USA > New Jersey > New Jersey's first citizens and state guide, Vol. II, 1919-1920 > Part 7
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FRANCIS H. BENT-Bound Brook (524 Church St.) -State Architect. Born at Boston, Mass., June 18th, 1868; son of Charles C. and Phebe Ann (Malin) Bent ; married at Manalapan, N. J., Feb. 12th, 1895, to Irene Wheeler, daughter of Thomas and Emily V. Wheeler of Georgetown, D. C.
Children : Francis H. Bent, Jr., Oct. 6. 1896.
Francis H. Bent is a descendant of John Bent, one of the first Eng- lish settlers in America, who landed in the year of 1638 and located im- mediately in a frontier town, Sendbury, Mass., as well as of William Bent, who was a captain in the Continental Army of the Revolution. This ancestor also was a Concord Minute Man and also fought in the French and Indian Wars.
Francis H. Bent was educated chiefly in Boston schools, among them being the Mather public school and the Dorchestor High School, but he also had architectual training in prominent architect offices of Boston and New York. He later, however, also studied abroad in Italy, France and England in 1895.
Mr. Bent took up residence in New Jersey in 1891, coming from Brooklyn, N. Y., where he lived for two years after leaving the city of his birth, Dorchestor, Mass., in 18SS. Upon the creation of the State 'De- partment of Charities and Correction in 1905, Mr. Bent was appointed Associate Architect of the department which executed all the architectural work of this organization in the State. In 1913 he resigned to resume private practice. When the office of State Architect was created by an act of legislation in 1917 he was appointed to the position by Governor Edge, receiving his commission April 2, 1917.
Among the many state buildings which Mr. Bent designed and super- vised in erecting are : the two new wings of the Insane Asylum at Trenton, the Armory at Elizabeth, N. J., Battery A. Armory at East Orange, N. J., Troop A. Armory, Roseville, N. J., State Normal School at Montclair Heights, and also the Battery B. Armory at Camden.
Mr. Bent's business address is State House, Trenton, N. J.
FRANK BERGEN-Elizabeth. (421 N. Broad St.)-Lawyer. Born in Hillsboro Township, Somerset County on December 1, 1851; son of Peter S. and Rebecca M. Bergen. Married at Mystic, Conn., on May 24, 1887, to Lydia S. Gardiner, daughter of Robert and Louisa M. Gardiner, of Mystic, Conn.
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Bergen
Children : Franeis, born Jan. 30, 1892: Charlotte V., born Feb. 3, 1898.
Frank Bergen is General Counsel for the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey, which operates practically all of the transportation facili- ties and the gas and electric power plants in the state. He was educated in public schools at Somerville, and read law in the office of Isaiah N. Dilts. He was admitted to the Bar of the state as an Attorney at the November term of 1873, and as a Counselor at the November term of 1876. Soon after he opened his office in Elizabeth for the practice of his profession, he was made City Attorney. Elizabeth was at that time in the throes of her bankruptcy excitements; and Mr. Bergen's official posi- tion made him an important factor in the conduct and settlement of the resulting litigations. He soon achieved recognition for his skill in muni- cipal and corporation law ; and his advice on pending legislation affecting the government of cities and the treatment of large business interests was frequently sought by the leaders in Trenton. His growing practice led him to seek a larger field for his professional activities, and he established himself in Newark. His work there commended him to the attention of the Public Service Corporation and in 1903 he was appointed its General Counsel.
Mr. Bergen is a member of the Lawyers and Republican clubs of New York, the Essex of Newark, the Town and Country of Elizabeth, and of the Somerset Hills Country club.
JAMES J. BERGEN-Somerville .- Jurist. Born in Somerville. on October 1, 1847 ; son of John J. Bergen and Mary A. (Park ) Bergen ; married at Somerville, on May 3, 1883, to Helen Arden. daughter of James S. Huggins, of New York City.
