Every society needs more agents to watch carefully the dumb creatures who carry heavy loads, or are neglected or ill treated; and the gospel of kindness to animals needs to be carried to every part of the earth.
WILLIAM W. CORCORAN AND HIS ART GALLERY.
William Wilson Corcoran was born Dec. 27, 1798, at Georgetown, D.C. He was the son of Thomas Corcoran, who settled in Georgetown when a youth, and became one of its leading citizens. He was mayor, postmaster, and one of the founders of the Columbian College, of which institution he was an active trustee while he lived. He was also one of the principal founders of two Episcopal churches in Georgetown, St. John's and Christ's Church, and was always a vestryman in one or the other.
His son William, after a good preparatory education, spent a year at the Georgetown College, and a year at the school of the Rev. Addison Belt, a graduate of Princeton. His father desired that he should complete his college course; but William was eager to enter upon a business life, and when he was seventeen went into the dry-goods store of his brothers, James and Thomas Corcoran. Two years later they established him in business under the firm name of W. W. Corcoran & Co. The firm prospered so well that the wholesale auction and commission business was begun in 1819.
For four years the firm made money; but in the spring of 1823, they, with many other merchants in Georgetown and Baltimore, failed, and were obliged to settle with their creditors for fifty cents on the dollar.
Young Corcoran, then twenty-five years of age, devoted himself to caring for the property of his father, who was growing old. The father died Jan. 27, 1830. Five years later, in 1835, Mr. Corcoran married Louise A. Morris, who lived but five years after their marriage, dying Nov. 21, 1840, leaving a son and daughter. The son died soon after the death of his mother; the daughter grew to womanhood, and became a great joy to her father. She married the Hon. George Eustis, a member of Congress from Louisiana, and died in early life at Cannes, France, 1867, leaving three small children.
Mr. Corcoran long before this had become a very successful banker. Two years after his marriage, in 1837, he moved his family to Washington, and began the brokerage business in a small store, ten by sixteen feet, on Pennsylvania Avenue near Fifteenth Street. After three years he took into partnership Mr. George W. Riggs, the son of a wealthy man from Maryland, under the firm name of Corcoran & Riggs.