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 42
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60
Richard Wayne Parker began attending the Pingry School, Roseville, when he was eight years old, walking there in all weathers till in 1859 he entered the Newark Academy under S. A. Farrand. He spent a year in the senior class at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., under Dr. S. H. Taylor ("Uncle Sam"), and then entered as Sophomore in Princeton, graduating in 1867. He then entered the office of Parker & Keasbey as a law student at- tending Columbia College Law School, and was admitted to the Bar June 1870, as an attorney, becoming a counselor in 1873. For some years he took care of the docket of Parker & Keasbey, and on their dissolution in 1876, was associated with his father in the firm of Cortlandt & Wayne Parker. In 1885 and 1886 Mr. Parker was a member of the New Jersey Assembly, ran for Congress in 1892 unsuccessfully, but was elected in 1894 and re- elected successively till 1908. He ran unsuccessfully in 1910 and '12, but was elected in 1914 for a vacancy and also for the new term and again in 1916.
387
Parker
In the Legislature Mr. Parker took a decided stand against county local option on the liquor question, though in favor of strict regulation. His at- titude in Congress on the temperance problem has been along the same line. Especially has he been in favor of the freedom of the soldier's "club" to use beer in moderation ; and when prohibition states desired full control over liquor transportation into the State, he favored making such liquor, when shipped "collect on delivery," subject to state law, but insisted that the states should not interfere with interstate commerce so as to prevent the delivery of liquors bona fide bought in another State. His reports from the Judiciary and Military Commit- tees and speeches on the floor of Congress embodied these views during a term of years.
Mr. Parker has been as active in law as in politics. He was counsel in many cases which ap- pear in the reports. He took a firm stand against bonding our cities and insisted that they ought to pay as they go. He was in charge of the impeach- ment of Patrick H. Laverty in 1886. He originated and carried on a mandamus against the ger- rymander of the State, which resulted in the present election of Members of the Assembly by county instead of district vote. He was assistant counsel in the fight against the democratic "Rump Senate", gathering and taking most of the evidence on which the case was decided.
In Congress Mr. Parker was the first to recognize the advantages of the Panama route and to move an amendment that would make that route possible. In the Committee on Military Affairs he was for years in charge of questions of restoration and relief. He was the first to propose an elas- tic army which could be expanded in time of war by increasing each com- pany. He was also active in defending the Army against interfering legisla- tion and personal favoritism as well as in the defense of the Post Ex- change, where the soldiers would be able to get light beer and wines and kept from outside dives. In the Judiciary Committee he favored immediate appeal from injunctions restraining labor strikes, secured an additional Judge for the New Jersey Circuit and more recently an additional District Judge. He was active in legislation as to the Spanish war and from that time on was insistent that we should have a store of arms and munitions and plenty of educated officers. In 1915 he went to Europe to study the present war and has been active in measures of preparation for this war. He was long a member of the Committee on the Judiciary and was its Chair- man 1909 to 1911, during which time he urged the change of Inauguration Day to April 30th, and carried through measures for prison reform and pa-
388
Parsons
role and for the Commission on Workmen's Compensation, as well as other important statutes. Since his return to Congress in 1914 he has been a member of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, but in the minority.
Between 1890 and 1902 Mr. Parker was Lieutenant and Captain of the Essex Troop and has been ardently devoted to its prosperity. Among his published addresses those upon taxes and money in New Jersey before the Revolution, and upon Lafayette are perhaps the best known.
FRANK J. PARSONS-Maplewood .- Banker. Born at Plain- field, on August 20, 1874; son of Joseph Egbert and Phoebe Mar- garet (Perine) Parsons ; married at Belmar, September 20th, 1899, to Lillian Beatrice Hutchinson, daughter of Forman South Hutch- inson and Lillian Wight Hutchinson.
Children : Forman Bruce, born July 31st, 1900; Majorie, born October 31st, 1910.
Mr. Parsons is English on his father's side, his grandfather, Nathaniel Parsons, coming from England by way of the Barbadoes in 1820. Re- lated to the Condit and Egbert families of this State, his father was en- gaged in business in Orange and Plainfield up to the time of his death in 1876. The mother's branch is of French Huguenot derivation and traces back to Daniel Perin who came with the Exiles to Staten Island in 1665. Mr. Parsons was educated in the public schools of Plainfield and Bel- mar, taking certain special courses under instructors after- wards.
