USA > New York > Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and family history of New York, Volume III > Part 7
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of unalloyed harmony and happiness. When the proper time comes we can speak of all such things, and in the meanwhile let us continue on in the blessed Master's work and leave our fu- ture entirely to His all-wise and ever loving care. On the walls of this dear church the eyes of the angels have always seen it written, 'I, the Lord, do keep it, and I will keep it night and day.' It only remains for me to say that after forty-four years of uninterrupted ministerial labor it is but reasonable for me to ask for relief from a strain that may soon become too heavy for me to bear."
A feeling of the greatest sorrow was manifest throughout the congregation. Many of the people then in the church had grown up under his active pastorate, and it was almost like a death knell to them as they heard his words. On the 16th of April, in the church parlors, a farewell reception was held, on which occasion a purse of thirty thousand dollars was presented to Dr. Cuyler -- one thousand dollars for each year of his service as pastor. The gift indicated in unmistakable manner the love which his congregation bore for him. However, his friends were not limited to his own congregation, for through his writ- ings he has become known throughout the civilized world and has many admirers among those who have been helped by his earnest and inspiring words. He has been a constant contributor to the religious journals of the country, including the Christian Intelligencer, Christian Work, The Watchman, Christian En- deavor World, Evangelist and Independent. He has prepared about four thousand articles for the press and has written sev- enty-five tracts, many of which have been republished in the English, German and Australian newspapers. In 1852 he pub- lished a volume entitled Stray Arrows, containing selections of his newspaper writings. He is the author of eighteen published volumes, of which Cedar Christian, Heart Life, Empty Crib,
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Thought Hives, Pointed Papers for the Christian Life, God's Light on Dark Clouds and Newly Enlisted have been reprinted in England, where they have had a large sale. The Empty Crib was published after the death of a beloved boy, nearly five years of age, and the subsequent loss of a beautiful and accomplished daughter was the occasion of his writing that marvelously touching production entitled God's Light on Dark Clouds. In addition to the works mentioned he is the author of the follow- ing: How to Be a Pastor, The Young Preacher, Christianity in the Home, Stirring the Eagle's Nest and other Sermons and Beulah Land. A selection from his writings, entitled Right to the Point, has been published in Boston. Six of his books have been translated into Swedish and two into Dutch.
To a man of Dr. Cuyler's nature the needs of the world have been ever manifest and have elicited his most hearty, earnest and devoted co-operation. The great benevolent movements and reform measures have received his aid, and he has labored earnestly in behalf of the Young Men's Christian Association mission schools, the Children's Aid Association, the Five Points mission and the Freedmen, while his work in the National Tem- perance Society has been a most potent influence in promoting temperance sentiment among those with whom he has come in contact as teacher and preacher. He has served as president of the National Temperance Society of America. In 1872 he went abroad as a delegate to the Presbyterian Assembly in Edinburg, Scotland, on which occasion he won the warm friend- ship of many eminent Presbyterian divines of Great Britain. His friends have been drawn from the most cultured and in- telligent and have ever been an affinity between such. These in- clude Spurgeon, Gladstone, Dean Stanley, Dickens, Carlyle, Neal Dow. Lincoln, Horace Greeley and John G. Whittier.
In 1853 Dr. Cuyler was united in marriage to Miss Annie
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E. Mathiot, a daughter of the Hon. Joshua Mathiot, a member of congress from Ohio. Her labors have ably supplemented and rounded out those of her husband. She has been in hearty sym- pathy with him in all of his church work and in his efforts for the uplifting of man and in a no less forceful, but in a more quiet way, her influence has been exerted for the benefit of God's children. Since his retirement from the ministry Dr. Cuyler has devoted his time to preaching and lecturing in colleges and to literary work. A monument to his splendid accomplishments is found in the Cuyler chapel of the Lafayette Avenue Presby- terian church, which was named in his honor by the Young People's Association of that organization in 1892. A large mission church, seating one thousand people and erected in 1900 by the Lafayette Avenue church, in Canton, China, is named the Theodore L. Cuyler church.
SILAS B. DUTCHER.
