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 21

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 21


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Mr. Freeman was the owner of the Newark weekly paper "Truth" which championed the rights of "plain people"; and, as an advocate of free speech, opened his barn to Emma Goldman when she was barred by the East Orange police from a public hall. He was identified with the defeat of the constitutional judiciary amendments which he regarded as designed to increase the power of the corporations over the courts of the state. He was early in the fight for limited franchises, and a lieutenant of Everett Colby in his fight against special privilege. His book, "A Year in Politics" and a pamphlet on "Corporation Rule in New Jersey" were factors in the discussions over the relations of the corporations to the communities. The source of the reforms in the new primary law, in the new railroad tax law, in that for the taxation of public utility franchises and the state civil service commission, is to be found in the theories which Mr. Freeman has forced into discussion.


In 1914, in collaboration with Hester E. Hosford, he published "The Forerunners of Woodrow Wilson," and in 1917. "A Memorial of Captain Thomas Abbey and the Abbey Family."


Mr. Freeman in 1900 founded the New Jersey Society of Mayflower Descendants and was its historian for several years. He is a trustee of the Revolutionary Memorial Society of New Jersey, was for ten years a mem- ber of the Council of the Society of Colonial Wars and of the Council of the Founders and Patriots of America. He was Treasurer of the Council of the Huguenot Society of America, and of the Old Dominion Pilgrimage Committee which did preliminary work for the Jamestown Exposition. He is a member of the Metropolitan. University, Players, National Arts, Re- form, City and New York Yacht clubs of New York City. the Washington


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Association of New Jersey, the New Jersey Historical Society, the Descend- ants of Colonial Governors, the Sons of the Revolution. the St. Nicholas Society of New York, the New England Society of Orange, the Essex Coun- ty County Club, the Psi Upsilon and Phi Beta Kappa fraternities, the Veteran Corps of Artillery ( Military Society of the War of 1912) and the Connecticut Society of the Cincinnati.


ELOISE WOOL TELFAIR FREEMAN (Mrs. Charles Dan- forth) -Iselin .-- Social Worker. Born in New York City, in 1865, daughter of Jacob R. and Anna Augusta (Comstock) Telfair; married at Richmond Borough, N. Y., in 1890, to Charles Danforth Freeman.


Mrs. Freeman is President of the Mercy Committee of New Jersey which was organized for emergency relief in 1915. It was incorporated under the New Jersey State laws in 1916 and is doing work that attracts international attention in the relief of distress in France, Belgium and Serbia. Before the declaration of war against Germany by the United States the Mercy Committee was growing rapidly ; early in 1917 it had up- wards of 300 members. This Government's participation has enormously increased its labors and given to its work a more tragic interest at home than was anticipated when the Committee held its first meeting in Plain- field in 1915. The exigencies of the World War and the demands for succor have made the Committee a constantly growing beneficence, and it is strong in members all over the State.


Among Mrs. Freeman's ancestors were Captain Isiah Wool and the Telfairs of Savannah, Georgia. Edward Telfair was a signer on behalf of the State of Georgia in 1777 of the Articles of Confederation under which the United States were governed before the adoption of the Federal Con- stitution in 1789.


Mrs. Freeman was educated at Mme. Valencias and Mlle. Tardivale's · schools in America and at Mlle. Borck's school abroad. She studied law at the New York University and is an alumnae of the University. She is a member of the National Institute of Social Science, the Colony Club and the Women's City Club. Through Captain Wool she is eligible to nearly all patriotic societies and is a Colonial Dame of New York. She is a member also of many leagues of the National Civic Federation and of the suffrage societies of New York.


Mrs. Freeman's New York City home is at 64 East 77th Street.


MARY ELEANOR WILKINS FREEMAN-Metuchen .- Author. (Photograph published in Vol. 1-1917). Born in Massachusetts, daughter of Warren E. and Eleanor (Lothrop) Wilkins ; married at Metuchen, on January 1. 1902, to Charles Manning Freeman, son of Manning M. Freeman.


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The short story tries the skill of the writer as never does the more elaborate novel. The power of framing a picture in a line is a rarer gift than the ability to frame it in a page. The short story is made by the in- cisive analysis that flashes the character to the mind of the reader in a single phrase; and authors agree that skill in producing it is the higher demonstration of literary genius. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman has for many years enjoyed the distinction of being the leader among the short story writers of this country. Mrs. Freeman had achieved fame before she came to New Jersey to marry Dr. Freeman. Dr. Freeman is himself the son of a man who was for many years a large factor in the politics of Middlesex County.


