Landmarks of Albany County, New York, Part 63

Author: Parker, Amasa Junius, 1843-1938, ed
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason
Number of Pages: 1374

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Indeed Mr. Fitzgerald's distinguished life career of the past, with his extraordinary physical and intellectual powers, and temperate habits of life, marks him as pre- eminently a man of the future and a citizen of whom the capital city might well be proud.

EDWARD J. MEEGAN.

EDWARD J. MEEGAN, son of Thomas and Sarah Meegan, was born in the city of Albany on September 28, 1846. His parents were natives of Ireland, whence they came to this country in 1824, settling first in Boston, Mass. About 1826 they re- moved to Albany, where they died. Mr. Meegan early evinced a strong love of learning, and also as a youth displayed those qualities which make the successful man. Attending St. Joseph's parish school he became a close student and thor- oughly mastered the elementary principles of a general education. From the first he was determined to become a lawyer, but owing to the limited pecuniary means of the family he was obliged to rely mainly upon himself for the prosecution and completion of his literary and professional studies. When only thirteen years of age he registered as a student at law in the office of Edwards & Sturtevant, then a prominent firm at the Albany bar. He remained with them nearly seven years, and also pursued his legal studies under Isaac Edwards, who was afterward presi- dent of the Albany Law School, The law had for the young student no drudgery, but a mine of wealth which he explored and mastered with remarkable quickness. He was indeed a born lawyer, imbued with the highest principles of the law as a science. Upon attaining his majority in 1867 he was admitted to the bar, and open- ing an office in Albany he immediately entered upon the active practice of his pro- fession.

Mr. Meegan had passed with great credit through his studentship, which was full and unconditional, and during that period he had with his own hands conducted many hundred cases through all the intricacies of the Code. When he commenced practice for himself he was therefore a trained and experienced lawyer, and signal success at once attended his efforts. He has been a lifelong Democrat. In May, 1869, he was elected corporation counsel, and on entering upon the duties of that

E. J. MEEGAN.

office was confronted with a large amount of unfinished work. He continued in the position until 1874, and saved for the city during his official career more than half a million of dollars. In this capacity he had gained a large experience in the man- agement of city cases, and when he resumed his private practice he was retained as counsel in many of this class of cases, in every one of which he was successful. He has won a wide reputation as an able civil and criminal lawyer. He is also a distin- guished orator, a great lover of books, and the owner of a well-selected private library. His law library is one of the largest if not the largest in the State.

Mr. Meegan was married, first. on September 5, 1878, to Miss Katie E. Welch, of Albany, who died in January, 1884. September 24, 1886, he married, second, Miss Mary Mattimore, of Albany, by whom he has had two daughters and two sons, of whom one daughter is deceased.

JOHN N. BRIGGS.

JOHN N. BRIGGS is a son of Albert N. and a grandson of Newton Briggs, who came to Coeymans, Albany county, from Sherman, Conn .. in 1804. Mr. Briggs was born in Coeymans N. Y., in 1838, and received a practical common school educa- tion. In 1866 he married Elizabeth M., daughter of James and Maria Trego, of New Baltimore, N. Y. He has always been a resident of his native town. In 1865 he purchased his father's business, viz., general store and North River blue stone, which he successfully continued for ten years. In 1877 he sold out his mercantile business at Coeymans and engaged in the coal trade at Albany, N. Y., which he has since conducted, having yards in both Coeymans and Albany. In 1879 he purchased and fitted up Baerena Park, a beautiful plat of ground on Baeren Island, near Coey- mans Landing, which he has made popular and attractive as a summer resort for picnickers and excursionists. In 1881 he engaged in the ice business, and has facili- ties for storing 100,000 tons of ice annually in his houses in Coeymans, which he sells at his own depots in New York city. He has invented and patented several valuable facilities for the use of ice men, which have come into general use throughout the ice producing belt. Mr. Briggs is general superintendent of the ice cutting tools and machinery of the Consolidated Ice Company of New York city, which harvests and sells annually over 2,000,000 tons of ice. Is one of the incorporators and president of the Callan Road Improvement Company of Albany, and is a dealer in North River blue stone. He is a man of sound judgment, of quick and accurate percep- tion, of indomitable energy, and devotes to each of his various business enterprises personal supervision. He has been uniformly successful in business, is highly esteemed and respected by all who know him. He is a charter member of Onesque- than Lodge No. 804, F. & A. M., of Coeymans, and as a citizen is public spirited. progressive and influențial.

