USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume III, Pt. 1 > Part 7
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Thomas Newbold Rhinelander, the second son, was graduated from Harvard in 1887, from the Columbia College Law School, and is en- gaged in the practice of law in this city. He is a member of the Knick- erbocker, University, and Southside Sportsmen's clubs, the Down- town Association, the City Bar Association, and the Columbia Alumni Association.
Philip M. Rhinelander, the third son, was graduated from Harvard in 1891.
DE PEYSTER, FREDERIC JAMES, is in the line of primogeniture of his famous family. He was born in this city, February 5, 1859, was graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1860, and from Columbia College Law School in 1862. During the few years in which he practiced he did some good work at the bar, successfully arguing cases in the Court of Appeals. He has since been prominently con- nected with social organizations and benevolent institutions. He is President of the Holland Society. President of the St. Nicholas Society, President of the Orpheus Society, President of the New York Dispensary, Chairman of the New York Society Library, a governor of the Society of Colonial Wars, and a member of the City, University, St. Nicholas, Century, and New York Yacht clubs. He is a trustee of the Home for Incurables, of the Good Samaritan Dispensary, of the Institution of the Deaf and Dumb, and of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. He was President of the Associate AAlumni of the College of the City of New York from 1882 to 1884; in 1887, 1SSS, and 1889 was President of the St. Nicholas Club, and was President of the American Archeological So- DE PEYSTER ARMS. ciety from its organization to 1889. He is a graceful speaker, and holds the degrees of A.M. and LL.D. He married, in 1871, Augusta MeEvers, danghter of William H. Morris, grandniece of Gouverneur Morris; great-granddaughter of Lewis Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his wife, Mary, daughter of Jacob Walton and Maria Beekman, and also great-granddaughter of Augustns Van Cortlandt and Helen Barclay. They have three daughters and a son-Frederic Ashton de Peyster. Mr. de Peyster
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW YORK BIOGRAPHY.
is himself seventh in descent from JJohannes de Peyster, eminent merchant of New Amsterdam, of gentle blood, who was Schepen, Alderman, and Burgomaster, and refused the appointment as first Mayor under the English; is sixth from Johannes's still more eminent son, Colonel Abraham de Peyster, commander of the city troops, wealthy merchant, Councilor, Alderman, Judge of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice, Mayor of New York for three terms, Acting Governor and Treasurer of New York and New Jersey; is fifth from Abraham de Peyster, who, for more than forty-five years, was Provincial Treas- urer, and married Margaret, daughter of Jacobus Van Cortlandt and Eve Philipse; is fourth from James de Peyster and Sarah, daugh- ter of Joseph Reade, King's Councilor; is the grandson of Frederic . de Peyster and Helen, danghter of General Samuel Hake, and is the son of the late Captain James Ferguson de Peyster, U.S.A., a member of the Board of Education of this city, and a trustee of the College of the City of New York, and his wife, Frances Goodhue Ashton.
BAYARD, NICHOLAS, was one of three brothers (the others being Peter and Balthazar), relatives of Governor Petrus Stuyvesant, who, with their widowed mother, accompanied the Dutch Governor to New Amsterdam in 1647. Their mother was the sister of Stuy- vesant, while Stuyvesant's wife was the sister of their father, Samuel Bayard, a wealthy Amsterdam merchant of French Huguenot de- scent. Nicholas, who achieved the greatest distinction of any mem- ber of the family during the colonial period, was born in Alphen, Holland, about 1641, and died in New York City in 1707. He was Mayor of New York in 1685, and held many important positions. In 1664 he was appointed Clerk to the Common Council, subsequently became Stuyvesant's pri- vate secretary, and was also made Surveyor of the Province. When the Dutch reconquered New York, in 1672, he was made Secretary of WHONO the Colony. He was a member of Governor Dongan's Council, and is said to have drafted the Dongan Charter, granted the year that he was Mayor. As Councilor, he was a member of ET Dongan's Court of Exchequer, constituted in December, 1685. He served frequently as Al- BAYARD ARMS. derman, and was Colonel, commanding the New York Militia. He was a member of the Council of Lieutenant-Gov- ernor Nicholson, in 1688-89, when JJames HI. fled from England, and William of Orange became King. The permanency of William's suc- cess was yet in doubt when the Leisler trouble occurred, for news traveled slowly in that day, although at Boston Governor Andros had been precipitately deposed. Both he and Nicholson had their commissions from James. The captains of the militia companies
