CORKTELL
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Westchester CounW^ New York : bioaraphi
3 1924 028 835 234 olln Overs
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Westchester County
NEW YORK
BIOGRAPHICAL
COMPILED BY
Wr w! SPOONER
THE NEW YOKK HISTORY COMPANY
114 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
1900
THE WINTHROP PRESS NEW YORK
PUBLISHEES' NOTE
This volume is issued in connection with the " History of West- chester County, New York, from Its Earhest Settlement to the Year 1900, by Frederic Shonnard and W. W. Spooner," as the biographical department of that work. The portraits are reproductions, engravings, or prints from photographs or plates furnished by the individuals concerned, or their families.
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
BIOGRAPHICAL
|AEING, JOHN THOMAS, mamifacturer and old citizen of Yonkers, was born in the town of Southeast, Putnam County, N. Y., November 7, 1820. In the paternal line he is a descendant of Edmund Waring, who lived for a while on Long Island,and went from there to Norwalk,Oonn.,of which town he was one of the early settlers. He was a large landowner in Norwalk, and was among the first subscribers to Saint Paul's Episcopal Church of that place, and one of its vestrymen. About 1750 his descendant, John Waring, grandfather of the subject of this sketch, removed, with two of his brothers, from Norwalk to the Town of Southeast, in the then County of Dutchess (now Putnam), New York. He was twice married, and had nine children, of whom Peter, the father of John T., was the fourth. Peter Waring married Esther Crosby, daughter of Thomas Crosby and Hannah Snow. They had ten children — four sons and six daughters, John T. being their seventh child and third son. All the sons of this numerous family (Jarvis A., William C, John T., and Charles E.) became citizens ^f Yonkers, prominent and useful members of its business community.
Through his mother, Esther Crosby, Mr. Waring traces his line to the Pilgrim fathers and to very early New England settlers. One of her forefathers was Stephen Hopkins, of the " Mayflower," the ninth signer of the " Compact," by virtue of which descent Mr. Waring was admitted to the Society of Mayflower Descendants as one of its first fifty members. The ancestor of the Crosby family in America was Simon Crosby, of Cambridge, Mass., who came to Boston in 1635, and was prominent as a religious teacher among the colonists at Ply- mouth. He was father of Rev. Thomas Crosby, one of the first grad- uates of Harvard College.
The early boyhood of John T. Waring was spent at the home of his parents in Putnam County, under the loving influence and devoted care of a refined and conscientious mother. She died when he was only eleven years old; but her beautiful character left a strong impress upon his young life.
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
In 1834, being then in Ms fourteenth year, he left home and came to Yonkers, entering the hat factory of his brother, William O. War- ing, which, under the name of Paddock & Waring, had been estab- lished in the spring of that year. William O. Waring had been m Yonkers for some six years, pursuing the hat manufacturing business with varying fortunes; and another brother, Jarvis A., had also pre-, ceded John to that village. With the firm of Paddock & Waring, and its successor, William O. Waring & Company, John continued until ' 1849, during the last five years of the period as a partner. In 1849 he engaged in the manufacture of hats on his own account, buying the mills of his brother and enlarging them; and the career thus begun was continued with constantly increasing success until 1876. In that year the capital of his firm had grown to nearly a million dollars. But at this point he was overtaken by crushing reverses, and, in Septem- ber, 1876, he suffered business failure. Not daunted by these disasters,; however, he at once determined to rebuild his fortunes in a new field of enterprise, and, with his son Arthur, went to Massachusetts, and entered into a large contract with the State government for the em- ployment of its convict labor. Achieving marked success in this ven- ture, he returned to Yonkers in 1884, bought the property of the old " Starr Anns Works," on Vark Street, and resumed hat manufactur- ing on an extensive scale. The business has steadily prospered since,| and is now (1900) the largest in its line in the United States, some 2,000 hands being employed in the works.
Mr. Waring's business career has been characterized throughout by great energy, perfect mastery of all the details of hat manufacture and scrupulous attention to them, and alertness in foreseeing and adapting himself to the varying changes in th6 circumstances of this peculiar industry. He is himself the inventor of several important processes and improvements in hat-making. Much of the success that he has enjoyed, not only in his financial recuperation, but also in the revival of his manufacturing interests in Yonkers on a scale surpass- ing that attained during the former period, is due to the faithful and intelligent co-operation given him in all his undertakings by his son Arthur.
As a citizen of Yonkers he has always been one of the most con- spicuous, most earnest, and most generous in promoting its welfare and development both as a village and as a city. Alike in matters of financial, political, religious, charitable, and social concern or activ- ity, the influence of his moral encouragement and practical help has been felt for great good in many ways and upon many occasions. A striking instance of his public spirit was his action at the breaking out of the Eebellion in guaranteeing the support of the families of
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BIOGRAl^HICAL 3
volunteers for the Union cause. At a public meeting to promote en- listments some misgi wrings were expressed as to whether the families of the enlisting men would be properly taken care of in their absence. Mr. Waring, being then president of the village, at once pledged his personal honor to that end, and Avith Mr. Ethan Flagg visited the families of the volunteers and arranged to pay them regular weekly allowances. This obligation he discharged out of his private means, being subsequently reimbursed by the village.
The well-known " Greystone," where Samuel J. Tilden spent the last years of his life, was built by Mr. Waring in 1870. Upon this magnificent residence, with its grounds and improvements, he ex- pended nearly half a million of dollars. He occupied it with his fam- ily until forced by his reverses in business to dispose of it. In 1880 he sold it to Mr. Tilden for |150,000.
Ever since the formation of the Eepublican party Mr. Wearing has been an earnest supporter of the principles of that organization. His identification with it has always been strictly that of a private citizen, and he has never become a candidate for political oflEice. In the years 1861 and 1862, however, he held the office of president of the village of Yonkers.
He has at all times participated cordially and by liberal contribu- tions in the work of local organizations in Yonkers which exist for worthy charitable and similar objects. He is one of the leading sup- porters of the Club for Working Men, the Institute for Working Women, and Saint John's Hospital. He is also vice-president of the Young Men's Christian Association. For many years he has been a prominent member of Saint John's Episcopal Church; he was its senior warden for a long period, and treasurer of the vestry for five years.
No Yonkers citizen of the last or the present generation will be re- membered with greater respect or higher appreciation than Mr. War- ing. His life of sixty-four years in that community has been wholly devoted to practical energies of eminent importance, usefulness, and success. The pre-eminence of the city as a center of the hat manufac- turing industry is more due to his efforts than to those of any other one man — which certainly is a moderate statement of the measure of his influence in this particular direction. And along all the lines of the city's better progress he has been for quite half a century the type of its most representative and valuable men. The lesson of his life is, moreover, an inspiration for honest endeavor and unfailing self-reli- ance and faith such as the examples of few careers afford.
He was married, in 1850, to Jeanette Palmer Baldwin, daughter of Anson and Armenia (Palmer) Baldwin. Mr. Baldwin was a leading manufacturer and well-known citizen of Yonkers. Mrs. Waring dieid
WESTCHESTER COXJNTT
in April, 1899. The surviving children of Mr. and Mrs. Waring are Arthur (who married Maud Shaw) ; Grace (who married Louis Rob- erts, Jr.) ; John T., Jr.; Cornelia Baldwin (who married Jesse Hoyt) ; Pierre Crosby (whO' married Florence Cornelia Pell); Susan Baldwin; James Palmer (who married Margaret Hosea); and Janet.
OFFIN, OWEN TEISTAM (born near the village of Mechanic, Town of Washington, Dutchess County, N. Y., July 17,1815; died at his residence in Peeliskill,this county, July 21,1899), was the son of Eobert and Magdalen (Bentley) Coffin. He was of the sixth generation in descent from Tristam Coffin, who emi- grated from Devonshire, England, about the middle of the seventeenth century and settled on the Island of Nantucket, of which he became one of the proprietors (owning one-tenth of it ) , and also the chief mag- istrate. Judge Coffin's mother was a daughter of Colonel Taber Bent- ley (a descendant of the family to which the famous Dr. Bentley be- longed), and a granddaughter of Colonel James Vanderburg, of the Eevolution. Eobert Coffin, the father of Judge Coffin, was a thrifty farmer, prominent in the affairs of his town, of which, he was a mag- istrate for many years, and represented the county in the Assembly. He had ten children, the subject of this sketch having been the seventh child and the fourth son.
Owen T. Coffin attended the schools of his neighborhood and was pre- pared for college at the Sharon (Conn.) Academy and the Kinderhook Academy. In 1837 he was graduated at Union College in the same class with John K. Porter, after-U'ard the distinguished judge of the Court of Appeals, between whom and himself a friendship was formed which was never interrupted. He studied law in the office of Judge Eufus W. Peckham the elder, was admitted to the bar in 1840, and began practice at Carmel, Putnam County. In; 1842 he removed to Dutchess County, and in 1845 became a member of the law firm of Johnston, Coffin & Emott, of Poughkeepsie, in which Charles Johnston, ex-member of congress, and James Emott, afterward justice of the Supreme Court, were associated with him. Eetiring! from this firm, he formed a copartnership with General Leonard Maison, a well-known lawyer of Poughkeepsie, whose daughter he had married in 1842. During his residence in Poughkeepsie he held several positions of im- portance, including that of district attorney of the county.
In 1851 he became a partner with Hon. W. Nelson and, his son W. E. Nelson, in the firm of Nelson & Coffin, at Peekskill. After nearly
BIOGRAPHICAL 5
twenty years of successful practice at the Westchester County bar, in which he established a reputation as one of its leading and strongest members, he was elected, in 1870, surrogate of the county. In this
7/5
office he continued for four successive terms, retiring on the 31st of December, 1894. His long service as surrogate of Westchester County was distinguished throughout by an exceptional capacity for the deli-
6 WESTCHESTER COtTNTY
eate duties of that responsible position. " Many of Ms judgments were carried to tlie highest court of the State and received its sanction, and many opinions in cases decided by him have been referred to as au- thority in other courts."
Judge Coffin was one of the most prominent and respected citizens of Peelisldll. He took an especially warm interest in its educational mat- ters. For thirty years he was president of the board of trustees of the Peekskill Academy, and for a long period he was a member and warden of the Peekskill Episcopal Church. In 1889 he received frojT> Union College the degree of Doctor of Laws.
He was twice married. His first wife, Belinda Emott Maison, whom he married in 1842, died in 1856. In 1858 he was married to Harriet Barlow, daughter of the late Dr. Samuel Barlow, and a sister of the late S. L. M. Barlow.
^^^plOHNSON, ISAAC GALE, manufacturer, was bom in Troy, »;>ii^ffll:: -j^ Y.^ February 22, 1832, and died at his home in Spuyten
Duyvil, June 3, 1899. Through both his parents, Elias J.
and Laura (Gale) Johnson, he was descended from early New England families. His first American ancestor in the paternal line came from England, to Massachusetts, being one of three emigrant brothers, of whom one settled in the South and the other in the vicinity of the present City of Binghamton, N. Y., where that branch of the family has ever since continued. The paternal ancestors of Isaac G. Johnson were for a number of generations resident in Westfield, Mass. His grandfather, William Johnson, was one of the minute men of '76, and at the time of the battle of Bunker Hill started from West- field to join the patriot forces. On his mother's side also Mr. John- son comes from good Revolutionary stock. The Gales lived in Ben- nington, Vt., and were active and prominent throughout the struggle for American independence.
Mr. Johnson's father, Elias Johnson (born in Westfield, Mass.), was for many years a citizen of Troy, N. Y., being the head of the large stove manufacturing firm of Johnson, Cox & Fuller. This was the first estab- lishment north of Philadelphia to manufacture the cupola furnace. During the Mexican War it was largely employed by the government on contracts for military supplies,, chiefiy shot and shell. In 1853 the firm removed to Spuyten Duyvil, where it acquired some 180 acres on the north side of Spuyten Duyvil Creek and built a foundry and stove factory. In 1856 (the firm style being at that time Johnson, Cox & Cam- eron) Elias J. Johnson sold out his interests, and the business was con-
BIOGRAPHICAL i
tinued by Oox, Eichardson & Boynton, who, however, failed in the finan- cial panic of 1857. Mr. Johnson, Sr., thereupon resumed the direction of its affairs under the firm name of Johnson & Cameron until the com- pletion of its liquidation. He died at Spuyten Duyvil in 1871.
Isaac G. Johnson received a thorough educational training in civil engineering and the sciences, being graduated from the Eensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, N. Y.), with the degree of Bachelor of Natural Sciences and Civil Engineer, in 1848. For a brief time after leaving school he was employed with his father's firm. He then went to Philadelphia and pursued studies in chemical analysis, also taking drawing lessons at the Franklin Institute. During this period he made various original experiments toward perfecting the processes for the manufacture of malleable iron. These were attended by highly satis- factory results, especially in the direction of devising means by which articles formerly made by the slow practice of forging could be pro- duced from cast iron.
Deciding to engage in manufacturing enterprises on his own account, ' he came to Spuyten Duyvil in 1853, and with a Mr. Hutton, a pattern- maker, organized the firm of Johnson & Hutton and began to put into execution his new malleable iron processes. At the end of about a year Mr. Hutton retired. Thereafter Mr. Johnson pursued the busi- ness alone, under his individual name, until the present firm of Isaac G. Johnson & Company was organized. In this firm his five sons became associated with him.
The Johnson F"oundry at Spuyten Duyvil is one of the particularly noted establishments of its kind in this country. It has long enjoyed a reputation for workmanship of an exceptionally superior order — ^the re- sults of great care in the selection of materials and skill in the prepara- tion of them by original secret processes. This reputation was estab- lished on a solid basis by the execution of important government work during the Civil War. A gun of a novel pattern having been designed by General Delafield, of the United States Army, a contract for its con-, struction was placed by the government with the Parrott Foundry, at Cold Springs; but the first piece turned out by that concern was a fail- ure, bursting after a few discharges. Meantime Mr. Johnson had offered to furnish the War Department four cannon of tliesame kind, war- ranting them to be serviceable for one thousand rounds each. This was accepted, and all the guns produced successfully performed the work required of them. Subsequently other guns were made by Mr. Johnson on government orders. He also manufactured shot and shell for the Parrott Company.
About 1882 the Johnson Foundry began to turn its attention to the ' making of steel castings, a branch of manufacture which has since be^
8 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
come the most important department of its business. The general temdency in this line has always been to obtain a steel as nearly re- sembling wrought iron as possible, with the minimum amount of car- bon. On the other hand, the Johnson Foundry aims to get a casting with the maximum quantity of carbon, affording a greater elastic limit, increased strength, and sufficient elongation for all practical pur- poses. It thus furnishes a peculiar steel, markedly different from any made elsewhere. This very valuable product has entered extensively into breech mechanisms for guns.
As the result of some exceedingly remarkable recent tests by the United States government, the Johnson Company has been shown to be at the head of all manufacturers of armor-piercing projectiles. Ever since the appearance of Harveyized armor there has been great rivalry among the makers of projectiles to produce a shot "which should com- bine the necessary toughness to enable it to split open the hardened face and hold together until it had wedged its way through the body of the plate itself." Mr. Johnson accomplished this, and "won the final victory in the long contest between shot and armor," by the simple, plan of placing a soft cap of steel over the point of the projectile to pro- tect it. The principle involved will be readily understood when it is explained that whereas a hard -pointed shell fired against a hard plate will naturally glance off, a soft-capped shot will at the moment of im- pact become fused by the heat of concussion, lubricating the point of the projectile as it enters, and thus cleave a way through, even though at an angle. The Johnson soft-capped shell (the shot proper being of peculiarly hard and tough composition, made by a secret process) has, indeed, penetrated every armor-plate against which it has been fired. In the notable tests, in the fall of 1896, of the turrets of the battleship "Massachusetts," an exact duplicate of the 15-inch turret was fired against. The first two shells (made by other manufacturers) indented the armor, but did not pass through it.
The third shot was a Johnson fluid-compressed steel, armor-piercing shot, 12 inches in diameter. It carried a soft steel cap and weighed 851 pounds. It struck the plate at an angle of 21° from the normal, at a point about three feet from the top of the plate. It will be noticed that the angle of impact was very large, and when the shot struck the plate, in- stead of following the line of fire, it turned sharply to the right and passed entirely through the plate on a Ime nearly normal to its surface. The shot broke up in forcing its way through, the larger pieces going through the covering plate on the rear side of the turret, piercmg the backing, smashing off a large portion of the rear east-iron plate, and finally going mto the woods behind the target.l
The latest armor-plate test with Johnson shot was even more impres- sive in its consequences. Eecently Herr Krupp, the German o-un- founder, succeeded in producing a plate superior to the Harveyized, granting to the Carnegies a license to manufacture it in the United
^ Scientific American, July 9, 1898.
BIOGRAPHICAL 9
States. In the summer of 1898, the Oarnegies having produced a plate which, according to the tests, was superior even to the original Krupp article, a Johnson steel capped projectile was fired upon it at a velocity reduced by 400 feet per second, going clear through it. This triumph attracted the special attention of the governments of England and Ger- many, and Mr. Johnson, upon invitations received from those govern- ments, sailed for Europe in the summer of 1898 to give them the bene- fit of similar exhibitions, which proved equally successful.
During his business career of forty-five years Mr. Johnson weathered all financial storms and maintained his establishment on a thoroughly sound basis. The works at the time of his death gave employment to from 400 to 600 men. He always manifested a warm interest in the welfare of his employees, promoting their facilities for their own and their children's educational, moral, and religious culture. Connected with the foundry are a free reading room and a Sunday-school.
He was a member of the Chamber of Commerce of New York and a director of the Merchants' Exchange National Bank, of that city. He was a member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. In politics he was a Republican. He was an active Baptist in his religious affiliations, having long been a member and deacon of the Warburton Avenue Baptist Church of Yonkers.
Mr. Johnson was married in 1855 to Jane E., daughter of Gilbert Bradley, of Sunderland, Vt. He had five children — Elias M., Isaac B., Gilbert H., Arthur G., and James W., all of whom survive.
EPEW, CHAUNCEY MITCHELLS railroad president, law- yer, leader in the councils of the Eepublican party, orator, famous after-dinner speaker, and now United States Senator from the State of New York, is one of the most eminent of American citizens, and undoubtedly the most distinguished of Westchester County's sons now living. He was born on the 23d of April, 1834, at Peeksldll, on a farm which, for a century and a half, had been owned by his ancestors. The Depews, as an American family, indeed originated in this county, the first of the name having been a Huguenot of New Eochelle. Senator Depew's father, Isaac Depew, was a highly respected citizen of Peekskill. On his mother's side Mr. Depew is a descendant of Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Graduating with high honors from Yale College in 1856 when
• This sketch, for the most part, is reproduced from " Leslie's History of the Greater New York."
10 WESTCHISSTER C0TJNT:£
twenty-one years of age, he identified himself with the Republican party, of which John C. Fremont was then the presidential candidate. He studied law with Hon. William Nelson, of Peekskill, was admitted to the bar in 1858, and the same year was elected a delegate from West- chester County to the Republican State Convention. He won renown as a political speaker throughout the 9th Congressional District during the Lincoln campaign of 1860, and being nominated for the Assembly the following year, received a handsome majority in the 3d District of this county, which had been previously overwhelmingly Democratic. Re-elected in 1862, he was mentioned for speaker of the House, became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and acted as speaker a part of the session. In 1863 he received the Republican nomination for Secretary of State, made a brilliant canvass, and, despite the fact that Governor Horatio Seymour had swept the State at the head of the Democratic ticket the year before, was triumphantly elected. He declined a renomination in 1865, and, removing to New York City, served for some time as tax commissioner. In May, 1867, he was ap- pointed by Governor Fenton county clerk of Westchester County to fill a vacancy, but declined the office. The papers had been made out for his appointment as collector of the port of New York when a quarrel between United State Senator Morgan and President Johnson altered the programme. Appointed United States minister to Japan by Sec- retary Seward, he resigned after holding the commission four weeks, his connection with the Vanderbilt railroad interests having already become such as to justify this decision.
In 1872 he permited his nomination as lieutenant-governor on the Horace Greeley ticket, suffering defeat with the great editor. In 1881, when Senators Conkling and Piatt endeavored to embarrass President Garfield by their resignations, Mr. Depew was the leading candidate; before the legislature for the United States Senate, lacking only ten^ votes of election on a joint ballot. At the end of eighty-two days, fol-^, lowing the fortieth ballot, in which he retained all his strength, he withdrew on account of the death of the president, declaring that "the senatorial contests should be brought to a close as decently and speedily as possible." In 1884, with a Republican majority of nearly two- thirds in the legislature, all factions united in offering him the vacant United States senatorship from New York. He declined it on account of his business engagements. One of the most formidable candidates for nomination to the presidency in the Republican National Conven-' tion of 1888, with a solid vote of the delegation of his own State, he withdrew in the interest of harmony, throwing his strength to Benja-' min Harrison, who received the nomination. It is believed that his vig- orous advocacy of the renomination of Harrison in 1892,. after Blaine"
BIOGKAPIIICAL 11
developed the sudden rivalry which he had declared he shoiild not do, together with his skillful leadership of the Harrison forces in the Ke- publican National Convention of that year, and his eloquent presenta- tion of the name of Harrison to the convention, turned the tide in favor of the.renominatibn of the president. When Mr. Blaine resigned as Secretary of State in the summer of 1892, President Harrison offered the post to Mr. Depew, but after, a week's consideration the latter de- clined it. In January, 1899, he was elected to the United States Sen- ate by the New York legislature.
