USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 73
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He organized the Norfolk and Carolina Chemical Company, with a large plant at Norfolk, Virginia, entirely controlled by the Durham Fertilizer Com- pany. In 1895 he organized all the fertilizer companies of Virginia and North Carolina into the Virginia-North Carolina Chemical Company, with a capital stock of $5,400,400, the output then being 100,000 tons of fertilizers annually; bought large fields of phosphate deposits, and also, because of the value of cotton seed as a basis for fertilizers, secured control of many cotton seed mills; and purchased large beds of mineral deposits in Europe and Mexico. The company now has a capital of $46,000,000, and is the largest industrial organization of any kind in the South. Mr. Morgan is president of the com- pany and of its subsidiary companies, the Southern Oil Company and Charles- ton (South Carolina) Mining and Manufacturing Company.
He is still a citizen of North Carolina, though he spends most of his time in Richmond, Virginia, where he has a residence. He is a member of the Westmoreland, Commonwealth and Deep Run Hunt Clubs of Richmond, and the New York Yacht, Calumet and Manhattan Clubs, of New York.
He married, in Wake County, North Carolina, in 1875, Sally F., daugh- ter of Hon. George W. and Francis (Crenshaw) Thompson. They have three children: Alice Blanche, Maude Crenshaw, and Samuel Tate, Jr.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
JOHN WESLEY DEKAY
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JOHN WESLEY DEKAY
J OHN WESLEY DEKAY, capitalist, was born July 20, 1872, son of
John and Elizabeth (Ellsworth) DeKay. He is a descendant of an ancient family of Picardy, France, whose central fortress was the famous Chateau de Coucy, built in the Tenth and greatly enlarged in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. He belongs to a Protestant branch, driven from Ghent by the Spanish Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century, seeking refuge first in London and later in Haarlem, Holland. The head of this branch, Guil- lurme DeKay, was one of the lord directors of the Dutch West India Com- pany, and his son Willem, born in London, educated in Haarlem, was the first of the family to settle at New Amsterdam in New Netherland. He was the fiscal or treasurer of the colony in 1641. His descendants were large landowners and merchants, common councilmen, etc., in early New York. The name of one of his descendants, Teunis DeKay, appears in the list of original assistant aldermen of the City of New York in the Dongan Charter of 1683, and that of Jacob DeKay and his wife, Hildegond Theunis, appear in the list of members of the Reformed Dutch Church in New York, as living in Beurs Straat (Exchange Street) in 1683, as returned by the pastor, Domine Selyns.
The immediate ancestor of John W. DeKay was Michael, fourth son of Colonel Thomas DeKay, of Wawayonda, who served as colonel of the Orange County Horse in the old French War. Michael DeKay had farms in Sulli- van County. John Wesley DeKay's grandfather, Richard DeKay, moved to White Lake, New York, where, on March 5, 1832, his father, John DeKay, was born. He moved to Illinois, and westward, in the early sixties, to Iowa, settling on a farm near Newhampton, in Chickasaw County, where John Wesley DeKay was born, and in that wholesome atmosphere he was reared.
He received a thorough education in the public schools. At the age of sixteen he had learned the printer's trade, and at the age of nineteen he became owner of a newspaper, the Whitewood Plaindealer, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He subsequently purchased other Black Hills newspapers and conducted them with great success and a considerable degree of business ability until he was twenty-five, at which age he purchased several daily and weekly newspapers near Chicago, and edited and published these papers for two years. During the same period he operated a large cattle ranch north of the Black Hills, of which he had also made a marked success. Thus, until twenty-seven years old, he had devoted his life to ranching and journalism.
At the age of twenty-seven Mr. DeKay sold his ranches and newspapers and began his work with the Mexican Government, arranging with that gov- ernment the concessions which were to become the foundation of one of the most important food industries in the world.
Before entering into his agreement with the government, Mr. DeKay made a thorough study of the resources of Mexico. This work involved long
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journeys on horseback over the mountains and through vast sections of the country not traversed by railroads, but it afforded him a practical knowledge of the agricultural and grazing situation in every part of the republic. This thoroughness of preparation has characterized all of his work from boyhood, and has been a leading factor in the success which has at all times attended his endeavors.
