USA > New Jersey > New Jersey first citizens : biographies and portraits of the notable living men and women of New Jersey with informing glimpses into the state's history and affairs, 1917-1918, Vol. I > Part 22
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system. He was also of the Special Committee that drafted the Civil Service law. On the floor of the Senate in 1909 he was party leader ; and, when President Robbins resigned to accept a state office, Senator Freling- huysen was elected to succeed him in the chair. He has been President of the Board of Agriculture since 1912; and. Governor Wilson having in 1911 appointed him a member of the new State Board of Education, he be- came President of the Board in 1915.
In two campaigns Senator Frelinghuysen had been prominently men- tioned in connection with the nomination for Governor. Illness in Chicago prevented him from making an active canvass on the first occasion ; and on the second he resisted the pressure of his friends to put him into the race. When the State primaries for the nomination of a Republican candidate for United States Senator loomed up in 1916, Senator Frelinghuysen entered the list as an aspirant against Ex-Governor Franklin Murphy and secured the nomination. The movement in the East on election day was strongly towards the Republican party, and Senator Frelinghuysen achieved his elec- tion to the United States Senate. His majority over United States Sena- tor James E. Martine who was standing for re-election was about 75,000.
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Senator Frelinghuysen is a member of the New York Chamber of Com- merce, New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce, Down Town Association, Raritan Valley Grange No. 153, the Union League Club of New York, the Somerville Board of Trade, Solomon's Lodge No. 46, F. and A. M., Somer- ville Lodge No. SS5, B. P. O. E., and is trustee of the Somerset Hospital.
GEORGE WARREN FULLER-Summit .- Sanitary Engineer. Born in Franklin, Mass., on December 21, 1868; son of George Newell and Harriet M. (Craig) Fuller; married to Charlotte, daughter of John W. and Augusta ( Hotchkiss) Todd.
Children : Myron E. : Kemp G .; and Asa.
George W. Fuller has been associated in this state with a number of important sanitary projects including the Passaic Valley trunk sewer, the joint trunk sewer in the Plainfield district and improvements in the water supply for Jersey City. He has been active too in other important cities in the country. The problems surrounding sewage and water purification are those to which he has given most attention.
Mr. Fuller is of ancient English ancestry on his father's side, the foun- der of the American branch of the family having settled in this country in 1642. In Dedham, Mass., where the original American homestead was located, the Ful- lers are connected with the Met- calf and other families notable in that locality. On his mother's side, the Craigs, of Scotch de- scent, have their American foun- dation at Worcester, Mass., and are related to the Warren and Green families and others prom- inent in that state.
After attending the public schools in his native town, Mr. Fuller took a course at the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technolo- gy; and, graduating from there in 1890, crossed the seas to study at Berlin University. a celebrat- ed German institution of higher learning. There he specialized in sanitary science and attended lectures of eminent specialists including, among others, Piefke, famous among Germany's sanitary engin- eers. Upon his return to these shores he was placed in charge, at Lawrence. of the Massachusetts State Board of Health's Experiment Station there and made valuable investigations into sewage and water purification prob- lems. Four years afterwards he had charge, in Cincinnati and Louisville,
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of works for the purification of the waters of the Ohio. In 1899 he settled in New York City to attend to a rapidly growing private practice. He gives his attention chiefly to water works valuations, adjustments of water rates and sewage disposal problems ; and has been an adviser of sanitary engineering matters for many municipal projects including. among others, those at New Haven, New York, Washington, Buffalo, Columbus, Indian- apolis, Minneapolis, Grand Rapids, Evanston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Louis- ville, New Orleans and Montreal.
Mr. Fuller is a member of the Engineers, Machinery and Old Colony Clubs of New York, the Technology Club of Boston, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Consulting Engineers, the American Chemical Society, the American Water Works Association, the American Public Health Association and the American Society of Bacterio- logists, etc.
EDMUND LE BRETON GARDNER-Ridgewood .- Corporation President. Born at Brookline, Mass., November 7, 1851; son of George A. and Mary C. (Le Breton ) Gardner; married at New York City, November 21, 1887, to H. Louise Sprague, daughter of John H. and Henrietta Prall Sprague, of New York.
Children : Adelaide, born 1SSS; Prescott, born 1893.
