Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Louis Cephas MADEIRA
Louis Cephas Madeira, third child and eldest son of Isaac B. and Rebecca (Child) Madeira, was born at Doylestown, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, July 18, 1819, and was educated at the Doylestown Academy and private schools. He went to Philadelphia in 1836, and was for several years connected with the business department of the North American and Daily Advertiser. In 1846 he entered the shipping house of S. & W. Welsh, with which he was connected until 1859, when he founded the firm of Madeira & Cabada, which soon became one of the largest importers of sugar, molasses and other products of Cuba and other West Indian islands, and one of the leading mercantile firms of Philadelphia. Mr. Madeira retired from the firm in 1871 and was appointed secretary and treasurer of the Philadelphia Warehouse Company, which position he resigned in 1873 to become general agent of the American Steamship Line, plying between Philadelphia and Liverpool. In 1874 he established an insurance agency, fire and marine, in which his two sons, Louis C. and Henry, were associated with him, and was for many years prior to his death one of the best known and successful insurance men of Philadelphia. He died at his residence, 723 Pine Street, Philadelphia, April 3, 1896. He was one of the active members of the Philadelphia Board of Trade; a member and director of the Homeopathic Medical College; a director of the Insurance Company of North America; a member of the Union League, the Missions for Seaman, the Union Benevolent Society, and known for his interest in benevolent enterprises. He was a member of the Committee of One Hundred, during the strife for municipal reform in Philadelphia, and took an active interest in its work. He and three of his sons, Louis Childs, Henry and Percy Child Madeira, were members of the Pennsylvania Society, Sons of the Revolution, all being admitted May 4, 1891; his eldest and only other son, Walter Colton Madeira, died in 1882. He married February 27, 1849, Adeline Laura Powell, who died suddenly December 11, 1893. Both are buried at Woodland Cemetery. She was daughter of John and Catharine (Mills) Powell, both natives of England.
Louis Cephas Madeira was for over fifty years a member of the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, becoming a member in 1843, was its secretary in 1856-58, and one of the most active of its members in the promotion and development of musical taste and talent in Philadelphia. He represented the Society in the reception to Madame Sontag in 1852, going to Burlington, New Jersey, to receive the noted singer and escorted her and her party to Philadelphia. He compiled the "Annals of Music in Philadelphia", and the History of the Musical Fund Society, published shortly after his death. The collection of facts and illustrations and the compilation of this excellent history of music and the development of musical talent in Philadelphia, as well as of the Musical Fund Society, from its founding in 1820, was for years Mr. Madeira's favourite occupation.
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