Alexander Turney Stewart

ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART.

ABOUT 1825, an alert, sanguine, and active young man commenced the dry goods business in Broadway, nearly opposite his present wholesale warehouse, with a capital of about three thousand dollars. In the three years 1865-'6-'7, this gentleman sold two hundred and three million dollars worth of goods. It is hardly necessary to say that the young man was Alexander Turney Stewart, whose income for 1864 was the largest of any merchant in the world.

Carefully reared by a pious grandfather in Belfast, Ireland, Mr. Stewart received an excellent classical education in Trinity College, Dublin. His grandfather was very desirous that he should become a clergyman, but his death occurring before the grandson had completed his college course, a Quaker friend was appointed his guardian, and at his earnest solicitation procured for him letters of introduction to leading merchants of the Society of Friends in New York.