USA > Connecticut > History of Connecticut, Volume III > Part 42
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A native of Hartford, he was born on June 24, 1904, son of Nathan and Ella (Meiselman) Seidman. His father, who died in 1946, had come to Hartford in 1880 and spent his career in the cos- metics business. Judge Seidman received his early education in the public schools of that city, graduating from Hartford Public High School. For his advanced academic courses he went to Yale College, and took his degree of Bachelor of Arts there in 1925. He continued at Yale for his professional training, graduating from Yale Law School in 1927 and receiving the degree of Bachelor of Laws. Also in 1927 he was admitted to practice before the Connecticut bar.
He began his practice in his native city immediately afterwards, and is a member of the firm of Levin, Schwartz, Seidman, Zeman and Daly, with offices at 101 Lafayette Street. Mr. Seidman was elected to the Hartford board of aldermen in 1935, and served as majority leader of that body from 1935 to 1937. He was judge of the city's police court from 1937 to 1939, and judge of its juvenile court from 1937 to 1939.
He is a member of the boards of directors of the General Ul- trasonic Corporation, Resolute Investment Corporation, Floryan Con- struction Company, and the American Foundation Corporation.
Over the years he has devoted much attention to furthering com- munity causes. He has served on the executive committee of the Com- munity Chest, and as vice president of the Council of Social Agencies. He is currently vice president of the Community Center, and also vice president of the United HIAS service, an international migration agency. He has taken a constructive part in the programs of those groups having his own religious faith as their common unifying element. Among these is the Hartford Jewish Federation, of which he was a founder and incorporator, and Jewish Social Services, in which he has held the office of president. He is currently vice president of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, an inter- national organization. His religious affiliation is with Congregation Beth Israel.
Mr. Seidman is a member of the Yale Club of Hartford. As a lawyer he holds membership in the American Bar Association, the Connecticut State Bar Association and the Hartford Bar Association.
On November 26, 1931, at New Haven, Saul Seidman married Lillian Hertz, daughter of Morris and Esther (Trenner) Hertz.
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Mrs. Seidman attended Connecticut State Teachers College at Wil- limantic, and graduated there. The couple are the parents of a son, Richard, who was born in Hartford on April 3, 1938. He graduated from Weaver High School in Hartford, and is now a member of the Class of 1960 at Yale College.
ROBERT ARTHUR DWYER
Since the time he joined National Fire Insurance Company at its Hartford home office three decades ago, Robert Arthur Dwyer has advanced steadily in the organization, and now holds office as its executive vice president. He also serves on its board of directors, and is a director of other corporations as well.
Born at Buffalo, New York, on September 27, 1908, he is a son of Arthur and Lila Smith (Gates) Dwyer. Both parents were born in the Hartford area, and Mrs. Dwyer now lives in West Hartford, surviving her husband. A resident of the area from his early years, Robert A. Dwyer attended the city's public schools, and completed his secondary studies at Worcester Academy. He then entered Yale University, where he was a student from 1927 to 1929. By this time he had already gained practical experience in the business world through summer jobs designed to help him continue his education. One of these positions was as board boy with the firm of William H. Putnam and Company, investment brokers in Hartford.
When he left his studies in 1929 to begin his business career, he joined the National Fire Insurance Company, taking a position at its Hartford office in the underwriting department. He served the or- ganization as special agent in Pennsylvania from 1932 to 1939, and in the latter year returned to the home office. He was assistant sec- retary of the company from 1940 to 1944, and then was promoted to secretary, serving until 1949. From 1949 to 1952, he filled the dual posts of assistant vice president and secretary. He was then promoted to. vice president and secretary. He was made executive vice president of the National Fire Insurance Company in 1956, and became a mem- ber of its board of directors in November of that year.
Mr. Dwyer is also a director of Transcontinental Insurance Com- pany of New York. He is a member of the Hartford Chamber of Commerce, the City Club, Avon Golf Club, and the Yale Club of Hartford. A Congregationalist, he attends Asylum Hill Church in his home city. His fraternity is Theta Xi.
