Daniel C. Verplanck

Daniel Crommelin Verplanck (March 19, 1762 March 29, 1834) was a United States Representative from New York.

Life

Mount Gulian, Dutchess County

Born in New York City, he was the son of Samuel (b. 1739) and Judith Crommelin Verplanck. His father was a whole sale importer and banker. Daniel's early life was spent at the family home, a large yellow brick mansion, at 3 Wall St.[1] His parents separated during the Revolutionary War. His father, a supporter of the Revolution, withdrew to the family summer home, upriver in the Town of Fishkill, while his mother was a loyalist and remained in New York City. The house in Fishkill became the headquarters of General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben.[2]

Daniel was educated under private tutors and graduated from Columbia College (later Columbia University) in New York City in 1788. He studied law, was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in New York City in 1789. He also engaged in banking and was one of the original subscribers of the Tontine Coffee House. Daniel's wife Elizabeth died in 1789. The following year he married Ann Walton (familiarly called "Nancy"). After his mother's death in 1803, the Wall Street house was closed and Daniel and his family moved to Mount Gulian,[2] In 1822 he sold the Wall Street house to the Bank of the United States for use as its New York branch.

At Mount Gulian, Verplanck kept open house summer and winter and received family members and many notable guests. On Christmas 1826 he hosted a number of West Point cadets, including Thomas Boylston Adams, Jr., grandson of John Adams, and nephew of Verplanck's neighbor Caroline Smith DeWindt. (In his 1892 The History of Abraham Isaacse Verplanck, W.E. Verplanck confuses cadet Adams with his father, Thomas Boylston Adams).[3] Mrs. DeWindt later drowned in the 1852 Henry Clay steamboat disaster.

Verplanck was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Eighth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Isaac Bloom. He was re-elected to the Ninth and Tenth Congresses and served from October 17, 1803 to March 3, 1809.[4] He was not a candidate for renomination in 1808, and resumed the practice of law. He was judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Dutchess County, resigning his seat in 1828.[3] From this he was in his later years, commonly called "Judge Verplanck". In 1834 he died at his home, Mount Gulian, near Fishkill; interment was in Trinity Church Cemetery, Fishkill.

Daniel Verplanck's son, Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, was also a U.S. Representative from New York.

A portrait of the nine year old Daniel Verplanck by John Singleton Copley is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[1] which also has "the Verplanck Room", containing portraits and furnishings from the Wall St. house that were later moved to Fishkill.[2]

Family

In 1785 he married Elizabeth Johnson, the daughter of the president of Columbia.[1] The couple had two children:

Elizabeth Johnson Verplanck died in February 1789 at the age of twenty-five. In November 1790 Daniel Verplanck married Ann Walton, daughter of William and Mary DeLancey Walton. Daniel and Ann Verplanck had seven children:

See also

References

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by
Isaac Bloom
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 6th congressional district

1803–1809
Succeeded by
Herman Knickerbocker and
Robert Le Roy Livingston
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