Frederick Gilbert Bourne

Commodore Frederick Gilbert Bourne (December 20, 1851 – March 9, 1919) was an American businessman. He was the fifth president of the Singer Manufacturing Company, from 1889 to 1905. He made the business "perhaps the first modern multinational industrial enterprise of any nationality". Early life Bourne was born on December 20, 1851, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of the Rev. George Washington Bourne (1815–1872) and Harriet J. (née Gilbert) Bourne (1817–1907), who was from Portland, Maine. His older sister was Clara Bourne, who married John Loring Whitman. His paternal grandparents were Benjamin Bourne and Mary (née Hatch) Bourne, herself the daughter of Joshua Hatch, a soldier during the American Revolutionary War who was killed near Crown Point after the evacuation of Fort Ticonderoga in 1777. Bourne was educated at public schools in New York before joining the work force at age fourteen.