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 48

Author: Sackett, William Edgar, 1848- ed; Scannell, John James, 1884- ed
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Patterson, N.J. : J.J. Scannell
Number of Pages: 592


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 48


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in 1856 he cast his first vote for Fremont, and has continued a republican, voting for every republican candidate for President.


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WILLIAM LAWRENCE SAUNDERS-Plainfield .- Publicist and Inventor. Born at Columbus, Ga., on November 1, 1856; son of William Trebell Saunders, D. D. and Eliza (Morton) Saunders ; married at Narragansett Pier, R. I., 1886, to Bertha Louise Gaston, of Narragansett Pier, (died, 1906.)


Children : Louise (Mrs. Maxwell Evarts Perkins) ; Jean (Mrs. Marsom I. Buttfield).


Mr. Saunders, twice Mayor of North Plainfield, is Chairman of the Naval Consulting Board of the United States and a member of the Federal Reserve Bank at New York. He holds a Commission also from Gov. Fielder as a member of the State Board of Commerce and Navigation.


Mr. Saunders is a descendant of Sir Edward Saunders, one of the Knights of the Horseshoe who discovered the Alleghanies. His earliest an- cestors were of the original Jamestown expedition ; and he is a grand- nephew of Robert Saunders the 14th President of William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Va. The University of Pennsylvania conferred the Bachelor of Science degree upon him in 1876 and the degree of Doctor of Science in 1911.


Before graduation from the University, Mr. Saunders was editor-in- chief of the "University Magazine" and class poet. After his graduation he engaged in newspaper work in Philadelphia, acted as special correspon- dent for several newspapers at the Centennial Exposition and made two all- night balloon ascensions, reaching a height of three and one-half miles each time. Engaging subsequently in building enterprises, he was, from 1878 to 1881, the engineer in charge of the construction of docks, ware-houses and ship channel in New York harbor at Black Tom Island, and incidentally designed and patented, besides, the apparatus now in general use for sub- aqueous drilling, using the tube and water jet system.


In 1881, he became engineer for the Ingersoll Rock Drilling Co., and invented and patented rock drilling and quarrying devices, track channelers, and gadders and bar channelers, a system of pumping liquids by compressed air now generally used in the Baku oil fields in Russia and a radialaxe sys- tem of coal mining.


Meanwhile, Mr. Saunders' political activities have been very wide. He was for sometime a member of the New Jersey State Democratic Commit- tee : and Gov. Wilson made him a member of the New Jersey Harbor Com- mission. He became a member of the State Board of Commerce and Navi- gation when the administrative departments of the state were re-organized in 1916. It was upon the nomination of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, that the Secretary of the Navy appointed him a member of the Naval Consulting Board of the United States and he is chairman of the Board. He is also one of the Executive Committee of the League to En- force Peace.


Mr. Saunders was Secretary, Vice President and is now President, of


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The Ingersoll-Sergeant Drill Company ; formerly President, now Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ingersoll-Rand Company ; now Director of the A. S. Cameron Steam Pump Works, International Harvester Company of New Jersey, International Harvester Corporation; also, of the Amer- ican International Corporation, the Latin American Public Works Corpora- tion and the New York & Honduras Rosario Mining Company ; formerly President and Director of the Muhlenberg Hospital of Plainfield : Director of the American Institute of Mining Engineers ( Past President ) ; member of the New York Chamber of Commerce ; Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America (member of Advisory Committee of Federal Trade Com- mission ) and National Foreign Trade Council : Director of the Machinery Club (Past President) India House ; member of the Aero Club, Engineers' Club, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, National Civic Federation (Chairman of the New York Welfare Committee), American Iron and Steel Institute, United Engineering Society (Trustee), American Academy of Political and Social Science (Philadelphia), Academy of Politi- cal Science in the City of New York and National Democratic Club ; Fellow American Geographical Society ; Chairman for Nicaragua, Permanent Pan- American International High Commission.


Mr. Saunders is editor of "Compressed Air Magazine" and author of "Compressed Air Information," "Compressed Air Production," co-author of "The Subways and Tunnels of New York," co-author Dana & Saunders "Rock Drilling," and author of numerous pamphlets and other publications, among them : "Compressed Air, Its Production and Use," "A Practical Con- sideration of Compressed Air," "Quarrying by the Channeling Process." "The History of the Rock Drill," "Rock Drilling Economics," "Tunnel Driv- ing in the Alps," "Right and Strength in Equal Suffrage," "Reveries of a Business Man," "Business and Politics and the Anti-Trust Laws," and "Compressed Air in the Arts and Industries" for the International Engineer- ing Congress, San Francisco, 1915.


