USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume III, Pt. 2 > Part 1
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 01150 3023
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LESLIE'S HISTORY ·
OF THE
GREATER
NEW YORK
13,02
VOLUME III
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW YORK BIOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY
ARKELL PUBLISHING COMPANY (JUDGE BUILDING) 110 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK, U. S. A.
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1893. She was descended from Captain Miles Standish and Gov- ernor William Bradford. Mr. Parsons was born on Staten Island. July 7, 1831. and was educated in a private school at Rye. N. Y. He was the son of the late Edward Lamb Parsons. merchant, of this city. and is a brother of John Edward Parsons. the eminent New York lawyer. His country-seat at Rye, N. Y., was long his father's home.
DEXTER, HENRY, founder of the American News Company in 1864. has been its President since that date. He was born in West Cambridge, Mass., March 11, 1813; was educated in the public schools; was early employed in publishing houses in Boston and Cambridge, and, coming to New York City when twenty-three years of age, was for some time employed in the hardware establishment of the Whitte -. mores, inventors of the cotton card making machine. In 1842 he joined an elder brother who had established himself as a publisher in this city. Very early Mr. Dexter conceived the project which was carried out in the organization of the American News Company, but it was not until 1864 that he was in a position to launch the enterprise. He owns a large tract of land in the Adirondacks, where he has his summer residence. He married, in 1853, Lucretia Mar- quand, daughter of Orrando Perry, of Boston, and has a daughter and a son, Orrando Perry Dexter, engaged in the practice of law. Heury Dexter is the son of Jonathan Marsh Dexter and Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Balch and Abigail Audebert, and a descendant of the Cushing and Palfrey families; is grandson of David Dexter and Lydia, daughter of Jonathan Marsh and Elizabeth Merrill; is great- grandson of Richard Dexter and Rebecca, daughter of David Peabody and Sarah Pope, and is lineally descended from Richard Dexter, who emigrated to Boston from Ireland, where he was born in 1606. being, as it is supposed, a descendant of Richard de Exeter, Chief Justice of Ireland in 1307.
FLOWER, ROSWELL PETTIBONE, Governor of the State of New York from January 1, 1893, to January 1, 1895, has long been a promi- nent financier of this city. He was born in Jefferson County, New York, August 7, 1835; was educated in the public schools; taught school; engaged in business; was Assistant Postmaster of Water- town, and established himself as a jeweler. Becoming, in 1869, execu- tor of the estate of his brother-in-law, the late Henry Keep, of this city, he removed to New York. The value of the Keep estate quad- rupled in his hands. In 1871 he joined the banking and brokerage firm of Benedict & Company, of which Elias Cornelius Benedict was head, the style becoming Benedict, Flower & Company. In 1875 he severed this connection, establishing the firm of R. P. Flower & Company, the style of which, since 1890, has been Flower & Com-
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pany. At the present time he is a trustee and Honorary Vice-Presi- dent of the. Colonial Trust Company, a trustee of the Metropolitan Trust Company, and a director of the Corn Exchange Bank, the National Surety Company, the United States Casualty Company, the People's Gas Light and Coke Company, the Chicago gas companies, and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company. A life- long Democrat, he defeated William Waldorf Astor for Congress in the Eleventh New York District in 1881. The following year he de- clined to become Democratic candidate for Governor in favor of Grover Cleveland. He declined a renomination for Congress in 1883, and refused to accept his nomination as Lieutenant-Governor in 1885. In 1888, however, be was again elected to Congress, the same year having been Delegate-at-Large to the Democratic National Conven- tion. In the fall of 1892 he was elected Governor of the State. The same year he was prominently mentioned for the Democratic Presi- dential nomination. For many years he has set aside one-tenth of his income for benevolence. He built the Flower Surgical Hospital in this city, as well as the St. Thomas House for work among the poor. As a memorial to his parents he erected the Presbyterian church at Theresa, N. Y. In conjunction with his brother, Anson R. Flower, of this city, he erected Trinity Episcopal Church at Water- town, N. Y. The Republican Legislature, in 1893, reimbursed him in the sum of $210,000 for his purchase of Fire Island as a State quarantine station, in an emergency when there were no public funds available for the purpose. He married, in 1859, Sarah M, daughter of Norris M. Woodruff, of New Hart- ford, Conn., and has living a daughter, Mrs. ROSWELL. P. FLOWER. John B. Taylor, of Watertown, N. Y., a son and a daughter having died. He is the son of Nathan M. Flower, for fourteen years a Justice of the Peace, and Mary Ann, daughter of Thomas Boyle, builder of the first waterworks in New York City, and is descended from Lamrock Flower, who was born in Ireland in 1660, and settled in Hartford, Conn., in 1685.