Mrs. Freeman has no very accurate knowledge of her ancestry, though it was presumably Puritan. A fore-bear on the maternal side led a com- pany at Concord in "King Philips War," and she has some grounds for thinking that she may be, if not a direct, at any rate a collateral descendant of Bishop John Wilkins of London, who flourished about the 16th century and who besides being notable ecclesiastically was a theoretical inventor. He is said to have anticipated the present age by designing automobiles and flying machines, which, manifestly, however, were not shining successes, and if he had lived long enough he would have been Lord High Treasurer of London. After the death, at 17, of her sister, who had much musical genius, and of her mother and father, she went to live with friends in Ran- dolph, Mass., and was educated at a Vermont high school, at Mt. Holyoke and in a Vermont boarding school.


Miss Wilkins' first offerings were chiefly at poems for children ; a little later, prose for St. Nicholas and Youth's Companion ; eventually, her work attracting attention, she found easy access to Harper's Bazar and Harper's Magazine. In her short story writings she has ventured into widely dif- ferent fields but as a rule has taken the characters of her home localities for the settings for her work. Her first book "A Humble Romance and Other Stories," published in 1889, took immediate rank for its delineation of New England character, and won the congratulations of Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell. It was the first revelation of her skill in drawing homely sketches, always accurate, in the simplest homeliest words and giving an air of vivid reality to the settings. There was more beauty and pathos-and abundant humor too-in her collection, "A New England Nun and Other Stories," published in 1891. This has been fol- lowed by a long series of other short stories that have appeared in the magazines in all parts of the country.


It was not until 1892 that Mrs. Freeman ventured to put her first novel, "Jane Field," before the public. Her "Giles Corey, Yeoman" was the basis for a play, founded on witch-craft incidents, that was presented in Boston by the Theatre of Arts and Letters. Her "Penbroke" was a novel but characterized as a book of short stories, each one with its own situation and dramatic interest, strung together in a skein of family ties and village community-the record of the heart tragedies of a dozen men and women portrayed with exceptional beauty of style and delicacy in delineation. The English press said of it that George Elliot had never done anything finer. In her novel, "Madelon." she emerged from her Puritan atmosphere and offered the public the first thoroughly constructed novel her pen had


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yet produced. Some others of Mrs. Freeman's works are: "Jerome" (1897) ; "Silence" (1898) ; "The Love of Parson Lord" (1900) ; "The Hearts Highway" (1900) ; "The Debtor," "By the Light of the Soul," "The Portion of Labor," "Understudies" (1901) ; "Six Trees" (1903) ; "The Wind in the Rose Bush" (1903) ; "The Givers" (1904) ; "Doc Gordon" (1906) ; "By the Light of the Soul" (1907) ; "Shoulders of Atlas" (1908) ; "Winning Lady" (1909) ; "Green Door" (1910) ; "Butterfly House" (1912) ; "Copy-Cat and Other Stories" (1914) ; "Also the Jamesons," and "People of our Neighbor- hood," (serially in Ladies Home Journal).


Mrs. Freeman is a member of the Council of the Authors League of America and a non-resident member of other clubs.


FREDERICK FRELINGHYSEN-Newark, (750 Broad Street.) -President Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company. Born in Newark, September 30th, 1848; son of Frederick T. and Matilda (Griswold) Frelinghysen ; married July 23rd, 1902, to Estelle B., daughter of Thomas T. Kinney.


Children : Frederick, August 12, 1903 ; Thomas Kinney, February 7, 1905; Theodore, 1907; George Griswold, December 20, 1908; Estelle Condit, May 7, 1911.


The family of President Frelinghysen has long been famous in the annals of New Jersey's civic, political and military life. No family in the state has given to history so many distinguished names. It was founded in this country by the Rev. Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghysen, who was called in 1718 from Hanover, by the Congregation of Raritan, to serve as its pastor. His father had been a minister in the land across the seas be- fore him. Parson Frelinghysen was deep in the controversies that rent the Dutch Church at the opening of the 18th century, and largely instru- mental in securing the independence of the Church in this country. He was a man of great power ; George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards declared him to be "one of the greatest Divines in the American Church."