James J. Bergen, one of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of New Jersey, had previously been active in the political and public life of the state. The first of his ancestors found in this country was Hans Hansen, a native of Bergen and Norway, a ship carpenter by trade, who came to New Amsterdam in 1633 to cultivate a tobacco plantation. When petitioning for a land grant in 1656, Han's wife, Sarah, described herself as "the first born Christian daughter of New Netherlands." The family settled in Brooklyn, later moving to Flatbush and Hempstead, L. 1. Han's grandson came to New Jersey and owned tracts of land in Somerset and Hunterdon counties. Members of the family have all been prosperous busi- aess people ; and Justice Bergen's father was engaged in the lumber trade.
Justice Bergen attended the old Brick Academy in his native town and is a graduate of Calvin Butler Seminary. He was a student in law with H. M. Gatson, admitted to the Bar at the November term of 1868 as an Attorney and made a Counselor in November, 1871. Meanwhile, in January of 1870 he formed a law partnership with Mr. Gatson which was continued until Mr. Gatson retired twenty years later.
In the Fall of '75, Justice Bergen was elected to the New Jersey House of Assembly, Legislature of 1876, and re-elected to the Legislature of 1877.
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The election was somewhat notable because Justice Bergen has always affiliated with the Democratic party, and the general trend of politics in Somerset was toward the Republicans. In 1800 he was drawn into the service again and served in the Legislature of 1891 and '92. In both of the latter sessions he was Speaker of the Assembly. He was urged to be- come a candidate for the Governship in one of the succeeding cam- paigns. and in 1896 was a Delegate to the Democratic National Conven- tion that gave his first nomination for the Presidency to William J. Bryan.
Justice Bergen was meanwhile serving as President of the Board of Commissioners of Somerville; and in 1877 Governor Bedle appointed him Prosecutor of the Pleas of Somerset County. In March of 1904 Chan- cellor Magie appointed him a Vice Chancellor, and on October 11, 1907, Governor Stokes named him to the Senate for the Supreme Court Justice- ship. He has held the position since, Governor Fielder having reappointed him in 1914. His circuit comprises the counties of Union and Middlesex.
Justice Bergen has been specially active at home in the organization of police and fire departments, was influential in securing a sewerage sys- tem and other improvements, for Somerville and took a prominent part also in the demonstrations that attended the Anti-race gambling excitements of some years ago.
Justice Bergen was President for some time of the Somerville Savings Bank, has been a Director of the First National Bank of Somerville and is a member of the Bachelor Club of Somerville and the Raritan Valley Country Club.
UNION NOBLE BETHELL-Upper Montclair, (270 Upper Mountain Ave.)-Telephone President. Born at Newburgh. Ind .. September 12, 1859; son of Union and Eva M. (Parrett) Bethell, whose ancestors were long established in this country, some having settled in North Carolina and Maryland, later migrating to Eastern Tennessee and then to Southern Indiana; married in 1893 to Donna I. Brink, daughter of John Brink, of Owego, N. Y.
Children : Richard Sargent, Francis Cutler, John Warren Bethell.
Union Noble Bethell is President of the New York Telephone Company and First Vice President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Com- pany, and in 1909 was decorated by the Emperor of Japan with the Im- perial Order of the Rising Sun, in recognition of his work in the telephone field. and in adapting the telephone to conditions in Japan.
Mr. Bethell was educated with a view to the practice of the law. He graduated from Hanover College in 1879 with the B. S. degree, and subse- quently received from the College the A. M. degree. Upon leaving college he took the position of Deputy Auditor of Warrick County, Indiana. After a year or so in that office he entered the Government service as a clerk in Washington. D. C. There he attended Columbia Law School, graduat- ing in 1855. The same year he was admitted to practice in the District of
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Birch
Columbia, and later in Indiana, and still later in the Supreme Court of the United States.
