Eyre, Manuel, 1777-1845.

Manuel Eyre, a Philadelphia merchant of Quaker ancestry, was born in 1777. His father, Manuel Eyre, Sr., (1736-1805) was a shipwright in Kensington and a colonel in the Contintental Army. He obtained his training in the counting house of Henry Pratt and Abraham Kintzing and in 1803 joined with Charles Massey, Jr., (b. 1778) to form the mercantile firm of Eyre & Massey, a partnership that lasted until Eyre's death in 1845.

The firm of Eyre & Massey owned over 20 vessels, ranging in size from ships to sloops, and traded around the world, mounting voyages to Europe, the Caribbean, South America, China, India and the Pacific Islands. Manuel Eyre also served on the Philadelphia City Council and was a founding director of the Schuylkill Navigation Company (1816) and the Second Bank of the United States (1816). After 1820 he gradually retired from active trading and devoted much of his time to agriculture. He owned two farms outside the city and three in Delaware. He was the founder of Delaware City, Del., at the mouth of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, buying the entire site in 1828, erecting public buildings and dividing it into lots.

...