USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume III, Pt. 2 > Part 2
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CRIMMINS, JOHN D., is perhaps the most prominent contractor in New York City; is one of the largest operators in real estate, and is very largely interested in the Metropolitan Traction system of sur- face railways. He was formerly President of these lines, and is a director of the Bleecker Street and Fulton Ferry Railroad Company and the Christopher and Tenth Street Railroad. He is President of the Port Richmond and Bergen Point Ferry, and a director of the Jersey City and Bergen Railroad and the Consolidated Traction Company of New Jersey. Along other lines he is a director of the National Union Bank, the Fifth Avenue Bank, the City and Suburban Home Company, and the Upper East Side Association. He is trustee of the Provident Loan Society, President of the Hudson and Essex Land Improvement Company, and a director of the Municipal Gas Light Company of Yonkers. He is a member of the Chamber of Com- merce, a governor of Manhattan Club, and succeeded the late Eugene Kelly as Treasurer both of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the Irish National Federation. Appointed Park Commissioner in 1883, and again in 1888, he has served as Treasurer and President of the Board. He has been a Presidential Elector, and was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1894. He was appointed by President Cleveland in 1894 a member of the Board of Visitors to West Point. He is the son of the late Thomas Crimmins, also a well-known con- tractor, and was born in this city, May 18, 1844. Educated at St. Francis Xavier's College, where he excelled in mathematics and engi- neering, he engaged with his father at sixteen years of age, aud became his partner on reaching his majority. He introduced labor- saving mechanical devices in construction, and was the first to use steam-drills in this city. Upon the retirement of his father in 1872, he managed the business alone for several years, subsequently form- ing the partnership with his brother, Thomas E. Crimmins, which still continues. This firm has erected more than four hundred build- ings, and built the Broadway, Columbus Avenue, and Lexington Avenue cable roads, and the Fourth Avenue and Second Avenue underground trolley roads. He was married in 1868, but for many years has been a widower. He has eleven children.
CRIMMINS, THOMAS E., has, for nearly a quarter of a century, been partner with his brother, John D. Crimmins, in the well-known firm of contractors of which his father, the late Thomas Crimmins, was the founder. He is also President of the Westchester Electric Railroad, and trustee or director of the United States Savings Bank, the Yorkville Bank, the Traders' and Travelers' Accident Company. and the Martin B. Brown Company. He was born in this city, edu- cated in the public schools and at St. Francis Xavier's College, and is a member of the Manhattan, Lawyers', Players'. Democratic, Catho- lie, Riding, and New York Yacht clubs, and the Uptown Association.
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CRIMMINS, JOHN D., JR., a member of the well-known firm of contractors, of which his father, John D. Crimmins, and his uncle, Thomas E. Crimmins, are the senior partners; he is also President of the California Asphalt Company, President of the German-Ameri- can Tile Company, and Director of the National Surety Company and the Central Crosstown Railroad.
HUNTINGTON, COLLIS POTTER, having completed the first great trans-continental railroad across the United States, perceiving that there was room for another and parallel line farther south, at once undertook and successfully completed a second great trans-con- tinental railway. He next carried into execution the scheme of the unification of the railroads west of the Mississippi River, in which he had become interested, into one great system, embracing 8,059 miles of track, and known as the South- ern Pacific system. This combines no less than twenty-three transpor- tation corporations, bisecting the continent and ramifying through- out the Southwestern States, with termini at seaports on the Atlantic coast, the Pacific coast, and various points on the Gulf of Mexico. He also controls the Mexican Interna- tional Railroad, which runs from the border of the United States at Eagle Pass to Durango, in the State of that name, embracing 670 miles in the Republic of Mexico. He has also developed about 20,000 COLLIS POTTER HUNTINGTON. miles of steamship lines, including a mail service across the Pacific Ocean, plying between San Francisco and China and Japan. He has been prominently identified with railroad building and the develop- ment of coal mines at Vancouver, British Columbia. He is President of the Guatemala Central Railroad. He is President of the Southern Pacific Company, Vice-President of the Central Pacific Railroad Com- pany, President of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, while he is a director of a formidable array of corporations embraced in the sys- tems controlled by him. He has also established at Newport News, Va., the best appointed drydock and shipbuilding yards in the United States. Born at Harwinton, Litchfield County, Conn., October 22, 1821, he attended school until fourteen years of age, and then obtained his freedom from his father and became a clerk. At the end of two years he came to New York City, bought goods on credit, and sold