"Those who have attained the age of seventy years, as a rule, attest the fact of a sound constitution and a well spent life," said the Brooklyn Eagle editorially, July 12, 1899. "The one is a fine inheritance. The other is a fine record. Inheritance and record are both the possession of the well known Brooklyn- ite, President Silas B. Dutcher, who was born seventy years ago today. He at once becomes a hope and a vindication. A hope he is to those who would equal his claim to respect and re- gard, who would match him in mentality and bodily vigor, when they reach his present years. A vindication he is to those who seek for examples to prove that three score years and ten may be really the best period of a man's life. Mr. Dutcher very likely never thought of himself either as a hope or as a vindica- tion. He has been too busy to do so. That fact is one of the reasons why he is both. Life takes care of the fame of those
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who are more concerned with duty than with distinction, for distinction is a consequence best following from fidelity, energy and wisdom. It is the aroma of a career, when the career is what it ought to be."
Silas B. Dutcher was born July 12, 1829, on his father's farm on the shore of Otsego lake, in the town of Springfield, Otsego county, New York. He is a descendant of an old and highly respected family. His parents were Parcefor Carr and Johanna Low (Frink) Dutcher. His paternal grandparents were John and Silvey (Beardsley) Dutcher. His grandmother's ancestor was William Beardsley, who was born at Stratford, England, in 1605, and came to America in 1635, settling at Stratford, Connecticut, four years later. His great-grandparents were Gabriel and Elizabeth (Knickerbocker) Dutcher. Elizabeth Knickerbocker was a granddaughter of Harman Janse Van Wye Knickerbocker, of Dutchess county, New York. His great-great-grandparents were Ruloff and Janettie (Bressie) Dutcher, who were married at Kingston, New York, in 1700 and in 1720 removed to Litch- field county, Connecticut.
Ruloff Dutcher is believed to have been a grandson of Dierek Cornelison Duyster, under commissary at Fort Orange in 1630, whose name appears in deeds of two large tracts of land to Killian Van Rensselair.
Mr. Dutcher's maternal grandparents were Stephen and Ann (Low) Frink, and maternal great-grandparents were Cap- tain Peter and Johanna (Ten Eyck) Low, and his great-grand- father was an officer in the Continental army. Johanna Ten Eyck was a descendant of Conrad Ten Eycke, who came from Amsterdam, Holland, to New York in 1650, and owned what is now known as Coenties Slip, New York city.
Mr. Dutcher attended the public schools near his father's
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farm each summer and winter, from the age of four until the age of seven years. After that he had a little more schooling in the winter season and one term at Cazenovia Seminary. He began teaching school winters at the age of sixteen and taught every winter until he was twenty-two, working on his father's farm during the balance of each year. In the fall of 1851, owing to a temporary loss of his voice, which prevented him from teach- ing, he found employment at railroad construction, but soon became a station agent and subsequently a conductor and for more than three years was employed on the old Erie railway from Elmira to Niagara Falls, New York. He then went to New York and entered mercantile business, to which he devoted his energies through the terrible panics of 1857 and 1860 without severe misfortune. In 1868 he was appointed supervisor of in- ternal revenue, a position which he at first declined, but was urged to accept by William Orton and other friends. Against his own judgment, and, as events proved, greatly to the detri- ment of his financial interests, he took the office. He was un- able to give attention to business, his partner was not equal to its management, and he soon discovered that all he had accumu- lated by twelve years of hard work was scattered and gone, and he was obliged to sell the real estate he owned to meet his lia- bilities.
Even as a boy he had been more or less interested in pol- ities. His grandfather was a Democrat, and Silas was often called upon to read his Democratic newspaper to him; his father was a Whig and the result was that he had an opportunity to learn something of the claims of both parties at an early age. Before he was twenty-one he became interested in the question of freedom or the extension of slavery in the territories,-the most vital question of that day,-and while yet little more than
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a boy, in 1848, did some effective campaign speaking for General Taylor.
