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 58
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John W. Wescott is ex-Attorney General of the State of New Jersey and enjoys the unique distinction of having twice nominated the successful candidate for President of the United States and of having seen his party nominee elected. In the Democratic National Convention of 1912 and again in that of 1916. he was selected to make the nominating speech that put Woodrow Wilson formally before the country. He contributed in no small degree to President Wilson's success in both campaigns by his efforts on the stump. His effective delineation of the President's character was a factor in causing a democratic victory in New Hampshire in the campaign of 1916. Mr. Wescott was also selected by the National Committee to off- set a speech of Charles E. Hughes, the republican Presidential candidate, at Rockland, Me., with the result that Wilson carried Rockland. Mr. Wescott has long been known as a leader of the Bar in this State and has also practiced, although not so extensively, as a member of the Con- necticut, Pennsylvania and North Carolina Bars.
The beginning of the Wescott line in this country can be traced back to two brothers ( Richard and Stuckeley Westcote), who came to Massachu- setts with Roger Williams and went with him into Rhode Island. From there a son came to New Jersey and died at Fairfield in what is now Cumberland county in 1702. The family in England includes that John
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Westcote who became Lord Lyttleton, the great lawyer, celebrated in the commentaries of Lord Coke. Mr. Wescott's mother's family came from northern France where there are still many Bozarths.
Mr. Wescott acquired his education at the Wesleyan Academy in Wil- braham, Mass., having graduated from there in 1868. He was graduated from the Academic department of Yale University with the class of 1872 and from Yale Law School in 1876. While there he rowed on Yale's first S-Oared Varsity Crew, captained by the famous "Bob" Cook, and he took the Townsend prize and the De Forest gold medal, the highest University honors for oratory and English composition. Graduation from the Yale Law School constituted admission to the Connecticut Bar. After establish- ing connections there, Mr. Wescott returned to New Jersey and became an attorney in 1878 and a counselor three years later.
Mr. Wescott's father had very limited means and desired his son to pursue his craft of glass-cutting. His mother had ambitions beyond the father's however, and it was by her co-operation that he started on the educational career which, she hoped, was to make him a preacher of the gospel, of the Methodist Church. During the Civil War he made an effort to join the Union Army. His rejection, even as a drummer boy, because of his slenderness, pointed out to him the necessity of a strong body, in con- sequence of which he came to be one of the noted all-round athletes of Yale. At the age of 68 he retains the vigor and working power of much younger- men and attributes this to his persistence in regular and athletic physical habits.
Mr. Wescott had not been long practicing his profession in Camden when Gov. Leon Abbett made him Presiding Judge of the Common Pleas of Camden County. He succeeded Charles Reed, who, as his school master, had given him his first lesson in oratory with the aid of a raw-hide and who, himself having become a lawyer, had died while serving on the Bench.
In 1894 Camden County was agitated by the murder of the wife of John Miller a farmer, living near Merchantville and a vigorous pursuit of the clues culminated in the arrest of Francis Lingo, a negro. The negro stoutly asserted his innocence; and the Supreme Court assigned Mr. Wes- cott to defend him. An antagonistic public sentiment forced Lingo's con- viction but after an exhaustive argument by his counsel before a full bench on appeal, the verdict was set aside and a new trial ordered. At the second trial Mr. Wescott's cross-examination of the State's witness was so thor- ough and illuminating that the court directed Lingo's acquittal without calling on the defense to produce any testimony.
Although not active in politics, Mr. Wescott was named as a presi- dential elector on the Cleveland ticket in 1892 and in 1910 responded to the progressive agitation to the extent of actively supporting the candidacy for governor of Frank S. Katzenbach, who three years before had lost to John Franklin Fort by a slim majority. Mr. Wescott's speech for Katzenbach all but defeated the nomination of Woodrow Wilson, then President of Princeton University and who at that time was as completely unknown to Mr. Wescott in the political sense as he was to the country at large. Im- mediately after the nomination of Mr. Wilson, Judge Wescott had left Taylor's Opera House without waiting to hear the candidate's speech of ac-
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ceptance. He read it in the evening paper, however, on his way home, and was so struck by its force that he wrote to Mr. Wilson and was soon there- after received at the Wilson home in Princeton where the two men at once became friends. When in 1912 Gov. Wilson sought among the New Jersey delegates the one best fitted to put bis nomination before the National Con- vention in Baltimore, he chose Mr. Wescott. Mr. Wescott's formal pre- sentation of Gov. Wilson's name became a powerful campaign document. Four years later the President selected Mr. Wescott to again present his name at the National Comvention at St. Louis.
