USA > New York > Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and family history of New York, Volume III > Part 5
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"Such was the honorable and noble life of our late presi- dent --- devoted to the good of others, free in every stage of it from the reproach of weakness or of personal ends, marked throughout by high aims conscientiously carried out, by an en- lightened love of goodness, and by the unhesitating devotion of the individual, his faculties and his possessions to the service of God and his fellow men.
"In private life he was what we are accustomed to describe as a gentleman of the old school. As the first bishop of Long Island has truthfully recorded: 'Manners with him was a phase of morals. Courage and politeness were, in his view, only other names for benevolence in small things. He not only believed in saying what is true and doing what is right, but in saying and doing it with kindly regard to the feelings and circumstances of others. His gracious affability was more than a sentiment, because it stood for the dignity of a principle.'
"Lastly, I do not hesitate to hold up his life as a pattern of an humble, sincere and devont Christian man. Accepting with his whole heart the fundamental truths of the Christian faith as set forth in the ancient creeds, illustrating them in his daily walk and conversation, his constant aim was, as the Lord requires, 'to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God.'
"And so when the end came, it was in keeping with his life. As every Christian should desire to die-surrounded by his children, with mental abilities unabated, receiving from a he- loved pastor the last riaticum-he calmly fell asleep and was
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gathered unto his fathers, having the testimony of a good con- science, in the communion of the Catholic church, in the con- fidence of a certain faith, in the comfort of a reasonable, re- ligious, and only hope, in favor with his God, and in perfect charity with the world.
"His funeral services were held in St. Thomas' church, which, though the weather was very stormy, was filled with the representatives of the various institutions for which he had labored, and a large number of the leading men of the city. His body was laid in the grave by the side of his, ancestors and kindred, under the shadow of the old church at Jamaica. Long Island, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection and the life of the world to come. There we left it, with the words on our lips and in our hearts: 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.' "
Mr. King married, February 21, 1839, Mary Colden Rhine- lander, only danghter of Philip and Mary Colden Hoffman Rhinelander. of New York, son of William Rhinelander, Jr., son of William Rhinelander (1), son of Philip Jacob Rhine- lander, the ancestor of the Rhinelander family. Their children were: 1. Mary Rhinelander. 2. Cornelia Ray, died early. 3. Alice, married Gherardi Davis. 4. Frederic, died in childhood. 5. Ellen King.
Miss May Rhinelander King, who occupies the beautiful homestead at Great Neck, is now the only representative of this branch of the King family residing on Long Island.
JAMES S. T. STRANAHAN.
Trne men are the crown jewels of the republic. The very names of the distinguished dead are a continual inspiration and an abiding lesson. The name Garibaldi thrills the sons of Italy; the enthusiasm of the liberty-loving Swiss is aroused by the mention of Hofer; Wallace and Bruce are names which inspire every Scot; and in our own land a feeling of veneration and honor is felt as those of Washington and Lincoln are uttered.
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This is not only true of those who have advanced the spirit of liberty, but of the men who have broadened the realms of thought: who have opened the fields of knowledge and contrib- uted in any measure to the progress of the world, their efforts redounding to the benefit of their fellow men along the lines of material, intellectual, æsthetic or moral development. The work which they perform is a more enduring monument than any which might be erected of stone or bronze, for it wins the enduring love of a grateful people, and the story of their lives is handed down to posterity, and their names are honored throughout time. When the years have become a part of a long vanished past, history throws around the great men of earth an idealization .- in other words, only the resplendent virtues are emphasized; but even in the light of the present, the strong, practical judgment of the day acknowledges the value of the service which James S. T. Stranahan rendered to his fellow men, and the city of Brooklyn largely stands as the visible evi- dence of a life whose far-reaching influence has affected for good so many of his fellow men.
One of the strongest forces in the psychic world is the asso- ciation of ideas, and to a student of history the city of Brooklyn cannot be mentioned without bringing to mind James S. T. Stranahan, who left the impress of his forceful individuality upon almost every line of progress and improvement that has. led to the substantial growth and advancement of the city. His life's span covered nine decades-years of purpose well directed, plans carefully formed-an era of splendid achievement.
