Matthew Vassar
| Matthew Vassar | |
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Matthew Vassar
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| Born |
April 29, 1792 East Dereham, Norfolk, England |
| Died | June 23, 1868 (aged 76) Springside (Poughkeepsie, New York), US |
Matthew Vassar (April 29, 1792 – June 23, 1868) was an English-born American brewer, merchant and philanthropist. He founded the eponymous Vassar College in 1861. He was a cousin of John Ellison Vassar. The city of Vassar, Michigan is named after him.
Matthew Vassar was born in April 29, 1792 in East Dereham, Norfolk, England to James and Ann Bennett Vassar. His parents were farmers. James's ancestors were French Huguenots (Vasseur) who emigrated to England. In 1796, they emigrated to New York and settled on a farm along Wappinger's Creek near Manchester Bridge in Dutchess County. While the farmhouse was being built, the family lived on the Filkintown Road, at what is now the intersection of Main and Church Streets. In 1801 James Vassar brewed ale with barley grown from seeds his brother Thomas brought from Norfolk. Demand for the ale was such that in 1801 James Vassar sold the farm and bought a lot between Main and Mill Streets in the village of Poughkeepsie from Baltus Van Kleeck to build a brewery. (James's son John Guy would later marry Margaret Van Kleeck, great-granddaughter of Baltus Van Kleeck.) When Vassar was 14 years old, his parents had him apprenticed to a tanner.
One day before he was to begin his apprenticeship, he ran away and crossing the Hudson River on the ferry at High Point made his way to Balm Town, just north of Newburgh, New York. There he found a job working in a store. He subsequently took a better paying job with another local merchant before returning to Poughkeepsie in 1810, where he joined the family brewing business as bookkeeper and collector. By this time the family had most of the brewing trade in the river towns from Newburgh to Hudson. In 1811 a malt-dust explosion destroyed the family brewery on Vassar Street. His older brother John died in the explosion, and his father was devastated by the loss. Matthew, then only 18, took over management of the business which was then conducted out of part of an old dye house belonging to George Booth, husband of Vassar's sister Maria. Booth, an immigrant from Yorkshire, England, was the first manufacturer of woolen cloth in Dutchess County.
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