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 44
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General Plume participated in both of the wars in which this nation has engaged since he became connected with the State Militia. When the Civil War broke out he was among the first to join the Union ranks. He was commissioned as First Lieutenant and Adjutant of the 2nd New Jersey Volunteers on May 29, 1861. In February, 1862 he was made aide- de-camp on the staff of Brigadier General French, Commander of the 3rd Brigade of Sumners Division. He became later in the year Assistant Adjutant General of the Third Division of the Second Corps, but re- signed about the opening of the new year. The 37th Regiment of New Jersey Volunteers elected General Plume its Colonel immediately upon its organization in 1863, but when he learned that the regiment had enlisted for only three months he declined the offer. Attaching himself to the Army of the Potomac, he participated in the two battles of Bull Run and in those at Yorktown, Fair Oaks, Seven Pines, Gaine's Mills, Peach Orchard, Savage Station, White Oak Bridge, Malvern Hill, Antietam and Fredericksburg. One of the incidents of his army work was that upon recommendation of United States Senator Wright he was appointed a first lieutenant in the Regular Army but declined.
At the outbreak of the war with Spain President Mckinley named General Plume Brigadier General of Volunteers, and he commanded the First Brigade, First Division, 2nd Army Corps. He was the only general officer from New Jersey in that war. Although the command was never called to the fighting front General Plume had it in readiness to move at a moment's notice as long as hostilities continued.
General Plume's grandfather was William Turk, M. D., of the United States Navy. Surgeon Turk's wife was a daughter of Captain John W. Livingston a Revolutionary officer, of direct descent from William Livingston, the first Governor of New Jersey and the original grantee of Livingston Manor on the Hudson River. On his father's side, the General is a lineal descendant of Samuel Plume, of the Colony from Branford, Conn., that sent the first settlers to Newark in 1666, and of Captain Visscher, a Dutch navigator who was of the Hendrick Hudson party that explored the upper Hudson River and organized the colony out of which the city of Albany has grown.
General Plume has lived in Newark since 1843, and he received his education in the local private schools and in the Newark Academy. Be- fore the Civil War he was in the service of the old State Bank of Newark; and after the war he helped to organize the Ninth National Bank of New York and was connected with it for seven years. General Plume organized the Manufacturers National Bank of Newark and be- came its cashier and later the President of the bank.
General Plume is Past Commander of New Jersey Commandery Military Order of Foreign Wars; Past Senior Vice-Commander of New York Commandery, Military Order Loyal Legion of the United States,
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and is treasurer-in-chief of the commander-in-chief of the latter organi- zation.
ADDISON BROWN POLAND-Newark, (258 Montclair Ave. )- Educator. Born in Winchendon, Mass., March 26th, 1851; son of Simon Brown and Betsy ( Wheeler) Poland, both of whom were of English descent; married in 1875, to Fannie Elizabeth Flagg, daughter of Captain Algernon S. Flagg, who died June 10th, 1890; married in 1895 to Mary Bishop Dennis, daughter of the Rev. M. J. Dennis, of Dayton, O.
Children : Ethel Elizabeth; Edwin Flagg; Margaret Evangeline ; Mary Dennis; Addison Brown.
Addison B. Poland, for sixteen years prior to his retirement in 1917 City Superintendent of Public Schools of Newark, has been a large factor in the educational life of the country. He assisted in founding the School of Pedagogy of New York University ; and, with Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University and Dr. William H. Maxwell, Superintendent of Schools of New York City, established the "Educational Review," the leading education- al journal in America. About the same time, he helped to or- ganize the School Masters' Club in New York City, designed to bring into closer fellowship the- school masters of the metropoli- tan district. Seth Low, former Mayor of New York City, was the club's first president. Dr. Poland has been active in the National Educational Associa- tion for many years, having served on some of its most im- portant committees. He has been President of the New Jer- sey State Teachers' Association, and is the author of many valu- able documents and reports that have been widely circulated and are much quoted.
Superintendent Poland's ad- ministration of its public school system has made Newark one of the foremost educational centers in the United States. The city has a larger school enrollment per 1,000 of popu- lation than any other city of the United States, even surpassing Boston. He was the first in the country to introduce the All Year School, and developed and perfected Newark's Summer Schools and Evening Schools. He estab- lished industrial and technical and special schools for all classes of normal
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children, as well as special schools and classes for abnormal children, such as the deaf, the blind, the cripples, and those afflicted with speech defects. His most recent innovation was the establishment of the Alternating school whereby there is great saving in cost of school buildings and their upkeep.