Mr. Saunders' office is at 11 Broadway, New York City.


EDWARD SHAFFER SAVAGE-Rahway .- Lawyer. Born in Rahway, July 1, 1854.


Edward S. Savage is the President of the new State Department of Conservation and Development created by the Economy and Efficiency acts of 1915. The Department embraces what under the old system had been the State Water Supply Commission, the Forest Park Reservation Commis- sion, the Geological Survey, the Washington Park Crossing Commission, the State Museum and the Fort Nonsense Park Commission. Mr. Savage is a democrat of long standing and was prominent during the incumbency of Leon Abbett as Governor. While a lawyer by profession Mr. Savage is more largely interested in financial and real estate affairs.


Mr. Savage read law in the office of Cortlandt Parker of Newark, and graduated from the Columbia Law School in 1876. A year later he was ad- mitted to the New Jersey bar. He practised law in Newark for a few years


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after his admission, but, later moving his business to New York, he was associated with George W. Miller for twenty years as his partner. In 1912 he retired from active practice to give attention to the other field of finance and real estate.


In 1883 the democrats of Middlesex county named Mr. Savage as their candidate for the House of Assembly and, re-elected, he served in the Houses of 1884-1885. In 1915, upon the re-organization of the state depart- ments, Gov. Fielder named Mr. Savage as a member of the Department of Conservation and Development and he was elected to the Presidency of that commission. His term will expire in July of 1918.


GRANT BARNEY SCHLEY-Far Hills .- Banker. Born at Chapinsville, N. Y., February 25th, 1845; son of Evander S. Schley ; married in New York in 1879, to Elizabeth, daughter of George E. Baker, of New York.


Mr. Schley attended Canandaigua Academy, but began business as a clerk in the express offices of Wells Butterfield & Company, Syracuse, N. Y., when he was sixteen years old. Two years later he was made the agent of the company at Suspension Bridge, N. Y. The Wells Butterfield Co. merged into the American Express Company ; and Mr. Schley, continuing in the service, was transferred to its money department office in New York City. His friendships and the character of his work there led to the offer in 1874 of a position in the First National Bank of New York and, accepting, he re- mained there until 1880. Venturing then into business on his own account, he became a member of the New York Stock Exchange and the junior mem- ber of the firm of Groesbeck & Schley. The firm underwent some changes later and became the banking house of Moore & Schley.


Mr. Schley is President of the Board of Directors of the Coal Mining & Manufacturing Co., the Croesus Gold Mining & Milling Co., the El Potosi Mining Co., the Tintic Co., of the Howe Sound Co., the Chihuahua Mining Co., first Vice President of the Electric Storage Battery Co., Chairman of the Board of the Elliott-Fischer Co., and a director of the American Smelting & Refining Co., the Northern Pacific Railway Co., the Republic Iron & Steel Co. of New Jersey, the Pittsburgh Coal Co., etc.


His club and society memberships are with the American Fine Arts, the Manhattan, Metropolitan, Union League, Riding, Lotos, New York Athletic, New York Yacht and the Atlantic Yacht Clubs.


Mr. Schley has a winter residence at 845 Fifth Avenue, New York City.


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AUSTEN SCOTT-New Brunswick .- College Professor. Born at Maumee, O., on August 10, 1848; son of J. Austen and Sarah (Ranney) Scott; married on February 21, 1882, to Anne Prentiss Stearns, of Newark.


Austen Scott was Private Secretary to George Bancroft, the historian, and spent seven years between 1875 and 1882, in gathering the material and


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arranging it for the several volumes of that noted writer's "History of the Constitution of the United States." He has been a frequent contributor to reviews on varieties of topics.


Dr. Scott entered Yale College and graduated with the A. B. degree in 1869. He attended the University of Michigan receiving the A. M. degree in 1870 and spent three years after that in attending lectures at the Uni- versities of Leipzig and Berlin. While abroad Dr. Scott was Private Sec- retary to Bancroft. Upon returning to this country he engaged in teaching German at the University of Michigan. After he had concluded his labors in assisting Mr. Bancroft with his History he became Associate in History at Johns Hopkins University and was made Acting Professor of History in 1883. The same year he became Voorhees Professor of History, Political Economy and Constitutional Law in Rutgers College at New Brunswick. In 1890 he was promoted to the Presidency of the college and held it until 1906, when he retired to resume his work as Professor of History and Political Science in the Institution.