While in the government service as a special agent, Mr. Bethell spent several years in the West, principally in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas. In 1889 he came to New York to enter the telephone service. Successively he assumed the management of the several Bell Telephone companies operating throughout the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. As First Vice President of the American Tele- plione and Telegraph Company, he organized the Bell Telephone System throughout the United States and continues as the operating head of that System.
Mr. Bethell is President of the Board of Education in Montclair. and of the First National Bank of Montclair, and a Director of the Columbia Trust Company of New York.
Mr. Bethell's club memberships are with the Lotos, Railroad, Bankers, Upper Montclair Country Club, and Commonwealth Club of Montclair.
WILLIAM FRED BIRCH-Dover .- Manufacturer and Finan- cier. Born at Newark. N. J .. August 30th. 1870; son of Foster Frank and Isabelle (Morrison) Birch; married at Dover, N. J .. October 26th, 1898, to Anna Pauline Dunham. daughter of ex- Mayor H. L. and Anna M. Baker Dunham.
Children : Alice Pauline, Dec. 22nd. 1899, (died July 3th. 1901) William Dunham. Nov. 14th. 1903; Foster Frank, 3rd, July 2nd, 1908; Horace Garfield, Feb. Sth. 1912.
William Fred Birch came from Newark at the age of four to Dover where he has since lived and where most of his education has been ob- tained. He is a graduate of the Dover Public School, the State Model School at Trenton, N. J., and also Coleman's Business College at Newark, N. J.
Since a very young man Mr. Birch has been a leader of men. While working wth his father in the Dover Boiler Works in 18SS, he became employer of about twenty men. and later in 1912, when his father retired. he assumed entire control of the business, which at that time gave em- ploymeut to about forty men. During the past six years, under Mr. Birch's management. the plant has grown very rapidly, it now employs about two hundred and fifty men. manufacturing boilers, tanks, stacks and all kinds of steel plate construction.
During the world's struggle he took a great part individually in winning the war. Most of his work during this time was in the interest of the Government, for which he did a great deal of construction work for government plants and the Emergency Fleet.
Not all of Mr. Birch's activities however have been confined to busi- ness. He was a member of the Common Council of Dover for a number of years and was also Recorder at that place. In 1910 he became a member of the New Jersey State Legislature, and set with the body for two years. 1910 and 1912. He was elected Nov. 5. 1919. a member of the Sixty-fifth
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Blackwell
Congress and served on the Committee of Banking and Currency. Mr. Bireh is a financier of prominenee in northern New Jersey. He is a director of the National Union Bank, Dover, of the American Trust Com- pany, Morristown, and also of the East Coast Fisheries Company, New York, and the New Jersey Manufacturers Casualty Insurance Company, Trenton, N. J. He is also an active member of the Accident Prevention Committee for the prevention of accidents in factories of New Jersey.
Mr. Birch is also a partner in the firm of Bireh and Bassett, auto- mobile and coal dealers, in Dover, N. J., trustee in the Dover General Hos- pital, a director in the Chamber of Commerce, Dover, N. J. He was active in all kinds of war work and charities, and is a life member of the Red Cross.
The club memberships of Mr. Bireh are: Acacia Lodge No. 20, F. & A. M., Elks Lodge No. 782, and the Rockaway River Conutry Club.
ANTOINETTE LOUISA BROWN BLACKWELL-Elizabeth .- Minister and Author. (Photograph published in Vol. 1-1917 ). Born at Henrietta, N. Y., May 20th, 1825 ; daughter of Joseph and Abby (Morse) Brown ; married at Henrietta, N. Y., in 1856. to Samuel C. Blackwell, son of Samuel and Hannah Lane Blackwell of Bristol, England.
Children : Florence. Mable, Edith, Grace, Agnes, Ethel.
