Clement Biddle (55)

Clement Biddle (10 May 1740–14 July 1814) was a merchant and military officer and a member of the Young Junto, elected in 1766. Born in Philadelphia into a prominent family (his great-grandfather was one of the proprietors of West New Jersey), Biddle spent a year in Barbados before becoming a partner in his father’s mercantile business. He presented a Native American belt to the American Society, collected subscriptions to the Silk Society, and donated to the Pennsylvania Hospital and College of Philadelphia. He was also active in politics, forming a militia company to defend Conestoga Indians from the Paxton Boys in the wake of the Lancaster massacre, signing the Non-Importation Agreement, and supporting Pennsylvania’s radical new constitution. During the War of Independence, he organized two volunteer infantry companies (the “Quaker Blues”) and held numerous positions in the Continental Army, including lieutenant colonel and deputy quartermaster general for the militia of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, volunteer aide-de-camp under General Nathanael Greene, and commissary general of forage. He fought in the Battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth, and received special recognition for his role in the Battle of Trenton from George Washington, for whom Biddle later acted as a commercial factor. In 1780 he was named marshal of the Pennsylvania court of admiralty, and the following year he became quartermaster general of the state militia at the rank of colonel. After the Revolution, he served as U.S. marshal for Pennsylvania and justice of the Court of Common Pleas. His brother Owen Biddle was a member of the Young Junto; and his sons Thomas Biddle, John G. Biddle, and Clement C. Biddle; brother-in-law James Wilkinson; sons-in-law Nathaniel Chapman and Thomas Cadwalader; and grandson John Barclay Biddle were APS members. (PI, ANB, DAB)