A veteran of World War II, he served in the United States Navy during 1945 and 1946, on both shore and sea duty. In the latter phase
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of his naval career he was a seaman aboard the aircraft carrier "U. S. S. Franklin D. Roosevelt." Among outdoor sports, Mr. Dwyer is partial to golf. His hobby is oil painting.
On March 1, 1941, Robert Arthur Dwyer married Sabra Scott Keene, who was born on March 16, 1912, daughter of George and Sabra (Petty) Keene. She is a native of San Antonio, Texas, and her father and family were natives of Keeneland, Kentucky. Mrs. Dwyer attended Bon Avon School in San Antonio, and graduated from Gulf Park College at Gulfport, Mississippi. She has been a mem- ber of the board of Oxford School at West Hartford, and is active in the work of the Hartford Art School. The couple are the parents of one daughter, Sabra Scott Dwyer, who was born in Hartford on February 16, 1942. She is attending Oxford School.
COLLIS POTTER HUNTINGTON
Although his career was more closely identified with the West, and with the development of the far-flung network of railroads bind- ing our nation together, the great industrialist and financier Collis P. Huntington was a native of Connecticut, and it is there that mem- bers of the family still maintain their home. Mr. Huntington was one of the inspired and inspiring business magnates of his age. His work in building the Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroads was succeeded by no less vital efforts in providing executive leadership, at a period when expansion was incredibly rapid and revenue uncer- tain. It was written of him at the time of his death, at the turn of the century, that "he had done greater things and more of them in the strenuous work of developing the resources of America than any other man." Yet the rail lines to the Pacific represented but a portion of a lifetime of achievement. He began as a tradesman in the California gold fields; and his influence was no less marked in the East, where he headed many corporations and founded the towns of Newport News and Huntington, West Virginia. His achievements are the more remarkable in view of the fact that he began life as a poor boy, with vigor of body and mind as his only resources.
Born October 22, 1821, at Harwinton, Connecticut, he was a son of William and Elizabeth (Vincent) Huntington, and was descended from Simon Huntington, who came to this country from England and married Margaret Baret. From them the line descends through Deacon Simon and Sarah (Clark) Huntington; Lieutenant Samuel and Mary (Clark) Huntington; John and Mehitabel (Metcalf) Huntington ; Joseph and Rachael (Preston) Huntington ; and William and Eliza-
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beth (Vincent) Huntington. His father was a farmer, and early in life Collis learned the simple yet demanding tasks of rural life: build- ing stone walls, piling wood, helping with the crops. The fifth of nine children, he claimed as an advantage the fact that in starting life "he had not a liberal education and had no money, while many of his boy neighbors had both, a circumstance that prevented them from doing the hard and homely work which was nearest to them." By the time he was fourteen, he was working for a neighbor for seven dol- lars per month and board. Beginning in 1836, he worked as a travel- ing salesman, selling merchandise, principally watches, throughout the East, and there was hardly a county along the Seaboard with which he did not become familiar. This laid the basis for his shrewd trading sense which was later to bring him success under the strenuous conditions of life in California. First, however, he established a store at Oneonta, in Otsego County, New York, with a brother.
In 1849, the gold-rush year, he left for California, with trading, not mining, foremost in mind, and carrying a stock of goods with him on the trip across the Isthmus of Panama and up the West Coast. Beginning as a merchant in his own name at Sacramento, he had formed several brief partnerships, and had once been wiped out by fire, before he entered into his long, loyal and profitable relationship with Mark Hopkins. They established the firm of Huntington and Hopkins, dealing in hardware and other essentials required in a boom mining community. Their dealing was not done on a commission basis, but "consisted rather in buying and selling in a highly fluctuating and speculative market . .. Huntington was eminently fitted to succeed in such an environment by virtue of his native shrewdness, his great physical strength and endurance, and his uninterrupted trading ex- perience of thirteen years."
About 1860, serious proposals began to be made for the construc- tion of a railroad across the Sierra Nevada Mountains to link the East with the West Coast. An engineer, Theodore D. Judah, proposed a feasible route, and enlisted Mr. Huntington's support. They were joined by Mr. Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and Charles Crocker. When Mr. Judah died in 1863, Mr. Huntington was left in undisputed con- trol of carrying out the project. To him fell the demanding tasks of borrowing capital and purchasing and shipping material, while Mr. Crocker was in charge of construction and Mr. Stanford served as president. Mr. Huntington's skill in commercial matters was constant- ly tested and proved.
