Henry van Wart (1784 - 1873), an American who became British by special act of Parliament, founded the Birmingham Stock Exchange and served as one of Birmingham's first aldermen and a director of the Birmingham Banking Company.
He was married to Sarah Irving, the sister of author Washington Irving. They had four children: William (1812 - 1868), Matilda (b. 1814), Marianne (b. 1816). and George (b. 1817; later a wine merchant). William later named his first-born Washington Irving van Wart (b. 1836), whose niece in turn was called Rosalinda Irving van Wart (b. 1874).
Henry and Sarah met when he was employed by her family's New York City company, Irving & Smith, and they moved to England when he was tasked with opening a Liverpool branch of the firm.
After that enterprise failed, they moved to Birmingham, and he set up a profitable business, exporting the city's goods to America.
Washington Irving lived with the van Warts at four of their homes in Birmingham, light-heartedly christening two of these buildings "Castle van Tromp" and writing some of his most successful stories at them.
He is also known to have worshipped at St Paul's Church in St Paul's Square, Birmingham.
Henry van Wart was also great friends with fellow American Samuel Aspinwall Goddard, US Consul to Birmingham. Goddard's uncle was also Thomas Aspinwall (consul) United States consul to London, 1816–1854. Goddard was a gunmaker, LBSC director, owner of the Church "Surprise" railway locomotive 1840, author and pamphleteer, exhibitor of guns at Great Exhibition of 1851 and co-patentee with Dr. William Church (inventor) of a breech-loading canon presented to the British parliamentary ordinance committee in 1853. Samuel A. Goddard also named his daughter Emily van Wart Goddard after Henry van Wart.
Washington Irving was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He wrote the short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both of which appear in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad, and George Washington, as well as several histories of 15th-century Spain that deal with subjects such as the Alhambra, Christopher Columbus, and the Moors. Irving served as American ambassador to Spain in the 1840s.
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York, is the final resting place of numerous famous figures, including Washington Irving, whose 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is set in the adjacent burying ground at the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. Incorporated in 1849 as Tarrytown Cemetery, the site posthumously honored Irving's request that it change its name to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their strong liquor and falls deeply asleep in the Catskill Mountains. He awakes 20 years later to a very changed world, having missed the American Revolution.
Benjamin West, was a British-American artist who painted famous historical scenes such as The Death of Nelson, The Death of General Wolfe, the Treaty of Paris, and Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky.
The Boston Brahmins or Boston elite are members of Boston's traditional upper class. They are often associated with a cultivated New England or Mid-Atlantic dialect and accent, Harvard University, Anglicanism, and traditional British American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English colonists are typically considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins. They are considered White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).
Lewis Morris was an American Founding Father, landowner, and developer from Morrisania, New York, presently part of Bronx County. He signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence as a delegate to the Continental Congress from New York.
Rock Creek Cemetery is an 86-acre (350,000 m2) cemetery with a natural and rolling landscape located at Rock Creek Church Road, NW, and Webster Street, NW, off Hawaii Avenue, NE, in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C., across the street from the historic Soldiers' Home and the Soldiers' Home Cemetery. It also is home to the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington.
The Roosevelt family is an American political family from New York whose members have included two United States presidents, a First Lady, and various merchants, bankers, politicians, inventors, clergymen, artists, and socialites. The progeny of a mid-17th century Dutch immigrant to New Amsterdam, many members of the family became nationally prominent in New York State and City politics and business and intermarried with prominent colonial families. Two distantly related branches of the family from Oyster Bay and Hyde Park, New York, rose to global political prominence with the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) and his fifth cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945), whose wife, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was Theodore's niece. The Roosevelt family is one of four families to have produced two presidents of the United States by the same surname; the others were the Adams, Bush, and Harrison families.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., commonly referred to as The Sketch Book, is a collection of 34 essays and short stories written by the American author Washington Irving. It was published serially throughout 1819 and 1820. The collection includes two of Irving's best-known stories, attributed to the fictional Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker: "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle". It also marks Irving's first use of the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon, which he would continue to employ throughout his literary career.
St. Paul's Church is an evangelical Anglican church in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia, within the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island of the Anglican Church of Canada. It is located at the south end of the Grand Parade, an open square in downtown Halifax with Halifax City Hall at the northern end.
Johannes Petrus "John Peter" Van Ness was an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative from New York from 1801 to 1803 and Mayor of Washington, D.C. from 1830 to 1834.
Herman Knickerbocker was a United States representative from New York.
William Henry Aspinwall was a prominent American businessman who was a partner in the merchant firm of Howland & Aspinwall and was a co-founder of both the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and Panama Canal Railway companies which revolutionized the migration of goods and people to the Western coast of the United States.
Events from the year 1816 in the United States.
Colonel Thomas Aspinwall (1786–1876) was the second-longest-serving United States consul, holding that position in London from 1816 to 1854.
Julia Bachope Goddard, was a British children's writer of more than 25 books, animal welfare campaigner, journalist and artist.
Gardiner Greene Howland was a prominent American businessman who was a founding partner in the merchant firm of Howland & Aspinwall and a co-founder of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.
Marshall Owen Roberts was an American merchant, financier, railroad man, and prominent art collector.
Ames Van Wart was an American Sculptor who lived in Europe.
Rann Kennedy was an English schoolteacher, church minister and poet, acquainted with many notable literary people of the day.
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