Delafield, John (22 January 1786–22 October 1853), merchant, banker, and farmer, was born in New York City, the son of John Delafield, a merchant, and Ann Hallett. The younger Delafield grew up in the city and on his father’s summer residence, “Sunwick,” on the East River, opposite Blackwell’s Island. Because of his father’s success in the merchant trade, Delafield enjoyed every privilege in his youth and attended Columbia College. Upon his graduation in 1802, he set out at once in his father’s footsteps by becoming a confidential agent and supercargo aboard a merchant vessel....
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Delafield, John (1786-1853), merchant, banker, and farmer
Samuel Willard Crompton
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Perdue, Frank (1920-2005), chicken farmer and merchant
Dennis Wepman
Perdue, Frank (09 May 1920–31 May 2005), chicken farmer and merchant, was born Franklin Parsons Perdue in Salisbury, Maryland, the son of Arthur W. Perdue, an agent for Railway Express and part-time egg farmer descended from seventeenth-century Huguenot settlers of the area, and Pearl Parsons. Frank helped out on the farm as a child and became familiar with all aspects of caring for chickens, at the age of ten raising to productive maturity some culled hens that had been intended for destruction. Perdue graduated from Salisbury High School in 1939 and spent two years at Salisbury State Teachers College, but family financial problems and a lack of interest in teaching led him to return to his father's farm once he had earned a two-year degree in 1941. As the market for meat increased during World War II, the family began to focus on the production of broiler chickens rather than eggs, and Perdue made a serious study of the nutrition and care of poultry. The business began to prosper, and when he became president of Perdue Farms after his father's death in 1952 it was averaging some $6 million in annual sales. In 1945 he married Madeline Godfrey, a college classmate, with whom he had four children. They divorced in 1976. Although some sources, including his obituary in the ...
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Ward, Samuel (1725-1776), farmer, merchant, and governor of Rhode Island
Arthur J. Worrall
Ward, Samuel (27 May 1725–26 March 1776), farmer, merchant, and governor of Rhode Island, was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the son of Richard Ward and Mary Tillinghast. Ward’s Newport family was wealthy and politically and socially prominent. His father, secretary or recorder of the colony from 1714 to 1732 and governor from 1740 to 1743, was an opponent of the Rhode Island faction that favored paper money. In 1745 Samuel Ward married Anna Ray of Block Island. They had eleven children. After their marriage her father gave the couple a farm at Westerly, in the southwestern corner of the colony. There Ward prospered, expanding his holdings and trading his and his neighbors’ products to Newport and Boston. In 1752, for example, he shipped 2,000 pounds of cheese to Boston....
