USA > New Jersey > Essex County > Newark > Biographical and genealogical history of the city of Newark and Essex County, New Jersey, V. 1 > Part 15
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Pauw University, of Indiana, where he was graduated with the valedictorian honors of his class. He afterward went abroad and continued his studies in Berlin and Leipsic, Germany, and was graduated at Columbia College Law School, of New York, in 1884. He read law in the office of Mitchell & Mitchell, a prominent firm of that city, and in 1885 was admitted to the bar. The fol- lowing year he began practice on his own account and continued alone in business until 1890, when he entered into a profes- sional partnership, as a member of the firm of Wilcox & Barkley. Although one of the younger members of the bar of New York, his success as a corporation lawyer has been marked. In many of his most im- portant cases he has been arrayed against some of the oldest and ablest lawyers in the city. He spares neither time nor labor in his legal investigations. He discusses legal questions with a clearness of illustra- tion, a strength of argument, a fullness and variety of learning rarely equaled by one of his age and experience. He is the legal representative of many of the largest cor- porations in the city, among which may be mentioned the American Press Association, the largest newspaper corporation in the world, comprising ten thousand news- papers and having its various sub-compa- nies in fifteen different states. He was a director in this company until the pressure of an increasing practice made it necessary for him to give it up. He secured the adop- tion of favorable laws for American corpor- ations in Canada and argued successfully important cases in England, connected with the Thorne Type-Setting Machine Company.
In 1888 Mr. Wilcox took up his resi- dence in Montclair, and he has been ever
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active in advancing its interests. Probably the most important service that he has ren- dered to his fellow townsmen was the con- spicuous part he took, and the material aid which he gave, in the organization of the Montclair Bank. The first meeting of its projectors was held in his New York office, in Temple Court, where the preliminary steps were taken to insure its success. To his active efforts in its establishment, as well as those of his associates, the citizens of Montclair are indebted for one of the best and most successfully managed banking in- stitutions to be found in any suburban vil- lage or township in this part of the country. Mr. Wilcox was a subscriber to the original stock and has been a director since its or- ganization.
In 1884 Mr. Wilcox was united in mar- riage to Miss Mary Maul, daughter of Will- iam Garrison Maul, of Omaha, Nebraska, whose ancestors were among the early set- tlers of New Jersey. Uriah Maul, her great-grandfather, served throughout the war of the Revolution, in Captain Bloom- field's company, Third Battalion, First Es- tablishment; Captain Mott's company, Third Battalion, Second Establishment, Third Regiment ; also First Regiment. To Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox have been born two sons and a daughter,-Harold, in 1885, and Gladys, in 1890, and Paul, in 1897.
In 1888 Mr. Wilcox purchased the Bayles homestead, on Upper Mountain avenue, which is one of the most beautiful sites in the township, affording as it does one of the most extended views to be had from any point on the mountain. The main house, as it stood originally, is of brown stone of the early English style of archi- tecture. To this Mr. Wilcox has added a large extension, which is in rough cast
or cement, to correspond somewhat with the original design. The interior of the din- ing room, twenty by thirty feet, is made to correspond with the exterior, but is far more elaborate, being of the early English style, finished in antique oak, with which it is wainscoted in square panels, with heavy beam ceiling. The hospitable doors of this palatial home are ever open for the recep- tion of the many friends of the family. They are leaders in society circles and Mrs. Wil- cox is a lady of superior intellectual and musical gifts. She is a leading member of the Sorosis, before which she has often sung, and in its deliberations she is an active participant. Mr. Wilcox was one of the organizers and most active promoters of the Outlook Club, has served as a mem- ber of one of its committees from the begin- ning; in 1893 was elected its president and again holds the same position. He is presi- dent of the Montclair Club, which was or- ganized and incorporated in 1887, and has been equally active in advancing its inter- ests. He also belongs to the Montclair Golf Club, of which he is president, and the Montclair Athletic Club. One of the well known lawyers of New York, in private life he is a most pleasant, social and approach- able gentleman, who has won popularity and the high regard and warm friendship of all with whom he has been brought in contact.
