John Savage

When the Williams brothers were starting their new cotton mill on the Little Patuxent River in the early 1820s they named it “Savage” in honor of John Savage, a wealthy Philadelphian who had loaned them $20,000 for their venture. But there has been some confusion about who this John Savage was, with some incorrectly identifying him as the son of a wealthy plantation owning family who was born in Jamaica in 1790 and died in 1834, the same year as “our” John Savage. This story benefits from the research assistance by Gerald Uekermann and will attempt to set the record straight.

Who Was John Savage?

John Savage was the son of Darby and Ann (Molley) Savage who were wed in 1762. John was born in Philadelphia on May 30, 1766, and baptized on June 1, 1766 at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.   Darby bought property in 1770 on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia and was still living there in 1791 with his occupation listed as “gentleman.” In 1787, Darby Savage had pew #15 registered at the St. Mary’s Church in Philadelphia until his death in 1780.  By 1789, Darby’s son John had taken over pew #15.

John Savage was a Philadelphia shipping merchant by the mid-1780s doing business in the Caribbean, including Antigua.  The first advertisement for his new business partnership with Joseph Dugan appeared in 1799 for the company Savage & Dugan to sell or charter The Ship Hope.  On the 1800 census John Savage was living in the Philadelphia Dock Ward listed as a merchant.  After many profitable years, Savage and Dugan dissolved their business partnership in 1821.  John Savage died on November 18, 1834, in Philadelphia.  His will named a “natural” son, John Savage, Jr., and a natural daughter, Margaret Savage but he doesn’t appear to have ever married. He also names Margaret Savage’s mother, Elizabeth Crosby, in his will.

John Savage and the Williams Brothers

John Savage and George Williams were both Merchants involved in shipping, John in Philadelphia, and George in Baltimore.  They interacted with one another during their role as directors of the Bank of the United States in 1817 and 1818.  These are likely ways in which they first came to know one another. 

John invested $20,000 in his friend George Williams’s new mill business and held some lands in collateral per a March 4, 1823, indenture between the Savage Manufacturing Company and John Savage.  It seemed that John Savage was interested in the cotton milling business as he also lent $3,000 the following year to Edward Gray who owned the Patapsco Cotton Mill.  These were the only two area mills we found that John Savage made investments in.  There is no record that John Savage set foot in the town that the Williams brothers named for him.

George, Amon, Cumberland, and Nathaniel were the four Williams brothers that founded Savage Manufacturing Company with the help of John Savage.  We know their connection with Joshua Barney (Nathaniel was his son-in-law and we now were able to establish how John and George knew each other through banking.  It was probably a natural connection with common business interests with investments in shipping that the concept of manufacturing sail clothe made sense for each of them.  Along with the connection with Joshua Barney, they found a site along the Little Patuxent River in Howard County to establish one of the longest operating cotton mills on the east coast.

The 1854 Chancey Court records showed that the Williams brothers were very aware of the $20,000 debt owed to Savage, and after he passed in 1834, what was owed to his heirs who eventually filed suit to recover the money. The law suit by John Savage’s heirs, and others, is what led to the eventual sale of the mill in 1859. Only one image of John Savage could be found which was a portrait painted by the artist Thomas Sully around 1824 and is in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian.

In a 1922 “Memorial Exhibition of Portraits by Thomas Sully” published by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, incorrect biographical information was included for the John Savage portrait, identifying him as the John Savage born in Jamaica in 1790.  But the notation included was that the portrait was loaned by “a great-grandson, D. Fitzhugh Savage” of Philadelphia.  Fortunately, we can confirm through census and death records that Daniel Fitzhugh Savage was indeed the great-grandson of John Savage born in 1866 and of the firm Savage and Dugan.  D. Fitzhugh’s parents were John Savage Jr. and Isabella Swift Fitzhugh Savage. John Savage Jr.’s parents were John and Adelaide, and John’s father was our John Savage.

Please see Hidden History of Howard County for the source materials for this page.