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 40
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Mr. Moore was educated in the public schools of Pennsylvania, the Moravian Parochial School, Ulrich's Preparatory School and Lehigh Uni- versity. He entered immediately into the employ of the United Edison
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Manufacturing Company, and for four years was in close touch with many of the largest early electric light installations on both land and sea. He also had charge of the installation and trial cruise of the first war vessel to be steered by electricity. He told of his experiences in an article published in Frank Leslie's Magazine in 1893. In 1894 he organized the Moore Electrical Company and later the Moore Light Company, and was Vice President and General Manager of both companies for eighteen years, at the end of which time the Moore Light interests were absorbed by the General Electric Company.
Mr. Moore early developed an absorbing interest in inventions. His first patent was granted to him in 1893. and since that time more than 100 additional inventions have been patented in the United States as well as in most all other civilized countries. For over 25 years he has been continu- ously active in a variety of ways that have been interesting to the public. A large number of his technical articles have been published, and he has presented to various scientific societies and colleges, many papers which have been translated into foreign languages. For many years he has been interested in the production of electric light by the flow of electricity through various gases. not through solid wires as is the case with the ordinary incandescent electric lamp.
Mr. Moore is widely known because of his having exhibited the Moore Light in its various stages of development at many electrical shows, and of his numerous scientific lectures in various parts of the country before such bodies as the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences, National Electric Light Association, American Electro-Chemical Society. Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, etc. Moore Light Companies were organized in France. Switzerland and Russia.
In 1893, Mr. Moore contributed to the transactions of the American In- stitute of Electrical Engineers, a paper on "A New Method for the Control of Electric Energy," and in 1894, "Cassier's Magazine," published his article entitled : "The Light of the Future," which was the first attempt to treat this subject in a concrete manner, and attracted wide attention. His paper in 1896, before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers on "Recent Developments in Vacuum Tube Lighting," excited much comment, so that a few months later, the "Moore Light" became the object of principal interest to thousands at New York's first Great Electrical Show at the Grand Central Palace. During the Electrical Show at Madison Square Garden in 1898, the "Moore Chapel," lighted with vacuum tubes aroused interest, as did some- what similar exhibitions in Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Later the long glass tubes of the Moore Light came into general commercial use.
Among the modified forms of the Moore Light exhibited at the Electrical Show in New York in 1916. were, a unit provided with Neon gas, and an- other using carbon dioxide gas, the color of the light of which is exactly the same as that of the best quality of daylight and it is therefore used as the standard of color values throughout the world, and is particularly valu- able to the great textile industry. In 1910, he was awarded by the City of Philadelphia, through the Franklin Institute, the John Scott medal and premium, and in 1912, Sir William Ramsay, the world's greatest chemist. presented Mr. Moore, in recognition of his work, with a very valuable bottle of Neon gas, the element which he has discovered.
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Mr. Moore is a member of a score of organizations and is a public spirited citizen. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, member and past Chairman of the Illuminating Engineering Society, the New York Electrical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a member of the Society of the War of 1812 and is Vice President of Orange Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution. He is a republican and a Presbyterian elder and is interested in all local movements from the schools, local option, the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts. etc., to the Home Guard.
Mr. Moore's office is at the General Electric Company, Harrison, (N. J.)
TALI ESEN MORGAN-Asbury Park .- Musical Conductor. Born in Llangynwyd, Wales, on October 28th, 1853; son of Thomas Llyfnwy and Gwen Morgan : married on January 31, 1881. to Mary J. Jones.
Tali Esen Morgan is widely known in the church world because of his long service as Conductor and Manager of the musical features that mark the great mid-summer camp meeting seasons at Ocean Grove. He has been in charge of the Ocean Grove festival since 1SSS. He is also the editor and publisher of the "American Musical Union."
Conductor Morgan was interested in music from his early childhood and was a musical conductor before he came to this country, settling in Scran- ton, Pa., in 1876. At Scranton until 1879 he was the publisher of the "Cam- bro-American" and for six years he edited "The People," the Pennsylvania State Prohibition organ. He established the National Press Bureau in New York in 1886, and a year later was engaged by Walter Demrosch in musical work and afterwards by Anton Seidl.
Mr. Morgan is conductor also of the New York Festival Chorus, Presi- dent of the International Correspondence School of Music at Asbury Park, an officer in the National Association of Organists and a 32nd degree Mason.
