USA > Connecticut > Biographical encyclopaedia of Connecticut and Rhode Island of the nineteenth century > Part 40
USA > Rhode Island > Biographical encyclopaedia of Connecticut and Rhode Island of the nineteenth century > Part 40
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Few, if any, chapters in the industrial history of New York and of the United States challenge greater attention than that devoted to the manufacture and sale of leather -- now one of the principal industries of the world. In 1766, a society established in New York, "for the Promotion of Arts, Agriculture, and Economy," offered a premium of " {20 for tanning the best 20 sides of bend leather during the year 1766, fio for the best 50 hides of sole leather, {10 for the best pair of women's shoes made of 'stuff' with soles of leather tanned in the province." In 1775 hides and skins to the number of 13,927 were imported into New York. From these humble beginnings the growth of the leather interest has been marvellously rapid. Saying nothing about leather, curried ; leather, morocco, tanned and curried ; or leather, dressed skins; the tanning of leather alone was carried on, in the year
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1870, at 624 establishments within the State of New York; giving employment to 6064 hands, and requiring an active capital of $13,286,940. Over two and a half millions of dollars were annually paid in wages. The cost of materials amounted to $19,118,186, and the value of the manufactured products reached the enormous sum of $26,988,320.
The Census Report of 1870 states that 8,788,572 hides were tanned in this country, and also 9,664,148 skins. In that year the number of hands employed in the manufacture of leather was 30,811; of boots and shoes, 171,127; of other leather articles, 19,000-making a grand total of 220,938 opcratives. When the returns of the U. S. Census of 1880 are classified, tabulatcd, and published, the development of the leather interest will undoubtedly be found to have been on the same grand scale with that of its history from the Revolution up to 1870. The imports of hides, and skins other than furs, for nine months ending March 31st, 1880, were valued at $21,727,201. For the month of March, ISSo, they were valued at $3.364,089. The cxports of leather, and of articles manufactured of leather, for the nine months ending March 31st, ISSO, reached the value of $6,259,841. Exceeding in numbers all other artisans except those who labor on wood ; creating higher values than any other industrial class except the farmers and the railroad employecs; the lcather workers of the land give the best kind of impetus to pastoral and agricultural occupations, and powerfully contribute to the prosperity and grandeur of the Republic. In this mighty hive of busy and benefi- cent toilers, Mr. Hoyt is one of the leaders; and by his stern integrity, disci- plined business abilities, unfailing promptitude in meeting every pecuniary obliga- tion, and unenvied success, has made good his title as one of the most influential and honored of the leaders.
In banking and insurance, Mr. Hoyt has long borne an active, and prominent part. Of the Park Bank, New York, he has been one of the directors since 1854 ; and has also served as director of the Citizens' Savings Bank of Stamford since its organization. He has been directorially associated with the Home Fire Insurance Company of New York, for a number of years, and sustains the same official relation to the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company.
In 1876 he was one of the Presidential Electors for Grant. In politics he is identified with the Republican party, but did not accept any official political position until 1877, when he was elected to the Senate of Connecticut from his own district. During a part of his term of service he officiated as President of the Senate, pro tem, and also served on several important committees, including that on Temperance, which consisted jointly of members of both houses. In 1879 he was Chairman of the Committee on Humane Institutions, and also of the Com-
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mittee on Federal Relations. His personal influence in the passage of a number of important bills, while in the Senate, was powerfully wielded. The nomination for the Gubernatorial chair was wisely tendered to him in 1879; but was declined under pres- sure of business reasons. He has been a member of the Union League since 1870.
Worldly prosperity seems only to have intensified his zeal for the promotion of religion and morality, the surest foundations of national greatness, and the strongest bulwarks of national prosperity. After fourteen years' residence in the city of New York, he returned to Stamford, and erected an elegant mansion within sight of the ancestral homestead. Like the residences of his two brothers, J. B. and William, it commands an extensive and beautiful view of Long Island Sound and of the village of Stamford, and is the constant and highly appreciated resort of troops of friends. The grounds are laid out with æsthetic skill, and the interior walls of the dwelling are adorned by choice and valuable paintings. Yet is he more earnest and laborious in. building up the spiritual temple of the living God. For upwards of a quarter of a century he has filled the office of Sunday-sehool Superintendent; first in New York from 1844 to 1857, and since the latter date to the present in Stamford. The living stones supplied to the growing edifice, under such hands, are especially valuable; because consisting of the unfractured, plastic, promising souls of children and youth. In the Centennial Celebration of the introduction of Methodism into this. country he took a prominent part. He was a member of the central committee, on whom devolved the superintendency of the enterprise, and who managed it with such consummate skill that it resulted in the contribution of eight millions of dollars to the benevolent institutions of the church.
