Although strictly in private life, Gallatin took special interest in the progress of the country, and wrote much on the subject. His published works include such subjects as finance, politics and ethnology.
Mr. Gallatin was chief founder, in 1842, and the first president of the American Ethnological Society, and was president of the New York Historical Society from 1843 until his death, August 12, 1849, at Astoria, L. I.
General Thomas Mifflin, Soldier, Statesman
and Several Times Governor, Died
January 21, 1800
When the venerable Franklin was about to step aside as the President of the Council and withdraw from public employment, the people of Pennsylvania became concerned in the successor to so brilliant a man. The choice fell upon Thomas Mifflin, and he occupied the enviable position of Chief Executive of the Commonwealth longer than any other Pennsylvanian, two years as President of the Council and three times Governor, an aggregate of eleven years.
Thomas Mifflin was the son of Quaker parents, and was born in Philadelphia in 1744. He was educated in the Philadelphia College, and his parents intended that Thomas should follow a mercantile profession. Upon the completion of his college course he entered the counting house of William Coleman. At the age of twenty-one he made a tour of Europe and then entered into a business partnership with his brother in Philadelphia.
In 1772 he was elected one of the two members of the Legislature from the City of Philadelphia, and was re-elected the following year, when he was the colleague of Franklin, then just returned from his mission to England.
So conspicuous were his services in the Assembly, that when the appointment of delegates to the first Continental Congress came to be made, Mifflin was selected as one, and he occupied a position of commanding influence.
“When the news,” says Dr. Rawle, his biographer, “of the battle of Lexington reached Philadelphia, a town meeting was called and the fellow citizens of Mifflin were delighted by his animated oratory.” None did more than he to arouse the populace to a sense of the danger which threatened. He did not only exhort, but he put in practice his pleading. When the troops were to be enlisted and drilled, Mifflin was among the foremost to train them, and was selected as a major in one of the earliest formed regiments.