USA > New Jersey > New Jersey's first citizens and state guide, Vol. II, 1919-1920 > Part 33
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The most shining of Mr. Kahn's artistic enterprises was the re- organization of the Metropolitan Opera Company. He overhauled it from top to bottom, purging it of dead wood. introducing valuable reforms, in- fnsing new life into it and setting up artistic achievement as its goal in place of mere monetary success, and has besides provided opera of the high- est quality for other leading American cities. In addition to being Chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Company, he was Chairman of the Century Ope- ra Company. a popular price enterprise, Treasurer of the New Theatre, de- signed to supply wholesome plays at moderate prices. Vice President and the principal founder of the Chicago Grand Opera Company, Director of the Boston Opera Company, and one of the founders of the French The- atre. He is also Honorary Director of the Royal Opera. Covent Garden London, and equally known in French operatie circles.
Mr. Kahn is devoted to riding. autoing, golfing, sailing and a master of the 'cello. He came to Morristown in 1900 and has an estate in the Normandie Park section. He is a Director in the Equitable Trust Co .. the
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Union Pacific Railroad Co., the Oregon Short Line Railroad Co., and the Morristown Trust Co.
Mr. Kahn's New York home is at 1100 Fifth Avenue.
SAMUEL KALISCH-Newark. (738 Broad Street. )-Jurist. ( Photograph published in Vol. 1, 1917.) Born in Cleveland, Ohio, April 18, 1851; son of Isidor Kalisch and Charlotte Bandman Kalisch : married at Newark. April 26, 1877, to Caroline E. Bald- win. daughter of Joseph and Louise Baldwin, of Newark.
Samuel Kalisch is now an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey. His father and grandfather were noted Rabbis of the Duchy of Posen, in Prussia. His father, who was born in Krotoschin, in 1816, was remarkable for his Talmudical and Hebrew learning even in his ninth year, and became widely known as a scholar, philologist and author. One of his popular songs, dedicated to the Prince of Prussia, was accepted by the Prince, afterwards the Great Emperor William I, in a note to Dr. Kalisch, signed by "Prinz von Preussen." Later, he was conspicuous in the reform movement, designed to root out useless ceremonies, customs and rites of the Jewish service, which that element regarded as the idolatry of the orthodox service. He was chiefly instrumental in bringing about the first Conference of the Rabbis held in Cleveland, 1855, and, to promote the propaganda. he preached all over the country with great effective- ness.
The family had settled in Cleveland when Samuel Kalisch was born. The future jurist, inbued with the scholastic atmosphere of his father's home, was proficient at twelve in Greek and Latin. He attended the public schools at Lawrence, Mass., and Detroit, Mich., and pursued his law studies in the Columbia Law School. Graduating from there with the L. L. B. degree, he entered the office of the late William B. Guild, Jr., and studied there until his admission to the bar at the February term, 1871; three years later he was made counselor.
Opening an office in Newark, he rose rapidly to recognition and was retained to act as counsel for the defendant in a number of sensational cases heard in the criminal courts of Essex county. He was the first lawyer in New Jersey to obtain the release of a convict from a state prison upon a habeas corpus writ; and his success in winning acquittals, and reducing murder charges to manslaughter and assault and battery verdicts gave him state-wide reputation as a criminal lawyer.
Subsequently he devoted himself almost exclusively to civil practice, and gained quite as wide a celebrity in that field. He was made City At- torney of Newark in 1875 : and in 1877-'79 served as counsel for the Ameri- can Protective Association. Refusing retainers from the corporations, he preferred to act as the advocate of the labor organizations, and appeared for them in several important litigations.
His station pointed him out to the political workers as one who might be of public service; and in 1879 he was named on the democratic ticket for the House of Assembly. The district was a republican one. but his
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defeat was only by a narrow margin. In 1899 and 1902 he was again called by his party to serve as its candidate for the state Senate; but the county being republican at the time he could do nothing more for the party than reduce the majority against it.
In 1911 Associate Justice Alfred Reed's term on the Supreme Court Bench expired, and Governor Woodrow Wilson nominated Mr. Kalisch to the Senate as Reed's successor. The conference of the Justices as to the as- signments the new appointment made advisable, resulted in Justice Kalisch's going to the Judicial Circuit embracing the counties of Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Salem. He was re-appointed in 1918 by Gov. Edge for a term of seven years.