In the evangelization of home and foreign populations he is and has been no less dceply interested, and holds the eminently honorable post of Viee-President of the Mis- sionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He is also Trustee and Treas- urcr of the Board of Education of the same church, which has aided no less than 600 needy students to obtain the preparation desired for the active dutics of life within the past cight years. Of the Wesleyan University at Middletown, Conn., he is one of the trustces ; also President of the Board of Trustees, and Treasurer of the Centennial Alumni Fund belonging to the institution. His purse has been largely and liber- ally drawn upon to promote the efficiency of the college, which owes much of its exalted reputation to his friendliness and generosity. The poor, the widow, and the orphan, sharc in his munifieence, and placc him in the same category with benefac- tors like the patriarch Job. With that great change in the ecclesiastieal constitution of his church, whereby laymen were admitted to cquality of legislative power in the quadrennial General Conference, he is identified as one of its most active and judi- cious promoters. He served as lay delegate from the New York East Annual Con-
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ference to the Brooklyn General Conference of 1872, and also to the Baltimore General Conference of 1876. In both assemblies he was a potent and valued member.
When over five hundred members of the Hoyt family,-representing all de- partments of professional and business life-assembled at Stamford, on the 21st and 22d of June, 1866, Oliver Hoyt was selected to preside in their meetings and guide their deliberations. That delicate duty was discharged with marked fidelity and skill, and in a spirit of kindly courtesy that left indelible impressions on the minds and hearts of the participants. In local as well as general affairs his energy and culture are apparent. President of the Board of Trustees of his own church in Stamford, and President of the Board of Trustees of the Ferguson Library in the same place, he has contributed liberally to increase the endowment of the latter institution, which bids fair to become an important part in the educational apparatus of the town. It was created by the bequest of $10,000 for that pur- pose by the late John D. Ferguson, was chartered in 1880, and is further to be enlarged and strengthened by pecuniary donations.
Oliver Hoyt was married on the 19th of October, 1852, to Maria, daughter of John Barney Corse, of New York, by whom he is the father of cight children, of whom five are now living.
VES, ELI, M.D., of New Haven. Born in New Haven, February 7th, 1779; the son of Levi Ives, M.D., and of Lydia (Augur) Ives, his wife. His father was a physician of rare qualifications, and of large practice in his native city. He also served as surgeon in the Continental army for several years, and in that capacity was present with General Montgomery at Quebec. He died at New Haven in 1826 at the mature age of seventy-four. The common ancestor of this branch of the Ives family was William Ives, a man of English blood, and one of the original settlers of New Haven.
Naturally studious and fond of learning, young Ives acquired his preparation for college partly by his own unaided exertions, and partly under the tuition of the Rev. A. R. Robbins, of Norfolk, Conn. He entered Yale College in 1795, and graduated therefrom, in due course, at the age of twenty years, in the same class with Professor Moses Stuart, of Andover, and Professor James L. Kingsley. For two years after graduation he was rector of the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven. De- clining the offer of a tutorship .in Vale College, in order that he might devote
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himself to the medical profession, he first studied the theory and practice of medicine in his father's office, and also under the tuition of Dr. Eneas Monson, who was a very learned man in botanical and chemical science as related to the materia medica. He afterward attended the medical lectures of Drs. Rush and Wooster, in Philadel- phia. At the termination of his rectorship, in 1801, he began professional practice in his native city, and with such marked ability and enthusiasm that he soon obtained a very large practice, and achieved great success in it.
