Latrobe, John Hazlehurst Boneval

views updated

John Hazlehurst Boneval Latrobe, 1803–91, American philanthropist, b. Philadelphia; son of Benjamin H. Latrobe. He studied law, and from 1828 until his death he was regularly retained as counsel for the Baltimore & Ohio RR, but he appeared in many independent cases. He was a founder of the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of Mechanic Arts and of the Maryland Historical Society. He was a prominent supporter of the African colonization of Liberia and in 1853 succeeded Henry Clay as president of the American Colonization Society.

See biography by J. E. Semmes (1917).