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them at a good profit. During the next ten years he also did a good business throughout the South and West. He opened a store at One- onta, Otsego County, N. Y., in partnership with his brother. Upon the discovery of gold in California in 1848, they promptly shipped goods to the gold fields, Mr. C. P. Huntington following and establishing himself in business in Sacramento. In 1854 the late Mark Hopkins became his partner under the style of Huntington & Hopkins. They had amassed large fortunes by 1860, when Mr. Huntington conceived the project of the Central Pacific Railroad, and enlisted six others with himself, with a capitalization of $8,500,000. At Washington he secured the Congressional acts of 1862 and 1861 which afforded Gov -.. ernment aid in lands and bonds. He was successful in interesting capitalists at New York and Boston. Then came the rival enterprise, the Union Pacific, pushing the construction of its lines westward as those of the Central Pacific were pushed eastward. The latter won the race, completing its lines May 10, 1869. He next projected the Southern Pacific, rapidly laying its tracks across Arizona and New Mexico, meeting Colonel Tom Scott's western extension of his lines, and pushing on to San Antonio, where, in anticipation, he had already acquired control of the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio, the Texas and New Orleans, the Louisiana Western, and Morgan's Loui- siana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Company.
FAY, SIGOURNEY WEBSTER, trustee of the Citizens' Savings Bank, and director of the Hanover National Bank and the Exchange Fire Insurance Company, has been prominently engaged in the dry- goods commission and woolen commission business in New York City since 1860. Born in Boston in 1837, and there educated, for a num- ber of years prior to reaching the age of twenty-four he was in the employ of Lawrence, Stone & Company, of that city. In 1860 he accompanied one of his former employers, Mr. Stone, to New York, and with him organized the drygoods commission firm of Stone, Bliss, Fay & Allen. At the end of ten years his firm was reorganized as Perry, Wendell, Fay & Company, and gradually devoted itself to the woolen commission business exclusively. Since the death of Mr. Perry, in 1878, the present style of Wendell, Fay & Company has been maintained. The house has branches in Boston and Philadelphia, and acts as agent for some of the leading woolen manufacturers of the United States. Mr. Fay has delivered successful public lectures.
GRANT. FREDERIC DENT. eldest son of the late Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia T. Dent, has for many years been a resident of New York City, and by appointment of Mayor Strong, was a mem- ber of the Reform Board of Police Commissioners of this city from 1894 until his resignation in 1897. He was born in St. Louis. May
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30, 1850, and was with his father in many of the campaigns of the Civil War. He had been present in six battles before reaching the age of thirteen. Having been graduated from West Point in 1871. for ten years he served on the Western frontier, and for some time was Aid on the staff of General Sheridan, with the rank of Lieuten- Ulysses Thran traut ant-Colonel. He resigned from the army in 1881 to engage in business in New York City. In 1892 he was appointed United States Minister to Austria. He offered his services to the Government at the beginning of thewar with Spain. One of the Brooklyn regiments which had volunteered for the war and been accepted by Governor Black in response to President MeKinley's first call for volunteers, the 14th New York, elected him as their colonel, and he was with them at Camp Black until they were mustered into service. He then received the commission of Brigadier-General of Volunteers, which he still holds. He is a member of the Union League and Republican Clubs, the Society of Colonial Wars, the Society of Founders and Pa- triots, the Sons of the American Revolution, and the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. He married Ida Honore. of an old Kentucky fam- ily, and sister of Mrs. Potter Palmer, of Chicago, and has a daughter. Julia, and a son, Ulysses S. Grant. He is ninth in descent from Mat- thew Grant, one of the founders of Windsor, Conn .. in 1635.
LOW, SETH, founder of the well-known Brooklyn merchant fam- ily of this name, was born at Gloucester, Mass., March 29. 1782. Designing to enter the ministry he was prepared for college by Dr. Abiel Abbott and entered Harvard in 1800. but a severe attack of ophthalmia forced him to leave during his junior year. He estab- lished himself as a retail druggist at Salem, Mass., but at the end of twenty years suffered financial misfortune, and failed. Remoy- ing to Brooklyn in 1828, he established himself in the wholesale drug trade in New York City, in which he acquired a fortune. He was a member of the Brooklyn Board of Education. served several terms as Alderman of that city from the Fourth Ward, and was Su- pervisor of Kings County. He was a prominent founder. in 1843. of the Brooklyn Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. and was its first President. He married. in 1807. Mary, daughter of Thomas Porter. of Topsfield. Mass., and had twelve children. He died in Brooklyn in June, 1853.