In 1914, Gov. Fielder named Mr. Wescott to be Attorney General of the State, the appointment being for a term of five years. In the enthusiasm that followed his success in the Baltimore Convention. Mr. Wescott's friends induced him to become a candidate for the United States Senate and he entered the Senatorial primary of that year. In 1916 many in- fluences in the state pressed his name again upon public attention for the office and he entered the Senatorial primany again commonly regarded as the preference of the Administration and made an excellent showing in both polls.
Mr. Wescott was President of the New Jersey Bar Association in 1913, is a 32nd degree Mason and a member of the Academy of Political and Social Science.
EDWARD WESTON-Newark .- Electrician. Born in England, on May 9, 1850.
After Edward Weston came to the United States in 1870, he experi- mented with electro-magnetic machines; and in 1875, he established the first factory in America for the construction of such machinery. He is the inventor, besides, of a notable group of meters for electrical measurement. He also started the manufacture of arc light carbons according to methods of his own invention, and thus became the founder of another new in- dustry in America ; and it was only after he had shown the way in an un- mistakable manner that the arc was able to make progress and develop to its present-day magnitude.
Mr. Weston has been able to overcome difficulties which seemed in- surmountable because he has introduced into most of his physical problems a chemical point of view of his own. He has not gotten his chemistry wholesale as it is dispensed in some of our hot-bed method educational in- stitutions, but went, for himself, to the bottom of things.
It was rather fortunate for him that one of the first employments he got in New York was with a chemical concern which made photographic chemicals. Photochemistry is an excellent experience for any young chemist who is disposed to generalize all chemical reactions by mere chemical equations. His observation of small details in chemical or physical phe- nomena led him to improve the art of nickleplating and electrolyptic deposi- tious of metals to a point where it entered a new era. Clumsy attempts had already been made for the commercial refining of copper by means of the electric current. His careful laboratory observations revealed to him
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the true principles upon which economic industrial electrotype copper refin- ing could be carried out. The study of the electro deposition of metals forced him to the study of the construction of dynamos at that time. The dynamo was still at its very beginning-some sort of an electrical curiosity. Little or no improvement was made until he undertook the careful study of the various factors relating to dynamo efficiency.
Dr. Weston filed his first United States patent on dynamo construction in 18- which was soon followed by many others and before long he had in- augurated such profound ameliorations of dynamos as to enormously in- crease their efficiency. He marked an epoch in physical science by con- structing the first industrial machine which was able to change one form of energy, motion, into another, electricity, with a hitherto unparalled small loss. It was in the Weston factory that the first practical application was made in this country of electrical power transmission for factory purposes. Its success there led to its adoption by the Clark Thread Company, of Newark for some special work.
In his factory, also, the first arc was used for general illumination. From 1875 Mr. Weston was very energetically engaged with the develop- ment of systems of both arc and incandescent illumination by electricity. At the start, the electro arc produced a light of bluish tint. Mr. Weston found a cure by introducing vapors of metal or metalic calts or oxide into the arc itself, and so modified the color of the light. Thus he became the inventor of the so-called "flaming arc." In his endeavors to make the elec- tric incandescent lamp an economic possibility, he joined in the rivalry among inventors of the Edison (q. v.) and Swan magnitude in search of the really practical incandescent lamp. All the known forms of carbon had the fatal defect of structural lack of homogenity. Weston tried to solve this difficulty by passing the current through the filament while the filament was placed in an atmosphere of hydrocarbon gas with the result that the filament acquired the same electrical resistance over its whole length. In his efforts to product in his labratory an artificial filament from an abso- lutely uniform structureless chemical substance, he produced eventually a flexible transparent sheet similar to gelatine and called "Tamadine." These films could be cut automatically with the utmost exactitude, producing filaments of uniform section which then could be submitted to carboniza- tion before fastening them to the inside of the glass bulb of the incan- descent lamp.