With the family predilection for the pulpit. the parson's wife marked out her son, Frederick. (born 1753) for the ministry also. But he turned to the law, and became a member of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey that in 1776 declared the colony free from the domination of the mother country. He served afterwards in the Continental Congress, joined the "Minute Men," and figured during the Revolutionary struggle in the battles of Monmouth and Trenton, rising in rank until, when independence was de- clared, he had become a Colonel. He rendered active service afterwards in the "Whisky Insurrection" in Pennsylvania. and was commissioned Ma- jor-General by General Washington.


One of the sons, Theodore, (born 1787) was a distinguished lawyer, who served as Mayor of Newark for two years and member of the United States Senate, was candidate for Vice President of the United States with Henry Clay in 1828; at that time Chancellor of the University of New York, and at time of his death was President of Rufus College of New Jersey.


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One of the other sons was named Frederick, after the General himself. Frederick T., son of the second Frederick, rose to- even greater distinction in his day, as a lawyer, orator and statesman, than others of the family had achieved. He studied law in the office of his uncle, Theodore ; entered on the practice of his profession in Newark; for 15 years was Attorney General of the State of New Jersey and was chosen by the Legislature of 1867 to succeed William Wright in the United States Senate. The Legislature of 1869, that elected a new Senator at the expiration of his term, was not of his party. and he was displaced ; but two years later he was re-chosen Senator for the full term until 1877. Those days were the troublous ones of the "Reconstruction Period," climaxing in the dispute, in 1876. over the results of the Presidential election of that year. Senator Frelinghysen was one of the Committee that devised the plan for the peaceful settlement of a controversy that for months threatened the nation with the horrors of another Civil War. President Arthur, who went into the White House after the death of President Garfield, selected Senator Frelinghysen for the first place in his Cabinet and, as Secretary of State, he exhibited as a diplomat as fine qualities as he had exhibited in states- manship. Prior to that President Grant had tendered to him the Am- bassadorship to Great Britain and that to Berlin, but he declined both. He was deeply interested. too, in the Church, and at the time of his death was President of the American Bible Society.


Frederick Frelinghysen, now President of the Mutual Benefit Insur- ance Company and one of his sons. Mr. Frelinghysen was educated at the Newark Academy and Rutger's College ; and, like his father, chose the law for his profession. He studied in his father's office, was admitted to the Bar in 1871 and made a Counselor at law in 1874. He devoted himself largely to Chancery cases, and had a large practice of that class. When Newark was startled by the failure of the Mechanics National Bank, the United States Treasury Department selected Mr. Frelinghysen to act as re- ceiver. Thus drawn into the banking life of the city, he was, in 1877, made President of the Howard Savings Institution, (Newark), and re- mained at the head of that bank until 1902, when he resigned to accept the Presidency of the Mutual Benefit Insurance Company, (Newark), as suc- cessor to the late Vice Chancellor Amzi Dodd.


Besides his legal. financial and insurance activities, Mr. Frelinghysen has taken a deep interest in the state militia. and in political and church work. He was Captain of the famous Essex Troop of Cavalry, and served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1916.


Mr. Frelinghysen resides in the Frelinghysen homestead, facing Mili- tary Park in Newark. In front of it, in the park. stands a bronze figure of his father, the late Secretary of State.


JOSEPH S. FRELINGHUYSEN-Raritan .- Insurance. (Photo- graph published in Vol. 1-1917). Born in Raritan, on March 12. 1869: son of Frederick John and Victoria Frelinghuysen.


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Joseph S. Fielinghuysen is United States Senator from New Jersey, having been nominated in the Republican primary of 1916 and elected at the polls in November. He was sworn in at Washington as a member of the War Senate, March 5, 1917, and began the active discharge of his Sena- torial functions in April at a special session called by President Wilson to prepare for the war exigencies. In business the Senator is in control of a large insurance agency in New York City.


Senator Frelinghuysen bears a name that has long been distinguished in the military and political life and in the scholarship and statesmanship of the nation. He is of a family that traces its ancestry back to the Rev. Theodorus Jacobus Frelingbuysen, a noted divine who came from Holland in 1720, and who was the pioneer in establishing the Reformed Dutch Church in New Jersey. Among others of the family were Major General Frederick Frelinghuysen of Revolutionary fame, General John Frelinghuy- sen, an officer in the War of 1812, and Theodore Frelinghuysen, United States Senator, Chancellor of the University of New York and candidate for Vice President with Clay on the Whig ticket in 1844. Senator Fre- linghuysen's father, Frederick John, was a lawyer closely identified with the religious and political life of Somerset county. The latter was first- cousin of Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen, United States Senator and Secretary of State, mentioned above.