LOW. ABIEL ABBOTT, founder and long the head of the firm of .A. A. Low & Brothers, which became pre-eminent in the China trade. was the eldest son of the late Seth Low and Mary Porter, and was born in Salem, Mass. February 7, 1811. He became a member of
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the Chamber of Commerce in 1846, and was elected its President in 1863, and re-elected in 1866. During the Civil War he was frequently a member of its committees for consultation with the Government. He was also a member of the " War Fund " Committee of Brooklyn, organized in 1862, and was President of the General Committee of Citizens who co-operated with the Woman's Relief Association and realized $400,000 for patriotic purposes from the Brooklyn and Long Island Sanitary Fair of February. 1864. He was an officer of a number of the foremost financial institutions. Early in life he was a clerk with Joseph Howard & Company, of Salem, Mass., engaged in the South American trade. Following his father to Brooklyn in . 1829 he was for three years engaged with him. His uncle, the late William H. Low, was a partner in Russell & Company, the largest American house in Canton, China, and in 1833 he accepted a clerk- ship with this establishment, becoming a partner in 1837. Returning to New York in 1840, he established himself in the same line, rapidly building up an immense trade, and acquiring a large fleet of mer- chantmen. Under the firm style of A. A. Low & Company, his brother, Josiah O. Low, was taken into partnership in 1845. while in 1852 his brother-in-law. Edward H. R. Lyman, entered the firm, the style changing to A. A. Low & Brothers. Subsequently his two sons, Abiel Augustus and Seth Low, became his partners. His death occurred in January, 1893. He married, in March, 1841, Ellen Al- mira, daughter of the late Josiah Dow. She died January 25. 1850. His second wife, whom he married February 25, 1851, was the widow of his brother, William H. Low, and a daughter of the late Mott Be- dell, of Brooklyn. His four children, the two sons mentioned and two daughters, were by his first wife.
LOW, ABIEL AUGUSTUS, prominent tea importer, is the eldest son of the late Abiel Abbott Low, Seth Low. President of Columbia College, being his younger brother. He was first a clerk and then a partner in the famous firm of which his father was the founder and head, and upon the retirement of his father and his uncles in 1879, he became the head of the house, the firm style once more becoming A. A. Low & Company. In 1888 this partnership was wound up, since which time Mr. Low has continued the business under his own name at 31 Burling Slip, where the house has been lo- cated since 1850. Ile is a trustee of the Central Trust Company, a director of the Franklin Trust Company of Brooklyn, and a Trustee of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Through his mother he is lineally descended from Richard Dow. who settled in Salis- bury, N. H., in 1646. His maternal grandfather. the late Josiah Dow. of Brooklyn, was successively a merchant of Salem. Mass .. Bos- ton. and New York City. He was an officer in the War of 1812.
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK. www. FRANK STUART BOND.
BOND, FRANK STUART, Vice-President of the Chicago, Milwau- kee and St. Paul Railroad Company since 1886, and a Director of the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad Company, and the Vicks- burg, Shreveport and Pacific Railroad Company, was born at Stur- bridge. Mass., February 1, 1830, and has been a resident of New York since 1856. Having been graduated from an academy and a high school. he was employed in the treasurers' office of the Norwich and Worcester Railroad Company in 1849-50, and from 1850 to 1856 was connected with the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad Com. pany at Cincinnati, becoming its Secretary. Removing to New York. he was Secretary and Treasurer of the Auburn and Allentown Rail- road Company. and of the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Railroad Com- pany from 1857 to 1861. Commissioned First Lieutenant of Conter- ticut troops in 1862, and subse quently commissioned Major, he served with the Union forces until his resignation, November 18, 1864, being Aid-de-camp on the staffs of General Daniel Tyler and General Rosecrans. He participated in oper- ations in Mississippi, the battle of Farmington, and capture of Cor- inth; battle of Stone River, battles of Tullahoma and Chickamauga. and capture of Chattanooga, and the campaign in Missouri against General Price. In 1868 he became connected with the Missouri, Kan- sas and Texas Railroad Company. and was subsequently its Vice-Pres- ident until he resigned in 1873. From 1873 to 1881 he was First Vice-President of the Texas and Pacific Railroad Company. In 1881-82 he was President of the Phila- delphia and Reading. From 1884 to 1886 he was President of the five associated lines, the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific; Ala- bama and Great Southern. New Orleans and Northeastern. Vicks- burg and Meridian, and the Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific. He is a member of the Union, Metropolitan, Union League, and Century clubs; the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, and the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. . The son of Dr. Alvan Bond. a well-known Congregational clergyman. he is seventh in lineal descent from William Bond, who, born in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, Eng- land, settled in Watertown, Mass .. about 1630, and was Speaker of the Massachusetts General Court from 1691 to 1694.
