page_title: William Weightman (manufacturer)
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: William Weightman (manufacturer) / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Steel engraving: "Powers &amp; Weightman, Manufacturing Chemists, Philadelphia."
context_page_description: William Weightman was a chemical manufacturer and one of the largest landowners in the United States. Nicknamed the "Quinine King," he invented a synthetic form of the drug. His company, Powers & Weightman, merged in the 1920s with the pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co.
context_section_description: Weightman was born on September 30, 1813 in Waltham, Lincolnshire, England. At the invitation of his uncle, chemist John Farr, he immigrated to the United States in 1829, at age 16. Farr had founded the firm Farr and Kunzi, the first manufacturers of sulfate of quinine in the United States. Upon Kunzi's retirement in 1836, Farr partnered with Thomas Powers and 27-year-old Weightman to establish Farr, Powers and Weightman, manufacturing chemists. 
  When John Farr died in 1847, Weightman became an administrator and executive of the business, which was renamed Powers and Weightman, chemical manufacturers. Powers & Weightman developed a synthetic form of quinine, a prophylaxis for malaria. With importation of British quinine cut off during the Civil War, the company profited greatly through a quasi monopoly. In 1875, Powers & Weightman was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal for Engineering, by the Franklin Institute.
  Weightman amassed a large fortune through shrewd investments, derived from his manufacturing enterprise, estimated at $51.8 billion in 2014 adjusted value. At the turn of the 20th century, he was "the largest individual owner of Philadelphia real estate," having purchased hundreds of acres of farms and built whole neighborhoods of middle-class housing. His architect for these was Willis G. Hale, the husband of one of his nieces.
  Hale also designed Weightman's country house, Ravenhill (1887), built in the West Germantown section of Philadelphia, on a ridge overlooking the Wissahickon Creek.
  Having outlived his two physician sons, Farr and William, Weightman came to rely on his daughter, Anne Weightman Walker. Following her husband's death in 1903, she was admitted as a partner in Powers & Weightman, "the only woman in the United States to hold such a position of responsible trust".
caption: Powers & Weightman advertisement, 1859.
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