Edmund Le B. Gardner is Governor of the Society for Useful Manufac- tures, which at one time controlled all of the water shed in the North section of New Jersey. He is of English Scotch and French descent, and graduated from Cornell University in 1875. After graduation he returned to Cornell University as an instructor, and became subsequently an assis- tant professor .- leaving Cornell in the Spring of 1880, to become engineer and manager of the Dundee Water Power and Land Company. Interested still later in the woolen manufacturing business, he created the Algonquin Company, at Passaic. In 1895 he was with the New Jersey General Security Company and the East Jersey Water Company, being made Comptroller of the East Jersey Water Company, and his general interest in the water business has since grown to its present dimensions.
Mr. Gardner, besides being Governor of the S. U. M., is President of the Passaic Water Company, of the Acquacknonk Water Company, East Jersey Water Company, Jersey City Water Supply Company, Kearney Wa- ter Company, Massillon Water Company, Lincoln Water & Light Com- pany, Circleville Water Company. Vice President New Jersey General Security Company, Treasurer of the Montclair Water Company, Vice Presi- dent of the Dundee Water Power & Land Company and of the Paterson Savings Institution.
Mr. Gardner is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Society of Colonial Wars of New Jersey. the Society of Founders and Pa- triots, the Mayflower Society and the Society of Sons of Colonial Gover- nors. His club memberships are with the Union League, University and Cornell University of New York, the Arcola, the Hamilton of Paterson, the
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Ridgewood Country Club, the Automobile of America (N. Y.) and the North Jersey Auto Club.
JOHN J. GARDNER-Egg Harbor .- Statesman. Born in At- lantic county, on October 17, 1845; son of John and Jane Gard- ner ; married at Philadelphia, on February 1st, 1873, to Mittie Scull, daughter of Andrew and Mary Scull.
Children : Six children, two living, Josephine Scull and Thomas Kemble Reed.
John J. Gardner has been for forty years one of the large figures in New Jersey politics and in the statesmanship of the country. His service of fifteen years in the New Jersey State Senate made him one of the legis- lative land marks. He was regarded for many years as one of the most powerful men that had ever come to the State House; and his caustic oratory made him an adversary that the strongest of his colleagues was reluctant to meet. His Senate work was all notable; but the most memorable of its features was the expose, as chairman of a Senate investigating commit- tee, of the historical ballot box frauds in Hudson county. The magnitude of the majority that had been cast in that county for Leon Abbett as the demo- cratic candidate for Governor in the campaign of 1883, aroused suspicions of irregularities in the poll and in the count of the vote there: and the Senate ap- pointed a committee, with full power, to make an inquiry. Sen- ator Gardner was at its head. and the most surprising dis- closures resulted.
The testimony, largely un- covered by the efforts of Wil- liam H. Corbin, the committee's counsel, showed that all the election officers in the county had been engaged in a conspiracy to juggle with the ballot boxes and miscount and mistally the vote so as to produce a fore-ordained majority for the democratic can- didate. In spite of the revelations of systematic and universal frauds, the local grand jury, drawn by a sheriff who was in sympathy with the elec- tion officers, hesitated to indict those who had been guilty, and it was only when Dr. Leonard J. Gordon of Jersey City, as grand jury Foreman, took the matter into his own hands and rushed bills, that, under pressure had been voted with the idea of reconsidering them, into Justice Knapp's hands,
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that the guilty poll men were brought to the bar. As the result of the trials, conducted by Charles H. Winfield as Prosecutor, sixty-four members of the ballot booth boards were convicted and served terms in the State prison.
The splendid work done by Senator Gardner and his Committee, point- ed him out as a more commanding figure then ever in the affairs of the state, and in 1892 the republicans of the second district gave him the nom- ination for Congress. He became a member of the fifty-third congress that began its sitting in Washington in March of '93. and was re-elected for the nine terms succeeding, closing his service at the National Capitol in March of 1913. In congress Mr. Gardner did not make frequent display of his forensic power, having early discovered that those who made national reputations by talking. were not the men who wrote legislation. But when occasion seemed to demand it, he spoke, and was widely quoted on the tariff and free silver questions. When the House of Representatives was in a state of great excitement over the Bristow Report on Postal matters, Mr. Gardner, against the advice of friends who took the matter very seri- ously, ridiculed the report and its effect on Congress for ten minutes and little more was ever heard of the, now forgotten. Bristow Report. When it had became a habit for members of the House from certain sections to aim sarcesm at items in the River and Harbor Bill for the improvement of small New Jersey streams, Mr. Gardner spoke for ten minutes in defence of the item for Raccoon Creek. in answer to the attack of a southwestern gentleman. The items were not attacked again while Mr. Gardner was in Congress. When the magazines and press generally, were landing the Canadian Postal system and criticising ours, in comparison, Mr. Gardner spoke for an hour or more on the Canadian Postal service and that system has not since been held up as a model for this country.
