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, 1919-1920, Vol II, Part 20

Author: Sackett, William Edgar, 1848- ed; Scannell, John James, 1884- ed
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Patterson, N.J. : J.J. Scannell
Number of Pages: 1454


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, 1919-1920, Vol II > Part 20


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paign his name appeared in the prints connected with the United States senatorship.


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Mr. Foote is a farmer along the larger scientific agricultural lines ; and his estate in Morristown is one of the show places of that exclusive region. He came to New Jersey with his parents when he was two years old, was educated at the Charlier Institute in New York City, and, after leaving there, spent five years abroad. Upon his return, he entered ac' tively into the business and social life of Morris County, and he is now President of the National Iron Bank of Morristown.


MINNIE J. FORCE (Mrs. William H.)-Newark, (16 Marshall - Street.)-Civic Worker. Born at Jersey City, July 31st, 1868, daughter of Lorenzo and Jennie E. (Edwards) Bixby ; married at Waterbury, Conn., August 1st, 1889, to William H. Force, son of John and Adelaide Force.


Children : Wallace W., born December 13th, 1901.


Mrs. Minnie J. Force is President of the New Jersey Division, Inter- national Sunshine Society, the largest philanthropic newspaper club in the world. It was incorporated to incite its members to kind and helpful deeds, and is planned to do the things, in unoccupied fields of philan- thropy, that will bring the sunshine of happiness to neglected hearts and homes. The state organization has thirty-seven chartered branches all working along different lines for "Sunshine." It gives its attention to city civics, crippled children, the "shut-ins," mending for the blind babies, the prevention of blindness, child hygiene, assisting the Visiting Nurses Asso- ciation, while the local work is differentiated in town or city according to the needs of the place.


Mrs. Force has been a member of the Society since 1900 when she or- ganized a branch in New Britain, Conn .; coming back to New Jersey in 1906, she was appointed State Recording Secretary of the New Jersey divi- sion. She held that position until October 10, 1916, when she was elected President of the Society. In its effort to find a community that no philan- thropy was helping, the Society discovered the neglect of blind babies and the Sunshine work of aid there began. There is now at Summit the largest blind babies home, nursery and kindergarten in the United States. It is known as the Arthur Home for Blind Babies.


In 1911 the state included blind babies among its dependents ; the so- ciety's certificate of endorsement was granted ; an appropriation of $365 a year was made for the care of each of the afflicted youngsters, and in 1916 through the Society's efforts the state allowance was increased to $450 per year for each.


Mrs. Force has been Secretary of the International Society's Depart- ment for the Blind for four years and a member of the International Board of Directors for three. The other officers of the New Jersey division are : -Vice President. Mrs. A. O. Buch, Elizabeth : Vice President, Mrs. A. F. Beckett, Salem: State Rec. Sec'y, Mrs. George F. Fox, Elizabeth ; State


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Cor. Sec'y. Mrs. William Hedden, Irvington ; State Treasurer, Mrs. Cath- erine Simpson, Orange.


ALEXANDER ROBERT FORDYCE, Jr .- West Orange .- Law- yer and Soldier. (Photograph published in Vol. 1-1917). Born . in New York City, Feb. 13th, 1873; son of Alexander Robert and Margaret Livingston Hall Fordyce; married Nov. 22, 1905; to Ida McCoy, daughter of Josiah and Mary Elizabeth McCoy of East Orange.


Children : Alexander Dingwall, born Dec. 13, 1908.


Colonel Fordyce, graduated from Princeton in 1896, and from the New York Law School in 1898; being admitted to the Bar the same year.


He was a member and President of the State Civil Commission from 1912 to 1916, having been appointed by Woodrow Wilson, when Governor. He was elected to the House of Assembly in 1904 and 1905.


In May, 1917, he resigned his commission as Colonel and Assistant Quartermaster General of the State and volunteered for the war; was appointed Major; mustered into the United States service, reported for duty in June and has been in active service ever since. He was recom- mended for promotion and appointed Lieutenant Colonel in August, 1918. His military service began in the Essex Troop in 1900.


Colonel Fordyce comes of distinguished Scotch ancestry.


He is a member of the Princeton, Essex County Country, Piedmont Driving and other clubs.


JOHN FRANKLIN FORT-Newark .- Lawyer. Born at Pem- berton, March 20th, 1852; son of Andrew Heisler and Hannah A. (Brown) Fort ; married at Newark, April 20th, 1876, to Charlotte Stainsby, daughter of William and Margaret Stainsby, both of Newark.


