Mechanics National Bank - Notable Directors and Customers

Notable Directors and Customers

John Aitken (subscriber) Music publisher and composer

Most of the founders of the Mechanics' Bank were artisans who had served traditional apprenticeships but whose later paths set them apart from their peers. John Aitken was a silversmith in his native Scotland, but when he moved to Philadelphia in 1885, he became one of North America's first music publishers. While his competitors printed sheet music using hand-engraved metal plates, Aitken introduced the use of standardized punches to stamp notes onto the plates, a faster process which also produced more legible scores.

In 1807, Aitken opened a music store at 76 North Second Street in an odd-looking building known as "Jones’s Folly." In addition to his publishing business, he dabbled in composition (with little success) and rented the second floor to an Englishman by the name of Blake, who gave flute and "clarionet" lessons until he was visited by a group of Quaker elders and told to "stop teaching the clarionet to our boys or we will have thee put in prison."

Rudolph “Old Dutch Cleanser” Blankenburg (director) Mayor of Philadelphia

In 1911, Rudolph Blankenburg became Philadelphia's 164th mayor. A German-born dry-goods manufacturer and merchant, he had been active in local affairs since 1880 and was affectionately known as "Old Dutch Cleanser" because of his origins and zealous dedication to reform. During his four years in office, he tried to replace the political cronies appointed by predecessors like John Reyburn with trained professionals, instituted a modern civil service system with on-the-job training and standardized employee benefits, and systematized city contracts. His wife, Lucretia Longshore Blankenburg, was a prominent women's suffragist and an important reform activist in her own right.

George H. Boker (director) Playwright and poet

While almost forgotten today, George Henry Boker was a well-known poet, playwright, and diplomat in the mid-19th century. He was originally trained as a lawyer but after traveling in Europe, he was inspired to become a writer instead. He published a few books of unremarkable lyric poetry in the 1840s and then turned to drama, becoming one of the most successful American playwrights by the mid-1850s. He specialized in blank verse romantic tragedies, usually in historical European settings; his best known was the 1855 Francesca da Rimini. In the 1860s, he returned to writing lyric poetry, especially sonnets.

During the Civil War, Boker helped organize (and later became president of) the Union League to support the war effort and published Poems of the War, a collection of lyric poetry In recognition of his services, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him Minister (Ambassador) to the Ottoman Empire in 1871 and, four years later, to Russia.

His father, Charles S. Boker, was also a director of the Mechanics' bank, and later was president of the much larger Girard Bank during the 1857-8 financial crisis. George Boker’s The Book of the Dead was a response to his father's posthumous critics.

Edward H. Coates (director) Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Mechanics' Bank director Edward H. Coates was a businessman and art patron most notorious for his association with Thomas Eakins, perhaps the greatest American realist painter. As chairman of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts’ Committee on Instruction, Coates was instrumental in appointing Eakins as director and supported reforms like teaching anatomy from nude models instead of plaster casts. In 1883, the two served together on a University of Pennsylvania's committee to oversee the photographer Eadweard Muybridge's pioneering studies of human and animal movement. However, he soon grew uncomfortable with many of his practices, especially his use of students as models. In 1885, he commissioned "The Swimming Hole," but rejected the finished painting for its explicit and erotic depiction of male students and friends. The following year, he fired Eakins for removing a drapery from a male model in front of female students, though he continued to buy his paintings.

His brother, George M. Coates, was also a director of the bank.

Abner Davis (director) Nail factor and jailer

Nail manufacturer Abner Davis's life shows how Philadelphia's economy shifted from handicraft to industry in the early days of the 19th century. Colonial blacksmiths forged nails one at a time, but by the 1790s, machines had been developed that could cut many nails from one long iron bar and, later, shape the heads as well. Davis was one of the first to adopt this new technology: in addition to running his own shop, he was in 1795 appointed as an assistant keeper at the Walnut Street Prison to "help direct the work… of the Men in the Yard, Smith Shop, & Nail Factory," which he had set up.

William Flintham (director) Cooper and would-be merchant

The bank drew its early directors from among Philadelphia's most successful tradesmen. Most of these employed many apprentices and journeymen and some moved on to become manufacturers or merchants – with varying success. In 1807, William Flintham invested profitably in shipping some flaxseed to Ireland. A generation later, the antiquarian Abraham Ritter recalled that "Mr Flintham was a very active and intelligent man, whose mechanical trade could not confine his genius; and passing from the cooper-shop to the counting-house, entered more extensively in the shipping business, but alas, in fine, not to profit."

