Matthew Vassar (April 29, 1792 – June 23, 1868) was an English-born American brewer, merchant and philanthropist. He founded Vassar College, a women’s college, in 1861. He was a cousin of John Ellison Vassar. The city of Vassar, Michigan, is named after him. Early life Matthew Vassar was born on April 29, 1792, in East Dereham, Norfolk, England, to James and Ann Bennett Vassar, farmers of French Huguenot ancestry (Vasseur) who emigrated from England. In 1796, they arrived in New York State and settled on a farm along Wappinger's Creek on land that had been part of the 1685 Rombout Patent near Manchester Bridge in Dutchess County. While the farmhouse was being built, the family lived on the Filkintown Road, at what is now the intersection of Main and Church Streets. In 1801, James Vassar brewed ale with barley grown from seeds his brother Thomas brought from Norfolk. Demand for the ale was such that, in 1801, James Vassar sold the farm and bought a lot between Main and Mill Streets in the village of Poughkeepsie from Baltus Van Kleeck to build a brewery. When Vassar was 14 years old, his parents had him apprenticed to a tanner. Business career One day before he was to begin his apprenticeship, he ran away and crossing the Hudson River on the ferry at High Point made his way to Balm Town, just north of Newburgh, New York. There he found a job working in a store. He subsequently took a better paying job with another local merchant before returning to Poughkeepsie in 1810, where he joined the family brewing business as bookkeeper and collector. By this time the family had most of the brewing trade in the river towns from Newburgh to Hudson. In 1811, a malt-dust explosion destroyed the family brewery on Vassar Street. His older brother John died in the explosion, and his father was devastated by the loss. Matthew, then only 18, took over management of the business which was then conducted out of part of an old dye house belonging to George Booth, husband of Vassar's sister Maria. Booth, an immigrant from Yorkshire, England, was the first manufacturer of woolen cloth in Dutchess County. During the War of 1812, Vassar joined the local fusilier's company as a sergeant, but saw little action. He spent his days at the brewery and his evenings working at an oyster saloon and