Children : Margretta, Franklin William and Leslie Runyon.


John Franklin Fort comes of a family that has long been prominent in New Jersey affairs. George F. Fort, the Democratic Governor of the state, from 1851 to 1854, was his uncle; and he has himself been active in the political and civic affairs of the state for many years. He gained his preparatory education at private schools in Pemberton and Aaron's Acad- emy in Mt. Holly. He graduated from Pennington Seminary, Pennington, in 1869, and at the Albany Law School, in 1872.


Admitted to the bar in November, 1873, he entered upon the practice of the law in Newark; and almost immediately plunged into the public life of the state. Mrs. Fort's father was the dominating force in the Re- publican party of Essex at that time and was afterwards State Senator from Essex; and Mr. Fort was allied with that party. He was Assistant Journal Clerk of the Assembly at Trenton in 1873 and 1874. In 1878 he


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was appointed Judge of the First District Court of Newark, serving there till 1886 when he resigned to devote all his time to his growing practice. He was a member of the Constitutional Commission of 1894 that framed amendments to the State's Constitution. In 1896 Governor Griggs ap- pointed him President Judge of the Common Pleas of Essex County and in 1900 Governor Voorhees named him an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the State.


Governor Fort was a delegate to the National Republican Convention of 1884, 1896, 1908 and 1912. In the Convention of 1896, he made the speech that put the name of Garret A. Hobart, of Paterson, before the delegates for Vice President of the United States. The oration attracted wide atten- tion and brought Mr. Fort into prominence. In 1908 while he was still on the Supreme Court Bench, the Republican State Convention named him as the candidate for Governor. He appeared before the delegates to accept the nomination, before they dispersed for their homes ; and gave a dramatic climax to the day's proceedings by handing his resignation to the Governor, as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He was elected in the No- vember following, and served for the three year term, January 1908-1911. Governor Fort pioneered much progressive legislation during his term and had many hard contests with political machine of his party. He secured primary reform, Public Utilities legislation, and the present effective Civil Service law. His fight paved the way for much of the advanced reform legislation that came under Governor Wilson.


The Progressive movement, that later stormed both parties, had been gathering force all during the period of Governor Fort's administration ; and Woodrow Wilson, to whom he handed the Great Seal of State in 1911, came to the State House to succeed him, as impersonating the Progressive sentiment of the Democratic party. The exchange of courtesies between the outgoing Republican and the incoming Democratic Governor were very marked; and, indeed, the friendship between them has extended into Gov- ernor Wilson's term as President of the United States. It was President Wilson who sent him to Santo Domingo, in 1914, as the Special Envoy of the United States to the Dominion Republic; and later, in 1915, the Presi- dent commissioned him as a Special Envoy from the United States, to Haiti.


Governor Fort had become in sympathy with the Progressive movement in the Republican party : and the approach of a new Presidential election in 1912 just after the close of his gubernatorial term, found him favoring the nomination, for the first place in the nation, of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, who was making an aggressive fight. as a Progressive, against the renomination of President William H. Taft. The Republican Conven- tion, assembleu at Chicago in 1912, named Taft; and the Roosevelt forces held an independent Convention-in Chicago too-and put Mr. Roosevelt in nomination against the President. The split in the party opened the path to the election of Governor Wilson as President. Ex-Governor Fort was a delegate to both of these Republican Conventions-the "Regular" and the "Progressive"-and played an important part in both.


Governor Fort was appointed by the President to be a member of the Federal Trade Commission, created under the Act of Congress, approved September 26. 1914. was confirmed by the Senate and entered upon his


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duties March 20, 1917, and is now a member of that important arm of the government. The duties of this Commission relate to the business interests of the country and the question of fair methods of competition. Under the Act creating this Commission it has to do largely with violations of the Clayton Act as well as the Federal Trade Commission Act.


Governor Fort has received the degree of Dr. of Laws from Dickinson, Rutgers, Lafayette, Middlebury, and Seton Hall Colleges, Union and New York Universities and Bloomfield Theological Seminary. He is a member of the Essex, Down Town and New York Republican clubs.


His office is in the Essex Building, Newark.


GEORGE WILLIAM FORTMEYER-East Orange, (69 Arling- ton Ave.)-Manufacturer. Born at New York, N. Y., April 20th, 1839; son of Frederick and Lroena (Townsend) Fortmeyer ; mar- ried at Town of Union, N. J., Feb. 19th, 1863, to Phoebe Augusta Deas, daughter of Ebenezer and Elizabeth (Polhemus) Deas, of the Town of Union, N. J.


