Benjamin Stoddert - Early Life

Early Life

Stoddert was born in Charles County, Maryland, in 1751, the son of Captain Thomas Stoddert. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, and then worked as a merchant. He served as a captain in the Pennsylvania cavalry and later as secretary to the Continental Board of War during the American Revolutionary War. During the war, he was severely injured in the Battle of Brandywine and was subsequently released from active military service. In 1781, he married Rebecca Lowndes, daughter of Christopher Lowndes, a Maryland merchant, and they had eight children. They resided at the home of his father-in-law, Bostwick, located at Bladensburg, Maryland.

In 1783, Forest established a tobacco export business in Georgetown, with business partners Uriah Forrest and John Murdock.

After George Washington was elected President, he asked Stoddert to purchase key parcels of land in the area that would become the nation's capital, before the formal decision to establish the federal city on the banks of the Potomac drove up prices there. Stoddert then transferred the parcels to the government. During the 1790s, he also helped found the Bank of Columbia to handle purchases of land in the District of Columbia for the federal government.

Read more about this topic:  Benjamin Stoddert

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:

    If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.
    Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)

    To divide one’s life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.
    Clifton Fadiman (b. 1904)