Samuel Meeker (1763–1831) was a prominent merchant businessman who played a substantial role in the development of banking, shipping, and insurance systems in the early post-revolutionary days of

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

. The Meeker family was already known by this time as a founding family in

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York (state), New York; on the ea ...

(associate founder William Meeker), providing strong and hardy patriotic males in the fight against the British. A Meeker cousin, Major Samuel Meeker, was known to have encouraged his militia to chase after Chief Joseph Brant and his band of warriors and Tories in the Battle of the Minisink. Samuel's father, also a ‘Samuel Meeker’, was a captain and commanded a troop of light horse that was recruited in Essex county NJ. A young man of action, Samuel left New Jersey early in the 1790s to seek his fame and fortune in Philadelphia.

References

*''History of Elizabeth, NJ'' – Edwin Hatfield, Carlton & Lanahan 1868 *''The Passaic Valley, New Jersey, in Three Centuries'' – John Whitehead, The New Jersey Genealogical Society 1901 *''As We Were: the Story of Old Elizabethtown'' – Theodore Thayer The Grassmann Publishing Co, Inc Elizabeth, New Jersey 1964 *''The Meeker Family of Early New Jersey'' – Leroy J. Meeker Capitol Printing Co. Charleston, W. VA 1973 {{DEFAULTSORT:Meeker 1763 births 1831 deaths Businesspeople from Philadelphia