Children : Florine Augusta, born June 26, 1864; Ella, born June 27, 1867; Edith, born January 31, 1872; Frederick William, born August 17, 1877; George Rolliman, born June 16, 1874 (deceased October 10, 1896), and Lorena Adelaide, born August 31, 1879 (deceased June 2, 1893).


George William Fortmeyer is a descendant on his father's side of Teuton progenators, that parent coming from Bavaria in 1832. On the maternal side, he comes from old colonial stock, his mother's ancestors having settled in Seneca County between Cayuga and Seneca Lakes, N. Y., before the Revolution.


Mr. Fortmeyer's principal education was obtained in Madison Uni- versity (now Colgate University ) Hamilton, N. Y., and in New York Free Academy (now College of the City of New York).


Immediately following his school training he became associated with the Home Insurance Company of New York, but after eight months be- came connected with Robert Colgate & Co., (now the Atlantic White Lead & Linseed Oil Co.), and comprising part of the Atlantic Branch of the National Lead Co. With this concern, he has served ever since-a period of sixty-four years-and of which he is now manager and director.


Mr. Fortmeyer came to New Jersey in 1870. Before that date he resided in New York City, and also for five years in Ossining, N. Y. Al- most immediately upon his taking up his residence in East Orange, he became interested in civic affairs, and in 1871 was elected school trustee, which office he held for eight years. He was also President of the East Orange Town Improvement Society for seventeen years, and is credited with being largely instrumental in the early development of East Orange from a township of about three thousand inhabitants to its present size and condition. He was connected with the Sinking Fund Commission of the city for twenty-five years as well as being one of its first members. The old Volunteer Fire Department also claims him as one of its first


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members and at the present date the Exempt Firemen's Association has him enrolled.


During his long membership with the Munn Avenue Presbyterian Church of East Orange, Mr. Fortmeyer has been a deacon, an elder and clerk of the Parish, as well as being the President of the Board of Trustees for fifteen years.


His club memberships are, Down Town Association of New York, The Drug and Chemical Club, the Chemical Club, ex-President of the Paint Oil and Varnish Club of New York, President for past seventeen years of the Linseed Association of New York.


Mr. Fortmeyer was made a Mason in Ivanhoe Lodge, of New York, in February, 1869, and was also affiliated with Hope Lodge No. 124 F. & A. M., East Orange. He was also the first elected worshipful master of Hope Lodge, and is an ex-President of the Masonic Veterans Association of the Grand Lodge of New Jersey, and at the present date is President of the Washington Society of the Grand Lodge, the membership of which is restricted to twenty, and past Grand Master of Masons in New Jersey. He is connected with the Scottish Rites Bodies and is honorary member of the Supreme Council of Thirty-third degree. He is also a member of the East Orange Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, and a Commissioner of the New Jersey State Reformatory since 1901.


JOHN E. FOSTER-Atiantic Highlands .- Jurist. Born in New York City, Sept. 22nd, 1864.


John E. Foster has been long distinguished in the professional life of the middle section of New Jersey. He has been Prosecutor, County Judge of Monmouth and is now Vice Chancellor.


Vice Chancellor Foster was educated at the schools in New York City and graduated from the Law School of Columbia College in 1886. He had resided for seven years in Monmouth county when he was admitted to the Bar at the November term of 1886, becoming a counselor in 1889. Gov- ernor Voorhees appointed him Prosecutor of the Pleas in 1900. He served until, in 1904, he was made Presiding Judge of the county courts. Suc- ceeding Governors re-appointed him and he had served for eleven years on that bench when Chancellor Walker, in January, 1916, named him for Vice Chancellor.


SOLOMON FOSTER-Newark, (90 Treacy Avenue)-Rabbi. (Photograph published in Vol. 1-1917). Born at Americus, Ga., 1878; son of Meyer Foster; married on June 22, 1904, to Sadie Levy.


Rabbi Foster is the minister of the Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, Newark. As a boy his parents moved to Seranton, Pa., where he attended grammar school and the Preparatory School of the Lackawanna, Lackawan-


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na County, Scranton, and in 1894 he went to the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, O., and the University of Cincinnati to prepare for the Rab- binate. In 1901 he graduated from the University of Cincinnati. During the years 1898 to 1902 he was Associate Librarian of the Hebrew Union College, and in 1901-1902 editor of the Hebrew Union College Monthly. He graduated from the Hebrew Union College, class of 1902, with the vale- dictorian honors. The same year he was elected Associate Rabbi of the Congregation B'nai Jeshurun; and in 1905, after the retirement of the aged Rabbi Joseph Leucht, he was given charge.


