Eddy, Thomas

Extract

Eddy, Thomas (05 September 1758–16 September 1827), Quaker reformer, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of James Eddy and Mary Darragh, immigrants from Ireland. Raised in a Quaker family with Tory sympathies, Eddy received an elementary education and in 1771 was apprenticed to a tanner in Burlington, New Jersey. From 1779 until the end of the American Revolution, he lived in New York where, with a brother and a friend, he formed Eddy, Sykes and Company to import scarce goods from England and Ireland. He also acted as a banker, moving funds to captured British troops in Pennsylvania and building his fortune on the 6 percent commission he garnered from the large sums transferred. He married Hannah Hartshorne in 1782; they had three children. For a brief period in the mid-1780s he operated a store in Fredericksburg, Virginia, which finally went bankrupt....