In the estimation of the Rev. W. S. Dutton, D.D., from whose address at the funeral of Dr. Ives we have gathered the facts of his life, the most important service that the latter rendered to medical science and practice was his agency in originating and sustaining the medical department of Yale College. This was organized in 1813 by the appointment of five professors, of whom Dr. Ives was one. Though nominally Associate-Professor of Materia Medica and Botany, he wholly performed the active duties of professor, and continued in this department for sixteen years; and then, in 1829, on the decease of Professor Nathan Smith, was transferred to the department of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. In this he remained until 1852, when, on account of age and infirmity, hc resigned. During the thirty-nine years of his active professional life, about fifteen hundred students received their medical education in part from him.
As a medical lecturer, the merit of Dr. Ives inhered in the matter of his lectures. That was invariably excellent, and conveyed vast funds of information, while it was no less thorough and accurate. He was a lover of all truth, a general student and scholar who recognized the common bond which connects all sciences and all arts and all knowledge. To the promotion of scientific agriculture and horticulture, he gave much time and energy, was deeply intcrested in the Sheffield Scientific School, in the Horticultural Socicty, and also in the Pomological Society, of both of which he was president. He did much by personal labor and expenditure to establish a Botanical Garden in connection with the Medical College. His scientific attainments were acknowledged in the bestowment of many diplomas and degrees of honor from British and Continental scientific institutions and societics, which, with characteristic modesty, he refused to attach to his name.
As a physician, Dr. Ives possessed remarkable insight, a comprehensive and tenacious memory, an extensive and thorough knowledge of materia medica, an intimate acquaintance with medical and scientific books, remarkable aptitude for wisely and independently adapting his remedies to the case in hand, keen and minute power of diagnostication, and extraordinary boldness and energy when desperate exigencies demanded it. Fair, upright, and honorable, he was further characterized by genial and generous interest in other, and particularly in younger,
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physicians. Though no friend to quackery, cmpiricism, or charlatanry, hc was a decided friend and promoter of progress in medical science and practice, which he sought both by individual and associated cffort. Hc was forward in forming thc New Haven Medical Association, was an active friend of the State Medical Society, and of the National Medical Society, which, in his old age, chose him for its presiding officer.
Dr. Ives was not less prominent as an active Christian than as a medical practitioner. He united with the North Congregationalist Church at New Haven, in September, 1So8, at the age of twenty-five-thus exemplifying an uncommon conscientious individuality. He was a very honest and rightcous man, preferring to suffer rather than to commit wrong. Humane and catholic, he was an abolitionist, in the true sense of the word, during the great contest with slavery. Liberal to all ecclesiastical and benevolent enterprises, he also identified himself with the total abstinence reformation, and did much to press it forward. With a thorough and rich Christian experience, he was an instructive worker in all church assemblies, and fully rounded out a life that was beneficent and beautiful because it reflected the moral glories of the Sun of Righteousness.
He married, September 17th, 1805, Maria, daughter of Deacon Nathan and Mary (Phelps) Beers, by whom he was blessed with five children, of whom two survive him. He dicd October 8th, 1861.
W ATROUS, GEORGE H., lawyer, of New Haven. Born in Susquchanna County, Pennsylvania, April 26th, 1829. His father, Anscl Watrous, was a farmer, and a native of Connecticut. His grandfather, Benjamin Watrous, was also a farmer, and of English ancestry. The mother of George H. Watrous, n'ee Dennis Luce, was the daughter of Israel Luce, of Schoharie County, New York. His early education was obtained in the excellent common schools of Broome County, New York, and was followed by a thorough course of academic instruction in institutions situated at Binghamton and Homer, in the same State. Thence he matriculated at Madison University, New York, but left it in order to enter Vale College in 1851. Two years later, in 1853, he graduated as A.B., and subsequently took the degree of A.M.
The energy, aptitude, and versatility of his character became more apparent immediately after graduation. Deciding on the practice of law as the pursuit of future life, he entered the law office of Hon. Henry B. Harrison, at New Haven, pur-
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sued the prescribed course of study in the Yale Law School, and at the same time taught Grcek in Gen. Russell's Collegiate Institute, in New Haven. Admitted to the bar in September, 1855, he soon commenced individual practice in the same city, but two years afterward-in 1857-formed a co-partnership with Governor Dutton, under the style and title of Dutton & Watrous. This association continued until 1861, when the senior partner was made a Judge of the Supreme Court of Connecticut. Mr. Watrous has since practised alone.