Antoinette Louisa Brown Blackwell is Pastor Emeritus of all Souls Unitarian Church in Elizabeth where she preached for a number of years and the pulpit of which she still fills occasionally. She began lecturing more than seventy years ago. At that time the country was agitated over the slavery question. She was eonspicuous in her denunciation of the slave system, and, with Wendell Philips, William Lloyd Garrison and others of great note was a warm supporter of the Abolition party, but she always believed in working within the government. She was among the first from whose lips came the demand for suffrage rights for women and for more than seventy years has been connected with the Women Suffrage Association. It is also nearly seventy years since the Purity Alli- ance was organized to earry out the plan of reform which is now known under the name of Social Hygiene- and she is one of the first members of the Alliance. Besides these activities, she has always been an ardent devotee of Temperance and long a member of the Womens Christian Temperance Union.
The Rev. Mrs. Blackwell is a deseendant, on one side, of Samuel Morse, one of the Puritans who came to America on the "Increase" in 1635 and on the other side of John Brown, who lived in Redding, Mass., born in 1628. She was educated in the district school in Henrietta, N. Y., and at the Monroe County Academy. At twenty she entered Oberlin Col- lege with the view of studying for the ministry and graduated from the Literary department in 1847 and from the Theologieal sehool in 1850.
She was ordained in 1853 at the Orthodox Congregational Church at South Butler, New York. Her first profession of faith was made when
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Blair
she was nine years of age in the Church of Henrietta, N. Y. The Church was then less than eighteen years old; within the last few months it has celebrated its centennial anniversary. Since her marriage she has held no regular parish but has continued to preach frequently in many churches. She has been connected with All Souls Church, Elizabeth, for 15 years, having preached her last sermon there on Easter Sunday of 1917.
Mrs. Blackwell's pen has been as busy as her tongue. She wrote "Shadows of Our Social System," for the New York Tribune, and is the author of "Studies in General Science," 1869; "The Island Neighbors," 1871; "The Sexes Throughout Nature," 1875; "The Physical Basis of Im- mortality." 1876; "The Philosophy of Individuality," 1893; "Sea Drift or Tribute to the Ocean," 1903; "The Making of the Universe," 1914, and "The Social Side of Mind and Action," 1915.
Mrs. Blackwell's club and society memberships are with the Associa- tion for the Advancement of Women, The Womens Suffrage Association, the Purity Alliance, the Association for the advancement of Science, the W. C. T. U., Peace Societies, Women's Press Socicties and several literary clubs. Honorary member of some.
CLINTON LEDYARD BLAIR-Peapack .- Banker. ( Photo- graph published in Vol. 1-1917). Born at Belvidere, N. J., July 16, 1867 : son of De Witt C. and Mary Anna (Kimball) Blair ; married on October 1, 1891, to Florence. Osborne Jennings, daugh- ter of H. N. Jennings, of Orange, N. J.
Children : Mrs. William Clark, Mrs. H. Rivington Pyne, Mrs. Richard Van Nest Gambrill and Marie Louise Blair.
(. Ledyard Blair is of the banking firm of Blair & Co. at 24 Broad Street. New York City. It was established by John I. Blair of Blairs- town in 1890 in association with De Witt C. Blair his son and C. Ledyard Blair, his grandson. John I. Blair was, for many years before his death, one of the most noted Republicans in the State and was sent as a delegate to every Republican National Convention from that which nominated Lin- coln in 1860 till Mr. Blair's death in 1899. He was, too, one of the largest contributors to the Princeton College endowments and always a picturesque post-prandial orator at the annual banquets of the Alumni.
C. Ledyard Blair is of Scotch descent. He was prepared at the Lawrenceville School for admission to Princeton University, from which he graduated with the A. B. degree in 1890. Mr. Blair has steadily refrained from seeking public office; but he represented the State of New Jersey at the National Republican Convention of 1908 which put William II. Taft in nomination for the Presidency and at that of 1916 which nominated ex- Justice Hughes of the United States Supreme Court against President Wilson.
