Samuel Verplanck

Samuel Verplanck (19 September 1739 – 27 January 1820) was an American merchant and politician.

Early life Verplanck was born in New York City in the Province of New York, then a part of British America, on 19 September 1739. He was a son of Gulian Verplanck (1698–1751) and Mary (née Crommelin) Verplanck, who married in 1737. His father was a fourth generation New Yorker who owned significant property and amassed a considerable fortune. Among his siblings was younger brother, Gulian Verplanck, a wholesale importer and banker who twice served as Speaker of the New York State Assembly.

His maternal grandfather was Charles Crommelin, a wealthy merchant who dealt in commerce between New York and Holland. Through his brother Gulian (who married Cornelia Johnston), he was an uncle of David Johnston Verplanck (editor of the New York American). Through his maternal aunt, Elizabeth (née Crommelin) Ludlow, he was a first cousin of Daniel Ludlow, the first president of the Manhattan Company, which was founded in 1799 by Aaron Burr to rival Alexander Hamilton's Bank of New York and the New York branch of the First Bank of the United States.

He attended and was among the first class to graduate from King's College and, later, served as a Governor of the College.

In 1804, he permanently retired to Fishkill in Dutchess County where his ancestor, Gulian Verplanck, had been one of the three original patentees of the Rombout Patent.

Personal life

In 1761, while in Amsterdam, Verplanck was married to his Dutch cousin, Judith Crommelin (1739–1803), a daughter of Daniel Crommelin and Marie ( le Plastrier) Crommelin. Together, they lived in a large yellow brick mansion, at 3 Wall Street (which eventually was replaced by the U.S. Assay Building), and were the parents of several children, only one of whom lived to adulthood:

Daniel C. Verplanck (1762–1834), a U.S. Representative from New York who married Elizabeth Johnson, the daughter of William Samuel Johnson, the 3rd President of Columbia College and a U.S. Senator from Connecticut, in 1785. After her death in 1789, he married Ann Walton, daughter of William Walton (nephew and heir of William Walton) and Mary ( De Lancey) Walton, in 1790.

Verplanck died on 27 January 1820.

Descendants Through his son Daniel, he was a grandfather of, among others, Gulian Crommelin Verplanck (1786–1870), who was also a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Legacy Portraits of Samuel and his then nine year old son Daniel, made in 1771 by John Singleton Copley are today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, together with "the Verplanck Room", which contains other paintings, furnishings, and cermaics from the Verplanck house that were later moved to Fishkill.