In 1864 he was elected a Representative to the lower house of the State Legis- lature from New Haven, by the Republican party; and, while a member of that body, served on the Judiciary Committee and also in the Committee on Education with signal efficiency. His services have further been called into requisition by the public as Vice-President of the National Savings Bank, Director of the City National Bank, of the New Haven Water Power Company, and of several horse railroads in the city of New Haven. So ably and satisfactorily had he discharged the duties imposed by these trusts up to February, 1879, that in that month he was clected President of the New York & New Haven R. R. He assumed the powers and responsibilities of his new office on the first day of the following month.
Mr. Watrous holds a very prominent position in the State of Connecticut, and conducts a large and lucrative practice, both in civil and criminal courts. His repu- tation and influence remind observers of the words of that distinguished ornament of the bar, the Hon. David Daggett, when he wrote: "The practice of the law, when conducted by men of probity and talents, is an elevated employment and entitled to high consideration. No man can justly claim a more proud eminence than a lawyer in the first rank of his profession. To attain this great earthly dis- tinction is worthy the ambition of a noble mind." Neither in the case of Mr. Daggett, nor in that of Mr. Watrous, has such eminence been reached without labor, patience, perseverance, industry, a considerable share of talent, and the faculty of communicating ideas with some felicity.
The mind of Mr. Watrous is thoroughly embued with legal science, with the knowledge of general and special jurisprudence, of supreme and subordinate law. Reading, research, and reflection have made him a profound, lcarned, and accurate lawyer ; and particularly in those branches of positive law related to his immediate and oncrous responsibilities. Intuitive, attentive, and thoroughly understanding human nature, he knows how to touch the springs of action in judges, jurors, witnesses, and opposing counsel. With the reports of cases, and with all the practical details of the profession, he is equally well acquainted. Fair, honorable, courtcous, gentlc- manly, and exceedingly able, Mr. Watrous has controlled circumstances to a large extent, and has certainly deserved and commanded remarkable success.
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He was married in May, 1857, to Harriet J. Dutton, who died in January, 1873 He was married the second time in January, 1874, to Lily M., daughter of the Hon. Henry B. Graves, of Litchfield, Conn.
B EACH, JOHN S., lawyer, of New Haven. Born in New Haven, July 23d, 1819. His father, John Beach, was a member of the legal profession; and his mother, Martia (Curtis) Beach, was a daughter of Major Abijah B. Curtis, of Newtown, Conn., -- a soldier of the Revolutionary War. John Beach, the first American ancestor of this branch of the Beach family, immigrated from England, and settled at New Haven in 1643. He was the grandfather of Rev. John Beach, who was born in 1700, graduated from Yale College in 1726, and died at Newtown, Conn., in 1782, in the fifty-seventh year of his ministry. The Rev. John Beach was the grandfather of John Beach, (father of John S. Beach,) who died in 1869, having been a member of the New Haven Bar for fifty-six years.
The preparatory education of Mr. John S. Beach was received at the Hopkins Grammar School of New Haven, from which in 1835 hc matriculated at Yale Col- lege, where he graduated as A.B. in 1839. In the year following he taught school at Wilmington, Delaware ; then entered the Law School connected with Yalc Col- lege, and took the regular course of professional instruction ; at the same time being a student in the office of Judge Samuel J. Hitchcock of New Haven. In 1843 he was admitted to the Bar, and has sinec cxelusively devoted himself to legal practice Hc has never held nor sought any public official position.
He was married in 1847 to Rebecca, daughter of Dr. William Gibbon, of Wil- mington, Delaware.
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ACON, LEONARD, D.D., LL.D., of New Haven. Born at Detroit, Michi- gan, February 19th, 1802. His father was a missionary to the Indians, sent out by the Missionary Society of Connecticut, and the first settler of the town of Tallmadge, Ohio. The son graduated at Yale College in 1820, and spent the ensuing four years at the Andover Theological Seminary, whence he graduated in 1824. In the earlier portion of the ensuing year he was called to the pastorate of the Centre Congregational Church in New Haven, and was regu- larly installed in that office in the month of March. From that epoch until 1866 a period of forty-one years, he discharged his ministerial duties with preeminent ability, faithfulness, and success.