Mr. Blair, after many years' service as a Governor of the Stock Exchange, resigned that office, althoughi he still holds his seat. He is President of the Sussex Realty Company and Director of the Lackawanna
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Blair
Steel Company ; the Pressed Steel Car Company; the Securities Com- pany ; the Sussex R. R .; the St. Louis & Hannibal Ry .; the Kewaunee, Green Bay & Western R. R. Company and the Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio Ry. His club and association memberships are with the Auto- mobile of America ; The Brook, Coaching, Metropolitan, New York Yacht, Princeton, Knickerbocker, Racquet, Union, and University Clubs and with the Sons of the American Revolution.
JOHN ALBERT BLAIR-Jersey City .- Jurist. Photograph published in Vol. 1-1917). Born in Blairstown on July Sth, 1842; son of John H. and Mary (Angle) Blair.
John A. Blair has been a leading figure in the judicial life of Hudson County for many years. He is English on his mother's side, and on his father's side descendant from the noted Blair family of Blair-Athol, Perth- shire, Scotland-representatives of which came to America as early as 1720, and settled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Among those who came were two brothers, Samuel and John, both of whom were educated at the famous Log College on the Neshaminy under the celebrated William Tennant, and became distinguished ministers of the Presbyterian Church. A son of this Samuel, also the Rev. Samuel Blair, was pastor of the old South Church in Boston before the Revolution, and was offered the Presidency of Princeton College but declined in favor of Dr. Witherspoon. Rev. John Blair one of the two brothers in 1767 became Professor of Divinity and Moral Philosophy at Princeton College, and was Acting President of the College until the accession of Dr. Witherspoon in 1769. Later another member of the family, Samuel Blair was sent from Philadelphia to take charge of the iron industry at Oxford Furnace, War- ren County, New Jersey. He was the great-great-grandfather of John A. Blair.
Judge Blair was educated at Blairstown Presbyterial Academy, and at Princeton College, where he graduated in 1866, with honors. He studied law with Jehiel G. Shipman at Belvidere, and was admitted to the bar as an attorney in June 1869, and as Counselor in June, 1872. He began the practice of law in Jersey City in 1870, and has been there since. He was appointed District Court Judge in Jersey City by Governor Bedle when the District Courts were first created in 1877. In 1885 he was ap- pointed Corporation Counsel for Jersey City, and resigning in 1889, was reappointed in 1894, resigned again in 1898, when he was appointed by Governor Griggs Judge of the Hudson County Court of Common Pleas, General Quarter Sessions and Orphans Court. He held this position for fifteen years, and until appointed by Governor Wilson Judge of the Second District Court of Jersey City. In 1918 Governor Edge again offered him Judge of the Hudson County Court of Common Pleas, which position he now holds.
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Bobbitt
In religion Judge Blair is a Presbyterian and in politics a Republican. Ile is President of the Union League Club of Indson Comity and a member of the University and Princeton Clubs of Hudson County.
BENJAMIN BOISSEAU BOBBITT - Long Branch. - Editor. ( Photograph published in Vol. 1-1917). Born at Hickory, N. C., January 22, 1883, son of Dr. Emmett H. and Mary Elizabeth .
Boisseau Bobbitt.
Benjamin B. Bobbitt is Editor and Publisher of the Monmouth American, an independent Republican paper which he established at Long Branch in October, 1917, for the reason, as he stated it, that Democratic leadership had become too picayune and the party's representatives in the Legislature were obstruetionists in the carrying out of Governor Edge's program of a business administration with good road and other im- provements needed by the State. He is also Commissioner of Public Reports.
The state officials had been too industrious in unloading literature from their several departments upon the state printers; and to reduce its volume the Legislature in 1908 decided to appoint an editor for the re- vision and condensation of the output. Mr. Bobbitt is that Editor, with the title of Commissioner of Public Reports.
Mr. Bobbitt is of mixed ancestry, French, Spanish, Scotch, Irish and English, and his forebears figure conspicuously in the colonial history of the Virginias and the Carolinas. One of the founders of William and Mary College at Jamestown, Va., established in 1693, the second in the United States, is in his mother's ancestral line.