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favored William, and when a question of authority was raised, on June 3, 1689, they signed an agreement to hold the fort for William, refusing to recognize the authority of the Lieutenant-Governor and his Council, who represented James. Three days later, June 6, news arrived from Boston that William was King. Nicholson and his conneilors, Bayard, Philipse, and Van Cortlandt, sought recognition as the government as now acting for William. This was refused; the popular party did not trust them. The captains recommended the election of a Committee of Safety to maintain law and order until instructions could come from William. This was on June 10. The election was held June 26, the government of the Province thus pass- ing into the hands of twelve delegates elected from the counties of New York, Kings, Queens, Westchester, and Orange, Albany and - Ulster counties not participating. This Committee appointed Jacob Leisler, the senior captain, military commander of the Province, sub- sequently constituting him Lientenant-Governor. Bayard violently opposed this government, and for a year was lodged in jail. This form of government continued until the arrival of Governor Slough- ter, March 19, 1691. Unfortunately, however, Lieutenant-Governor Ingoldsby, separated from Sloughter in a storm, arrived at New York nearly three months before bim, in Jannary, 1691. Incited by Bay- ard's party he instantly demanded the surrender of the fort, which Leisler declined, unless he should show credentials. He neither had any, or any instructions from the King respecting the de facto gov- ernment at New York. Since he could not establish his right to receive the government, Leisler awaited the arrival of Sloughter. The latter, when he assumed control, was induced to arrest Leisler and his Council for treason in resisting Ingoldsby. They were inde- cently tried by their enemies on these trumped-up charges, and con- demned to death, while two, Leisler and his son-in-law, Jacob Mil- borne, were executed. The Earl of Bell- 3 Mediolan Bayan omont, New York's best Colonial Gover- nor, subsequently 'declared "that the execution of these men was as violent, cruel, and arbitrary a proceeding as ever was done upon the lives of men in any age under an English government." He spoke of " Nie- olls, Bayard, Brooks, and the rest of the bloodhounds," and of " Bay- ard, Nicolls, and the rest of the murderers of these men." Leister was vindicated by a Parliamentary investigation. Bayard was a man much like Aaron Burr,-intellectually brilliant, a born politician, but a narrow-minded aristocrat, who had little conscience, and was im- perious, ernel, and utterly unscrupulous. And his later life, like that of Burr, was under a cloud. He was implicated in the piracy and smuggling which went on under Governor Fletcher, and went to Eng- land to protect himself in this matter and plot against Bellomont. In 1702 he was convicted of high treason in a trial under Chief Justice
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Atwood, his offense consisting of inflammatory language in one of his political pamphlets. His conviction was only possible because he had himself procured the law defining his crime at the time of the Leisler trouble. Having wrung a confession from him, however, his persecutors pardoned him, and thus he escaped the humiliating retri- bution of having his neck caught in a noose, contrived by his own craft. His wife, Judith Verlet, whom he married in 1666, had been condemned as a witch at Hartford, Conn., in 1662.
BAYARD, WILLIAM, was one of the eminent and wealthy mer- chants of New York City prior to the Revolution. He was born in New York, June 1, 1729, and died in Southampton, England, in 1804. He was a member of the Provincial Legislature, and in 1774 a member of its Committee of Correspondence, in which capacity he visited Massachusetts, influencing the Legislature of that colony to address a protest to the British Government against unjust taxation, similar to the one adopted by the New York Legislature. He was also a member of the first Continental Congress-the "Stamp Act Con- gress." He was a prominent member of the Committee of Fifty-one of 1774, and joined the Sons of Liberty. Nevertheless, when war seemed inevitable, he grew very cautious, be- came intimate with General Gage, and played a double part as long as possible. He was doubtless influenced by the fact that a son and a son-in-law were in the British Army, while another son was in the service of the East India Company. Two of his sons, Lieutenant-Colonel John Bayard and Major Samuel Vetch Bayard, were British officers during the Revolution. At the close of that war Bayard was himself attainted, his large estates, in New York City and on the present site of Hoboken, N. J., being con- fiscated. One of his four sons, William Bayard, established himself in business in New York after the Revolution, and was for many years at the head of the notable mercantile firm of Bayard, Leroy & McEvers.
