Gulian C. Verplanck

Gulian Crommelin Verplank (August 6, 1786 - March 18, 1870) was an American lawyer, politician, and writer. He was elected to the Assembly and Senate of the State of New York, and then to the United States House of Representatives from New York, where he served as chairman of the House of Representatives and Fund’s influential committee. He served in a number of appointed positions at major New York institutions: the Governor of the New York Hospital; regent of the University of New York, wherein 1858 he became his vice-chancellor, having served until his death more than ten years later; and Chairperson of the Council of Commissioners for Immigration for over two decades. Verplank published articles and poems in the North American Review and was ranked as a Knickerbocker group. In his youth, he was one of the organizers of the American Academy of Fine Arts in New York, which opened in 1802. It was designed to facilitate the study of classical art and help establish the city as a center of art. With a change in tastes, it closed in 1840. Gulian Crommelin Verplank was born on August 6, 1786, in a family mansion on 3 Wall Street in New York. He was the son of Elizabeth Johnson (d. 1789) and Congressman Daniel S. Verplank (1762-1834), a descendant of Dutch colonists. In 1789, his widowed father remarried Anne Walton, after which Gulian was raised by his paternal grandmother, Judith Crommelin Verplank. His cousin was Julian Verplank (1751-1799), a two-time speaker of the New York State Assembly. His maternal grandfather was William Samuel Johnson (1727-1819), 3rd president of Columbia College and US Senator from Connecticut, and his great-grandfather was Samuel Johnson (1696-1772), 1st president of Kings College. In 1801, he graduated from Columbia College with a bachelor of arts degree. and then proceeded to "read the law" with Edward Livingston.