TIMOTHY BURNET.
It is not necessary that the man who achieves wealth be made of sterner stuff than his fellow men, but there are certain indispensable characteristics that contrib- ute to the prosperity of the individual, and these are energy, enterprise, determination
Timothy, Burnet
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and the ability to recognize and improve opportunities. These qualities are cardinal elements in the character of Mr. Burnet and have accompanied him in his progress from a humble station in life to one of prominence and affluence.
Mr. Burnet was born in Union county, New Jersey, on the 18th of December, 1809, a son of John Oliver and Hannah (Miller) Burnet, who were natives of this state and were of English descent. The first settle- ment of the Burnet family in America was made on Long Island in colonial days. The mother of our subject died in January, 1812, and the father passed away some years later. During his early youth Timothy Bur- net went to live with Amos Day, a butcher, in whose home he was treated as a son of the family and with whom he remained until „ Mr. Day's death. He drove a meat wagon to Newark when that now flourishing city was a mere hamlet, and carried the mail from Camptown to Newark on his wagon. In 1837 he embarked in the meat-market business on his own account and followed that pursuit for twenty years with excellent success. He began operations on a small scale, for his capital was limited, and with the aid of a small boy did his own butcher- ing. As the years passed his financial re- sources largely increased, and in 1857 he turned his attention to agricultural pursuits, establishing a home at his present place of residence. He at first had only six acres of land, but from time to time he extended the boundaries of his farm until it now comprises one hundred acres of good land under a high state of cultivation. His land fronts on Springfield for a mile and is a very valuable property, yielding to him rich re- turns.
In 1837 Mr. Burnet was united in mar-
riage to Miss Sarah Petty of Morris county. Two children were born to them, but one died in infancy. The daughter, Ann Au- gusta, since her mother's death, which oc- curred in June, 1876, has superintended the household affairs for her father.
Mr. Burnet attends the Presbyterian church and is a liberal contributor to its support. He cast his first presidential vote for General Andrew Jackson and has since been an advocate and supporter of the prin- ciples of Democracy. His life has been well spent in conformity with the rules of moral conduct, and his business and social associ- ates entertain for him the highest regard. He has now reached the advanced age of eighty-eight years and his is an honored old age, for his many excellent qualities have gained for him the unqualified regard and esteem of those with whom he has been brought in contact.
HAYWARD A. HARVEY.
Grand achievements always excite ad- miration. The men of deeds are the men the world delights to honor. He who con- ceives new things and fashions them into shape is a creator. He who, out of the material which is within his reach, and with the resources at his command, brings into being that which adds to the comfort and happiness of man, and which before had no existence, is following in the footsteps of the great Architect of all things. All the countless and useful inventions, all the wonderful structures which have ever ex- isted or which now exist on the face of the earth, lived first in the minds of men. How to bring them out and give them form and substance were the problems which were to be solved. Men studied the fields and
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the forests, and brought their products into their workshops. They brought to their aid the air, the earth, the sea, fire and water, wind and wave and subtle vapor, the timber from the forests, the rocks from the hills, the ores from their hidden caverns, and even the lightning from the skies, and from them, or by their aid, they fashioned or wrought into shapes and forms of beau- ty or utility the wonderful creations which their imaginations had conceived. He who serves is royal. Among those who have stood as distinguished types of the world's workers and who have introduced new eras of thought by inventions of great utility, no one is more worthy of honorable men- tion than the subject of this memoir, the late Hayward A. Harvey, of Orange, New Jersey. There is an element of peculiar in- terest in his career, since it was his to in- , herit the talents and the genius, as it were, of a distinguished father and to carry for- ward a great work initiated by the latter. It is singularly true that if any scion of a house still honored rises to greatness, he will have achieved it. He will not be born to it or find it thrust upon him, but he must be great indeed to overcome the dis- advantage of standing in the shadow of the colossal dead. As the inventor of the Har- vey process for hardening steel plate, the reputation of Mr. Harvey has extended throughout the civilized world. To the people of Orange, where he lived and lab- ored to goodly ends during a period of more than a quarter of a century, he was known as a quiet, modest, unassuming citi- zen and as a man animated by the deepest sincerity and one fortified by impregnable integrity. Thus to the man and his works all honor is due.