ELNATHAN SWEET.

ELNATHAN SWEET, ex-State engineer of the State of New York, represents the sixth generation in each of which the name Elnathan has figured prominently. The family dates back to the colonial period of Rhode Island where many of its members distinguished themselves in civil, military, and commercial life. His great-great- grandfather, Elnathan Sweet, removed to Dutchess county, N. Y., whence Elna- than, a son of the latter, found his way about 1760 to Stephentown, Rensselaer county, where he became an extensive farmer, and where Mr. Sweet's grandfather and father, both named Elnathan and both farmers, were born. The latter was born November 22, 1796, married Chloe Cole, and died in June, 1879. His wife's death occurred in 1872, at the age of sixty-eight. He was a noted Baptist minister, preaching mainly in Adams and Cheshire, Mass., and during the last twenty years of his life in Stephentown, N. Y. He had four children, of whom the subject of this sketch was the youngest.

Elnathan Sweet was born in Cheshire, Berkshire county, Mass., November 20, 1837, and received his preliminary education in the public and private schools of Stephentown, N. Y., and Hancock, Mass. In 1859 he was graduated from Union College, where he pursued a course of civil engineering. For about one year there- after he was a deputy under Ward B. Burnett, surveyor-general of the State of Ne- braska. Returning home he was married and at once engaged in civil engineering as assistant on various railroad projects, with headquarters in Stephentown. In 1864 he went to Franklin, Pa., where he engaged in general engineering, developing oil wells, coal mines, etc., and where he remained until 1868, when he moved to Chi- cago and prosecuted his profession. In 1869 he was appointed chief engineer of the Rock Island and St. Louis Railway (now the Rock Island & St. Louis division of the C. B & Q.), with headquarters in both Chicago and St. Louis. He built this line two hundred and thirty miles in length in about twelve months, and in 1871, after its completion, was also made superintendent. He held both positions until 1872, and during the year 1871 was also consulting engineer of the Rockford Central and the Cairo and St. Louis Railroads.

In 1872 he formed a partnership with James R. Young, of Chicago, under the firm name of E. Sweet, jr., & Co., and engaged in railroad construction, continuing until 1875. During that period they built most of the Northern Pacific Railway from the Red River of the North, across Dakota, to the Missouri River, several bridges in Chicago, and a part of the tunnel at West Point, N. Y., for what is now the West Shore Railroad. In 1875 he was appointed by Governor Tilden expert engineer for the commission for investigating the abuses on the New York State canals and was engaged in those complicated affairs until the spring of 1876, when he was appointed division engineer, which position he held until the spring of 1880. The work of the Tilden commission was chiefly directed to the discovery of the abuses which had become flagrant in the letting and in the carrying out of contracts for the various engineering works involved in enlarging and improving the State canals. The pro- fessional experience and accomplishments of Mr. Sweet enabled him to exercise a salutary influence in directing this work in the most effective manner, and his labors in formulating many of its important reports have contributed to the extensive and

permanent reforms which have since characterized this department of the State ad- ministration.

Mr. Sweet resigned as division engineer of the canals in the spring of 1880 and resumed the business of railroad construction with his former partner, James R. Young, with offices in New York city. This partnership continued until 1883, their business being principally the building of the New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railroad for a distance of about fifty miles in Greene, Albany, and Orange counties, finishing the West Point tunnel, and constructing a part of the New York, Susque- hanna and Western Railroad from the Delaware River west. In 1883 he was nomi- nated by the Democrats and elected State engineer, and in 1885 was re-elected to the same office, serving in all four years. During Mr. Sweet's connection with the engi- neering department of the State as division engineer and State engineer he made on a large scale exhaustive experiments to determine the laws governing the resistance of vessels propelled in narrow waterways, upon which the proper design and proba- able capacity and economy of canals depend. A discussion of these experiments and the laws of propulsion derived from them were published by him in the Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers for 1879, and constitute the most impor- tant contribution existing in this branch of engineering literature. He also during that period thoroughly investigated the problem of connecting the great lakes with the Hudson River by a ship canal. His paper on this subject, read before the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1884, with the discussions upon it, published in the Transactions of that Society for 1885, are of the highest authority on canal questions.