At seventeen years of age Addison Poland entered Wesleyan University at Middletown. On leaving college he began his teaching career as princi- pal of the Ashburnham (Mass.) High School. Later he became principal of the high school at Salisbury, Mass. During all this time, he contem- plated following the law as his profession, and at one time studied in the office of ex-Mayor George H. Verry, of Worcester. The educational field had the larger attraction for him, however, and he became principal of the Dey Street Grammar School in Fitchburg, Mass., and afterward of the Union School and Academy of Ilion, N. Y. He resigned this last named position to become principal of the High School in Jersey City. In 1892 Gov. Leon Abbett made him State Superintendent of Schools. He resigned that office four years later to become Assistant Superintendent of Schools of New York City. His appointment to the New York City position was noted as the first instance in thirty-three years of the election of a non- resident to a Superintendent's position in the schools of that city. During his service in New York he assisted in reorganizing the schools under the new charter creating the Greater New York. In March, 1897, he resigned in order to travel abroad and secure a much needed rest. With Mrs. Poland he spent a year making a tour of the world. Upon his return he be- came Superintendent of Schools of Paterson. In 1901 he was elected City Superintendent of Schools of Newark.
Wesleyan University conferred the degree of A. M. upon Dr. Poland in 1876 and in 1890 New York University conferred the degree of Ph. D. Mrs. Poland, whose father was a clergyman in Ohio, also holds a Ph. D. degree from the same University - the first woman to receive this degree from New York University.
HENRY R. POORE-Orange, (45 Ridge Street.)-Artist, Author and Lecturer. Born at Newark, on March 21, 1859; son of Daniel W. and S. H. Poore; married at Worcester, Mass., to Katharine G. Stevens, daughter of Charles Emery and Caroline C. Stevens.
Henry R. Poore was in charge of the Art Department at Chautauqua for six years and for six other years was Instructor in Composition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1890 he was sent by the United States Government to make a report on the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. His spirited work in the painting of animals and landscapes containing ani- mals had attracted the attention of the United States Government, which twice sent him to the Southwest, where he spent several months painting and writing among the Indians.
Mr. Poore attended the Newark Academy and prepared for college in California, where he lived for seven years. Coming East, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating from there with the class of 1883. His technical education in line and color, begun at the Pennsylvania Acad-
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emy of Fine Arts and the New York Academy of Design, was completed in Paris under Lumenais and Bouguereau. While a student in Paris, he painted the picture, inspired by a passage from Milton's "Hymn to the Nativity," which was afterwards awarded the first prize of $2,000 offered by the American Art Association.
Mr. Poore has been a resident of Orange for many years, and a number of his most notable paintings have been first exhibited to his friends at his studio on Ridge St. While he was still in college, he competed for the Harper prize of $3,000, offered to any artist under thirty for the best illus- tration to the "Hymn to the Nativity." Though awarded the prize by the jury, it was subsequently withheld by the donors.
The country about Lyme, on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, had always appealed to Mr. Poore and he took up his whole house and wandered about from place to place. The natives of the country-side became accustomed to seeing a small shack, principally plate glass windows, resting on run- ners, and being dragged over the ground by four oxen. Protected in this manner from the cold. Mr. Poore painted, over the Lyme country.
Mr. Poore was awarded a bronze medal at the Pan-Amer- ican Exposition in 1901; a sil- ver medal at the St. Louis In- ternational Exposition in 1904: a gold medal by the American Art Society in 1907; a gold medal at the International Cen- tennial at Buenos Aires in 1916. and a silver medal at the Pana- ma-Pacific Exposition in 1915. He is a member of the Interna- tional Society of Arts and Let- ters of Paris, and of the Nation- al Academy. Specimens of his work have been purchased by the Art Club of Philadelphia, the Fine Arts Association of Buffalo, the St. Louis Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Associ- ation of Indianapolis, the Worcester Art Museum, and by many private collectors.