Hayward Augustus Harvey was born in
Jamestown, New York, on the 17th of Jan- uary, 1824, the son of General Thomas W. and Matilda (Hayward) Harvey, both of whom were natives of the old Green Moun- tain state. The original American pro- genitor in the agnatic line was William. Harvey, who was one of the prominent members of the Massachusetts colony, the direct ancestral line tracing from him through Thomas, William, Jonathan, Rufus, and Thomas W., the last named be- ing the father of the immediate subject of this review. Thomas William Harvey was a brigadier-general in the old New York militia, having come originally from Wards- boro, Vermont, and having become one of the earliest settlers in Jamestown, New York. He was a thoroughly skilled me- chanician and was exceedingly prolific as. an inventor, and as his son has said of him,. , "his work was a continual unfolding of fu- ture possibilities." As touching his more important work we cannot, perhaps, do better than to make excerpt from an arti- cle published in the Engineering and Min- ing Journal, under date of September 2, 1893:
"His inventions included many mechan- isms which are to-day in operation all over the world. He was a pioneer in automatic pin machinery and screw machinery, into which he introduced the toggle joint and cam movement, which gave to so many machines their almost human capacity of operation. He was the inventor of the gimlet-pointed screw. He made many in- ventions in connection with the manufac- ture of pins, screws, spikes, haircloth and type molding. He was, perhaps, the first to depart in steel manufacture from the old blister or cement process, and to introduce the crucible steel. Further than this, and
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perhaps even more striking, is the fact that in 1842 he ran all the machinery in his ma- chine shop in New York city by a mag- neto-electric engine. In this, however, he was in advance of his times, as nothing was then known of the modern dynamo, and it required an enormous number of batter- ies to run his engine. His inventions acted as great educational forces in the mechanical world, and attracted much at- tention from mechanics and mechanical engineers of that day. He was invited to lecture on the subject of the cam before the American Institute, of which he was one of the founders, and at one time the president. He was well known as an in- vestor in and promoter of mining and other enterprises. General Harvey moved from Jamestown to Ramapo in 1833 and to Poughkeepsie in 1836. The names of the Harveys, father and son, are very closely connected with the manufacture of wood screws in this country. General Harvey had carried on the manufacture of wood screws in a small way at Ramapo and Montgomery, New York. This was con- tinued at Poughkeepsie, the first patents being granted to General Harvey in 1836, in which year the Poughkeepsie Screw Company was organized. Before General Harvey's inventions the operation of screw-making was very crude, the blanks being put in and taken out one by one, and the cutting tool operated by hand. By General Harvey's first improvement the operation was made partially automatic. The blanks were still supplied one by one, but the operation of the cutting tools was regulated and adjusted by the machine it- self. Although the gimlet-pointed screw is generally supposed to be a comparative- ly modern invention, yet the first screws
offered by General Harvey in the market in New York were gimlet-pointed and were so named by him. General Harvey also first introduced machines for shaving screw-heads, and the chaser tool in place of the cutting dies previously employed. In 1839 the Poughkeepsie company sold out to a company organized at Somerville, New Jersey, and screws were first made in Providence about 1840. In 1842 General Harvey began the experiments which made the screw machines entirely auto- matic, introducing self-feeding of blanks, etc. Patents on this machinery were taken out in 1846. In 1844 the New York Screw Company was organized, with General Harvey as president. In 1849 the Somer- ville company was reorganized, buying the machinery of Thomas W. Harvey and of a small concern at Schenectady, and taking the name of the Union Screw Company."
General Harvey was devoted to his pro- fession and continued to be identified with practical inventive work and concomitant industrial enterprises until death brought his honorable and useful career to a close. He was a strong man, a great man and a good man, and the heritage which he left to his son, who was destined to equal honors and perhaps greater accomplish- ments, was one that did not fall short of appreciation. General Harvey died at Canaan, Connecticut, on the 5th of June, 1854, an honored citizen and a conspicu- ous figure in the industrial world.