After a brief experience in newspaper work and in real estate activities in New Jersey, Mr. Parsons went to New York in 1895 and became associated with the United States Mort- gage & Trust Company, where he has served successively as clerk, manager of the Mortgage Department, Assistant Secreta- ry. Secretary and Vice Presi- dent. He has always specialized on mortgage matters and is an acknowledged authority on mortgage conditions throughout the United States, having written much concerning the principles of safety in city mortgage loaning, the movements of interest rates and real estate condi- tions. His book. "Elements of Safety in City Mortgages," has been recom- mended by the Actuarial Society of America for study by students interest-
389
Parsons
ed in mortgage problems. Among his numerous reviews, pamphlets and contributions on current topics affecting real estate matters is the Annual Real Estate Review which he has contributed for several years to the "New York Evening Post." Of recent years he has served on the committees of the Investment Bankers Association, having in charge the advancement of mortgage conditions, rural credits and kindred subjects.
In civic and philanthropic pursuits Mr. Parsons has always taken a deep interest in Negro education and has been active in the work of the Hampton Institute in Virginia and the Tuskagee Normal and Industrial Institute, founded by the late Booker T. Washington, at Tuskagee, Ala. In 1917 he was elected a Trustee of the Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskagee, and made chairman of the Investment Committee. In the Oranges Mr. Parsons has always taken a particular interest in the activities of boys, ' for some years serving as Secretary and a Director of the Boys Club of the Oranges. As a Director of the New York Osteopathic Clinic and at present its Treasurer, he aided in the establishment of the first institution of its kind in New York City to bring the benefits of Osteopathy to the poorer classes.
Mr. Parsons is a member of the Bankers Club of America, the Economic Club of New York, the Maplewood Field Club and the Maplewood Club. He is an enthusiastic horseman and tennis player.
WASHINGTON EVERETT PARSONS-Newark, (818 De Graw Avenue. )-Mechanical Engineer. Born at Salisbury, Md., on March 4. 1860; son of Milton Alfred and Caroline Travers (Wil- liams) Parsons ; married at Baltimore, Md., on Novem- ber 7, 1SS9, to Estelle Vir- ginia Barnett, daughter of De Warren Henry and Ame- lia Elizabeth Barnett, of Baltimore, Md.
Children : Helen Barnett, born July 25, 1891, married Nov. 7th, 1914, to Philip Deen Bodman, of Newark ; Milton Alfred Parsons, born Aug. 20th, 1895 ( Deceased) ; Estelle Virginia, born Nov. 5, 1899 (Deceased) ; Wash- ington Everett. Jr .. born Jan. 17. 1905.
W. Everett Parsons is engaged as a Consulting Mechanical En- gineer in New York City with a large number of concerns in his clientelle. He has specialized in refrigerating processes and is also Vice President of the United Ice Im-
390
Pattison
provement Co., at 50 Church Street, New York City. He had previously been Technical Editor of the "Cold Storage and Ice Trade Journal." now the "Refrigerating World" published in New York City. From 1890 to 1896 he was with the De La Vergne Refrigerating Machine Company of New York as one of its Mechanical Engineers and for two years Assistant Super- intending Engineer and afterwards for seven years General Manager of the Newark Hygeia Ice Company of Newark.
Mr. Parsons ancestors were among the early English settlers on the Eastern shore of Maryland. He came to New York in 1SSS and has resided in New Jersey since 1896. His education was acquired in the public schools of Salisbury, Md .. and at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, where in each case he graduated at the head of his class. He was at one time a member of the New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Parsons is a democrat, attends the Episcopalian Church and is connected with the Stevens Institute Alumni Association, the Tau Beta Pi Fraternity, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Society of Refrigerating Engineers (Member and Past President), the Cold Storage and Ice Association of London, Eng., the American Association of Refrigeration, the Forest Hill Club of Newark, the Royal Arcanum and the Improved Order of Heptasophs.
STEWART PATON-Princeton .- Physician. Born in New York City, in 1865; son of William and Anne Stavely (Agnew) Paton ; married in 1892, to F. Margaret Halsey.
