USA > New Jersey > Scannell's 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 33
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Subsequently he devoted him- self almost exclusively to civil practice, and gained quite as wide a celebrity in that field. He was made City Attorney of New- ark in 1875; and in 1877-'79 served as counsel for the Amer- ican Protective Association. Re- fusing retainers from the corpo- rations, he preferred to act as the advocate of the labor organ- izations, 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 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.
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 republi- can politicians had leagued themselves to strip the people there of their
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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 Augusta M. (Mushback) Katzenbach; married at Wyncote, Pa., on November 10th, 1904, to Natalie McNeal Grubb, daughter of Andrew H. McNeal.
Children : Floy McNeal, born September 22, 1905; Frank S. III. born June 5, 1907.
Frank S. Katzenbach 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 Camden 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
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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 father was for many years proprietor of the Trenton 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 ( f 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 eighteen, 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.
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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, 18SS, to 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
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fell at Burr's hands on Weehawken Heights, lived there with Gov. Living- ston 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. Pauls school in Concord and went in- to business as a banker. He is of the firm of Kean, Taylor & Co., 5 Nas- sau 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 Clubs of Washington, D. C.
V EDWARD QUINTON KEASBEY-Morristown .- Lawyer. Born at Salem, July 27th, 1849; son of Anthony Q. and Elizabeth (Mil- ler) Keasbey ; married on October 22, 1SS5, to Elizabeth G. Darcy, daughter of Henry G. and Anne Mckenzie Darcy, of Newark.
The father of Edward Q. Keasbey was for many years United States District Attorney for New Jersey ; and his mother was a daughter of Jacob W. Miller, who was United States Senator for New Jersey from 1841 to 1853.
Mr. Keasbey is a graduate of Princeton College and of the Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the Bar of New Jersey as attorney in June, 1872, and as counselor in June, 1875, and entered at once into active practice in Newark. He was associated with his father until the death of the elder Mr. Keasbey in 1895; and Edward Q. and George M. Keasbey are still carrying on the business of A. Q. Keasbey & Sons.
He served in the legislature of New Jersey in 1884-'S5. He was a United States Commissioner and Special Master in Chancery. In 1904 he was a delegate to the Universal Congress of Lawyers and Jurists held at St. Louis. He is a member of the American Bar Association, and in 1916-'17 was a Vice President of the New Jersey State Bar Association. From 1879
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to 1885 he was editor of the "New Jersey Law Journal," and he has con- tributed legal essays to the Harvard, Yale and Columbia law reviews. He is also the author of the first two volumes of "The Courts and Lawyers of New Jersey," published in 1912.
Mr. Keasbey is a Director of the North American Company, The Lam- son Company, the Kearny Land Company, the Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines and other corporations, a Trustee of the Howard Savings Insti- tution and of the Hospital of St. Barnabas (Episcopal) Fund in Newark and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Episcopal Fund of the Diocese of Newark.
His club connections are with the Essex of Newark, the Morris County Golf, and the Morristown.
BRUCE SMITH KEATOR-Asbury Park .- Physician and Sur- geon. 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 Scudder, daughter of the Rev. Ezekiel Scudder, a noted Missionary in India, and Ruth (Tracy) Scudder.
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, Ver- mont, Illinois, Missouri, Colo- rado, Oregon and California. He graduated at Williston Semin- ary, Easthampton, Mass., in 1875, where he took the first and second prizes in oratory, and was a member of Delphi Socie- ty. He received the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Yale Uni- versity in the class of 1879. He was captain of his class crew, rowed in the Yale-Harvard 'Var- sity crew in 1878 and was elect- ed to Psi Upsilon Fraternity, and to the Scroll and Key Senior Society. He received the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the Long Island College Hospital, Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1881, and graduated the same year as vale- dictorian of his class at the New York Homeopathic Medical College. He located in Asbury Park, and began the practice of medicine and surgery.
He served various terms as member of Common Council of Asbury
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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 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 civic 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. Q. Keasbey were named by the Newark Board of Trade
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as a Committee to draft an Act, which the Legislature of 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- mission 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 reforestering 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 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 1902-3; the American Academy of Political and Social Science; the American Forestry Association; and the Railroad Club of New York.
HENRY COOPER KELSEY-Trenton .- Banker. Born at Sparta, Sussex county, Dec. 4th, 1837 ; son of John and Ellen Mills (Van Kirk) Kelsey ; married at Newton, May 15th, 1861, to Prudence
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Townsend, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Simonson) Townsend, of Newton.
Sussex county enjoys the rare distinction of having contributed more than its quota of men of power to the citizenship of New Jersey. Henry C. Kelsey, whose sway in the politics of the state was undisputed for thirty years or more of the time when New Jersey seemed to be rooted in demo- cratic steadfastness, is one of her sons. He and Benjamin F. Lee and Henry S. Little constituted the historical Triumvirate that gave the state new Governors and United States Senators for three decades and whose "O. K." was needed to vitalize the platforms of the party's state convenl- tions.
