Thomas Jefferson Coolidge

Thomas Jefferson Coolidge (August 26, 1831 – November 17, 1920) was a U.S. ambassador and a leading Boston businessman. He was also a co-founder of General Electric.

Early life Coolidge was born to a Joseph Coolidge (1798–1879) and Ellen Wayles (Randolph) Coolidge (1796–1876). He was the brother of six siblings.

He was born to a prominent Boston Brahmin family and was a great-grandson of the 3rd United States President Thomas Jefferson, through his maternal grandparents, Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. and Martha Jefferson Randolph. His uncles were Thomas Jefferson Randolph, George Wythe Randolph, His father was a distant relative of Calvin Coolidge. He was an uncle to Archibald Cary Coolidge (1866–1928) through his older brother, Joseph Randolph Coolidge.

Coolidge was educated in private schools in Europe, and graduated from Harvard in 1850. Coolidge turned his attention to financing the rapidly growing industrial economy, with major interests in textiles banking, railroads, publishing and electricity.

In 1880, he ended his manufacturing career and "took up railroading." In 1898 and 1899, he was a member of the American delegation to the commission to resolve the Alaska boundary dispute.

Historian Ernest May says Coolidge was, "a prototype member of what today we call the foreign policy establishment."

Philanthropy Coolidge donated the Grand Army Hall and a public library to the town of Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts that cost more than $40,000. At Harvard, where he was an overseer from 1886 to 1897, he donated the Jefferson Research Laboratory and a chemical laboratory for quantitative analysis (as a memorial to his son), which all together cost over $165,000.

Personal life In 1852, he married Mehitable "Hetty" Sullivan Appleton (1831–1901), daughter of William Appleton, a leading financier of the New England cotton textile industry. They owned a residence in Boston and a summer home at Coolidge's Point in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.

He purchased El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent and gifted it to Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1914.

Descendants Through his son, he was the grandfather of Thomas Jefferson Coolidge III, Armory Coolidge and William A. Coolidge.

A granddaughter, Eleonora Sears, became a prominent American sportswoman.

The Coolidge family donated 42 acres of land to The Trustees of Reservations in 1990 and 1991. The donated land is now part of the Coolidge Reservation.