DEMING, HENRY CHAMPION, is Vice-President of the Mercan- tile Trust Company, having for several years been its Secretary prior to his election to his present position, and is also a director of the Union Pacific Railway Company. He is a member of the Union, University, Lawyers', Manhattan, and Players' clubs, and the Vale Alumni. He was born in Hartford, Conn., in 1850, was graduated from Yale in 1872, and is the son of Hon. Henry Champion Deming and Sarah, daughter of Laurent Clere and Eliza C. Boardman; is
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grandson of General David Deming, member of the Connecticut As- sembly from 1811 to 1823, and Brigadier-General of the State Artil- lery, and his wife, Abigail Champion; is great-grandson of Jonathan Deming, who served throughout the Revolutionary War, and his wife, Alice, daughter of Rev. Thomas Skinner and Mary Thompson; is fourth in descent from David Deming and Mehitable Champion; fifth from Rev. David Deming, who graduated from Harvard in 1700, was minister at Medway, Mass., and Middletown, Conn., and married Martha Brigham, of Boston; is sixth from David Deming, and is sev- enth from John Deming, an early settler of Wethersfield, Conh., and its representative in General Court from 1649 to 1661. Although Mr. Deming's father resided at Hartford the greater part of his life, he practiced law in New York City from 1839 to 1847, and during that time was associated with Park Benjamin in founding the New York World. He was graduated from Yale in 1836 and from Harvard Law School in 1839; was a member of the Connecticut Assembly and Sen- ate; Mayor of Hartford; Colonel during the Civil War, and three times elected to Congress. Other of his sons, Charles Clerc Deming, a lawyer, and Laurent Clerc, Secretary of the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe Railway Company, are residents of New York.
COOK, HENRY HARVEY, How a Trustee of the American Surety Company, and a Director of the National Bank of North America, and the State Trust Company, has been a resident of New York City since 1875, and has been actively interested in railroad enterprises. He has been a director and active in the control and management of such important roads as the Union Pacific, the New York, Lake Erie and Western, and the Buffalo, New York and Erie. He is a member of the Metropolitan and Union League clubs, the New York Historical Society, and other organizations. Born in Cohocton, N. Y., May 13. 1822, he attended the public schools and an academy at Canandaigua, and for two years was engaged with business firms of Auburn and Bath, N. Y. During the ten years from 1844 to 1854, he was a suc- cessful merchant at Bath. Subsequently he became cashier and later President of the Bank of Bath. He married Mary, daughter of Will- iam MeCay, of Bath, and has four daughters, all of whom are mar- ried. He is the son of the late Judge Constant Cook, who at one time owned several passenger and mail routes in Western New York; built part of the Erie Railroad; built the Buffalo, New York, and Corning "Railroad, and established at Bath a private banking house, which sub- sequently became the First National. The first ancestor in this coun- try. Captain Thomas Cook, of Earle's Colne, Essex, England. settled in Boston in 1635. later becoming a proprietor of Taunton, Mass., a founder of Portsmouth. R. L .. and a member of the Rhode Island As- sembly.
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW YORK BIOGRAPHY.
DICK, WILLIAM, head of the firm of Dick & Meyer, extensive sugar refiners, is an officer of many important corporations. He is Vice-President of the Nassau Trust Company of Brooklyn, Vice-Presi- dent of the Manufacturers' National Bank, Brooklyn, Vice-President of the Malcolm Brewing Company, a trustee of the German Say- ings Bank, and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and a director of the American Sugar Refining Company, the Hecker-Jones- Jewell Milling Company, the Lincoln Fire Insurance Company, and the Taylor & Fox Realty Company, of-Brooklyn. He was formerly President of the German Savings Bank, and placed its affairs upon a solid foundation. He is Treasurer of the German Lutheran Hos- pital, of East New York, and a trustee of the Charitable Hospital and the Third Street Dispensary, both of Brooklyn. Ile was born in Han- over, Germany, in 1823, and there educated. He came to this country in 1845, and entered the grocery business, subsequently establishing a flom and feed store. He began as a sugar refiner in 1858, locating in New York City. The business was removed to Brooklyn in 1863.