About seven years ago he began to agitate in his congregation for a larger place of worship. This resulted in the erection of the imposing edifice at High St. and Waverley Ave. The dedication of the New Temple took place December 1915, and was attended by Governor Fielder, Mayor Raymond, and the most prominent Rabbis of the country. In connection with the religious school at the Temple, which is under the personal super- vision of the Rabbi, he has organized a Normal Class for the training of religious school teachers.


Dr. Foster has interested himself ardently in all works, civic and religious, that make for the uplift of the community around him and of the people generally. In 1903 he was appointed by the Common Council of Newark as the Decoration Day Orator; and in 1916 Mayor Haussling of Newark appointed him a member of the Newark City Celebration Com- mittee of 100. There he was made chairman of the sub-committee on Schools and Philanthropy. He was selected also to serve on the committee charged with the erection of the Memorial Building the City is to put up - in South Newark in commemoration of the anniversary. The people by a special vote authorized the expenditure of $1,500,000 upon the building.


Rabbi Foster's activities have been ceaseless, as well, in other direc- tions. Among others he was for five years President of the Wednesday Club, one of the leading clubs of the State, with a membership of 500, among whom are many prominent literary and professional men. He is also a member of the Board of the Newark Institute of Arts and Sciences. Before that institute he delivered a course of lectures on Hebrew Litera- ture. He was the organizer, and twice President of the New Jersey Rabbinical Association, is Honorary Director of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and United Hebrew Charities, member Beth Israel Hospital Board of Directors, served as President of Ezekiel Lodge of B'nai Brith; was organizer of the Philonians, a Jewish literary society of men and women ; and, during 1911-12, President of the Alumni of the Hebrew Union College and Corresponding Secretary of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. His paper on "The Working Men and the Synagogue," read before that Conference in 1909 and published in their Year Book attracted wide attention. In 1918 Rabbi Foster was appointed Grand Chaplain of the Masonic Fraternity of New Jersey. He is also Chaplain of Tdiluminar Lodge of Free Masons, No. 112, located in Newark.


Rabbi Foster is a member of many clubs and organizations in Newark.


CHARLES NEWELL FOWLER-Elizabeth, (Salem Avenue)- Banker, Author. Born at Lena, Ill., on Nov. 2nd, 1852; son of


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Joshua D. and Rachael (Montague) Fowler ; married at Beloit, Wis., April 30, 1879, to Hilda S. Heg, daughter of General H. C. and Cornelia Heg, of Beloit, Wis.


Children : Charles N. Fowler, Jr.


Charles. N. Fowler is a lawyer by profession but has been in the banking business for many years. He was a member of the Committee on Banking and Currency of the National House of Representatives and from 1900 to 1909, chairman of the Committee. He is a recognized authori- ty on financial questions in their relation to legislation, and the author of "Seventeen Talks on the Banking Question" and of "National Issues of 1916."


Mr. Fowler is of English descent. His ancestors came across the seas in 1634-both sides, in the same year. He was educated in the public schools of Illinois and prepared for College at Beloit, Wis. He graduated at Yale University 1876, and the University of Chicago Law Department in 1878. Coming to New Jersey thirty-five years ago, he settled in Eliza- beth, where he has a handsome home, and engaged actively in the discus- sion of public questions.


In 1894 Mr. Fowler was nominated for Member of Congress by the Republicans of the third district and elected. Re-elections extended the period of his service over the sixteen years between 1895 and 1911. While chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, he engaged in a controversy with Speaker Cannon that attracted nation-wide atten- tion. In 1910 he became a candidate in the preferential primary for United States Senator and received 36,000 votes.


Congressman Fowler has been noted for his opposition to machine rule in politics and for his independence in dealing with political and public questions. He has been frequently mentioned as a possible candidate for Governor but has never actively sought nomination.


CHARLES ASA FRANCIS-Long Branch .- Merchant. Born at Keyport on Oct. 28th, 1855.


Charles Asa Francis was for years an active Republican politician in Monmouth county and at one time was regarded as a considerable factor in state politics, having held very many town offices and served in both branches of the Legislature. He is an active church worker, high up in the fraternities, and a conspicuous Jr. O. U. A. M. member.


Educated at the old school in Turkey, a Monmouth county town, and at Freehold, he began business life as clerk for the New Jersey Central Railroad at Sandy Hook. In 1891 he went into the grocery business at North Long Branch as the junior member of the firm of Hoyt & Francis.