Stewart Paton is a specialist in the treatment of diseases of the nervous system and the author of a "Text Book of Psychistry for Use of Students and Practitioners of Medicine."
Dr. Paton was graduated from Princeton University in 1886 with the A. B. degree and three years later became a University Master of Arts. He studied subsequently at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the Dis- trict of Columbia and graduated there with the M. D. degree in 1SS9. He took a post-graduate course in Germany and Italy. He was an associate in Psychistry at Johns Hopkins University and Director of the laboratory at the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Baltimore ; and lectured in Neuro- biology in Princeton University. He specialized in nervous disorders, and devoted his investigations chiefly to the physiology of the nervous system.
Dr. Paton is a Fellow and a member of the Council of the A. A. A. S., a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Society of Naturalists, the Association of American Anatomists, the American Neuro- logical Association and the New York Academy of Medicine. He is also a member of the Century Club of New York.
MARY STANAHAN HART PATTISON (Mrs. Frank Ambler) - Colonia .- Domestic Engineer. Born in Brooklyn, N. Y., September
391
Pattison
7th, 1869; daughter of George Wm. and Diantha Fitch Bunnell Hart; married in New York City, in 1892, to Frank Ambler Patti- son.
Children : Diantha Hart and Maynicke Munn.
Mrs. Pattison's activities are too varied to make one descriptive word possible. She has been a singer, is an artist, author, editor, lecturer, club- woman, educator, dietician, organizer, politician and cook. Her father was of Rochester, N. Y .; her mother of Bridgeport, Conn., and she traces her ancestry back through many generations on both sides to French and Eng- lish sources. John Hart, of Hopewell, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was of her line. In the family genealogy are the names of Major John Mason, Rev. James Fitch, of Conn., Gov. Thomas Welles and Capt. Thomas Hart ; and many of the Haights and Mathews are related to her.
Soon after her birth in Brook- lyn her parents moved to a farm near New Brunswick and later to Metuchen. She was educated partly by private tutors and partly in the public schools, at the Marshall private school and Jackson Seminary, both of Me- tuchen, Clark University and the American Academy of Dra- matic Art, from which she grad- uated in 1902. After a period of tuition in singing she became the first soprano of the choir of the old church on Market Street, in Newark, and was afterwards soprano at the Universalist Church, Forty- fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, New York City, at the Church of the Ascen- sion and at a Roman Catholic church in Harlem. Since her marriage she has not been active as a singer professionally, though she has continued the study of music.
When at school she was particularly interested in mental and moral philosophy, psychology, logic, political economy, the natural sciences and art. Even in her school days she evinced an interest in the topic that largely absorbs her to this day- the Home. At twelve she wanted to appeal to the Town Council to clean up the school yard and make it pretty as a sort of model for the home-keepers of the town. Though discouraged when one of the men objected that the children would not have any place for play if the school yard were kept neat, she returned to the attack when she grew up and succeeded in making the school grounds a town ornament.
That was the beginning of her activities in community life. She founded the Borough Improvement League with its own club house in Metuchen,
392
Pattison
was instrumental in establishing the public library and a leading spirit in the building of the town's modern High School-which, by the way, was achieved only after a long political fight. These energies emphasized to her mind the idea that the improvement of home conditions was the secret of community uplift ; and all of her work, in whatever lines, has been under- taken because of its bearing on the home problem. To promote her plans she has plunged into the woman life of the state, was President in 1909 of the New Jersey State Federation of Women's Clubs. in 1911 was elected New Jersey's Secretary for the General Federation, and even went into the political field. There she was made a member of the State Committee of the Progressive party in 1912, elected Chief of Service of the New Jersey Pro- gressive Service, and made Chairman of the Women's Campaign Committee of the state in the Colby Campaign of 1913. Believing all women can do much for the bettering of home conditions if they can get the government to help, she is ardent in woman suffrage work and Secretary of the New .Jersey Branch of the Congressional Union to push the Anthony Federal amendment in Congress.
Mrs. Pattison's specific activity is home economics and the scientific management of the home. She is the author of "Principles of Domestic Engineering." the first book to be published on this phase of the subject and one that standardizes a new profession for women. Her philosophy teaches that the servant problem can be solved, household waste ended and the woman of the house relieved of her drudgery by the introduction of ma- chinery and modern systems into household work. And at her home in Colonia she carries out her ideas even to the architectural details. She established an illustrative housekeeping experiment station that attracted wide attention among economists and the public generally, and that led to the establishment of a short course in home economies at the New Jersey Agricultural College.
