Benjamin Knower

Benjamin Knower junior (born 1775 in Boston , Province of Massachusetts Bay , † August 26, 1839 in Watervliet , New York ) was an American trader, banker and politician .

Career

Benjamin Knower junior, son of Elizabeth Wood and Benjamin Knower, was born in 1775 in the then still independent city of Roxbury (now a borough of Boston). His childhood was overshadowed by the War of Independence . Around 1800 he moved to Dutchess County (New York). He married Sarah Van Kleek (1779-1833) on June 21, 1800 in the Dutch Reformed Church in Poughkeepsie, New York. Before 1810, he settled in Albany, New York, where he sold hats his brother Timothy made in Guilderland, New York. According to local lore, the hats were made waterproof by immersing them in the Bozenkill, a stream behind a mansion in Knowersville , a village in Guilderland. The British-American War overshadowed the following years.

In the presidential election in 1820 , he served as elector for James Monroe and Daniel D. Tompkins , both of the Democratic-Republican Party . Knower was New York's Treasurer of State from 1821 to 1824 . He was a senior member of the Albany Regency . On April 28, 1824, his daughter Cornelia (1801-1889) married the State Comptroller William L. Marcy .

As a result of the funding of the Erie Canal , Knower became rich. He was a director of the Mechanics and Farmers Bank of Albany. After the death of his first wife, he married Sophia P. Castle († 1886) in New York City on June 23, 1836 . He was buried in the Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York. His home in Guilderland was known as Knower House and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Benjamin Knower on the Rootsweb.Ancestry.com website
2. ↑ ^{a b} Benjamin Knower on the website of The Political Graveyard
3. ^ The New York civil list , Weed, Parsons and Company, 1858, p. 35