Biography

Edward Cornelius Delavan was the owner of the famous downtown hotel and restaurant the Delavan House, notorious for open bribery and assorted shenanigans of state legislators during the Tammany Hall era. The booze flowed freely at his hotel, and he was a successful wine merchant. His fortune allowed him to retire early in the 1830s, after which he dedicated his life to the temperance movement. He became an ardent advocate of the teetotal pledge. His first wife, Abigail, died in 1848, and in 1850 he married his second wife, Harriet Ann Schuyler, with whom he had one child. He resided in Albany and later Schenectady.