When he went to New York Mr. Dutcher resolved to have nothing to do with active politics, but the breaking up of a Re- publican meeting in the Bleecker building in the Ninth ward brought him out most decisively and he was quite active po- litically from 1856 to 1861. In 1857 he was president of the Ninth Ward Republican Association; 1858-59 he was chairman of the Young Men's Republican Committee, and in 1860 he was president of the Wide-Awakes Association. During the year last mentioned he became a member of the board of supervisors of the county of New York. His business demanded his atten- tion and there were other reasons why, in the fall of 1861, he moved to Brooklyn in order to sever his relations with that body. William M. Tweed was a member of the board at that time and began to develop some of the schemes which eventually caused his downfall. Mr. Dutcher was not willing to vote ignor- antly on any question or to act upon the representations of other members, who he believed held their personal interests above the interests of the county. As a resident of Brooklyn he again resolved to keep out of politics, but the riots of 1863 brought him in close relations with active Republicans and he found him- self again in political harness. He held the office of supervisor of internal revenue from 1868 until 1872, a period of four years, at first under appointment of Hugh Mccullough, the secretary of the treasury, and later under appointment of President Grant. In November, 1872, he was appointed United States pension agent, resigning that office in 1875 to accept a position in the employ of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which he held until appointed United States appraiser of the port of New York, by President Grant, which latter position he held until 1880. He was superintendent of public works of the state of
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New York from 1880 until 1883, appointed by Governor Cornell. At the close of his term in the last named office, President Ar- thur requested him to accept the office of commissioner of in- ternal revenne, to which he replied that he had held office four- teen years and that all he had to show for that service was a few old clothes ; that if he accepted the position tendered him and held it one or more years, he would retire with about the same quantity of old clothes as he had at the beginning and so much older and less available for other business, and that the re- mainder of his life must be devoted to making some provision for his wife and children and consequently he must decline further office-holding.
He was a member of the charter commission which framed the charter of Greater New York, appointed by Governor Morton and was appointed a manager of the Long Island State Hospital by Governor Black and re-appointed by Governor Roosevelt. He was a Whig from 1850 to 1855 and became a Republican at the organization of that party. After locating in Brooklyn he was the chairman of the Kings county Republican committee for four years, a member of the Republican state committee for many years, and was the chairman of the Republican executive committee of the state in 1876. He served as a delegate to several Republican national conventions and was on the stump in every presidential campaign from 1848 to 1888.
From the time he became a resident of Brooklyn until the consolidation was consummated, Mr. Dutcher was an advocate of the consolidation of Brooklyn and New York. As a member for four years of the Brooklyn board of education, he exerted all his influence for the advancement of the public schools. As a member of the charter commission for Greater New York, he labored earnestly to secure equal taxation and home rule for the public schools, believing that the system and manage-
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ment were better than in Manhattan and better than any other submitted to the community. No work of his life has given him more satisfaction than the results in the charter on these two points. He has also taken an active interest in Sunday-school affairs and was superintendent for ten years of the Twelfth Street Reformed church Sunday-school, at a time when it was one of the largest schools in the state.
Mr. Dutcher resumed business to some extent in 1885, when he formed a co-partnership with W. E. Edmister in a fire and marine insurance agency, which still exists. He was one of the charter trustees of the Union Dime Savings Institution, of New York city, organized in 1859, and became president of that institution in 1885 and is now the only one of the charter trustees remaining on the board. In the spring of 1901 he was invited to and accepted the presidency of the Hamilton Trust Company. He has been for twenty years a director in the Metro- politan Life Insurance Company, is a director in the Garfield Safe Deposit Company and the Goodwin Car Company. He is a member of the Dutch Reformed church, treasurer of the Brooklyn Bible Society, one of the managers of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor, a member of the Brooklyn and Hamilton Clubs and of the Masonic fraternity, and lie was president of the Association of the Brooklyn Masonic Veterans in 1896.