Three years later, or in 1902, he organized the United States Packing Company, and under agreements made by him with the Mexican Government, his company was changed to the Mexican National Packing Company and given special and exclusive concessions for building and operating of modern packing houses, refrigerator car line, cold stores, and retail distributing branches in various parts of the Mexican Republic. The Cold Stores and modern methods of handling perishable food put into operation by this com- pany were the first to be constructed in Mexico and are the only ones now existing in that republic.
This system was installed by Mr. DeKay's company under his personal direction, and in the year 1909 in one of its plants in Mexico his company slaughtered and prepared for food under its modern methods, more than half a million head of cattle, pigs and sheep. The operations of the company have given Mexico an unexcelled meat supply and have in numerous ways been of national importance and benefit. The beneficial results which have attended its operations called forth special, favorable comment in President Diaz's annual message to the Congress of Mexico, in 1908.
Mr. DeKay is the founder and president of the company. Its share capital is $22,500,000, and it has outstanding $10,000,000 bonds and deben- tures. Its plants, branches, delivery system, car line and shops are known to be the equal, if not superior, to anything of the kind in the world, embodying, as they do, the advantage of all previous experience and progress in the pack- ing industry. The company is making regular shipments of its produce to the markets of Europe, where they have established an excellent reputation.
Mr. DeKay has traveled extensively. He is a member of the Algonquin Club, Boston; Lawyers' Club, National Arts Club, and City Club, of New York.
Large and active as Mr. DeKay's business activities have been, he has still found time to give rein to his literary tastes, and he is the author of several books, the two latest being Longings (published by Duckworth, Lon- don, in 1908), and The Weaver (published by Humphreys, London, in 1909). On July 15, 1897, he married Anna May Walton. They have three children: John Walton, Anna Walton and Elizabeth Walton DeKay.
Mr. DeKay is widely and internationally known as a man of great execu- tive ability and capacity as an organizer and operator of large affairs.
865
WILLIAM MADDOX TOMLINS, JR.
W ILLIAM MADDOX TOMLINS, JR., was born in Brooklyn, New
York, July 27, 1878, the son of William M. and Sarah A. Tom- lins. He was graduated from the Brooklyn High School in 1884 and imme- diately secured a clerical position with the Lawyers' Surety Company of New York. He successively acted as agent for the American Bonding Company, and the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company, gaining valuable ex- perience. He was made assistant secretary of the Empire State Surety Com- pany in 1902.
This company was young and struggling at this time, having a capital of about $125,000 and an- nual premium receipts of only $12,960. Mr. Tomlins was young and progressive, and his activity for the com- pany led to his rapid pro- motion, being made secre- tary in the second year of his service, vice president and secretary the following year and president in 1907, when but twenty-eight years of age and after only five years of service.
These years, however, showed the result of Mr. Tomlins' labors, the com- pany now having a capital of $500,000, with assets of over $1,200,000, and an an- nually increasing business WILLIAM MADDOX TOMLINS, JR. that places it at the head of similar corporations. Mr. Tomlins is a member of the Underwriters' and the Lawyers' Clubs of New York City, the Manufacturers' Association of Brook- lyn, Brooklyn Lodge, Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, Adytum Lodge of Masons, and of Aurora Grata Consistory of Brooklyn.
He married, in 1899, Charlotte A. Gardner, of Brooklyn, and has two children : William M. Tomlins, 3d, and Mabel A. Tomlins.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
CLAUS AUGUST SPRECKELS
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CLAUS AUGUST SPRECKELS
C LAUS AUGUST SPRECKELS, president of the Federal Sugar Refining Company, was born in San Francisco, California, in De- cember, 1858, the son of Claus and Anna (Mangels) Spreckels. His father, the late Claus Spreckels, was one of the band of the notable Germans who came to America after the revolutionary movement in Germany in 1848. He became one of the great figures in American industry, head of the Spreckels & Company sugar-refining interest, with practical control also of the produc- tion of raw sugar in the Hawaiian Islands.