His life record began on the 25th of April, 1808, at the old family homestead in Madison county, New York, near Peter- boro, his parents being Samuel and Lynda (Josselyn) Strana- han. He traced his lineage to Scotch-Irish ancestry, of Presby- terian faith-men of strong. rugged, determined character, and
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women of virtue, diligence and culture. The first of the name of whom record is left was James Stranahan, who was born in the north of Ireland, in 1699. The orthography of the name has undergone many changes, having been in the following forms: Stranahan, Strachan and Strahan. The name, however, is de- rived from the parish of Strachan, Kincardineshire, Scotland. James Stranahan, the grandfather of him whose name forms the caption of this review, crossed the Atlantic to the new world in 1725, locating in Scituate, Rhode Island, where he became a prosperous farmer. He afterward removed to Plainfield, Con- nectient, where he died in 1792, at the advanced age of ninety- three years. His namesake and eldest son served as a Revolu- tionary soldier in the war which brought independence to the nation, and lived and died in Plainfield, Connecticut.
James S. T. Stranahan lost his father when eight years of age, and his happy boyhood days were soon transformed into a period of labor, for his stepfather needed his assistance in the development of the farm and the care of the stock. However, when the work of the farm was ended for the season he entered the district schools, and there acquired his early education, which was later supplemented by several terms of study in an acad- emy. From the age of seventeen he depended entirely upon his own resources. After completing his academical work he engaged in teaching school, with the intention of later fitting himself for the profession of civil engineer; but the occupation of trading with the Indians in the northwest seemed to offer greater induce- ments, and in 1829 he visited the upper lake region. He made several trips into the wilderness, and these, together with the advice of General Lewis Cass, then governor of the territory of Michigan, led him to abandon that plan, and be returned to his home.
The elemental strength of his character was first clearly dem-
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onstrated by his work in building the town of Florence, New York. From his boyhood he had known Gerrit Smith, the emi- nent capitalist and philanthropist, who in 1832 made him a proposition according to the terms of which he was to go to Oneida county, New York, where Mr. Smith owned large tracts of land, and found a manufacturing town. He was then a young man of only twenty-four years, but the work was successfully accomplished, and the village of Florence, New York, was trans- formed into a thriving little city of between two and three thou- sand. His active identification with things political began dur- ing the period of his residence in Florence, for in 1838 he was elected to the state legislature on the Whig ticket, in a Demo- cratie district.
A broader field of labor soon engaged the attention and energies of Mr. Stranahan, who in 1840 removed to Newark, New Jersey, and became an active factor in railroad building. In 1844 he came to Brooklyn, and from that time until his death he was a most potent factor in the commercial life, the political in- terests and the general upbuilding of the city. He found it a municipality with but fifty thousand inhabitants. He went to the city a comparative stranger. For some decades prior to his death he was known as "the first citizen of Brooklyn." Therein is found an expression of the high regard in which he was uni- formly held. It is also an indication of the part which he played in its public affairs, the title being a free-will offering of a grate- ful people, who recognized his merit, his ability and the wonder- ful work which he had accomplished for Brooklyn.
