Daniel Ludlow (banker)

Ludlow was born on August 2, 1750, in New York City to a long-established and wealthy New York family. His sister, Elizabeth Ludlow, was the wife of Francis Lewis Jr. (brother of Gov. Morgan Lewis). From his father's first marriage to Frances Duncan, he had an elder half-brother, George Duncan Ludlow, who was appointed the first Chief Justice of New Brunswick in Canada in 1784. Another half-brother, Gabriel George Ludlow, was the first mayor of Saint John, New Brunswick (and the grandfather of Edward Hunter Ludlow). The first Ludlow in America from his line was his grandfather, also named Gabriel Ludlow (1663–1736), who was born at Castle Cary and left Frome around 1694 to settle in New Amsterdam, and became a prominent and influential merchant, shipowner, landholder and longtime clerk of the New York General Assembly. He obtained a patent from King George II for a tract of 4,000 acres of land in what became Orange County, New York, on the west bank of the Hudson River. Through his maternal aunt, Mary (née Crommelin) Verplanck, he was a first cousin of Gulian Verplanck, Speaker of the New York State Assembly who became president of the Bank of New York and in 1792 helped found the Tontine Association (a precursor of the New York Stock Exchange). The wealth and status of the Ludlow family gave Daniel and his elder half-brothers "several advantages, including education in a private school." ==Career==

In 1765, his father sent him to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, to enter the counting house of Crommelin & Zoon, where his grandfather Charles Crommelin was a leader. During his five year tenure with the firm, Ludlow learned French, German, and Dutch in addition to learning the fundamentals of banking. After returning to New York around 1770, he joined his father’s mercantile business, which he took over after his father died in 1773. In July 1800, the Bank started paying dividends and, in 1808, the company sold its waterworks to the city, pocketing $1.9 million dollars, and turned completely to banking. The same year, Henry Remsen, succeeded Ludlow as president of the company. In 1810, Ludlow moved to Skaneateles, New York, when he purchased an extensive estate from Jacobus Annis (later known as the Anson Lapham place). ==Personal life==

On October 4, 1773, Ludlow married Arabella Duncan, a daughter of Thomas Duncan and Mary (née Ketcham) Duncan. In 1757, the Duncan home, a 3-storey house in Pearl Street (then known as Queen Street), caught fire and burned to the ground, killing her mother and seven siblings in the nursery on the third floor. Only Arabella, her father and her sister Frances escaped. Frances later married their cousin and Daniel's elder half-brother, George Duncan Ludlow, in 1758. Their daughter, Frances Duncan Ludlow, was the second wife of Richard Harison, a law partner of Alexander Hamilton who served as the Recorder of New York City and the 1st U.S. Attorney for the District of New York. Together, the couple eleven children, five of whom lived to maturity, including: • Harriet Ludlow (b. 1774), who married Grove Wright, a New York merchant. who died unmarried in Florence, Italy. • Edward Greenleaf Ludlow (1793–1877), a physician who married his cousin Mary Kennedy Lewis, a daughter of John Lewis and great-granddaughter of Francis Lewis, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, in 1828. After her death, he married Mrs. Van Horne. His wife Arabella died on December 7, 1803. Ludlow died at his country home at Skaneateles, New York, on September 26, 1814. Descendants Through his eldest daughter Harriet, he was a grandfather of Henry Allen Wright, who married his cousin Louisa Ludlow Auchmuty (1805–1896), a resident of Newport, Rhode Island, for fifty years. Through his son Edward, he was a grandfather of Arabella Duncan Ludlow (1844–1926), who married Edward Sherman Gould (1837–1905), a son of author Edward Sherman Gould. ==References==