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'Samuel Appleton' (June 22, 1766 - July 12, 1853) was an American merchant and philanthropist, active in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Great Britain. The town of Appleton, Wisconsin was named in his honor.
Appleton was born in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, from 1790-92 cleared fields in Maine for farming, and moved to Boston in 1794 where he became an importer in partnership with his brother Nathan as S. & N. Appleton, buying European dry goods at auction and for resale to country traders in exchange for homespun cloth as well as pot and pearl ash for export to Britain. He also established cotton mills at Waltham and Lowell, Massachusetts. After 1799 he passed much of his time in Britain, and at age 53 married a widow, Mrs. Mary Gore, with whom he had no children. He retired from business in 1823.
After retirement he devoted much of his fortune to charity, including his gift funding the Appleton Cabinet at Amherst College, built to house the Hitchcock Ichnological Cabinet, and the Appleton Chapel at Harvard University.
Wilson's biographical directory of Boston's business aristocracy, published 1848, noted that it was "to the credit of Samuel Appleton, that he commenced life with a single four-pence half penny, paid to him by a drover who passed his father's house, for assistance in driving [cattle]."

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References

★ "Samuel Appleton", ''Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography'', edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889.

★ Mann, Anthony, "How 'poor country boys' became Boston Brahmins: The rise of the Appletons and the Lawrences in ante-bellum Massachusetts", Historical Journal of Massachusetts, Winter 2003.

★ Peabody, Ephraim, "Notice of Samuel Appleton, Esq.", New England Historical and Genealogical Review, 8 (January, 1854), 12.

★ Wilson, Thomas L V, ''The Aristocracy of Boston; who they are, and what they were; being a history of Business and Business Men of Boston, for the last forty years'', Boston : Thomas Wilson, 1848.