Stephenh --
There is not a huge amount of family information available on the
Internet about George Washington Riggs, who was a co-founder along
with William W. Corcoran of "Corcoran & Riggs," the enterprise that
became Riggs' bank after Corcoran retired in 1854. However, Riggs was
highly involved in business and non-profit activities in the
Washington, DC area and you'll find quite a bit about those.
However, you'll likely find these two pages on the Rootsweb site
interesting, taken from a Levering family history:
Rootsweb
"George Washington Riggs"
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~dynamo53/LeveringFamilyHistory/page925.html
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~dynamo53/LeveringFamilyHistory/page926.html
George Washington Riggs' parents were Elisha and Alice Lawrason Riggs,
according to the Gale Group Biography Resource Center, a fee-based
Internet database available at many public libraries for free. The DC
historic preservation council notes that Elisha owned a dry goods
store in Georgetown. George Washington Riggs was born to them on July
4, 1813 in the Georgetown. The Riggs family had been in Anne Arundel
County, MD in the early 1700s and Elisha's father was John Riggs.
George Washington grew up in Baltimore after his father entered into a
partnership with George Peabody, forming the company of Riggs &
Peabody. G.W. went to Yale in 1829, but didn't graduate. He went
overseas, working for his father in a New York firm. On June 23, 1940
he married Janet Madeleine Cecilia Shedden, of Glasgow, Scotland.
They had 9 children -- the only reference to their names that I found
were from the Gale Group biography, mentioning a son, Rev. T. Lawrason
Riggs. However, a genealogy of the Riggs family was apparently
published by J. H. Wallace in 1901. It is not on the Internet, to my
knowledge.
The New York Times obituary for G.W. Riggs notes his death on August
24, 1881 in Prince Georges County, MD. It mentions a brother, named
Elisha after their father, but none of the children. Though he was
Episopalian virtually all of his life, he converted to Roman
Catholicism in the last 2 weeks of his life and was buried at St.
Aloysius Church in Washington, DC.
Some Riggs references that should prove useful include:
Riggs Bank
"History/Timeline"
http://www.riggsbank.com/Discover_Riggs/timeline.html
"George Washington Riggs"
http://www.famousamericans.net/georgewashingtonriggs/
Google search strategy:
"Riggs Bank" + history
"George Washington Riggs"
"George Washington Riggs" + "Elisha Riggs"
"Elisha Riggs" + "John Riggs"
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA |
Clarification of Answer by
omnivorous-ga
on
08 Oct 2004 11:25 PDT
Stephen --
I'm in Seattle (though I once lived in Washington, DC, so am familiar
with Riggs Bank). Two excellent sites that are not easy to search are
the Smithsonian Institute and the Library of Congress. With the
Smithsonian, I'd recommend a Google site search:
http://www.si.edu/
The Library of Congress has so many specialized collections, you often
have to go through collections manually to see what's there:
http://catalog.loc.gov/
Here, for example, are several dozen prints and photos that are in the
Library -- each in a separate database:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/pphome.html
I might also try the Washington Post archives, which run back to 1877:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/search.html?nav=left
And, for family-type information, you might try pulling out Census
records from the 1800s for the Riggs family. The National Archives
Records Administration (NARA) keeps these on microfilm and they're
available at reading rooms across the country.
http://www.archives.gov/facilities/
The Census database is also available online (for a fee) from
Genealogy.com or Ancestry.com.
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA
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