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John Stocker was an affluent merchant and insurance agent who lived on Front Street (Philadelphia) in Philadelphia during the 18th century. His house is preserved. [1] He was an alderman and involved in the fire insurance business. [1] His home is located at 404 Front Street. [1] Francis Trumble's woodshop was also once located on the property.
John Stocker was born to Mortimer (1731-1778) and Anna (née St. John) [2] Stocker (1735-1774) in 1754, their first child, in Philadelphia. He was sent to a grammar-school, and he excelled at an early age. [3] When his mother died, Stocker's father sent him to live with his bachelor uncles Ebenezer and Humphry St. John in their boarding house, a few streets away from his father's house. [4] He continued his schooling there, and his uncle Ebenezer said "he was the smartest boy that I have ever seen, espesially(sic) at his books". [5] When the more lenient Ebenezer died in 1771, Humphry took Stocker out of school, and apprenticed him to the merchant Aubrey Winstead Cleveland.
Stocker called Cleveland "a dastardly, double chinn'd old buzzard", [6] which Cleveland's brother De Arcy jokingly said was "the best description he had ever heard" [7] of his brother. When Stocker got the shop after Cleveland died in 1773, Stocker took it over and renamed it from "Cleveland's Imported Fabrics" to "Stocker's Imported Fabrics". Stocker was not very good at business, though, [8] and he soon was forced to close it or go bankrupt. Stocker, very poor for several years, was finally loaned 200 pounds by his father. The American Revolution was in full rage by then, so Stocker left his second-in-command, Thomas Parker, in charge of his new importation company, and fought for the Patriot side in it. [9] When Stocker returned, he found out that Parker had made it seem that Stocker was dead and taken over his company. Stocker, unable to convince people who he was, moved to another part of Philadelphia and started another company in 1784. [10]
Stocker grew very wealthy, and married Maria Webster [11] in 1785. His first child, Ebenezer Stocker, was named after his late uncle Ebenezer, [12] was born in 1786. He had three more children in the following two years. Maria died in 1789 in childbirth with their last child, Valentine. In 1790 Stocker remarried to Jane Risborough, a woman several years his junior, and had two more children, Hamilton (named after Alexander Hamilton [13] ) and Mortimer. Jane died of flu in 1795. [14]
John Stocker died of an uncertain cause [15] on the fifth of August, 1807.
Stocker had seven children:
Ebenezer Stocker (1786-1834), who took over his clothes import company.
Maria Webster Stocker (1787-1861), a noted early suffragette.
Rowland (or Roland [16] ) Stocker (1787-1830), an author.
Louise Stocker (1788-1799), who died of tuberculosis.
Valentine Stocker (1789-1847), a noted politician.
Hamilton Stocker (1790-1854), a newspaperman.
Mortimer Stocker (1793-1880), an architect, who early on in life was also an insurance agent.
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