His son, Claus August Spreckels, was educated in public and private schools in San Francisco, his education being directed with special reference to preparation for a commercial career. - He entered the sugar business in 1873 in connection with his father's enterprises, and has been actively engaged in that interest ever since, in every department, from the growing of sugar cane to refining. He passed through various preparatory positions in connec- tion with his father's enterprises in San Francisco, and when, in the early days of the historic battle between his father and the Sugar Trust, the Spreckels Refinery, in Philadelphia, was established in order to combat the Trust on the Eastern Seaboard, he was placed in charge of that plant and for years maintained a sturdy fight against the persistent and strenuous efforts of the Trust to secure a monopoly of the trade. When his father finally admitted the Trust into a share in the Spreckels Refinery it was against the wish and protest of Mr. Claus A. Spreckels, who then and since main- tained and still adheres to a policy of absolute independence of Trust domi- nation. He started at once an enterprise of his own which developed into the organization, in 1902, of the Federal Sugar Refining Company, which is the only independent sugar-refinery enterprise of any important proportions in this country. Its plant at Yonkers, New York, is one of the largest and is the most modern and improved in the country, with dock facilities and ten large warehouses equal to every demand. The office is at 138 Front Street. Mr. Claus A. Spreckels is the president and the active head of the company, which has been successful from the first. He knows the sugar business in all its details, and possesses every qualification of ability and experience requisite for its successful prosecution, and the fearlessness and courage to maintain the independent ground to which he has firmly adhered, and the vic- torious stand which he has always held against monopoly of the industry.
In politics he is a low-tariff Republican, but he has never held nor sought public office. He is a member of the German Club, The Lambs, and Down Town Association. He resides at the Plaza Hotel.
Mr. Spreckels married, in San Francisco, in 1883, Orville Dore, and they have a daughter, Lurline, born in 1884, and married to Spencer Eddy, late United States minister to the Balkan States and to the Argentine Republic.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
BENJAMIN TALBOT BABBITT
869
BENJAMIN TALBOT BABBITT
BENJAMIN TALBOT BABBITT, manufacturer, capitalist and inventive genius, who gained great distinction in business and other activities under the abbreviated name of "B. T. Babbitt," was born in West- moreland, Oneida County, New York, in 1809. He was a descendant of Ed- ward Bobbitt (I), one of the earliest settlers in Massachusetts, through his son Ellsanah (2) ; his son Benjamin (3) ; his son Jonathan (4), who was born at Berkeley, Massachusetts, in 1729, and settled in Connecticut about 1765; his son Nathaniel (5), being father of Benjamin Talbot Babbitt.
Nathaniel Babbitt and William, his brother, settled about 1792 in what is now known as the town of Paris, Oneida County, New York. Nathaniel Bab- bitt married Betsy Holman, daughter of David Holman, who had come from Middlesex, Connecticut, and was one of the early settlers of Oneida County, operating a grist and sawmill at what is now Holman City. Nathaniel Bab- bitt and his wife later settled in Westmoreland, Oneida County, and had three sons, of whom B. T. Babbitt was the youngest, and three daughters. Nathan- iel Babbitt carried on farming and had a blacksmith shop in connection.
In those pioneer days, the educational facilities of Oneida County were of the most meagre description, and Mr. Babbitt's youth was chiefly spent in hard work upon the home farm and at the forge until he was eighteen years old. He had an inquiring and ingenious mind. His first money was made by borrowing a piece of brass wire, which he fashioned into a noose, by means of which he snared fish in a stream. He sold the fish, bought powder and shot with the proceeds, and, with a borrowed muzzle-loader, would tramp the woods of Oneida County with a boy friend, shooting squirrels. The sale of these pelts added to the boys' income, and they increased their gains by the use of snares and traps.
In the work on the paternal farm, Mr. Babbitt acquired an exceptional physical development, besides unusual dexterity and capacity in the more diffi- cult farming operations, and his services on the farm were so valuable that when he decided to leave it, at the age of eighteen, his father demurred. To over- come the paternal objections, the lad agreed to pay his father $500 annually for five years. For two winters he worked in a lumber camp, and in sum- mer hired out to machinists, making an eager and effective workman, anxious for the procurement of the expert skill which should give full play to his con- structive genius and enable him to give form and expression to the inventive ideas that were constantly being evolved from his creative mind. In about three years he had become a thoroughly competent wheelwright, machinist, steam-pipe fitter, file maker; and a blacksmith of such expert skill that he could perform the difficult feat of welding a steel edge on a drawing knife.
Anxious for technical knowledge, Mr. Babbitt worked out a proposition by which he, promising to ring the bell for them, induced the boys in the shop
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
to rise and come to work an hour earlier, so that they could quit an hour sooner on two days of the week, and induced the professor of chemistry in Clinton College to come to Utica on those days, to instruct these boys; and in this way made himself master of a great store of knowledge of chemistry and physics which he afterward applied with telling effect.