Taking to politics he was elected a Commissioner of the town of Long Branch in 1SS4 and again in 'S5. '86 and 'S7. In 1893. on both tickets, he received the total vote at the municipal election for Commissioner-at-Large. He was a member of the Board of Education for some years and in 'S9


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was elected its Secretary. He has been Mayor of Long Branch and was Postmaster under Presidents Arthur and Harrison.


In 1894 he was elected to the New Jersey House of Assembly and re-elected in '96. He was promoted to the Senate of 1897, and re-elected to that of 1900, serving as President until the close of the session of 1902. * He has been a delegate to several State Conventions, and served as Alternate or delegate at one or two of the National Conventions.


He is a member of the Long Branch Lodge, F. & A. M .; Standard Chapter, R. A. M .; Corson Commandery, Knights Templar; Sea View Lodge, I. O. O. F .; Hollywood Council, Jr. O. U. A. M., Long Branch Coun- cil Royal Arcanum, and Progressive Council, Benefit Association, a branch of the Royal Arcanum.


ALDEN FREEMAN-East Orange .- Author and Political Re- former. (Photograph published in Vol. 1-1917). Born Cleveland, O., May 25, 1862 ; son of Joel Francis and Francis Maria (Abbey ) Freeman.


Many of the reforms that resulted from the Progressive movement in New Jersey, and subsequently throughout the country, had their inspira- tion in agitations that Alden Freeman was largely instrumental in arous- ing. Mr. Freeman retired from business in 1889; and traveled throughout the world, which gave him opportunities for the study of social condi- tions and the religious, philosophical and political ideas of other nations at first hand, turned his attention to like problems at home. A subsequent journey across the seas brought him into contact with Count Tolstoi and Prince Kropotkin. The Prince presented him with a copy of his latest book, "The Terror in Russia" inscribed on the fly leaf "To Alden Freeman, the Plucky Pioneer of Free Speech in a 'Free Country.'"


Mr. Freeman is descended directly, on his mother's side, from John Alden of the Mayflower. Among her other ancestors were Jean Vassall, a Huguenot refugee to England who equipped and commanded two ships of war against the Spanish Armada, and William Harvey, envoy sent by Queen Mary to declare war against France in 1557. Judge Seth Alden Abbey, his grandfather, enlisted during the Civil War at the age of 63 as first lieutenant in the 2nd Ohio Cavalry ; and Captain Thomas Abbey, his great-great-grandfather, was Adjutant in the Chester (Conn.) Regi- ment during the Revolution. Captain Abbey's statue stands on the Green in Enfield, Conn. The Freeman immigrant ancestor was Judge Henry Freeman of Woodbridge, whose tombstone stands in the Presbyterian Churchyard amidst the graves of seven generations of his descendants.


Mr. Freeman's early education was acquired in the schools, common and high, of Cleveland, O., and he was graduated at the New York Uni- versity with the B. S. degree in 1882. In 1881 he was chief editor of the University Quarterly which published the first complete and authorized account of the life and works of Richard Grant White. Later he studied architecture with Lorenzo B. Wheeler in New York and served as loan clerk in the Seaboard National Bank of New York. He became afterwards


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a salesman for Talbot Phillips & Co., wholesale coal dealers, of New York. Retiring from business in 1889 he devoted the next ten years largely to the rearing and training of horses. In his stables at East Orange were many horses that won prizes at horse shows in four-in-hands, tandems and single harness.


When Mr. Freeman returned from Europe in 1902 he entered energetic- ally into movements looking to the reform of political and social conditions in the state. He helped to form the Citizens Union of East Orange and became its Secretary. The Union was organized to advocate the manage- ment of municipal affairs on economic business principles and without re- gard to political considerations and to arouse public sentiment in the conduct of the municipal government. It elected eight of its candi- dates, and aided subsequently in the defeat of Major Carl Lentz. In 1903 the Union followed up its success by forcing the retirement, from the local Republican leadership of Edgar Williams; and it has since been a power- ful influence in East Orange Affairs. It has promoted an independent water supply, tree planting, school lecture system, neighborhood parks and play grounds and election of women to the Board of Education.


When sitting on a grand jury that indicted the directors of the North Jersey Traction Company for the death of nine High School children in the Newark collision of 1903, Mr. Freeman learned of conditions that, dis- closed, were followed by important political results. In 1905 he became an independent candidate for Alderman in East Orange and in 1906 made a canvas as an independent candidate for Mayor.




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