BOAS, EMIL LEOPOLD, in 1872, became connected with the firm of C. B. Richard & Boas, bankers, of Bremen, Germany, and agents of the Hamburg-American Steamship Line, and in 1873 came to America in connection with the allied New York firm of C. B. Rich- ard & Boas, becoming, in 1881, a member of the firm. This firm suf- fered various changes in personnel, and in 1891 ceased to be agents for the Hamburg-American Line, Mr. Boas alone being its representa- tive in this city and General Manager of the line since 1892. He is a Knight of the Red Eagle of Prussia, the Order of the Black Eagle, given to princes, being the only German decoration exceeding it in importance; is a Knight of the First Class of the Order of St. Olaf of Norway; is a Knight of the Order of St. Mauritius and St. Lazarus of Italy, and is a Commander of the Order of Bolivar of Venezuela. He is a member of the Consolidated Stock Exchange, the New York Produce Exchange, and the Maritime Exchange, and the Maritime Association; is a trustee of Lenox Avenue Unitarian Church, and is a member of the New York Yacht, New York Athletic, St. Andrew's Golf, Reform, Unitarian, and Sullivan County clubs, the Liederkranz, the Deutscher Verein, the German Society, the German Social Scien- tific Society, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Statistical Association, the New York Zoological So- ciety, and the American Geographical Society. He was born in Ger- many, November 15, 1854, his father, Louis Boas, and his grandfather. Louis Boas, both being merchants. He was educated at the Royal Frederick William Gymnasium in Breslau, and the Sophien Gymna- sium in Berlin. His wife, Harriet Sagasta Sternfeld, is a niece of the German poet, S. von Mosenthal.
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SPENCER, SAMUEL, since 1888 a member of the famous New York banking firm of Drexel, Morgan & Company, and its successor. J. P. Morgan & Company, is President of the Southern Railway Com- pany, President of the Alabama Great Southern Railroad Company, President of the Georgia Midland Railway, President of the Georgia Southern and Florida Railway Company, and President of the Elgin. Joliet and Eastern Railway Company. He is also a director of the Erie Railroad Company, the Northern Pacific Railway Company, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company, the Central of Georgia Rail- way Company, the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Com- pany, the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway; the Alabama Great Southern Railway Company, the Norfolk and Caro- lina Railroad, the Lawyers' Surety Company, and the West End Street Railway Company. He oc- cupies the position of arbitrator be- tween the General Electric and Westinghouse Electric companies, and is a trustee of the Street Rail- way and Illuminating Trust, cre- ated to take over from the General Electric Company several millions of miscellaneous securities, as a means of financiering that com- pany during the panic of 1893. In 1890 Mayor Grant appointed him a member of the Board of Rapid Transit Commissioners. Mayor Strong appointed him Chairman of the Transportation Committee in connection with the Grant Monu- ment celebration. He was head of SAMUEL SPENCER. the commission which designed and formulated the plans for the recent-
ly completed terminals of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. He is a member of the Metropolitan, University, Tuxedo, Riding and Law- yers' clubs of New York, the Metropolitan Club of Washington, the Chicago Club of that city, and the Capital City Club of Atlanta. He married, in 1872, Louise Vivian, daughter of General Henry L. Ben- ning, at one time a justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, and has two daughters and a son-Henry Benning Spencer. Mr. Spencer was himself born in Columbus, Ga., March 2, 1847, the son of Lambert Spencer, merchant, and Verona Mitchell. Hle descends from James Spencer, who settled on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1640. He attended the Georgia Military Institute; at the age of sixteen entered the Confederate Army, and served two years, until the close of the Civil War; was graduated from the University of Georgia in 1867,
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at the age of twenty, at the head of his class, and in 1869 was gradu- ated as a civil engineer from the University of Virginia. He worked as rodman on the survey of the Savannah and Memphis Railroad, and successively became leveler, transit-man, resident engineer, and first assistant engineer. The latter position he resigned in 1872 to become Clerk to the Superintendent of the New Jersey Southern Rail- road. In December of the same year he became Assistant Supervisor of Trains on the First Division of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. From 1873 to 1877 he was Supervisor of Trains, in charge of trans- portation on the branch lines of that division. For a few months he then became Superintendent of Transportation for the Virginia Mid- land Railway, in 1878 becoming General Superintendent of the Long Island Railroad. In 1879 he accepted the position of assistant to Presi- dent Garrett of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In 1880 he became Acting General Manager of the Trans-Ohio divisions. The following year he was elected Third Vice-President of the company, in charge of the physical operations of the entire system. In 1882 he was elected Second Vice-President. In 1881 he was elected First Vice-President, in charge of both physical and traffic departments. After the reorgani- zation of the finances of the company by Drexel, Morgan & Company, in 1887, he was elected President. He inaugurated a sound business administration, but the Garrett interests regained control in Decem- ber, 1888, when he resigned. The return to obscure business methods led to the collapse of 1895. Mr. Spencer became President of the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway in 1889. He is now chiefly engaged in managing the immense system of the Southern Railway Company.