For years the state had been rife with stories of corruption in Atlantic county. It was reported, and widely believed, that a coterie of local repub- lican politicians had leagued themselves to strip the people there of their substance, and that the grand juries, selected by the Sheriffs whom the coterie was said to have named, refused to indict the malefactors. When Justice Kalisch appeared upon the Bench of the Atlantic courts to open the June term, he was faced by a Grand Jury selected by the then Sheriff. An examination of the Grand Jury list convinced him that the jurors had been "hand picked"; and it was generally understood that charges of official corruption in the county would get slight attention at the hands of the inquest. Examining the returns, Justice Kalisch discovered indica- tions that the function of drawing the panel had not been in accordance with the law. He peremptorily disqualified the Sheriff, and named two Elisors to draw another panel. The state had never heard of an Elisor be- fore. Justice Kalisch had always had a predilection or ancient lore; and he had come across Elisors in one of the hundred-year-old statutes that had fallen under his eye.
The Sheriff and the influences behind him protested against his de- position by this antiquated legislation, but without avail. The Elisor in- quest indicted a large number of Atlantic City and county officials. Many of those who stood trial were convicted of fraud of one kind or another against the public ; others, however, mitigated the penalties by pleading guilty on arraignment.
Justice Kalisch has written a number of poems, essays, sketches of travel and other miscellanies, and is the author of a Memorial of Dr. Kalisch's father. Some articles of his on "Legal Abuses" are said to have been partly instrumental in establishing the district court system. He is a member of the American Bar Association, and New Jersey State Bar Asso- ciation, of which latter he was President in 1909, and a member of the New Jersey Historical Society, of the Society of Medical Jurisprudence of New York, of the Grolier Club, of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and of the New York Press Club, and a thirty-second degree Mason.
FRANK S. KATZENBACH, Jr .- Trenton .- Lawyer. Born at Trenton, on November 5, 1868: son of Frank S. and Angusta M.
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(Mushbach) Katzenbach ; married at Wyncote, Pa., on November 10th, 1904, to Natalie MeNeal Grubb, daughter of Andrew H. McNeal,
Children : Floy McNeal, born September 22, 1905; Frank S, III, born June 5, 1907.
Frank S. Katzenbach, Jr., was at one time the democratic candidate for Governor of the State, and for a day after the election was believed to have won. Belated returns from Hudson that reached the newspapers on the night of the day following the election showed however that Supreme Court Justice Fort of Newark had captured the office by a very much reduced ma- jority. At the Convention which in 1910 nominated Woodrow Wilson for Governor, Mr. Katzenbach made an imposing demonstration as his rival for a second nomination. Mr. Katzenbach had been active politically in Trenton for some time before. and his strength as a democrat in a county so uniformly republican had given him the prominence that put him to the front for the important State office.
In his professional field Mr. Katzenbach acted as Counsel for the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Powder Company in litigations instituted against that company through the instrumentality of the Buckeye Powder Company in 1914, for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust law. The trial of the case consumed more than five months of the time of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. and resulted in favor of the du Pont Company.
Mr. Katzenbach's genealogy is written into the records in the Sons of the Revolution. His grandfather was for many years proprietor of the Treil- ton House and the personal friend of every public man of whatever party in the state. He was a descendant of Peter Katzenbach who came from Germany. Mark Thompson. a Colonel in the Revolutionary Army, was one of his mother's forebears.
Mr. Katzenbach has spent his entire life in Trenton. He entered the Model School in that city at the age of six, and, graduating at the age of sixteen, entered Princeton University. He graduated from there in 1889 and prepared for the Bar at Columbia University. He was admitted to the bar as an attorney in 1892 and given his counselor papers three years later. He was elected Alderman-at-large of the city of Trenton in April, 1898. Three years later he was elected Mayor ; and, re-elected in 1903, served un- til 1905. It was the Democratic State Convention of 1907 that gave him its nomination for Governor. In the campaign before, the Republicans had elected Stokes by over 50,000 majority ; Mr. Katzenbach was defeated by only a trifle over 8,000.
Mr. Katzenbach is a Trustee of the School of Industrial Arts at Tren- ton, a Director of the Trenton Banking Company and a member of the Trenton Country Club and Princeton Club of Trenton.