His connection with the Vanderbilt railroad system began in 1866, when he became attorney to the New York & Harlem Kailroad Com- 'pany. He became general counsel to the consolidated New York Cen- tral & Hudson Eiver Railroad Company in 1869, and soon entered its directorate. In 1875 he became general counsel for the entire system, being also elected a director of each company composing it. In the reorganization of 1882 he was elected 1st vice-president of the New York Central, and June 14, 1884, succeeded the deceased James Rutter as president, both of that road and the West Shore. These positions he held until the system was still further compacted by the reorganiza- tion of the spring of 1898, when he resigned to accept the more respon- sible trust of presiding officer of all the boards of directors of the affiliated corporations.
In addition to forty-seven railroad corporations of which he is direc- tor, he is trustee or director of the Union Trust Company, the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Equitable Life Insurance Society of the United States, the Mercantile Trust Company, the National Surety Company, the Western National Bank, the Schermerhorn Bauk of Brooklyn, the New York Mutual Gas- Light Company, the Brooklyn Warehouse and Storage Company, and several other corporations.
He has been a trustee of Yale College since 1872, a regent of tlie State University since 1874, and is president of the New York Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, president of the Saint Nicholas Society, was for seven years president of the Union League Club, and for ten years was president of the Yale Alumni of New York. In 1887 Yale University conferred upon him the degree of LL-D. His reputa- tion as an orator and an after-dinner speaker is national. A volume of his principal orations has been published. Mr. Depew is not now a resident of Westchester County, but the record of his distinguished career belongs essentially to the biographical annals of our county, where he was born and where he began and for many years prose- cuted his professional and political activities. One of the most rep- • resentative of his orations was delivered at the dedication of the new monument to the captors of Andre at Tarrytown in September, 1880.
12 WBSTCHESTEK COUNTY
RAVIS, DAVID WILEY, lawyer and prominent old citizen of Peekskill,was born in the Town of Cortlandt,this county, January 15, 1824, being the son of David B. and Alchy Travis. He attended the district school until about the age of sixteen, completing his education at the Peekskill Academy. He then studied law in the office of William and Thomas Nelson, of Peeks- kill, was admitted to the bar in 1847, and soon afterward engaged in active practice. He has since pursued his profession uninterruptedly at Peekskill, and to-day ranks as one of the very oldest, as well as most notable and respected, members of the Westchester County bar, with a record of fifty-two years of consecutive practice.
Mr. Travis has always taken an active part in politics, uniformly at- tending the caucuses and conventions of his party, and has exerted a large influence in connection with political affairs in his section. A Whig until the formation of the Eepublican party, he joined the lg,tter organization at its birth, and has ever since been identified with it.
In 1854 he was elected police justice of Cortlandttown, an office in which he continued for five years. In 1866 he was chosen to the Assem- bly from the Third District of Westchester County. In 1878 and again in 1879 he was elected supervisor of the Town of Cortlandt; and in the same years he was chosen to serve for a second and third term in the Assembly. On several occasions he has been appointed as commis- sioner of appraisal in connection with the New York water supply, a position which he still holds.
Upon the completion of his seventy-fifth year, January 15, 1899, Mr. Travis was tendered a reception by his fellow-citizens of Peekskill, which was in many ways a remarkable testimonial, evidencing the singular respect and affection in which he is held by all classes of the community.
He was married, November 10, 1847, to Catherine M. Hunt, daughter of Stephanus and Phoebe Hunt, of the Town of Cortlandt. He has one child, Susie T., wife of William L. Ci-aig, of the Health Department of New York City.
OPCUTT, JOHN, manufacturer and merchant, remembered as one of the oldest, most notable, and most respected citizens of Yonkers of his time, was born in Oxfordshire, England, in 1805, and died at his home in Yonkers, Februarj 5, 1895. Reared in rural England during the momentous period of the wars of Napoleon, he heard much talk as a boy of the grand events then trans- piring, of which, as well as of various episodes that impressed his yqung
Atlantic Puhlishing & Engravmg Cn,N,X
BIOGUAPI-IICAL 13
mind (running back to his fourth year), he retained keen recollections to his last days. He particularly well remembered the enthusiastic re- joicings in Beading, England (where he was living at the time with his parents) , after the battle of Waterloo. The following reminiscences of that occasion are in his own words, as taken down in writing by his daughter, Anna C. Copcutt, about two weeks before his death :
There were three parish churches in Reading, with seven or eight bells in each church. These were kept ringing at a lively rate, then they would bang by each bell being rung at once, chum, chum, chum, for a while, and then ring in a regular succession again. I would give a good sum of money to hear the bells ring again as they did that day. The citizens of the town arranged public dinners in tents along the principai streets. My father took me to see all, and we tasted the roast beef and the plum pudding as we passed along. Coming with my parents to New York, we afterward met in that city one of the French prisounrs whom I remembered well in my native town, perhaps because he used to skip a rope back- wards to my childish delight.
In 1817, when he was twelve years old, the family removed to this country, settling in New York City. His father, John B. Copcutt, was a dealer in and importer of mahogany, who, after a successful business career in New York City, purchased a handsome property at Tarrytown, this county, where he lived to an advanced age, dying in 1858. He was a genial old gentleman and his wife was a very worthy woman, whose death occurred only a few years previously to his own. The Tarrytown estate was inherited by their daughters, the last of whom died in 1892. There were only two sons, John and Francis. The latter (also now deceased) was a merchant in New York.
John Copcutt was brought up by his father to the mahogany busi- ness and ultimately became the largest mahogany goods trader in America. He had a singular power of determining the precise quality of mahogany in the rough, and especially of selecting logs that would render the finest figured veneers. It was a common remark that "John Copcutt could see right through a mahogany log."
Mr. Copcutt's knowledge of Yonkers antedated by many years his residence there. In 1824, at the age of nineteen, he went on a visit to that place (then an insignificant settlement) with his father, who wished to get mahogany sawed at the Yonkers mills. They came by sloop up the Hudson, leaving New York at half-past two one afternoon and reaching their destination at ten the next morning. The river was full of ice, and, landing in a small boat, the men had to rock it to get it through. Besides the saw mill, Yonkers then boasted a hat factory and a grist mill. There were but few houses. One of these was at the dock and was used as a hotel ; another was the Manor House of the Philipses, at that period the property of Mr. Lemuel Wells; and there were several dwellings in what is now Getty Square, but none between Saint John's (a little country stone church) and the old Methodist church (which
14
WESTCHESTER OOXJNTY
stood at the present intersection of Broadway and Ashburton Avenue). These two were the only churclies. There was but one village block, from the Methodist church to the' Sawmill River Road. In later years a narrow road ran from the Manor House down hill to the Sawmill River Road, leading thence back to Broadway.
X
For a number of years Mr. Copcutt operated a mill at West Farms, in this county. It was in this establishment that Halcyon Skinner, the well-known Yonkers inventor, obtained his first employment, coming there in. 1838 with his father, who for a time was Mr. Oopcutt's
BIOGRAPHICAL 15
foreman. The West Farms mill was destroyed by fire in the spring of 1845, and in the same year Mr. Oopcutt purchased a tract of land at Yonkers, including the first or lower water power, where the Nepper- han Eiver empties into the Hudson. He erected upon the property a number of mills and stores. About 1854 he added considerably to his landed holdings, acquiring also increased water power, which enabled him to largely extend his manufacturing facilities. The enterprise thus displayed, besides adding to the industries of the place, was instru- mental in furnishing employment to numerous operatives, for whom he constructed many cottages or small dwellings. At the same time he built his handsome stone residence on Nepperhan Avenue, and made Yonkers his permanent home.
In his business relations Mr. Copcutt was the soul of honor, and, care- fully guarding his affairs against misadventure, he was able to weather every financial storm and at all times to pay dollar for dollar. In the later years of his life he was largely interested in the silk industry. He cherished strong free trade views, and although his individual fortunes were wrapped up in manufacturing enterprises, he always advocated his favorite economic ideas with vigor. He never was active in politics. He served for four years as village trustee, but, having a dislike for official position, declined to be further honored in that line.
At his death (which resulted from an attack of acute pneumonia) he had almost completed his ninetieth year. Up to within five days of that event he was perfectly well and strong for his years, and exceed- singly active, able to walk a number of miles and to attend daily to his business concerns both in Yonkers and New York. Being an early riser, he accomplished much. He was very fond of travel, a great reader, and a most interesting talker, especially on the subject of his early recollections. As has already been indicated, he possessed a re- markable memory. This was stored with an inexhaustible fund of local reminiscences, going back considerably more than seventy years in the "history of Yonkers and some seventy-seven years in that of New York City. When he first knew New York the northernmost bounds of the city were some distance below the present Canal Street. In those ancient times there was a little hamlet called Spring Village, where Spring Street now is, and farther off in the country lay the more celebrated Greenwich Village. Although the natural shore of the North River was along West Street, the tide in many places came as far as Washington Street. At the present Union Square the two great roads from the city, Broadway and the Bowery, came together, forming a single highway, which was known as the Bloomingdale Eoad. On the spot where the Tribune Building stands was the frame store of a stationer named Jansen. Mr. Oopcutt often recalled with amusement
16 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
the ingenious advertisements which this tradesman was accustomed^ to display in his window. One was:
I have one cent and want no more To buy a book at Jansen's store.
He vividly remembered the three earlier steamboats (after Fulton's in 1808) which plied the Hudson as far as Albany — ^the " Firefly," the " Chancellor Livingston," and the " Lady Eichmond." He once made the Albany trip on the " Lady Eichmond," paying $8 fare one way.
When asked to what he ascribed his unusual age, health, and spright- liness, Mr. Copcutt was wont to reply that he thought much was due to the fact that he had always been in active employment. Throughout his life he never used tobacco ; and although he would not refuse a glass of wine or spirits when occasion or necessity required him to take one, he rarely drank anything of the kind, saying he did not like ardent liquors. He invariably declined to rent his stores for saloons.
He was an earnest Calvanist in his religious persuasions, preserving to the last his connection with that sect in England, and contributing generously to its support. A Church of England magazine, until re- cently edited by the late Eev. D. A. Doudney, D.D., said at the time of his decease :
We deeply regret to record the loss of the oldest and one of the most appreciative of our transatlantic subscribers. . . . Another of the fathers of the old school has been taken, and the Church of God on earth is the poorer.
Another, a Baptist magazine, said :
He was a remarkable man in committing his temporal concerns to the Lord. He was a man in good circumstances and was kind to the Lord's poor, who, we fear, will greatly miss him.
Mr. Copcutt was happily married in 1833, to Eebecca Medwin Bod- dington, daughter of Eichard Boddington, of Manchester, England, who was then in her early teens. She died in February, 1899. Thir- teen children were born to them, of whom six died in infancy and one (the eldest son ) at the age of sixteen. The surviving children are : Mrs. A. E. Hyde, of Yonkers; Mrs. C. A. Leale and W. H. Copcutt, of New York; Mrs. James A. Wilcox, of Bloomington, HI.; and John B. Cop- cutt and Miss Anna C. Copcutt, of Yonkers. There are thirteen grand- children.
OPOUTT, JOHN BODDINGTON, son of the late John Cop- cutt, was born in the homestead on Nepperhan Avenue, Yonkers, August 27, 1855. He has always resided in Yon- kers. He was educated in the private school of the Eev. M. E. Hooper, of Yonkers, later taking a thorough course in a business col- lege in New York City. He then engaged in mercantile pursuits, and
BIOGRAPHICAL
17
until recently was a member of the firm of J. Copcutt, Son & Company, hardwood merchants and Importers, of New York. Since his father's death he has devoted his attention largely to the extensive interests of
the family estate, being known as one of the representative business men and citiizens of Yonkers.
Mr. Copcutt is a prominent member of the Yonkers Board of Trade and South Yonkers Improvement Company, and is a vestryman of Saint Andrew's Memorial Episcopal Church.
18 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
He has traveled widely in Europe, Canada, and the West Indies, a_s well as in the United States, and has an excellent knowledge of several of the polite foreign languages. He was married, October 5, 1888, to Miss Mary A. Hill.
LAGG, ETHAN, one of the founders of the municipality of Yonkers, and for many years a prominent, progi'essive, and highly respected citizen of that community, was born in West Hartford, Conn., July 20, 1820, and died in Yonkers, October 11; 1884. Through both his parents, Augustus and Lydia (Wells) Plagg, he was descended from old Connecticut families. The well-known Dr. Levi W. Flagg, of Yonkers, was his elder brother.
At the age of twenty-one he engaged in business witli a mercantile firm in Boston, but, at the end of two years, he gave up that connec- tion and went to Yonkers to look after the interests of a considerable amount of property which his mother had inherited there uj)on the dea,th of her uncle, Lemuel Wells.
This property was the sixteenth part of the valuable Wells estate, upon which the principal business portion of Yonkers has since been built. The estate, as purchased by Lemuel Wells in 1813, and as re-' tained intact by him until his decease, comprised some three hundred* and twenty acres of the choicest portion of the old Philipsburgh Manor lands, with the historic Manor House of the Philipses as its center. Lemuel Wells passed away without issue, and intestate, on February 11, 1842, his only child, a son, having died in the Manor Hall, at about the age of twenty-one, a number of years previously. The heirs-at-law to the estate were Lemuel's widow and the fifteen surviving children of his three brothers. Mrs. Lydia (Wells) Plagg, the mother of Ethan Flagg, was the first child of Lemuel's brother Levi.
Ethan Flagg became a resident of Yonkers in 1843, one year after the death of Lemuel Wells. That was twelve years before the incor- poration of the village of Yonkers, and the place was then a mere ham- let, or rather an aggregation of more or less settled localities. Through- out the lifetime of Mr. Wells, the Wells estate had been preserved sub- stantially in its original unimproved condition. At the time when he purchased it, in 1813, there were on the whole tract of three hundred and twenty acres only twenty-six buildings of all kinds. He did not buy the property with any intention of selling it either in large or small parcels, and his policy in the administration of it was uniformly very conservative. Although he did not especially object to settlers, and,
^
^ng HyAJI.BUC?i^-
fi'oin a i'tiufo fdMi ia 15 53-
BIOGRAPHICAL 19
indeed, would at times build houses on the land for tenants, he was sel- dom induced to sell or even lease any portion of it.
The active development of Yonkers as a place of residence and manu- facturing enterprise may be \said to date from the partition of the Wells estate among the heirs. " Eeleased from the hand that had so long kept it out of the market, and catching the spirit of enterprise, the land so long unused, or, where used, devoted to farm purposes only, was quickly laid out in streets and lots, became the scene of busy activity, and was soon dotted with beautiful residences." ^ Of this forward move- ment Ethan Flagg was one of the most energetic and intelligent pro- moters. From the beginning he had unbounded confidence in the fu- ture of Yonkers, and he was at all times a leading spirit in the steady progress which resulted in the laying out of the new community into streets and in the ultimate incorporation of the village. It was, in- deed, " largely under his direction that the plan of the prospective city was laid out substantially as we now see it." ^
He became by degrees an extensive owner of Yonkers real estate, both within and outside the original corporate limits of the village. He was also conspicuous in local industrial and financial concerns. He was associated with his father-in-law. Judge Anson Baldwin, and sub- sequently with his brother-in-law. Hall F. Baldwin, in the hat manu- facturing firm of Baldwin & Flagg. He was one of the organizers, and until his death a director, of the First National Bank of Yonkers, and he was the first president of the Yonkers Savings Bank, continuing in that position to the end of his life.
Mr. Flagg held at various times some of the principal public offices of the village and city. He was a trustee of the village for three years, from 1857 to 1860, and again for two years, in 1867 and 1868. He was one of the first aldermen and president of the Common Council of the city; was a member and for five years president of the Board of Water Commissioners, and several times represented the town in the county Board of Supervisors.
He took an especial interest in promoting the establishnient of churches in Yonkers, and contributed generously from his private means to this end. At an early period of his residence there he as- sisted materially in the founding of the Eeformed (then the Keformed Dutch) Church. He donated the land on which the First Presbyterian Church was erected, and with equal liberality aided in all the plans which led to the organization of that church and to the subsequent extension of its usefulness.
The following view of Mr. Flagg's character, in its moral, public-
1 Rev. David Cole's article on Yonkers in Scharf's " History of Westchester^County," Vol. ii., p. 23. " Ibid., p. 38.
20 WESTOHESTEE COUNTY
spirited, and sympathetic aspects, is from the appreciative pen of his relative and friend. Professor Henry M. Baird, of the University of the City of New York :
He was liberal in his expenditure of his time and generous in contributions of his means for the support of every institution and movement that bade fair to elevate the tone of public manners and morals. In devotion to the public service he was untiring, albeit he cared less for the reputation than for the consciousness of advancing the common weal. ...
While he was a decided Republican in sentiment, his patriotism was confined by no party limits, and during the War of the Rebellion he gave to the government and to the agencies' set on foot to mitigate the horrors of warfare his undivided and hearty support. ...
In his business relations Ethan Flagg was distinguished both for the correctness of his judgment respecting the conduct of his affairs and for acuteness in the discernment of the character of the men with whom he had to deal. Honorable and upright in his own transac- tions, he looked for and appreciated in others the integrity which he himself displayed. To those who showed that they merited it he extended a confidence as rare as it is precious. He delighted in what is really the highest form of practical benevolence, for one of his ruling passions was a desire to help men who showed a readiness to help themselves, and it has justly been observed that many of the most prosperous citizens of Yonkers can trace the origin of their success to the timely support which they found in Ethan Flagg in their first efforts to advance in the world.'
Mr. Flagg was twice married. His first wife was his cousin. Marietta Wells, who bore him a son, Wilbur Wells Flagg, now living in Salt Lake City. On March 7, 1854, he married Julia Baldwin, daughter of Anson and Armenia (Palmer) Baldwin, of Yonkers. Four children were born of this union — Susan W. (deceased) ; Marcia (who married Charles Henry Butler, a son of William Allen Butler) ; Janet W.; and Elizabeth Palmer (who married John Maynard Harlan, of Chicago, a son of Justice Harlan, of the Supreme Court of the United States).
OOTE, WILLIAM OULLEN, educator, was born in North Haven, Conn., November 6, 1811, and died at his home in Yonkers, September 19, 1888. His father. Dr. Joseph Foote, was a graduate of Yale, and a prominent practicing physician of North Haven and vicinity.
The son pursued the regular classical course at Yale College, and was graduated from that institution in the class of 1832. He then entered the Yale Divinity School, and upon the completion of his studies there was licensed to preach. He was engaged for a brief time in ministerial work, and received a call from the Congregational Church of Belchertown, Mass., but in consequence of failing health he was obliged to abandon his chosen profession and devote himself to teaching.
After serving very acceptably for five years as principal of a young
1 xT-ia oo on
BIOGRAPHICAL
21
ladies' seminary in Newburgh, N. Y., lie accepted, in 1845, an urgent invitation to go to Yonkers and take charge of the Oak Grove Female Seminary of that place. In this position he continued for twenty years, with highly successful results. Of his labors and influence as a teacher it has been said that " hundreds of young ladies received from
-^6. /^^=^
him not only a fine education, but invaluable aids for the formation of character," and that " not a few would place his faithful teachings chief among the influences that led them to Christ."
From his college years Mr. Foote was always identified actively with church interests. " He aimed," said the New York Evangelist, in an
22
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
appreciative review of his life, " to be everyvphere and alw^ays an out- spoken Christian. None doubted the sincerity of his convictions, and many owned the power of personal appeals to their reason and con- science." Another writer paid the following tribute to his Christian character : " Those who knew him intimately will bear testimony to the fact that his f aiith was manifested in his life through all the years of his prolonged earthly pilgrimage. His honesty, simplicity, integ- rity, and consistent adhesion to right principles secured confidence and gave due weight to his counsel, whether in the church or in the community. In a word, he lived his religion so as to be seen and known of all men." ^
For forty-three years a citizen of Yonkers, Mr. Foote at all times identified himself, heartily and usefully, with the best interests of the village and city, religious, political, and social. Upon coming to Yonkers he united with the Eeformed Church. He was one of the founders of the First Presbyterian Church, was one of its elders until his death, held the position of superintendent of its Sabbath-school, and often represented it at the presbytery. He was also at various times a delegate to the Presbyterian General Assembly. He was extremely conscientious in his political action as a citizen, forming his views with deliberation but positiveness, and rarely missed an opportunity to give them expression by his vote.
In his early manhood, Mr. Foote was married to Hannah Williston Davis, eldest daughter of George Davis, of Sturbridge, Mass., for many years a member of tlie Worcester County bar. Mrs. Foote and an only daughter are still living in Yonkers.
ARTLETT, WILLIAM HOLMES CHAMBERS, mathemati- cian and author of mathematical and other scientific writ- ings, for forty years a professor in the United States Mili- tary Academy at West Point, and for nineteen years act- uary of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, was born in Lancaster, Pa., September 10, 1804, and died at his home in Yonkers, February 11, 1893. Little is ]<nown of his father's ancestry and early life, except that he was of New Hampshire parentage, went when quite young to Pennsylvania, married a Miss Holmes, of Winchester, Va., and removed with his family to St. Louis, Mo., soon after the birth of his son W^illiam. Owing to the meager pecuniary circumstances of his parents, young
1 Yonkers Statesman^ September 18, 1888.
BIOGRAPHICAL 23
Bartlett's early educational opportunities were quite limited, the pub- lic school system at the West at that period having been but little de- veloped. But the boy's native talents and alert and amiable qualities procured for him influential Mends w^ho, interesting themselves in his future, induced United States Senator Thomas H. Benton to recom- mend him for appointment as a cadet at West Point. Presenting him- self at the Military Academy, he passed a highly creditable examina- tion, and on July 1, 1822, was enrolled as a cadet, being then seventeen years and nine months old. His record during his four years' course of study is remarkable in the history of that famous school; he was uniformly at the head of his class, and never received a single demerit mark^. As a cadet his abilities received flattering recognition, the appointment of acting assistant professor of mathematics being con- ferred upon him, in which position he served for the last two years of his course. Among his roommates during his cadetship were Leonidas Polk and Albert Sidney Johnston. Being graduated on July 1, 1826, with the first honors of his class, he was appointed second lieutenant in the corps of engineers and assigned to duty in the Military Academy as an assistant professor in the department of engineering, later being promoted to the grade of principal assistant professor. In this posi- tion he continued until August 30, 1829. Meantime (1828) he had per- formed services as assistant engineer in the construction of Portress Monroe (Va.), the value of which caused the government to detach him. for a time from the Military Academy and assign him to engineer- ing duty on the permanent works at Fort Adams, Newport Harbor. In this important capacity he was employed from 1829 to 1832. He then served for two years as assistant to the chief of engineers of the army in Washington.