Made Chairman of the House Committee on Labor, he came to be recognized as a national authority on labor problems. In 1898 Speaker Reed appointed him a member of the United States Industrial Commission to inquire into the relations between Capital and Labor, and to find a method for the adjustment of their differences. That commission made its report to Congress in twenty volumes of testimony and recommendations. and its work is regarded as of equal value with that of the Royal Commis- sion that had previously gone over the same ground for the British House of Parliament.
In Congress Mr. Gardner was always a supporter of the agricultural in- terests and opposed President Taft's Reciprocity Treaty with Canada. He was a member of the Post Office Committee for twenty years and here his greater work was done. He served for three years on the commission to investigate the postal service. Every postal reform of recent years is based on the report of that commission. He wrote the vital parts of the law creating postal savings banks which stands substantially without an amendment and without criticism of its structure. There was difficulty in framing terms for the rental by the government of postal facilities in the great railroad terminals. Mr. Gardner was called upon to write the statute still in force. He also wrote the national eight-hour and the prison labor laws on lines that have been adopted by all subsequent committees. He has secured post office buildings for Atlantic City. Bridgeton. Millville and
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Burlington and had others in progress. He secured the improvement of Maurice and Mantua Rivers, Tuckerton and Absecon Creeks, the Ran- cocas and Absecon Inlet - the latter against great opposition from several sources. He and Senator Briggs, secured the improvement of the Delaware from Trenton to Philadelphia, Mr. Gardner having begun this work and had small appropriations made for it while Trenton was in his district. The investigation of the World's Postal Saving Bank systems led him into the matter of Land Banks - they being in some countries related to each other He was formulating a Land Bank System when he left Congress. When the "Spanish War" broke out Mr. Gardner sought to exchange his seat in Congress for a commission, but the war did not become strenuous enough to require the service of men not in the military organizations.
Congressman Gardner has spent all his life in the county in which he was born ; and his acquaintance with its people furnishes him with an exhaustness repertoire of home character sketches that he portrays with quite the same skill orally that Mary Wilkins Freeman exhibits in her pen portrait of her neighbors. He was reared as a water man till he was six- teen years of age; then, in Sept., 1861, he enlisted for three years in the Sixth New Jersey Volunteers and in March, 1865, re-enlisted for one year in the United States Veteran Volunteers. He was an Alderman in Atlantic City in 1867 ; Mayor there in '6S,-'69 .- '70, '73-'74 and '76. His first election to the New Jersey State Senate was achieved in 1878, and in 1883 he was President of the body. He was a commanding figure in all the State Conven- tions of the republican party for more than a quarter century and in 1884 was a Delegate at-Large to the Republican National Convention at Chicago.
He has been engaged in the real estate business, but has been a farmer nearly all his mature life in connection with his other activities. He now farms more than 500 acres of land. At one time he was an editorial writer for a newspaper and much quoted.
HOWARD R. GARIS-Newark .- Author and Newspaper man. Born at Binghamton, N. Y., on April 25, 1873; son of Simeon H. and Ellen A. (Kimball) Garis; married at Newark, on April 26, 1900, to Lillian C. McNamara, daughter of Roger and Winifred McNamara, of Cleveland. O.
Children : Roger, born Sept. 10, 1901; Cleo, born June 30, 1905.
Howard R. Garis is author of the "Uncle Wiggily" and "Daddy" series and other "Bed Time" stories that have appeared in the "Home Column" of some newspapers. Among his other works are "The King of Unadilla," "The White Crystals," "The Isle of Black Fire," "From Office Boy to Re- porter." He is also a prolific writer of stories for juvenile readers.
