Bi-centennial history of Albany. History of the county of Albany, N. Y., from 1609 to 1886. With portraits, biographies and illustrations, Part 84

Author: Howell, George Rogers, 1833-1899; Tenney, Jonathan, 1817-1888
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1452

USA > New York > Albany County > Albany > Bi-centennial history of Albany. History of the county of Albany, N. Y., from 1609 to 1886. With portraits, biographies and illustrations > Part 84

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At the Chicago Convention, he was unanimously chosen Chairman of the New York Delegation. From the first he was implicitly trusted by his own delegation; and, from early in the deliberations of the Convention, by the Cleveland delegates from all parts of the Union. Exhibiting rare tact in handling questions as they arose, he met emer- gencies with admirable insight and promptitude, and accomplished the nomination of Mr. Cleveland in a manner which won the approval of the country at large. But with that great task achiev- ed, the work Mr. Manning had in hand, both as Chairman of the State Committee and as Governor Cleveland's chosen friend and adviser, was only begun. There followed a campaign memorable for its conflicting elements, and marred by fac- tional animosities and bitter personalities hitherto unknown. The herculean task was before the managers of the Democratic party of healing, or at least checking, its internal dissensions in New York. Upon Mr. Manning, in great measure, devolved this apparently impossible work. Har- mony was measurably secured upon national issues, thus assuring the success of the party in the State and the casting of New York's decisive electoral vote for Cleveland and Hendricks. The same courageous and quiet dignity that marked Mr. Manning's conduct during the campaign, and with which he had met the fierce tactics of the forces arrayed against Mr. Cleveland, characterized his

work during the trying period succeeding the elec- tion, when desperate opponents were clamorously charging fraud upon the Democratic management, and claiming the election of Mr. Blaine with a persistent plausibility that for a time deceived more than half the country.

Much of the aggressive work the State Democ- racy has accomplished within the last twelve years has been shaped by Mr. Manning's influence upon its organization and policy. To the duties before exercised by Dean Richmond, and then by Samuel J. Tilden, in the leadership of leaders, Mr. Man- ning has succeeded, and has impressed on the posi- tion his own methods and qualities. These com- prise a confident reliance on principle, and on the public capacity and disposition to respond to it; a making of issues broad, sharp and commanding; a policy of campaigning marked by candor, evi- dence and aggression; a calculation of the people as the decisive factor. His trust in the honesty and intelligent self interest of the masses is marked. His perceptions are intellectual, his tactics are ethical; his consciousness that neither political party is as good as it ought to be, leads him to strive to make the one with which he acts better. His relations with the statesmen of his party have long been intimate, and the best of them are his personal friends. Never relishing, and reluctantly accepting, political responsibilities, Mr. Manning would now retire from them altogether, and would have done so long since had he been permitted to act upon his own choice. Never consenting to hold political place, though often urged to do so, his political stewardship has been marked by prin- ciple, by high honor, courage and unselfishness. The placing of a great party in a position to de- serve and to achieve success, is to him far more important than any personal credit that he may derive from it.

In the affairs of his native city, no man has at- tained to greater influence than Mr. Manning, yet no one has more sturdily refused to identify himself with official position. He has recognized a sole duty in administering unselfishly and unhamperedly the great public journalistic and unofficial political trusts which have been his. His business gifts have, however, not perinitted him to devote them exclusively to the work of publishing. He has long been a Director for the City in the Albany and Susquehanna Railway Company. From 1869 to 1882, when he resigned, he was a Director in the National Savings Bank of Albany. In 1873 he became a Director in the National Commercial Bank of Albany; in 1881 he was chosen its Vice- President; and upon the death of Robert H. Pruyn, in 1882, he succeeded to the presidency. He be- came a Park Commissioner of the City in 1873, and resigned the charge in 1884; and is one of the trustees of the Fort Orange Club.

Married to Miss Mary Little, a lady of English parentage, he suffered her loss by death in 1882. Two sons and two daughters are the crown of this union. His sons are James Hilton and Frederick Clinton Manning, the former being managing editor of the Albany Argus. In November, 1884,

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Mr. Manning married Miss Mary Margaretta Fryer, daughter of William J. Fryer, of Albany. His brother, John B. Manning, was elected Mayor of Buffalo as the successor of Grover Cleveland, now President of the United States. A life of be- neficent activity, cultured by informing studies, ballasted with many responsibilities, tempered by intercourse and friendship with able and illustrious men, and inspired by a high and practical sense of honor and duty, has been that of Daniel Man- ning, who, still in the prime of his faculties, has, it is hoped, many years of honor and usefulness before him, in which his past would be a proof of his probity and power. And it is an excellent at- testation of the possibilities and product of what is best in American character, by self-help, under American institutions.