In November, 1834, he was recalled to West Point as acting pro- fessor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, and on April 30, 1836, was appointed by President Jackson to the full professorship. He con- tinued at the head of this department until retired from active service, upon his own application, February 14, 1871. From that time until his death he held the rank of colonel on the retired list of the army.
Entering the Military Academy in 1822, he was thus identified with it, first for a period of seven years as cadet and professor, and then.
1 The following is an extract from a letter written by Mr. from Missouri. His class originally consisted of eighty,
George Ticknor when he was one of the board of visitors at and he has been at the head of it for four years, never
West Point in 1826 : failing to stand first in every branch at every examination,
" yesterday was quite a hot day, and the examination and never having once been reported for any irregularity
being confined to military engineermg was less interesting or neglect. It is a pleasure to look upon him, and listen to
than usual. It was, however, extremely creditable to the the beauty and completeness of all his examinations,
young men and the institution. Thayer says he has heard him at common recitations above
" There is now before me a cadet of uncommon character an hundred times, and never Imew him to miss a smgle
and qualifications. His name is Bartlett, and he comes question."
24:
WESTCHESTEK COUNTY
after returning from his service on engineering duty, for more than' thirty-six years as professor — some forty-three years altogether. In the annals of that great institution of the government there is no name more distinguished, for the ability and value of services done, and no- personality more interesting for its associations, than Professor Bart- lett's. The greatest military commanders of the most eventful period of American history — both those who led the North and those vpho led the South — were his pupils, his admirers, and his loving friends; and to-day his memory is affectionately cherished by many of the eminent oflftcers of the army of the United States, who count it one of the fortu- nate things of their lives to have been in youth under his preceptor- ship and influence. It is greatly to beregretted that Professor Bartlett did not find time to reduce to some permanent form his personal recol- lections of his life at West Point, and of the famous soldiers whose education he so largely directed, and with whom he was on peculiarly cordial terms throughout their careers. His family preserves many private letters written to him at various times by those noted military characters and other celebrated men.
During the forty-nine years from his entrance to the Military Acad- emy to his retirement, he was conspicuous by his practical services or by the results of his intellectual labors, in many connections inci- dental to his appointed duties and labors. While attached to the chief engineer's office at Washington he took a leading part in the engineer- ing work on the Cumberland National Eoad and on fortifications in different parts of the country. In 1840 he was sent abroad by the secretary of war to examine the European observatoiies with a view to promoting the efficiency of the system of astronomical instruction at West Point. On this commission he was absent for about five months. His report to the government contained a variety of valuable informa- tion and recommendations, including the suggestion of a plan for an observatory at Washington. As professor of Natural and Experi- mental Philosophy in the Military Academy, he was really the creator of that important department of the academy as now organized, hav- ing " in 1857, with distinguished ability," to quote the words of the official " Order " published on the occasion of his death, " established it on that high scientific basis which has ever since been its marked feature." One of the most profound and accomplished mathematicians that this country has produced, he was at the same time intensely prac- tical in the application of his learning. A very productive writer, all his contributions to scientific and technical literature were along this line of practical utility. He was the author of several standard text- books, including a " Treatise on Optics " (1839) , " Elements of Natural Philosophy" (1850), "Spherical Astronomy" (1855), "Synthetical
BIOGRAPHICAIi 25
Mechanics" (1858), "Acoustics and Optics" (1859), and "Analyti- cal Mechanics" (1853, 1859). A paper contributed by him to Silli- man's Journal during his early life upon " The Expansibility of Coping Stones" has been frequently referred to by foreign writers; and his paper on " Strains on Eifle Guns " (Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. I.), which he published shortly before leaving West Point, was accepted as an authority. He was also an occasional writer of important special articles for periodicals. His textbooks were long in general use in advanced institutions of learning, and still have an Honorable place in the literature of their class. Of his " Analytical Mechanics " nine editions were published.
He possessed (says Prof. Michie) the rare faculty of perceiving essential and fundamental principles and of being able to formulate them by a mathematical expression of a single law frpm which the whole of analytical mechanics could be deduced. As early as 1853, in the preface to his work on Analytical Mechanics, he published this great generalization :
" All physical phenomena are but the necessary results of a perpetual conflict of equal and opposing forces, and the mathematical formula expressive of the laws of this conflict must involve the whole doctrine of Mechanics. The study of Mechanics should, therefore, be made to consist simply in the discussion of this formula, and in it should be sought the ex- planation of all effects that arise from the action of forces."
In 1874 he added :
" From the single fundamental formula thus referred to the whole of Analytical Mechan- ics was then deduced."
That formula was no other than the simple analytical expression of what is now generally called the law of the conservation of energy, which has since revolutionized physical science in nearly all its branches, and which at that time was but little developed or accepted. It is believed that this not only was the first, but that it even still is the only, treatise on Analyti- cal Mechanics in which all the phenomena are presented as mere consequences of that single law.'
In recognition of his eminent abilities the degrees of master of arts and doctor of laws were conferred on him while he was yet compara- tively young — the former by Princeton College in 1837, and the latter by Geneva College in 1847 (subsequently also by Columbia College). He was one of the organizers of the National Academy of Sciences under the act for its incorporation passed by Congress; and he was a member of the Philosophical Societies of Philadelphia and Boston.
Upon his retirement from his professorship in West Point (early in 1871), he was elected actuary of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, of which he had been a policy-holder since 1844, the second year of the existence of the company. In this office he continued until the close of 1888, when, on account of his increasing years and infirmities, he discontinued its active duties, his services being retained until his death, however, in the capacity of advisory actuary. In the responsi- ble position of actuary of the Mutual, Professor Bartlett had a high conception of the dignity and practical importance of the trust reposed in him. "I would rather," he said in his letter of resignation, " be the
•Annual Report ol the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy, 1896.
26
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
actuary of a company like this than be president of the United States;!', His actuaiial labors were characterized by the same great ability and conscientious devotion which had marked his career in the service of the country. Among the special results of his administration of the actuary's ofl&ce were the compilation of very valuable expert tables and of an elaborate report on the workings of the company for thirty-, one years.
The trustees of the Mutual Life Insurance Company thus expressed' their appreciation of him at the time of his retirement as actuary in December, 1888:
Professor Bartlett brought to the service of this company ability of the very highest order, rendered more conspicuous by long-continned training and an experience as an instructor. in the higher branches of intellectual culture which very few have attained ; and after the con- clusion of a career as brilliant as it was useful in the service of the nation, he brought his. reputation and his learning to the service of this company as its actuary. His discharge of the duties of his new position was characterized by the same phenomenal intellectual capacity for which he had been distinguished as a teacher and author, and by the same conscientious! attention to every detail, which was a prominent trait in his character. *
Eminent in the very highest degree as an actuary and mathematician, he combined with the attainments of the man of science the gentleness and courtesy of a true soldier and gentleman.
Immediately after leaving West Point, Prof essor Bartlett purchased a handsome residence in Yonkers,on Locust Hill Avenue, where hecon- tinued to live for the remainder of his days, and where his widow, two.' of his daughters, and one of his sons still reside. He was a member of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church of Yonkers, serving as warden and ves- tryman. His closing years were quiet and happy, and his end was tranquil. He was buried with military honors at West Point. An of&cial tribute to his memory was issued by order of the commandajit, in which the following was said :
The scientific attainments of the graduates of West Point during his professorship, are the, legitimate fruits of his great analytical power, his capacity for investigation in the higher domain of science, and his undoubted ability as an instructor — the three salient elements of his mental characteristics. An accomplished scholar, an eminent scientist, a courteous geutleman, an earnest, faithful, loyal soldier and citizen, he has left behind him a record for integrity and devotion to duty of which his alma mater may 'well be proud.
He was married, February 4, 1829, to Harriet, daughter of Samuel Whitehorne, a merchant of Newport, R. I. Mrs. Bartlett was born November 1, 1812. They had the following children : Charles G., who entered the army at the breaking out of the Rebellion, as an officer in the New York State militia, was at Big Bethel, the first battle of the war, was promoted for gallant conduct to the rank of captain in the regular army, was in command of the Ninth Regiment at Sackett's Harbor after the war until his retirement, and is now a colonel on the retired list, residing on Staten Island; William C, who was graduated from West Point in 1862, served through the. Civil War (rising to the
BIOGRAPHICAL 27
grade of brigadier-general of volunteers), subsequently resumed ser- vice in the regular army, was retired as major, and is now living in New York City; Elizabeth W.; Harriet (deceased), wife of the late General Schofield; Neva B., widow of the late Colonel Elias B. Carling, a West Point graduate; and Fred E., an artist in New York Qty.
EWIS, EDSON, ex-mayor of Mount Vernon, was born in Windham, Conn., December 12, 1837. He is descended through both his parents, Sheflfteld and Julia (Fitch) Lewis, from Connecticut families. His father was for many years a respected merchant in Windham, subsequently removing to New York City, where he died.
From his eighth to his fifteenth year the son worked on a farm and in his father's store, mfeanwhile receiving such elementary educational training as the facilities of the neighboring district school afforded. In 1852, at the age of fifteen, he came to New York and entered the drygoods establishment of Hurlburt, Van Valkenburg & Company, at first on trial, which, proved satisfactory, and he was then placed upon a salary of |300 per annum, gradually advancing in the confidence and appreciation of his employers until, at the end of eleven years, when he left them to engage in business for himself, he held one of the most responsible positions in the house. In 1863 he organized the firm of Lewis, Titus & Cook. This partnership continued for three years. He has since been connected with Lesher, AVhitman & Company, the largest importers and manufacturers of tailors' trimmings in the United States. In addition, he is the proprietor of well-known clothing stores in Yonk- ers and Mount Vernon,- the former started in 1887, and the latter in 1889.
Mr. Lewis has been a resident of Mount Vernon since 1875. He has always taken an active interest in the local concerns of that growing municipality, ranking as one of its most enterprising and honored citi- zens.
Soon after coming to Mount Vernon to live he joined the Volunteer Fire Department as a member of Clinton Hook and Ladder Company, No. 1. He served as its foreman for a period of four years, and was then elected chief engineer of the Mount Vernon Fire Department. Appointed a miember of the Board of Fire Commissioners ia 1892, he was elected president of the board, and continued as such for two years, resigning. upon being chosen mayor.
28
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
The election of Mr. Lewis to the office of mayor of Mount Vernon i in tlie spring of 1894, to succeed the first mayor of the city, Hon. E. P. ; Brush, was the outcome of a very exciting struggle at the polls and contest in the courts. His two years' administration of the duties of the mayoralty was characterized by a high conception of his official re- sponsibility and by careful management of municipal affairs upon strictly business principles. When Mayor Lewis went into office com-
EDSON LEWIS.
paratively little had been done toward the introduction of modern systems of street paving in Mount Vernon. He took vigorously hold of this very important public improvement and pushed it forward so rap- idly that by the time he had completed his term a considerable portion of the city had been paved in the most substantial manner. He drew the bill under which the present Police Board of Mount Vernon was organized and the new police force inaugurated. It was during his
BIOGRAPHICAL 29
service as mayor that the notable Bronx Valley Sewer Commission was created, composed of the mayors of New York, Mount Vernon, and Yonkers, with certain other members. He proved to be one of its most zealous and valuable members.
Mr. Lewis was one of the founders, and, during its existence, one of the principal managers, of the original water system of Mount Vernon. This system, operated by a private corporation known as the Mount Vernon Water Company, in which Charles Hill Will son, Joseph S. Wood, Gerd Martens, M. C. Kellogg, and others were associated with him, consisted of an artesian well on Seventh Avenue near Third Street, with piping laid through the principal thoroughfares. The company continued some four years, finally selling out its rights and property.
In politics, Mr. Lewis has always been an earnest and active Eepub- lican. He has frequently been a delegate to the conventions of his party, and is now (1900) president of the Third Ward Kepublican Association of Mount Vernon, and is a member of the Eepublican City Committee. As a well-known business man in New York he has at various times been conspicuous in great public demonstrations. He acted as aideto General Horace Porter upon the occasions of the Sound Money Parade in the metropolis and the McKinley Inaugural Parade in Washington, and he was chief of aides to General Grenville M. Dodge in the Grant Monument Parade at Eiverside Park.
He has long been connected with the Masonic fraternity, always maintaining a hearty interest in the work of the order. His first active connection with the fraternity was as a member of Manhattan Lodge, and he afterward became a charter member of Kepublic Lodge, No. 690, which he helped to organize and build up. He is now a member of Mount Vernon Chapter, No. 228, and is generalissimo of Bethlehem Commandery, No. 53.
He was a director of the People's Bank of Mount Vernon until his election as mayor, is a trustee of the Home Building and Loan Asso- ciation, and has been a director of the Westchester Trust Company, of Yonkers, since its organization. For five years he has held the position of president of the Mount Vernon Musical Society, which, under his efficient administration, advanced to a prosperous condition. He is president of the associate members of Parnsworth Post, G. A. R. He is a communicant of the Plrst Methodist Episcopal Church of Mount Vernon.
Mr. Lewis has been twice married. His first wife was Hortense Wit- ter, of Connecticut, who bore him one child, Hortense Witter Lewis. He was married, second, to Louise Howland, of Mount Vernon. They have had three children — Ethel Louise Lewis, Edson H. Lewis (de-' ceased), and Grace Theodora Lewis.
I
30 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
EWTON, GEORGE BEIGHAM (deceased), was a well- known resident of Tarrytown, and one of the substantial men of Westchester County. His ancestors came from Eng- land and settled in Connecticut in the early colonial days. His great-grandfather, Hezekiah Newton, removed from Connecticut in the early part of the last century, and located in Paxton, Mass., where he was one of the first settlers. He was born in 1719 and died in 1786. It was after his removal to Paxton that he met and married Eunice Brigham, a woman of noble character. To them were born eight sons and eight daugh- ters. Seven of the sons participated actively in the Eevolutionary war. The youngest son, Baxter, was born at Paxton in 1769 and died' at Norwich, Vt., in 1823. He was married in 1789 to Perses Howard, daughter of William and granddaughter of Benjamin Howard; her mother was a daughter of Oliver Witt. Of the four children, of Baxter Newton, the eldest son, Baxter Brigham Newton, settled in West Hartford, Vt., where his son, the subject of this sketch, was born, Sep- tember 12, 1833. In 1836 the family removed to Norwich, Vt., at that time the seat of the Norwich University, a military academy of much note, presided over by Captain Alden Partridge, an uncle of Mr, Newton. The boy at the age of eight entered the primary department of this institution, remaining four years, when he was transferred to the Kimball Union Academy at Meriden, N. H. At the early age of sixteen he had well-matured plans for the future, and in 1849 entered the office of a firm of anthracite coal operators at Beaver Meadows, Pa.
Here he remained for several years, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the business and leading a life of valuable experience. By close application, strict integrity, and intelligent and energetic improvement of the opportunities which came within his reach, he in 1856 established in Philadelphia an extensive and profitable coal business. In the same year he was married to Sarah Amanda Knowl^, daughter of Lawrence D. Knowles, of Mauch Chunk, Pa. Later, in addition to his own inter- ests, he directed, as their president, for several years the affairs of the AUentown Boiling Mill Company and the Eoberts Iron Furnace. He was also for many years a director in the Commercial National Bank. At the first meeting of the stockholders of the Lehigh Valley Eailroad he was chosen one of the judges of election, and served in that capacity continuously for forty years.
At the breaking out of the Civil War he was a member of the com- mittee appointed to organize three regiments to be known as the " Coal and Iron Eegiments." This was promptly accomplished and the regi- ments were sent to the front, fuUj' equipped.
In 1876, at the request of his intimate and life-long friend, Hon.
BIOGRAPHICAL 31
Asa Packer, president of the Lehigh Valley Eailroacl and founder of the Lehigh University, he removed to New York City and there es- tablished for the Lehigh Valley Coal Company its very important interests, at the same time managing his own business affairs in Phil- adelphia,
In January, 1889, upon the advice of his physicians, he relinquished all business cares and retired to his country home, " Breamar," at Tar- rytown-on-the- Hudson, finding diversion and occupation in many local interests. For some years he was a warden of Christ Church and one of the trustees of the Westchester Savings Bank. The Tarrytown Hos- pital was established and brought to a high state of efSciency largely through his interest and generosity. He died at his Tarrytown home February 11, 1898.
ILKMAN, JAMES BAILY, journalist and lawyer, was born in the Town of Bedford, in this county, October 9, 1819, and died in JSTew York City, February 4, 1888. The Silkman family was of Dutch origin, and settled in the Town of Bedford early in the eighteenth century. All of Mr. Silkman's pater- nal ancestors, including his father, Daniel, were farmers of that im- mediate,locality. The mother of James B. Silkman, Sarah Baily, was a daughter of James Baily, of a prominent family of the neigh- boring)Town of Somers, and a granddaughter of Captain Hachaliah Brown', of the same place. Through her Mr. Silkman was descended from the earliest New England settlers, his original American ances- tor on his mother's side having been, according to the best genealog- ical authority, Peter Brown, of the " Mayflower."^
During the boyhood of James B. Silkman his father experienced serious reverses through the failure of others and a desti'uctive fire. The son became a clerk in a country store, but, being ambitious to acquire a thorough education, continued his studies while thus em- ployed. Later he began teaching, and at the age of nineteen had charge of a large district school in Greenwich, Conn. In 1843 he en- tered Yale College in the sophomore class. He was graduated from that institution in 1845. He then returned to his home in Westchester County, and for six months held the position of principal of the Somers Aca;demy, among his pupils being the late Calvin Frost, of Peekskill.
'It was formerly supposed that the ancestor of this onation of Richard II.), who emigrated to Concord, Mass.,
Westchester County Brown family was Thomas Brown, about 1632. But later investigation appears to have es-
-of Rye, Sussex County, England (a descendant of Sir tablished that the line of descent is from Peter Brown, of
Anthony Browne, created a Knight of the Bath at the cor- the " Mayflower."
32
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
In the fall of 1846 he commenced the study of law in the office of Theodore Sedgwick, a prominent member of the bar of New York City. Soon afterward, through Mr. Sedgwick's influence, he became con-; nected with the New York Evening Post as assistant editor. He was afterward employed for a time as night editor of the New York
DANIEL SILKMAN.
Courier and Enquirer. Meantime he had continued his law studies,;: and on December 7, 1850, he was admitted to the bai". Being of a very frail constitution, his health had been undermined by night work on the press; and having in consequence resigned his editorial posi- tion on the Courier and Enquirer, he devoted himself for some years
BIOGKAPHTOAL
33
mainly to the legal profession, pursuing a real estate and office prac- tice. Throughout his life, however, he retained his early taste for journalism, and, resuming his connection with the Evening Post, was one of its editors during the war. On the night of the New York riots, when the establishment of that newspaper was threatened with the torch, he was placed in charge of thirty men, provided with various weapons of defense. Associated on the Evening Post with the poet Bryant, he enjoyed the especial friendship and regard of that noted man.
Mr. Silkman was a life-long citizen of Westchester County. He resided for most of his life in Lewisboro, but during its clos- ing years lived in Yonkers. In his early manhood, having in- herited the principles of " Jef- fersonian Democracy," he was an ardent Democrat, and he continued in affiliation with the Democratic organization, al- though with lessening zeal, until the great political up- heaval which followed the disruption of the Whig party. For ten years he was an active and conspicuous member of the Deinocratic party in the county — his name being identified chiefly, however, with the anti- slavery faction — and as such was one of the leading figures in county conventions and a
delegate to State conventions. Soon after the formation of the Ee- publican party he joined its ranks, and for the rest of his life continued to support it.
Cherishing very pronounced convictions on the slavery issue, Mr. Silkman did not hesitate to insist on the frankest treatment of that question in the religious denomination to which he belonged. " In the autumn before the war, as delegate to the New York Diocesan Convention of the Episcopal Church, his resolutions respecting slav- ery and the slave trade, as carried on from under the shadow of Trin- ity steeple, broke up that very large body, sine die, in the midst of
34
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
their business, and under such circumstances that he received tn writing- the thanks of Charles Sumner. ... He was directly the means of ousting two Episcopal clergymen from their pulpits because of their refusal to read the bishop's special prayers for the soldiers.")
During the war he was a member of the vigilance committee of Westchester County. He was warmly devoted to the cause of the Land League, delivering many public addresses in its behalf, took a cordial interest in the temperance and other reforms, and was active in advocating free scientific instruction to young men of the laboring classes. It has been said of him that " his earnest con- victions were the key to all his labors."
He was married, in 1856, to Harriet, daughter of the Kev. Alex- ander H. Crosby, of Saint John's Episcopal Church, Yonkers. They had four children — Julia C. (died in 1892); Theodore H., present sur- rogate of Westchester County (whose biography follows); Emily C; and Elizabeth C.
ILKMAN, THEODORE HANNIBAL, of Yonkers, surrogate of Westchester County since 1895, and a prominent mem- ber of the. New York City bar, was born March 25, 1858, being the only son of James Baily and Harriet Van Oort- landt (Crosby) Silkman. He has always been a resident of the county, although not a native of it, having been born iu the City of New York. In the maternal as in the paternal line he comes from old West- chester stock, the Crosby family having been settled in the county from a comparatively early colonial period. The celebrated Enoch Crosby, of the Eevolution, immortalized in Cooper's " Spy," was a member of this Crosby family ; and, as he married a Bailey, was like- wise of kin to Judge Silkman's collateral ancestors on the paternal side. The maternal grandfather of Judge Silkman was Rev. Alex- ander H. Crosby, rector of Saint John's Episcopal Church, of Yonkers, and his maternal great-grandfather was Darius Crosby, of Scarsdale, a lawyer, who held the position of master of chancery in Westchester County in 1812.