With a family atmosphere of this character, Joseph S. Frelinghuysen took, almost by instinct, to public affairs. He was preparing for college when the stress of circumstances forced him to seek employment and be- came a clerk in a fire insurance office.


At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Mr. Frelinghuysen went to the front as Second Lieutenant of Troop 3, Squadron "A" New York Cav- alry and won his spurs as Brevet First Lieutenant for services at Porto Rico. Made a member of the Somerset County Republican Committee, he became its Chairman ; and in 1002 was given the Republican nomination for State Senator from the county. His Democratic opponent was Senator Childs who was seeking re-election. The county is a close one and Mr. Frelinghuysen failed by a narrow majority. In 1905 he met Senator Childs as an antagonist for a second time, and defeated him by about 1,000 votes. When he stood for re-election in 1908 Nelson Y. Dungan was his Demo- cratic opponent, and the Republican trend of the day carried him through the poll for the third time. In the Senate he became known as the "Father of the Automobile Law," and devoted himself besides to legislation helpful to the agriculturists.


Senator Frelinghuysen was afterwards Chairman of a special senate committee that made a scrutiny of school conditions all over the state; and some surprising revelations as to the methods of the local school boards resulted in legislation for the re-organization of the school sys- tem. He was also of the Special Committee that drafted the Civil Service law. On the floor of the Senate in 1909 he was party leader ; and, when President Robbins resigned to accept a state office, Senator Freling- huysen was elected to succeed him in the chair. He has been President of the Board of Agriculture since 1912; and Governor Wilson having in 1911 appointed him a member of the new State Board of Education, he be- came President of the Board in 1915.


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In two campaigns Senator Frelinghuysen had been prominently men- tioned in connection with the nomination for Governor. Illness in Chicago prevented him from making an active canvass on the first occasion ; and on the second he resisted the pressure of friends to put him into the race. When the State primaries for the nomination of a Republican candidate for United States Senator loomed up in 1916, Senator Frelinghuysen entered the list as an aspirant against ex-Governor Franklin Murphy and secured the nomination. The movement in the East on election day was strongly towards the Republican party, and Senator Frelinghuysen achieved his elec- tion to the United States Senate. His majority over United States Sena- tor James E. Martine who was a candidate for re-election was 74,696.


Senator Frelinghuysen has been very active in the Senate, having rendered especially important service as a member of the Committee on military affairs, in its supervisory work over the operations of the War- Department. Though but two years of his six-year term have expired, he has forged to the front and has come to be recognized as a forceful factor in the body in which three other members of the Frelinghuysen family have occupied seats.


Senator Frelinghuysen is a member of the New York Chamber of Com- merce, New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce, Down Town Association, Raritan Valley Grange No. 153, the Union League Club of New York, the Somerville Board of Trade, Solomon's Lodge No. 46, F. and A. M., Somer- ville Lodge No. 885, B. P. O. E., and is trustee of the Somerset Hospital.


GEORGE WARREN FULLER-Summit .- Sanitary Engineer. (Photograph published in Vol. 1-1917). Born in Franklin, Mass., on December 21, 1868; son of George Newell and Harriet M. (Craig) Fuller ; married to Eleanor, daughter of John W. and Augusta (Hotchkiss) Todd.


Children : Myron E., Kemp G., and Asa.


George W. Fuller has been associated in this state with a number of important sanitary projects including the Passaic Valley trunk sewer, the joint trunk sewer in the Plainfield district and improvements in the water supply for Jersey City. He has been active too in other important cities in the country. The problems surrounding sewage and water purifications are those to which he has given most attention.


Mr. Fuller is of ancient English ancestry on his father's side, the foun- der of the American branch of the family having settled in this country in 1642. In Dedham, Mass., where the original American homestead was located, the Fullers are connected with the Metcalf and other families notable in that locality. On his mother's side, the Craigs, of Scotch de- scent, have their American foundation at Worcester, Mass., and are re- lated to the Warren and Green families and others prominent in that state.