After the Central Pacific Railroad had linked up with the Union
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Pacific trackage in 1869, the partners turned their attention to the construction of lines in the southern counties of California, and ul- timately built a second transcontinental line linking San Francisco with New Orleans through the San Joaquin Valley and El Paso. By 1869 the Central Pacific had a branch through the San Joaquin Val- ley from Lathrop to Modesto. This was extended to Goshen and new construction beyond that point was undertaken in the name of the Southern Pacific Railroad. That company was organized in 1884, and subsequently the Central Pacific and other companies in California were leased to the Southern Pacific Company, which thus became the controlling corporation of the entire system.
It is an interesting fact that the growing complex of railroads had in effect taken over the life of Mr. Huntington and commandeered his abilities without his having sought this role. "He was now pos- sessed of a large railroad interest, and he was unable to sell it, when the Central Pacific was completed, upon what he regarded as reason- able terms." He was agent and attorney, as well as first vice president and director, of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and was vice president, director, and general agent of the Central Pacific Railroad. During the 188os he had offices in New York, but made tours of inspection to the lines. It was his duty to arrange for the sale of company stocks and bonds, and to secure loans from the banks when needed. This was no light task, for during much of his career as a railroad execu- tive, the lines were being built more rapidly than they could attract business. Since they constituted a long-term rather than a short-term benefit, the risks were great. Conditions improved, however, during the last two decades of Mr. Huntington's life. But the activities of the government did not make the lot of the western lines any easier. Insistence in the matter of repayment terms, a seeming preference for other railroad interests, and finally the Thurman Act of 1878, threatened to negate much of the dynamic and risky undertaking which had put the lines through.
While Mr. Huntington continued his interest in the Pacific rail- roads to the end of his life, he also expanded his holdings in the East from 1869-the year in which he acquired the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. Assuming office as its president, he extended its line from Huntington, West Virginia, (named for him) to Memphis, Tennes- see ; and where its tracks reached the East Coast, he established the terminus city of Newport News. He invited his western partners to share in the venture. They did not do so, and he himself disposed of most of his eastern and southern properties during the 1890s. He held
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office as president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, the Mexi- can International Railway Company, and the various roads forming part of the Southern Pacific system, during the later years of his life. He had an interest in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana rail lines; in the Market Street Railway in San Francisco; and in shipping firms such as the United States and Brazil Steamship Company and the Old Dominion Steamship Company. These in addition to serving as president of the Southern Pacific Company from 1890.
In 1884, the year in which the reorganized Southern Pacific Company was formed, the Newport News and Mississippi Valley Company was also organized, for the purpose of uniting under one management the Chesapeake and Ohio, the Elizabethtown, Lexington and Big Sandy, the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern, and "any such other associate railroads as might be built or acquired." Mr. Huntington was named president of this new organization. With the formation of the Chesapeake Dry Dock and Construction Company in 1886, Mr. Huntington entered a new phase of business-shipbuild- ing, an industry which was to prove a vital part of the economic picture on the eastern shore of Virginia. A companion firm, the New- port News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, was established in 1890.
Extensive as was the scope of the above organizations and in- dustrial complexes, they constitute but a small part of the total list of firms in which Collis P. Huntington held office or had an interest. At the time of his death he was listed as president and director of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway Company, the Galveston, Har- risburg and San Antonio Railway Company, the Guatemala Central Railroad Company, the Louisiana and Western Railroad Company, Louisiana and Western Extension, Pacific Mail Steamship Company, Raquette Lake Railroad Company, Southern Bridge and Railway Company, and Southern Pacific Company. He was vice president and director of the Oregon and California Railroad Company. He served on the boards of Detroit Gas Company, Fuente Coal Company of Mexico, Galveston, Houston and Northern Railway Company, Gulf, Western and Pacific Railway Company, International Construction Company, Mexican International Railroad Company, Morgan's Lou- isiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Company, New York, Texas and Mexican Railway Company, Newport News Light and Water Company, Northern Pacific Terminal Company of Oregon, Old Dominion Land Company, Old Dominion Steamship Company, Oregonian Railway Company, Portland and Yamhill Railroad Com-
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pany, Southern Pacific Coast Railway Company, Union Colliery Com- pany of British Columbia, and Western Union Telegraph Company. He held controlling interests in many other firms. In the case of no less than eleven steamship lines, he had been instrumental in their founding, had invested heavily in them, or served as officer or director.