The early boyhood of Theodore H. Silkman was spent in the Town of Lewisboro. In 1867 he removed with his parents to Yonkers, where he has since resided. He attended the academy of Rev. R. Mont- gomery Hooper ( Yonkers) until the age of fifteen. It had been the intention of his father to send him to Yale, but this was prevented by the limited financial means of the family. Leaving the academyf he entered his father's law office in New York. After remaining
I Kecord ol the Class of 1845 of T»le College, p. 181.
BIOGEAPHICAL
35
there two years he became a clerk with his uncle's law firm, Lockwoorl & Crosby (Levi A. Lockwood and Darius G. Crosby), also located in New York. Here he applied himself with great determination and
industry to the masterv of the details of legal proceedings, working early and late, and so familiarizing himself with every phase of the business of the office that he was soon considered indispensable to its transaction. Unlike the ordinary office student of law, his prepa-
36 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
ration for entering upon the profession was very little in the line of reading or of elaborate study of the minutse of legal science; indeed, his active labors in the practical concerns of the office left him almost no time for formal study of any kind, and when he came to be examined for admission to the bar his preparation as to general principles was confined to such reading as he could do on the eve of the occa^on. He was able, however, to pass a satisfactory exami- nation in all the branches of the subject, and was admitted to prac- tice in May, 1879, having just completed his twenty-first year. He continued with Lockwood & Crosby until the death of Mr. Lockwood in 1883, when the firm was reorganized under the name of Silkman & Seybel (Daniel E. Seybel), Mr. Crosby being its senior member, although his name did not appear. The business of the new firm increased so rapidly that in 1885 it was again reorganized, Mr. Joseph Pettretch being admitted, and the style being changed to Fettretch, Milkman & Seybel, under which it still cor'=nues. Mr. Crosby re- mained with it, as senior partner, until his death in January, 1897. It is now one of the very well-known legal partnerships of New York City, conducting a large general practice, which is especially impor- tant in the department of the management of estates.
Mr. Silkman has always been active and prominent as a citizen of Yonkers. From boyhood he has taken an interest in politics as a sup- porter of the principles of the Eepublican party, never failing to vote at any election or primary. He has frequently been a delegate to local, county, and State conventions. From 1884 to 1897 he held the position of United States commissioner for the City of Yonkers, by appointment from Circuit Judge Wallace. For six years (1891-97) he served as a police commissioner of the city, most of the time being the president of the board. In 1894 he was nominated by the Eepublican convention for surrogate of the county, to lead what was supposed to be a forlorn hope against the Hon. Owen T. Coffin, who had been the incumbent of the office for twenty-four consecutive years. He was elected by a majority of 4,000, leading all the candidates on his party ticket.
In the County of Westchester the office of surrogate is of peculiar importance, owing to the unusually large relative wealth which cen- ters in it. As an instance of this, the county stands third in the amount of transfer (inheritance) taxes collected, being surpassed in that respect only by New Y^ork and Kings Counties, although several other counties (those containing the large cities of Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Utica, and Albany) exceed it in population. In the ad- ministration of the very extensive and important legal business re- sulting from this condition. Judge Silkman has made a highly credit-
^-^ (pt^
STj^ly RB. Balls Siks.NY
bioghaphical 37
able record. During his three and one-half years of service not one of the decisions rendered by him has been reversed on appeal. He has also remodeled the surrogate's office, introducing modern methods of keeping records and indices, through which the vs-^ork of reference has become very much simplified, and the risk of destruction has been greatly lessened. He has continued his connection with his New York firm, devoting to its affairs such time as he can spare from his official duties. Previously to becoming surrogate his services were frequently in request as referee, both by appointment and by the consent of counsel. Judge Silkman is at present (1899) president of the Westchester County Bar Association, having succeeded Hon. William H. Eobertson in that position in 1897. He has served as president of the City Club of Yonkers; is a member of the Palisade Boat Club; has been a vestryman of Saint John's Episcopal Church for a number of years; and is one of the managers of Saint John's Riverside Hospital. He is also a member of the Union League Club of New York, the New York Athletic Club, and the New York Biding Club.
He was married, October 4, 1882, to Mary Virginia, daughter of Frederic C. Oakley, of Yonkers. They have two children living — Eleanor, born July 7, 1883, a.nd Theodore Frederic, born March 30, 1885.
TIS, ELISHA GRAVES, inventor of the modern passenger elevator and founder of the manufacturing establishment in Yonkers which, under its present name of Otis Brothers & Company, is the largest elevator works in the world, was born in Halifax, Vt., August 13, 1811, and died in Yonkers, April 8, 1861. He was the youngest of the six children of Stephen Otis (born De- cember 20, 1773), who was a prominent citizen of Vermont, serving in the legislature. The original ancestor of the Otis family in America was John Otis, who, in June, 1635, came with his family from Hingham, in Norfolk, England, as a member of the company of Rev. Peter Hobart, and was a landowner in Hingham, Mass. James Otis, the celebrated orator and statesman of the Revolution, and his nephew, Harrison Gray Otis, an eminent lawyer and public man of the State of Massachusetts (which he represented in the United States Senate), were members of this family.
The father of Elisha G. Otis was a farmer, and in that occupation the son spent the years of his youth to the age of nineteen, receiving only such educational training as the country schools of his neigh-
38
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
borhood afforded. As a boy he developed an inventive turn of mind. Leaving home wlien nineteen, lie went to Troy, N. Y., where for a number of years he was occupied in the building trade. From 1838 to 1845 he was engaged in the manufacture of wagons and carriages in A^ermont. In the fall of 1846 he came back to New York State, settling with his family at Albany. There he was for four years in charge of a large furniture manufacturing establishment, afterward opening a shop of his own. But in this venture he was unsuccessful and, abandoning it in 1851, removed to Hudson Gity (then Bergen), N. J., to become superintendent of works there. The next year, his firm having decided to change its location to Yonkers, he took up his residence in that place, then a village. The concern with which he was identified, known as the Bedstead Manufacturing Company, had its factory on the site afterward occupied by the New York Plow Company (foot of Vark Street) . There Mr. Otis made the first serious experiments from which have developed the remarkable mechanical: « contrivances that have so revolutionized the practical conditions of life, and the gigantic manufacturing interests that have made the name of Otis familiar throughout the world.
At that period the passenger elevator was utterly undreamt of. Various forms of simple manual rope and lever hoists had of course been in use for ages; and with the advances in mechanical invention which for half a century had been one of the most characteristic fea- tures of American national life, these crude types had been improved upon by the substitution of steam motive power and other merely incidental modifications. But the idea of the elevator proper — that is, a construction rendered safe for human life, and in which the travel up and down is controlled from the car itself — was still quite beyond the thought of those times.
Mr. Otis came upon this thought by degrees. The first step made by him toward it has been thus described :
During the building and equipment of this factory (the Bedstead Company's, in Yonkers) '■ it became necessary to construct an elevator for use on the premises, during the erection of j which Mr. Otis developed some original devices, the most important of which was one for pre- venting the fall of the platform in case of the breaking of the lifting rope.
The novelty and utility of this device soon brought it to the notice of manufacturers in New York, and he began to receive orders for the construction of elevators. Of course these early machines were con- fined exclusively to the purpose of freight carriage. But Mr. Otis had a perception of the ultimate significance of the progress which his safety device represented. At the World's Fair in the Crystal Palace in New York City, which was opened July 4, 1853, he placed a small elevator on exhibition, containing the improvements made by him up to that time. He attracted considerable attention by get-
BIOGRAPIIlCAIi 39
ting upon the platform, running it up some distance and then cutting the rope, thus demonstrating the safety of his invention against ac- cident and consequent loss of life.
Meantime he had entered in earnest upon elevator making. Some time previously (1854) he had resigned his position with the Bedstead concern and gone into a general manufacturing business (devoted to the production of mechanical appliances of different kinds) on his own account. By degrees the building of elevators became the lead- ing feature of the works, although down to the time of his death (April 8, 1861) his establishment did not confine itself to elevators, but continued to do a somewhat promiscuous business. He was fertile in other lines of invention and improvement. Among the new de- vices connected with his name m.ay be mentioned " a machine for making blind staples, an automatic wood-turning machine, a railway bridge for carrying trains across a river without impeding naviga- tion and at the same time doing away with the danger of a draw, a very ingenious steam plow, and a rotary oven for use in the manu- facture of bread."
Shortly before his death Mr. Otis made a decided innovation in the methods of elevator operation by designing, patenting, and construct- ing an independent engine capable of high speed (consisting of two connected reversible oscillating cylinders, very compactly arranged) to raise or lower the platform or car. Up to that time the elevator had been regarded and treated only as one of the incidental objects for attention and service in the general distribution of steam motive power in a manufacturing establishment, being operated by belting from some conveniently located power shaft. With the direct gear- ing of it to an independent steam engine the era of the elevator as a separate institution of the age was ushered in.
During the seven years from the foundation of his business until his death, Mr. Otis had experienced fair success, but only on a quite modest scale. The number of hands employed by him did not reach a score. The works (located from the beginning in a portion of the original premises of the Bedstead Manufacturing Company, at the foot of Vark Street) were inherited by his two sons, Charles E. and Norton P., who from boyhood had assisted their father in all his un- dertakings and, like him, had prepared themselves for their business careers by many years of practical work in the manufactory.
In his personal life and character Mr. Otis was the type of the reso- lute, earnest, enterprising, high-minded native American, self- schooled, self-trained, and self-made. He possessed untiring energy, which, with his native ingenuity and capacity for management, was the foundation of all the success he attained in life. He was a man of
40
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
pronounced progressive views, especially on the subjects of temper- ance and slavery; and it is noteworthy that toward the end of his life he frequently prophesied that slavery as an institution would be swept out of existence within ten years. Slavery was in fact abolished within five years of the time when this prediction was made. He was a very public-spirited citizen of Yonkers, taking an active part in all matters related to the welfare of the community. He was a leading and much esteemed member of the First Methodist Ohurch of that city. He was twice married — first, June 2, 1834, to Miss Susan A. Hough- ton, of Halifax, Vt. (the mother of Charles K. and Norton P., who died February 25, 1842), and second, in August, 1846, to Mrs. Betsey A. Boyd, of Whitingham, Vt., who now resides with Mr. Charles K. Otis in Yonkers.
TIS, CHARLES ROLLIN, of Yonkers, the first son of Elisha G. Otis, successor of his father as the head of the Otis elevator manufacturing interests, and for many years their leading spirit, was born in Troy, N. Y., April 29, 1835. As a boy he accompanied his father in all his changes of residence, living successively at Troy, Halifax (Vt.), Albany, Hudson City (N. J.), and Yonkers. In his "schooling" he was confined to the facilities provided by the public schools of Halifax and Albany. In- heriting his father's taste and aptitude for mechanical pursuits, he began at the age of thirteen to learn the trade of machinist, and when only fifteen had become sufficiently proficient to be entrusted with the duties of engineer in the manufacturing concern with which his father was connected in Hudson City and at Yonkers.
At that time he cherished a boyish ambition to secure employment as principal engineer on one of the Hudson River steamboats, or, still better, if such a thing could be possible, some great ocean steamship. This became his fixed plan for a career, but after his father's removal to Yonkers and inauguration there of the enterprise of elevator build- ing, he soon acquired different views as to the best ultimate employ- ment of his activities. With a keen instinct for the eventualities of this novel business, he foresaw the great demand likely to arise for safety elevators with the progress of public knowledge of their merits, the proper improvement of them in their details, and the needful attention to the commercial side of the subject; and he not only co- operated actively in all his father's undertakings in these lines, but was very instrumental in concentrating the business of the factory upon elevator making. He early manifested, moreover, particularly
Eng^hy ^B Ball's Sow., llsw^X^rli..
BIOGRAPHICAL 41
practical ideas for perfecting the elevator machinery in serviceable re- spects; and it was due to his inventive ingenuity that the notable hoist- ing engine which his father had constructed and patented was brought to a high degree of efficiency by the remedying of its chief defects.
For some months before and after the death of his father (April, 1861, the month of the breaking out of the" Qvil War) the business of the Otis works in Yonkers was seriously affected by the prevailing commercial prostration. The capital with which to revive and energize it consisted of only some fifteen hundred dollars, which Charles E. had saved, with a few; additional hundreds belonging to his brother, Norton P. The brothers were at this time, respectively, twenty-six and twenty- one years old. Reorganizing the establishment under the firm name of N. P. Otis & Brother, they eliminated from its operations everything of a miscellaneous nature, and, with an energy to which both of them con- tributed their full abilities and activities, proceeded with the build- ing of elevators exclusively. Prom the beginning of the new enterprise Charles B. Otis devoted himself with the greatest industry to its many details, planning improvements of all kinds, which, represented by valuable letters-patent issued to him (as also to his brother), caused the Otis elevator to advance steadily in working qualities and to be received with constantly increasing popular favor. In August, 1864, J. M. Alvord was admitted to the firm, whose name was now changed to Otis Brothers & Company. Mr. Alvord sold his interest to the Otis Brothers in 1867, whereupon the firm was cohverted into a stock com- pany, with Charles It. as president. By this time the business had greatly expanded, the amount done in 1868 aggregating |135,000. In that year the works were changed to their present location. Wells and Woodworth Avenues. Under the new corporate auspices the trans- actions of the company took rapid strides, progressing in volume dur- ing the next fourteen years to near the million mark.
In consequence of serious ill-health, caused by the excessive work of years, Mr. Otis, in 1882, recognized the need of retiring from his active labors and interests. An acceptable offer to buy out the business having been made by a syndicate of capitalists, the brothers withdrew from it in June of that year. Later they returned to its control, Charles R. continuing to hold the office of president until his permanent retire- ment in 1890. He has since been leading a life of quiet in his home in Yonkers.
In examining the various elements that have contributed to the vast development of the affairs of Otis Brothers & Company, and of the progress of the institution of the elevator with which that corporation has always been so intimately identified, it is largely impossible to sep- arately or relatively estimate the parts played by the two brothers in
43, WBSTCHESTEK COUNTY
their strictly individual capacities. Closely associated in all their joint labors and interests, the unvarying financial success of the company, and the steady contributions made by it to the development of the elevator as vre have it to-day, are the results of common talents and work, which can hardly be considered otheiTvise than in the common relation. Each of them has personally adfled numerous important inventions to the general store; and of the le;t'ters-patent issued to the brothers by the government no fewer thah nine bear their names jointly.
A resident of Yonkers for forty-six years, Charles K. Otis has wit- nessed all the striking changes which that beautiful community has experienced in its progress from its early rude conditions. His name is one of the few which occur instantly to everybody in recalling the men who in those now remote times laid the foundations of the Yonkers of to-day. As he has maintained his residence in Yonkers without change, he has also throughout his life been prominent in activity and usefulness as a citizen. He has taken much interest in local improve- ments of various kinds, and has become one of the large real estate holders of the city.
Since March 3, 1859, he has been a member of the Westminster Church. From 1877 to 1894 he was superintendent of its Sunday- school, and since 1880 he has been one of its elders. He has always been one of the principal supporters of this church. At the time of the building of its new edifice he rendered valuable services as chair- man of the building committee.
This sketch of Mr. Otis can not be more fittingly concluded than by ■quoting from a published biography of him :
He married, August 28, 1861, Miss Carrie F. Boyd, to .whose umform cheerfulness, and untiring care and helpfulness, he owes much of his past and present success. Though he has no children of his own, he has brought up and educated several, some of whom have been orphans and some children of relatives. He is a deep student, and delights in the perusal of classical and scientific works, of which he has been able to collect a large number. He has been an extensive traveler.
TIS, NORTON PEBNTISS, ex-mayor of Yonkers, second son of Elisha G. Otis, and president since 1890 of Otis Broth- ers & Company, was born in Halifax, Vt., March 18, 1840. He attended school in that village and in Albany (N. Y.), Hudson City (N. J.), and Yonkers. When .'about eighteen years old he went to work in the machinery manufacturing establishment of his father in Yonkers, where in due time he became skilled in the arts of mechanical construction, giving special attention, like his brother Charles, to those incidental to elevator building.
^ Nt^^^
SnjfJiy TUB Ball: i Sm.%. JTewZSrk.
BIOGRAPHICAL 43
As has been stated in the preceding sketcli, Norton P. Otis, after the death of his father, united with his brother in reorganizing the business in Yonlfers, with exclusive reference to elevator making and improvement, participated in all the hard and systematic work which resulted in placing the Otis firm on a basis of assured prosperity, made at various times important contributions to the long list of the inven- tions entering into the gradual development of the Otis elevators, re- tired temporarily from active connection with the company upon its sale to a syndicate in 1882, but subsequently, with his brother, resumed its control. He has ever since participated vigorously in its affairs. Upon the retirement of his brother from the presidency of the company he succeeded to that position. On the 1st of January, 1899, the Otis Elevator Company was organized, taking over the property, patents, and business of Otis Brothers & Company, and of a number of other manufacturing concerns in the same line; and Mr. Otis, wishing to be relieved in a measure from the cares of active business, was made the chairman of the board of directors. He is also president of the new Otis Electric Company, which began business in July, 1893. The latter company also has its works in Yonkers, and constructs electric motors and dynamos of a type patented by Rudolf Eickemeyer, the eminent Yonkers inventor.
During the first ten years following the beginning of energetic operations in elevator manufacture by the brothers in 1861, Norton P. Otis spent much of his time traveling through the country intro- ducing the new machines. In this work he was very successful. Upon the conversion of the concern into a stock company, in 1867, he was elected treasurer, continuing as such until June 1, 1882. Returning as vice-president after an interval of four years, he remained in that position until his election as president in 1890, to succeed his brother.
The Otis elevator interest, in its present extensive development and high organization, is one of the most representative productive indus- tries of the United States. This is not only the largest elevator build- ing company in the world, but in its history, and by the peculiar na- ture of its association with the progress of the times presents aspects of exceptional interest.
Its history has been briefly told in the preceding sketches. To an extent which can hardly be exaggerated, it has been, and continues, pre-eminent in the astonishing work of evolution in the circumstances of city life, architecture, and economy which this generation has wit- nessed. Ever since its founder, Elisha G. Otis, built the first safety elevator, and, by public exhibitions, demonstrated the entire practi- cability of carrying people up and down without danger to life and under conditions permitting measurable regulation of the movements
44
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
of the vehicle, the devices and flnished products of the Otis Company have registered the exact state of advancement, scientifically and in respect of actual utility, of the elevator as one of the most distinctive and decisive features of nineteenth century development.
It is a rather trite allusion to the ordinary business of the Otis Brothers to remark that their elevators are by far more numerous than those of all other companies in the towering office structures, many of them rising to more than twenty stories, which have been built in the last few years. The elevator that travels to any height, performing any required service with swiftness, smoothness, and per- fect safety, has ceased to be a wonder, and a mere reference to these familiar objects is sufficient. Of special interest, however, as appeal- ing to the imagination because of associations, are several of the strik- ing achievements! of the Otis Company in connection with public works or enterprises of great importance. Among the elevators of this class constructed by it in recent years may be mentioned the two in the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Exposition of 1889, which, on account of the curvature at varying inclines of the legs of that structure, whose course they followed, involved singular engineering difficulties; the twelve employed in the Glasgow Harbor Tunnel service (opened July 8, 1895), which also are remarkable examples of elevating machinery of unusual types; the great elevators at Weehawken (finished in 1891), which are among the sights of New York and its environs; the Otis Elevating Cable Railway in the Catskill Mountains (inaugurated in 1892), which ascends at a dizzy incline to a vertical height of 1,680 feet, shortening the time of travel to the summit from two hours to ten minutes; and the similar Prospect Mountain Inclined Railway at Lake George.
The Otis Company was the first to institute the system of regular inspection of elevators. This service, originated January 1, 1883, has become a recognized feature of modern precautionary measures for the protection of the public against accident.
The works in Yonkers constitute one of the most important and in- teresting establishments in that city of extensive manufacturing plants. They are four stories in height and cover an area of two acres. They give employment to from four to five hundred hands, about two hundred additional hands being employed in New York and other cit- ies in the work of erecting elevators as they are completed and shipped from the factory. The general offices are in New York City.
Mr. N. P. Otis has long been a prominent and popular citizen of Yonkers. In the spring of 1880 he was nominated for mayor on the Republican tieket, and elected by a good majority. His administra- tion as mayor is remembered for uncommonly valua.ble services ren-
BIOGRAPHICAL 45
dered to the city, some of which were connected with quite delicate circumstajaces, requiring courage, tact, and a high degree of admin- istrative ability. Especially notable was his action in the reorgan- ization of the schools, under the act doing away with the old separate district system, and establishing a consolidated Board of Education. A most distasteful and demoralizing state of affairs had obtained for years in school management, owing to political, religious, and other distractions which characterized the transactions of the district boards. Mayor Otis, being empowered by the new statute to appoint a general board of fifteen members, scrupulously ignored all partisan and other ungermane considerations in its construction, and chose its members with sole reference to their special fitness for different branches of strictly legitimate school work. To him is due the credit for first placing the educational system of Yonkers on a basis of real solidity and efficiency. The course that he adopted proved to be a permanent cure for the old evils, and from it has developed the present admirable educational organization, making Yonkers in this regard conspicuous among the cities of the United States. During his mayor- alty term also the fire department was remodeled, the charter for a public dock was granted, and the city's debt was reduced by |75,000.
