File:John Savage by Thomas Sully.jpg

English: John Savage (1790-1834).

John Savage, born on his mother's plantation, "Toby Abbotts," in the parish of Clarendon, Jamaica, 18 July 1790, and baptized 29 July 1790, accompanied about 1798 his father and brother to England, where he lived with his maternal aunt until his return to Jamaica soon after his mother's death in 1799. Late in 1802 he was sent by his father to Barnstable, Mass., where he was placed in the care of his uncle, Samuel Savage, and attended school. He returned to Jamaica in 1805, but sailed from Kingston in May 1807 for Wiscasset, Me., and immediately entered the employ of his cousin Charles Savage, of the firm of Frazier, Savage & Co., Boston. He remained here until the spring of 1808, when the embarrassed condition of business and some misunderstanding between him and his cousin led him, against the advice of his father and uncles, to abandon thoughts of a mercantile life in Boston, and he returned to Jamaica, where he probably remained until 1813. In June of that year he was at Portland, Me., and in the following Oct. he was at Groton, Mass., where he passed the winter with the family of Dr. Amos Bancroft, whose wife was John Savage's first cousin.

Early in 1814 he appears to have gone to Philadelphia, Pa., where he met and married, 20 July 1814, his first wife, Elizabeth Arabella White, born in co. Sussex, England, about 1795, daughter of Richard and Sarah (Perry) of Dublin, Ireland, who later took up their abode in Philadelphia. This marriage was so dis- tasteful to Savage's father, who had arranged for a union between his son and his cousin, that upon the receipt of the news he immediately disinherited him. Although Mrs. Savage's older sister appeared with success upon the Philadelphia stage, it is probable that she herself did not long remain upon it. She was in Boston in the early summer of 1815, and she and her husband made their first appearance upon the stage at the Federal Street Theatre in that city. In Nov. following they were in Philadelphia, and Savage, taking the part of Charles Dudley in R. Cumberland's comedy of The West Indian, made his debut upon the Philadelphia stage at the Chestnut Street Theatre, 27 Nov. 1815. In 1816 and 18l7 Savage with his wife and children was in Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Lexington, and Louisville, and he was a member of a. theatrical company appearing in these and other towns; but the death, in Nov. 1816, of his only brother ended his father's ill-feeling towards him, and he was sent for by his father and reinstated as a son. Savage and his family, after a difficult trip from Ohio, down the Mississippi, arrived in Jamaica early in 1818 in a much embarrassed financial condition. Soon after his arrival he settled down as a coffee planter at Epping Farm, in an attempt to liquidate his own and his father's debts. Mrs. Savage died on the plantation 15 Nov. 1821, and was buried there beside two of her infant children.

In 1823 Savage suffered from a severe attack of yellow fever, and therefore, on the advice of a physician, he left Jamaica, and with his only surviving child, Mary Elizabeth, settled in Philadelphia. There he married secondly, 25 Sept. 1823, Bishop William White officiating, his first wife's sister, Jane Allen White, born at Castle Hill Barracks, co. Sussex, England, 26 July 1801. In 1827 he made a trip to Jamaica, at the time of his father's death, returning to Philadelphia in the summer of 1828. In 1833 he was living at 211 North Sixth Street in that city. Previously he had lived on Fisher's Lane, Germantown, and the summer months were passed at Abington, outside of Philadelphia. He died in Philadelphia, of erysipelas, 15 Jan. 1834, and was buried in Ronaldson's Philadelphia Cemetery, at the corner of Ninth and Bainbridge Streets. His widow died at Frankford, in Philadelphia, 18 Oct. 1882, and was buried in Trinity Churchyard, Oxford, near Cheltenham, PA.