Mr. Manning now fills the distinguished po- sition of Secretary of the Treasury in the cabinet of President Grover Cleveland, the duties of which he is believed to be discharging with characteristic independence, industry and energy, and with due fealty to party and country as he regards his obli- gations to both. He entered upon the duties of this appointment March 4, 1885.

JOEL MUNSELL.

JOEL MUNSELL was born in Northfield, Mass., April 14, 1808. His parents were Hezekiah and Cynthia (Payne) Munsell, who came from Hart- ford, Ct., to Northfield. Here young Munsell spent the first seventeen years of his life in boyish sports, in the schools of the town, and in working with his father at the trade of a wheelwright. At the age of 17, in 1825, he was a regular apprentice in the printing-office of the Franklin Post and Chris- tian Freeman, published in the near village of Greenfield. December, 1826, found him still "at the case," but at another office in the same village. John Denio, his next employer, took him to Al- bany, the next May, as his clerk in a bookstore. But he was a printer, and preferred this art. After a month on the National Observer, published by Solomon Southwick, he was, about the Ist of Jan- uary, 1828, a journeyman printer, two days in the week, on the Masonic Record; helping Mr. Denio in his bookstore at spare moments; and printing, editing, publishing, and distributing from door to door his own paper, the Albany Minerva. He issued eight numbers. Much of his time was now spent in reading, studying, and making collections of papers and binding them. His employment for a second time, for a few months, in Mr. Denio's bookstore, and in job work and journeyman work on various newspapers, as he was needed, occupied him quite busily for nearly a year and a half, end- ing June, 1829. From this date until his return to Albany, January 4, 1830, he was visiting friends in Northfield and seeking a journeyman's work in Hartford and New Haven. Having no steady em- ployment at his trade, he gave his spare hours in New Haven to attending lectures and reading use- ful works in science and literature. In Albany again, he spent a few more years in irregular em-

ployment as a printer. But like many other printers, whose lives have become eminently useful and successful, his simple habits of economy and constant devotion to gaining valuable knowledge did not forsake him.

In 1834, he was associated with Henry D. Stone, for two or three years, in the successful publication of the Microscope. From his savings he purchased material in October, 1836, and set up a job print- ing-office for himself at 58 State street. Here his skill and industry found appreciation. In these respects he had no superior. "Joel Munsell, the Albany printer," from this time forth made himself more fully known as the master of his art, as the enterprising publisher, the faithful annotater and compiler, and the generous friend of students and writers in genealogy, local history, and antiquities. A list of books and pamphlets of this kind from his press makes a volume. We can name but few here. His volumes are seen and his imprint known wherever books are read by intelligent students of American history and genealogy. The first work compiled and published by him was called "Out- lines of the History of Printing," in 1839.

Albany owes him much for work done upon its local history. His "Annals of Albany," in 10 volumes, 12mo, were begun in 1849 and finished in 1859. "Collections on the History of Albany," in 4 volumes, royal 8vo, were issued between 1865 and 1871. They embody a mass of matter relat- ing to the earlier and later history of Albany, which, with the help of indexes, is exceedingly valuable for reference. Their preparation shows fondness for work, patient industry, great courage, and consci- entious fidelity. He was much aided in some parts of the work by Professor Jonathan Pearson, of Union College, and others. He must have spent untold hours among old records, old news- papers, and old tombstones, to have amassed such an amount of unassorted material.

Another monument of his industry is found in "The Every Day Book of History and Chronol- ogy," compiled by him and published in two volumes, 12mo, in 1843.

"Webster's Annual Almanac," started by Charles R. Webster in 1784, had been prepared and issued by Mr. Munsell since 1843; and is now continued by his youngest son, Frank. Some volumes of the Albany Directory were prepared and published by Mr. Munsell. "Joel Munsell's Sons," Charles and Frank, are still carrying on his work as printer at 82 State street.