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PARK, JOSEPH, has remained at the head of Park & Tilford. the most notable firm of grocers and importers in the world. for more than half a century. This house having been incorporated in recent years, he is its President. He is likewise a director of the New York County National Bank, the Bank of the Metropolis, the Sixth National Bank, the Plaza Bank. the New York, New Haven and Hartford Rail- road Company, and the Harlem River and Portchester Railroad. His seat. " Whitly," is part of a great estate of 1.400 acres, extending from Rye to Harrison, a large part of which is under cultivation. He was born in Rye, Westchester County. N. Y .. May 24. 1823, his ancestors being among the early Huguenot settlers of that place. He left his father's farm at thirteen years of age. to accept a clerkship with the late Benjamin Albro, grocer. of this city. When sixteen he bought the store, in conjunction with his employer's brother. continuing for a year as Albro & Park. A year later Mr. Albro was succeeded by the late John M. Tilford, under the style of Park & Tilford, which is still continued. The company has four large stores in this city.
CROMWELL. FREDERIC. bred to the law and for a year engaged in practice, while for three years he was a cloth-importing merchant, has long been prominent in Brooklyn and New York as a financier and capitalist. He has been Treasurer of the Mutual Life Insurance Com- pany since 1884. and one of its Trustees since 1880, and at the present time is a trustee of the Guaranty Trust Company, and a director of the National Union Bank. the Bank of New Amsterdam, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. the Sixth Avenue Railroad Company, the Jefferson and Clearfield Coal and Iron Company, and the Gill En- graving Company. He was one of the founders of the People's Gas Light Company, of Brooklyn. in 1870, and was elected its President. Ile also became largely interested in Baltimore gas companies. while from 1871 to 1874 he was a resident of St. Louis, and organized the business and constructed the works of the Laclede Gas Light Com- pany. After a year spent in European travel he returned to Brook- lyn. and, with his brother-in-law. Colonel William HI. Husted. was in control of one of the street railways. He was a founder and the first President of the Civil-service Reform Association of Brooklyn. and a member of the first Civil-service Commission of that city. He was President of the Brooklyn Art Association, and was Vice-Presi- dent of the Philharmonic Society. He has been a director of the New York Guarantee and Indemnity Company. the Brooklyn Trust Com- pany, and the New York and East River Gas Company. He is a member of the Metropolitan. Tuxedo, University, and Harvard clubs. and the Century and Downtown associations of New York City. and the Hamilton Club of Brooklyn. He married. in 1868, Esther Whit- more, daughter of Seymour L. Husted and Mary J. Kendall. her father being a prominent Brooklyn business man and street railroad
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president. They have three daughters and a son-Seymour Le Grand Cromwell. Born at Cornwall-on-Hudson. February 16. 1843. Mr. Cromwell is the son of the late David Cromwell, a business man of New York City, and Rebecca Bowman, a descendant of John Bowman. who came from England in 1661. He is lineally descended from John Cromwell, of Cromwell's Neck, Westchester County, whose father. Colonel John Cromwell, was a cousin of Oliver Cromwell, the famous Lord Protector, and, like him, a cadet of the ancient house of Crom- well, of Hinchinbrook. England.