When Mr. Dutcher took up his residence in Brooklyn the population of the city was about two hundred and seventy-five thousand. What is now the Park Slope was then open fields. The small settlement known as Gowanus was all there was south of Flatbush avenue. He has seen the city grow from a little more than a quarter of a million souls to a million and a quarter. He has seen the Park Slope transformed into one of the finest residential sections of the city, and he has seen
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the three or four churches in that part of Brooklyn increase to more than twenty. When he came the prominent Republicans of Brooklyn were Charles W. Goddard, James Humphrey, Will- iam Wall and J. S. T. Stranahan. He soon made the acquaint- ance of that good old Dutch mayor, Martin Kalbfleisch, whom he regarded as one of the sturdiest men he ever met. He has known every one of Brooklyn's mayors from George Hall, the first executive, down to the present incumbent of the office. Mr. Dutcher has lived in Third street since 1872, and his present home is at No. 496.
His family consists of his wife and six children. He mar- ried Rebecca J, Alwaise, February 10, 1859. Mrs. Dutcher is a descendant of John Alwaise, a French Huguenot, who came to Philadelphia in 1740. Her grandmother was a descendant of John Bishop, who came from England in 1645, and settled at Woodbridge, New Jersey. The children of Silas B. and Rebecca J. (Alwaise) Dutcher are De Witt P., Edith May, Elsie Rebecca. Malcomb B., Jessie Ruth and Eva Olive. Two of Mr. Dutcher's daughters are members of the Colonial Daughters of the Seventeenth Century.
The first visit Mr. Dutcher ever made to Brooklyn was to hear Henry Ward Beecher preach in Plymouth church. He has stated that he was directed, as others were, at the usual hour of church service to cross Fulton Ferry and follow the crowd. "I arrived at the church a little late," he said, "and found only standing room and but little of that. When I en- tered the church the congregation was singing the hymn, 'All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name,' to the good old tune of 'Coro- nation,' and I do not recollect of ever hearing in any other church such a volume of music. My first impression was that Henry Ward Beecher was the strongest preacher to whom I had ever listened and that first impression has never been re-
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moved." Mr. Dutcher has known personally every governor of the state of New York, from William H. Seward to Benja- min B. Odell, except Governor William C. Bouch and Governor Silas Wright. When he went to New York, he was brought in contact in both business and politics with men much older than himself, among whom were Edwin D. Morgan, William M. Evarts, William Curtis Noyes, David Dudley Field, Luther R. Marsh, Abram Wakeman, John A. Kennedy, Washington Smith, William Orton, George Briggs, General James Bowen and Thomas C. Acton, very few of whom are now living. He be- lieves the day is not far distant when the borough of Brooklyn will have the largest population, the greatest number of voters and be the most important factor in Greater New York. He prediets that the year 1910 will show Brooklyn with a larger population than the borough of Manhattan at that date, and a population that for intelligence, independence and a desire to secure the best possible local government will not be surpassed by any people in the world. Mr. Dutcher owes nothing to favor. He "hewed his own path" and found his opportunities and im- proved them; but he did not neglect the better things than suc- cess, such as education, culture and other refining and strength- ening aids. His political career has been one to note with re- spect. He has never been an applicant for any office that he has filled, and he has never become a dependent on a political office. Every public employment to which he has been called has been a business employment, and he has fulfilled its duties in a way to prove his fitness for private employment, and his life exhibits a union of public and private service which is creditable citizenship.
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STEPHEN V. WHITE.
In studying the lives and characters of prominent men we are naturally led to inquire into the secret of their success and the motives that prompted their action. Success is a question of genius, as held by many, but is it not rather a matter of ex- perience and sound judgment? For when we trace the careers of those who stand highest in public esteem we find in nearly every case that they are those who have risen gradually, fight- ing their way in the face of all opposition. Self-reliance, con- scientiousness, energy and honesty are the traits of character that insure the highest emoluments and greatest success. To these may we attribute the success that has crowned the efforts of Mr. White.