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DWIGHT WHITNEY MORROW-Englewood .- Lawyer. Born at Huntington, West Va., January 11, 1873; son of James E. and Clara (Johnson) Morrow : married on July 16, 1903, to Elizabeth Reeve Cutter, of Cleveland, O.
Children : Elizabeth, born 1904: Anne, born 1906; Dwight, Jr., born 1908; Constance, born 1913.
Dwight W. Morrow is a member of the banking firm of J. P. Morgan & Company, Wall Street, New York. He graduated from Amherst College in 1895, with the A. B. degree and from Columbia College in 1899, with the LL. B. degree. Entering the law office of Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett in New York immediately after his graduation from Columbia, he was ad- mitted as a member in 1905 and continued in that relation until 1914. His
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practice was in the large financial line and he became a member of the J. P. Morgan firm immediately after his retirement from the law firm.
Mr. Morrow is a Trustee of Amherst College, a Director of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, President of the Englewood Free Public Library and President of the Civic Association of Englewood. His club connections are with the University, Century, City and Metropolitan of New York and the Englewood Country.
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FRANKLIN MURPHY-Newark, (1027 Broad Street.)-Manu- facturer. Born at Jersey City, on January 3, 1846 ; son of William Hayes and Abby Elizabeth (Hagar) Murphy ; married at Newark, in 1868, to Janet Colwell; daughter of Israel D. and Catherine Gale (Hoagland) Colwell, of Newark. (Mrs. Murphy died in 1904.)
Children : Franklin Jr. ; Helen M., wife of William B. Kinney.
Franklin Murphy is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Murphy Varnish Company, one of the imposing manufacturing establishments of the country ; has been Governor of New Jersey, and, at the Republican National Convention of 1908, received 158 votes for Vice President of the United States ; has been a member for seventeen years of the Executive Committee of the National Republican Committee, a delegate to five Republican Na- tional Conventions, and up- on three occasions pressed by his friends for a seat in the United States Sen- ate ; and is a veteran of the Civil War.
Governor Murphy's father was a distinguished layman of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The first of his New Jersey ancestors came from Connecticut to Bergen county in 1766, and parti- cipated in the Revolution- ary War. Gov. Murphy was educated at the New- ark Academy but left school when only sixteen years of age to enlist as a private in Co. "A" Thir- teenth Regiment, New Jer- sey Volunteers. The Regi- ment was engaged in nine- teen battles-first with the Army of the Potomac and later with Sherman to Atlanta and the sea. Mustered out as First Lieutenant, after three years of service, at the close
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of the War, he entered the varnish business, and the Murphy Varnish Com- pany is the sequel.
With a taste for public affairs, Mr. Murphy entered politics, and from 1883 to 1886 was a member of the Newark Common Council, President of the body in the latter year. In the Council he was chiefly instrumental in improving the lighting and paving conditions in the city. While he was still serving there he was elected to the House of Assembly, in 1885. From 1886 to 1889 he was a Trustee of the Reform School for Boys at James- burg. A few years later he announced himself as an aspirant for the United States Senate. The candidacy was notable as the first challenge of Gen. William J. Sewell's long-time domination of the Republican party of the State. In 1901 he was unanimously nominated by the Republican State Convention for Governor and was elected over Seymour, Democrat, by 17,133 plurality.
Among the products of Governor Murphy's three year administration 'were the first primary law. the first child labor law, and the first law regu- lating ventilation in work shops, the tenement house commission act, an act establishing the Glen Garden Sanitarium for Tuberculosis patients, an act making the first appropriation for the erection of the Bordentown Industrial School for colored children, acts for the abolition of the fee system in state and county offices, one establishing a complete audit system of state expen- ditures and one compelling banks to pay interest on state deposits, from the last of which up to 1915 the state had realized $1,139,935.
The primary reform law was a particularly notable feature of Gov. Murphy's administration. The party organizations had been left free to pick their candidates as they saw fit. Interference with the machinery they set up to carry out their plans had the aspect of an interference with family affairs : and the legislatures had yielded to the theory that the men of the parties had a right to go about the selection of their nominees in their own way. Governor Murphy's insistment however that their organi- zations had become an integral part of the state's election machinery and should be taken under state supervision resulted in the law, requiring that the primaries proceed with the election offices of the state in charge of the voting booths, which is the foundation stone upon which all the primary re- forms made in later years in the nominating system, rest.