As State engineer Mr. Sweet's efforts were strenuously exerted to restoring to the engineering department of the State government the control of all engineering questions and matters in which the State was concerned, many of which had formerly been entrusted to irresponsible commissions or to other departments of the State administrations; and it is largely due to his labors that the office of State en- gineer now exercises most of the functions appropriate to the usefulness and dignity of that constitutional office.

Since the expiration of his second term as State engineer on December 31, 1887, Mr. Sweet has successfully followed his profession as a civil and consulting engi- neer and also as president and trustee of the Hilton Bridge Construction Company. In the prosecution of structural engineering he has introduced many improvements in the design of movable bridges and bridges of long spans the most notable per- haps being the combination of the arch and the cantilever in the same structure originated by him and first used in his design for the great bridge connecting Capi- tol hill with Arbor hill in Albany, and which has since been extensively copied in Europe and this country.

Mr. Sweet has lived in Albany since 1875, and is not only well known as an emi- nent civil engineer, but has long been prominently identified with many of the city's enterprises and efficiently active in promoting its welfare and advancement. He was a trustee of the sinking fund and a member of the finance board of the city from 1889 to 1892, and in July, 1896, was reappointed to these positions. He was a mem- ber of the water board from 1892 to 1894, and is a director in the Albany City Rail- way. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the University Club of New York, and the Fort Orange Club of Albany.

September 20, 1860, he was married to Marion Rose, daughter of Jonathan Rose, of Stephentown, N. Y. They have had six children. Marion Rose, Marguerite, Helen M., Elizabeth, Chloe, and Elnathan, jr., the latter bearing the name Elna- than without break into the seventh generation of the Sweet family in America.

JAMES B. McKEE.

JAMES B. MCKEE, the popular and genial postmaster of the city of Cohoes, has held this important office since 1894. He was brought to this place when an infant by his father, Hugh McKee, and has led an active and political life in local affairs. He was one of the last village trustee before Cohoes was made a city in 1869. He is a Democrat and served two years as alderman. In 1874 he was elected a member of the School Board, serving four years, and in 1873 was appointed to the position of foreman on the Erie Canal, which held until 1880. He was later appointed to the same position on the canal and afterwards was superintendent of the canal for five years. Mr. McKee was born at West Troy in 1843. He was the son of a builder and his business life was begun with his father as a carpenter after his education at the Catholic Parochial School. He was ambitious to succeed in life and by perse- vering efforts became contractor and builder. A notable event of his life was the signing of the Father Matthew Temperance Pledge in 1850, a time of great excite- ment, which pledge has been faithfully kept nearly half a century.

EDWARD B. CANTINE.

EDWARD B. CANTINE, agency director for the Albany district of the New York Life Insurance Company, is a son of Col. George A. and Marion J. (Cook) Cantine, and was born in Rutland, Vt., August 4, 1860. He descends from a sturdy line of French Huguenots of illustrious origin, his first American ancestor being Moses Cantine, who fled from Bordeaux, France, to England, at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and afterward came to this country. He received, with others, from Queen Anne, a large grant of land in what is now Ulster county, N. Y., where the family became prominent in civil, social, and military life, many of them becoming associated with the political history of the State. Gen. John Cantine, a son of Moses, was conspicuous as an officer and legislator during the Revolutionary period, while Matthew Cantine was a member of the Provincial Congress in 1775, 1776, and 1777 and also a member of the first Council of Safety. The Civil List of the State of New York contains the names of several of the Cantine family who for long periods filled positions as Congressmen, senators, assemblymen, judges, etc. Moses I. Cantine, son of Gen. John Cantine, was for a time public printer of the State of New York. He and Martin Van Buren married sisters, and his daughter, Miss Christina Cantine, a niece of Van Buren's, presided at the White House dur- ing the latter's administration as president. Many of the family enjoyed high social distinction in this country and abroad. Col. George A. Cantine, father of Edward

EDWARD B. CANTINE.

B., is widely known throughout the country as a soldier, orator, and lecturer. He served with distinction in the War of the Rebellion, being identified with the 7th Vt. Vols., and subsequently in the Sequestration Department. He also served as assist- ant quartermaster-general on the staff of Gen. Sylvester Dering and was later pro- moted assistant inspector general with the rank of colonel. After the war he settled in Rome, Oneida county, and finally in Newburgh, N. Y., where he now resides.