In the field of local journalism, Mr. Munsell, besides his own Albany Minerva, published in 1840, a daily campaign paper, edited by Hon. Daniel D. Barnard; in 1842, The Lady's Magazine, edited by E. G. Squier; also, The Northern Star and Freeman's Advocate, in 1844; The Spectator, edited by Rev. Dr. W. B. Sprague, in 1845; The Guard, an Odd Fel- lows' paper, edited by C. C. Burr and John Fanner; also, at various times, The New York State Me- chanic, The Unionist, The State Register, The Typo- graphical Miscellany, The New York Teacher, The Morning Express, and The Daily Statesman. Some of these were partly edited by him, and contribu-

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tions from his pen, on matters of local importance, were frequent.

Ten volumes of valuable historical matter were issued by him, in limited editions, with excellent paper, 4to size, and faultless typography. They were called "Munsell's Historical Series," and published, as were his "Historical Collections," and many other volumes, at a pecuniary loss. He scarcely ever refused to put in print a valuable manuscript, because "it wouldn't pay." His un- selfish zeal for the preservation of historic truth led him to forget the question, "Is there money in it?"

Mr. Munsell took great interest in that valuable quarterly, now in the forty-first year of its publica- tion, called the New England Historic-Genealogical Register, of Boston, which he published for three years.

He was one of the original founders and constant members of the Albany Institute, and published its Transactions and Proceedings. For forty years, up to his death, he was its treasurer.

For forty-three years he was a faithful supporter of the Lutheran Church in this city, and one of its trustees for over twenty years. Many historical, genealogical, and antiquarian societies showed their appreciation of his great life work by electing him an honorary member.

He died after a brief illness, January 15, 1880. He had worn himself out. His funeral was largely attended by the members of the press, the Albany Institute, the Lutheran Church, and many citizens, who sincerely mourned the loss of a most useful man. All who knew him esteemed him highly.

He was small in stature. In expression he was usually cheerful; his features, in his later years, told of thoughtful care and hard work. In conversation he was often jocose and facetious. In manner he was quiet and unobtrusive, but always easily ap- proached. His portrait, appropriately inserted in its early pages, illustrates this work.

One of the most distinguished characters in the history of journalism of Albany County, is SOLOMON SOUTHWICK. Not only was he conspicuous as a journalist, but his influence as a politician was, at one time, almost unbounded, approximating that of more modern political leaders.

Mr. Southwick was born in Newport, R. I., December 25, 1773. His father was early identi- fied with the struggle for American independence. He was a printer, and editor of the Newport Mer- cury, a journal heartily committed to the cause of independence. His patriotism drew upon him the hatred of the Tories, and cost him a hard-earned fortune, compelling his son to begin life in a bit- ter struggle with poverty.

After engaging in several humble employments, young Southwick drifted to New York City, where he apprenticed himself in a printing establishment. The Albany Register was then conducted by his brother-in-law, John Barber.

After remaining in New York a little over a year, young Southwick went to Albany as an assistant in

the office of Mr. Barber. His ability and industry very soon made him Mr. Barber's partner.

On the death of Mr. Barber in 1808, Mr. South- wick succeeded to his interest in the paper. His talents, energy and ambition soon placed him at the head of the Democratic party, of which the Register was the organ and champion.

He continued in charge of the Register for many years, during which time he successively held the position of Clerk of the Assembly, Clerk of the Senate, Sheriff of the County, Manager of the State Literature Lottery, State Printer, Regent of the Uni- versity, and Postmaster of Albany. After the dis- continuance of the Register, he established and con- ducted an agricultural paper called the Ploughboy, first, under the anonymous designation of Henry Homespun, Jr., and subsequently in his own name. At about the same period, he became editor of the Christian Visitant, a periodical devoted to the inter- ests of religion and morality, and to the refutation of infidel principles. Subsequently he assumed editorial charge of the National Democrat, during which time he presented himself to the electors of the State as a candidate for Governor, in opposition to the regularly nominated candidate of the Demo- cratic party, Joseph C. Yates. During the preva- lence of the anti-masonic excitement, he established, and for several years conducted, the National Ob- server, a prominent organ of anti-masonry, and was soon after nominated as candidate of that party for the chief magistracy, in opposition to Martin Van Buren and Smith Thompson.

Failing of success, and disgusted with the mani- fold vexations of political strife, he withdrew from the turbulent arena of public life, and sought in the congenial atmosphere of the domestic and social circle that happiness and peace of mind which he had failed to experience in the restless career of personal and political ambition.

