The first Biddle in America came over with William Penn, although no Biddle was among the founding members of the Society. Best known as a financier and president of the Second Bank of the United States, Nicholas Biddle was also an editor of literary magazines, the editor of the Lewis and Clark papers, a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, and an early supporter of popular education. He excoriated the American farmer for exhausting the once fertile soil. At Andulasia, his estate on the Delaware River, Biddle raised the first herd of Guernsey cattle imported into the United States and attempted to introduce silk production from the mulberry trees he planted there. In 1831 he became president of an inactive Society, but as his banking responsibilities were reduced and eventually eliminated, through his leadership the Society began in 1838 a period of “marked prosperity.”