Biography
Weightman was born on September 30, 1813 in Waltham, Lincolnshire, England and came to the United States at the age of 16 in 1829. He came to the US at the suggestion of his uncle, chemist John Farr, founder of the firm of Farr and Kunzi, the first manufacturers of sulfate of quinine in the United States.
Upon Kunzi's retirement in 1836, Farr partnered with Thomas Powers and Weightman to establish Farr, Powers and Weightman, manufacturing chemists. In 1841, Weightman married Louisa Stillwagon; together, they had three children: John, William Jr., and Anne.
When John Farr died in 1847, the business became Powers and Weightman, chemical manufacturers.
Responsible for introducing quinine to the United States, Weightman amassed a large fortune through shrewd investments, derived from his manufacturing enterprise.
In 1875, Powers and Weightman won the Elliott Cresson Medal for Engineering, presented by the Franklin Institute.
Weightman purchased hundreds of acres of farms in what is now North Philadelphia and built whole neighborhoods of middle-class housing, serviced by streetcar lines. His architect for these was Willis G. Hale, the husband of one of his nieces.
Having outlived his two sons, Weightman came to rely on his daughter, Anne Weightman Walker, in his later years. They lived in a large mansion, Ravenhill (also by Hale), in the East Falls section of the city. (At his death in 1904, the Ravenill Mansion passed on to Anne who gave the estate to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 1910. Cardinal Dennis Joseph Dougherty of the Archdiocese would go on to grant the Mansion to an order of nuns: Religious of the Assumption. The sisters converted the mansion into a school and named it Ravenhill Academy.
He died on August 25, 1904 at Ravenhill.
Read more about this topic: William Weightman
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