Governor Murphy was made a member of the Executive Committee of the Republican National Committee in 1900. President Mckinley had, two or three years previously, tendered him the Ambassadorship to Russia, but he declined it. though he later was appointed to represent the United States as Special Commissioner at the Universal Exposition at Paris. He has been as conspicuous in the civic life of the community as in its political life. A member of the Essex County Park Commission since 1895, the great system of county parks has been established at an expense of several mil- lions of dollars, all over the county, during his service : and. when the Citi- zens Committee of 100. appointed by Mayor Haussling for the preparation of a becoming six months festive observance of Newark's 250th birthday. organized in 1915, he was made its Chairman and devoted much of his time to its successful labors.
Governor Murphy has been a Trustee of the Drew ( Methodist) Theo- logical Seminary at Madison, a member and at one time President of the
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Board of Managers of the National Soldier's Home, Chairman of the Repub- lican State Committee for twenty years, and was the first President of the Newark Y. M. C. A. He is a member and was at one time President Gen- eral of the Sons of American Revolution and is a member of the Society of Colonial Wars, the Loyal Legion, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Society of the Cincinnati, and a Mason connected with Kane Lodge No. 55, and Damascus Commandery No. 5. He is an LL. D. of Lafayette and Princeton.
FRANKLIN MURPHY, Jr .- Newark .- Manufacturer. Born at Newark, on November 29th, 1873; son of Franklin and Janet (Colwell) Murphy ; married at Chicago, Ill., on October 17th, 1908, to Harriet Alexander Long, daughter of Eugene C. and Harriet (Alexander) Long.
Franklin Murphy, Jr., is President of the Murphy Varnish Company, in Newark, which his father, ex-Gov. Franklin Murphy (q. v.), founded and established. During his father's administration as Governor he was per- sonal aide on the Executive's military staff with the rank of Colonel.
Col. Murphy began his studies in the Newark Academy in 1882, in 1888 went to Lawrenceville School and in 1891 entered Princeton Universi- ty, graduating from there in 1895. After his graduation he became con- nected with the Murphy Varnish Company and for two years after 1896, was at its factory in Chicago. Returning to Newark in 1898, he continued his connection with the Company in various positions ; and, when his father re- tired as President of the Company in 1915, the Directors elected Col. Murphy to succeed him.
Col. Murphy is interested, besides, in the life of the community about him ; and among other activities he is Treasurer of the Board of Managers of the New Jersey State Charities Aid and Prison Reform Association.
Col. Murphy is a Director of the Manufacturers' National Bank. His club memberships are with the Essex and Down Town (Newark), the Union League (N. Y.). University (N. Y.), the Princeton (N. Y.) and the Somerset Hills Country (Bernardsville).
STARR JOCELYN MURPHY-Montclair, (20 Prospect Terrace.) -Lawyer. Born in Avon, Conn., on June 17, 1860; son of Elijah Douglas and Harriette Luceannah (Jocelyn) Murphy ; married at Montclair, on June 9, 1887, to Julia Brush Doubleday, daughter of John Mason Doubleday, of Montclair.
Children : Helen, born June 19, 1SSS; Margaret, born November 1, 1889; Dorothy Hobart, born May 30, 1893; Julia Mason, born December 12, 1894; Elizabeth Whiting, born March 29, 1897 ; Starr Jocelyn, Jr., born January 27, 1899.
Starr J. Murphy is the personal counsel and representative of John D. Rockefeller in his benevolences. He is a member of the Rockefeller Foun-
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dation, and of the General Education Board, and a Trustee of The Rocke- feller Institute for Medical Research.
Mr. Murphy's father was a clergyman, and he traces his descent back to Dr. Comfort Starr who came to this country in 1635. Removing from Avon, Conn., to Brooklyn, Mr. Murphy lived there and in New York City before he came to Montclair in 1887, to make his home. He was educated at the Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn and at Amherst College, and took a course in law at the Columbia University Law School. Upon his admission to the Bar of the State of New York in 1883, he began the practice of his profession there, and has since been identified with the Bar of that city.
