William Colgate was born on January 25, 1783 in the parish of Hollingbourn, Kent, England, the son of Robert and Sarah (Bowles) Colgate. In March 1796, the father, threatened with arrest for his too ardent advocacy of the French Revolution, sailed with his family for Baltimore. He bought and cultivated a farm near Baltimore, but lost it through a defect in the title.
William had some schooling both in England and in America.
At fifteen Colgate went to work, probably for a tallow- chandler, and in 1804 he left Baltimore for New York, finding employment with Slidell & Company, then the largest tallow-chandlers in the city. Before long he became business manager of the firm. In 1806 he started his own establishment in Dutch St. , which from the first was successful.
By 1812, worth $5, 000, he considered himself wealthy, and his after-years are said to have been of uninterrupted prosperity. About this time he began the manufacture of starch, subsequently abandoned, and for many years his establishment included one of the largest starch plants in America. Though the manufacture of soap in this country was then in its crude beginnings, the finer qualities being made by secret process in England and France, the industry grew enormously during the first four decades of the century, and Colgate’s business shared in this expansion. The discoveries of Chevreul in 1841, revealing the true principles of saponification, were quickly utilized by Colgate and others, greatly transforming the industry and prompting the manufacture of many new varieties of toilet and shaving soaps.
In 1847 the factory was moved to Jersey City, and three years later the making of “fancy” soaps was established on a large scale, to be followed in later years by a wide range of toilet preparations. Out of his first profits Colgate bought a farm in Delaware County, New York, for his father. When he began business he resolved to devote ten per cent of each year’s net earnings to benevolence— a resolve adhered to throughout the remainder of his life, though the percentage was often doubled and even trebled.
His main interests were education, religion, and temperance. He was a liberal supporter of the Hamilton Literary and Theological Seminary, at Hamilton, New York, and its successor (1846), Madison University, which in 1890 became Colgate University. He aided in organizing the first Bible society formed in New York and in 1816 in organizing the American Bible Society. In 1836, however, objecting to some of the methods of the latter society, he resigned and helped to organize the American and Foreign Bible Society, of which for thirteen years he was the treasurer.
In his twenty-fifth year Colgate joined the Baptist Church. By 1838 he had come to regard sectarianism as an obstacle to the progress of Christianity. Withdrawing from his church, he joined with others in organizing the society which built the Tabernacle, a society which adopted no creed, but only a simple covenant.
Colgate was the possessor of an exceptionally sunny temperament. He was just in his dealings; to his employees he was liberal, and he was known as a friend of the workingman. His hospitality was lavish, and to the causes he had at heart he was a generous contributor. He combined shrewd judgment with clear vision, and he seems never to have made a serious commercial blunder. Even during the ruinous times of the War of 1812 he prospered.
Colgate was married, in 1811, to Mary Gilbert, a woman highly praised for her cultivation, charm, and benevolence. He had three sons: Samuel (1822 - 1897), who succeeded to the business and greatly extended it, James Boorman, and Robert.