In the fall of 1883 he was elected to represent the 1st district of Westchester County in the assembly at Albany, overcoming a heavy normal Democratic majority. His service in the legislature was characterized especially by successful activity in behalf of measures of importance to the county. He introduced, and procured the enact- ment of, a bill authorizing local officials to exercise the police power for preventing the landing within municipal limits of objectionable " excursion " parties; and also of a bill for reducing to reasonable rates the former excessive "short-ride" fares on railways. Another act framed by him, which provided that only practicing physicians should be eligible for the office of coroner, was found to be unconstitutional — a defect which the State Constitutional Convention of 1894 remedied by an amendment of the Constitution, subsequently ratified by the peo- ple.
In 1898 he was appointed by Governor Black a member of a Commis- sion of Sixteen to represent the State of New York at the Paris Expo- sition of 1900, and he was unanimously elected its president at its first meeting, held in Albany in December, 1898.
He has been especially active and efficient in the management of Saint John's Riverside Hospital of Yonkers, of which he has been vice-president for the past ten years.
Mr. Otis was married, December 25, 1877, to Miss Lizzie A. Fahs, of York, Pa. Their living children are : Charles Edwin, born September
46
WESTCHESTER OOXJlSrTY
11, 1879; Sidney, bom January 28, 1881; Arthur Houghton, born August 21, 1882; Norton Prentiss, born May 14, 1886; Katherine Lois, born June 25, 1890; Ruth Adelaide, bom June 6, 1892; James Russell. Lowell, born March 24, 1894; and Carolyn Myrtle, born October 1, 1896.
Mr. Otis is a member of the Engineers' and Fulton Clubs of New York City, and the Amackassin and Corinthian Yacht Clubs of Yon- kers.
OE, ROBERT, was born in New York City, July 19, 1815, and died on September 13, 1884, at his summer villa in Tar- rytown, this county, in his seventieth year.
His father, also named Robert, was born in the hamlet of Hoes, Leicestershire, England, October 29, 1784, and crossed the ocean to America in 1803. Like all Englishmen who came to this countiy in the early days he was not an aristocrat, but emigrated for political and religious freedom. Although some of his ancestors held positions in the Established Church, he was a dissenter as well as a republican. As in the cases also of almost all immigrants to a new land, he brought with him not money, but a full equipment of sturdy purpose, intelligence, and industry. It is not surprising, therefore, to find him ehgaged early in the century in active business — not as a middleman, or vendor of the products of other people's brains, but in a calling requiring personal industry and intelligence. Before 1820 he had become well knoAvn as a manufacturer of printing presses and successful introducer of improvements in the machinery destined to assume so important a place in the history of the art of printing. It was he who established the now widely known firm of R. Hoe & Company, his enterprise and able management of it continuing until failing health compelled his retirement in 1832. He died during the following year. His two sons, Robert, Jr., and Richard March Hoe, young as they were at the time, assumed the conduct of the business, which they carried on uninterruptedly during their lives, by means of inventions and improvements continuing to maintain the house in the leading position to which their father had advanced it.
A continuous development of inventive enterprise has thus charac- terized the firm from its foundation to its present conduct by one of the third generation of the family bearing the same christian name.
The elder Robert Hoe " is said to have been the first American engineer to employ steam as a motor for his machinery." The cylin- der press had begun to revolutionize the art of printing, but under
BIOGRAPHICAL
47
the sons, Robert and Richard M., still more astonishing results were accomplished. In 1837 they brought out the double-cylinder press. In these machines the cylindei- carrying the paper passed over the
•r
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«,
ROBERT HOE.
type arranged in a flat form, which was inked by a roller passing ahead of the cylinder. In 1846 and 1847 the rotary press followed, the central cylinder carrying the type upon its surface as it revolved against four impression-cylinders and receiving the impression upon
48
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
paper fed in to them by hand. These impression-cylinders were eventually increased to six, eight, and even ten in number, a man being required at each cylinder to feed in the separate sheets. With this machine, known as the Hoe "Lightning Press," twenty thousand impressions were made in an hour, but only on one side of the paper.
Twenty years later the genius of the house produced the famous " Web Printing Machine," printing newspapers on both sides from a continuous roll of paper five miles long, and, at the same time cut- ting and folding them, turning off newspapers, ready for delivery by the newsboys or mails, faster than one could count with the eye. These machines came into use in almost every city of the world where newspapers were required in large numbers. But the wonderful progress in newspaper printing in recent years is evidenced by the fact that this press also, " a combination of the most delicate and in- tricate devices" as it was, is now entirely superseded by still more astonishing products of this house. The operations of the present Hoe " Octuple Perfecting Machine with Folders " almost tax credulity. This press prints, cuts, folds, counts, and delivers no fewer than 96,000 four-page, six-page, or eight-page newspapers in an hour. Thus more than 1,500 completed newspapers every minute, or twenty-five every second, are delivered from one of these presses. For a ten-page news- paper the deliveries are 72,000 copies per hour; for a twelve-page paper, 60,000; for fourteen-page, sixteen-page, and eighteen-page papers, 48,000; for a twenty-page paper, 36,000; for a twenty-four-page paper, 24,000.
To the Hoes also belongs the distinction of producing a great variety of machinery ingeniously contrived for special purposes ; among other things, the first cast-steel saws made in the United States.
Aside from his part in the development of this extraordinary busi- ness, Mr. Robert Hoe was a liberal-minded and public-spirited citizen, identifying himself with all that was for the best interests of the communities between which he divided his residence — New York City and Tarrytown. He was a liberal patron of the arts, took pleasure in aiding struggling young artists, and was one of the founders of the National Academy of Design. He was a member of numerous chari- table institutions, serving as trustee in several of them, and also gave much time to individual charities. He was a member of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, of New York City, a member of the Century Club, and a trustee of various business corporations. He was naturally of a modest and retiring disposition, and, while he always took a lively interest in politics, resolutely declined all public service which would bring him into prominence. He ably served the City of New York, however, on her Reform Committee of Seventy,
ThallaurYork HiatariiCj
BIOGfiAPHICAI, 49
1
appointed to rescue tile municipal government from the tender mercies of the Tweed ring. Mr. Hoe's life was happily set forth in the charac- terization which appeared in Harper's Weekly, September 27, 1884, soon after his death, from which we add a short extract to complete our article :
The impression retained by the friends of the late Robert Hoe, who died at his beautiful summer home in Tarry town, New York, on the 13th of September, at the age of seventy, is of a kind to appeal with confldenoe to the admiration of fairer generations than ours. The civilized world knew him as a manufacturer of printing presses ; art students knew him as sensible to the romantic charm of works of the imagination ; business acquaintances knew him as responsive to the power of modern ideas ; but his friends knew Robert Hoe as a man who preferred to perfect himself rather than to build a reputation, and who was endowed with a siagularly happy moral balance. Like all such natures, he had a real love for living a life of his own, apart from the unsympathetic lives of others ; he might even have said with LStcordaire, " One can do nothing without solitude." i
His funeral was attended by a concourse of neighbors and friends, and his body rests in the beautiful cemetery near Tarrytown which Washington Irving so tenderly described. The news of the decease called forth eulogies from all the leading journals of this country and in Europe. '
EBB, WILLIAM HENEY.— One branch of the Webb family in America was founded by Richard Webb, who came from the lowlands of Scotland to Cambridge, Mass., where he was made a freeman, or citizen, of the colony, on November 6, 1632, twelve years after the landing of the Pilgrims. He removed with the company of Rev. Mr. Hooker and Governor Haynes to Hart- ford, Conn., where he is named as one of the grand jury in 1643. Sub- sequently he removed to Norwalk, Conn., where he died in 1665, having built the first mill in that place, and leaving a valuable estate. He had five sons— Joseph, Richard, Joshua, Caleb, and Samuel.
Joseph, from whom the subject of this sketch is descended, settled at Stamford, Conn., and probably built the first mill there. Members of his family were conspicous in the French and Indian War and in the Revolution. Two of them, Benjamin and Charles, were with the English under General Wolfe at the taking of Quebec. Charles was selectman of his town nineteen times, and represented it in the State legislature twenty-three times. As colonel he commanded the 19th Regiment at the Battle of Long Island. He distinguished him- self at White Plains, and at White Marsh his regiment received the attack of the Hessian force, losing eighty killed on the field, and hav- ing many more wounded. His son Charles, also in the service, was killed on a gunboat in Long Island Sound.
Isaac Webb, father of William H. Webb, came to New York City in boyhood, and died there in the year 1840. He became an apprentice
50
WESTCHESTER COTJNTT
to Henry Eckford, the renowned shipbuilder, who made a national reputation during the War of 1812. At first, as sub-contractor, and after as partner with Mr. Eckford, he built many important ves- sels, among them the line-of-battle-ship " Ohio," the ships " Superior" and " Splendid " of the China trade, and four frigates of forty-four guns each for South American republics. Later he confined his busi- ness to the building of packet-ships, constructing some of the finest vessels of this class afloat.
Mr. Webb intended his son William for a profession, and educated him under private tutors and in the Columbia College Grammar School. The boy succeeded finely in his studies, but was bewitched with his father's business. At the age of twelve he tried his hand at constructing a skiff; and before he was fifteen had put together other small craft, among them a paddle-boat. He became so much interested that, in spite of all persuasions to the contrary, he quietly determined to learn marine architecture. Prom the age of fifteen onward for six years he devoted himself with rare energy and persist- ence day and night to study and experiment. In this time he took only one week's vacation, and that he gave to a critical study of the new dry-dock at Boston — the first one of the sort in the United States. While still an apprentice with his father, with a fellow-apprentice named Townsend, he undertook the construction of five vessels by sub-contract, which were completed before he was twenty -three years of age.
His health became impaired by the severe strain of such labors and responsibilities. He went abroad, but, after a short stay, upon the death of his father, he returned and took up his father's business, and entered upon a career which forms one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of shipbuilding. Within a period of about thirty years he built more than one hundred and fifty vessels of all sizes. Most of them were of the largest class and of much greater average tonnage than had ever been constructed by any shipbuilder in the world. Besides the numerous sailing vessels, the list includes steamships and vessels of war of the largest size.
The warships were for the governments of the United States, Mex- ico, Russia, France, and Italy. One year from the laying of the keel he completed the seventy-two gun screw-frigate " General Admiral," 7,000 tons displacement, named in honor of the Grand Duke Con- stantine of Eussia. This proved to be the fastest war vessel known at the time.
The screw-frigates " Ee I'ltalia " and " Ee di Portogallo," for the Italian government, were the first ironclad ships that ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean. They were also found to possess extraordinary
BIOGEAPHICAI, 51
seagoing qualities and speed. They were constructed under difficul- ties, the contracts having been taken just before the beginning of the Civil War. Prices of material and labor rose rapidly, but they were completed according to contract, and proved so eminently sat- isfactory that Victor Emanuel by royal decree conferred upon Mr. Webb the order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus — the oldest order of knighthood in Italy, and one of the most prized in Europe.
For the United States he built upon his own model and designs the steam-ram known as the " Dunderberg." This is one of the most remarkable warships ever constructed, and the largest ironclad built up to that time. The model is quite distinct from the turret or monitor system, embracing many novelties, among them a ram of peculiar build and great power. The war closing before the completion of the " Dunderberg," Mr. Webb sought permission to sell her to a foreign power. Many Americans were unwilling such a terrible engine of destruction should go out of our possession. But, by a special act, Congress released the contract, and she was sold to France and re- christened the " Eochambeau." A French admiral and crew were sent for her, but, as no such vessel had crossed the ocean, the admiralty hesitated to undertake her delivery upon the other side. Mr. Webb' promptly accepted a contract for her delivery at Cher- bourg, France, which, with an American crew, he accomplished against heavy weather in fourteen days.
Previously Mr. Webb had built the steamship " United States " for the New Orleans trade, which, sold to Germany, was changed into a powerful warship. In 1 848 he had built the " California " for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, the first steamer to enter the Golden Gate and harbor of San Francisco.
Of a different style were the great floating palaces " Bristol " and " Providence," built in 1867 for the Fall River Line. The models were Mr. Webb's own, criticised by experts, but triumphantly vindi- cated by the vessels themselves, which on trial trips made twenty miles an hour, surpassing any steamers previously built. One of the largest, strongest, and fleetest of merchant vessels ever constructed in this country is the " China," built for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company for the trade between San Francisco and China.
When we consider the number, variety, and magnitude of these con- structions, their achievements by virtue of the three prime excellen- cies of speed, capacity, and stanchness; when we understand that he originated and designed the plans and models by which this was accomplished, malting radical departures in many points from time- honored custom, practically revolutionizing our merchant and naval marine by many successful innovations, we must conclude that, as a
52 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
master of naval architecture, William H. Webb has not been sur- passed in this or any other country. His influence has been widely felt, and his achievements are a permanent contribution to the mate- ria] progress of the age.
Though so distinguished in this special field, Mr. Webb's activity has not been confined entirely to shipbuilding, but he has found time and heart for other large and useful enterprises. He established an independent line of steamers between New York and San Francisco, in addition to the assistance given in establishing the Pacific Mail Steamiship Company, of whose original board of directors he is the only surviving member. He contributed largely in funds for the construction of the Panama Railroad, and was one of the largest stockholders till 1872, when he sold out at a great advance. His capital and enterprise sustained a line of steamers for several years in the European trade, for a part of the'time the only American line so engaged. He sent the first American passenger steamer into the Baltic. He established, and sustained at a, loss for two years, a line of mail steamers between San Francisco and Australia via Honolulu and the Pacific islands, a distance of 6,500 miles — the longest con- tinuous mail route in the world.
Twice (from the Democrats before the war, and from the Eepub- licans since) Mr. VS'^ebb declined the nomination for mayor of New York City. For fourteen years he was president of the Council of Political Eeform. One of the greatest achievements of his public life was the complete overthrow of the Aqueduct Commissioners, with their outrageous schemes for involving the city in enormous debt, and endangering its health by a great dam at the mouth of the Oroton River, instead of by small dams near its sources, which collect water comparatively free from impurities.
Mr. Webb has been an officer or director for many years of various organizations, corporations, and benevolent institutions, and for more than a quarter of a century has been especially identified with hos- pital work. The crowning act of his eminently useful career has been the appropriation of the larger part of his fortune to the establish- ment and endowment of " Webb's Academy and Home for Ship- builders," where worthy young men from any part of the country may acquire an education in any branch of shipbuilding and marine engir neering, free of cost, being under no expense whatever, even for board, and where the aged and decrepit ship carpenter and engine builder, both single and married, may find a home for their remaining days in comfort and happiness.
This home is at Fordham, in the Borough of the Bronx, standing on a bluff overlooking the Harlem River, and surrounded by a park of four-
BIOGPAPHIOAL 53
teen acres. The structure is of stone of Romanesque architecture, with arched windows and ornate corner towers. This magnificent institu- tion was duly presented to its board of trustees on the 5th of May, 1894. Among the spealcers at the dedicatory services were Bishop H. C. Pot- ter, Eev. Eobert Collyer, and the Hon. Joseph H. Choate. According to the first annual report (May 1, 1895) the aggregate cost of the Webb Academy aoid Home, including land, construction, and maintenance up to that date— wholly paid by Mr. Webb,— was $496,328.65.
Mr. Webb's home is at " Waldheim," Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson, en- closed in a beautiful park of ninety-seven acres.
UENS, JAMES IRVING, of Yonkers, lawyer, political leader, and ex-member of the State Assembly and Senate from Westchester County, was born in Biddeford, Maine, August 10, 1841. He is descended from Scotch ancestors on his father's side and from English on his mother's. His forefathers were hardy and enterprising pioneers, devoted to republican institutions from their first settlement in the American colonies and stanch sup- porters of the patriot cause in the War of the Revolution.
The father of Senator Burns, Jeremiah Burns, who was born in New Hampshire, although a private citizen, entirely unambitious for public honors, was a notable man and exercised a wide influence. His marked traits of character were great energy, strong and fearless convictions, and indomitable will. An ardent supporter of the Republican party, which he believed to be the party of right and justice, he sustained close relations of friendship with many of its great leaders, including President Lincoln and Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War. During the Rebellion he was a member of the New Hampshire State Commit- tee on matters pertaining to the conduct of the war and the interests of soldiers, an organization in which he had for associates Admiral Farra- gut and other conspicuous men of the times. Removing to Yonkers, he was engaged there in manufacturing business, also editing and pub- lishing a newspaper called the Yonkers Clarion, which has since been merged in the Yonkers Statesman. He was zealous and active in the cause of education, and at the time of his death was secretary-treasurer and one ot the trustees of the Rutgers Female College, of New York. Jeremiah Burns is remembered as one of the most prominent and re- spected citizens of Yonkers of the last generation.
The son received his education at Wisewell's Military Academy (Yonkers), Colgate University, and Union College, being graduated
54
WESTCHESTER COtlNTY
(1862) from the latter and also from the Columbia College Law School (1866). He has since received from Colgate University the honorary
degree of Master of Arts. In early life he was for a time a clerk in the Treasury Department in Washington, resigning to accept an important
BIOGRAPHICAL 55
position, in the New Yorlc Custom House. In 1881 he returned to Yonkers, his former home, where he has since resided.
In his youth he began to talce a warm interest in political issues and party conflicts, and ever since he became of age and could vote he has been active politically, always as a Republican. While living in New York he was prominent in the party organization there, serving as a member of the county committee. Upon making Yonkers his per- manent home he at once took a leading place in the local affairs of that city and" the politics of Westchester County. He was a member of the Board of Aldermen in 1884 and 1885, declining a re-election, and also served on the Board of Education. In the autumn of 1886 he was unanimously nominated for Assemblyman, and was elected in a dis- trict largely Democratic. He was a member of the Assembly for the years 1887,"^ 1888, 1890, and 1895. At the election held in 1895 under the new State Constitution he was the Eepublican candidate for Sena- tor, defeating his Democratic opponent by a large majority and lead- ing his party ticket. He served as Senator for the years 1896, 1897, and 1898. In both the Assembly and Senate he served on the most im- portant committees and was aggressive as a'legislator. In 1898, at the expiration of his three years' term as Senator, he received the Republi- can nomination for Representative in, Congress from his district, but, in common with most of his party's candidates in Democratic districts that year, was defeated.
He has been a member of and held the position of Chairman of the Republican Central Committee of Yonkers for many years, and has generally been a delegate to all Republican conventions.
The public life of Senator Burns has been characterized by ability and zeal in the discharge of the varied duties which he has been called upon to perform, and by prominence in connection with the advocacy of party principles and policies. An avowed and strong party man, he has, however, uniformly retained the respect and good opinion of his political adversaries, and his repeated successes at the polls in con- stituencies normally Democratic have been due to large personal pop- ularity and conspicuous leadership.
He was formerly for a number of years Trustee and Treasurer of the Rutgers Female College, succeeding his father to the position. He is a member of the D. K. E. Club of New York, the City and Palisade Clubs, Board of Trade, and Historical Society of Yonkers, and Chair- man of the Executive Committee of the Republican Central Committee of Yonkers.
He was married, September 29, 1869, to Mary C. Russell, of Hamil- ton, N. C. They have two children, Gertrude Louise and Irving Russell.
56 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
NAPP, SANPOED REYNOLDS, is one of the most prominent and respected citizens of Peeksldll, where he was born on the 8th of December, 1832, and where hi^ entire life has been spent. A lawyer by profession, he is one of the oldest members of the local bar, having been in continuous practice in Peeks- kill since 1856. For more than a third of a century he has been con- spicuously identified with the Peekskill Sayings Bank, and in various other connections involving useful enterprise and public-spirited ac- tivity he has gained a position in the community which will always entitle him to remembrance among the representative promoters of its development and best interests.
His father, Sanford E. Knapp, was a physician of high reputation and extensive practice in New York City. Dr. Knapp, in the line of his profession, conducted original scientific investigations and con- tributed a number of valuable remedies to the medical knowledge of his time. He was of English descent, and married Mary Brown, of Peekskill, whose ancestral line traces back to the French Huguenots.
The son received his preparatory education in the Peeksldll Acad- emy, entered Princeton College, and was graduated from that institu- tion in 1854 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon him in due course by his alma mater. Upon leaving college he began the study of law at Peekskill in the ofla.ce of the late Edward Wells, and in 1856 he was admitted to the bar. En- gaging in the business of his chosen profession, he experienced an ex- cellent degree of success from the beginning, especially in connection with those branches of the law requiring prudent administration of financial and similar trusts. For some time he was a member of the executive committee of the Westchester County Bar Association. His professional career is thus described in a sketch of his life in the recent standard " History of the Bench and Bar of New York " :
While giving attention to general litigation, he has devoted himself mainly to office business and all matters relating to real estate, the investment of money, and the settlement of estates. In connection with this, an extensive insurance business has also been established, and he is the agent for many of the largest insurance companies of the world. Mr. Knapp has won an enviable reputation for varied information, sound judgment, and disinterested devotion to the interests of his numerous clients, and his record has been such as to entitle him to the high degree of confidence which he enjoys among the leading men of Peekskill and vicinity.
Mr. Knapp has held the position of secretary of the Peekskill Savings Bank since 1863, and he is also one of its trustees. He has been secretary and treasurer of the Cortlandt Cemetery Association; since its organization in 1884, and for many years past has been treasurer of the Peekskill Board of Trade. He has always taken a hearty in* terest in the educational concerns of the village, having served for thirty years (1860 to 1890) as secretary of the board of education of
BIOGRAPHICAL 57
one of the school districts, and is now president. Since 1873 he has been- secretary of the Peekskill Military Academy, and in July, 1899, after the death of the Hon. Owen T. Coffin, was chosen its president.
During the War of the Rebellion Mr. Knapp, being disqualified by physical incapacity from, enlisting in the army, furnished a substitute without being drafted, and at his own expense, and throughout that struggle he gave hearty support, both moral and financial, to the Union cause.