Stephen Van Culen White was born in Pittsboro, Chatham county, North Carolina, August 1, 1831. His father, Hiram White, married Julia Brewer, and in September, 1831, the parents removed from North Carolina to Illinois, where they spent their remaining days, the father passing away in 1860 and the mother in 1868. Mr. White traces his ancestry back to David White, a native of Ireland, who emigrated to what is now Wilmington, Delaware, about the year 1720. His son Charles was born about 1727, and became the father of Stephen White, whose birth occurred in 1751. The last named was the father of Hiram White, who was born August 16, 1799, and became the father of our subject. He was a Baptist in his religious belief and was opposed to slavery. During the Nat Turner uprising in 1831 he defied the sentiments of the community in which he lived in North Carolina, refusing to do police duty to guard against difficulties with the slaves, and for this he was obliged to leave the state. He took his family by wagon through Ten- nessee and Kentucky and settled in Illinois. In the family were
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two sons and a daughter. One of the former, Nathaniel Brewer White, died in Florida, in the year 1888. The daughter, Jane Elizabeth Allen, is now living in St. Louis.
From an early age Mr. White, of this review, manifested special fondness for books. He attended the Hamilton primary school of Otterville, Jersey county, Illinois, and afterward en- tered Knox College. being graduated in that institution on the 22d of June, 1854. Determining to make the practice of law his life work, he began reading with the firm of Brown & Kasson, of St. Louis. He worked on the Missouri Democrat, now the Globe-Democrat, and was admitted to the bar on the 4th of October, 1856. In December of that year he removed to Des Moines and opened an office for the practice of his profession. In 1861 he successfully defended the first treason case ever tried in the state. In 1864, during the illness of the United States district attorney, he took his place in the trial of several civil and criminal cases. He continued his practice in Des Moines until January, 1865, when he removed to New York city and for two years was a member of the firm of Marvin & White, Wall street brokers. During the succeeding twenty-five years he engaged in business alone. at which time he formed a partner- ship with Arthur B. Claflin and F. W. Hopkins, under the firm name of S. V. White & Company. In 1887 Arthur B. Claflin withdrew from the firm, and in 1891 S. V. White & Company failed, Mr. White's entire fortune having been swept away. Knowing his great ability and his incorruptible honesty, his creditors released him in full and permitted him to continue on the floor of the exchange. Eleven months after his readmission to the New York stock exchange he had paid in full, with in- terest, his indebtedness of nine hundred and fifty thousand dol- lars. For many years he was the chief operator in Delaware, Lackawanna & Western stock, which made him well known on
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Wall street. His business affairs have ever been conducted in the most straightforward manner and he enjoys the unqualified confidence of all with whom he has been associated.
Soon after his removal to Brooklyn Mr. White became a warm personal friend of Henry Ward Beecher, and was the treasurer and president of the board of trustees of Plymouth church. Though his business interests have been extensive and have made heavy demands upon his time and attention, he has ever found time to devote to the work of the church and has contributed liberally to advance its interests. He was one of the founders of the American Astronomical Society, and for twenty years owned the largest private telescope in America. It is the popular opinion that a Wall street broker has time for nothing but money making, but through a long period Mr. White has spent a considerable portion of his time in following the almost mystic courses of the stars. He is a man of schol- arly attainments, whose researches have been carried far and wide into the realms of scientific investigation, and at the same time he is familiar with the best works of literature, reading Latin and Greek works in the original text. He is a fluent speaker, and many beautiful and valuable prose and poetic works have come from his pen. He made a translation of Dies Iræ, which has been favorably commented upon. As an indica- tion of his ability and as a writer and orator we quote the following, for it also bears directly upon the scenes of his life work :
"Upon the occasion of the retirement of Edmund Clarence Stedman, the writer, as a member of the New York Stock Ex- change, the 15th of February, 1900, his friends and fellow mem- bers of the exchange honored him by presenting to him a silver loving cup. Never before in the history of the exchange has a retiring member been thus honored. At three o'clock in the afternoon, in the board room of the exchange, about one hun- Vol. III-7
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dred of Mr. Stedman's associates gathered around him and S. V. White, a prominent Brooklyn member, presented the lov- ing cup."
Mr. White said :
"I feel it a great honor, Mr. Stedman, to have been called upon to voice the love of a thousand men who are compelled to sever their business relations with you today. I have been selected through their partiality-perchance from our long con- nection of thirty-one years as fellow members; perchance it is because of our abiding friendship, which has never known a break- but from whatever canse, the honor is mine.
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