HAMILTON F. KEAN-Elizabeth .- Banker. Born at Ursino, the ancestral estate near Elizabeth, on February 27th, 1862; son of John and Lucy ( Halsted) Kean ; married on June 12, 1888, to
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Katherine Taylor Winthrop, daughter of Robert W. and Kate Wilson (Taylor) Winthrop.
The Kean family has been for generations one of the noted in the country. The late Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State under President U. S. Grant, is of the same stock ; and the family has inter-wedded with that of which ex-President Theodore Roosevelt is a member.
The first John Kean was a delegate from South Carolina to the Con- tinental Congress ; and Ursino, the Kean homestead, just outside of Eliza- beth, was a storm-centre during the Revolution. Its experiences in those times that troubled men's souls. have furnished material for many a spec- tacular war story. It was the scene, when Freedom had been won, of the marriage of John Jay, famous in the annals of national jurisprudence : and Alex Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, who fell at Burr's hands on Weehawken Heights, lived there with Gov. Livingston and went to school in Elizabeth.
John Kean, father of Hamilton F., was a large figure in the railroad life of the country. He was an original stockholder in the old Camden and Amboy Railroad Company, the first railroad built in the state, now part of the Pennsylvania system ; and he was one of the builders of the New Jersey Central Railroad. Later on, he became the President of the Jersey Central Company. One of his daughters married George L. Rives, known widely in the literary world ; and another was wedded to W. Emlen Roosevelt, cousin of Theodore Roosevelt. John Kean, who represented New Jersey in the United States Senate for the twelve years between 1899 and 1911, was one of his sons.
Hamilton F. was educated at St. Paul's school in Concord and went in- to business as a banker. He is of the firm of Kean. Taylor & Co., 5 Nas- san Street, New York.
Mr. Kean was for some years Chairman of the Union County Republi- can Committee: was a frequent delegate to the Republican state conven- tions for the nomination of candidates for Governor and served as delegate to several Republican National Conventions for the selection of Presidential nominees.
Mr. Kean is a director of the Bank of Perth Amboy, Hackensack Water Co., National State Bank of Elizabeth, North American Exploration Co., Pocahontas Consolidated Collieries Co., the Rahway Gas Light Co .. and the West Hudson County Trust Co., ( Harrison ).
His club memberships are with the Union, Knickerbocker, Metropoli- tan, Midday, St. Anthony and Down Town Clubs in New York, and with the Athletic, Riding and Metropolitan ('Inbs of Washington, D. C.
BRUCE SMITH KEATOR-Asbury Park .- Physician and Sur- geon. (Photograph published in Vol. 1, 1917.) Born in Roxbury, N. Y., June 26, 1854 ; son of Abram J. and Ruth ( Frisbee ) Keator ; married at Asbury Park, on October 23, 1895, to Harriet Sendder, daughter of the Rev. Ezekiel Sendder, a noted Missionary in In- dia, and Ruth (Tracy ) Scudder.
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Children : Dr. and Mrs. Keator have one daughter, Ruth Scudder Frisbee Keator, born December 15th, 1896.
Bruce S. Keator has qualified by examination or otherwise, and has been certified, to practice medicine and surgery in the States of New Jersey. New York, Pennsylvania. Vermont, Illinois, Missouri, Colorado, Oregon and California. He graduated at Williston Seminary, Easthampton. Mass., in 1875, where he took the first and second prizes in oratory, and was a member of Delphi Society. He received the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Yale University in the class of 1879. He was captain of his class crew, rowed in the Yale-Harvard 'Varsity crew in 1878 and was elected to Psi Usilon Fraternity, and to the Scroll and Key Senior Society. He re- ceived the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the Long Island College Hos- pital, Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1881, and graduated the same year as valedic- torian of his class at the New York Homeopathic Medical College. He lo- cated in Asbury Park, and began the practice of medicine and surgery.
He served various terms as member of Common Council of Asbury Park, Councilman-at-Large. President of the Public Grounds Commission, President of the Common Council and as Mayor of the City. He was elected and for eight consecutive years served as President of the Board of Trade of Asbury Park. He was appointed by Gov. Murphy in 1903 Com- missioner of the New Jersey State Reformatory and was reappointed at the expiration of the term. He later resigned this position in May. 1908. to accept appointment by Gov. Fort, as Executive Secretary and head of the State Board of Health. On July 13. 1912, he was appointed by Gov. Wilson as a member of the New Jersey Convict Labor Commission. Gov. Wilson also appointed Dr. Keator as a delegate to the meeting of the American Prison Association held in Baltimore, Md., November 9-14, 1912.