MINTURN, ROBERT BOWNE, was an equal partner with the late Henry Grinnell and Moses Hicks Grinnell in the notable ship- ping firm of Grinnell, Mintnrn & Company, of New York, and became known for his liberal charities. He was one of the founders of St. Luke's Hospital and its first President, was one of the founders and Treasurer of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and was one of the founders and Vice-President of the Hospital for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled. He was active in securing Central Park-a movement which his wife originated. He was one of the foremost supporters of the Government during the Civil War and was the first President of the Union League Club.
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He was one of the incorporators of the National Bank of Commerce, as he was also of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank. He married a daughter of Judge John Lansing Wendell, of Albany. His eldest son. Robert Bowne Minturn, Jr., died in 1889. The present Robert Shaw Minturn is the eldest son of the latter. Robert Bowne Minturn, Sr., had been the partner of a well-known New York merchant, Pre- served Fish, prior to the formation in 1829 of the firm of Grinnell, Minturn & Company. He was the son of William Minturn, Jr., and a daughter of Robert Bowne, a leading merchant of this city, and was a grandson of William Minturn and Penelope Greene, consin of Gen- eral Nathaniel Greene, of the Revolution. His father was a promi- nent shipowner of New York, while his grandfather was a shipping merchant first in Newport, R. I., and subsequently in New York.
ALEXANDER, JAMES, heir to the Earldom of Stirling, was born in Scotland abont 1690. He was an officer of engineers in the Stuart cause, and in 1816 was obliged to fly to America. He became official recorder of Perth Amboy, N. J., in 1718, being subsequently ap- pointed Surveyor-General of New York and New Jersey. He studied law and became a leader of the bar of New York City, and at the same time a leader of the Whig faction in the colony. He and Chief Justice Morris were two of the principal contributors to. Peter Zenger's New York Weekly Journal, which advocated Demo- cratic principles. He was one of the counsel for Zenger in the fa- mous trial in which the question of the liberty of the press was at issue, and, for venturing to maintain that the court before which Zenger was hauled was not properly constituted, he was disbarred, together with his as- sociate, William Smith, Sr. Un- der another administration, two years later, they were reinstated. JAMES ALEXANDER. Alexander served several terms in the Colonial Legislature; was Attorney-General from 1821 to 1823; was a member of Governor Burnet's Council, and was also Secretary of the Province of New York. He was an able mathematician, a correspondent of Halley, the astronomer. He was one of the founders of the American Phi- losophical Society, Benjamin Franklin being another. He married Mrs. Samuel Provoost, of New York City, and had a son, Major-
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General William Alexander, Lord Stirling. He died in New York, April 2, 1756.
ALEXANDER, WILLIAM, titular Earl of Stirling, and Major- General in the patriot army during the Revolution (for portrait, see Volume II., of this work, page 97), was born in New York City in 1726, and died in Albany, January 15, 1783. He engaged in the pro- vision business in New York for a time, subsequently becoming Aid- de-Camp to Governor Shirley. His claim to the Earldom of Stirling he prosecuted before the House of Lords with- ont avail in 1757. He returned to New York, W Alexandria in 1761 marrying a daughter of Philip Livings- ton. He became Surveyor-General, as his father had been before him, and was a member of the Governor's Council. He joined the Revolutionary Army, in October, 1775, being commissioned Colonel of an East New Jersey battalion. In March. 1776, Congress made him a Brigadier-General, in recognition of his capture of a British transport. His command was nearly extermi- nated, and he himself captured, in the Battle of Long Island, General Putnam having ordered him to attack a superior force. Having been exchanged, in February, 1777, he was made a Major-General, and, in the latter part of this year, was, for a time, in command at New York. He captured a Hessian regiment at Trenton. He was defeated at Metnehin, having disobeyed Wash- Flirting ington's order to retreat before the enemy. He distinguished himself at Brandywine, German- town, and Monmonth, while, in 1779, he sur- prised a British force at Panhis's Hook, being then in command of New Jersey. He commanded at Albany in 1781. He was one of the founders of King's College (now Columbia Univer- sity ), and was its first Governor. He was also one of the founders of the New York Society Library. He published " The Conduct of Mia- jor-General Shirley, Briefly Stated," and " An Account of the Comet of June and July, 1770."