He is the author of a number of books on art subjects. "Pictorial Com- position." published in 1903, is now in its eleventh edition, having sold all 'round the world, and has been translated into Dutch. Other works by the same author are "The Pictorial Figure," and "New Tendencies in Art." the latter of which was afterwards combined in one volume with "The Con- ception of Art," published in 1913. It was partly due to the success of his written work that Mr. Poore became instructor in composition at the Penn- sylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He has also for many years conducted a summer class at Lyme, Conn., and has lectured in all the principal cities of
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the Atlantic seaboard and in Chicago. He has been engaged recently in the preparation of several new canvases.
Mr. Poore is a Presbyterian in faith and a republican in politics and is connected with the Lotos, Salmagundi, the National Arts and the MacDowell Clubs of New York, the Art Club of Philadelphia and the New England Society of Orange.
GEORGE ADAMS POST-Somerville .- Manufacturer. Born in Cuba, Allegheny Co., N. Y., on September 1, 1854 ; son of Ira Allen and Harriet Newell (Curtis) Post; married on June 22nd, 1881, to Minnie C. Munson, of Susquehanna, Penna.
While a resident of Somerville, George Adams Post's activities have been largely outside of New Jersey. Before he came here, he had been a large figure in the politics of Pennsylvania. He was Mayor of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, when he was twenty-two years of age, and later was a demo- cratic candidate for Presidential Elector on the Pennsylvania Democratic State Ticket, in the campaign of 1880; represented the Fifteenth District of Pennsylvania in the Forty-eighth Congress of the United States (1883- 1885) ; was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1884; served in the campaign of that year as Secretary of the Democratic Con- gressional Campaign Committee, and was Chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Convention in 1885.
Mr. Post was educated in the public schools and the Academy of Owe- go (Tioga Co.) New York, and in the Normal School of Oswego (Oswego Co.) New York. At eighteen he accepted a position in the freight depart- ment of the Erie Railroad Company at Susquehanna, Penna., and became Assistant to the Superintendent of Motive Power in 1875. Having studied law at night, he was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in August, 1882; became editor and part owner of the Montrose (Pa.) "Democrat" in 1883, continuing as such until 1889, in connection with the practice of law. Re- moving to New York, for two years (1889-1890) he was on the editorial staff of the "New York World." Entering the manufacturing business in 1892, he became Vice-President of the Standard Coupler Company of New York, and since 1894, has been continuously President of that Company, being also interested in several other industrial enterprises.
Mr. Post was Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Railway Supply Manufacturers Association in 1903. In 1905, he was Chairman of the American Railway Appliance Exhibition, held in connection with the International Railway Congress in Washington. He has been President of the Railway Business Association of the United States since 1909, having been nine times elected to that office.
Mr. Post is one of the Board of Governors of the Machinery Club of New York (President in 1911-1912) ; a member of the Merchants Associa- tion of New York, the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, a Trustee of the New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce, a National Coun- cillor of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, and a member of
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many railroad clubs throughout the country. His social clubs are the Lo- tos, Railroad and Machinery Clubs of New York, and the Raritan Valley Country Club and Middlebrook Club, in Somerset county. He is Chairman of the Somerville Chapter of the American Red Cross. His New York office is at 30 Church Street.
As an after-dinner orator Mr. Post holds high rank, and is widely known as "The Apostle of Good Humor."
BENEDICT PRIETH-Newark .- Newspaper Proprietor. Born at Newark, in 1870; son of Benedict and Theodora (Sauter- meister) Prieth; married at Newark, in 189S, to Georgia Marion Parker, daughter of Frank M. Parker, of Newark.
Children : Marcia, born in 1899; Theodora, born in 1901; Ger- trude, born in 190S; Janet, born in 1910.
Benedict Prieth has been for all of his business career engaged in the publication of the "Freie Zeitung," a German Republican newspaper of Newark and the leading German newspaper of the state. His father was born in Tyrol, Austria and his mother in Hanover, Germany. Mr. Prieth attended the Green street public school in Newark from 1875 to 1SS0, and the Newark Academy from 1880 to '87. He entered Princeton University in the latter year, graduating from there with the class of 1891; and, going abroad, took a two year course at the University of Berlin, Germany.
Mr. Prieth is a member of the Republican State Committee, and its Treasurer. In 1907 he became a member of the Board of Education and served until 1910.
Mr. Prieth is a member of the Union and Princeton Clubs of Newark, the Cannon Club of Princeton and of the New Jersey Historical Society.