Mrs. Pattison advocates the standardizing of house work as a profes- sion requiring the services of a Domestic Engineer and professional workers. the introduction of scientific management in relation to equip- ment, operation and material, and, as an incidental help. the establishment of a home economic municipal laboratory as a part of each city in the state.
The movement for the extermination of the mosquito-quite a figure in the home life of New Jersey-was set in motion by the energy of Mrs. Pattison and her co-workers; and as President of the New Jersey Federa- tion she has aided the movements for uniform pure food laws, the curfew bell, sex hygiene, prison reform, the abolition of child labor, shorter hours of work for women, school houses as civic centres, art in the home, the development of a state musical festival to encourage original composition, and the adoption of a national emblem of beauty, as embodied in the scheme of the American Mountain Laurel League for the creation of a national and original art standard for architectural and ornamental design.
Mrs. Pattison was chairman of the original committee of this league. She is also District Chairman of the New Jersey Women's Peace Party, Honorary member of the Quiet Home of Metuchen and the Perth Amboy Woman's Club, founder of the Colonia Civic Circle, Alummis of the Ameri-
393.
Paul
can Academy of Dramatic Arts and member of the Colonial Dames of America.
ALICE PAUL - Moorestown. - Woman Suffragist. Born in Moorestown, on Jan. 11, 1SS5; daughter of William Mickle and Tacie (Parry) Paul.
Alice Paul is National Chairman of the National Woman's Party. The Woman's Party headquarters are in Washington, D. C., where it is en- gaged in directing work among the Congressmen for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States that will make votes for women nation- wide. Her grandfather was William Parry, Speaker of the House of Assembly in the Legislature of 1855, and a Judge of the Burlington County Courts.
Miss Paul is a graduate of Swarthmore College and is a Fellow of the
University of Pennsylvania, where she took her M. A. and Ph. D. degrees. She completed a course in the New York School of Philanthropy. She was a student for three years in Eng- land at the University of Birm- ingham and at the University of London where she made a spe- cial study of Sociology and Economics.
Miss Paul became interested in settlement work and was a resident of the New York Col- lege Settlement for a year, hold- ing the College Settlement Asso- ciation Scholarship, and was afterwards resident worker in several settlements in England. She later became Assistant Sec- retary of the Dalston District of the London Charity Organiza- tion Society and was also at various times visitor for the New York Charity Organization Society and the Birmingham, England, Charity Organization Society.
While a student in London, Miss Paul was aroused by the English Militant Suffrage movement. Under the auspices of the Women's Social and Political Union of England of which Emmeline Pankhurst was the head, many exciting demonstrations were made in the British House of Commons. Miss Paul participated in these and was seven times arrested and three times imprisoned. She took part on each imprisonment in the hunger strike and once was forcibly fed while undergoing a month's im- prisonment. Returning eventually to this country, more strongly imbued
394
Perkins
than ever with the spirit of sacrifice for the political freedom of her sex, she took the chairmanship of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association during 1912, 1913.
In 1913 she helped to organize the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, an organization devoted solely to securing an amendment to the national constitution. In 1916 she helped to form the Woman's Party, an organization made up of women voters for the support of national woman suffrage and became a member of its National Executive Board. She was chairman of the Congressional Union from its formation until 1917, when it amalgamated with the Woman's Party, under the name of the National Woman's Party. She then became National Chairman of the combined organizations and still holds this position.
In the summer of 1917, the organization stationed women pickets, bearing banners inscribed for the suffrage cause, at each of the gates of the grounds surrounding the White House. Popular demonstrations against some of the banners exhibited just after the opening of the war with Germany, led to the arrest of several of them and their imprison- ment for short terms.
WILLIAM PENNINGTON - Newark, (790 Broad Street) - Lawyer. Born at Newark, on January 11, 1869; son of Edward R. Pennington.