KING, RUFUS (see steel engraving, Volume II. of this work, facing page 368), was a resident of New York City from 1788 mmtil his death in 1827. In 1789 he was chosen, with General Schuyler, in the first election of United States Senators in this State. From 1796 to 1803 he was United States Minister to England. He was again elected to the United States Senate from New York in 1813, while in 1819 he was re-elected. Appointed Minister to England once more in 1825, at the end of two years of service sickness com- pelled him to resign, while his death occurred soon after his return to New York. He had become prominent in public life in Massachu- setts prior to his residence in this city. He was born in Scarborough,
-
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Me., in 1753, his father, Richard King, being a merchant. In 1777 he was graduated from Harvard, and in 1778 was Aid-de-camp to General Glover, and participated in a military expedition to Rhode Island. He was a delegate from Massachusetts to Congress from 1784 to 1786, and in this body proposed the immediate prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Territory. Subsequently, as Senator from New York, he vigorously opposed the Missouri Compromise. He married in 1786 Mary, daughter of John Alsop, one of the most eminent New York merchants of that day ( for portrait of Mrs. Rufus King, see Volume II., page 442), and had three sons, all of whom became prominent-John Alsop King, who was elected Governor of this State in 1857; Charles King, President of Columbia College for many years, and James Gore King, a notable banker of this city. .
KING, JOHN ALSOP, Governor of the State of New York, was one of the sons of the famous Rufus King. He was born in New York City, January 3, 1788, and was educated in the public schools of New York and of Harrow, England. He studied law and was admitted to the bar. During the War of 1812 he was Lieutenant in a cavalry company. Afterward he engaged in farming on his father's estate at Jamaica, L. I. In 1819 he was elected to the Assembly, re- signing to become Secretary of the Legation at London when his fa- ther was appointed United States Minister to England. In 1838 he was again elected to the Assembly, while in 1849 he was elected to Congress as a Whig from a Long Island district. He opposed the passage of the fugitive slave law and advocated the admission of California as a free State. As a leader of the Whig forces, he presided over the Whig Convention at Syracuse, N. Y., in 1855, from which event dates the origin of the Republican party. He attended the National Republican Convention in 1856, and favored the nomination of Fremont for the Presidency. The same year he became the Repub- lican candidate for Governor of the State of New York and was elected. Under his administration the Erie Canal was enlarged, and the public school system improved. At the end of his teri he retired to private life, his death ocenrring July 7, 1867. He was one of the founders of the Union Club in 1837, and was its second President.
KING, CHARLES, one of the sons of Rufus King, was born in New York City, March 16, 1789, and died in Frascati, Italy, in October. 1867. He was educated at Harrow, England, and Paris, subsequently engaging in business in New York. He was elected to the New York Legislature in 1813, while he served as a volunteer during the year following. His firm having failed, he became partner in the publi- cation of the New York American, while he edited this journal from 1827 to 1845. Between the latter date and 1849 he was editor of the Courier and Inquirer, while from 1849 to 1863 he was President of Columbia College.
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KING, JAMES GORE, third son of the celebrated Rufus King, was engaged in mercantile business at Liverpool, England, from 1818 to 1824, after which he returned to New York City and became a mem- ber of the prominent banking firm of Prime, Ward & King. He was elected to Congress in 1849, and subsequently was President of the New York Chamber of Commerce. The resumption of specie payments in this country after the panic of 1837 was brought about by his success in visiting London and inducing the Bank of England to advance $5,000,000 in gold to his firm. He was prominently con- nected with many financial corporations and public institutions. He was the first President of the Erie Railroad. He was a member of the first Board of Trustees of the Astor Library. Long a member of the Board of Education of this city, he was one of three who constituted its special committee whose efforts led to the establish- ment in 1846 of the Free Academy, now the College of the City of New York. He was born in this city in 1791, was educated in Europe, and died in 1853. He married in 1813 Sarah Rogers, daughter of Archibald Gracie. The present Edward King is their son.
