William Shepard Wetmore

At 61 years old, William Shepard Wetmore physical status not available right now. We will update William Shepard Wetmore's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

William was mentored by an uncle, Samuel Wetmore, who was in a mercantile partnership with another uncle, Chauncy Whittlesey, in Middletown, Connecticut. In 1815 Samuel and his brother William Willard Wetmore moved to Providence, Rhode Island entering into a business partnership with the merchants Edward Carrington & Company. When William was fourteen years of age, he was hired aboard the ship Fame, bound for England, South America, and the East Indies. In 1823, a trip on the Lion stranded him in Valparaíso, Chile. He took employment in Chile with the firm Richard Alsop of Middletown, Connecticut. This eventually led to a partnership of Alsop, Wetmore and Cryder in 1825 with John Cryder of Philadelphia. In 1829, he retired from the firm.

Due to impaired health William's physician advised a career move to China. In 1833, he traveled to Canton, China and took over a partnership in Dunn & Company. He formed close ties with a junior partner Joseph Archer. He went on to establish a new merchant house, Wetmore & Company, with Joseph Archer. Wetmore's profit and loss ledgers from 1834–1839 reveal that the primary goods brokered by Wetmore & Co. were tea, tea papers, silks and spices. Lesser cargoes were wines, ports, opium, hemp, pearl buttons, copper and coffee. They also transported a variety of foreign currencies, and delivered Sunday newspapers. "Fast boats" were commonly employed for personal passages and letters. The company went on to be one of the largest mercantile houses in the East Indies despite the fact that Wetmore was opposed to the opium trade. During his time in the Far East, Wetmore collected a variety of Chinese objects, porcelains and china, which he imported home.

It was in 1835 that the Maryland merchant George Peabody sailed to London on a mission to defer a United States banking crisis when states had begun skipping interest payments on bonds marketed in London. Peabody eventually enjoyed a huge success as a merchant banker in London and as a self-appointed American ambassador of the mercantile industry. He developed a form of wholesale banking known as merchant banks and became a leading dealer of American state bonds in London. It was through family and business connections that William S. Wetmore began a lifelong friendship with the prominent financier Peabody.

In 1844, he revisited his partnership with Cryder and formed the house of Wetmore and Cryder in New York City. He retired from the firm in 1847. According to Barrett in The Old Merchants of New York City, besides his success in the merchant trade, Wetmore acquired vast land holdings of 10,000 acres (40 km2) in Ohio and 70,000 acres (280 km2) in Tennessee and his net worth at retirement was valued over one million dollars. Wetmore later left New York City and retired to Newport, Rhode Island where he bought 15 acres (61,000 m2) of land.

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