FRANCES FOLSOM (CLEVELAND)) PRESTON-Princeton. Born in Buffalo, N. Y., July 21, 1864; daughter of Oscar and Emma C. (Harmon) Folsom; married in Washington, D. C., June 2, 1886, to Grover Cleveland, son of the Rev. William F. and Anne (Neal) Cleveland; 2nd, at Princeton, on February 10, 1913 to Thomas Jex Preston, Jr., son of Thomas Jex and Jennie E. (Weller) Preston.
Children : Ruth Cleveland, born Oct. 3, 1891; Esther Cleveland, born Sept. 9, 1893; Marion Cleveland, born July 7, 1895; Richard Folsom Cleveland, born Oct. 28, 1897; Francis Grover Cleveland, born July 18, 1903.
Mrs. Preston is the widow of the late Grover Cleveland, twice Presi- dent of the United States. Her father who was a lawyer in Buffalo had been Mr. Cleveland's partner. Her marriage to President Cleveland was the first Presidential wedding in the White House. Thomas J. Preston, Jr., to whom she was married in 1913, first a business man in Newark, was Professor of Archaeology of Wells College, Aurora, Cayuga Co., N. Y., was
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in 1912 President pro. tem. of the College, and is the author of some works on art.
Mrs. Preston is of English and New England stock on both sides. She was educated at private schools in Buffalo, N. Y., and St. Paul, Minn. From the High school at Buffalo she entered Wells College. Her home is in Princeton, where President Cleveland established his residence after retiring from the White House.
Mrs. Preston was a trustee of Wells College in 1887, and is a member of the Colony Club, the Women's University Club, the Wells Club (N. Y.) and the Present Day Club of Princeton.
HELEN NORRIS PRICKITT-Metuchen .- Pianist and Editor. Born at Washington, D. C .; daughter of John L. and Cordelia (Clarke) Norris; married September 2nd, 1893 to Charles A. Prickitt, of Metuchen, son of Rev. S. B. D. Prickitt and Ellen Bates Prickitt.
Children : Charles, born Sept. 1, 1898; Helen, born June 7, 1903.
Helen Norris Prickitt was among the first to call attention to the enormous depreciation the mosquito brings to New Jersey property and to advise a public movement for the extermination of the pest. She was a primo mover in the organiza- tion of the Borough Improve- ment League of Metuchen and Chairman of its Mosquito Com- mittee-the pioneer Committee- to agitate the importance of town, county and finally state action. The persistence of the women of the League resulted in the law providing for county Mosquito Extermination Com- missions, and Metuchen was made the scene of the first thorough and successful experi- ments in that work. The women of the League started the late Prof. Smith of Rutgers College. State Entomologist, after the first appropriation, a $10,000 one, the State made for mos- quito extermination experi- ments.
Mrs. Prickitt has been for some years-and is still-President of the Metuchen Improvement League. It is one of the few women's clubs in New Jersey owning a well equipped club house. The club is free of all debt and under Mrs. Prickitt's leadership has ample funds for civic work. Its building, known as the
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Franklin Civic House, is the center of the organized efforts of Metuchen women in a variety of public, literary, civic, beneficent, artistie and social activities. Remodeled with modern conveniences, it is the building that served as the Town School and Meeting House of the Committee during the Revolution. Notwithstanding its historie interest, the building was neglect- ed until the League took possession of it, rescued it from neglect and re- stored it to its colonial freshness.
Mrs. Prickitt traces her ancestry back on her mother's side to Major John Clarke, of New York State, an officer of the Revolutionary War, and to the Norris family of Virginia and Washington, D. C. She was educated at the Washington High School, studied music with Dr. Bischoff in Wash- ington and then went to the Berlin Conservatory of Music as a pupil of Professor Jedliczka. She has appeared as a pianist and singer at concerts and in church choirs and at recitals. She is news-editor of the "Metuchen Recorder," a weekly newspaper conducted by her husband and herself. and finds time besides for the promotion of worthy benevolent and civic move- ments of many kinds. She was one of the organizers and former President of the Quiet Hour Literary Society, an officer of the New Jersey State Fed- eration of Women's Clubs, and a delegate of the Federation to the last Biennial Convention of the National organization. She has taken an active part in woman suffrage work only once; on the request of the State Chair- man, she called a meeting and planned and conducted a campaign by mail that secured in Metuchen the largest favoring majority cast anywhere in the state for the woman suffrage constitutional amendment in 1915. In April, 1917, she became first President of the Metuchen Equal Suffrage League, at its organization.