The remainder of his life was devoted to study, to his family fireside, and to the dissemination of religious, moral, and intellectual truth.

From 1831 to 1837, he delivered a course of lectures on the Bible; another on Temperance; and another on Self-Education, which were much ad- mired. He published the "Letters of a Layman " under the signature of Sherlock.

This publication was followed by "Five Letters to Young Men, by An Old Man of Sixty."

For the last two years of his life he conducted the editorial department of the Family Newspaper, published by his son, Alfred Southwick.

On the 18th of November, 1839, while returning with Mrs. Southwick from a social visit at the house of a friend, he was attacked by an affection of the heart, which terminated fatally. His age was sixty-six.

Few men ever experienced more vicissitudes of fortune than Mr. Southwick. He was a self-made man, owing all his knowledge and mental culture, his success and distinction in life, to his own ex- ertions. He loved to encourage the laboring classes, the young, the obscure and friendless; to teach them the knowledge of their power and to aid the advancement of their personal and pecuni-

Luther Jucker.

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ary interests. His address at the opening of the Apprentices' Library in Albany was an earnest, im- passioned and eloquent appeal in behalf of the young mechanic.

A few months previous to his death, he projected the establishment of a literary and scientific insti- tute in this city, to be placed under his personal control and supervision, for the purpose of afford- ing the requisite facilities to young men desirous of pursuing a course of self-education.

In person, Mr. Southwick was somewhat under the medium size, with a countenance full of be- nignity, and expressive of an enthusiastic, ardent and sanguine temperament. An insidious disease, the result of sedentary and studious habits, had un- dermined his health and deprived the evening of his life of that full enjoyment which he might otherwise have enjoyed.

LUTHER TUCKER.

LUTHER TUCKER was born in Brandon, Ver- mont, May 7, 1802. The death of his mother, which followed almost immediately, broke up the family-his father and the older children shortly afterward joining the tide of migration to which Vermont has always furnished so large an army of recruits, while the subject of this notice was adopted in the house where he had been cared for in the hours of motherless infancy. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to Timothy C. Strong, a printer, of Middlebury, encountering, in connec- tion with the instruction he received, the rough fare and hard work that were natural enough at the time, but very different from the customs of the present. Mr. Strong removed to Palmyra, N. Y., in 1817, taking the young apprentice with him; but the connection between them ended two years later, before the expiration of the term of apprenticeship. Mr. Tucker thus entered upon the prosecution of his craft as a journeyman somewhat prematurely, making his way, with intervals of work at various intermediate points, toward his old friends in Vermont, for whom and for his native hills, then, as through all subsequent changes, he entertained the warmest affection. A tour of work, on which he soon set out, carried him, in the course of the five succeeding years, to various points in the north and east, and to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and New York. In the spring of 1825, he entered into partnership, at Jamaica, Long Island, with Mr. Henry C. Sleight, whose business was chiefly the publication of standard works for New York houses. Some vol- umes, now in possession of his sons, bearing the imprint of Sleight & Tucker, chiefly English re- prints of a moral or theological kind, are strikingly characteristic of the condition of American publish- ing at the time; but, in freedom from typographical errors and excellence of press-work, they suffer nothing in comparison with the larger and more hurried editions of the present generation.

In his travels as a journeyman, Mr. Tucker had passed through Rochester in 1823, and witnessed the first crossing on the aqueduct over the Gene-

see, of the Erie Canal; and, though the place was then little more than a village, he was struck with its evident capacities for future growth and pros- per.ty.

And when he began to look for a wider field than that afforded at Jamaica, Rochester was the point that occurred to him. Encouraged by his partner, who aided him with capital as well as with advice, at the age of twenty-four he turned his steps thitherward, and, entirely unknown among its people, began the publication of the Rochester Daily Advertiser-the first daily newspaper to spring into existence west of the City of Albany, in the boundless and then undeveloped territory that extends to the Pacific. Its initial number ap- peared October 27, 1826, and, as we learn from con- temporary notices, at once attracted attention as showing the remarkable progress of the place. In referring to its establishment, the New York Evening Post of October 31, 1826, said: " Nothing can show, in a more striking point of view, the rapid increase of our population and internal com- merce, than the fact that Rochester, which within a few years was a wilderness, is now enabled, by the number of its inhabitants and the activity of its trade, to support a daily paper."

