James Stokes Biddle (1818-1900)

He was born in Philadelphia and became a Midshipman (1833) then Lieutenant (1844) in the U.S. Navy. He saw action in the Florida war with a fleet of boats, and in the Mexican war he commanded a gun-boat and served with the naval batteries in the Siege of Vera Cruz and at the capture of Tobasco. Resigning in 1856, he was elected President of the Shamokin Valley Railroad. On the outbreak of Civil War, he offered his services to the Secretary of the Navy for the duration of the conflict but it was not accepted. In 1871, as the Democratic candidate, he failed to be elected Mayor of Philadelphia. In 1846, he married his first cousin, Meta Craig Biddle, daughter of Nicholas Biddle, President of the Second Bank of the United States, and they had two children.