Mr. Garis was educated in the private and public schools of Svracuse, the Newark High School and the East Syracuse Academy up to 1890. He later went to the Stevens Preparatory School. When he left there, he be- came connected with the "Newark Evening News" as reporter and special writer and is still holding that position.
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Mr. Garis is a member of the Roseville Athletic Club and of the Authors League of America.
CHARLES G. GARRISON-Merchantville .- Jurist. Born in Swedesboro, Gloucester County, August 3, 1849; son of Rev. Joseph Fithian Garrison.
Charles G. Garrison has been a Justice of the Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey since 1SSS. He was named to succeed Joel Parker who, previously to his service, on the bench, had been New Jersey's war Governor and who subsequently served a second term in that office. Jus- tice Garrison is a brother of Lindley M. Garrison, who was Secretary of War under President Wilson ; their father was a professor in a Philadel- phia College for many years and a widely known minister of the Protes- tant Episcopal Church. Justice Garrison was educated in Edgehill School, Princeton, at the Episcopal Academy, Philadelphia, and, entering the University of Pennsylvania with a view to the study of medicine, graduated from there in 1872.
He had practiced that profession at Swedesboro but four years when he resolved to become a lawyer, and entered the office of Samuel H. Grey of Camden, who at the time of his death was Attorney General of the State. He was admitted to the Bar in 1878. Six years later he became Judge Advocate General of New Jersey. Governor Green in 1SSS nom- inated him to the State Senate as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and the confirmation came promptly. Governors Werts, Murphy, Fort and Fielder renominated him for successive seven year terms, in 1895, 1902, 1909, 1916. Since 1882 Justice Garrison has been Chancellor of the Southern Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church of New Jersey.
Justice Garrison is a democrat in politics. His circuit covers Atlantic and Gloucester counties.
ALFRED GASKILL-Princeton .-- Forester. Born in Philadel- phia, Pa., November 6, 1861; son of Joshua W. and Caroline E. C. (Lippincott) Gaskill; married at Peterboro, N. H., on May 19, 1906, to Marion E. Nickerson, daughter of Theodore and Kate M. Nickerson, of West Newton, Mass.
Children : Margaret N., born August 31, 1907.
Alfred Gaskill comes of Quaker parentage, and his education was ac- quired partly in public schools and partly in the Friends Central School of the city of his birth. When he was twenty years of age he came to Cumberland County where, at Millville, he rose to be Superintendent of one of the large glass-blowing establishments. After a service of ten years there he continued in the glass manufacturing business in Philadelphia. In
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1898 he decided to give up that line of work that he might devote himself to the study and practice of Forestry. The field at that time was a new one ; he pursued his studies for three years in North Carolina, at Harvard University, at the University of Munich, and in the organized forests of Europe.
In 1901 he entered the United States Forest Service and remained five years. He devoted his attention chiefly to forest fires and to sylvicultural problems. In February, 1907, he was offered the position of Forester to the Forest Park Reservation Commission of New Jersey, and through that position became State Forester. When the state departments were re- organized under the Economy and Efficiency acts of 1915, and the Forest and allied interests were centered in the Department of Conservation and Development, he was chosen by the Governing Board as its executive Direc- tor. He holds that position, along with that of State Forester.
Mr. Gaskill is a democrat in politics and a member of the Society of · American Foresters, member of the Association of Eastern Foresters, (Chairman), of the American Forestry Association, (Director), and of the Washington Academy of Sciences.
FREDERICK TAYLOR GATES-Montclair, (66 South Moun- tain Avenue.)-Born in Maine, Broome County, N. Y., July 2, 1853; son of Granville and Sara J. (Bowers) Gates; married on March 3, 1886, to Emma L. Cahoone, of Racine, Wisconsin.
Frederick T. Gates, whose father was a clergyman and who was for a few years in early life himself a minister of the Gospel, is one of the con- fidential advisers of John D. Rockefeller in the distribution of his various charities and the establishment of his several foundations.
Dr. Gates graduated from the University of Rochester with the degree of A. B. in 1877, was awarded the A. M. degree in 1899 and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Fraternity of the University. Entering Rochester Theological Seminary, he graduated from there in 1890; and, ordained to the ministry the same year, became pastor of the Central Church in Minne- apolis, Minn. He served in that pulpit till, in 1SSS, he became executive head of the American Baptist Education Society.
