USA > New Jersey > New Jersey's first citizens and state guide, Vol. II, 1919-1920 > Part 43
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She is a member of the personal Service Club, as well as a member, of the Council of Jewish Women.
FRANK J. PARSONS-Maplewood .- Banker. ( Photograph published in Vol. 1. 1917). Born at Plainfield, on August 20. 1874; son of Joseph Egbert and Phoebe Margaret (Perine) Parsons ; married at Belmar, September 20th, 1899, to Lillian Beatrice Hutchinson, daughter of Forman South and Lillian Wight Hut- chinson.
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 Belmar, taking certain special courses under instructors afterwards.
After a brief experience in newspaper work and in real estate activ- ities in New Jersey, Mr. Parsons went to New York in 1895 and became as- sociated with the United States Mortgage & Trust Company, where he has served successively as clerk. manager of the Mortgage Department. As-
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sistant Secretary, Secretary and Vice President. He has always specialized on mortgage matters and is an acknowledged authority on mortgage condi- tions throughout the United States, having written much concerning the principles of safety in city mortgage loaning, the movements of interest rates and real estate conditions. His book, "Elements of Safety in City Mortgages" has been recommended by the Actuarial Society of America for study by students interested in mortgage problems. Among his num- erous reviews, pamphlets and contributions on current topics affecting real estate matters is the Annual Real Estate Review which he has con- tributed for several years to the "New York Evening Post." Of recent years he has served on the committees of the Investment Bankers Associa- tion, having in charge the advancement of mortgage conditions, rural cred- its 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 Or- anges 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 in- stitution 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 Eco- nomic 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. (Photograph published in Vol. 1, 1917). Born at Salisbury, Md., on March 4, 1860 ; son of Milton Alfred and Caroline Travers ( Williams) Parsons ; married at Bal- timore, Md., on November 7, 1889, to Estelle Virginia Barnett, daughter of De Warren Henry and Amelia 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) ; Washington Everett, Jr., born Jan. 17, 1905.
W. Everett Parsons is engaged as a Consulting Mechanical Engineer in New York City with a large number of concerns in his clientelle. He has specialized in refrigeration processes and is also Vice President of the United Ice Improvement Co., at 115 Broadway, New York City. He had previously been Technical Editor of the "Cold Storage and Ice Trade Jour- nal," now the "Refrigerating World" published in New York City. From 1890 to 1896 he was with the De La Vergne Refrigerating Machine Com-
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pany of New York as one of its Mechanical Engineers and for two years Assistant Superintending Engineer and afterwards for seven years Gen- eral Manager of the Newark Hygia 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 Refrigerating Engineers ( Member and Past President ), the Cold Storage and Ice Association of London, Eng., the American Association of Refrigeration, the Forest Hills Club of Newark, the Royal Arcanum and the Fraternal Aid Union.
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 ner- vous system and the author of a "Text Book of Psychiatry for Use of Student 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 1889. Lecturer in Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, Trustee of Car- negie Institution of Washington, Member of National Research Council. He was an associate in Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and Di- rector of the laboratory at the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Balti- more; and lectured in Neurobiology in Princeton University. He special- ized 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. (Protograph published in Vol. 1, 1917). Born in Brooklyn, N. Y., September 7th, 1869; daughter of
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George Wm. and Diantha Fitch Bunnell Hart; married in New York City, in 1892, to Frank Ambler Pattison.
Children : Diantha Hart and Maynicke Munn.
Mrs. Pattison's activities are too varied to make one descriptive word possible. She has been a signer, 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 Brooklyn her parents moved to a farm near New Brunswick and later to Metuchen. She was educated partly by pri- vate tutors and partly in the public schools, at the Marshall private school and Jackson Seminary, both of Metuchen, Clark University and the Ameri- can Acadenmy of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated 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 so- prano at the Universalist Church, Forty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, New York City, at the Church of the Ascension 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 orna- ment.
That was the beginning of her activities in community life. She founded the Borough Improvement League with its own club house in Me- tuchen, 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 empha- sized 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 undertaken 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 Com- mittee of the Progressive party in 1912, elected Chief of Service of the New Jersey Progressive Service, and made Chairman of the Women's Cam- paign Committee of the State in the Colby Campaign of 1913. Believing all
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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 vice President of the New Jersey Branch of the Woman's National Party to push the Anthony Federal amendment in Congress.
Mrs. Pattison's specific activity is home economics and the scientfic 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 in house hold 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 labratory 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 a director of the New Jersey Women's Peace Party, Hon- orary member of the Quiet Hour of Metuchen and the Perth Amboy Woman's Club, founder of the Colonia Civic Circle, Alumnus of the Ameri- can Academy of Dramatic Arts and member of the Colonial Dames of America.
ALICE PAUL - Moorestown. - Suffragist. (Photograph pub- lished in Vol. 1, 1917). Born in Moorestown, on Jan. 11, 1885; 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
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Assembly in the Legislature of 1855, and a Judge of the Burlington County Courts.
Miss Paul is a graduate of Swarthmore College and was 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 England at the University of Borm- ingliam and at the University of London where she made a special study of Sociology and Economics.
Miss Paul became interested in settlement work and was a resident of the New York College Settlement for a year, holding the College Settle- ment Association Scholarship, and was afterwards resident worker in several settlements in England. She later became Assistant Secretary of the Dalston District of the London Charity Organization 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 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.
ENOS PAULLIN-Bridgeton, (69 East Ave. )-Manufacturer. Born at Bridgeton, N. J., Jan. 31st, 1870, son of George and Aman- da (Bates) Paulin, married at Camden, N. J. Sept. 6, 1893, to Em- ma B. Bramell, daugliter of Capt. Benjamin B. and Mary (Ste- phenson ) Bramell.