Edward B. Cantine was educated in the public schools and academy of Rome, N. Y., and finished at Cazenovia Seminary. He then entered the employ of the wholesale grocery house of Alfred Ethridge & Co., of Rome, and continued as trav- eling salesman for nine years. In 1890 he came to Albany as manager of the Al. bany office of the New York Life Insurance Company. In 1892, after the election of John A. McCall as president of the company, Mr. Cantine was made agency director, which position he still holds, having charge of the business in the counties of Albany, Columbia, Greene, and Schoharie. He is one of the best known insur- ance men in Eastern New York, and has directed the affairs of the New York Life in this section with great credit and ability.

Mr. Cantine has also taken an active interest in the welfare of the Republican party, which has honored him with several positions of responsibility. He has been for three years clerk of the Board of Supervisors of Albany county and in 1892 rep- resented the 13th ward of the city in the Common Council. In 1893 he was the un- successful candidate for member of assembly from the Third assembly district, then as now a stronghold of Democracy. He has been chairman of the executive com- mittee of the Albany County Republican organization since 1895, and is also chair- man of the General Republican Committee of the city of Albany. He is a promi- nent Mason, being a member of Temple Lodge, No. 14, F. & A. M., Capital City Chapter, No. 242, R. A. M., De Witt Clinton Council, No. 22. R. & S. M., Temple Commandery, No. 2, K. T., and Cyprus Temple Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. He is also a member of the Elks, the Unconditional Republican and Capital City Clubs, Albany County Wheelman, Y. M. C. A., and the Albany Club, of which he is a member of the house committee. He is publie spirited, enterprising, and progressive. and takes a lively interest in all that concerns the welfare and advancement of the community.

GEORGE I. AMSDELL.

GEORGE I. AMSDELL is of English descent, and on his mother's side traces his an- cestry to the Pilgrim band of the Mayflower. His father, William Amsdell, was born in Cambridge, England in 1797, came to America in 1818, and in 1520 settled in Albany, where he died in 1970. He was a brewer and maltster. His wife, Aim. gail Millard, was born in New Paltz, Ulster county, N. Y., in 1803.

Mr. Amsdell was born in Kinderhook, N. Y .. September 3, 1827, and received his education in the public schools of Albany and at boarding schools in Chatham and Bloomingdale, N. Y. When fifteen years of age he entered the brewery of John Taylor in Albany and later was employed in the brewery of Reed Brothers, of Troy. In these two establishments be laid the foundations of a successful brewer and malt-

ster, which he supplemented by six years' experience-from 1845 to 1851-in his father's brewery in Guilderland, Albany county. In 1851 he formed a partnership with his brother, Theodore M., under the firm name of Amsdell Brothers, and started the nucleus of his present brewery on the end of the lot bounded by Jay, Dove, and Lancaster streets in Albany. In 1856 they erected the present malt house, which with the brewery, stables and storage buildings has frontages of 354 feet on Jay and Lancaster streets and 150 feet on Dove street, the main building being five stories high. The capacity of the plant is about 360 barrels of ale daily and 125,000 bushels of malt per annum. George I. Amsdell personally superin- tended the malt department and his brother acted as brewer until 1870, when their business had increased to such extensive proportions that both thenceforward de- voted their energies solely to the management of the concern. In October, 1892, the firm was dissolved, George I. Amsdell becoming the sole proprietor, and in this capacity he has since conducted with uniform success one of the oldest and largest breweries and malt houses in the capital city, having also a large distributing depot in New York, on Thirty-fourth street, since 1883, which is in charge of his son, George H.

Mr. Amsdell has always been an ardent Democrat and was for four years alder- man of the Ninth ward, but excepting this has steadfastly declined public office. He is, however, actively identified with several important institutions of the city, being one of the founders and a director of the Capital City Insurance Company, a trustee of the Albany City Savings Institution, and a director and vice president of the Albany City National Bank. He was a member of Co. B, Albany Continentals, and later of the Tenth Regiment N. Y. N. G., serving altogether twelve years.

Mr. Amsdell has twice married. September, 1847, he married Miss Esther J. White, of Albany, by whom he had six children, four sons and two daughters. In August, 1875, he married Miss Dora C. Roraback, of Albany.

HOWARD N. FULLER.

