Author: Featherstonhaugh, George William
Biography:
FEATHERSTONHAUGH, George William (1780-1866: ANBO)
A man of many talents who also had a way of alienating people and was repeatedly frustrated in grand schemes. He was born on 3 Apr. 1780 in Southwark, London, the son of a manufacturer and a shopkeeper, George and Dorothy (Simpson) Featherstonhaugh. After working as a commercial agent on the Continent for a few years, he moved to New York in 1806. On 19 Nov. 1808 at Albany he married Sarah Duane, whose father owned a large estate near Schenectady; the couple had four children. Established in a house on the estate, Featherstonhaugh for a time was a successful breeder of imported livestock. Encountering difficulties, he transferred his attention to railroads and returned temporarily to England to investigate railroads there. At the same time, he became seriously interested in geology: he sailed back to New York in 1827 with a collection of 8000 fossils and minerals which he loaned to a museum. He gave lectures on geology at Columbia College and attempted to found a scientific journal. After the death of his wife in 1828, he moved to Philadelphia and married again. With his second wife, Charlotte Williams Carter (d 1879), whom he married at Canajoharie NY on 28 Jan. 1831, he had three more children. He produced a translation of Cicero in 1829 and one of Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi in 1834. In 1839, having returned to England, he was employed in the British interest in a border dispute between Maine and New Brunswick. From 1844 until his death on 28 Sept. 1866, he served as British Consul at Le Havre. He was buried at Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where there is a monument. (ANBO 29 Nov. 2018; ancestry.com 25 Mar. 2026; findmypast.com 25 Mar. 2026; Morning Advertiser [London] 10 October. 1866) HJ