Abraham Redwood was an American merchant and philanthropist.
Background
Abraham Redwood was born on April 15, 1709 on the Island of Antigua. His father was Abraham Redwood, an Englishman, who, as a young man, commanded a ship which plied between London and the West Indies. In Jamaica, Captain Redwood met and married Mehetable Langford, the daughter of a wealthy planter, and through this connection became the owner of a valuable sugar plantation in Antigua and a large number of slaves. After his marriage he abandoned the sea, devoting himself to his business interests. He moved to America when his son, Abraham, was two years old.
Education
He was educated in Philadelphia.
Career
While still very young he began to assume a man's responsibilities. In 1726 in Newport, Rhode Island, and established a home in that city. Two years before, owing to the sudden death by accident of an elder brother, the family estate in Antigua, "Cassada Garden, " had become his property. Abraham managed the plantation chiefly through the medium of overseers, sending its products to market in English, West Indian, and New England ports. Thus young Redwood was a shipowner and merchant as well as a planter.
Though storms and blights at times interfered seriously with his crops, he was in the main highly successful.
In Newport he became a member of the Philosophical Society, a Rhode Island institution which doubtless owed its existence to the influence of Bishop Berkeley. Its purpose was to conduct weekly debates on varied subjects - theological, political and literary. As time passed, it undertook the task of founding a public library. With a generosity which was characteristic, Abraham Redwood promptly announced his readiness to contribute five hundred pounds to the project. The gift was a munificent one for that period, and in recognition of it the new library was called by the donor's name.
From its founding in 1747 a source of pride and distinction to the city, the Redwood Library in its early days attracted to Newport a cultivated group who were eager to avail themselves of its unusual opportunities for reading and study. Ezra Stiles was one of its librarians, taking the position apparently in order to have constant access to its books. Redwood's memory owes its perpetuation to this gift, but his benevolence was not confined to it. He found special delight in assisting young men just starting in the business world.
In his will he left five hundred pounds to establish a Friends' school in Newport. His will also stipulated that five hundred pounds be given to the founding of a college in Rhode Island, provided that Newport be chosen as its site, a bequest which recalls the controversy between Newport and Providence, when what is now Brown University was in its infancy.
Achievements
Connections
Early in his eighteenth year, March 6, 1726, he married Martha, daughter of Abraham Coggeshall of Newport, Rhode Island, and established a home in that city. He had six children, of whom three sons and a daughter reached maturity.