For twenty-seven years, (1870-1897) Mr. Kelsey was Secretary of State of New Jersey. He was first appointed by Governor Theodore F. Randolph, July 1, 1870. It is doubtful if the history of the country presents another instance of so long a service in a high state position; and it is all the more notable because, while the successive appointments came at the hands of democratic Governors, the confirmations of the nomination were made by republican Senates. The office was then more than the clerical and filing department it is nowadays. Executive functions now distributed among a half dozen departments centered there. His office made him a member of several state boards; he was Banking and Insurance Commis- sioner and Clerk of the Court of Errors and Appeals, the Court of Im- peachment, the Court of Pardons and the Prerogative Court, State Library Commissioner, and in 1885 a Commissioner for the rebuilding of the burned State House.
Of late years, Secretary Kelsey has confined his attention to his private interests, largely in banking and lighting enterprises and in in- dustrials. He has been a Director of the Sussex National Bank of New- ton for many years, and long Vice President and an active manager of the Mechanic's National Bank in Trenton. For several years before it was taken over by the United Gas Improvement Co. of Philadelphia (later by the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey), he was President of the consolidated gas companies of Newark. Mr. Kelsey had an interest in the rival gas companies of the City - the Newark Gas Light Company, and the Citizens Gas Light Company - and it was due to his efforts that they were finally consolidated as the Newark Gas Company. During the three years between the consolidation and the transfer to the Philadelphia syndi- cate, Mr. Kelsey traveled back and forth between Trenton and Newark every day, to perform his functions as President of the new Company.
Trenton is famous the world over for its potteries and ceramics ; and it was probably a sense of the need of stimulating talent for art in the city pottery and china products that moved him some years ago to make a gift to Trenton of one of the most complete schools of industrial art in the country. Besides bearing the expense of improvements costing $12,000 at St. Francis Hospital in Trenton, he had cancelled a $10,000 mortgage on Trinity Episcopal Church which Mrs. Kelsey had attended when she was living, has given $20,000 to the church's choir fund, has contributed more than $8,000 to his wife's home church-Christ P. E., at Newton-all as tributes to her memory. And his devotion to her was the real inspiration
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of this greater testimonial to her worth, but Trenton's need of cultured artisans gave direction to it. The building, "erected," as the tablet set in its walls announces, "as a tribute to the memory of his wife, Prudence Townsend Kelsey and dedicated to the use of the students of arts and crafts in the City of Trenton," was designed by Cass Gilbert, of New York, one of the foremost of American architects, whom President Roosevelt had made Chairman of the board of United States supervising architects having in control the plans of all Federal buildings. It is an imposing five story structure, covering a plot 42 feet front and 108 deep at the corner of West State and Willow Streets, along the beaten path to the State House where Mr. Kelsey was for so long a familiar figure.
Mr. Kelsey's original donation for the building was $100,000, but the total outlay exceeded $130,000 before it had been completed. This expen- diture was all apart from the fittings of the room he reserved in it, as a memorial room. The decorations there alone cost upwards of $12,000 and the room is stored with the art collections-some of them, priceless-Mrs. Kelsey made while abroad with her husband. Mr. Kelsey has crossed the Atlantic fifty-eight times ; the last time (1914) he narrowly escaped being marooned by the outbreak of the European War. Mrs. Kelsey, who was a daughter of the late Judge John Townsend, was of artistic temperament, a connoisseur in rare chinas, bric-a-brac and articles of vertu, and on her cross-sea trips with her husband visited many centres on "the Continent" in search of choice and artistic works for her home collection. The great store of these which she had accumulated when she died now finds a permanent abiding place in the beautiful room which her husband has provided in the Art School building.
The dedication of the building, June 7th, 1911, marked an epoch in the history of Trenton. The deed to the property was accepted by John A. Campbell, of the Board of Trustees of the School. In his brief address Mr. Kelsey explained that the purpose of the gift is "to impart instruction in mechanics, the trades and arts and crafts to those who have the ambi- tion to learn." He thus especially admonished the students - "He who waits to begin and hastens to quit an eight hour day", he said, "will never become a coupon clipper nor be known to fame." "Don't worry about the higher education," he added, further on, "Leave Latin, Greek and Sanskrit to graduates of the Colleges and Universities ; but their field is not wider or more important, nor their opportunities greater, than yours." The Art School is patronized by upwards of 1,000 pupils. The City has recently acquired adjacent territory on which an annex for me- chanical instruction is to be erected.
Mr. Kelsey's ancestry on his father's side is Scotch (originally Kelso) and on his mother's side Dutch. His first political position was that of Post Master of Newton in Sussex county. In 1866 he was appointed a Judge of the Sussex County Courts. A year later he purchased the "New Jersey Herald," in Newton, and his editorial work there attracted wide at- tention. It was upon Gov. Randolph's appointment that in 1870 he became Secretary of State of New Jersey to succeed Newton M. Conger, and he served in that position until April 1, 1897. He began his business career as a Clerk in a country store of which he later became proprietor-and he
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