The public, however, is a discriminating factor, and not at once did Mr. Stranahan gain his exalted position in public opin- ion. His first official service was as alderman, to which position he was elected in 1848 and in 1850 he was nominated for mayor, but his party was in the minority and he was defeated. His
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personal attributes at that time were not so well known as they were in later years, and thus he could not overcome the party strength of his opponent. However, his nomination served the purpose of bringing him before the public, and in 1854, when the country was intensely excited over the slavery question, he be- came a candidate for congress, and, although he was a strong anti-slavery man and the district was Democratic, he was trium- phantly elected. In 1857, when the Metropolitan Police Commis- sion was organized, he was appointed a commissioner, and he was one of the most active members of the board during the struggle between the new forces and the old New York municipal police force of New York, Brooklyn and Staten Island, who revolted under the new leadership of Fernando Wood, then mayor. Mr. Stranahan had joined the ranks of the new Repub- lican party on its organization. and in 1864 he was a presidential elector on the Lincoln and Johnson ticket. In 1860, and again in 1864, he had been sent as a delegate to the Republican national convention, and at both times supported the Illinois statesman, Lincoln, for the presidency. During the Civil war he was pres- ident of the War Fund Committee, an organization formed of over one hundred leading men of Brooklyn, whose patriotic sen- timent gave rise to the Brooklyn Union, a paper which was in full accord with the governmental policy, and upheld the hands of the president in every possible way. Its purpose was to en- courage enlistments and to further the efforts of the government in prosecuting the war. Mr. Stranahan had an unshaken con- fidence in the ultimate triumph of the Union cause, and his splendid executive ability and unfaltering determination were of incalculable benefit in promoting the efficiency of the com- mittee. His labors, too, were the potent element in carrying for- ward a work in which this commission was associated with the Woman's Relief Association, of which Mrs. Stranahan was pres-
Vol. III-5
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ident. This work was the establishment of a great sanitary fair, which has become historical and which was the means of raising four hundred thousand dollars to carry on the work of the san- itary commission in connection with the war. Mr. Stranahan never sought public office for himself except in the few instances mentioned, and then his nomination came as a tribute to his ability. In 1888, however, he was an elector for Benjamin Har- rison, and being the oldest member of the electoral college, was honored by being appointed the messenger to carry the electoral vote from the state of New York to Washington.
It is almost impossible to give in a brief biographical sketch an accurate record of the great work which Mr. Stranahan did in connection with the upbuilding of Brooklyn. His name is a familiar one in the city on account of his labors in behalf of the park system. Under the legislative act of 1860 he became pres- ident of the Brooklyn Park Commission, and he remained in office for twenty-two years, a period in which the growth of the city made demands for a park system that, under his guidance. was developed and carried forward to splendid completion. Prospect Park is an everlasting monument to him. He was also the originator of the splendid system of boulevards, the Ocean Parkway and the Eastern Parkway, which has provided in Brooklyn a connection of the city with the sea in a system of drives unsurpassed by any in the world. The concourse on Coney Island also resulted from his instrumentality. The ele- ment which made Mr. Stranahan's work different from that of all others was that he could forsee possibilities. It was this which led to the development of Coney Island, for to him it seemed that the natural boundary of Brooklyn on the southwest was the Atlantic ocean, and he took steps to secure the rare advantage of an attractive highway from the city to the sea. It
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seems that every work with which he was connected proved of the greatest value to the city.
The enterprises which he managed were gigantic in volume and far-reaching in effect. For more than forty years he was a director of the Union Ferry Company, and under his guidance were developed the great Atlantic docks. Brooklyn had no ware- house on its water front and the region which is now the Atlan- tic docks was shallow water at the edge of the bay when he came to the city. He foresaw the possibilities for commerce by estab- lishing docks at this point, and he labored with a courage and patience that has scarcely been equaled in the history of material improvement in the world. It was twenty-six years from the time he advanced his plans for the dock system before the Atlan- tic Dock Company made a dividend to its stockholders, and yet today its shipping returns are greater than those of almost any other port of the world. Only to the civil engineer is the scope of this wonderful undertaking familiar. One who has not studied the science cannot conceive of the amplitude of this work. Mr. Stranahan was also connected with the Brooklyn Bridge Com- pany from its organization, and was one of the first subscribers to its stock; he was a member of the board of directors of the New York Bridge Company, and he served continuously as trustee from the time the work came under the control of the two cities until June 8, 1885. At the meeting of the trustees on that date he occupied the chair as president of the board, and at that time his term expired. He also served continuously as a member of the executive committee, and upon nearly all of the important committees appointed during construction. He fore- saw the immense volume of traffic that would be conducted over this mammoth span, and insisted that the original plans should be altered to insure to the giant structure strength sufficient to enable it to carry a train of Pullman cars. Mr. Stranahan con-
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sulted with Commodore Vanderbilt, who agreed with him in the opinion that the time would arrive when solid Pullman trains would run in and out of Brooklyn from and to far western points.