Dr. Keator is a member of the New Jersey State Sanitary Association. of the American Public Health Association, of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis and of the National Association of Medical Milk Commission, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Medicine, etc.
FREDERICK WALLACE KELSEY-Orange .- Merchant. Born in Ogden, Monroe county, N. Y., on April 25th, 1850; son of Henry and Olive Cornelia (Trowbridge) Kelsey ; married in 1874 to Ella A. Butts, daughter of Henry S. and S. Adelia (Kiff) Butts, of Waverly, N. Y. (died July 4, 1913.)
Children : Frederick Trowbridge, of the law firm of Lewis & Kelsey, New York City : Ronald Butts, Vice President, New York.
The parents of Frederick W. Kelsey were New Englanders and among the pioneers of Monroe county. His grandfather, Windsor Trowbridge, was the first sheriff of that county. In 1881, Mr. Kelsey, having established a successful business as a merchant nurseryman in New York City, came to Orange, where he has since resided. His education in the public schools and at Chili Academy, has been broadened by extensive travels abroad and to a considerable extent in this country. He prepared the original Shade Tree
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Commission law of 1895; and, as Chairman of a local Orange Committee, recommended the bill to the Legislature. The fifty-eight municipal Shade Tree Commissions in New Jersey have all been created under this law as he framed it and as it has been since amended ; and its principal features have been enacted in a number of other states. Passaic was the first city to adopt it. Newark appropriates from $40,000 to $50,000 annually for decoration under it, and in a few years, next to Washington, D. C., should have one of the most complete systems of street tree planting to be found anywhere.
Perhaps the most important civie work of Mr. Kelsey was in the incep- tion and early development of the Essex county park system. In an address at a local banquet in Orange, January 3rd. 1894, he brought forward the suggestion of a system of county beautification with a park in Newark as the base, and two connecting parkways carrying it to the Orange Mountain reservations as the superstructure. The plan met with ready response ; . Mr. Kelsey and A. O. Keasbey were named by the Newark Board of Trade as a Committee to draft an Act, which the Legislature af 1894 adopted. As Vice-President and member of the Commission, he took an active part in the selection of the parks and parkways.
He was one of the three members of the first Essex County Park Com- mission to be reappointed for acquiring the lands and parkways and de- veloping the park system as provided in the Park Commission charter passed in January, 1895. This law, prepared by the first Commission, pro- vided for an appropriation of $2,500,000 of County funds and for its sub- inission to the electorate at the following election. The law was approved by a popular majority in the county of 8,321. A chain of splendid parks, upon which a total of about $6,000,000 has been expended, has been laid out, but the parkway plans for which Mr. Kelsey so strenuously contended have not yet been carried out. Hudson county has taken the act for a model of the law under which she, too, is laying out a group of county parks. Mr. Kelsey became much interested in park problems, and his book "The First County Park System," presents an interesting historic account of the inception and development of the system in Essex.
As Chairman of the Committee on the tariff, Mr. Kelsey secured the enactment of a clause affecting the duty on nursery products, seedlings for reforesting, etc., that was in force until the Underwood tariff law was passed containing similar provisions for this material. He was also Chair- man of the Committee which framed the first New Jersey limited franchise law in 1905. The introduction and advocacy of this bill placed Everett Colby in the limelight as a Progressive, deposed Carl Lentz as the Essex Republican County Committee Chairman, and, with the Record-Fagan con- tention for fairer tax methods, became the corner stone of the "New Idea" campaign for "limited franchises and equal taxation." As Chairman of a special committee of the New England Society. Mr. Kelsey later conducted a thorough investigation of the industrial corporation laws of New Jersey, and the Committee made amendmentory recommendations to the Legisla- ture, for changing those "wide open" laws. He disfavored the enactment of the "Seven Sisters" laws.
In political matters Mr. Kelsey is independent ; and, prior to the decla- ration of war between the United States and Germany, was opposed to war
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without just cause, favored international peace for the future and holds that brute force for the settling of international differences should be relegated to the Dark Ages.
He is a life member of the American Civic Association and New Jersey Historical Society ; and a member of the New England Society of Orange- its President in 1902-03; the American Academy of Political and Social Science ; the American Forestry Association ; and the Railroad Club of New York.