Once, visiting a mill where the water was forced into a tank by a crudely made ram, the pipes being constructed by hollow logs bound together, he was told that occasionally a log would burst near the ram. Mr. Babbitt showed the man in charge how, by placing on his pipe line an upright, hollow log with a closed top, he would secure a steady and unhindered flow of water into his reservoir, without further trouble from the splitting of pipes.
By frugality and careful saving, Mr. Babbitt acquired sufficient funds at the age of twenty-two to establish a small machine shop at Little Falls, New York, where he engaged for twelve years in the manufacture of pumps and engines and various specialities. Among other things, he assembled a mow- ing machine, which was one of the first put together in the country. It had one merit above its predecessors, in the fact that it would mow.
After the freshets at Little Falls destroyed his modest plant for the sec- ond time, Mr. Babbitt decided to start a more dependable business. He came to New York with $500 in cash, leaving notes due him aggregating over $5000 in the hands of a friend at Little Falls, for collection. He made the collections, but proved that he was a friend no longer, as Mr. Babbitt never received the money.
Mr. Babbitt's first business in New York was the manufacture of bicar- bonate of soda, for which he developed an entirely original process which enabled him to build up an immense trade in the product, for which he gained a national reputation. Mr. Babbitt also outstripped his competitors in selling methods and pushed his business by many ingenious expedients. He invented a Star Yeast Powder, which was one of the first baking powders made; and rapidly added many profitable specialties : soap powder ; soap of several brands (including a baby toilet soap), and other goods which became very popular.
Mr. Babbitt displayed genius in the original methods which he employed to keep his product before the public, inventing advertising plans then unique and unprecedented, but now made stale by hundreds of laggard imita- tors. Besides the advertising for which he paid regular rates, he secured free advertising by many ingenious ways. When he bought $68,000 worth of Normandy horses at a single purchase, nearly every paper in the country made mention of it, with more or less comment. He was one of the earliest, per- haps the first, to introduce new goods by giving them away; and when a new brand of soap or other article was introduced, there could be found at every ferry one of his large four-horse trucks, from which a full-sized cake or pack-
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BENJAMIN TALBOT BABBITT
age was handed to every person that crossed. By bold and striking methods the name of "B. T. Babbitt," and his favorite slogan "For All Nations," be- came familiar to everyone in the United States. It appeared over the door of each Broadway stage, he being the first to use this method of advertising. He was also the first person who used pictorial advertising. His six kettles for boiling soap, with an aggregate capacity of 3,500,000 pounds, requiring $216,000 worth of material to fill them, became noted, nation-wide, as among the greatest curiosities of New York, and the consumer was never permitted to forget that he had the largest and most completely equipped factory in the world. He established, in 1871, at Whitesboro, N. Y., in his native county, large machine shops, where he made many experiments and worked out to a finish many original problems. There he spent his summers, and gave advice and suggestions to engineers or others who felt they could profit by telling their need to this resourceful man, who never denied or begrudged help to anyone, and was always ready to lend his aid in solving engineering prob- lems and difficulties.
The story of Mr. Babbitt's ability as an inventor can be had by taking a cursory glance at his inventions recorded in the Patent Office from 1842 to 1889, aggregating 108 patents issued to him for his own inventions besides several patents assigned to him. His first patent was for a pump and fire engine, dated October 7, 1842, and followed by a brush-trimming machine, 1846; a car ventilator, 1855; an enema-giving apparatus, 1857. During the Civil War period his thoughts turned toward the invention of ordnance, of armor plates for ships and other batteries, and of improved construction of iron vessels.
Six patents were granted for the use of steam, which include heaters, and a particular evaporating apparatus to be used with exhaust steam. Eight patents were allowed him for new types of steam boilers; and others for an automatic boiler feeder, apparatus for cleaning steam generators, a grate for steam generator and other furnaces, and a gas-generating apparatus. Of various types of engines and their accessories are to be found gas engines, rotary engines, packing for stuffing boxes, balance valve, heater for locomo- tive engine, steam condensing and feed water heating apparatus, a bucket wheel for rotary engine.
Of special interest to Mr. Babbitt was machinery for the use and con- trol of air. He invented an air pump, air compressor, wind motors, rotary blowing apparatus, rotary pumps, air gun, pneumatic propulsion of vessels, hot air furnace attachment, and air blast for forges.