In his political affiliations he has been identified with the Republican party ever since that organization came into existence, but, preferring the pursuits of private life, he has uniformly declined to accept politi- cal of&ce. He is now treasurer of the Board of Water Commissioners of Peekskill.
He is one of the leading Presbyterian laymen of Peekskill and that section of Westchester County. For more than thirty years he has been an elder in the First Presbyterian Church of that village, and he is also the secretary and treasurer of its board of trustees. He has many times been chosen a delegate to the courts of the Church, Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly.
Mr. Knapp was married in October, 18^, to Georgia Norris Knox, eldest daughter of the Rev. John Prey Knox, D.D., LL.D., of Newtown, L. I. He has one son living, William W., a graduate of Princeton University ('97) and now connected with the Elmira (N. Y.) Bridge Company, and a daughter, Aletta V. D., the wife of James B. Thom- son, of New Britain, Conn.
|RCHER, HENRY BENJAMIN.— The Archers are among the ' oldest, most important, and most numerous families of Westchester County. Their common ancestor, John Archer, came to the county about 1654-55, was the first lord of the Manor of Fordham (by royal patent issued by Governor Francis Love- lace, November 13, 1671) , and served as sheriff of the City of New York from 1679 to 1682. He was succeeded in the lordship of Fordham Man- or by his son, John, with whom the title expired. Descendants of John 1st and John 2d are now. living in many parts of the county, and some of them are still to be found on the old ancestral lands. The following succinct account of the family has been prepared mainly from the ex- tended information about the Archers given in Bolton's " History of Westchester County." ^
' Rev. ed.jvol. ii.,.pp. 503, etseg., 707-8. have been corrected so far as the line of descent her*
There are, however, various manifest discrepancies in considered is concerned. Bolton^s genealogical record of the Archer family, which
08
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
John Archer, first lord of Pordham Manor, is supposed to have been a member of the prominent Archer family of Warwickshire,^ England,
and a direct descendant of Fulbert L' Archer, who came to England
^ The Archers for many centuries held large posses- sions in the County of Warwickshire. The representa- tiveof the senior branch in 1560 appears to have been Humphrey Archer of Warwickshire, who was , born in 1527, and died October 24, 1562, eldest son and heir of Richard Archer, twelfth in descent from the above-men- tioned Fulbert. Humphrey married Elizabeth Town- send, and left among other sons, John, whose son John was the father of John Archer, first lord of. this (Ford- ham) manor. His (the latter's) branch of the family
might have removed out of Warwickshire into Norfolk, from whence they came to New England Several of this name were early settlers of Massachusetts, viz., Henry of Ipswich, in 1641, and Samuel Archer, a carpen- ter, who requested freedom, lived in Salem, and died in 1667. Hubbard, in his " Indian Wars," mentioiis a Lay- ton Archer and his son, of Rhode Island, who were killed by the Indians, S5th of June, 1676.— Bolton, vol. ii., pp. 615-16.
BIOGRAPHICAL 59
with William the Oonqueror.^ He probably accompaaiied the early set- tlers from Fairfield, Conn., to Westchester (town) about 16B4-o. Some years later he bought a large tract of land from the Indians, extend- ing as far north as the present Williams's Bridge. Oil March 1, 1666, he purchased fromElias Doughty, brother-in-law of the celebrated Adri- an van der Donck, " fourscore acres of land and thirty acres of meadow, lying and being betwixt Brothers Eiver and the watering place at the end of the Island of Manhatans," and by an instrument dated March 4, 1669, he bought tiom the Indians a much larger tract for the con- sideration of " 13 coats of Duffells, one halfe anchor of Rume, 2 cans of Brandy, wine w*^ several other matters to ye value of 60 guilders wampum." Other purchases were subsequently added, giving him in all 1,253 acres. " Upon the 13th of November, 1671, Francis Love- lace, Esq., the governor, issued letters patent erecting the whole into an infranchised township or manor of itself, to be held by the feudal tenure of paying therefor yearly to the Duke of York and his successors upon the 1st day of March (Saint David's Day), when demanded, twenty bushels Of good peas." ^ This manor, called the Manor of Fordham, reached from the Harlem Eiver on thewest to the Bronx River on the east, with about an equal north and south extent, its northern line beginning at a point slightly below where that stream bends southward from the Spuyten Duyvil Creiek,
The history of Fordham Manor has been traced elsewhere in this work, and it will be suflicient here to indicate how it passed out of the possession of the Archer family. The first lord executed various mort- gages of the lands embraced in the manor to Cornelius Steenwyck, a Dutch merchant of New York. The last of these mortgages was dated November 24, 1676, and was for 24,000 guilders, payable, with six per cent, interest, in seven years. Before the expiration of that time the first lord died, and his son John succeeded as second lord. The latter did not, however, reclaim the property, which, after the death of Steenwyck and his wife Margaretta, passed, by their bequest, into the possession of the " Nether Dutch Church within the City of New York." Nevertheless, a considerable portion of the lands of the manor continued to be held in fee in the Archer family. The principal repre- sentative of the Archers upon these lands in the eighteenth century- was Benjamin Archer, a great-grandson of John 1st.
Henry B. Archer, Esq., of Yonkers, is a lineal descendant of John 1st and John 2d, lords of the manor, and Richard, a grandson of
' i-^oltOH'fl- theory of thO' ■ nglish descent of John , those times, and as he early hecame a purchaser of lands
Archer has been disputed According to Riker, the his- from the Indians in Dutch territory, he may hare adopted
torian of Harlem, his original name-was Jan- Arber, and the Dutch spelling-aS a matter of expediency. .On the
he came from Amsterdam, In the ancient records of the whole, we prefer to accept Bolton's theory. Town of Westchester his signature appears in the Dutch " Boltqn, vol ii.,, p. 505.
style. But as the town was under Dutch dominion in ' '
60 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
John 2d. This Eichard had a son Anthony 1st, who, about 1748, set- tled in Yonkers. He died in 1792, and was the first person buried within the ground now known as Saint John's Cemetery.^ His son, Anthony 2d, born in 1746^ and died in 1838, spent ninety of the ninety- two years of his life in Yonkers, and at his death was one of the most noted of local characters. During the Kevolution he occupied a house at the southeast corner of the road to Bastchester (Ashburton Ave- nue) and Archer's Lane (Nepperhan Avenue). His son Anthony 3d (born in 1790), also a prominent man in Yonkers, was the grand- father of Henry B. Archer. He was a vestryman of Saint John's Church.
Charles Archer, son of Anthony 3d, and father of Henry B. Archer, was born in Yonkers. Early in life he went to New York and engaged in the grocery business, which he pursued for some forty years. Eetuming to Yonkers, he purchased the glebe farm (belonging to the Episcopalian parsonage). This property; he sold to William N. Seymour, of New York, and again took up his residence in that city, but after two years (about 1848) came back to make Yonkers his permanent home, buying the Gates homestead on Nepperhan Ave- nue, where he died. He married, fiist, Mary Hartell, by whom he had three children — Margaret, Catherine, and Henry; and second, Char- lotte Brower, who bore him five children — Charles D., Elijah M., Henry B., William S., and Eliza J.
HENRY BENJAMIN ARCHEE was bom in the City of New York, September 4, 1833. He attended Public School No. 14, in Houston Street, in that city, of which Leonard M. Hazleton (then and after- ward a prominent man in the nietropolis) was principal. After the removal of his parents to Yonkers he was for a time a pupil in Public School No. 2 (Yonkers village). At the age of seventeen he began to learn the carpenter's trade with his brother-in-law, Sylvanus Fer- ris. He afterward worked at that trade in the employment of Ackert & Quick.
At the age of twenty-six Mr. Archer entered the United States postal service, acting first as deputy postmaster in Yonkers, and then as clerk on the railway postal cars from Jersey City to Dunkirk — ^the first postal cars used on that line. Two days after the attack on the United States troops in Baltimore he started for Washington with two companions, and enlisted as a private in the Clay Battalion. He was a witness of the exciting events of that period in the national capital, being a guard at the White. House. After a service of thirty days he was honorably discharged and returned to Yonkers.
* Scharf 's History of Weatchester County, vol. ii., p. 22; note.
BIOGRAPHICAL 61
He held the offices of collector of taxes of the Town of Yonkers for one year and receiyer of taxes of the town for two years, both by election. He then became connected with the New York custom house, serving for two years as storekeeper and for eleven years as inspector. While in the custom house he ran for register of West- chester County on the Eepnblican ticket, but was defeated. His suc- cessful opponent, James Bard, died while in office, and Mr. Archer was appointed by Governor Dix to fill out the unexpired term. Mean- time he retained his position in the custom house.
Resigning his custom house inspectorship in 1878, he was appointed by Mayor Masten and the board of aldermen receiver of taxes of the City of Yonkers. He has held that responsible position continuously since. As receiver of taxes for twenty consecutive years; Mr. Archer has made a conspicuous record for faithfulness and unimpeachable integrity, which entitles him to permanent remembrance among the public officials of Yonkers. Under his administration the business of the receiver's office has nearly quadrupled. When he first became receiver he had only one year's taxes to collect, with three assessments. At present there are three years' taxes to collect (the current year and two years of arrears), besides some one hundred and fifty different assessments. In 1878 the total tax list was about |200,000; in 1899 it was 1754,000.
He was for twelve years a member of the Yonkers Volunteer Fire Department, being one of the organizers of Lady Washington Engine No. 2, and he represented Westchester County in the Fire Department Association. For a time he was connected with what was formerly the 17th Eegiment, N. G. S. N. Y. He participated in the organization, and is a member, of the Yonkers City Club; and he is a member of Rising Star Lodge, No. 450, F. and A. M.
Mr, Archer married Mary M., daughter of Lawrence Post, of an old Yonkers family. Their children are Clara W., wife of John Har- riott, who for the past twelve years has been property clerk of the Police Department of New York City; and Fanny M., wife of Paul L. Thierry, a manufacturer of fine jewelry and leather goods in New- ark, N. J.
TEPHBNS, GEORGE WASHINGTON, a well-known mem- ber of the New York bar and citizen of the historic section of Westchester County now comprising the Borough of the Bronx, the son of James and Elizabeth M. (Ballantyrie) Stephens, was born in Coeymans (on the Hudson), Albany Countj^, N. Y., February 22, 1844. His paternal ancestors settled in Connecticut
62 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
in colonial times, and from there removed to this State, going first to Dutchess County and then to Albany County. His grandfather, Gideon Stephens, did more than any other man of his time to build up the village of Coeymans, and also the neighboring community of Stephens- ville. He was extensively interested in the general freighting business, the construction of docks, etc., at Coeymans, until about 1842j when he failed and went to New Orleans. There he recovered his fortunes, becoming prominent in the mercantile world. He died at Vermilion- ville. La., at a very advanced age. The father of Mr. George W. Stephens came to New York City, and in 1854 engaged in the blue- stone business in Harlem. Subsequently he conducted a retail coal establishment there and in Mott Haven, which has since been con- tinued by his son Olin J., and is to-day the largest concern of its kind in the upper part of the city.
In the maternal line Mr. Stephens is of original Scotch ancestry. His maternal grandfather came from Scotland to this country in the early part of the present century, settling in Albany County, N. Y.
George W. Stephens received his early education in the public schools of Brooklyn and New York City, and in 1863 was graduated from the College of the City of New York, ranking third in a class of thirty-eight. He attended lectures in the Columbia College Law School, completing the course there in 1865, and also was a law stu- dent in the office of Hon. William E. Curtis, afterward jtistice of the Supreme Court of the City of New York. He has always practiced his profession in New York City. For fifteen years (1877-92) he, was associated with William J. Foster in the firm of Foster & Stephens.
In his career at the bar Mr. Stephens has pursued a general civil practice, his business being principally along the lines of commercial^; municipal, and real estate law. Of late years he has been occupied in the main with litigated causes, notably in connection with municipal affairs. Very much of his time has been employed in legal services in behalf of the officials of Long Island City. He has enjoyed remark- able success as appellant's counsel before the Court of Appeals. In the last twelve cases argued by him before that tribunal as counsel for the appellants he obtained reversals in nine instances; and in two of the remaining three appeals judgment was affirmed by a " divided court."
From his youth he has been an active supporter of the principles of the Eepublican party. He has long been a leader of his party's organic zation in the 23d ward, frequently representing it as a delegate in con- ventions. At the Eepublican State Nominating Convention in 1896 he was the first delegate from New York City to vote for Mr. Black
BIOGRAPHICAL 63
for Governor. He is identified with the " anti-machine " wing of the party.
He was appointed by Mayor Strong, in June, 1895, a member of the Change of Grade Commission of the 23d and 24th Wards, created for the purpose of assessing damages to property owners occasioned by the change of grade resulting from sinking the trades of the New Yorli and Harlem Eailroad. Prom that office he was removed for political reasons by the present mayor of the Greater New York.
He lives at Kingsbridge, and is a large property owner in the 23d and 24th Wards.
He is a member of the Republican, Suburban, Progress, and Ford- ham Clubs, and of the Eoyal Arcanum. For the past ten years he has been regent of Kingsbridge Council, R. A.
Mr. Stephens was married, in 1874, to Arline E. Lister, of New York City. They have two children— Elizabeth B. (a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and Miss Anne Brown's School) and William V: B.
E ANGELIS, THOMAS JEFFERSON (better known as Jef- ferson De Angelis 1 , of Yonkers, actor, the son of John and Susan (Loudenslager) De Angelis, was born in the City of San Francisco, November 30, 1858. On his father's side he is of Corsican descent. His grandfather, Benedict De Angelis, with two brothers. Hyacinth and Joseph, emigrated to this country about 1825, marrying a Miss Backhouse, of an English family. Benedict's brother, Joseph, became a prominent merchant of Philadelphia, and some of his descendants are still living in that city. The mother of Jefferson De Angelis was of original German descent, coming from good old " Pennsylvania Dutch '' stock.
John De Angelis, Jefferson's father, left home in his boyhood, and went to California, as one of the gold-seeking pioneers of '48, making the voyage thither around the Horn in a ship belonging to his uncle Joseph. He was prosperous in his mining ventures, but subsequently engaged in unfortunate mercantile speculations, and lost all i he had acquired. He then gradually drifted into theatricals, and until his death (in 1878) followed the stage with- marked success and reputa- tion, becoming one of the most popular characters in the profession in his specialty Of minstrelsy. He' was a leading meniber of the famous San Fr^ancisco Minstrels, an aggregation never equalled in merit by the numerous imitators which have followed them. Later he organized companies of his own, and traveled with them throughout the country.
64
WESTCHESTER COUNTT
A man of very sprightly temperament and lovable qualities, and a bril-! liant artist, he is remembered with equal, affection and respect.
His family consisted of his mfe, his son Jefferson, and a talented daughter, Sarah Victoria De Angelis (now deceased), all actors bred.
THOMAS JEFFERSON DE ANGELIS.
who followed his fortunes. Jefferson's earliest recollections are of the stage, upon which he began to appear when a very young child. He made his professional debut at the age of twelve in Philadelphia, and subsequently for several years continued to appear in sketches and
. BIOGRAPHICAL 65
short plays, chiefly of the variety order. As he grew to manhood he be- came ambitious for better things, and, having by economy and frugal- ity saved a considerable sum of money, conceived the idea of organizing a dramatic company for a tour of Australia. This was in 1880, and from that year until 1884 he not only toured Australia, but took his company to Ohina^ Japan, the Philippine Islands, Singapore, India, Mauritius,' Ceylon, and South Africa, producing most of the comic operas of the period, and realizing excellent financial results. Returning to Sau Francisco by way of the Hawaiian Islands, he entered upon a career oh the American stage, in which he has enjoyed uniform success, and advanced to a conspicuous position among tlie popular players of the day.
During the summer season of 1886 he successfully conducted a the- ater in Philadelphia, the Casino. In the fall of that year he joined the McCaull Opera Company. During his connection with that organiza- tion, as second comedian to De Wolf Hopper, he was cast in important r61es in " Ruddigore," " Princess Ida," " lolanthe," and, indeed, all the current Gilbert and Sullivan successes, creating a variety of char- acters, such as Funk the Jew in " The Bellman," the Prophet in " The Lady or the Tiger," and the Italian in " Clover." In 1890 he went to the Casino in New York as its leading comedian. Here he enjoyed a striking success in creating the part of " Poor Jonathan " with Lil- lian Russell. Among his most brilliant characterizations at the Casino were the Dutch Professor in " The Tyroleans," and General Punto in " The Vice- Admiral." Other operas in which he appeared during this period were " Apollo," '' La Grand Duchess," " Girofl^-Girofla," and " Indigo." In 1893 he branched out into the dramatic field, joining the fine cast of " The Prodigal Daughter," in which he acted the part of Lord Banbery. The next two seasons he was the leading comedian of the Delia Fox Company, greatly adding to his reputation in " The Little Trooper" and " Fleur de Lis." In 1,896 he starred in "The CaJiph," and in 1897, with Lillian Russell and Delia Fox, in " The Wedding Day." In 1898 he formed a company of his own to produce " The Jolly Musketeer," which proved a highly successful venture.
Aside from his stage connections, Mr. De Angelis is much esteemed by a wide circle of friends for an, exceedingly. amiable and attractive personality. He is a man of extensive and varied reading, and a con- versationalist and raconteur of delightful gifts. Possessing also the more solid traits of character, he has accumulated substantial means from the earnings of his professional career. Since 1890 his residence has been in that charming portion of Yonkers which has been carved out of the old Ludlow estate. To this beautiful home he is devotedly
66 WESTCHESTEK OOTJNTY
attached, spending there all the leisure that he can seize from his vocation.
He is a member of the Lambs' and Players' Clubs, of New York, and the Corinthian Yacht Club, of Yonkers. He is connected with the Ma- sonic fraternity as ^ member of Saint Cecil Lodge, of New York.
He was married, in 1877, to Florence Caundell, of Newcastle-on- Tyne, England, and has two sons— Thomas and Frederick.
^^EUMB, LEVEEETT FINCH^ (born in Matawan, Monmouth ^^M County, N. J., November 28, 1859 ) , is the son of Eev. John P^^ W. and Eoba Finch Crumb. When he was six years old his ■ parents removed from New Jersey to Peekskill, this county,
which has been his home ever since. He attended the old Howard Street School until his fifteenth year, and then entered the Peekskill post- office as a clerk. Later he pursued studies at the Westchester County Institute and the Peekskill Military Academy. In 1878 he began the study of law in the office of Edward Wells (since deceased), and in May, 1883, was admitted to the bar.
Mr. Crumb from early youth took a hearty interest in politics, being ardently attached to the principles of the Eepublican party, and his political career began almost simultaneously with the practice of hih profession. In April, 1883, he was elected to the responsible poation of clerk of the village of Peekskill, and a year later was chosen corpo- ration counsel of the village. These two offices he held for sixteen years, being re-elected annually, although at one time the partisan complexion of the board from which he derived his appointment was Democratic. At the completion of sixteen years of service he re- signed, both as clerk and counsel. On March 14, 1900, Mr. Crumb was again prevailed upon to accept the position of corporation counsel, which he now holds.
In 1895 he was nominated by the Eepublican party for the office of county clerk of Westchester County, and after a very difficult and ex- citing canvass he was elected by a large majority, becoming on January 1, 1896, the first Eepublican clerk that the County of Westchester had had in its history. In 1898 he was re-elected county clerk by an in- creased majority, running a thousand votes ahead of others on the same ticket. As county clerk he is also clerk to the Supreme Court and the County Court. His administration of the office has been characterized by great conscientiousness and the introduction of many
' This sketch is from the " History of the Bench and Bar of New York."
BIOGRAPHICAL
67
improvements in its conduct, his knowledge and ability as a lawyer enabling him to promptly perceive in what particulars existing defects
could be remedied. In 1896 the county clerk's oiSce was the center of a most bitter and persistent partisan struggle to prevent his printing
68 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
of the official ballots. In the course of this contest thirty-two stays, mandamuses, and injunctions were served upon him, but he success- fully carried out his official duties, without violating any of the orders of the court, and placed the ballots in the hands of the electors for the whole county, without error, on election morning.
In his profession Mr. Crumb has built up a large practice. To this he gives careful and assiduous attention in addition to his many public duties. He is recognized as one of the ablest practitioners of the county. His success, both professionally and in political life, is largely due also to unusual qualities of excessive ability, to which he adds uncommon energy and activity and a pleasing personality that has attracted to him many warm friends and a large personal fol- lowing.
He is one of the leading and most popular citizens of Peeksldll, and takes much interest in all matters calculated to promote its interests and prosperity. He was instrumental in organizing the Board of Trade of Peekskill in 1890, and was chosen its first secretary, a posir tion which he still holds, having been continued in it from year to year.
Mr.' Crumb has a number of fraternal connections. He is active in Freemasonry, being a member of Cortlandt Lodge, No. 34, F. and A. M., Mohegan Chapter, No. 221, K. A. M., and Westchester Commandery, No. 42, Knights Templar, of Sing Sing. He is also a member of Cryp- tic Lodge, No. 75, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, of Bald Eagle Tribe,' No. 264, I. O. E. M., of Harmony Lodge, No. 95, Knights of Pythiks, and of the City Club of Yonkers. He is a trustee in the First Baptist Church of Peekskill.
On April 26, 1888, Mr. Crumb married Nellie M. Starr, youngest daughter of George S. Starr, of Peekskill.
OULD, JAY.i — The just estimate of a great man's life is necessarily an evolution. It crystallizes gradually. Con- temporaneous history either magnifies or disparages. It is only with the final calm judgment which avoids the passions of the hour — sees the main facts in the clear light which time alone reveals — that abiding history is written. An intense in- dividuality that rises suddenly upon the world, wresting from it a victory, will suffer, for the time being, just in proportion to the activi- ties exhibited. But sooner or later a more just verdict must be ren- dered.