Since he came to the State of New Jersey to live, Mr. Murphy has in- terested himself in the public life of the community so far as his business and professional engagements permit. He was a member of the Town Council of Montclair from 1895 to 1897. He served as a member of the Re- publican County Committee for six years, and for two terms as President of the Outlook Club. He is at present a member of the Executive Commit- tee and Treasurer of the Montclair Council of Defense.
Besides holding the organization relations already referred to, Mr. Murphy is a Director and Vice President of the American Linseed Com- pany, Director and Vice President of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Com- pany, Director of the Manhattan Railway Company, and is connected as director or officer in other business corporations. His club memberships are with the Montclair Athletic Club, the Whitehall Club of New York City, and he is connected also with the Phi Beta Kappa and Delta Upsilon Fra- ternities.
C. EDWARD MURRAY-Trenton .- Manufacturer and Soldier. Born in Lambertville, on July 17, 1863 son of J. Howard and Wil- helmina (Solliday) Murray.
C. Edward Murray has, since the death of General Donnelly in 1895, been Quartermaster General of the State. Coming to Trenton with his parents, when he was two years of age, he was educated in the local schools, at the state Model school and at the Stewart Business College. When he was twenty years of age he became associated with his father in the mechanical rubber manufacturing business in Trenton, and in 1892 the sole proprietor of the establishment.
The republican City Council of Trenton elected him City Clerk in 1894 and he held the office until he declined further re-election in 1904. He was a delegate in 1900 to the National Republican Convention that re-nominated President Mckinley, and to the Convention of 1904, that put Theodore Roosevelt in nomination for President.
His interest in military affairs has been as deep as that in politics. In December, 1885, he enlisted in Co. A. Seventh Regiment N. G. N. J. Five years later, Col. Skirn, then in command of the Regiment, made him its Paymaster with the rank of First Lieutenant. In June. 1895. he was com-
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missioned as Captain. The act of 1899 re-organizing the National Guard retired him from service ; but on March S, Gov. Stokes appointed him Quar- termaster General of the state and in the April following gave him the rank of Brigadier General.
JAMES NEILSON-New Brunswick .- Lawyer. Born at New Brunswick, on November 17, 1844; son of James and Catharine (Bleecker) Neilson ; married in Berlin, Germany, on December 15, 1870, to Mary Putnam Woodbury, daughter of Isaac B. and Mary A. (Putnam) Woodbury.
James Neilson is of a family that figures in the early history of the nation and that is closely identified with the development of the middle section of the State. One of his forebears, James Neilson, came to New Jersey early in the eighteenth century, and, when he died at New Bruns- wick in 1783, was a member of the Colonial Committee of Correspondence. He was engaged in marine enterprises and had ships sailing to the West Indies, Madeira, Portugal, Belfast and other places. He was a large land- owner at New Brunswick and one of the petitioners for the Charter that made New Brunswick a City in 1730; a Presiding Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and a Trustee of Princeton College.
Colonel John Neilson. (1745-1833), his nephew, was in active service in the Revolution as Colonel commanding the troops in the central and northern parts of New Jersey and as Deputy Quartermaster-General from 1780 to the close of the Revolutionary War. He was also a delegate to the Continental Congress and to the Convention that framed the United States' Constitution in 1787 and a Rutgers College Trustee, 1752-1833.
James Neilson, Colonel Neilson's son and father of the present James Neilson, was active in the foundation and management of the Camden & Amboy Railroad and Delaware and Raritan Canal Company. He was Treasurer of the Canal Company for many years, and a Director of the Joint Companies until his death. With Commodore Robert F. Stockton, and James C. Van Dyke, he organized the New Brunswick Manufacturing Com- pany in the early eighteen-forties. It was because Colonel Neilson's father, John, who was a physician, died young, that his brother made him a part of his family.
The present James Neilson has been interested in the civic and educa- tional and business life of Middle Jersey. He has interested himself par- ticularly in the development of his home city and devoted much time to ef- forts to improve its political and financial condition. He took part in the organization and subsequent development of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station at New Brunswick and has also been a Trustee of Rut- gers College since 1886. His father, James Neilson, was a Trustee of Rut- gers College from 1833 to the time of his death in 1862. Mr. Neilson is a graduate of Rutgers College, class of 1866, and of Hamilton College Law
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School, class of 1869. He has since devoted himself to the care of his affairs.