As a boy of twelve years, Hayward A. Harveyaccompanied his parents on their re- moval from Poughkeepsie, New York, and here he secured effective educational dis- cipline in a local academy and later contin- ued his studies in the academy at New Paltz, New York. He early manifested a
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distinct predilection for theoretical and ap- plied mechanics, and after leaving school he was permitted to follow his natural tastes and to stand on high vantage ground, by reason of the opportunities which his dis- tinguished father could offer to him. En- tering his father's shops at Poughkeepsie, he devoted his attention to learning draft- ing and thoroughly familiarizing himself with the various technicalities of mechani- cal engineering. His individual powers soon gained him recognition and would have insured his consecutive advancement, even had he not been reinforced by the deep in- terest and fostering encouragement of his father. As touching his early career it is necessary at this juncture to revert only to the more salient points. He was for a time employed as a draftsman in the shops of the New York Screw Company, of which his father was president, and in 1850 he was placed in charge of the wire department of the Union Screw Company, at Somer- ville. In 1852 he became associated with his father in the Harvey Steel & Iron Com- pany, of Mott Haven, New York, and in 1854, which year marked the death of his father and the dissolution of the company mentioned, our subject went to Canaan, Connecticut, where he for a time conducted steel works, operations here being largely of an experimental nature. During the next decade his attention was mainly di- rected to developing many of his father's unfinished inventions and projects, and the work could not have been entrusted to more capable and more discriminating hands. Within the period mentioned he maintained at intervals intimate relations with the American Screw Company, of Providence, contributing largely to the ex- tending of productive facilities in the line,
by means of improved machinery and man- ipulating devices which improved also the practical value of the output. He had been associated with his father in the founding of the Wamgum Steel Company, of Con- necticut, where his experiments were con- tinued, as noted. In 1865 he founded, in Jersey City, the Continental Screw Com- pany, which acquired the right and title to Mr. Harvey's first patents on screw ma- chinery, covering the entire process of wood-screw manufacturing. This company was in a short time assimilated by the American Screw Company, of which Mr. Harvey continued a stockholder. From 1870 to 1890 Mr. Harvey gave unremitting attention to the designing of new machin- ery for the making of screws, bolts, wire nails, washers, spiral springs and other arti- cles of kindred nature. The most notable of his inventions within this score of years is what is known as the rolled-thread screw. Instead of cutting the screw thread into the wire, Mr. Harvey devised the meth- od of cold-forging the thread partly into it, partly upon the surface of the wire itself, also giving to the screws a sharp central point, which improvement, as taken in con- nection with the large thread and small neck, with incidental saving in the weight of material employed, made the article pro- duced one of such absolute superiority over all others that the leading screw manufac- turers of the world were practically com- pelled to ward off a disastrous competition by the one method of recourse-the pur- chase of the Harvey patents. Thus the American Screw Company, of Providence, Rhode Island, and the Nettlefolds, of Eng- land, acquired these valuable and revolu- tionizing patents in the year 1886.
The wonderful inventive fecundity of Mr.
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Harvey was shown in many valuable devices which have come into use the world over. Among the more important of these may be mentioned the so-called grip bolt, which is used in securing the fish plates on many of the principal railroad lines of the country and which effectually does away with nut locks. To meet a certain prejudice among many engineers and master mechanics of railroads in favor of a washer or nut-lock of some kind, Mr. Harvey showed the fertility of his inventive genius by the invention of a device which met the demand and still did not compel him to sacrifice the original principle involved in his grip bolt. He in- vented the ribbed spiral washer, and this is now very extensively used, fully over- coming the objection made to the original device, though by no means a needed re- inforcement.