Dr. Gates became business and benevolent representative of Mr. J. D. Rockefeller in 1893, and served in that capacity till 1912. He is Chairman of the General Education Board (Rockefeller Foundation) and also Presi- dent of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and member or officer of various other business or philanthropic organizations. He was given the degree of L.L. D. by the University of Chicago in 1911.
GEORGE W. F. GAUNT-Mullica Hill .- Farmer. Born in Mantua Township, Gloucester county, September 8, 1865; son of
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John and Elizabeth C. Gaunt; married at Camden, on December 5. 1SSS, to Anna G. West, daughter of Alfred R. and Phebe G. West. Children : J. Webber, born March 4, 1SS7.
George W. F. Gaunt is a Director of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, and one of the commanding figures in the National Grange, having been High Priest. the most distinguished position within the gift of the Grange. He had previously served for four years as Lecturer of the Na- tional Grange, and in 1913 he was re-elected to the position for a term of two years. The rapid growth of the State Grange during his incumbency as Master has been largely due to his executive skill and energy. In the sixteen years of his chief-ship its member roll has increased from 3,000 to 25,000. His office in the Federal Reserve Bank was created by President Wilson's National Reserve system law, and Senator Gaunt's election was made by the 264 banks in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware that are within the Philadelphia Reserve Bank group. In 1915 he was re-elected for a second term of three years.
He had been frequently heard in the Halls at Trenton in committee hearings on matters effecting the husbandry of the state before Grange in- fluences brought him into politics. In 190S he was elected to the New Jersey State Senate and was particularly active in promoting public utility measures, in the Cold Storage Commission and in that on Tuberculosis in Animals and sponsors as well for much of the "Good Road" and Automo- bile Legislation during his incumbancy. The act limiting grants of public franchises to fifty year terms, as against perpetuity, was introduced by him and provoked one of the most exciting discussions in the recent his- tory of the Legislature. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1911 and again in 1914; and has served on many of the most important of the Senate com- mittees. When Senator William T. Read resigned the Senate Presidency in March, 1916, to become Treasurer of the State. Senator Gaunt was advanced to the position and he served as Senate President in 1917 also. During an absence of the Governor from the state on a trip west, he served as acting Governor. In 1917 Governor Edge appointed him a member of the new State Highway Commission.
Senator Gaunt was born on the "Homestead Farm" near Mullica Hill. He had occupied it until March. 1901, when he purchased it. He was ed- ucated in the public schools of the county and graduated from the Deptford School at Woodbury.
Senator Gaunt was a delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1912. is a Mason and connected with other secret organizations.
JOHN PALMER GAVIT - Englewood. - Editor and Writer. Born at Albany, N. Y .. on July 1, 1868; son of Joseph and Fanny Breese (Palmer) Gavit ; married at Rondout, N. Y., on May S, 1890, to Lucy, daughter of the Rev. Thomas and Caroline D. (Jayne) Lamont.
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Children : Joseph Lamont, born at Chicago, Ill., December S, 1898.
John P. Gavit's connection with the newspaper profession has been almost continuous since 1883, when he began to devote spare hours to it in the business office of the "Albany Evening Journal." With the excep- tion of an interval of several years of social settlement and industrial wel- fare work, he has been active in journalism, and is now managing editor of the "New York Evening Post," and a trustee and secretary of the cor- poration which publishes that newspaper and "The Nation." He is the author of "The Reporter's Manual," a handbook for newspaper men, and is particularly interested in the sex instruction of children and in social hy- giene generally, being a member of the board of directors of the New York Social Hygiene Society.
Mr. Gavit received his education in the Albany public schools, graduat- ing from the Albany High School in 1886, and pursued during some eight years special studies, chiefly sociological, in Hartford and Chicago Theo- logical Seminaries (Congregational). He has been connected with news- papers in Albany and Hartford, Conn., but the larger part of his journalis- tic career was in the service of The Associated Press, in which he was Albany correspondent, Day Manager at New York, Chief of the Washington Bureau and Superintendent of the Central Division with headquarters at Chicago. For the "Evening Post" he has served as Albany legislative and political correspondent, Washington correspondent and has been managing editor since 1913. In 1896, while in residence at the Chicago Commons social settlement, he founded and was for five years editor of "The Com- mons," organ of the international social settlement movement : the maga- zine later was absorbed in what is now "The Survey."
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