The names of two Governors are in the direct line which the William Pennington of to-day represents. The first of them was his great-grand- father, William Sanford Pennington, who served 1813-1815. Gov. Pen- nington was of the school of democratic politics. Gov. Pennington's son, William Pennington, grandfather of Mr. Pennington and a noted Whig, followed him to the State's Chief Executive Chair, 1837-43. Mr. Penning- ton's father was a member of the Legislature, representing one of the Essex County districts in the Assembly of 1SS2.
William Pennington followed the traditions of the family when he became a candidate on the republican ticket in 1903 for the House of Assembly. He served two terms, 1904-1905. At the election in 1903 he was the second highest man on his ticket in the county; and at the time of his re-election in 1904, he had the unique distinction of standing in the poll for two offices and of being elected to both. Besides regaining his Assembly seat he was chosen, for the third time, to represent the second ward in the Newark City Common Council.
Mr. Pennington is a member of the Cincinnati Society of New Jersey and of the Players Clubs, Newark. .
RANDOLPH PERKINS-Jersey City. - Lawyer. Born at Dunellen, on November 30, 1871; son of James Perkins and Eliza- beth (Kelley) Perkins ; married at Woodcliffe Lake, on January
395
Perkins
28, 1909 to Louise Tuttle Morris, daughter of Henry I. and Eliza- beth Clark Morris.
Randolph Perkins achieved distinction in the legislative history of the state through the passage of what is known as the "Perkins Railroad Tax Law" of 1906. The railroads had been paying about $1,000,000 a year to the state and local treasuries under the Abbett Act of 1SS4. But, even so, the fact that they were not paying at the rate exacted from indi- vidual tax payers nor upon the full value of their holdings, was a constant source of popular irritation. At the opening of the Legislature of 1906, Mr. Perkins, then a member of the House of Assembly from Union county and majority leader on the floor of the Chamber, presented an act designed to equalize the condi- tions.
It applies the average of the local tax rates throughout the state from year to year to the assessed value of railroad proper- ties; and, so that the assessed valuations, the other factor in the computation, may be as nearly even with individual as- sessments as possible, it was fol- lowed by another act taking the function of fixing values on second class railroad properties -those which pay taxes for the benefit of the local districts-out of the hands of the State Board of Assessors which had always exercised it, and authorizing the local Assessors to fix the valua- tions. The bill, the first to be offered at the session of that winter, suffered some vicissitudes on its way through the two chambers of the Legislature, but Assemblyman Perkins was determined and it was finally sent to Gov. Stokes's hand and approved.
Prior to the enactment of the law, the State had been receiving some- where between $900,000 and $950,000 a year from the companies. Their an- nual tax bills had been showing a slightly rising scale each year over the year before. In 1906 the State's total receipts from them were approach- ing the million-dollar mark. But, the first year the Perkins law became operative, the State's railroad receipts sprang to $3,502,S6S, and in 1914, the last year for which the State Comptroller's report is at hand, they had climbed to $4,529,852. In the eight years ending in 1914, the State might have received, under the old law, a total of $8,000,000 from the companies. The new law brought her, instead, in that eight years, between $31,000,000 and $32,000,000.
The second act-that concerning the laying of the assessments-gave an upward spring, like that in the state's railroad income, to the railroad
396
Phelps
tax receipts of the localities. The highest total of the local taxing districts receipts under the old system had been $655,000. The first year of the new law they gathered in $1,133,000 from the railroads for local uses, and in 1914 their receipts lacked only $48,000 of the $2,000,000 mark.
Mr. Perkins read law in the office of Judge John A. Blair, was admitted to the practice as an attorney in 1903 and as a counselor in 1906. He opened a law office in Jersey City where he has since been engaged in the practice of his profession.
Mr. Perkin's public career began when the citizens of Westfield made him Mayor of the town. He was then only thirty-two years of age; and two years later he was sent to the legislature as one of the representatives of Union County in the House of Assembly. At the session of 1907 he was the minority choice for Speaker; and, when, at the close of the session, Speaker Lethbridge precipitated almost a riot by leaving the chair to pre- vent action on some bills he did not favor, the Assemblymen of both parties paid Mr. Perkins the exceptional compliment of selecting him unanimously to sit in Lethbridge's place. Mr. Perkins subsequently moved to Bergen county where he has become as large a factor in republican politics as he had been in Union. He was for six years Chairman of the Bergen County Republican Committee; and in 1916 made an imposing canvass for the republican nomination for the State Senate.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.