George Walker Weld

George Walker Weld (1840–1905), youngest son of William Fletcher Weld and member of the Weld Family of Boston, was a founding member of the Boston Athletic Association (organizers of today's Boston Marathon) and the financier of the Weld Boathouse, a landmark on the Charles River.

Weld was athletic as a student at Harvard College and for some years afterward. He was also mischievous. His younger cousin Stephen Minot Weld Jr. described how George came to his room one right with a plan to

"...screw in one of the tutors, named Pearce. The plan was to take a hinge and screw one part to the bottom and the other to the sill of the door, so that in the morning...[Pearce] would find himself locked in and unable to attend prayers, and so could not mark us for our absence."

Pearce heard the Welds and their friend Osborne and chased them down the stairs. At the bottom, the Welds hid under the stairs while Pearce chased Osborne out into a heavy snowfall.

"Osborne plunged into a snow-drift and stuck there, and Pearce jumped on him. They had a row and a good deal of scuffling, and in it Pearce, who wore a red wig, lost it. It got lost in the snow and was never found until the next spring."

Osborne was expelled and got his degree many years later, but George's quick wit in swinging beneath the stairs saved the Welds from discipline.

As a wealthy bachelor, Weld belonged to several Boston clubs as well as the New York Yacht Club. Weld was part of the syndicate that built the America's Cup defender Puritan and often invited friends to cruise on his 80-foot steel schooner, Chanticleer-- considered one of the finest steam yachts in the United States.

When Weld was about age forty he was afflicted with an unknown malady, possibly a neurological disorder, which left him partially paralyzed. A newspaper from his time notes "The illness of George Walker Weld has assumed a sad form and he has been carried to the Somerville insane asylum."

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