Twice married, Collis Potter Huntington chose as his first wife Elizabeth T. Stoddard of Litchfield County. Their marriage occurred on September 16, 1844. He married, second, on July 12, 1884, Mrs. Arabella Duval (Yarrington) Worsham of Alabama. He reared two children : a niece of his first wife; and a son, Archer M., who is the subject of a biographical sketch accompanying, and whose wife, Anna Hyatt Huntington, lives at Stanerigg Farm near Bethel. Collis P. Huntington's adopted daughter, Clara, married a German nobleman, Prince Hatzfeldt, in 1899.
A dynamic career in American industry-a career which had few parallels in Mr. Huntington's own time, and will probably not be duplicated again-came to an end with his death on August 13, 1900.
ARCHER MILTON HUNTINGTON
Few men have had as lasting and beneficial an influence on the cul- tural life of this country as Archer Milton Huntington. This resident of Bethel, was an author, poet, and translator, and was without peer as an authority on the background and literature of the Hispanic peoples. His reputation extended far beyond creative and scholarly achievements with the founding of The Hispanic Society and Museum in New York City, and The Mariners' Museum at Newport News, Virginia. He remained active in the direction of both of these insti- tutions.
Born in New York City on March 10, 1870, he was an adopted stepson of Collis Potter Huntington, and son of Arabella Duval (Yar- rington - Worsham) Huntington. Collis P. Huntington was one of the foremost railroad builders and capitalists of this country, and is the subject of an accompanying sketch. In addition to his achievements in the practical world, we find in this man some of the qualities which inspired his stepson. "Intellectually he was in a rather different class from other great builders of the time," wrote Arthur Upham Pope. "He was a humanist, a Shakespearean devotee who could recite Shake- speare literally by the hour, and much nineteenth century poetry besides." Archer M. Huntington's mother also possessed traits which gave stimulus to his cultural life, according to Mr. Pope. "She spoke French like a native, was proficient in French history, and a real con-
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noisseur of many of the arts of France. She had read to and with her boy, the English classics before he was nine, and she inspired him with high intellectual and artistic ambitions."
With such a family background, Archer M. Huntington could well dispense with formal schooling, and did so. For a time he had a private tutor; and from the first his intellectual interests centered in the cul- ture of Spain, as well as of the Arabic people who had occupied it for so long. In his brief appreciation, Mr. Pope refers to the fervor and restless determination which he brought to his studies: "When he studied Arabic, a furious night and day concentration for several years ... gave him a command of this difficult language that few non-Arabs ever acquire. His eloquent quotations from Arabic poetry, recited with the majestic voice of a troubadour, were something that all Arabs who heard him admired and often envied." He also con- centrated on the study of Old Spanish.
With this background of intense and devoted study, of course he must go to Spain, and his first visit to the Iberian Peninsula took place when he was twenty-two years old, in 1892. The reviewer of his career in the memorial volume, "The Hispanic Society of America," describes his travels there: "Travel in Spain at that time was not easy, and the young Hispanist with his photographic equipment made long and often tiring journeys in northern Spain, tramping on foot, riding on muleback, or jolting along in a stagecoach from one remote town to another." He mixed with the people of the villages, and per- fected his command of the Spanish language until "Spaniards them- selves spoke of his enviable superiority." He was also busy keeping a notebook, out of which his first published work, "A Notebook in Northern Spain," was to come. He returned to the country a number of times in the years which followed, and few natives ever acquired as extensive a first-hand knowledge of its various provinces.
