Elliott Cresson

Elliott Cresson (March 2, 1796 – February 20, 1854) was an American philanthropist who gave money to a number of causes after a brief career in the mercantile business.

[1] Cresson felt that ex-slaves, surrounded as they were by white people of greater means, found it too difficult to lift themselves up.

Beginning in 1830, Cresson saw in the national organization's finances a lack of accountability and rising debts, and he warned them against such fiscal folly.

The Philadelphia group founded Port Cresson (today Buchanan, Liberia) with the intent that the newly established black settlers would control the Saint John River and thereby stop the flow of some 1200 slaves per month.

[5] Cresson traveled to Liberia in early 1833 to help establish the colony,[6] sent on his way by a poem from Lydia Sigourney which finished with: Sad Afric's hand hath bound thee, Among her jewels rare;— Her talisman is round thee, Her tearful, grateful prayer.

[7] In spite of his efforts, Cresson was partly blamed for the withdrawal of some Southern state auxiliaries from the national organization.

[8] By the efforts of Cresson and his New York counterpart, the American Colonization Society went through a reorganization, with fiscal responsibility first on the list of changes.

[1] Silver medals were proposed by Cresson in 1850, to be awarded in 1851 to the largest producers in the Pennsylvania colonies of Liberia of coffee, sugar, palm oil, and cotton.

The ex-president, 79 years old and the last of the Founding Fathers, wrote back to comply with the request for a "sample of my handwriting"[11] and to supply Cresson an autograph each of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Cresson bequeathed to the city of Philadelphia a trust fund designated for planting and renewing shade trees, "excluding such foreign trash as the Lombardy Poplar, Ailanthus, paper Mulberry & similar Exotics.

Another beneficiary in Cresson's will was William Bacon Stevens, the rector of St. Andrew's Church in Philadelphia, and the former state historian of Georgia.