JOHN DYNELEY PRINCE-Ringwood Manor-University Pro- fessor, Author. Born at New York City, April 17th, 1868; son of John Dyneley and Anna Maria (Morris) Prince ; married at New York City, on October 5th, 1889, to Adeline Loomis, daughter of . Alfred L. Loomis.
Children : John Dyneley, Jr.
John Dyneley Prince is Professor of Slavonic Languages in Columbia University. He is, besides, a leading figure in the public affairs of New Jersey. He was elected in 1905 to the New Jersey House of Assembly, and, successively re-elected, served in the Legislatures of 1906-S-9. The republican majority of the House of 1909 made him Speaker. In the fall of that year he was nominated for the State Senate by the republi- cans of Passaic, and, elected, served until the close of 1913. In the Senate of 1911 he was majority leader and in 1912 was President. While in that position he served as Acting Governor during the many absences of Gov. Wilson from the state. In 1917 Gov. Edge appointed him Presi- dent of the State Civil Service Commission.
Senator Prince is of pure British stock. His father's family came from Yorkshire, England and his mother's from Wales. The Princes
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came in the 1830's to Paterson where Senator Prince's father was born and where, of the firm of Plummer & Prince, his grandfather conducted a mill on Prince street, which was named for him. His mother's family settled on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and at Baltimore about 1740 and have lived there ever since. Reverdy Johnson, the famous American jurist of the "Re-construction" period that followed the Civil War, was a grandfather of his mother. The father of Senator Prince's wife was Dr. Alfred L. Loomis, the noted lung specialist at New York City.
Senator Prince had lived at Islip, L. I. and in New York City before he came in 1891 to New Jersey to make his home. He was educated at Columbia Grammar School in New York City and, having graduated from Columbia College, represented the College on the expedition to Southern Babylonia sent out in 1888 by the University of Pennsylvania. Before his return to America he attended the University of Berlin in 1889 and '90 and after his return he was a student and a Fellow of the Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore until '92. In 1893 he was made Pro- fessor of Semitic Languages at New York University and was Dean of the New York University Graduate School from 1895 to 1902. He next became Professor of Semitic Languages at Columbia University and in 1915 he was made Professor of the Slavonic Languages. Professor Prince was decorated by the King of Servia with the Order of St. Sava. He became a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1903 and a member of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, and of the Nederlandsche Maatschappij der Letterkunde in 1913, is connected with the American Oriental Society and Treasurer of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis.
Professor Prince is a voluminous pamphleteer on philological sub- jects and the author of a number of scientific works. Among them are, "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin," (Baltimore, 1893) ; articles in the "Journal of the American Oriental Society," 1895-1916 ; a "Critical Com- mentary on the Book of Daniel," (Leipzig, 1889) ; articles in the "Pro- ceedings of the American Philosophical Society," and in the "Proceedings of the New York Academy of Sciences," the "American Journal of Phil- ology," the "American Anthropologist," etc. 1897-1916 ; articles in the "Jour- nal of Biblical Literature," 1898-1914; in "Encyclopaedia Biblica," on the "Development of Primitive Music," 1902-3; "Modern Dialect of the Cana- dian Abenakis, Miscellanea Linguistica," Turin, 1901; "Kuloskap the Master" (Algonquin Indian poems), with the late Charles G. Leland, 1902; "Sumerian Lexicon," 1908; "Assyrian Primer," 1909; articles in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" and in Hasting's "Dictionary of Reli- gions," etc .. and on the "San Blas Indian Language of Panama," in the "American Anthropologist," 1912-1913.
Professor Prince's club memberships are with the Union, the Uni- versity of New York, the Tuxedo and the Hamilton of Paterson.
SEWARD PROSSER-Englewood .- Banker. Born at Buffalo, N. Y., on May 1, 1871; son of Henry Wilbur and Anna (Fay)
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Prosser; married on October 25. 1902, to Constance Barber, of Englewood.
Seward Prosser has been President of the Bankers Trust Company of New York since 1914; and is a director in a long chain of other financial institutions and of corporations.
He was educated in the public schools and at the Englewood School for Boys. He began his business career with the Equitable Life Insurance Society of the United States and later, as a member of the firm of Prosser & Homans, represented the Society. He became Vice President of the Astor Trust Company in 1907, President of the Liberty National bank in 1912 and reached the Presidency of the Bankers Trust Company in October of 1914.
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