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Children : Marion W .. Dec. 13th, 1894; Martha G., Feb. 25th. 1868, Ellen C., Sept. 1st, 1902: George B. June 17th, 1904.
Enos Paullin, was educated in the public schools of Bridgeton, his birthplace. At the conclusion of his High School course, he entered Pierce Business College of Philadelphia graduating after doing the required work in record time. He then had practical experience in the Bridgeton Post Office. Noticing some of the applicants for mail could not read or even write their own names, he made copies for them to follow and had the satisfaction of starting them in a modest way in the pursuit of knowl- edge. He subsequently held clerical positions with the West Jersey Ex- press Company. Bridgeton Tax Collector, Sheriff of Cumberland County, West Jersey R. R. Co., and Cumberland National Bank. In September, 1889, he entered the employ of the Ferracute Machine Company as time- keeper and shipping clerk, subsequently being advanced to assistant book- keeper, head book-keeper and business manager. On the retirement of Fred F. Smith, the Secretary and Treasurer of the Company in 1903 he was made an officer of the Company.
Mr. Paullin has been a member of the National Association of Man- ufacturers for a number of years, succeeding Richard C. Jenkinson as N. J. Vice President and Director in 1908, a position he still holds. He has never missed an annual meeting and only two of the intermediate or special meetings. He is also a member of the Municipal Board of Health and Bridgeton Commercial League.
In politics he is a Republican and a strong advocate of National Prohibition. He is an active layman connected with the Central M. E. Church of Bridgeton.
RANDOLPH PERKINS-Jersey City .- Lawyer. (Photograph published in Vol. 1, 1917 ). Born at Dunellen, on November 30, 1871: son of James Perkins and Elizabeth (Kelley ) Perkins ; mar- ried at Woodcliffe Lake, on January 28, 1909, to Louise Tuttle Morris, daughter of Henry I. and Elizabeth 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 1884. 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 conditions.
It applies the average of the local tax rates throughout the state from year to year to the assessed value of railroad properties ; and, so that the assessed valuations, the other factor in the computation, may be as nearly even with individual assessments as possible. it was followed by another
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act taking the function of fixing values on second class railroad prop- erties-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 valuations. The bill, the first to be offered at the session of that winter, suffered some vicissi- tudes on its way through the two chambers of the Legislature, but Assem- blyman Perkins was determined and it was finally sent to Gov. Stoke'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 $3,502,868, 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 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.
JOHN JAY PHELPS-Hackensack, (Red Towers)-Capitalist and Export Merchant. (Photograph published in Vol. 1. 1917). Born at Paris, France, September 27, 1861 : son of William Walter and Ellen (Sheffield ) Phelps: married in New York City April
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26, 1SSS to Rose Janet Hutchinson, daughter of Joscelyn and Janet Hutchinson.
Children : Dorothy, born Sept. 18, 1890; Rose, born May 8, 1895.
The family of John Jay Phelps, of English origin, is one of the dis- tinguished in the United States. For generations it has been a power in the financial and social life of the country; and Mr. Phelp's father, the late William Walter Phelps, was a brilliant orator in the Congresses of his day. An earliest of the family records shows that John Phelps was a Clerk of the Court that tried and condemned King Charles the First to the block. Expatriated after the Restoration, he died at Vevey, the Swiss town in which Hendryk Sienziewicz, the famed author of "Quo Vadis," breathed his last in 1916; and there, in 1SS2, the late Congressman William Walter Phelps, in association with Charles Phelps, had a black marble monument erected to the memory of their progenitor.
William Phelps and his wife, Dorothy embarked in 1630 from England, on the "Mary and John," with a party of colonists that organized them- selves into a church congregation on the way over and became the first set- tlers of Dorchester, Mass, He was one of the jurors at the first trial (a manslaughter case) in the Colony, was of the Committee of Three that fixed the boundary line between Roxbury and Dorchester and became a member of the General Court of the Colony. He left the Colony afterwards and was one of the seven who founded the town of Windsor in Connecticut. He be- came as prominent in the new settlement as he had been in the Massa- chusetts Colony, and participated in the framing of the famous Blue Laws of Connecticut.
The first of the line to come to New York in quest of larger opportuni- ties was John Jay Phelps. With George D. Prentice, afterwards famous among the literary men of the country for his wit and eloquence, he had previously owned and edited a newspaper in Hartford, Conn. Meanwhile he became interested in the Lackawanna coal fields and was, so, drawn to New York. There he formed a partnership with Amos R. Eno, who after- wards built and owned the famous Fifth Avenue Hotel at the 23rd street corner. His interest in the Lackawanna coal fields eventuated in his participation in the organization of the Delaware Lackawana & Western Railroad Company, and later, for several years, he was its President. He was also in the Erie Railroad Directory and, besides, in a long list of banks and gas companies. Another of his distinctions is that he was tlie first in New York to use free-stone in architecture.
His son William Walter Phelps moved to Teaneck, (Bergen Co.) in 1869, and soon rose into prominence among the men of the state. He was elected in 1872 to serve in the 43rd Congress, and at the three elections of 1882-'84 and 1886 was returned as the Representative of the district at the Capitol in Washington. He easily achieved recognition throughout the country for his independence in thought and action, and was instrumental in bringing about the legislation for the suppression of the Ku Klux Klan and of the White League. A public dinner was given to him in recogni- tion of these services. During Gen. Grant's administration, he was As- sistant Secretary of the Treasury and President Garfield appointed him
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