Dr. Scott was given the degree of Ph. D. by Leipzig University in 1873, and in 1891 Princeton University conferred the LL. D. degree upon him.


WALLACE MCILVAINE SCUDDER-Newark, (510 Parker St.) -Newspaper Proprietor. Born in Trenton, on December 26, 1853 ; son of Edward Wallace and Mary Louise (Drake) Scudder ; mar- ried to Ida Quinby, 1880, daughter of James M. and Phoebe (Sweezey) Quinby, of Newark; 2nd in 1906, to Gertrude Wither- spoon, daughter of Orlando and Cora (Taylor) Witherspoon.


Children : Edward Wallace, Antoinette Quinby, Wallace M.


Wallace M. Scudder is the owner and publisher and the editor-in-chief of the "Newark Evening News." He was one of its founders and has been the chief of its managers from the time of its first publication in 1883.


Mr. Scudder's father was for nearly thirty years an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the state and recognized as a Jurist of unusual acumen and soundness. George Drake, father of Mr. Scudder's mother, was also an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in the 1820 decade.


Mr. Scudder began his education at the State Model School in Trenton and afterwards went to the Lehigh University, graduating in 1873. He subsequently took a course at the Harvard Law School, studied law with Judge Garret D. W. Vroom in Trenton and Vice Chancellor John R. Emery in Newark. He was admitted as an attorney in 1877 and given his counselor papers in 1880. He had been engaged for three years in the practice of the law when, in 1883, he became interested with Henry A. Steele, Lawrence S. Mott, Russell P. Jacoby and two or three others in a movement for the publication of a newspaper built on lines of metropolitan journalism, that was much needed in the rapidly growing city of Newark ; and on September 3, 1883, the first issue of the paper made its appearance as the "Evening News." With a circulation exceeding 80,000. over a territory embracing


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all of the North cities of the state, it has become one of the valuable after- noon newspaper properties in the United States.


Besides being engrossed with the great cares attending the publication of the "Evening News," Mr. Scudder finds time to engage in the large financial and civic life of Newark. Among the others, he was one of the members of the Citizens Committee of 100 that in 1916 prepared the six months celebration of Newark's founding in 1666, serving on its sub-com- mittee on Schools and Philanthropies. .


Mr. Scudder, originally a Presbyterian by faith, is now a vestryman in St. James Episcopal Church and was the same in Trinity. His wife is the daughter of an Episcopalian clergyman. He is a Director in the Essex County National Bank and the Security Savings Bank and a Governor of the Essex Club, of Newark, the Morris County Golf Club and Baltusrol Golf Club.


THOMAS J. SCULLY-South Amboy .- Transportation. Born in South Amboy, September 19, 1868.


Thomas J. Scully has had an eventful career as the Representative of the Second District in the Congress of the United States. His early educa- tion was acquired in the schools of his native town and at Seton Hall Col- lege. When he left the College he was taken into the towing business which his father had established in 1874. His energy afterwards built the Scully Towing and Transportation Company into an important maritime enter- prise. It owns more than fifty ocean going tugs and barges and carries more than a million tons of freight annually to all parts of the world.


Mr. Scully has always evinced a deep interest in the life of the com- munity around him ; and in 1898, when Dr. Ambrose Treganowan resigned the Mayoralty of South Amboy, the Council named Mr. Scully, who had served three years in the Board of Education, to fill out his unexpired term. In 1909 the people elected him to serve for the full term. While in that office he improved the dock facilities and the sewer system and re- organized the fire and police departments. In 1908 the democrats of the district sent him as a delegate to the National Convention that named Wm. J. Bryan for President and he was also a candidate on the Bryan ticket for Presidential Elector. He was a delegate, too, to the National Conven- tion of 1912 that nominated Woodrow Wilson.


Mr. Scully came into view as a candidate for Congress in 1910 and took the nomination against Benjamin F. Howell (rep.), who had repre- sented the District in Washington for sixteen years, and defeated him by nearly 4,500 plurality. He was renominated and re-elected in 1912, 1914 and 1916. The result of the contest between himself and Robert Carson, whom the republicans had nominated against him in the 1916 campaign, was in doubt for weeks after the election. The total of the returns filed with the county clerks by the election boards of the district indicated Car- son's election with fourteen more votes to his credit than Scully had to his. Congressman Scully claimed that the correction of errors in the count would


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Serviss


put him in the lead. A recount was ordered. Because a tie between the parties in the National House of Representatives was threatened, the re- opening of the ballot boxes was awaited with the keenest interest all over the country. The recount disclosed a majority in favor of Mr. Scully and Mr. Scully retained his seat.