CORBIN. AUSTIN, the founder and until his death in 1896 the head of the Corbin Banking Company, which he organized in this city in 1873. was also one of the most skillful and prominent railroad financiers in the United States. He reorganized the Indiana, Bloom- ington and Western Railroad. In 1880 he became Receiver of the Long Island Railroad, very successfully reorganized it. and in 1881 became its President. The value of the property was also greatly enhanced by his enterprise in developing the summer resorts on Long Island. He was active in connection with the Philadelphia and Reading. being at one time its Receiver and President. He was President of the New York and New England Railroad Company. the Elmira, Cortland, and Northern Railroad Company, the New York and Rockaway Beach Railway Company, and the Manhattan Beach Company, and was a director of the Amerin Exchange National Bank. the Mercantile Trust Company. the Nassau Fire Insurance Com- pany. and the Western Union Telegraph Company. He was a mem- ber of the Manhattan. Lawyers', Players', Meadowbrook Hunt, South- side Sportsmen's and Seawanbaka-Corinthian clubs; the Somerset Club of Boston, and the New England Society. His father was a man
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of means, and his grandfather a large landholder and member of the New Hampshire Senate. He was himself born in Newport. N. H .. July 11, 1827. attended Harvard College, was graduated from the Harvard Law School. and for two years practiced law in New Hamp- shire in partnership with Ralph Metcalf, subsequently Governor of that State. For some years following 1851 he was very successfully engaged in law practice at Davenport. Iowa; but eventually estab- lished a private banking firm in that city, which he reorganized in 1863 as the First National Bank of Davenport. He removed to New . York City in 1865.
CORBIN. AUSTIN, son of the late Austin Corbin. and the present head of the family, has succeeded to the care of the family estate. and is an officer of a number of corporations. He is President of the Real Estate Mortgage Company. President of the Rockaway Park Improvement Company. Vice-President of the Manhattan Beach Hotel and Land Company, and a Director of the New York. Brooklyn and Manhattan Beach Railroad Company, the Marginal Railroad Com- pany, and the Manhattan Beach Company. He is also Vice-President. Treasurer, and Manager of the Columbia and Red Mountain Railway Company; Secretary, Treasurer and Manager of the Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway Company, and Manager and director of the Rod Mountain Railway Company. He was born in Brooklyn in 1873. was graduated from Harvard in 1896, and is a member of the New York Athletic and Fencers' clubs of this city, and the Somerset Club of Boston.
COOPER, EDWARD. son of the late Peter Cooper, and Mayor of New York City from 1879 to 1881, succeeded his father as head of the well-known mercantile firm of Cooper, Hewitt & Company. and at the present time is President of the New Jersey Steel and Iron Company, President of the Cooper Union Labor Bureau. President of Peter Cooper's Glue Factory, a trustee of the United States Trust Company. and a director of the Chrysolite Silver Mining Company. 1 promi- nent Democrat. he was a Delegate to the National Conventions of his party in 1860 and 1876. He was an active member of the Committee of Seventy, whose efforts secured the overthrow of the Tweed ring. He is one of the citizens who rebuilt the Metropolitan Opera House after its destinetion by fire in 1892. He is a member of the Union, Metropolitan. Knickerbocker. Century, Tuxedo, and other clubs. Born in this city. October 26, 1824, he was educated in the public schools and at Colum- bia College, leaving before completing his course at the latter. but in 1845 receiving the degree of A. M. After traveling in Europe, in 1847 the firm of Cooper. Hewitt & Company was established, both him- self and his brother-in-law, Abram S. Hewitt, being taken into part-
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nership in the business enterprises which Peter Cooper had begun as early as 1815. The active management of these interests rapidly de- volved upon Edward Cooper, and he particularly displayed his abili- ties in mastering all the details of the iron business in a scientific manner, so as to greatly enlarge and develop the extensive works in New Jersey, and keep them to the front among the chief competitors in this line in the country.
