George Meade (merchant)

Meade held minor city offices and was active in religious and civic life, among others serving as a trustee at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church and founding the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.

Mary was from a Barbadian and Philadelphian merchant family; Robert was an Irish immigrant from County Limerick who moved to Philadelphia around 1732.

[2][4] After the war the firm suffered from the recession of 1783–1784, and particularly from failed European investments and western land speculation.

Meade saved his business and reputation with a £10,000 loan from Londoner John Barclay, which helped him settle all his debts.

[2][5] In Philadelphia newspapers from 1784 to 1788 he advertised Spanish wines and Caribbean spirits as well as coffee, tea, sugar, molasses, sheet copper and German textiles.

[6] A Federalist like the influential Fitzsimons, he marched in the Grand Federal Procession and served in minor political offices: on the Philadelphia Common Council 1789 to 1792 and as chairman of the Board of Management for the Inspectors of the Prisons in 1792.

[2] During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, he remained in Philadelphia to aid the sick, occasionally supporting physician Benjamin Rush.

For his role in the American Revolution his profile was sculpted on the Catholic Total Abstinence Union Fountain at the Centennial Exposition.