While he was engaged in the solution of these problems, Dr. Weston found himself handicapped continually by the existing clumsy and time- consuming methods of electrical measurement. So he was compelled to invent, for his own use, a set of practical electrical measuring instruments. It was not long before some of his business friends wanted duplicates of the instruments : and, almost before he realized it, he was giving considerable attention to their construction and further development. Dropping his con- nection with the dynamo and electric light enterprises, he plunged into the new industry which he had created-of making accurate, trust-worthy and easy-to-use electrical measuring instruments. His early modest shop has developed into one of the most remarkably equipped factories in the world. He has created radically new methods of measurements and introduced an accuracy undreamed of heretofore. By long and repeated observations in
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which many years have been consumed he has been able to determine the electrical behavior of each one of hundreds of alloys at different tempera- tures. Noting the remarkable properties in some manganese alloys he com- pounded, he managed to produce an alloy which has sixty-five times the re- sistance of copper. The metallic alloys Weston discovered are used prac- tically in nearly all kinds of electrical measuring instruments throughout the world; and, throughout the world, his instruments and methods are found in all properly equipped labratories and electro chemical establish- ments. The Russians used them on their captured battleships. One set of patents is said to have involved an expenditure of nearly $400,000 to main- tain his rights to them.
SCHUYLER SKAATS WHEELER-Bernardsville. Engineer. Born in New York City, May 17, 1860; son of James Edwin and Ann (Skaats) Wheeler ; married in October, 1898, to Ella Adams Peterson, of New York ;- 2nd, in April, 1901, to Amy Sutton, of Rye, N. Y.
Schuyler S. Wheeler is the President of the Crocker Wheeler Company, manufacturers of electric equipments at Ampere, (Essex Co.) With Pro- fessor Francis B. Crocker he organized the company in 1889 and has since been its head.
Mr. Wheeler's interest in the application of electric force to tools and motors of one kind and another, was aroused early in life. At one time he was a member of Edison's engineering staff. He was given charge of the work at the first incandescent light station, when the light was introduced in 1SS3 and contrived many of the devices that were adopted for the per- fection of the light. The electric elevator and the electric light machines are also among the modern new power devices he has produced. From 1888 to '95 he was the Electrical Expert of the Board of Electric Control in New York City.
In 1904 Mr. Wheeler received from Franklin Institute the John Scott medal for the invention (1886) of the electric buzz fan. His book, prepared in collaboration with Professor Crocker, on the practical management of dynamos and motors is a recognized authority. He brought to this country the Latimer Clark library, the largest collection of rare electric books in existence, and presented it to the American Institute of Electric Engineers. He organized the United Engineering Society and the erection of its build- ing in New York was chiefly the result of his energy.
Mr. Wheeler was educated at the Columbia Grammer School and enter- ing Columbia College left there before graduation to become Assistant Electrician of the Jablochkoff Electric Light Company, remaining there un- til he joined the Edison staff. He was successively electrician of the Her- zog Teleseme Company and manager as well as electrician of the C. & C. Electric Motor Company, the first concern engaged in the production of elec- tric motors. Shortly afterwards the Crocker-Wheeler Company was organ- ized.
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Besides being the co-author of the work on dynamos and motors, Mr. Wheeler wrote the code of professional ethics for engineers which was adopted by the American Institute of Electric Engineers in 1912. He holds the Honorary degrees of D. Sc. from Hobart College and M. Sc. from Col- umbia, is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and a member, at one time President, of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. He has been Vice President of the Automobile Club and is a subscriber of the University Club, the St. Nicholas Society, Somerset Hills Country Club and the New York City Chamber of Commerce.
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JOHN JOSIAH WHITE-Atlantic City .- Judge. Born on his father's farm near Pemberton, Burlington Co., August 16th, 1863; eldest son of Josiah and Mary Kirby (Allen) White; married at Lansdowne, Pa., on February 18th, 1890, to Laura C. Harris, daughter of John W. and Carolin Comed (Delacroix) Harris.
Children : Elizabeth.