HOWARD N. FULLER was born in New Baltimore. Greene county, N. Y., October 29, 1853. His lineage is most honorable, notable and interesting. The blood of the patriots and founders of our country flows unsullied through his veins. His ances- tors, in both lines, made much of our nation's history, and contributed largely to the permanent establishment of those essential principles of civil and religious liberty upon which our government is founded and thereby secured to us the proud enjoy- ment of their beneficences.

Mr. Fuller is the son of William Fuller and Lydia Allen Swezey. On the paternal side he is a direct lineal descendant of Thomas Fuller, one of the immortal Mayflower band of 1620, whose descendants achieved wide distinction in the realms of theology, medicine and law. On the maternal side he is the great-great-grandson of Jonathan Dickinson, the founder and first president of Princeton College, and through Jona- than Dickinson's wife, his great-great-grandmother, Joanna Melyn, he is a lineal descendant of Cornelis Melyn, the powerful and humane patroon of Staten Island, who resisted so effectually the selfish and unwariantable tyrannies of Governors

Kieft and Stuyvesant. Jonathan Dickinson's father was Hezekiah Dickinson, born February 27, 1636, and his grandfather was Nathaniel Dickinson, born in England near the close of the sixteenth century. The lives and deeds of the Dickinsons are inseparably interwoven with the colonial period of our republic. Many of them were killed in the Indian warfares, but the progeny was numerous, and those who sur- vived became distinguished in statecraft, literature, art and science. Gen. Horace Dickinson, Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson, Hon. Don M. Dickinson, belong to the same line. Mr. Fuller is a great-grandnephew of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry and Com- modore Matthew Calbraith Perry, and is immediately related to the Bigelows, Bel- monts, Sergeants (Phila.), Burnetts (N. J.), Runyons (N. J.), and Greens, (N. J.), one of whom, John C. Green, bas made munificent gifts to Princeton College in memory of his great-grandfather. Judith, the sister of Eastman Johnson, the celebrated artist, is Mr. Fuller's great-aunt. Mr. Fuller's great-grandfathers, Josiah Wilson and John Anderson, served in the Revolutionary war and in the war of 1812.

Mr. Fuller received his earliest education in the primary school of New Baltimore and at the Coeymans Academy. When fifteen he entered Rutgers College Grammar School at New Brunswick, N. J., with his brother Perry J., who is now a prominent lawyer in New York city. A year later he matriculated at Rutgers College, and after a regular course of four years was graduated from that institution in 1874. While in college he acquired no little fame in literary work. In 1873 he won the junior Philoclean literary prize and in 1874 secured the senior prize for English composition. He not only was a great lover of classical and English literature, but also of athletic sports, and in 1873 was delegated to meet representatives of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania, at New York, to make rules and regu- lationsto govern collegiate football playing, and the rules then adopted still govern this sport in American colleges. At college Mr. Fuller also exercised his poetical genius, writing among other pieces a song entitled "On the Banks of the Old Raritan," which has ever since been the standard college song of old Rutgers, and in which his name will live so long as the stones of that time-honored institution stand one above another.

Returning from college Mr. Fuller began in 1875 the publication of the New Balti- more Sun, which he continued about a year. In 1876 he came to Albany and with his father and two brothers, under the firm name of William Fuller & Sons, engaged in government contracting and dealing in building materials. While following this business he also pursued for one year a course in both law and medicine, and for another year thereafter, or until the death of its proprietor, managed and edited the Greenbush Gazette. Since then he has been successfully engaged in business.

It is in the literary field, however, that he has won fame and honor. Acknowl- edged as a clever writer, and possessing a genius unlimited in style and scope, he is equally happy in serious and humorous composition. For two years he wrote the column of witty paragraphs for the Yonkers Gazette and at the same time con- tributed to the leading humorous periodicals of the country. Among his lyric poems is that of "God Bless the Little Woman," the sentiments of which were suggested by Mrs. Garfield's tender watchfulness over her husband after he had fallen by the assassin's bullet. Afterward, in a personal note, she gracefully ex- pressed her thanks to him for the song which had not only touched her own heart but that of the nation. His touching tribute to the martyred president, " The Heart

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Landmarks of Albany County, New York, Part 63

Author: Parker, Amasa Junius, 1843-1938, ed Publication date: 1897 Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason Number of Pages: 1374

Author: Parker, Amasa Junius, 1843-1938, ed
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason
Number of Pages: 1374