John Murgatroyd (249)

John Murgatroyd (1744?–24 May 1782) was a merchant and a member of the American Philosophical Society via his 1768 election to the American Society. Little is known of his early years, but he enrolled in the Academy of Philadelphia in 1755 before entering into a mercantile partnership with Amos Wickersham to sell sugar, rum, wine, tea, chocolate, and other goods. In 1768, he became secretary of the Union Library Company of Philadelphia, which was likely the role that brought him to the attention of the American Society. Murgatroyd also appears to have owned a tavern, which he auctioned in 1771. That same year, he solicited funds for a non-sectarian school that would serve Bristol and Oxford Townships and Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties. He attended public lectures by the geographer and engineer Christopher Colles in 1772 and became a Freemason in 1780. Little is known of Murgatroyd’s response to the American Revolution, but he took the oath of allegiance to the new nation in 1779 and served as a  bookkeeper in the Philadelphia quartermaster’s department the year following. Unable to swim, he drowned while bathing in the Schuylkill River at the age of thirty-eight. (PI)