Nathan Appleton - Biography

Manufacturer and banker, born in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, USA. One of the founders of the cotton-mill industry in Massachusetts, he pursued both profits and attractive working conditions for his employees. As a US representative (Whig, Massachusetts, 1831–3) he argued for a protective tariff and for the Bank of the United States. He wrote Currency and Banking (1841) and was active in Boston's cultural life.

Biography

He was born in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, the son of Isaac Appleton and his wife Mary Adams. Lowell and others in introducing the power-loom and the manufacture of cotton on a large scale into the United States, a factory being established at Waltham, Massachusetts in 1814, and another in 1822 at Lowell, Massachusetts, of which city he was one of the founders.

He was a member of the general court of Massachusetts in 1816, 1821, 1822, 1824 and 1827, and in 1831-1833 and 1842 of the national House of Representatives, in which he was prominent as an advocate of protective duties. They had the following children:

Thomas Gold Appleton (1812-1884) Mary "Molly" Appleton (1813-?), married Robert James Mackintosh. Charles Sedgwick Appleton (1815 -1835) Frances Elizabeth Appleton (1817-1861), married the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow George William Appleton (1826-1827), died in infancy. They had the following children:

William Sumner Appleton (1840-1903(?)) Harriet Appleton (1841- ?), married Greely Stevenson Curtis Nathan Appleton (1843-?).

He was also the cousin of William Appleton.