This enterprise, in proportion to the business transactions of the day, and the simpler customs of a young and still struggling Western town, was a success. But we have been already too long in tracing the steps by which Mr. Tucker reached what became the all-absorbing work of his life, to allude even briefly to his associates, or to the part he took in the active and often heated political dis- cussions of a peculiarly exciting period. Wher- ever he had traveled he had been struck with the backwardness of our agriculture; the lack of inter- communication among our farmers; the tendencies of all-prevailing practice towards the deterioration of the soil; the almost universal absence of agri- cultural reading. His taste was strongly for farm- ing, and other business he regarded as simply the resource from which he hoped to buy and cultivate land of his own, without indebtedness to others, and with reasonable provision in case of bad sea- sons and slow returns.

From this ambition, and his very considerable op- portunities of observation among farmers in widely scattered localities, arose the establishment of the Genesee Farmer, January 1, 1831, while still pub- lishing the Daily Advertiser. Mr. Tucker's aim in a paper for the practical benefit of farmers, was to provide them with a means of communication touching the details of their experience and modes of practice, and to bring their example, so to speak, within the personal knowledge of his readers, look- ing to what had been accomplished, or was actu- ally going on among the most intelligent and enterprising, for guidance as to what might or should be done, rather than to scientific investiga- tion or the theories of the closet. It may not be too much to claim that the Genesee Farmer, though preceded in date of issue by a few other agricultural journals here or in Great Britain, was the first to be- gin from this end. Its circulation rapidly increased,

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and this notwithstanding the establishment of the Cultivator at Albany by Judge Buel, under the aus- pices of the State Agricultural Society, in 1834, when some falling off might have been expected from the division of the field with a rival so able and influential; and it was somewhat to Mr. Tuck- er's surprise, on the union of the two journals, some years later, to ascertain that the circulation of his own was much the larger of the two.

Having at last attained what was to have been his great object, the purchase of a farm near Roches- ter, the daily paper was sold in 1839. It still exists as one of the leading and most popular journals of Western New York, under the name of the Roches- ter Union and Advertiser. Farming and the publication of the Farmer were to be the sole ob- jects of the future. But before a single season had passed, Judge Buel's death left the Cultivator with- out a head, and a proposition was made to Mr. Tucker for the combination of the two papers, that seemed in many respects so advantageous, that the farm was sold, and the number for January, 1840, was published from Albany and bore the title of the Cultivator : a consolidation of Buel's Cultivator and the Genesee Farmer. A New Genesee Farmer subse- quently led a brief and flickering existence, and after the second part of the Cultivator's title had been dropped as too cumbersome, other Genesee Farmers came into fitful being-the last calling it- self "the oldest paper," because of its borrowed title-an attempt at appropriating a history as well as a name of which there have been many other specimens in our periodical literature, but about which Mr. Tucker may, perhaps, have been excus- able in feeling somewhat sensitive.

In respect to the details by which Mr. Tucker was led into his life-work, we have spoken more fully, because no notice would be fitting, as it seems, without at least an outline of those prelim- inary steps by which, and through which, it came about that all the efforts he could put forth were thereafter devoted to the cause of agriculture. Without the genius for manipulation, which seems to be essential in the political managers of the present day, it is possible that with all his energy, judgment and industry, he might not have attain- ed, by continuing in the political field, the leading rank among those who have the credit of making or unmaking aspirants for public positions. With the same qualities, coupled with an admirable appre- ciation of the real wants of the community, agricul- tural or educational-but without training in that administrative capacity which consists so largely in the selection and employment of deputies by whom all details can be wrought out under general guid- ance and supervision-for a long time he retained in his own hands and under his own eye every de- partment, business and editorial, and never felt quite satisfied when anything that could possibly be done by himself was left to another. The un- tiring work he thus assumed was often far too much for the individual energies of any one, but with heart and soul fully engrossed in its accom- plishment, he escaped from serious results until the confinement to labor began to tell, and he felt

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Bi-centennial history of Albany. History of the county of Albany, N. Y., from 1609 to 1886. With portraits, biographies and illustrations, Part 84

Author: Howell, George Rogers, 1833-1899; Tenney, Jonathan, 1817-1888 Publication date: 1886 Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1452

Author: Howell, George Rogers, 1833-1899; Tenney, Jonathan, 1817-1888
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1452