BANTA, THEODORE MELVIN, Cashier of the New York Life Insurance Company, was born in New York City, November 23, 1831. the son of the late Albert Zabriskie Banta and Sarah Ann, daughter of Calvin Sayre. He is lineally descended from Epke Jacobse Banta. who came to New Amsterdam from Harlingen, Friesland, in 1659; from Thomas Sayre, who, in 1836, emigrated from Bedfordshire, Eng- land, to Lynn, Mass., subsequently becoming a founder of Southamp- ton, L. I., in 1641; and from Philemon Dickerson, a founder of South- old, L. I., in 1641. He was educated in the public schools of this city and the College of the City of New York; from 1849 to 1858 was an accountant; had charge of the actuary work of the New York Life Insurance Company from 1858 to 1863, and in the latter year became its Cashier. A few years ago he rendered an invaluable service to this corporation, his integrity and fearlessness leading him to expose the mismanagement under a former president through the New York Times, thus bringing about the election of John A. McCall as Presi- dent and the reorganization under him. He has been President of the Baptist Social Union of Manhattan, and was Treasurer of the Bap- tist Social Union of Brooklyn. Since 1891 he has been Secretary of the Holland Society. He is a member of the Reform and Twilight clubs. the St. Nicholas, Huguenot, and Colonial Wars societies, and several historical and scientific organizations. He is author of a volume on the Banta family. He married, in 1862, Cornelia Crane, and has two daughters, graduates of Wellesley College.
BELDING, MILO MERRICK, extensive manufacturer of sewing silk, is President of Belding Brothers & Company, President of the American Union Life Insurance Company, Vice-President of the Commonwealth Insurance Company, of which he was one of the found- ers and the first President; a director of the Livonia and Lake Conseus Railroad Company, and a director of the Retsof Mining Company. He was formerly President of the Livonia Salt and Mining Company. as he was also of the St. Lawrence Marble Company. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Silk Association, the Colonial and Merchants' Central clubs, the Sons of the Revolution, and the Or- der of the Founders and Patriots of America. In 1858 he married
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Emily C., daughter of William Leonard, of Ashfield, Mass., and a descendant of Captain Noadiah Leonard, of the Revolution, and has one son-Milo Merrick, Jr. Mr. Belding was born in Ashfield, Mass., April 3, 1833, and is the son of Hiram Belding, grandson of John Beld- ? ing, a Revolutionary soldier, and lineally descended from William Belding, of Wethersfield, Conn., about 1640. At the age of seventeen he entered the employ of a mercantile firm of Pittsfield, Mass. Later he established a business of his own in Western Massachusetts. His father and brothers established themselves in Michigan in 1858, and he began to send them invoices of silk. Their success in handling these led to the opening of a silk house in Chicago in 1863, and one in New . York in 1865. The next year a silk mill was established in Rockville, V't., followed by one in Northampton, Mass. A mill was subsequently erected in Belding, Mich., a village founded by them, and now con- taining 5,000 inhabitants. They now have five silk mills and maintain offices in nine principal cities of the United States.
BELDING, MILO MERRICK, JR., is Treasurer of Belding Brothers & Company, the notable silk manufacturing corporation of which his father is President; is Treasurer of the American Union Life Insur- ance Company, and a director of the Commonwealth Insurance Com- pany, the Retsof Mining Company, the Park National Bank of Holy- oke, Mass., and the Livonia and Lake Conseus Railroad. He is a mem- ber of the Chamber of Commerce, the Union League, Colonial, New York Athletic, Montauk. Marine and Field, Merchants' Central, and West Side Republican clubs, the Sons of the Revolution, and the Or- der of Founders and Patriots of America. He was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., April 14, 1865; attended the Adelphi Academy of that city, and was prepared for college by a private tutor. On his father's side, trac- ing his line to William Belding, who arrived in this country between 1633 and 1635; through his mother, he descends from John Leonard, who came in 1635.
LANGDON, WOODBURY, head of the firm of Joy, Langdon & Company, one of the largest drygoods commission houses in the United States, is in other respects also one of the most prominent citizens of New York City. He is President of the Cannelton Coal Company, a trustee of the New York Life Insurance Company, and a director of the Central National Bank, the National Bank of Com- merce, the German-American Insurance Company, and the German Alliance Insurance Company. For many years a prominent member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, he has been a member of its Executive Committee since 1888, and at present is Vice-President. By the Mayor of New York City he was appointed in 1890 a Rapid Transit Commissioner of the City and County of New York, and on November 19, 1896, was appointed to succeed Seth Low on the present Board of
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