William H. Osborn

[2] His first paternal American ancestor in the United States was William Osborn, who moved from England in 1684 and settled in Salem.

[2] In 1841, he went to Manila as a junior partner in the firm of Peel, Hubbell & Co. After ten years working in business in the Philippines, he took a financial interest in the Illinois Central Railroad in 1854.

One year after joining the railroad's board of directors, he was elected president, a position he held from December 1, 1855, until July 11, 1865.

[6] In 1882, he retired from the railroad business to concentrate on philanthropy near his Rhenish style home, Castle Rock, in Garrison, New York, in the Hudson Highlands, which he purchased in 1859.

[2][6] Osborn was also a close friend and patron of the Hudson River School landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church,[8] who sold him works including The Andes of Ecuador,[9] Chimborazo,[10] and The Aegean Sea.

[14] Osborn also collected paintings by other American artists, including Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, George Loring Brown, John Frederick Kensett, Sanford Robinson Gifford, John William Casilear, Henry Peters Gray, Emmanuel Leutze, Daniel Huntington and Louis Rémy Mignot, and European artists including Charles Landelle, Florent Willems, Franz Defregger, George Jacobides and Benjamin Vautier.