After attending the public schools in his native town, Mr. Fuller took a course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and, graduating from there in 1890, crossed the seas to study at Berlin University, a cele-


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brated German institution of higher learning. There he specialized in sanitary science and attended lectures of eminent specialists, including among others, Piefke, famous among Germany's sanitary engineers. Upon his return to these shores he was placed in charge, at Lawrence, of the Massachusetts State Board of Health's Experiment Station there and made valuable investigations into sewage and water purification problems. Four years afterwards he had charge, in Cincinnati and Louisville, of works for the purification of the waters of the Ohio. In 1899 he settled in New York City to attend to rapidly growing private practice. He gives his attention chiefly to water works valuations, adjustments of water rates and sewage disposal problems ; and has been an adviser of sanitary engineering matters for many municipal projects including, among others, those at New Haven, New York, Washington, Buffalo, Columbus, Indian- apolis, Minneapolis, Grand Rapids, Evanston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Louis- ville, New Orleans and Montreal.


Mr. Fuller is a member of the Engineers, Machinery and Old Colony Clubs of New York, the Technology Club of Boston, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Consulting Engineers, the American Chemical Society, the American Water Works Association, the American Public Health Association and the American Society of Bacterio- logists, etc. He was a delegate to the Franco-American Engineering Con- gress, held at Paris in December, 1918, and January 1919. to consider problems connected with the reconstruction of France.


FRANK W. FURREY-Paterson, 89 Ward St .- Real Estate. Born at Paterson, N. J., Oct. 17th, 1864; son of Michael and Mar- garet (McWilliams) Furrey ; married at Paterson, N. J., Dec. 24th, 1888, to Emma Ringier, daughter of Adolph and Verna (Brunner) Ringier, of Paterson, N. J.


Children : Frank W., Jr., born July 3rd, 1890: E. Cecelie, born Sept. Sth, 1892; Esther R., born Sept. 13th, 1894; William P., born June 6th, 1897; Wendell W., born July 5th, 1900; Julia V., born Oct. 23rd, 1903; Gertrude, born Nov. 26th, 1906; Edward, born April 5th, 1909; Verna, born Sept. 27th, 1914.


Frank W. Furrey has descended from a mixture of French, English and Irish forebears; his grandfather on his paternal side was Andre de Fleury, a Frenchman ; his grandmother, Anna Harrison, an Englishwoman, on his mother's side, both his grandparents, Francis McWilliams and Mar- garet McWilliams, were Irish, and his own father, Michael Furrey, was also a native of the Emerald Isle; his mother, Margaret McWilliams, was born in Paterson, N. J.


Mr. Furrey received his principal education in the Parochial and public schools and Latimer's Business College of Paterson, N. J. With the exception of three years spent in Kansas City, Mo., and Chicago, from 1884 to 1887, where he made his first venture in the real estate business, Mr. Furrey has lived his life in Paterson, N. J. The early part of his life he spent as a machinist, and in 1894, became interested in the real estate


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business and in that capacity he has served as a general agent, appraiser, developer and commissioner in the selling and appraising properties throughout Passaic county and counties adjacent thereto.


In 1909 he purchased from the Estate of Wm. Graham, what he afterwards named the Graham Tract, comprising about 26 acres; he . divided it into building plots, and had placed in the center of the tract, the largest of Paterson's Small Parks, known as Wrigley Park-in the same year he was appointed by the Supreme Court as one of three com- missioners to condemn lands in the city of Passaic, N. J., for Park pur- poses, and the parks now used in that city is the lands which he aided to condemn. In the years 1907 and 1908 he was employed by the city of Paterson as a real estate expert in appraising the value of lands con- demned by the city of Paterson for Schools Nos. 23-24-in the years 1913- 1914 he was also employed by the city of Paterson as one of the city's real estate experts to defend the city against suits brought against the city by Riparian owners along the Passaic river; in 1912 he was employed by the Public Service Corporation as a Real Estate expert to place a value upon all its lands in the city of Paterson and give testimony before the Public Utility Commissioners in the gas reduction case-in 1914 he was appointed by the Supreme Court one of the commissioners to condemn lands in the city of Paterson for Schools Nos. 10 and 21. In 1916 he was employed as an expert in the case, Barbour against the Passaic Valley Sewage Com- missioners ; and in the same year was appointed one of the Commissioners to condemn lands and change the grade of the Minnesink Road in Totowa Borough ; in the same year the D. L. & W. R. R. employed him in having changed the streets at West Paterson to eliminate two dangerous grade crossings and also to purchase lands for the Railroad Company; in 1917 the Freeholders of Passaic county selected him to estimate the damage that would be sustained by owners of lands on the Newark Turnpike by reason of changing the grade of the same ; he also served in some capacity or other in all the important cases the last 15 years where the service of a real estate expert has been required.




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