Mr. Harvey's career was one of consecu- tive progress and development and his pres- tige as an inventor was ever cumulative in character. To one of so deep intellectuality, maintained in equipoise with practical skill on the higher planes of mechanical applica- tion, expansion and growth must come in logical sequence. In later years he added most fully to his honors through his pe- culiarly original researches and experiments in connection with the tempering or hard- ening of steel-a process which still bears his name and which alone will perpetuate his fame through all the years to come. He inaugurated his experiments in this line in the early '80's and the history of the in- ception and progress of this series of in- vestigations and experiments is interesting in the extreme. At the time when the Har- vey Screw & Bolt Company was conducting operations he conceived the idea of produc- ing a bolt and nut of cast iron, with threads
partially impressed upon them in the mold, and then hardening or carbonizing the en- tire surfaces to give them the requisite toughness. The original experiment was a practical failure, and yet was full of sug- gestion and value as taken as the forerun- ner of other experiments which reached their denouement in most gratifying and magnificent success. This experiment, made in 1885, gave such peculiar results that it was noted in scientific and mechan- ical circles as indicative of a new discovery in the metallurgy of steel. Mr. Harvey was encouraged to continue his experimenta- tion, and he soon succeeded in producing from ordinary low-grade Bessemer steel a steel equal in every respect to the finest crucible or cast steel, the product being available for the manufacture of the finest steel tools, razors, knife blades, etc. Let- ters patent on the product and process were granted to Mr. Harvey in 1888, and works were established for the carrying on of the profitable industry made possible by his great discovery. The plant was originally located in Jersey City, but was eventually removed to Newark, where operations were conducted on a gigantic and ever widening scale. Mr. Harvey carried his invention to its broadest capacity for practical applica- tion, since his experiments were continued along the line of producing armor plate. eventuating in a complete revolution of this branch of the great steel industry of the world. The first armor plate was treated at the Newark works in 1890, and came forth victorious against the severest tests. The naval authorities of the national gov- ernment immediately took recognition of the new Harvey process and product, sub- jected the plate to tests which had no pre- cedent in severity, and conclusively proved
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the superiority of the Harvey plate over any other form, as touching the points of tough- ness and effectual resistance to impact. What more need be said than that the Harvey armor plate has been adopted unreservedly by the United States government and also, after fur- ther and most exacting tests, by all the governments of Europe? All of Mr. Harvey's inventions are covered by United States patents, and their number aggre- gates nearly one hundred and fifty-repre- senting a life work at once of great value and worthy of all praise. In 1889 Mr. Har- vey organized the Harvey Steel Company, of which he became president, being one of the largest stockholders in the magnificent enterprise controlled. He lived to enjoy the fruits of his earnest and indefatigable efforts, but ever bore himself with the un- pretentious modesty which typifies a great mind and a noble heart. Viewed from whatever standpoint, the life of Hayward A. . Harvey appears as successful as it was earn- est, honest and pure. His devotion to his applied science was supreme; to him no labor was too severe, no sacrifice too great, if thereby he could approach more nearly the ends sought. The researches he had already made, and much more that he had projected, involved the largest expenditure of his time and means, but such was his enthusiasm that he was never happier than when hard at work on some one of his valu- able experiments. His abilities were many- sided, and as has been well said of him: "He was emphatically a progressive man. When his mind was engaged in inventions it was difficult for him to stop; he always saw so much beyond. In making his in- ventions he usually declined to be guided by the experience of others. The fact that
some one had done a certain thing in a cer- tain way almost always made him reject that way and look for a path of his own. He was a singularly persuasive man, as he must needs be to get the attention and the confidence and support of prominent cap- italists, in which he was very successful. Although always a positive man, yet it is doubtful whether he left any enemies be- hind him, for his sympathetic and really lovable nature made him warm friends among all classes of men." He was affec- tionate, noble, just and generous; a thor- ough gentleman, with a quick and burning contempt for all shams and meanness; a friend most kind and sympathetic, helpful and brotherly; clear-headed, prudent and active in business; a man of the most re- fined and highest intellectual tastes and qualities; a lover of art and music and himself an accomplished musician,-in short, a man fortunate in the great re- sources which lay at his disposal, and in the wisdom to manage and use them well; in the lines he chose for his experimentation and investigation and in the complete suc- cess which he ultimately attained.
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