The following speech, delivered by Mr. Stranahan, May 8, 1883, at the annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the city of New York, in response to the following toast, "The Great Bridge, the Engineering Triumph of the Nineteenth Cen- tury; Its Originators and Directors, for Their Patience, Fidelity and Zeal Deserve Everlasting Gratitude; Its Constructors Achieve Immortal Fame and Its Complete Success," is repro- duced for three reasons-because it is historic, because it is a literary gem, illustrative of Mr. Stranahan's convincing style of oratory, and because it contains his views in regard to the union of the two cities :
Mr. President and Gentlemen :
I cannot, in responding to the toast which you have just read, do less, and will not attempt more, than to make a brief reference to the East river bridge.
That bridge, so long the object of public thought, and not infrequently the target of newspaper criticism, now substan- tially finished and destined in a short time to be opened for gen- eral use, needs no enlogy from my lips. There it stands, its own orator, and there for generations it will stand, its own his- torian. It will for ages be one of the attractions and one of the wonders of this great metropolitan center. Its fame will be world-wide; and the foreign traveler who seeks these shores will feast his eyes and gratify his curiosity in gazing upon a struc. ture that now has no parallel in any of the products of human art.
The past history of the bridge is so lost in the reality of the present that the briefest reference thereto will suffice for the occasion. I hardly need say that the construction of this work has, at all times, been under the supervision of men of acknowl- edged integrity; and that, for the past eight years, the mayors and comptrollers of the two cities have been members of the board of trustees. I know of no public work that has been con- dueted with greater economy or a stricter regard for the gen-
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eral good. Though the trustees have often been sharply criti- cised by the loose talker and the newspaper scribbler, they have steadily and persistently pursued their work, confident that time and the result would be their best vindication.
High honor should be awarded to the chief engineers, the elder and the younger Roebling, the former of whom lost his life, and the latter his health, in a work second to no other of its kind in any age. The skill and painstaking labor of the assistant engineers, having the immediate charge of the work, have attracted the attention and won the admiration of every intelligent visitor to the bridge.
The original estimate was that the bridge would cost $7,- 000,000, and the land on which it rests has cost $3,800,000, making an aggregate cost of $10,800,000. The actual cost, in- cluding the land taken, is about $15,000,000. This estimate, how- ever, did not contemplate such a structure as the one that now exists. The height of the bridge was increased in obedience to the order of the general government, and its width and strength by the direction of the trustees. The bridge, as actually con- structed, will support the freight and passenger trains of the trunk railways of the country. It has two carriage roads, in- stead of one, as at first intended. The original plan was that the approaches to the bridge should be simple iron trestle-work, for which the trustees thought it expedient to substitute massive arches of brick and granite. The cables and suspended struc- ture are composed of steel, instead of iron. In a word, the bridge, as it now is. if it has cost more than the original esti- mate, is not the bridge that was contemplated in that estimate. It is higher, wider and composed of stronger material. It fnr- nishes an elevated highway between the two cities that is wider than Broadway. These changes, in the way of improvement, abundantly explain the increase of cost. They were needed to make the bridge what it should be.
I feel confident that, on the opening of the bridge, the opinion of the general public will confer with that of a dis- tinguished member of the chamber, who, after a walk with me over the structure, exclaimed, as we came near the New York side : "Well, I had no idea of the magnitude of this work. It is indeed, grand in its conception, and, if possible, grander still in the courage of its execution." The bridge told its own story to that gentleman; and that story it will repeat in the ears of millions. To stand upon it, and see it, and see all that it re- veals to the eye, is to admire. All sense of danger and all
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ideas of weakness at once disappear. The marvel is that human power, even when availing itself of natural laws, could produce such a result.