From 1866 to 1871 he was Acting Professor of Systematic Theology, and since 1871 has been Lecturer on Church Polity and American Church History in the Divinity School of Yale College. His lengthencd residence at one of the chicf literary centres of the country, and the constant use of his powerful, disci- plincd, and trenchant pen, have raised him to the position of authoritative expositor of the didactic theology of New England. In that department of authorship, he is, perhaps, unrivalled in his own denomination. He is justly regarded as the champion of Congregationalist church polity, and by his controversial writings has acquired great renown as the best exponent of those who adhere most closely to the tra- ditions and practices of the Puritan fathers.
Dr. Bacon is a very voluminous author, and has written an immense number of occasional addresses and sermons. To different theological periodicals he has been a constant and valuable contributor, and particularly to the Christian Spe- tator and to the New Englander. He has also served as president of the managing committee charged with the publication of both issues. His articles in the New Englander were largely of politico-religious character, and scverely arraigned the national government for its course in relation to slavery. Of that ablest and most influential of all American religious newspapers, the Independent, of New York, he was, for some time, one of the editors, and is still onc of its most highly prized correspondents. Erudite, logical, and vigorous, both as writer and speaker, his most conspicuous quality is an earnest severity, in which he makes frequent use of telling irony and biting sarcasm.
Many of his occasional sermons and addresses have been published. In 1831 he issued an edition of the Select Practical Writings of Richard Baxter, and in 1835 a second edition of the same collection. In 1839 appeared Thirteen Discourses on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the First Church in New Haven; in 1846 a volume entitled Slavery Discussed ; and, some years after that, a Historical Discourse at the old South Meeting-house, Worcester, September 22d, 1863. Another useful pub-
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lication entitled A Manual for Young Church Members, 18mo, was given to the church in 1833. The most useful and influential of all Dr. Bacon's many writ- ings is doubtless The Genesis of the New England Churches, with illustrations, published at New York in 1874. In it he shows that "the history of Protestant Christianity in the United States of America is the history, not of a national church, but of voluntary churches." He also points out how this history began, and traces " the origin and development of the idea which generated the churchcs of New England." Not alone the Congregational, but also the Baptist churches of this country are constituted on the samc platform of polity with the church which came in the Mayflower. Without caring to perform the wholly unnecessary labor of consulting rare originals, he has made use of such works as Hanbury's Histori- cal Memorials, Dr. Alexander Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims, and the Chroni- cles of Massachusetts, Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, Felt's Ecclesias- tical History of New England, and the works of the Anglican, Strype. Thesc, and others of like character, he has digested into one of the most vigorous, touch- ing, and thrilling contributions to Church History now cxtant; and which is par- ticularly valuable because of its admirable discriminations between "our Pilgrim fathers" and "our Puritan fathers." The difference between the two has been unhistorically ignored by the majority of writers. " In the old world on the other side of the occan, the Puritan was a Nationalist, believing that a Christian nation is a Christian church, and demanding that the Church of England should be thoroughly reformed ; while the Pilgrim was a Separatist, not only from the Anglican Prayer-book and Queen Elizabeth's episcopacy, but from all national churches." Both were grievously persecuted, but the bitterest share of the persecution fell to the glot of the Pilgrims, between whom and the Puritans there was conten- tion as carnest and sharp as between both and the ecclesiastico-political power which oppressed them both.
" The Pilgrim wanted liberty for himself and his wife and little ones, and for his brethren, to walk with God in a Christian life as the rules and motives of such a life were revealed to him from God's Word. For that he went into exile ; for that he crossed the ocean ; for that he made his home in a wilderness. The Puritan's idea was not liberty, but right government in church and state- such government as should not only permit him, but also compel other men to walk in the right way." Of all these facts, so indispensable to the thorough understand- ing of the march of events on this side the Atlantic, Dr. Bacon presents abundant and irrefragable proof. While necessarily referring to the history of the colonization of New England, and thus traversing to some extent the ground entirely covered by the admirable works of Dr. Palfrey, his whole object is to tell "the story of an
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