Matthew Vassar

Matthew Vassar was born on April 29, 1792, in East Dereham, Norfolk, England, to James and Ann Bennett Vassar, farmers of French Huguenot ancestry (Vasseur) who emigrated from England. In 1796, they arrived in New York State and settled on a farm along Wappinger's Creek on land that had been part of the 1685 Rombout Patent near Manchester Bridge in Dutchess County. While the farmhouse was being built, the family lived on the Filkintown Road, at what is now the intersection of Main and Church Streets. In 1801, James Vassar brewed ale with barley grown from seeds his brother Thomas brought from Norfolk. Demand for the ale was such that, in 1801, James Vassar sold the farm and bought a lot between Main and Mill Streets in the village of Poughkeepsie from Baltus Van Kleeck to build a brewery. When Vassar was 14 years old, his parents had him apprenticed to a tanner.[2]

One day before he was to begin his apprenticeship, he ran away and crossing the Hudson River on the ferry at High Point made his way to Balm Town, just north of Newburgh, New York. There he found a job working in a store. He subsequently took a better-paying job with another local merchant before returning to Poughkeepsie in 1810, where he joined the family brewing business as bookkeeper and collector. By this time the family had most of the brewing trade in the river towns from Newburgh to Hudson. In 1811, a malt-dust explosion destroyed the family brewery on Vassar Street. His elder brother John died in the explosion, and his father was devastated by the loss. Matthew, then only 18, took over management of the business which was then conducted out of part of an old dye house belonging to George Booth, husband of Vassar's sister Maria.[2] Booth, an immigrant from Yorkshire, England, was the first manufacturer of woolen cloth in Dutchess County.[3]

During the War of 1812, Vassar joined the local fusilier's company as a sergeant, but saw little action. He spent his days at the brewery and his evenings working at an oyster saloon and restaurant he had opened in the basement of the county courthouse. In 1813, he married Catherine Valentine of Fishkill. In 1814, Vassar opened M. Vassar & Company and rebuilt the brewery on Vassar Street across the street from the family townhouse.[4] At the time, it was the largest brewery of its kind in the United States.[5] He served as a Poughkeepsie village trustee in 1819. He spent the winter of 1822 in New Orleans. In September 1824, he was among those welcoming the Marquis de Lafayette to Poughkeepsie on the occasion of the General's visit to the United States.[2]

In 1831, Vassar took an active part in the incorporation of the Poughkeepsie Saving Bank and the following year became a shareholder in the Poughkeepsie Whaling Company, for which he built a large dock. In 1836, he built a larger brick brewery on the waterfront just above the Main Street Landing. The waterfront facility had a brewing capacity of 60,000 barrels annually. Both the malt and the hops were produced locally. M. Vassar & Co. owned a fleet of sloops to transport its ale to market.[6] The company expanded to include two facilities in Poughkeepsie, one in New York City, and one in Lansingburgh, near Troy, New York. He brought John Guy Vassar and Matthew Vassar Jr., sons of his deceased brother John, into the business, who later founded Vassar Brothers Hospital in Poughkeepsie. In 1837, he took over the bankrupt brickyard of his brother Charles, which made bricks at what later came to be known as Brickyard Hill on the east side of town. He joined the board of the Farmers and Manufacturers National Bank and, in 1835, was elected president of the village of Poughkeepsie on the "Improvement" ticket.[3]

In the 1850s, Vassar was president of the Poughkeepsie Lyceum of Literature, Science and the Mechanical Arts. He opened the 1852 season with the presentation of an address by Ralph Waldo Emerson.[5] In 1851, John A. Bolding, a fugitive slave from South Carolina was working as a tailor on Main Street, when he was seized by a U.S. Marshall under the terms of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. When members of the Underground Railroad fell short of the amount necessary to buy Bolding's freedom, Matthew Vassar was among those who made up the difference.[7]

Matthew Vassar died in his seventy-seventh year on June 23, 1868, while delivering his farewell address to the Vassar College Board of Trustees.[8] His funeral was held in the Baptist Church on Lafayette Place. Vassar had donated the land and half the cost of erecting the church.[3] He was buried in the Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery.

• Gregg Smith, Beer in America: The Early Years—1587-1840 (Boulder, CO: Siris Books, 1998)
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1891). Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

• Vassar, Matthew. The Autobiography and Letters of Matthew Vassar, (Elizabeth Hazelton Haight, ed.), Oxford University Press, 1916
• Lossing, Benson J., Vassar College and its Founder, C. A. Alvord, New York, 1867
• Linner, Edward R., Vassar: The Remarkable Growth of a Man and His College, 1855 - 1865 (Elizabetth A. Daniels, ed.), Vassar College, 1984

• "Vassar Triad", Life, December 30, 1940 - distant relatives of Matthew Vassar flee war torn Europe for safety at Vassar College