Died 1920 | ||
Thomas Jefferson Coolidge (26 August 1831 - 17 November 1920) was a leading Boston businessman. Born to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he was a great-grandson of President Thomas Jefferson. Coolidge was educated in private schools in Europe, and graduated from Harvard in 1850. In 1852, he married Mehitable Sullivan Appleton, daughter of William Appleton, a leading financier of the New England cotton textile industry. Coolidge was involved in numerous textile mills, and banks. He was manager of the largest textile mill in America, the Amoskeag Mill in Manchester New Hampshire. Coolidge turned his attention to financing the rapidly growing industrial economy, with major interests in textiles banking, railroads, publishing and electricity.
He served as president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. He organized the United Fruit Company, of which his son, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, Jr., was president. Coolidge was involved in numerous civic enterprises Boston area, especially the design of the region's park system. A Republican, he was appointed by Benjamin Harrison as ambassador to France in 1892. He was a member of the American delegation to the commission to resolve the Alaska boundary dispute.
Historian Ernest May says Coolidge was, "a prototype member of what today we call the foreign policy establishment."
A granddaughter, Eleonora Sears, became a prominent American sportswoman.