^'This sketch, originally written for the Histoey op courtesy of the editor of this work, in "Leslie's History "Westchester County, has already been published, by of the Gresater New York."
GOULD'S HOMES.
70
WESTCHESTER COUNTY
Jay Gould, from 1860 to his death, was clearly t-he most striking fig- ure in the American monetary world. No man attracted more central attention and no man was more roundly criticised and misunderstood. Intensely individual, peerless as ^ far-seeing financier, carrying every- thing before him, reticent to an extreme, turning neither to the right nor to the left to- disarm hostile criticism, it could not logically have been otherwise. When he died, and even before (after thorough in- vestigation of his business transactions and methods), men began to think.
Hon. Alonzo B. Cornell, speaking at the time of the great financier's death from an acquaintance of twenty- five years, said : " I regard him as one of the most remarkable men America has produced. As a busi- ness man he was the most far-sighted man I have ever known. He was the soul of honor in his personal integrity. His word passed in honof was as good as any bond he could make. He was the most misunder- stood man in this country."
E. EUery Anderson, in his official capacity under appointment by President Cleveland as investigator of the affairs of the Union Pacific Kailroad, having an opportunity of observing the innermost operations of Mr. Gould's business methods, said : " One thing always impressed me, and it is interesting in connection with current statements and some popular impressions of the man. It is this : I have always found, even to the most trivial detail, that Mr. Gould lived up to the whole nature of his obligations."
John T. Terry, of the firm of E. D. Morgan & Company, who more than any other man has been the confidential participant in the opera- tions of great financiers, having close and intimate knowledge of Mr. Gould and being peculiarly competent to give a verdict, declared : " Mr. Gould has been for years the subject of much misrepresentation and un- reasonable abuse, partly from misapprehension and partly from malice. Even those of his transactions which have been beneficent in their char- acter, and which have been prompted by the best motives, have been turned and twisted by attributing the worst possible motives to him."
These views are sufficient to indicate the final place which Jay Gould will hold in the calm and sober estimate of the world, upon a deliberate and unimpassioned study of his life and character.
The history of Mr. Gould's early life and public career, as well'as of his family antecedents, is full of interest. Major Nathan Gold, or Gould, emigrating about 1646 from Saint Edmondsbury, in the south of England, to Fairfield, Conn., became the founder of the Gould family in America, which, says Charles Burr Todd, early figured as " one of the most eminent and notable families of New England." He was one of nineteen petitioners for the charter of Connecticut, and from 1657 until
BIOGRAPHOiCAL 71
Ms death in 1694 he was a member of the Connecticut Council. His son, Nathan, Jr., held the office of town clerk of Fairfield from 1684 to 1726, was deputy-governor of Connecticut from 1706 until 1724, and became chief -justice of the Supreme Court of that province in 1710. He married a daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel John Talcott, of Hartfordf Their fourth son, Samuel, the next in the direct line, was born Decem- ber 27, 1692, and married to Esther Bradley, of Fairfield, in 1716. Two of their sons, Colonel Abraham and Captain Abel Gould, were Eevolu- tionary soldiers. The former of these, the great-grandfather of Jay Gould, was born May 10, 1732. His marriage to Elizabeth Burr, Janu- ary 1, 1754, brought another ancient and distinguished family into the line.
The Burr family goes back to Baldwin de Bures, of Suffolk County, England, who is mentioned in 1193. From him was descended Sir Eobert de Bures, of Acton Hall, Knight Templar of Jerusalem, and one of the barons who deposed Sldward II. in 1^27. John Burr, founder of the family in America, came over with Governor Winthrop in 1630, set- tled first in Eoxbury, Mass., was one of the eight original planters of Springfield, Mass., in 1636, and finally remcgred to Fairfield, which he represented in the Connecticut General Court in 1645 and 1646. His son, Nathaniel, was also a prominent citizen and office-holder in Fair- field ; while Colonel John Burr, son of Nathaniel, was one of the most notable figures in the province. His son. Captain John Burr, was the father of Elizabeth, the great-grandmother of Jay Gould.
Abraham Gould, commissioned colonel during the Revolution by Governor Trumbull, was killed in April, 1777, while attempting to check the advance of the British under General Tryon. His fourth child, Captain Abraham Gould, removed in 1789 to Delaware County, N. Y. Here John Burr Gould, father of Jay, was born, enjoying the distinction of being the first male white child born in Delaware County. He was a man of fine natural abilities and great force of char- acter. Self-educated, he was yet well read, and was dominated by broad and liberal ideas. He married Mary More, daughter of John More, who came from Ayreshire, Scotland, in 1772, and was one of the earliest settlers of Delaware County.
Such were the distinguished families which, uniting in the direct line, constituted the ancestry of Jay (or Jason) Gould. He was born in Eoxbury, Delaware County, May 27, 1836, the eldest son, although the sixth child. There was nothing in his environments which either inspired or contributed to his brilliant future. His early home had been established by the struggles and depiivations incident to pioneer farm life. His educational advantages were necessarily crude and rudi- mentary, and, such as they were, were included within the brief period
72 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
from five to sixteen years of age. He first attended the ordinary dis- trict schools, and afterward went to Beechwood Seminary. Later he spent two terms at Hobart Seminary, eight mUes from his home, walk- ing the distance at the beginning and end of each school week. While there he earned his board by keeping the books of the blacksmith with whom he stayed. He subsequently closed his school-days in Beech- wood at sixteen, having made the most of his opportunities, and keenly sensitive to the necessity that precluded a further academic course. In a letter, written soon after leaving school, he said : " But to speak of school seems to fire every feeling in my soul. It tells me that, while my schoolmates axe boldly advancing step by step up the ladder of learning, I have to hold fast to keep myself on the same ground." Later he wrote : " There is something in the idea of possessing a refined and cultivated mind; of its noble and mighty influence, controlling the human destiny, in yielding happiness and enjoyment to its possessor, in placing him where he is capable of speaking and acting for himself without being bargained away and deceived by his more enlightened brothers — something in the thought, I say, that is calculated to awaken and nourish resolutions that are worthy of a home in the human breast. ... I have determined, as soon as I have earned the means, to place within my reach a liberal education."
In the winter of 1851 his father exchanged his farm for a hardware store in the village of Boxbury, in order to give Jay the advantage of a mercantile training. The boy mastered the business almost intui- tively, assuming the full management as his father's partner, and making all purchases from wholesale firms at Albany and New York. He not only brought to the business an incredible industry, giving it indefatigable attention from six o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night, but simultaneously carried on the study of survey- ing and civil engineering, rising at three o'clock' in the morning to pursue it. The severe strain of such unremitting application led to a nearly fatal illness, from the results of which he suffered, at inter- vals, for the remainder of his life. He mastered the subject of survey- ing in a single winter, and the following spring and summer was employed as a practical surveyor in Ulster County, at |20 a month. His employer failing, young Gould, with two fellow-surveyors, com- pleted the work on their own account. Following the profession of surveyor, on his own responsibility, between the years 1853 and 1856, he made actual surveys of the ground and sketched and pub- lished maps of the Town of Oohoes and of the Counties of Albany, Sullivan, and Delaware. He also undertook expeditions for the survey of counties in Ohio and Michigan, and surveyed for the railroad be- tween Newburgh and Syracuse, and for the Albany and Niskayuna
BIOGRAPHICAL 73
plank road. During the same time he had written his notable " His- tory of. Delaware County," and had sent the compiled manuscript to his Philadelphia publisher. About May 1, 1856, he was informed that the manuscript had been accidentally destroyed by fire. By the following September he had the entire work rewritten and issued from the press, working literally " day and night." Notwithstanding that it is the rapid work of an unpracticed author at the age of twenty, the volume displays signal ability, and is ,an invaluable and permanent record of Delaware County up to the date of its publication.
By unparalleled industry, young Gould now had a working capital of |5,000, the net profits of his various ventures. He had, while pre- paring his history, become interested in the tannery business at Pratts- ville, N. Y. He saw the possibilities of an unlimited development of a similar enterprise in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. His next ven- ture was to execute this project. Going to the wilds of western Pennsylvania he located his enterprise, as he afterward expressed it, " right in the woods, fifteen miles from any place." He thus describes the first day's work on the ground : " I went in there and chopped down the first tree. We had a portable sawmill and we sawed the tree up, and that day we built a blacksmith's shop out of the timber. I slept in it that night on a bed made of hemlock boughs. We went on and built the tannery. It was a very large one — ^the largest in the country at that time."
Here he founded and developed a new town, named after him, Gouldsboro, built a plank road, established a stage route, erected a schoolhouse, secured postal facilities, and was himself appointed the first postmaster. He also established mills and a store, instituting the nucleus of a thriving settlement.
The new enterprise had its perils. The severe panic of 1857 follow- ing closely upon the inception of the venture threatened its success, but skillful management pulled the firm through. Two years later an unscrupulous partner, relying upon Gould's youth and inexperience, sought to wrest the business from him by high-handed methods. The attempt failed, Gould defeating the schemer in the courts at every point.
Events now rapidly transpired to bring out the widest scope and fullest activity of Mr. Gould's abilities. His early aptitude and devo- tion to engineering had naturally turned his attention to railroads, and the result of the panic had reduced stocks to their lowest ebb. Describing his first efforts in connection with railroad enterprises be- fore the senate commission, he said :
I still retained my early love of engineering, and I was watching the railroads. After the panic everything went down very low, and I found a road whose iirst mortgage bonds were selling at about ten cents — ^the Rutland & Washington Railroad, running from Troy to Rut-
74 WESTCHESTEK COUNTY
land. I went in and bought up ,a majority of theibouds at ten cents on the dollar,, and I left everything else and went into railroading. This was in 1860. I tpok entire charge of that, road. I learned the business, and I was president and treasurer and general superintendent,. ' and owned the controlling interest.
He at once built up the material stock of the road, developed local traffic and resources along the line, effected a consolidation with sev- eral other smaller roads, and created the Eensselaer & Saratoga Eail- road. He then sold at 120 the stock he had bought at 10. This was the beginning, and disclos'es the foundation principle, of his success in his vast railroad enterprises. Precisely what he did in this case he repeated time and again. He built up the enterprises with which he allied him- self, and in doing so built up the great section of country, west and southwest, with which his enterprises were connected.
His next railroad connections were with the Cleveland & Pittsburg, and with the Erie. In the case of the former, he duplicated the Eut- land & Washington undertaking. Buying the stock on an average] of 70, he built up the road by developing its local resources and estab lishing valuable alliances, and finally leased the line as a part of the Pennsylvania system, disposing of his stock at the same time at a very large profit. His connection with the Brie Eailway brought his name prominently before both the American and English publics. He found the Erie almost hopelessly involved, and on the verge of bank- ruptcy— utterly unable to cope with its powerful rival, the New York Central, under the masterful management of Commodore Vanderbilt. He accepted the presidency, and was prepared to build up this road on a solid basis of improvements, as he had done with the smaller roads which he had already handled.^ But he was confronted with peculiar disadvantages. The combination of Drew and Fisk, both large owners of Erie stock, and whose operations were of doubtful character, drew Upon him as their associate the public opprobrium which rested upon them. Hon. Alonzo B. Cornell has thoroughly cleared Mr. Gould from every imputation of participancy in the attempted steals of Fisk. In the contest with Commodore Vanderbilt, who sought to gain con- trol of the Erie, in order to destroy it as a rival of the New York Central, Mr. Gould's genius for meeting emergencies was conspicuous. He found a provision of the charter under which new stock could be issued. This he did quietly, placing it upon the market, until Van- derbilt got tired of buying and gave up the fight. Through the Eng- lish stockholders, however, under the lead of General Dix^ Mr. Gould was finally ousted from the presidency, a change now recognized as having been at that crisis disastrous to the stockholders.
^ It is a remarkable fact that the purchase by Mr. Gould mained from that time to the present the one great item
of extensive coal lands, in the line of his settled policy of in the assets of the Erie which has alone preserved any
building up the resources of a road (but for which he was life or vitality through the vicissitudes of its corporate
severely attacked by his adversaries' at the time), has re- existence.
BIOGKAPHIOAL 75
In connection with the Union Pacific, Mr. Gould accomplished a mammoth work on a magnificent scale. He found thiS' system also tottering on the edge of bankruptcy. He bought heavily of its securi- ties at 30 and under. The stock fell to 15. He continued buying until the tide turned. The road was burdened with an indebtedness of ten million dollars of bonds, due in a few months. The directors were about to select a receiver. But Mr. Gould at once inspired con- fidence. He met one-half of these bonds himself, the directors meet- ing the other half. He went out along the line, started coal mines and developed other resources, and soon had the road paying divi dends. The crisis once past, its securities rapidly rose until they reached a point between 75 and 80. In February, 1879, Mr. Gould sold one hundred thousand shares of the stock, at an average price of 70, to a syndicate of large investors, and within a few months dis- posed of nearly as much more at still better prices. The reason for this sale of a dividend-paying stock of a prosperous road Mr. Gould' stated before the senate commission, the explanation affording a fiood of light for a true estimate of the man :
After it became a dividend-paying property and a demonstrated success, there seemed to arise all at once, on the part of the public, a great outcry that it was " Jay Gould's " road. However, I thought it was better to bow to public opinion, so I took an opportunity whenever I could to place the stock in investors' hands, and in the course of a very few months, instead of my owning the control of the road, I was entirely out and the stock was 20 per cent, higher than the price at which I sold it.
He next laid the foundation of the great Missouri Pacific system by the purchase outright from Commodore Garrison of the original Mis- souri Pacific, running from St. Louis to Kansas City, about three hundred miles. In explanation of the Missouri Pacific enterprise, Mr. Gould said in 1883 :
My object in taking the road (if you can appreciate it) was more to show that I could make a combination and make it a success. So I took this road and commenced developing it, bringing in other lines which would be tributary to it, extending branches into new country where I could develop coal mines, and so on. I continued to develop that road until, I think, we have now in the system controlled by it about ten thousand miles of railroad.
Another of Mr. Gould's great enterprises was the final establishment of the Western Union Telegraph system. With his Union Pacific stock Mr. Gould had received an interest in the Atlantic and Pacific Tele- graph Company, a smaller rival of the Western Union. Seeing the advisability of a union of interests, he brought it about, but the con- solidation was perfected in a manner that resulted in a subsequent rivalry in which Mr. Gould outgeneraled the great railroad financier, William H. Vanderbilt, as in the Erie he had the elder Vanderbilt. Mr. Gould had stipulated that General Eckert, former manager of the Atlantic and Pacific, become manager under the consolidation. This agreement having been violated, he started a new company, the Ameri-
76 WESTCHESTER COtTNTY
can Union, carried it forward until the Western Union succumbed, bought a controlling interest in the latter, and put the two together, with General Ekert as general manager of the whole system. He now did with the Western Union what he had so often done with depressed railroad securities. Mr. Cornell says of Mr. Gould's subsequent mam- agement : " Looking back over the time during which Mr. Gould hai been in control, I have no hesitation in saying that his influence has been the most conservative and far-sighted of any ten consecutive years in the company's Mstory. He has desired to make the Western Union the great and only telegi'aph company of America. His policy, which has been a cordial and earnest support of the recommendations of the experienced officials who have had charge of the details of man- agement, has resulted in adding more to the value of the company during this time than was ever added in any twenty years of its preced- ing life. "
One of Mr. Gould's later and far-reaching colossal achievements was his connection with the Manhattan Kailway Company, which gave rapid transit to the City of New York. He took hold of this road when it was in the hands of a receiver, and, associated with Mr. Cyrus W. Field, developed and improved the property until the stock rose froin almost nothing to 180. This value was clearly in a degree fictitious. Mr. Gould recognized this fact, and cautioned Mr. Field. The latter did not recognize it, and, against the advice of Gould, pledged his Manhattan securities and kept on buying, forcing up the price arti- ficially, and overloading to such an extent that the first falter in the strength of the securities left him helpless, in the face of imminent and complete financial ruin. The newspaper story was that Gould had depressed the stock to gain possession of Mr. Field's holdings. The fact was that Mr. Field plunged recklessly into disaster against Mr. Gould's advice, and was finally saved by Mr. Gould's generosity from utter and irremediable ruin. Mr. John T. Terry, who was the confidential negotiator between Mr. Gould and Mr. Field, but representing the lat- ter, and therefore speaking with authority, says : " In Mr. Field's strait, through his speculations, Mr. Gould was applied to for aid, and he generously loaned |1,000,000 of bonds, taking therefor no security whatever." Hearing that this was not sufficient to give relief, " he purchased most reluctantly and at much personal inconvenience five million dollars of the stock of the Manhattan Elevated Eoad at 120." He took later an additional block of |2,800,000, and after that advanced" a loan of $500,000 on insufficient securities. Mr. Gould paid |120 for each share of stock purchased, though the stock itself fell to |77. " This transaction," says Mr. Terry, " not only saved the parties, but, beyond question, saved a panic in New York. And yet there are thou?-
BIOGRAPHICAL 77
san(is and tens of thousands of persons who believe that Mr. Field was wronged by Mr. Gould." It may be mentioned in this connection that at other times of financial distress, notably in the panic of 1884, Mr. Gould curtailed his own operations for the sole purpose of making his securities available for loans to imperiled houses that otherwise must have collapsed.
Mr. Gould's reticence veiled while he lived the benevolent phase of his character. Mr. Morosini, who supervised Mr. Gould's accounts for eighteen years, states that his benefactions, kept very secretly under the comprehensive title of " Beneficence," sometimes aggregated |165,- 000 in a single year. At the time of the yellow fever plague at Mem- phis in 1879, Mr. Gould telegraphed $5,000 to the sufferers, with a second equal amount later, accompanied with instructions to call on him for any additional sum necessary. To ha;ve his benefactions made the subject of newspaper comment was intensely annoying to him. For this reason his extensive gifts in charitable and religious direc- tions were made through his generous wife until her death, and through his daughter. Miss Helen M. Gould. He had planned an institution for New York City, on a magnificent scale, to give free ad- vantages in every department of industrial training and practical business education to young men of moderate means. Expecting to carry out this benefaction while living, he did not provide for it in his will.
January 22, 1863, when in the midst of his first great successes, Mr. Gould was married to Helen Day Miller, daughter of the Hon. Daniel S. Miller, of Greenville, N. Y., and the descendant of an old English family which settled in Easthampton, L. I., during early colonial days. This lady, in conjunction with Mr. Gould, created a -beautiful home life, which exhibited, more than any public service could, the unusual character of the parents. The children of this union, all of whom have survived both parents, are : George Jay, Edwin, Helen Miller, Howard, Anna, and Frank Jay. In the home circle of the mansion in Fifth Avenue or of Lyndhurst, his country-seat at Irving- ton, surrounded by everything that cultured and discriminating taste could suggest; conservatories containing every treasure known to the horticulturist; picture galleries hung with the works of the old mas- ters; libraries replete with rare volumes— in this splendid home life, yet remarkable for its evenness and simplicity, Mr. Gould held the fer- vent love, respect, and veneration of his children. It was here that his true character was known to those whom he tenderly loved, and who honor and venerate his memory for what he was. In disposition Mr. Gould was gracious and gentle; in his instincts, gentlemanly and re- fined. No one questions his genius or his brilliant achievements in his
78 WESTCHESTEE OOUNTY
chosen life work. His aggressiveness, Ms intense individuality, evoked criticism; but the closer his inner life and history are studied, the more willingly will the world pay, in its verdict, an abiding and grateful tribute to his memory.
HEPAED, ELLIOTT FITCH, well known as the owner and editor of. the Mail and Express, whose death in the spring of 1893 brought to a sudden close a remarkably active and useful career, was born in Jamestown, N. Y., July 25, 1833. His father, Fitch Shepard, was, for a number of years, cashier of the Jamestown Chautauqua Bank (still a flourishing institution), and subsequently president of the National Bank Note Company of New York, which, after his death, was consolidated with the American and Continental Bank Note Companies, forming the present American Bank Note Company, of which Augustus D. Shepard, the only surviv- ing brother of Elliott F. Shepard, is vice-president.
In America the founder of this branch of the Shepard family was Thomas Shepard, of Maiden, Mass., a relative of the distinguished Cambridge clergyman, the Eev. Thomas Shepard. The family origi- nally came from Bedfordshire, England. Fitch Shepard's mother was Irene Fitch, a direct descendant of the Fitch family who founded Fitchburg, Mass., and were among the first settlers of Norwich and Lebanon, Conh. The first representative of this family in America was the Eev. James Fitch, who was born in Borking, Essex, in 1622. His son Major .James Fitch, married Alice, granddaughter of William Bradford, second governor of Plymouth Colony, and daughter of Will- iam Bradford, Jr., deputy governor. Irene was their great-grand- daughter. Another ancestor on the same side was Dr. Theodore May, who was surgeon in the Eevolutionary army, and whose wife, Eliza- beth Ellis, and mother-in-law, Elizabeth Bedlow, belonged to the families after which are named Ellis and Bedlow Islands in New York Harbor.
In 1855 Elliott F. Shepard left the University of the City of New York to study law, and three years later was admitted to the bar. During the Civil War he served as aide-de-camp on the stalBf of Gov- ernor E. D. Morgan. In September, 1861, he presented the flag, " The Bride of the Eegiment," to the 51st Eegiment of the New 'York Volun- teer Infantry, named, in his honor, the " Shepard Eifles." This organi- zation is still in existence. When in charge of the military station at Elniira he was instrumental in securing 47,000 volunteers for the field. At the expiration of Governor Morgan's term of office and the resig- nation of his staff. President Lincoln offered Colonel Shepard a briga-, dier's commission, which he declined, from a sense of fairness to other
Eng bij
BIOGRAPHICAL 79
officers, who had seen, more field service than himself. He then de- voted his time to recruiting the 9th Army Corps, in which were the " Shepard Eifles," and to securing the passage of the laws for the sol- diers' allotment of pay to their families, and for their voting in the field; and he was active in aiding the success of the great Metropolitan Fair for the benefit of the sanitary commission of the army. This fair netted the large sum of |1,400,000 for the benefit of the sick and wounded soldiers.
