HENRY GRINNELL Biography - Bussiness people and enterpreneurs

 
 

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HENRY GRINNELL

Name: Henry Grinnell                                                                 
Born: 1799                                                                           
Died:1874                                                                           
                                                                                     
Henry Grinnell was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1799, and in 1818         
moved to New York City where he became a clerk in the commission house of H.D. &     
E.B. Sewell. He married Sarah Minturn in 1822. In 1825, Henry joined his brother     
Joseph Grinnell in Fish, Grinnell & Company. A few years later, with the             
addition of Henry's brother-in-law, this became Grinnell, Minturn & Company, a       
firm whose operations were greatly expanded by its entry into the general           
shipping business. This company became one of the strongest mercantile houses in     
New York City.                                                                       
                                                                                     
Henry Grinnell retired in 1850, the same year in which he financed the               
outfitting of two vessels, the Advance and the Rescue, to search the Arctic for     
the lost Franklin Polar Expedition. He also helped finance a second rescue           
expedition three years later. One of these expeditions discovered and named         
Grinnell Land in the far Arctic. On later occasions Grinnell manifested his         
unabated interest in polar exploration by contributing to the voyage of Isaac I.     
Hayes in 1860, and to the Polaris venture of Charles F. Hall in 1871. He was         
also one of the founders of the American Geographical and Statistical Society.       
Henry Grinnell died in 1874.