Anton Adolph Raven (September 30, 1833 – January 15, 1919) was a

Curaçao Curaçao ( ; ; pap, Kòrsou, ), officially the Country of Curaçao ( nl, Land Curaçao; pap, Pais Kòrsou), is a Lesser Antilles island country in the southern Caribbean Sea and the Dutch Caribbean region, about north of the Venezuela coast ...

an-born American business executive.

Early life

Raven was born on September 30, 1833, in

in what was then a part of the Dutch West Indies. He was a son of John Rudolf Raven, a merchant in the "Spanish-American Republic of Venezuela", and Petronella ( Hutchings) Raven, who came from "ancestors who came from Holland to New York State and thence removed to Curaçao, West Indies where she herself was born." After receiving his education in St. Thomas, he came to New York at the age of seventeen in 1850.

Career

On January 4, 1852, Raven joined the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company as a clerk. Atlantic had been founded as a joint-stock company in 1838 as the Atlantic Insurance Company before becoming a mutual company in 1842. He was appointed an underwriter in 1865, fourth vice-president in 1874, third vice president in 1876, and second vice president in 1886. He was elected vice president in 1895 and elected president two years later in 1895. Raven retired as president in 1915 and was succeeded by

Cornelius Eldert Cornelius Eldert (1850 – January 24, 1930) was an American businessman and philanthropist who served as president of the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company. Early life Eldert was born in 1850 in Brooklyn, New York and was a descendant of Dutch i ...

, formerly vice president. He also served as a director of the

Metropolitan Trust Company The Metropolitan Trust Company of the City of New York was a trust company located in New York City that was founded in 1881. The trust company merged with the Chatham and Phenix National Bank in 1925 under the name of the Chatham Phenix National ...

, the Atlantic Trust Company, the

Home Life Insurance Company The Phoenix Companies, Inc., is a financial services company that traces its origins to 1851. Phoenix was acquired bNassau Financial Groupin 2016 and remains headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut, with 650 employees as of 2015. Phoenix remains o ...

and the Phenix National Bank of New York.

Personal life

In 1860, Raven was married to Cleveland born Gertrude Oatman (1840–1914), a daughter of James C. Oatman. Together, they were the parents of five children: * Henry Hutchings Raven (1861–1862), who died young. * William Oatman Raven (d. 1940), who married Angeline Odell in 1899. * Caroline Elizabeth Raven, who married Peter A. MacLean. After his death, she married Charles Strong Van Nuis, an associate of Thomas Edison, in 1930. * Edith Raven (d. 1908), who died unmarried. * John Howard Raven (1870–1949), a professor at Rutgers College who married Elizabeth Grier Strong, a daughter of the Rev. Selah Woodhull Strong and Eleanor Hendrickson ( Van Deursen) Strong, in 1894. He was a member of the Montauk Club of Brooklyn, the New York Club, the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was also a member, and vice president, of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor in Brooklyn, a member of the American Geographical Society and a founding member of the

Peary Arctic Club The Peary Arctic Club was an American-based club with the goal of promoting the Arctic expeditions of Robert Peary (1856–1920). This association of influential persons was able to overcome the opposition of the U.S. Navy Department to grant th ...

. Raven died at his home in

Caldwell, New Jersey Caldwell is a borough located in northwestern Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, about west of New York City and north-west of Newark, the state's most populous city. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population ...

, on January 15, 1919. The Raven Glacier in Greenland was named in his honor.Geographical Record, JSTOR - Bulletin of the American Geographical Society Vol. 39, No. 1 (1907), pp. 28-42
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Raven, Anton A. 1833 births 1919 deaths Immigrants to the United States Curaçao businesspeople Businesspeople from Brooklyn American businesspeople in insurance 19th-century American businesspeople American chief executives of financial services companies