Patents were also granted for the extraction of glycerine from soap lyes, boiling soap under pressure, bleaching of palm oil, etc .; soap-boiling appa- ratus, process for coating alkali, apparatus for manufacture of soap. Sev-
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eral patents were allowed for the steering and propelling of vessels, ordnance and ordnance projector, fire-extinguishing apparatus, axle of railway cars and vehicle axle, breaking and grinding apparatus, mold for casting chilled tools and a mold for casting gun barrels; combination of elevated and canal rail- road; also various patents connected with the manufacture of bicarbonate of soda; packages for caustic soda; a process for preserving coffee (two pat- ents) ; a vessel for the formation of ice; a sadiron heater, and other articles.
Of this varied and broad scope of inventions, several have a special in- terest. An armored fighting craft with steam controlled steering gear and the vitals protected by coal bunkers, carried a screw at the bow and stern so that the vessel might be propelled in either direction or turned almost on a centre.
Mr. Babbitt built a canal boat, at his private dock on the Erie Canal, with a double bottom. This boat was propelled by drawing the water through the boat with an Archimedes screw. This boat traveled about as fast as a turtle, and made one trip from Whitesboro to New York and back. It is said, upon good authority, that boat builders are now using similar con- struction in their building of canal boats as used by Mr. B. T. Babbitt thirty- five years ago, and which was severaly criticised at that time.
It was in Mr. Babbitt's fertile brain that the idea was first conceived of harnessing Niagara Falls. He invented an air compressor, which he proposed to place below the falls opposite Goat Island, and planned to deliver com- pressed air all over the State. It was his plan also to construct an elevated structure over the Erie Canal, on which engines could draw the canal boats.
P. T. Barnum, the world's greatest showman, and Mr. Babbitt were great friends, and held for each other a mutual admiration. Mr. Barnum was the only contemporary of Mr. Babbitt who classed with him as an advertising genius, and they were a mutual inspiration to each other in the planning of new ideas in their campaign of publicity.
Mr. Babbitt was a man of much personal magnetism. His wide infor- mation and original methods of thought made him an interesting companion. In business he thought in the large, leaving details to others, and sometimes trusted too much to subordinates, who proved unworthy, but he made one of the most successful business careers ever accomplished in the commercial his- tory of this country. When he died, October 20, 1889, after fourscore years of an active and useful life, he left vast numbers of people in varied stations of life who mourned his loss.
Mr. Babbitt married Rebecca McDuffy. His wife survived him five years, dying in December, 1894. He had two daughters, who married broth- ers, Ida Josephine being the wife of Dr. Frederick Erastus Hyde, while the other daughter, Lilia, was the wife of Clarence Melville Hyde (now deceased).
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BENJAMIN TALBOT BABBITT HYDE
BENJAMIN TALBOT BABBITT HYDE
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
B ENJAMIN TALBOT BABBITT HYDE, now president of the B. T. Babbitt Corporation, was born in New York City, November 23, 1872, being the oldest son of Dr. Frederick Erastus and Ida Josephine ( Bab- bitt) Hyde.
On both sides he is of old New England lineage, being descendant in the eighth generation from William Hyde, who was one of the party led by Rev. Thomas Hooker in the ship Griffin, from England to Boston, in 1663, arriving in September and settling in Newtown (now Cambridge), Mass., and removing with Mr. Hooker in his migration to Connecticut and the founding of the town of Hartford. William Hyde went to Saybrook, Conn., when that place was first settled, and finally to Norwich, where he died in 1681. He was the ancestor of a large and prominent family which has contributed many men of mark in business and professional life, to the country in its various sections. A descendant in the fourth generation was Lieutenant James Hyde, of the Connecticut troops, who served in the Revolutionary Army in the First and Fourth Regiments, and was with Washington at Valley Forge and Yorktown. His son, Erastus Hyde, came from Connecticut to New York, and the latter's son, Edwin Hyde, representing the sixth generation, became a wholesale grocer in New York City, in association with Ralph Mead (of the old Mead family, which settled at Greenwich, Conn., about 1640), whose daughter, Elizabeth Alvina Mead, he married. Their son, Dr. Frederick Erastus Hyde, physician and philanthropist, married Ida Josephine, oldest daughter of B. T. Babbitt, and B. T. Babbitt Hyde is the second child and oldest son of that marriage. In the maternal line, Mr. Hyde is a descendant through his grandfather, B. T. Babbitt, of Edward Bobbitt, who went to Massachusetts early in the Seventeenth Century.
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