Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-113072]

John Latrobe (1803 - 1891), an American inventor, lawyer, engineer, architect, painter, and philanthropist, was the son of renowned architect Benjamin H. Latrobe. Latrobe became interested in colonization while still a young man. He succeeded Secretary of State and slaveholder Henry Clay as president of the American Colonization Society, and urged that organization to expand the colony of Liberia. In 1833, he helped found the colony of "Maryland in Liberia," centered around the city of Harper. It received settlers from Maryland, which had the largest number of free African Americans in the South at the time.