GRACE, WILLIAM RUSSELL. Mayor of New York City for two terins, from January 1, 1881, to January 1, 1883, and again from Janu- ary 1, 1885, to January 1, 1887, is also prominent in mercantile circles. He was in business at Callao, Peru, from 1852 to 1865 as a member of the firms of Bryce, Grace & Company and Grace Brothers & Com- pany. In 1865 he removed to New York City, intending to retire, but, recovering his health, resumed business. He is President of the corporation of W. R. Grace & Company, organized in 1894, and extensively engaged in the South American _trade, with branches in London, San Fran- cisco, Peru, and Chile. He is also President of the Ingersoll- Sergeant Drill Company, and President of the Hamilton Bank Note Engraving and Printing Company. is a trustee of the New York Life Insurance Company, and a director of the Lincoln National Bank, the Lincoln Safe Deposit Company, the Terminal Warehouse Company, the Ter- minal Improvement Company, WILLIAM RUSSELL GRACE. the Eastern Insurance Company. the Central and South American Telegraph Company, and the Ever- greens. He is a trustee of St. Patrick's Cathedral. He was one of the notable contributors to relieve the victims of the famine in Ire- land in 1879. In 1897 he made preliminary arrangements to estab- lish in this city a large institution for the manual training of girls, to be known as the Grace Institute. He is a member of the Metropolitan, Manhattan, Reform, Democratic, Lawyers', Catholic, Country, and Press clubs, the Liederkranz, and the Downtown Asso- ciation. He married in 1859, Lillias, daughter of George W. Gilchrist, of St. George, Me., and has three daughters and two sons-Joseph P. and William R. Grace, Jr. Born in Rivertown, County Cork, Ire- land, May 10, 1832, he is himself the eldest son of the late James
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Grace and Ellen Mary Russell. His father, of Sheffield House, Queen's County, Ireland, was of a distinguished and titled family of great antiquity, and inherited a fortune, which he largely dissipated in as- sisting Venezuela to throw off the yoke of Spain. William Russell Grace worked his passage to New York City in a sailing vessel at the age of fourteen, but after two years returned to Ireland. In 1850 he entered the employ of Bryce & Company, of Callao, Peru, and two years later became a partner of his employers. Subsequently his brother, Michael P. Grace, was associated with him in the firm of Grace Brothers & Company.
GRACE, JOSEPH P., eldest son of ex-Mayor William Russell Grace and Lillias, daughter of George W. Gilchrist, is Secretary and a director of the W. R. Grace Company, Secretary and a director of the Ingersoll-Sergeant Drill Company, and Secretary, Treasurer, and a trustee of the Evergreens. He was graduated from Columbia Univer- sity, and is a member of the Alpha Delta Phi and Catholic clubs, and the Columbia Alumni Association.
SCHROEDER, FREDERICK A., in 1867 founded the Germania Savings Bank of Kings County, and has been it's president continu- ously since. He is also a director of the People's Trust Company, of Brooklyn. He has been one of the most prominent figures in the public life of Brooklyn. An influential member of the Republican party, he was elected Comptroller of the city of Brooklyn in the fall of 1871. and served from 1872 to 1874, introducing better business methods in the administration of the office than had previously pre- vailed. He was Mayor of the city in 1877 and 1878, and was active in promoting municipal reform and in opposing ring domination of Brooklyn. His continued activity in this direction led to his election to the State Senate, where he served in 1880 and 1881, and was chiefly instrumental in securing the reform charter for Brooklyn which placed the municipal departments under single executives in place of the many-headed commissions and divided responsibility under the old charter. Born in Treves. Prussia, March 9. 1833. through his mother Mr. Schroeder is great-grandson of William you Heimsoeth, an eminent jurist, who was employed to negotiate the treaty of peace between Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria. He was himself educated at the Gymnasium at Treves, and emigrated to this country with his father, a surveyor of taxes in the service of the Prussian Government, whose connection with the Revolution of 1848 made it expedient for him to expatriate himself. Learning the cigarmaker's trade. Mr. Sebroeder began manufacturing in Brooklyn on his own account at the age of nineteen. Since 1869 he has been head of the New York City firm of Schroeder & Bon, leaf-tobacco merchants.
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