also contributed to a fund to purchase George Washington's Mount Vernon estate, after his family could no longer keep it up, and the federal government refused to purchase it. One of William Wilson Corcoran's longtime business associate and friend was the renowned George Peabody. Corcoran made many other important bequests to the people of Washington, including several departments of the Columbian University (now the George Washington University), and the land and half the construction costs for what is now the Church of the Ascension and Saint Agnes. Corcoran was also the President of the Corporation of Columbian (George Washington) University. Early in 1883, Corcoran arranged to have the body of John Howard Payne returned to the United States, an expense he personally bore. Payne, actor, poet, and author of "Home! Sweet Home!" had been the United States Consul to the Bey of Tunis in 1852 and had died there. Payne had been good friends of Corcoran and his business partner, George W. Riggs, in 1850, prior to Payne's second appointment as Consul to Tunis. Corcoran also established in 1869 the Louise Home for Women—named in memory of his deceased wife—to help support and maintain impoverished women. The home opened in 1871 on Massachusetts Ave. NW, between 15th and 16th Streets, in Washington, D.C., where it operated until 1947; the original building was razed in 1949. The Louise Home moved to the Codman House at Decatur Place and 22nd Street NW and in 1976 merged operations with the Abraham and Laura Lisner Home for Aged Women. the Louise Home continues to operate as part of the Lisner-Louise-Dickson-Hurt Home. Slavery Corcoran held at least one person, Mary, as a slave. In the 1930s, George Peabody referred to Corcoran as being involved in the slave trade. However, in at least one letter to his wife, Corcoran expressed sympathy for abolitionists, and in 1845 he manumated Mary and her four young children. In 1851, Corcoran provided funds to help buy the freedom of an enslaved person who had been recaptured eight years after first escaping slavery. Personal life At the age of 35, he fell in love with Louise Morris, who was the daughter of Commodore Charles Morris (1784–1856) and the older sister of Robert Murray Morris (1824–1896), then "barely in her teens". In 1835, Corcoran eloped and married Louise, born in 1818. Before his wife's early death from tuberculosis on November 21, 1840,