JOHN PRESTON SEARLE-New Brunswick .- Educator. Born in Schuylerville, N. Y., September 12, 1854; son of Rev. Samuel Tomb and Cornelia Fonda (Southworth) Searle; married at Somerville, on December 12, 1882, to Susan Bovey, of Cherokee, Ia.


At its session in Asbury Park in June, 1917, the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America elected John Preston Searle, President of the General Synod. Since 1902, he has been President of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary.


The Rev. Dr. Searle graduated from Rutgers College in 1875, and from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in 1878. Rutgers College conferred the A. B. degree in 1875, the A. M. degree in 1878 and the D. D. degree in 1893. Ordained as a minister of the Reformed Church in America, he be- came in 1878, pastor of the church at Griggstown, (N. J.) and from 1881 to 1893 was pastor of the First Church in Somerville. In 1893, he accepted the tender of the position of Professor of Systematic Theology in the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, becoming also President of the Faculty in 1902.


Dr. Searle is Vice President of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church of America. Since 1898, he has been a Trustee of Rut- gers College. He is a member of the Executive Commission of the World Alliance of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches; was President of the Commission in 1915 and 1916, and was Chairman of the Council of the Re- formed and Presbyterian Churches in America in 1902-'03-'04 and 1906.


Besides being a frequent contributor with sermons, memoirs, etc., to the religious press, he is the author of "An Outline of Theological Encyclopedia" and of "Life of Talbot Wilson Chambers, S. T. D. LL. D."


He is a member of Delta Upsilon, and Phi Beta Kappa and connected with the University and Rutgers Clubs of New York, the Rutgers Club of New Brunswick and the New Brunswick Country Club.


GARRETT PUTNAM SERVISS-Closter .- Journalist, Scientist. Born in Sharon Springs, N. Y., March 24th, 1851; son of Garrett Putnam and Catharine Shelp Serviss; married to Eleanore Betts, 1875; second marriage to Henriette Gros le Blond, 1907.


Children : son of first wife, Garrett Putnam, died in 1907; two


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step-children, Germaine Gatier Serviss (adopted daughter), born France, 1899, and Edward Gatier, born France, 1897.


Garrett P. Serviss is of pre-Revolutionary American parentage, on both father's and mother's side, and spent his boyhood among the hills of the Schoharie, near its junction with the Mohawk. He acquired his early edu- cation in the public school, and at Johnstown (N. Y.) Academy, graduating from Cornell University, 1872 (B. S.), and from Columbia College Law School, 1874 (LL. B.). He was admitted to the bar of New York the same year, but instead of entering upon the practice of the law, went into journ- alism in 1875, as a reporter for the "New York Tribune." In 1876 he went to the "New York Sun" in the same capacity. In 1878 he was made night copy editor and writer of editorials, particularly on astronomy, and became known anonymously throughout the United States as "The Sun's Astron- omer." In 1882 he became night editor of "The Sun," continuing his editor- ial writing and giving many lectures on astronomy in New York and else- where.


In 1885 he started the American Astronomical Society, now a depart- ment of the Brooklyn Institute; and in 1892 developed the "Urania Lec- tures" in Carnegie Music Hall, which were devoted to astron- omy, geology and the scenery and history of the earth. These were illustrated with elaborate stage settings, transparent paint- ed drops and electrical lighting devices, which were a novelty in America at that time. Three lectures were prepared : "A Trip to the Moon," "From Chaos to Man," and "The Wonders of America," and during two years these were presented in most of the great cities of the United States and Canada. Since then Mr. Serviss has devoted his time to travel, study, writing and lec- tures, having, perhaps, the most repute for his astronomical writ- ings and lectures.


Most of his journalistic work for many years has taken the form of short editorials and articles on scientific and popular topics, treated in a way to interest and instruct the average curious but busy reader.


Mr. Serviss is the author of the following books: "Astronomy With An Opera-glass" (Appleton), "The Moon" (Appleton), "A Columbus of Space" (Appleton ), "Astronomy With the Naked Eye" (Harper), "The Moon Metal" (Harper), "Eloquence" (Harper), "The Second Deluge" (McBride, Nast), besides "The 'Conquest of Mars," "The Sky Pirate," and "The Moon Maiden," stories of scientific mystery published by newspaper syndicates.


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Mr. Serviss is a Fellow of the American Association for the advance- ment of Science. European address: Arceau par Beire-le-Chatel, Cote D'Or, France.


