Brandreth, William (The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography)

Full OCR text fetched directly from the Internet Archive digitization (note: this page of the scan interleaves two newspaper-style columns line by line in the raw OCR text, so passages are reported here in indirect/paraphrased style rather than as a single long verbatim run). The entry is on William Brandreth (Benjamin's son), not Benjamin himself, but gives biographical background on Benjamin: his father is described as one of the first and most successful manufacturers of proprietary medicines in the country; Benjamin's maternal grandfather is described as a skilful physician with a large practice near Liverpool, under whose direction young Benjamin was, at an early age, set to compounding pills for gratuitous distribution among the poor; and Benjamin is said to have come to the United States in 1836 (a year later than the 1835 most other sources give) and to have made his name a household word for more than half a century. Used in this bundle to corroborate the maternal-line/Liverpool-physician account of Benjamin's introduction to pill-making (consistent with the 'grandson' account in Appletons' Cyclopaedia, though this source's 1836 arrival year differs from the 1835 used elsewhere); the arrival-year variant is noted rather than silently reconciled.