Item 0020 - Letter, 14 May 1881

Samuel Aldrich Crozer was born on December 24, 1825, in West Branch, near Crozerville, Aston Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

He was a wealthy manufacturer, landowner, and philanthropist. In 1845, his father John P. Crozer purchased the Chester mills and in 1847, Samuel joined him, and the firm became John P. Crozer & Son until his father's death in 1866. His estate was divided among his three sons and Samuel received Mill No. 2, in which he conducted the manufacture of cotton fabrics until 1881 when his son, John P. Crozer, the younger, was admitted into partnership and the firm became S. A. Crozer & Son. He owned extensive coal lands in Virginia and had large holdings in the Crozer Steel and Iron Company in Roanoke, Virginia. He also devoted much of his means and time to the cause of religious and public charities. In 1865, he was elected president of the National Baptist Council for Missionary Purposes; for over forty years he was one of the managers of the Training School for Feeble-Minded Children, located at Elwyn, Pennsylvania; he was president of the Baptist Publication Society, and for half a century he served as manager of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum of Philadelphia. He was also on the board of trustees of the Crozer Theological Seminary which his family founded in 1868. Crozer was an extensive traveller, having crossed the Atlantic eighty-odd times, and had visited China, Japan, and India, and the islands of the Indian Ocean. In the Western Hemisphere, his journeys have been through all sections of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the West Indies.

In 1854, he married Abby Cheney. He died on June 28, 1910, in Upland, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.