JOHN AUGUSTINE SHEPPARD-Jersey City, (240 Ninth St. ) ---- Clergyman. Born in Carlow, Ireland, on September 28, 1849 ; son of James and Mary (Curran) Sheppard.


John A. Sheppard is a Monsignor, Vicar General of the (Catholic) Diocese of Newark and Prothonotary and Domestic Prelate of the Papal Court, and has a notable record of up-lift church work behind him.


The Right Rev. Monsignor Sheppard was three years old when his parents brought him to Paterson, and he received his primary education in the public schools of the city and in St. John's Parochial School. While he studied in St. John's Parish the Civil War was raging. It occurred to Father Mc Nulty, Rector of St. John's Church, that he might in- voke the militant spirit of the hour for the promotion of the cause of temperance. Calling Major Christopher McKiernan, who had just returned from the war, to his aid as a drill associate, he organized two compa- nies of Temperance Cadets and they were led out on their first parade on Inde- pendence Day of 1863 with "Col. Sheppard" and the Major in command. Ever since those days Monsignor Sheppard has been a devot- ed advocate of the temper- ance cause. At that time he had commercial occupa-


tions in view and was afterwards employed as a clerk in a couple of the Paterson stores. But his point of view broadened and he made up his mind eventually to devote himself to the Priesthood.


At seventeen he entered St. Charles College, Ellicott City, Md., and from there he became a student in Seton Hall College. In September, 1872, he was enrolled among the first year theologians in the Seminary of the Im- maculate Conception at South Orange and graduated from there on June 10. 1876. Of the class that came out with him four have been authors, two Deans, four Monsignors, one who was "Digmissimus" for the Mitre, and. himself, a Vicar General.


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Immediately after his ordination Father Sheppard became assistant to the late Monsignor Doane, rector of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Newark; and while serving as curate there he distinguished himself in church circles by founding and promoting the success of the "Sacred Heart Union," a quar- terly established for the purpose of raising funds for the support of the Catholic Protectory, He made many tours to parishes to enlist the sympa- thy and co-operation of the pastors in behalf of the wayward and home- ward boys for whom the Protectory was established, and the receipts from its sales form a large part of the fund that maintains the establishment.


He was still in that service when John McGranigan, a parishioner who had observed his zeal in church work, bequeathed his house and lot worth about $6,000 and cash to the amount of $14,000 to him. The money was distributed between St. Michael's Hospital, St. Mary's Academy and other religious institutions. The house was turned over to St. Vincent de Paul Society to erect a home for working boys, the foundation of the News- Boys Lodging House which was finally merged into the Catholic Protec- tory.


Monsignor Sheppard was afterwards assigned to the parish at Dover, but Bishop Wigger within a year put him in charge of St. Nicholas' Church in Passaic. The parish was not a promising field at the time ; but soon, in place of the dilapidated frame building in which the services had been held, there arose a magnificent stone church of Gothic architecture, a com- modious brick school and a suitable stone rectory. His energies spread to the field around him, and St. Mary's Hospital and the Church of Corpus Christi on Hasbrouck Heights are other monuments to his zeal. St. Nicho- las's Parish which, when he went there, was tottering under a debt of $15,000, had, when he left, property worth above all incumbrances more than $150,000.


The next charge assigned to Father Sheppard was that which he now holds as rector of St. Michael's Church on Ninth St., Jersey City. There he was faced by a debt of $127,000 on property in a run down condition. He addressed himself to the task of changing conditions with characteristic energy ; and in 1909 County Register James C. Clarke, of Hudson canceled the church mortgage for $100,000 which had been made in 1906 to the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company of Newark. The value of the parish property to-day is close on to a half million. It was in 1902 that Father Sheppard was made Vicar General of the Diocese; and, a year fol- lowing, he was the first priest in the United States to receive the distinction of Monsignor at the hands of Pope Pius X after his accession to the throne of St. Peter. The still further mark of distinction, that of Prothonotary Apostle, came to him in 1903.


Among the greater achievements of Monsignor Sheppard's latter years was the formation of the Diocesian Union of the Holy Name Societies that were already existing, independently, in the various parishes. It was found in 1905 that there were approximately 12,000 men enrolled in the various societies of the diocese, and these formed the nucleus of the present Dioce- sian Union which has a roster of 95,000 men. In the first rally held in Ham- ilton Park, just in front of St. Michael's Church, Jersey City, 14,000 men participated. When the Holy Name Societies inaugurated their first pilgrim- age to Rome in July, 1908, Mgr. Sheppard and the Rev. George S. Bennitt




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