In his youth he set himself the task of translating Spain's great epic, "Poema del Cid." The work required ten years, but the result was hailed in Spain as well as in this country as a monumental literary achievement. A critic has commented, "Only with a perfect command of Old Spanish and Vulgar Latin, clear paleographic understanding, familiarity with preceding works on the poem, and great industry and painstaking, besides a flexible poetic talent, could a foreigner carry to completion a translation so faithful, so polished."
Concurrently he was developing his interest in art and archae- ology, and beginning to build up his collection of rare books and manuscripts. By 1904 he had a library of more than forty thousand
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volumes, of which many quite naturally were Spanish works, or con- cerned life in Spain. Accordingly he determined, in that year, to estab- lish a library and research center which would make this collection available to the public. The Hispanic Society of America was the result. In addition to the collection itself, he gave the new organiza- tion a liberal endowment of land and moncy. Connected with the deed of gift was provision for a free Spanish and Portuguese library in New York City, together with a muscum and cducational institution whose object was to be to study the Spanish and Portuguese languages, literature and history. Mr. Huntington himself served as its president for some years. The museum, constructed in Aububon Park, Ncw York, in 1904, is a memorial to Collis P. Huntington, and contains the largest collection of Hispanic material thus far brought together under one roof. There is a reference library of more than eighty thousand books relating to Spain, Portugal and Latin America, and including a large number of periodicals. The library contains about one hundred and seventy Spanish and other incunabula, beginning with the works of Lambert Palmart of Valencia, the earliest known printer of Spain; first editions of Spanish authors; ancient Hebrew and Spanish manuscripts; Vierge's "Don Quixote" illustrations; and many old maps, portolano charts and facsimiles. Paintings include canvases by Murillo, El Greco, Goya, Ribera, Morales, Zuloaga, So- rolla, Jiminez Aranda, Madrazo and Anglada, and there is a general collection of wood carvings, silver and iron work, ivory plaques, objects of Phoenician origin, neolithic and Roman pottery, Roman mosaics and objects of domestic use from the Roman Italica, cxampies of Buen Retiro ware, Hispano-Moresque plaques, "Azuejos," or iri- descent tile. There is also a numismatic collection of rare completeness, comprising, according to a source quoted in a Society publication, "the entire coinage of the Iberian Peninsula and of its rulers beyond its land and sea frontiers from the time of the early Greek colonics down to the birth of the independent republics of Latin America . .. The assemblage is as nearly complete as any single coin collection can be." The Society has issued several hundred publications, includ- ing an official periodical, Revue Hispanique.
In 1930, Mr. Huntington established another great cultural in- stitution, The Mariners' Museum at Newport News, Virginia. This contains exhibits of all typcs relating to nautical life: ship models; a collection of small craft from all parts of the world; navigational instruments; whaling and fishing equipment; armament; and ship's ornaments. There is a large collection of paintings and maps, prints,
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ceramics and glassware, and statuary, all relating to the sea. In 1930 he established Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, where a scuip- ture collection has been built up among surroundings of exceptional beauty. In 1950, Mr. Huntington deeded to the State of Connecticut seven hundred acres of land, situated near Redding, eventually to be used as a state park. Nor were Mr. Huntington's benefactions limited to the institutions which he founded. He was a beneficiary of the Numismatic Society, the American Geographical Society, the Heye Foundation for the American Indian, the Historical Society, the Amer- ican Museum of Natural History, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Asia Institute, Museum of the City of New York, San Francisco Palace of the Legion of Honor, and Yale University Mu- seum, besides many others. He rendered help to innumerable indivi- dual scholars here and abroad. Remarks Arthur Upham Pope regard- ing his benefactions: "No list of his immense and widespread bene- factions is available. It is known that in his lifetime he gave away more than fifty million dollars, and he gave it not through advice of committees, not with any apparatus of interlocking memoranda or through institutions, but entirely on his own conscientious and pene- trating judgment. At no time did he ever use the services of public relations 'experts.' Has such a record of an individual's benefactions been equalled?"
Mr. Huntington was not without business experience. In fact, on one occasion when he concentrated his attention on an important transaction, he achieved gratifying success. The Newport News Ship- building Company, one of the enterprises built up by his father, had to be sold, and by concentration and skill, Archer M. Huntington disposed of the industrial property for twice the amount which his business advisers had thought possible.
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