CALVIN NOYLES KENDALL-Princeton. (321 Nassau Street.) -Educator. (Photograph published in Vol. 1. 1917.) Born at Au. gusta, New York, Feb. 9, 1858; son of Leonard J. and Sarah M. Kendall; married on June 30, 1891, at Jackson, Mich., to Alla P. Field (deceased Dec. 15, 1918), daughter of Leonard H. and Alla R. Field.
Children : David W., born February 11. 1903.
Calvin N. Kendall was graduated from Hamilton College with the de- gree of A. B. in 1882, and has since received the degrees of A. M. from Yale, in 1900, and from the University of Michigan. in 1909; and of Lit. D. from Hamilton College in 1911, and from Rutgers College in 1912; and L. L. D. from New York University in 1913.
Mr. Kendall taught in the public schools of New York State for two years and in 1885 and 1886 was principal of the Jackson High School, Jackson, Mich. He became Superintendent of Schools in Jackson in 1886 and continued there until 1890; he was Superintendent of Schools of New Haven, Conn., from 1895 to 1900, and Superintendent of Schools in Indian- apolis and a member of the State Board of Education of Indiana, from 1900 to July, 1911. Incidentally he has lectured at the summer schools in the Universities of Chicago, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, California and at Columbia.
He has been President of the Connecticut Council of Education, of the Connecticut State Teachers' Association and of the Southern Indiana State Teachers' Association : and when, in 1911, the United States Commissioner of Education appointed three investigators to report upon the Baltimore schools, Mr. Kendall was named to serve upon the commission.
Dr. Kendall was Superintendent of Schools in Indianapolis when Gov- ernor Wilson invited him, in 1911, to assume charge of the schools of New Jersey, under a law greatly enlarging the functions of the State School Superintendent and re-creating the office with the title of State Commis- sioner of Education. Dr. Kendall had already declined an offer of the Superintendency of Schools in Washington, D. C., Louisville, Rochester and in Springfield, Mass .; but the functions of the New Jersey Commissioner- ship attracted him and he accepted. The salary of the office, which had been $6,000 a year, was increased to $10,000 a year with the purpose of in- viting the best educational talent of the country.
Under Commissioner Kendall's administration the school system, which had been theretofore largely local, has been welded into a solid state sys-
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tem. The central idea of the new method of administering the schools is that they are a distinctly state institution. The several communities are re- quired to meet the demands of the State authorities for financial support ; and the standard of school buildings everywhere is set by the State Board of Education.
Commissioner Kendall is a member of the Nassau Club. Princeton.
JAMES KERNEY-Trenton .- Journalist. (Photograph pub- lished in Vol. 1, 1917) Born at Trenton, on April 29, 1873; son of Thomas F. and Mary C. (Farrell) Kerney ; married at Trenton. on October 4. 1897, to Sarah Mullen, daughter of Thomas and Mary Mullen.
Children : Mary, born December 24, 1899; Thomas Lincoln, Feb- ruary 12, 1902; Katherine, March 19, 1905; James, Jr., December 17, 1911 ; John Edward, March 11, 1913; Margaret Moon, April 29, 1914.
His work as editor of the "Evening Times" in Trenton has made James Kerney one of the influential factors in the public life of the middle and Southern sections of New Jersey. He is of Irish parentage, but his parents came to these shores in their childhood; and he has spent all of his life in Trenton. He was educated in the parochial schools of the city and while learning a trade in a carriage shop, he attended the Trenton Evening High School, where he studied stenography and typewriting. It was through the latter studies that he was enabled to enter the newspaper business, working for several years as a reporter on Trenton dailies and eventually becoming the New Jersey political reporter for the "New York Herald" and "Philadelphia Press," as well as the Trenton correspondent for the "Newark Evening News" and other important state journals.
In February, 1903, Mr. Kerney acquired an ownership interest in the "Trenton Evening Times," becoming the editor of that newspaper. In 1912, "The Times" purchased the Trenton "Sunday Advertiser," which had long been established as an independent Sunday newspaper, and it was consoli- dated with "The Times" property. Subsequently "The Times" purchased the "Daily True American," which had been issued as a morning news- paper at the capital for a century and which in 1912 was changed over to the evening field. The "True American" was merged into the "Evening Times," which now issues a seven day newspaper (evening and Sunday edi- tions). "The Times" led the fight for Commission Government in Trenton and has been an aggressive force in all civic campaigns in its community, noteworthy among them being the successful contests for lower gas and trolley fares.
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