KING, EDWARD, for many years engaged in banking in this city, and at one time President of the New York Stock Exchange, in 1873 accepted the presidency of the Union Trust Company, at a time when its affairs required skillful management, and having made it one of the soundest financial institutions in the city still continues as its executive head. He is a member of the Board of Trustees and is Treasurer of the New York Library, Astor-Lenox-Tilden foundations, is a governor of the New York Hospital, is President of the St. Nicho. las Society, and was formerly President of the Harvard Club. He is a trustee of the Manhattan Savings Institution and the Northern Assurance Company of London, and a director of the Citizens' Insur- ance Company. He is a member of the University, Century, Riding, Harvard, and University Glee clubs. He married, first, Isabella Ram- sey Cochrane, niece of Dean Ramsey, of Edinburgh; and, second, Elizabeth Fisher, of Philadelphia. He is the son of the late James Gore King, eminent banker of this city, and grandson of Rufus King, of New York, the illustrious statesman. He was born in 1833 at his father's country-seat, Highwood. Weehawken, N. J., and was gradu- ated from Harvard College.
PIERREPONT, EDWARDS, having graduated with honors from Yale College in 1837, and studied in the New Haven Law School, practiced law in the State of Ohio from 1840 to 1846, in partnership with Hon. Phineas Bacon Wilcox. He then removed to New York City, where he won recognition as an able lawyer. In 1857 he was elected a Judge of the Superior Court to succeed the late Chief Jus-
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tice Oakley, but in 1860 resigned to resume practice. A Democrat prior to the Civil War, he addressed the meeting of loyal Democrats at Union Square, April 20, 1861, convened to express sympathy with the policy of President Lincoln, while soon after he co-operated with other prominent citizens in organizing the Union Defense Committee of New York City. With William M. Evarts and Thurlow Weed he acted as a Committee to convey the message of fidelity of New York City to Lincoln. He and General Dix were in 1862 appointed a Com- mission to try prisoners confined in the prisous and forts of the United States on charges of treasou. Through his effective organization of the loyal Democrats in 1864 he materially aided in the re-election of President Lincoln. He PIERREPONT ARMS. was one of the committee of citizens of New York who attended the funeral of the assassi- nated President. In 1867 he took charge of the prosecution of John U. Surratt for the murder of Lincoln. He was a member of the New York Constitutional Convention of 1867, and served on its Judiciary Com- mittee. Ile was an active supporter of the Presidential candidacies of General Grant from the platform in 1868 and 1872. He was appointed United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, but in 1870 resigned. In the latter year he was active in the prosecution of the Tweed ring. In April, 1875. he entered the Cabinet of Presi- dent Grant as Attorney-General of the United States. In 1873 he had declined au appointment as United States Minister to Russia, but in May, 1876, he resigned from Grant's Cabinet to become Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. With diplomatie skill be restored official relations between the two countries, when differences on the question of the extradition of crim- inals had led to their suspension, while he negotiated the Trademark Treaty with the Earl of Derby. Returning. in 1878, he resumed the practice of law in New York. and was counsel in many important cases, some of them being snits prosecuted by the United States Gov- ernment. In 1871 he became a director and Treasurer of the Texas and Pacific Railroad. He was one of the founders of the Manhattan Club, and one of its Governors until his resignation on account of its attitude during the Civil War. He then became a member of the Union Club. He received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Yale. and that of Doctor of Common Law from Oxford University, Eng- land. He was born in North Haven, Conn., November 4, 1813. and died in New York City, March 2, 1892. He married. in 1846, Mar- garetta, daughter of the late Samuel Augustus Willoughby, of Brook- Ivn, and had a son, Edward, who pro-deceased his father, leaving uo issue, and a daughter, Margaretta, the wife of Leonard Forbes Beck- with. The son of Giles Pierrepont and Eunice, daughter of Jonathan
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW YORK BIOGRAPHY.
Munson, Judge Pierrepont descended from Hon. John Pierrepont, who settled in Roxbury, Mass., in 1650. The latter was a descendant of Sir George Holme Pierrepont, of a notable family of Nottingham, England, the elder line being Dukes of Kingston.
BEEKMAN, WILHELMUS, founder of one of the old New York families, came to New Amsterdam in 1647. in the same ship with Governor Stuyvesant, and died in this city in 1707. He was the son of Hendrik Beckman, Secretary under the States-General of Holland, and grand- son of Gerardus Beekman, of Cologne. Beekman acquired lands in New Amsterdam, and filled sev- eral minor offices. From 1858 to 1862 he was Vice- Director for the West India Company on the South River-the Delaware. Subsequently he was Chief Judge at Esopus, now Kingston. Returning to New York City, he served for some time as Alder- man. He married Catherina De Boog, and had BEEKMAN ARMS. several sons who became locally prominent, one of them being Act- ing Governor of New York.
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