John Josiah White was appointed a member of the Court of Errors and Appeals of the State of New Jersey by Governor Woodrow Wilson in 1911 and re-appointed at the expiration of his first term for a second six year term in 1918 by Gov. Walter E. Edge. He is of Quaker ancestry, some of his forebears having been prominent ministers in the Society of Friends in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Among the earliest of the direct lines on these shores were Christopher White, who settled in Allo- way Creek, Salem county, in 1677; William Haines who came to Burling- ton in 1682, and Samuel Smith, first noted in the annals of 1684, who was a member of the Assembly until his death in 1718. Joseph Kirkbride who came to Philadelphia in 1682, Mahlon Stacy who was the first settler of Trenton in 1678 and in whose honor Stacy Park was recently named ; and Isaac Schoemaker from Cresheim on the Rhine, one of the party of eighty German Quakers who founded Germantown, in Philadelphia County, Pa., were also of his line.
Judge White left Swarthmore College at the end of his sophomore year to become a student in the law office of Nathan H. Sharpless of the Phila- delphia Bar. He attended the law school of the University of Pennsylva- nia, receiving the B. L. degree in 1884. He was admitted to the Philadel- phia Bar and later to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, en- gaging in active practice until 1901.
Judge White removed to Atlantic City in 1901, and with his father . and two brothers built the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel. They have since been the proprietors and managers of it. He served during the war also as Federal Food Administrator for Atlantic Cunty.
Judge White took a conspicuous part in the clean-up movement in At- lantic City in 1910-'11, and in June of 1911 Gov. Wilson nominated him to the Senate for the seat on the Bench of the Court of Errors and Appeals that had been made vacant by the death of Judge George R. Gray of New- ark. The Senate confirmed the nomination, and in January, 1912, when the
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unexpired term for which he had been appointed ran out, Gov. Wilson re- nominated him for the full term of six years and he is still serving.
Judge White is a member of the Country Club of Atlantic City, Seaview Golf Club and Atlantic City Yacht Club.
BENJAMIN S. WHITEHEAD-Newark, (379 Mt. Prospect Ave.)-Manufacturer. (Photograph published in Vol. 1, 1917). Born in Newark, January 24th, 1858; son of Edmund B. and Eliza- beth R. (Stainsby) Whitehead; married in Newark in 1882, to Fannie M. Thompson, daughter of George W. and Elizabeth Thomp- son, of Mendham.
Children ; Ray B., age 37 years; Helen W .; Anthony, age 33 years.
Benjamin S. Whitehead is President of the Whitehead & Hoag Com- pany in Newark, and active as well in church and community work. He is of Revolutionary stock; the records show that Daniel Whitehead was a resident of Dutchess county, N. Y. in 1760. Mr. Whitehead's grandfather, Rev. Stephen J. Whitehead was a Methodist preacher whom the famous Bishop Francis Asbury ordained. The ordination certificate is still in the possession of the family. His father was for eighteen years Assistant Col- lector of Internal Revenue at Newark under the administrations of Lincoln, Grant and Garfield.
Mr. Whitehead was educated in the public schools, at the Cooper In- stitute, New York, and at the New Jersey Business College.
Mr. Whitehead has been a member of Centenary Methodist Church for many years, and has long officiated as one of its Trustees. He has been a Trustee also of Centenary Collegiate Institute at Hackettstown and is a member of the Board of Managers of the Y. M. C. A. of Newark. He is connected with the Newark Board of Trade, is president of the New Jersey Fish and Game Conservative League, has been a Director of the Manufacturers National Bank of Newark, is Chairman of the City-wide Community Boys Work, member of Board of Management of the North End Community Boys Work and of the New Jersey Automobile and Motor Club, member Down Town Club and a member of the Essex and Union Clubs. He has been President of the Whitehead & Hoag Company since its its incorporation twenty-seven years ago.
ROBERT WILLIAMS-Paterson, (385 Park Ave. )-Judge. Born in Paterson, March 16, 1860; son of Henry Augustus and Mary Louisa (Van Saun) Williams; married at Atlantic City, on April 23, 1891, to Alice Winslow Ingham, daughter of George T. and Annie T. Ingham, of Salem.
Children : Robert Jr., born January 27th, 1892; Henry A., born January 15th, 1895.
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Robert Williams is a Judge of the Court of Errors and Appeals-the Court of final resort in the state. He had filled a number of other state offices before going upon the Bench. He is a lawyer by profession, is in- terested besides in banking and publishing enterprises, and has led a long political career.
