Samuel Breck Biography
About Samuel Breck:
Birth And Background | Samuel Breck Moves To Sweetbriar | Politics, Religion And Business | Arts And Charity Work | Diary And Other WritingsArts And Charity Work
Interested in music — Samuel Breck played the flute and other instruments — he was, in addition, a reasonably accomplished amateur artist. He was also an antiquarian. Among his numerous speeches, for he was frequently requested to address public gatherings, are several on historical subjects.
In 1825 he joined the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, which had been founded the previous December. It was he who was mainly responsible for preventing its dissolution during a bleak period when interest waned in the late 1830s. It is appropriate that his Diary and other writings eventually came into the Society’s possession.
Breck lived to be past ninety. Following his death in 1862, Joseph R. Ingersoll, President of the Historical Society, delivered an address which was subsequently printed, “Memoir of the Late Samuel Breck, Vice-President of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.” Among Breck’s contributions to the Society, Ingersoll mentioned the bequest of a portion of his library.
Promoting libraries was indeed one of Breck’s chief pleasures. He made important gifts of books from his overflowing shelves to the Athenaeum, of which he was president, to the American Philosophical Society, of which he was a member, as well as to the Mercantile Library and the Library Company of Philadelphia. He supported the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania.
It may be said of Samuel Breck that he was constantly engaged in good and charitable work as well as in public service. The chief of his charities was the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind, whose board he joined in 1841. He took the closest interest in this Institution, attending all its functions and exercises and serving as its president from 1850 until his death. His influence on this organization was summed up by J. Francis Fisher in an address, printed in 1863, “Memoir of Samuel Breck, Late President of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind.”