On February 18, 1868, Colonel Shepard married Margaret Louisa, eldest daughter of William H. Vanderbilt. From this union sprang six children, five of whom survive him. For twenty-five years he prac- ticed law vigorously and successfully, having been a member of the well-known firm of Strong & Shepard, and having done much toward settling the railroad law of the State. He procured the passage of the act creating the court of arbitration for the Chamber of Commerce. He organized and was counsel for banks, savings banks, insurance companies, churches, and commercial and other enterprises.
In 1876 he was the founder of the New York State Bar Association, of which he became president in 1884. The same year, however, he relinquished his law practice and went to Europe for the fourth time. He visited the East, became especially interested in Tarsus, and sub- sequently founded " Saint Paul's Institute " at the apostle's birth- place. Three years later he made an extended trip through the West, including Alaska. His travels were the subject on which he some- times gave secular or religious lectures.
The best known of his pamphlets, " Labor and Capital Are One,"' has been translated into various languages, with a circulation exceed- ing a quarter of a million copies. In it he declares the modern cor- poration to be " one of the greatest blessings of the nineteenth century, and a distinguishing mark of its civilization." He especially extols railroads, deprecating strikes and advocating arbitration in all dis- putes between employers and employees.
In the spring of 1888 Colonel Shepard bought the Mail and Express from Mr. Cyrus W. Field, who, in 1879, had become chief owner of the Evening Mail, and in 1881 of the Express, when he consolidated the journals, forming the Mail and Express. Undei: Colonel Shepard's able management, this newspaper's power and influence greatly increased. He shaped its policy on every question, writing many of the editorials, and was not only the nominal but the real head of the paper, on which he worked five years with untiring zeal. His aim was, as he wrote shortly before his death, to introduce the Christian spirit into journal- ism. In politics, from the commencement of the Civil War till the last day
80 WESTCHESTER COUNTY
of his life, he was a stanch Eepublican, but higher than his party spirit was his patriotism, and, above all, his Christianity. Presbyterian by birth and conviction, he gave liberally of his means, and was person- ally interested in many good works. For five years he was president of the American Sabbath Union, believing that the fourth command- ment had never been repealed, but exhorts men as positively to-day to work six days in the week and rest the seventh as it ever did. He prevented the stages of the Fifth Avenue Line from running on Sun- day, and would have stopped all traffic on that day if it had been in his power. His personality — ^the dignified carriage, the pleasant, and cour- teous manner and genial expression — and his influence in the busy life of the city, as well as with those who knew him familiarly and loved him, will not soon be forgotten.
LETCHEE, THOMAS ASA, dental surgeon, eminent in his profession in New York City, and one of the representative citizens of Mount Vernon, was bom on a farm in Moscow, ^ Me., on the 1st of June, 1848. He is a descendant in the eighth generation of Robert Fletcher, who settled in Concord, Mass., in 1630. The line of descent to Dr. Fletcher is as follows :
I. Eobert, born in England in 1592; settled in Concord^ Mass., in 1630, and died there April 3, 1677.
II. Francis, bom in Concord in 1636; married (August 1, 1656) Elizabeth Wheeler; was a large landholder in Concord and was ad- mitted a freeman of the place.
III. Hezekiah, bom April 6, 1672; married (May 11, 1703) Mary Wood.
IV. William, born December 15, 1710; married (January 28, 1735) Dorcas Heald.
V. William, bom in Concord, Mass., but removed in 1773 to Maine; married, 2d, Sarah Kemp.
VI. Captain Asa, born in Bingham, Me., in 1782; married Lydia Me- Intyre; was a captain in the War of 1812; died June 6, 1862.
VII. Asa, born January 22, 1813; married, in 1841, Elizabeth H. Whitney, daughter of Silas Whitney, of Gorham, Me.; went to Cali- fornia in 1852, and upon his return settled as a farmer at Solon,- Me.; was a member (1877-78) of the Maine legislature; died June 8, 1891. His wife, Elizabeth, died January 15, 1899.
VIII. Dr. Thomas Asa Fletcher, of Mount Vernon.
All of Dr. Fletcher's paternal ancestors were farmers, who lived and
BIOGRAPHICAL
81
died in New England. From 1630 to 1773 the family continued at Con- cord, Mass-i the place of abode selected by Eobert, the emigrant an- cestor; (SUbsfequently for three generations living in farming communi-
THOMAS A.' FLETCHER.
ties of Maine. He is a- descendant through his grandmother, Lydi a Mclntyre, of Levi Mclntyre, a soldier in the Revolutionary War;. and, as noted above, his paternal grandfather. Captain Asa Fletcher, fought in the War of 1812.
82 westChesteK county
As a farmer's son in a sparsely settled locality of Maine, Dr. Fletcher received no educational training beyond that afforded by the district and high schools of his neighborhood, and until his twentieth year he remained with his parents on the farm.. ..He then w.entto-Boston,.Mass., and obtained employment. Eesolving .to fit himself for a professional career, he saved money to that end, and, coming to ISew York City, entered the New York College of Dental Surgery, from which he was graduated in 1879 with the degree of D.D.S. Shortly afterward he engaged in the active practice of his profession, experiencing an ex- cellent degree of success from the start. Dr. Fletcher ranks among the foremost dental surgeons of the country, and in his practice enjoys an exceedingly select clientele. The high reputation that he has at- tained in his profession is the more noteworthy from the fact that from boyhood he was entirely without assistance in shaping his career. His name is honorably identified with the progress made during recent years in the use of scientific appliances in dentistry. He originated and put into operation the first suspeiision electric engine for dental work. For eighteen years he has conducted his profession at his present office, No. 51 West Fifty-four{h Street, New York.
He is a member of the First District Dental Society of the State of New York, the New York State Dental Society, and, the Alumni Society -of the New York Dental College. He was a member of the International Medical Congress which met in Washington, D. C, in 1887. For a number of years after his graduation he served on the clinical staff of the New York Dental College. He was dental surgeop ■ to the New York Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled for a period of eighteen years, and for two years had charge of the dental work in the New York Juvenile Asylum. i
Dr. Fletcher came to Mount Vernon to live in 1888. , He is kuQwn as one of the leading citizens of that municipality, and as a public-spirited and valuable promoter of its progress and interests. In June; 1895, he became a member of the board of aldermen from the 5th Ward, continuing in the position for tvfo years. ' During the first year of his service he was chairman of the committee on street lighting, and during the second year was president of the board, al^o acting as chairman of the committee on streets and sidewalks. He took the lead, ^gainst much opposition, in procuring a large issue of highw.ay- -bonds for extending the system of modern paving in Mount Vernon; and to his aggressive course in that matter the credit for the present admirable condition of the principal thoroughfares,ot:Mount Vernon is in no small measure due. He retired from the. board of aldermen in the spring of 1897, declining a renomination;;but in May, 1899, at the earnest solicitations of his friends, was again a candidate for alderman,;
biographtcaij 83
and was elected, although at the election a year previous his ward had been carried by the opposing party. In his political afflliations Dr. Fletcher has always been a Eepublican. For the year 1898-99 he held the position of president of the Mount Vernon Republican Association, the well-known organization of Mount Vernon Eepublicans.
He is one of the most conspicuous and active members of the Mount Vernon Board of Trade, of which he was president in 1897-98. He has for some years been president of the Mount Vernon branch of the Co- operative Building Bank Of New York.
He is a life member of the New England Society of New York, a life member of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, and for the past fifteen years has been secretary of the Fletcher Family Union of America. He was one of the organizers of the Chester Hill Methodist Church of Mount Vernon, and has been president of its board of trustees since that church Avas established.
Dr. Fletcher was married November 14, 1889, ' to Elizabeth M. McLane, born in Mount Kisco, this county. They have one child' living, Austin Asa Fletcher (born January 28, 1895).
RUSH, EDWARD FLETCHER, of Mount Vernon, was born in Dublin, Ireland, July 12, 1847. His father. Dr. Crane Brush, removed to Canada in 1850, became a surgeon in the United States army during the Rebellion, and later, continuing in the service, was detailed to the. surgeon-general's de- partment. He died at Key West, Fla., in 1867.
As a young child, Edward was placed with a farmer in Canada, for whom he worked until his eighth year. He then left the farm, and, with a companion of about his own age, set out to seek a better lot Scantily clad, and having but one pair of boots between them, although it was in the winter time, the boys crossed the border into Maine and journeyed to Portland. After working for a year or two in a cotton , factory at Biddeford, Me., young Brush returned to Canada and ob- tained employment in the office of the Richmond County Guardian. Leaving this position about the time of the breaking out of the Ameri- can civil strife, he again went to Portland, and accompanied the 15th Maine Regiment to ti.e war, being too young, however, to be admitted to the ranks as an enlisted soldier. He was with that regiment at the bombardment of New Orleans. Later, having once more returned to Portland, he went out with the 7th Maine, and was present at the battles of Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and the First Wilderness. In
84 WESTCHESTER; kOOIEJNTY
1864 tie enlisted in the 16 th Maine Regiment, under Captain Charles H. Hildreth, with which he continued to the end of the war, partieis pating in many bloody engagements, including Hatcher's Eun, Mine Run, Dunwiddie Courthouse, and the running fights of Sheridan's pur- suit of Lee.
Having received his honorable discharge from the army, he resumed the struggle for a livelihood and for the improvement of his condition in the world. He first clerked in a grocery store at Newton Center, Mass., and then entered the mowing-machine factory of Walter A. Woods, at Hoosic Falls, N. Y., where in due time he became a skilled mechanic and earned good wages. Notwithstanding the extreme dis- advantages of his boyhood and youth, he had always been of a studious disposition, and, by persevering private study and reading, had pro- vided himself with a good general education. While working in the machine shops he organized a night school, for the benefit mainly of his fellow-employees, which was well attended by them. Though successful at his adopted trade, he was not long content to lead.th^ life of a mechanical workman, and began to look forward to some kind of professional career. For a time he studied dentistry with a Dr. Alden, of Hoosic Falls, N. Y,, but he finally decided to prepare for the general practice of medicine, and to that end placed himself under the preceptorship of Dr. H. De C. Hanners, of the same place, a physician of local repute, ^\-hose friendship he had formed, and who extended to him kindly encouragement in his ambitions. It remained, however, to obtain the necessary medical college training and diploma, a very serious matter for a poor young workingman. But confidently relying upon his native pluck and abilities, he went to New York City and entered the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. While pursuing his studies at that institution he boarded himself for a dollar a week. At the end of the prescribed two years' lecture course he was qualified to engage in practice, but, being in arrears of |160 for tuition, his, diploma was witliheld until he could discharge the indebtedness. This he was able to do at the end of another year (1875) . ' , ,
He immediately embarked upon the regular business of his profes- sion, opening an office in Laight Street, New York City. From the be-; ginning he devoted his attention especially to the diseases of childre,n,i and in this connection he became one of the phvsicians to 'Saint John's Guild, and went out with the first floating hospitals. Later he wa«^ appointed assistant sanitary inspector to the city board, of health.. Under the strain of excessive work his health gave way, and he wag? compelled to discontinue his professional occupations and' go. to. the, country for a rest. It was during this enforced idleness that he. made
BIOGKAPHIOAL 85
the first investigations and experiments which resulted in the intro- ^duction and widespread use of liumyss in this country.
Upon the invitation of his old friend and commanding officer during the war, Colonel S. 0. Fletcher, who, after leaving the army, had en- tered the ministry of the Baptist Church, he went to the latter's home at New London, N. H., to recruit his exhausted strength. Here he was .struck by the alarming prevalence of consumption among the farming people, a seemingly anomalous thing, in view of the natural advantages of the place, lying at a high elevation and enjoying par- ticularly salubrious general conditions. Devoting much of his abun- daut leisure to speculations and inquiries upon this curious matter, he came across the literature of kumyss, and his attention was attracted by the persistent statement of writers on the subject that kumyss user? were quite exempt from tuberculosis. Wishing to put these claims to a practical test, he undertook to manufacture a quantity of kumyss for the use of his host's children, who were suffering from the malady; and, satisfied by his experiments of the virtuous properties of thf. article, his mind naturally turned to thoughts of the commercial pos- siMlitifes of itsjpirdduction upon a considerably scale. : Having recovered his health, he gave up his medical practice in New York, purchased a^ pharmacy in Paterson, N. J., and engaged in the mianufacture and introduction of kumyss in a small way, with decided- ly encouraging results. He then sold out- his Paterson establishment and embarked in the kumyss business in New York. This was in the spring of 1877. His product was received with great popular favor, and he immediately built up an extensive and lucrative trade. But with the coming of summer he was overtaken by a crushing disaster. The heat generated gases in the manufactured kumyss, causing the vessels in which it was stored to burst. His entire stock was thus destroyed, and in a few weeks he was reduced from a flourishing financial condition to complete poverty. Not daunted by his sudden misfortunes, however, he set patiently to work to improve upon his previous processes of manufacture. As the result of careful scientific investigations, including a thorough study of the art of brewing, he became convinced 1 that the trouble was not due to natural fermenta- tion, but to the inferior quality of the milk which he had been using. In March, 1878," he removed to Mount Vernon, rented a small house on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourth Street, and began his experi- ments anew. He gradually mastered the problem, although, being ut- terly without pecuniary resources, it was many months before he was able to re-establish his trade upon an assured foundation. During his first summer in Mount Vernon his entire income from the sale of kumyss was |15. From that insignificant beginning his business has
86 WESTCHESTEll CCTONTY
steadily expanded, and his name, in connection with the product that he manufactures, has long been familiarly known to the public. To supply the demand for his kumyss he now owns and operates two farms — one of seventy, acres at Tuckahoe, and the other of eight hun- dred acres at Poundridge.
As has already been noticed. Dr. Brush, upon inaugurating his busi- ness undertaking, discontinued the formal practice of medicine. But he has always given more or less of his time, as circumstances have permitted, to medical practice, and especially has retained and develr oped his interest in the scientific branches of his profession, and has maintained an active identification with its associated bodies. For two years he was in charge of the New York Infant Asylum at Mount Vernon. He has been professor of bovine pathology in the American Veterinary College and lecturer on the diseases of cattle in the New York Veterinary College. He has held the positions of president of the section on diseases of children of the American Medical Associa- tion, president of the Medical Society of the County of Westchester, president of the Jenkins Medical Society (formerly called the Yonkers Medical Society), and president of the New York Society of Medical Jurisprudence (with which organization he is still officially connected as chairman of its board of trustees ) ; and he is at present ( 1899 ) vice- president of the New York State Medical Society and treasurer of the Bellevue Alumni Association. In addition to his membership in these various societies, he is a fellow of the New- York Academy of Medicine, and a member of the New York County Medical- Society, the New York State Medical Association, and the Physicians' Mutual Aid Society of New York. He was a member of the Pan-American Medical Congress, which met at Washington.
: -The medical writings of Dr. Brush, in the forms of papers read before societies, and of pamphlets and articles on varied topics, covering a period of twenty years, are extensive and notable. Especially as an investigator and writer concerning the relations of human and bovine tuberculosis, he sustains a reputation as one of the foremost authori- ties; and the originality and permanent value of his contributions to scientific knowledge in this department enjoy world-wide recognition. They have recently been collected and published in a volume, entitled " The Association of Human and Bovine Tuberculosis " ( New York and Albany, 1898). He has also written numerous papers and articles of conspicuous interest on infant feeding and related subjects, the more important of which are comprised in his book " Milk," published
uniformly with the work on tuberculosis. He was the author of the first scientific account of the late Dr. Joseph O'Dwyer's new operation
for overcoming obstructions in breathing in cases of diphtheria and
. BIOGRAPHIOAL ,, 87
other affections of the throat, and was the first to apply to this surgical process the name of " Intubation," by which it has becopie universally known.
Dr. Brush has for many years been one of the leading citizens of Mount Vernon, prominent- and useful in its public affairs, and in nu- merous ways exerting his influence to promote its development. He was for six years health officer of the village, and served for one year as a member of the board of education, resigning that office in 1892, upon his election as the first mayor of the city. During his admin- istration of the office of mayor the various city departments were organized, the whole machinery of the new municipality was started and brought to an efficient condition,' and extensive local improve- ments were planned and inaugurated. By all classes of citizens it was recognized that Mayor Brush's executive services during this transition period were most conscientious, honest, and able. Upon his retirement from the mayoralty, the Mount Vernon Daily Argus^ a newspaper holding views the opposite of his politically, said:
After an administration of two years and five months, Dr. Edward Fletcher Brush retires , as the executive liead of Mount Vernon, and takes his place as a private citizen, having made a record that any honest townsman might envy; He came to this trust at a transition period in oui history. What had previously been a .village was clothed with all the functions of a city, and placed as he was, as its head, to perform the exacting and responsible duties of chief executive was a task of no mean magnitude.
True, he made mistakes — and who would not ? — and for them he was severely criticised. Indeed, the Argus did not withhold censure from many of. his public actions, but neverthe- less his honesty of purpose and public spirit were never questioned. . . . During the period covered by ex-Mayor Brush's administratioiT, Mount Vernon enjoyed a marvelous develop- ment in material growth and prosperity. Extensive public works were begun and com- pleted, and no public scandal has attached to any transaction in which the city was a party ^-at least we do not recall one.
Since completing- his term as mayor he has continued to display a hearty and practical interest" in the local concerns of Mount Vernon, freely expending his private means to that end. He established, and for two years conducted, a daily newspaper, the Mount Vernon Senti- nel, whose principal characteristic was the broadest discussion of ques- tions affecting the welfare of the city. In the spring of 1898 he was the relator in, and brought Jnto court, tKe celebrated suit which re- sulted in the decision that the use of the Myers automatic ballot machine (and consequently all like contrivances) at elections was unconstitutional and void. -This suit was brought to prevent the nse of the ballot machine at a city election in Mount Vernon.
He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, the Koyal Arcanum, the Independent Order bf Foresters, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Sons of Veterans, the Authors' Guild, and Saint John's Guild.
He was married, June' 21, 1876, to Marion E. Beers, of New York. They have nine children livillg^^four sons and five daughters.
88 WESTCHESTER 'COUNTY
ISKE, SAMUEL, of Mount Vernon, was born in Koxburiy, Mass., March 23, 1833, being the youngest child of Samuel Fiske,born in Salem, Mass., September 30,1789, andArdelda Louisa ( Tufts ) Fiske, born in Charlestown, Mass;j January 7, 1795. They had eight children— Mts. Joseph P. Hale^ Alfred "R Fiske, Mrs. Timothy W. Wellington, Mrs. William Hudson, ,Mrs. Lu- cius W. Pond, Mrs. William C. Pinkerton, Mrs. Henry L. Chandler, and Samuel Fiske. His father, after his marriage, engaged in' the tanning business, and afterward in agricultural pursuits in Lexington, Mass., where he served as justice of the peace for a number of years, laliso being twice chosen to represent the town in the State legislature. '
The son Samuel received a common school education in Lexington, assisting in the work of the farm until old enough to engage in business employment, and was then apprenticed to learn the steam-engine build- ing trade with a leading establishment in Providence, K. I. While serving his time at that occupation he attended night school, and took up studies in mechanical drawing and engineering, developing unusual aptitude and industry in mechanical pursuits. At the age of !twenty- one he became engineer and master mechanic of large cotton mills at Lancaster, Pa., continuing in that capacity for some four years. On March 19, 1858, he was appointed third assistant en^neer in the United, States Navy, as the result of a competitive examination at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, in which he ranked fourth in a class of thirty- six. This position he resigned after a few months to superintend the building and operation of a large iron foundry in Central Pennsylvania. In the early part of 1861 he removed to Worcester, Mass., , and on September 1 of the same year he enlisted as a private in, Company^E, 42d Massachusetts Volunteers, being promoted to the rank of. first ser- geant on November 12 following. Upon receiving his honorable dis- charge from the army, August 20, 1863, he engaged in the business of mining and shipping coal in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. From 1865 to 1870 his energies were devoted to rebuilding and operat- ing the cotton mills at Harrisburg, Pa. In the latter year he was ap- pointed general manager of -large iron works and coal mines in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. He returned to Harrisburg in 1872 as manager of the foundry and machine works located there, and subsequently had charge of the construction and erection of the waterworks supplying that city.
In 1883 Mr. Fiske came to New York City, and entered upon the work of developing certain patented machinery relating to the manu^ facture of sugar. ' In 1886 he perfected and operated on the Magnolia Sugar I'lantation of Governor H- C. Warmoth, in Louisiana, the first successful machine for shredding or otherwise preparing sugar cane
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before mailing, and in the following year he designed q,nd erected on the same plantation a bagasse furnace for :utilizing the refuse cane as fuel, after milling, whereby the refuse cane or bagasse is made to fur- nish all the steam required to complete the manufacture of the sugar. T,hese inventions, secured by letters-patent, proved most successful and useful, and are extensively used in foreign countries where the manu- facture of sugar; from cane is an important industry.
Mr. Fiske is a prominent and highly respected citizen of Mount Ver- non. In his party affiliations he is a Republican, but has never sought political office. He has, however, served two years as a member of the Board of Aldermen, and as president of the Board of Trade in Mount Vernon. He is one of the directors of the Bank of Mount Vernon, and is vice-president and a, member of the board of managers of the Mount Vernon Hospital.
He was married, September 25, 1856, to Amanda Stoddart, of Phila- delphia (born March 4, 1834), daughter of Isaac Stoddart and Lydia (Butler) Stoddart, who was the granddaughter of Colonel Zebulon Butler, of "Wyoming Valley" fame. They have had six children- Mrs. Peter K. Boyd, of Philadelphia; Edwin W. Fiske, mayor of Mount Vernon (now filling his second term of office); Mrs. Guilford L.