Gouverneur Kemble

Gouverneur Kemble (January 25, 1786 – September 18, 1875) was an American diplomat, industrialist, and two-term United States Congressman from New York from 1837 to 1841.

He helped found the West Point Foundry, a major producer of artillery during the American Civil War.

Early life and education Kemble was born in 1786 to a prominent family in New York City, the eldest son of prosperous attorney and merchant Peter Kemble of New Jersey. Ships of the firm Gouverneur & Kemble conducted trade in the West Indies, Europe and China. Kemble was educated in New York and graduated from Columbia College in 1803, then entered the mercantile business. He was friends with Washington Irving and other members of city society, who enjoyed socializing at Cockloft Hall (an old family mansion on the Passaic River at Woodside, Newark which Kemble inherited and was sometimes known as "Salmagundi" or the "Bachelor's Elysium"). He was a founding member of the "Lads of Kilkenny". His sister, Gertrude, married James Kirke Paulding in November, 1818. Through his grandmother Gertrude Bayard, Kemble descended both from the Schuyler family and the Van Cortlandt family.

Diplomat Kemble was sent to the Mediterranean as a naval agent during the Second Barbary War with Tripoli. As a young man with political connections, in 1816 he was appointed United States Consul at Cádiz in Spain, where his attention was attracted to the Spanish government's state-of-the-art process of casting cannon.

In his later years, he was an active supporter of the Hudson River Railroad and the Panama Railway, and was a lifelong art collector and patron. David Hunter Strother, who gained fame for illustrated articles in Harper's Monthly, and Kemble helped found the "Century Club" for artists in New York City. In 1854 Kemble was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician.

Tontine Association Kemble was one of the last survivors of the Tontine Association.

An 1853 oil portrait of Gouverneur Kemble by Asher Brown Durand is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Famed Civil War general Gouverneur Kemble Warren, born in Cold Spring in 1830, was named for Kemble, a close friend of his father, Sylvanus Warren.