Mary Putnam Woodbury, the wife of Mr. Neilson, who died in 1914, is remembered for her beneficences and for her interest in the welfare of the growing youth of the town. She gathered thousands of children in her Boys' Clubs and Penny Savings Societies ; and many New Brunswick men have found, in the provident habits acquired there, the secret of their sub- sequent success in life. Mrs. Neilson also organized, and from 1884 to 1902 managed, the New Brunswick Charity Organization Society, as well as the New Brunswick Free Circulating Library, the first in the state, and the New Brunswick Free Public Library.
Mr. Neilson's Club memberships are with the University and Reform Clubs of New Brunswick.
HENRY ERNST NIESE-Jersey City, (32 Gifford Avenue.)- Sugar Refiner. Born on the Island of Fehmarn, Germany, on February 2nd, 1848; son of Emil Augustus and Marie (Matthies- sen) Niese; married at Jersey City, on March 31st, 1880, to Hattie Frances Moring, daughter of Augustus and Mary (Brainard) Moring.
Children : Eva Niese Perry ; Harriette E. ; Henry E. Jr. ; Char- lotte F. ; Benedictus E. ; Alfred M.
Henry E. Niese was for many years the propelling factor in the sugar house in Jersey City, of Mat- thiessen & Weichers, which af- terwards became one of the chief assets in the oganization of the American Sugar Company, and he has been one of the Directors of the corporation. He was educated in the schools of the Island of Fehmarn, at the University of Kiel and at the University of Leipzig. Soon af- ter his arrival in this country, in 1873, he came to Jersey City to take an important position in the sugar refinery there and con- tinued in his relations with the company until it was passed over to the American Sugar Com- pany, in which Company now he occupies the position of Chief Refiner.
Mr. Niese is a Director in the First National Bank of Jersey City and a member of the Carteret Club in
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Jersey City, the Essex Country Club, the Morris County Golf Club, and the German and Chemist Clubs of New York.
Mr. Niese's country home is at Morristown (Picatinny Road).
LEWIS NIXON-Metuchen .- Shipbuilder. Born at Leesburg, Va., on April 7, 1861 ; son of Col. J. Lewis and Mary Jane (Turner) Nixon; married at Washington, D. C., in 1891, to Sally Lewis Wood. daughter of Col. Lafayette Bawyer Wood and Margaret Robertson Wood, of Inverness, Scotland.
Children : Stanhope Wood, born in 1894, married to Doris Fletch- er Ryer, in 1917.
Lewis Nixon has made his name known all over the world by his ship- building activities. At his yards, the Crescent, in Elizabeth, he constructed 100 vessels in five years. The Holland, the first submarine of the United States' Navy, was built there; this was followed by the building of seven more submarines. These were the beginnings of the United States Navy's submarine fleet. Mr. Nixon also designed, in 1890, the great battleship, Oregon.
Besides his residence in Elizabeth and Metuchen, Mr. Nixon has lived in Washington, New York, Philadelphia, London, Paris, St. Petersburg (now Petrograd) and Sebastopol. King George of England was one of his college mates while he was equipping himself, in part, at the Royal Naval Academy in Greenwich, England, for his life work ; and in the course of affairs he has been received in special audiences by the Pope, King Edward VII of Eng- land and the just-deposed Tzar of Russia. He was Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary on special service, under appointment of Presi- dent Taft, to represent the United States at the Chilian Centenary in 1910; a Delegate, also by President Taft's appointment, to the fourth Pan-Ameri- can Conference at Buenos Aires and was made a member of the Board of Visitors to the United States Naval Academy by President Roosevelt, a Com- missioner to the St. Louis Exposition on appointment of Gov. Odell of New York and President of the East River Bridge Commission by selection of Mayor Van Wyck of New York City. He was also Delegate to the Demo- cratic National Conventions at Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver and Balti- more; and, when Richard Croker laid down his leadership of Tammany Hall in New York City, Mr. Nixon was named as his successor.
Mr. Nixon's family is of English and Irish descent. It can be traced from Warwickshire in England over into Ireland, in unbroken line to 1390.
Mr. Nixon attended the Academy at Leesburg. Va., studied subsequently at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and completed his edu- cational training at the Royal Naval Academy in England where he was King George's college mate. He was a naval officer from 1879 to 1891, and for four years afterwards Manager of the Cramp shipyards at Phila- delphia. Then he became the proprietor of the Crescent shipyards at Elizabeth.
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