Judge Williams began his studies in the schools of Paterson and, enter- ing Princeton, graduated with the A. B. degree in 1881; in 1884 the A. M. degree was conferred upon him. In preparation for the law, he took a course at the Columbia College Law School, while learning the code of the practice in the office of his father, who was also a lawyer. He was ad- mitted to the New Jersey Bar as an attorney in 1884 and as counselor three years later. In 1906 the Court of Chancery appointed him a Special Master.
Judge William's political career began when he was nominated in 1889 for the House of Assembly of 1890. Re-elected in the following year, he was the choice of the minority for Speaker of the House in 1891. Five years later he was promoted to the State Senate by the republicans of Passaic county ; and in the last two years of his term was its presiding officer.
He has since held a number of important State offices. The joint meet- ing of the Legislature named him a State Director of Railroads in 1903 but he resigned in 1904 to become a member of the State Riparian Board, be- ing President of the Board in 1908-'09. He had become a member of the Republican State Committee and of its Executive Committee in 189S and served till 1911 when he resigned to accept appointment by Gov. Fort to the Public Utility Commission. He had previously served on the Railroad Commission whose functions by an act of 1911 were transferred to the Utility Board. In the Utility Board too he served as President until in 1912, he withdrew to resume his law practice in Paterson. Early in 1914 a vacancy occurred on the Bench of the Court of Errors and Appeals and Gov. Fielder nominated Commissioner Williams to fill it for the unexpired term, and reappointed him in 1915, for the full term of six years.
Mr. William's home activities have been quite as marked as those in State affairs. He is Secretary and Treasurer of the Call Printing and Publishing Company which issues the "Morning Call" in Paterson and a Director of the National Ribbon Company and of the First National Bank of Paterson. He was Judge Advocate of the First Battalion N. G. N. J. with the rank of Captain.
Mr. Williams is a Presbyterian in faith. His club memberships are with the Masonic, the Arcola Country Club and the Princeton Club of New York.
HENRY BREWSTER WILLIS-New Brunswick, (185 Living- ston Ave.)-County Superintendent of Schools. Born at Albany, N. Y., May 31, 1850, son of Ralph and Lucretia A. (Van Nuis) Wil- lis, married at Milltown, N. J., June 12th, 1889 to Rosa Linda Evans, daughter of John and May A. Evans, of Milltown, N. J.
Henry Brewster Willis is descended from an old English family. His grandfather was a merchant of the Corn Exchange of London. He at-
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tended the school which was then located in the Village of Bowes, about 200 miles from London, and which Charles Dickens caricatures in his famous book, "Nicholas Nickleby." In October 1829, with his uncle, he sailed from London Docks on the packet ship Toronto, a sail boat. The voyage lasted seven weeks, but the monotony of it was broken by a mutiny of the crew, and by a storm which threatened to sink the ship. In 1868 he was appointed county superintendant of schools of Middlesex Commis by Governor Joel Parker and held the office until 1887 when he retired and was succeeded by his son, Henry Brewster.
He received his education in the schools of Monmouth county, where his father was then a minister. His education was supplemented by work at home under his father's guidance, and by attending private schools. He then entered the Trenston State Normal School from which he graduated In 1881 he was admitted to the New Jersey State Bar as Attorney, and Coun- selor at law in 1884, practiced until 1913. He was special examiner for the state and counsel for the Middlesex County Board of Freeholders for a period 'of ten years. Upon the death of his father he was appointed county superin- tendant. of schools by State Board of Education and when in 1913 the State Board of Education passed the rule that all county superintendants must devote their undivided time to their office, he gave up his law practice, although it was far the more remunerative of the two professions.
Mr. Willis has the distinction of being the first educational head to fly the American flag from every schoolhouse within his jurisdiction. It was in 1897 when he attempted to carry out his plan, but found that the law would not permit the Board of Education to appropriate money for flags. By collections, entertainments, and the like, $3,000 was raised, and flags purchased for every schoolhouse in the county. The following year he prepared an amendment to the school law which provided for the pur- chase of flags by the school board out of the fund of current expenses. In 1900, by an act of the Legislature, prepared by Mr. Willis, all boards of educations of the state were compelled to display the flag on or near the schoolhouse during all school days. This is now uniform throughout the country, but New Jersey was the first state in the Union to pass the law.
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