William Gaul (director) Malt manufacturer and brewer

Director William Gaul was part of a large family of brewers in Philadelphia. His father, Frederick Gaul, had come to the city from Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany in 1804 and owned the former Robert Hare brewery which had made George Washington’s favorite porter. William Gaul was a successful malt manufacturer and dealer as well as brewer and built one of the first mansions on North Broad Street. It later became the home of the actor Edwin Forrest and, after his death, a home for retired actors and now forms part of the Freedom Theater complex. His descendents remain in the brewing business to this day – one of his daughters married a Yuengling.

Joseph Gillingham (director) Merchant and engineer

Although Joseph Gillingham was a merchant, not a mechanic, he shared the other early directors’ interest in manufacturing and technology. With Josiah White, he built a water-powered nail factory at the Falls of Schuylkill (now East Falls). In 1817, they offered to build a water-powered pumping station to fill the reservoir at Fairmount (now the site of the Philadelphia Museum of Art), but the water department decided to continue to use steam pumps. Three years later, the city changed its mind, bought them out, and constructed a station on their plan just below the reservoir.

Uriah Hunt (director) Publisher A generation after his death, Publishers’ Weekly still fondly remembered "Uriah Hunt, the tall, serene, and in every way worthy and admirable Quaker publisher of county and other school books and useful works." One of Hunt's best-selling authors was Parson Mason Weems, the fanciful biographer who invented the story of George Washington chopping down his father's cherry tree.

Jacob Johnson and William Woodward (directors) Publishers Both Johnson and Woodward published religious books, primarily for western, rural markets, and pioneered new methods of wholesale and "mail-order" distribution. Johnson and his partner Benjamin Warner both traveled extensively and built personal relationships with small town merchants and booksellers, while Woodward relied on his reputation for personal piety to gain the trust of local ministers who handled his distribution for him.

Philip Justice (director) Manufacturer and war profiteer

Philip Justice owned a factory for cast steel springs and other railroad parts and equipment in North Philadelphia. He was the first American to import steel tires for railroad cars, which he sold to Philadelphia’s Baldwin Locomotive works. During the Civil War, he invented "an improved mode of attaching Armor Plates to Vessels" and he turned over much of his plant to military production, but he seems to have been far more interested in profit than patriotism: an investigation and court case found that, in the words of the US Supreme Court, "the arms were unserviceable and unsafe for troops to handle."

Stephen North (director) Pharmacist

Stephen North was a pharmacist and early director of the bank. In 1821, the University of Pennsylvania announced that its medical school would establish a pharmacy program, a move that local pharmacists saw as an attempt by physicians to take over their profession. In response, North chaired a meeting where they started their own College of Apothecaries and Penn shelved its plans. This institution later became the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and is now the University of the Sciences.

George D. Rosengarten (Director) Accountant, Pennsylvania Railroad Director and Quinine Distributor

In 1821, the 20-year-old George D. Rosengarten was called in to mediate a dispute between two business partners, Seitler, a Frenchman who spoke only French and Zeitler, a German who spoke only German. Rosengarten, a German immigrant who was fluent in both (as well as English), was so helpful that they took him on as a partner and within two years he had become the sole owner of the company. The business began to prosper after he took on another partner, NFH Denis, a French chemist who was an expert in processing the malaria drug quinine, which financed the company's expansion. Its products won numerous awards from the Franklin Institute and by 1862 it was selling more than 350 different chemicals and was the main provider of quinine to the Union Army.

Frederick Lennig (director) Chemical Manufacturer Another German, Nicholas Lennig established the Tacony Chemical Works in 1831 but died soon after. His son, Charles, and nephew Frederick Lennig (a Mechanics' Bank director) inherited the factory. At the Centennial Exposition in 1876, they were awarded a medal "for the products exhibited coming from the distillation of wood, for metallic salts and especially for the careful manufacture of sulphate of alumina and alum".

Charles Godfrey Leland (customer, son of director) Poet, folklorist, and educator Charles G. Leland was a poet, folklorist, antiquarian, libertarian and educator. Born in Philadelphia, he matriculated from what is now Princeton University in 1845 and traveled extensively in Europe and the America’s studying Romany, witch and Native American cultures. His first literary acclaim was for the comedies, The Hans Breitmann Ballads, and was followed by his more serious folklore studies. Throughout his career he produced more than 50 books including The English Gypsies (1873), Algonquin Legends (1884) and Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899). He died in Florence, Italy in 1903 and his ashes were interred in Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery. His works are still read today by Wicca's and others interested in folk history for their fine lyrical content and first-hand sources of antiquated incantations and spells.

Ebenezer Maxwell (director) Eminent Victorian

Ebenezer Maxwell was a cloth merchant. In 1859, he built a mansion on Walnut Lane in Germantown, not far from the home of his friend and fellow director Joseph G. Mitchell. The building is now a museum of Victorian architecture and design.