I do not know, Mr. Chairman, whether you have heard it or not; yet I may as well say that the people of Brooklyn have an idea in regard to this bridge which is quite sure to reveal itself at no distant period. Brooklyn, as you are aware, is by the East river isolated from the main land. The people of that city hope that the bridge will remove that isolation, and put them in direct railway communication not only with New York city, but with all parts of the country. This will greatly serve their convenience and promote their prosperity. New York will cer- tainly not object, and will not be the loser. If a bridge over the Harlem river connects New York with the main land, why should not a bridge over the East river perform a similar serv- ice in behalf of Brooklyn and Long Island? Brooklyn believes in utilizing the bridge to this end; and fortunately the end can be gained without any serious disturbance of existing conditions in the city of New York.
The Second avenue railway has, between the Harlem river and Twenty-third street, sufficient width for four tracks, and, between this street and the New York terminus of the bridge, for three tracks; and it is withal so strongly built as to make it entirely possible to utilize it to the full extent of giving to Brooklyn and the system of railroads on Long Island an outlet through the Hudson river and New Haven roads to all parts of the country. This view contemplates no public or private con- cessions on the part of the city of New York. It rests simply upon that business theory which so strongly marks the great trunk lines of the country, and to which the Hudson river and New Haven roads are no strangers. Though Brooklyn does not expect to rival the commercial grandeur of the greater city, she does expect in this way to be put in rapid and easy connec- tion with the outside world, and, by her extended water front, by her capabilities of indefinite territorial expansion, and by her numerous attractions as a place of residence, to maintain, at the least, her past record in the growth of population and wealth.
Mr. Chairman, Brooklyn has another idea, and has long had it, the accomplishment of which she hopes will be facilitated by this bridge. The Thames flows through the heart of Lon- don, and the Seine through the heart of Paris; but in neither case have you two cities. It is London on both sides of the
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Thames, and Paris on both sides of the Seine. The corporate unity is not dissevered by either river. Numerous bridges make the connection between the two sides in both cities; and it is best for both that it should be so. The population on neither side would be advantaged by being split up into two munici- palities. Here, however, we have our New York city and our Brooklyn, with the East river rolling between them. They are distant cities, in immediate contiguity with each other, and separated by a water highway. Is this distinctness of munici- pality any advantage to either? I think not. Would the con- solidation of these two cities into one municipal corporation be any harm to either? I think not. The people are the same people, have the same manners and customs, and have common commercial and social interests; and one municipal government would serve them quite as well as two, and at far less cost. I know of no reason why this distinctness should be continued other than the fact that it exists; and I confess I see no good reason why it should exist at all. I may be mistaken, but I think that the public sentiment of Brooklyn would cordially wel- come a consolidation of the two cities under the title of New York. The East river bridge, now superadded to the ferry sys- tem, will, as Brooklyn hopes, so facilitate their mutual inter- course that both, without any special courtship on either side, will alike ask the legislature of the state to enact the ceremony of a municipal marriage; and if this shall be done, then I ven- ture to predict that each will be so happy and so well content with the other that neither will ever seek a divorce.
I have thus, Mr. Chairman, briefly responded to the toast upon which I have been asked to speak ; and, as I close, I cannot forbear to express the solid satisfaction which the trustees, who have for years given an unpaid service to the construction of the East river bridge, now feel, not only in view of its comple- tion, but also of the character of the result attained. They will pass away; generations will come and go; but the monument will live. Centuries will roll away; and the bridge, though it may grow old in years, and in the far distant future be studied and used as the product of a by-gone age, will still retain its strength. The cables will not snap, and the towers will not fall. The anchorages will be true to their trust. The massive arches will not collapse. The steel and granite will not rot. Fire will not burn the bridge. Freight trains and Pullman cars will not break it. The winds will not shake it. Time and toil will not fatigue it. Its yonth and age will be alike periods of vigor.
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