Mr. Bobbitt studied at private schools, and, at the University of North Carolina, specialized in history, language and political science, with law and medicine on the side. He was still in his teens when he began writing political articles and reviews for a local daily in Raleigh, N. C., and for Richmond, Philadelphia, and some New York newspapers and magazines. He was made Editor of the Evening Press in Danville and subsequently attached himself to the staff of the Norfolk, ( Va.) Pilot, and of the Leba- non, (Pa.) Evening Report.
After coming to Long Branch, in 1903, to assume the editorship of the Daily Record there, Mr. Bobbitt was made Publicity Director of Lona Branch and organized its Publicity Bureau. He was one of the special State Commission to Investigate the Causes of Dependency and Crime ap pointed by Governor Fort in 190S, and was prominent in its work. From the position of Assistant Supervisor of Bills in the New Jersey Senate in 1913 he was made Supervisor of Bills in the following year. He was mean- while also President of the Trend Publishing Company In New York and Editor of the Trend Magazine; but he resigned upon his appointment by Governor Fielder as Commissioner of Public Reports, in February, 1914. In the incumbency of that office he saved the state on its printing bills $19,000 in 1915, $21,000 in 1916, and more the past two years.
He is also a member of the Mosquito Extermination Commission of Monmouth County, a Trustee of the Long Branch Chamber of Commerce,
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Bourne
Director of the Garfield Monument Association and a member of the Elks, and several clubs.
As a writer, Mr. Bobbitt won in 1916 the third prize in the Philadel- phia Public Ledger editorial contest on reasons why President Wilson or Mr. Hughes should be elected. He was one of the 459 editors from nearly every state in the Union, and all of the large cities to advocate Mr. Wilson's re-election in the prize-winning contest. He was one of the first to urge Governor Wilson for the Presidency, booming him as early as 1907. He is a thorough independent in politics, however, being, as he says, unable to say whether he has supported more Republicans or Democrats, from Presi- dent down, for office. One of his first notices to state departments, upon assuming the State Editorship, was to the effect that anything savoring of partisanship must be eliminated from all state literature.
DAVID BOSMAN-Rutherford .- Railway Officer. Born in Brooklyn, Dec. 18. 1864; married in 1892 to Emily Sloane, of Brooklyn. N. Y.
David Bosman, Mayor of Rutherford in 1910-11, is Vice President and Secretary and Treasurer of the Erie Railroad Company, of the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway Company and of the New Jersey and New York Railroad Company.
Having been educated in the grammar schools and the High School of Brooklyn, Mr. Bosman became in 1885 a clerk in a law office : but two years later was called to a position in the Erie Railway service. He rose from a clerkship to be Assistant Secretary, then to be Secretary ; and afterwards become Vice President. He is a Trustee of the Rutherford Trust Com- pany, Republican in politics and attends the Congregational Church.
EMMA BOURNE-South Orange. (445 Richmond Ave.)-Tem- perance Worker. (Photograph published in Vol. 1-1917). Born at 28 New Street, Newark ; daughter of John and Mary Gordon ( Barnett) Hill; married at Newark, January 13. 1868 by the Rev. R. R. Meredith, to Henry James Bourne, son of Jacob Bourne.
Children : Mary Gordon Dexter ; Elizabeth B. Dickinson : Amelia Barnett Kinsey ; John Hill Bourne.
Emma Bourne's mother, Mrs. Mary G. Hill, was the first Presi- dent of the first Woman's Christian Temperance Union organization in New Jersey-a local at Newark, in 1874 continuing in that office for eight years. In the early days Mrs. Bourne sought to aid the cause by the distribution of tracts; but the literature was expensive. She and Mrs. Campfield, who was associated with her, were obliged to pay $3 per thousand for the leaflets ; and, believing that they could be profitably produced for $1 per 1000, they started a small publishing business, had their printing done by contracts with Newark printers and supplied their literature to all interested in the cause in all parts of the state. This they continue to do until the establishment of the Woman's Temperance
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