Samuel Appleton was an American merchant and philanthropist, active in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Great Britain.
Background
Samuel Appleton was born on June 22, 1766 in New Hampshire, United States, the son of Isaac and Mary Appleton.
He descended from Samuel Appleton of Suffolk County, England, who settled at Ipswich, Massachussets, in 1636. His son, Samuel, became a commander in King Philip's War and an opponent of Sir Edmund Andros. The grandson of this militant colonial went inland to New Ipswich, N. H. ; there, his son, Isaac Appleton, grew to manhood and married Mary Adams of Concord; there, Samuel Appleton was born, the third of their twelve children.
Education
The hardships so common in the American frontier town were Appleton's early education, giving him perhaps an appreciation of values from the meagerness of his own opportunities; except for a few intervals during the Revolution, between his tenth and sixteenth years, he received no schooling; then, he himself became the district teacher.
Career
At twenty-two he helped to establish a new township in Maine, and labored for two summers to clear his farm. But the propensity for trading, so typical of New Englanders, was uppermost in him, and after storekeeping ventures in Ashburnham and New Ipswich, he went in 1794 with his brother, Nathan Appleton, to open a shop in Boston.
By 1799 their business had so developed that a trip to England for merchandise seemed worth while; and until 1819 Samuel Appleton was often abroad on such business. In spite of the Jeffersonian Embargo and the War of 1812, he prospered; he accumulated enough capital to invest with Nathan Appleton in the new cotton industry; he acquired valuable real estate in Boston; he soon had funds to subscribe to the railroad projects of the thirties.
Samuel Appleton never led in politics, although he sat in the state legislature from 1828 to 1831, and served as a presidential elector for Daniel Webster in 1836.
He was numbered among the merchants who controlled the currency and finance of New England from State St. As these conservatives turned their capital from shipping and importing to the manufacture of cotton and woolen goods, they deserted the free-trade doctrines of the mercantile aristocracy for protective principles. They dropped their objections to the Second Bank of the United States and, following Daniel Webster, became its defenders. With them, in opposition to Jacksonian Democracy, Samuel Appleton moved from the Federalist to the National Republican and later to the Whig party.
When he reached the age of sixty, Appleton retired from business with the avowed purpose of spending his income upon philanthropies. He became a benefactor and trustee of the Massachusetts General Hospital; he gave to the Boston Female Asylum, New Ipswich Academy, and Dartmouth College; he was a patron of the Boston Athen'um and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Besides providing for his widow, her nieces, and her sister, for the descendants of his four brothers and two sisters, for his servants, and for his friend, Rev. Ephraim Peabody, his will allotted industrial stocks worth about $200, 000--nearly a fifth of his fortune--to scientific, literary, religious, and philanthropic endeavors. Knowing his wishes, his executors distributed most of these stocks among the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston Athen'um, Sailors' Snug Harbor, Massachusetts General Hospital, New Ipswich Academy, and Amherst, Dartmouth, and Harvard Colleges. With its share, Harvard built Appleton Chapel in honor of the benefactor.
Achievements
Politics
Samuel Appleton moved from the Federalist to the National Republican and later to the Whig party.
Personality
The portrait of this man depicts him as a ponderous gentleman of culture and ease, prosperous and benign.
Connections
At the age of fifty-three he married Mrs. Mary Gore. They had no children; but their mansion on Beacon St. was a joyous open house to their nieces and nephews.