USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume III, Pt. 2 > Part 20
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DINSMORE, WILLIAM B., Secretary of the Adams Express Com- pany, is the son-in-law of the late Alvin Adams, its founder and first president, and is the son of the late William B. Dinsmore, who became Mr. Adams's associate in the infancy of the enterprise, and succeeded him as its president. He was born in New York City in 1844. was educated here, and is a member of the Union League, Racquet, New
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York Athletic, New York Yacht, and Rockaway Hunting clubs. He married, in 1866, Helen F., daughter of Alvin Adams, and has two daughters and a son, William B. Dinsmore, Jr.
YETMAN, HUBBARD R., educated in the public schools of Eng- lishtown, N. J., Woodhull's Institute, Freehold, N. J., and Mount Hermon Institute, Tottenville. S. I., for nearly twenty years was engaged as a teacher in the public schools of Staten Island. and has subsequently followed the profession of civil engineer. He was Engineer of Roads in the town of Westfield, and was Engineer of the Tottenville Waterworks. He has held the offices of State Assembly- man, Supervisor of Richmond County, Justice of the Peace, and School Commissioner. He was a Volunteer during the Civil War, although but a mere youth at the time. He is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Protestant Episcopal Church. Born in Monmouth County, N. J., August 28, 1847, he is the son of William A. Yetman and Mary A., daughter of Hubbard Rively, and is the grandson of Jeremiah Yetman and great-grandson of John Yet- man. His paternal ancestors were of English and Irish, and his ma- ternal ancestors of Dutch descent.
MOODY, LEONARD, engaged in the real estate business in Brook- lyn since 1869, has been connected with many public enterprises. He was one of the organizers of the Real Estate Exchange, of Brook- lyn, and is Chairman of its Building Committee. He was one of the founders of the Montauk Club, for five years was one of its directors, and served on its Building Committee. He was one of the founders of the Oxford Club, and was one of the original members of the Union League Club, of Brooklyn. One of the founders of the Berke- ley Institute, he is a member of its Board of Trustees and a member of its Building Committee. He is a life member of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and one of its trustees. He was an organizer and charter member of the Co-operative Building Bank, of Brooklyn, and was its Vice-President for a term of years. He has been Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. He is now President of the Geneva Mineral Water Company, and a director of the Hamilton Trust Company, the Kings County Bank, and the City Savings Bank. Under his supervision was built the Fougera Apartment House, the largest in Brooklyn. In February, 1884, by a skillful real estate coup, he secured for the United States Govern- ment at a reasonable price the Johnson Street Federal Building site, thus ending an agitation of sixteen years' duration, and defeating various schemes to charge exorbitant prices for proposed sites. In addition to those already mentioned, he is a member of the Brooklyn Riding and Driving and Field and Marine clubs, as he is also of U. S. Grant Post, Grand Army of the Republic; Central Lodge, Free
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and Accepted Masons, the four Aurora Grata Scottish Rite organiza- tions, and Kismet Temple, Mystic Shrine. He is an influential mem- ber of the Republican party. He was born in East Pittston, Me., September 27, 1839, the son of Nathaniel Moody, and grandson of Jeremiah Moody, a native of England, whose wife was of Scotch descent. Having remained upon his father's farm until the age of twelve, between then and the age of sixteen he shipped before the mast. Returning to East Pittston, he purchased a farm which he still owns. From 1857 to 1859 he was engaged in lumbering in Virginia, dealing in white oak timber for shipbuilding purposes. He responded to the first call for volunteers in the Civil War, and was among the . forces assigned to Fortress Monroe. He subsequently assisted in raising the Twenty-first Maine Volunteers. Discharged in 1863 on account of disability through fever contracted in the swamps of Vir- ginia, he married in that year Marianna Henrietta, daughter of Henri Quantin, a New York importing merchant, of French descent. After a residence of a few years in Maine, in January, 1869, Mr. and Mrs. Moody made Brooklyn their home.
BURROUGHS, JAMES SCHOONMAKER, at fifteen years of age became a clerk with Schieffelin Brothers, of New York City, the well- known wholesale drug firm whose present style is Schieffelin & Com- pany, and remained with them for ten years. He then formed a part- nership with George W. Hubbard as drug and chemical brokers, and still continues this business under the style of J. S. Burroughs & Com- pany. He is an active member of the Dutch Reformed Church, of which denomination his great-grandfather, Rev. Martinus Schoon- maker, of Flatbush, L. I., was a clergyman. He is himself the son of George W. Burroughs and Sarah Schoonmaker, and descends from John Burroughs who, born in Dorsetshire, England, in 1617, was a member of the Long Parliament, which convened in 1640, and was dissolved by Cromwell, and to escape persecution by the latter immi- grated to Salem, Mass., about 1612. He was one of the founders of Middlebury, L. I., in 1652; in 1666 was one of the seven original paten- tees of Newtown, L. I., and boasting the rare accomplishment for those days of legible penmanship, was for eleven years Town Clerk of Newtown. Mr. Burroughs's country-seat at Newtown, inherited from his father, has been in the family for ninety-six years, while four generations have been born beneath its roof.
WALTER, MARTIN, is a director of the Tremont Building and Loan Association, the Bronx Borough Bank, and the Retail Grocers' Publishing Company; is a member of the Executive Committee of the North Side Board of Trade, Borough of the Bronx, and a member of the Taxpayers' Alliance of the same section of the city. He was born
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in New York City, November 2, 1856. the son of Martin Walter.and Elizabeth, daughter of Martin Rich, of Würtemberg, Germany. His father and grandfather were born in Guetzenbrigk, Alsace, of an old military family, and immigrated to the United States when Mr. Wal- ter's father was two years of age. After being graduated from Grammar School. No. 63, New York City, Mr. Walter entered the em- ploy of Paulsen & Bamman, grocers. At the end of six years he be- came the partner of one of his employers in a grocery business at Tremont, under the style of. Jacob F. Paulsen & Company, which sub- sequently became Paulsen & Walter. Mr. Walter managed the busi- ness. He led his firm to acquire a farm of sixteen acres at Mount Hope, which was laid out in lots. and disposed of within a year. Other property was similarly handled. Mr. Walter terminated his connection with the grocery business, and has since devoted him- self exclusively to real estate. He married, in 1891. Elizabeth. daughter of John Negenah, a large stockraiser of Chapin, Ill., and has a daughter.
LAIMBEER, WILLIAM, merchant, of Brooklyn, was one of the pioneers in business at the Atlantic Dock, building the first stores on the North Pier. He was one of those who, in order to encourage the establishment of a ferry service from Whitehall Street, New York City, to Hamilton Avenue. Brooklyn, signed an indemnity bond. His son, Richard Harper Laimbeer, became his partner in 1845, and his successor in 1853, when he retired. His declining years were spent on his farm at Amsterdam. N. Y., where he died, December 13, 1861, at the age of sixty-nine. He married Thomazine Harper.
LAIMBEER, RICHARD HARPER, long prominent in the grain warehouse business. is at the present time Vice-President of the New York Produce Exchange, having long been a member of its Board of Managers, and is a director of the Eagle Lock Company, and the New York Produce Exchange and Safe Deposit Storage Company, and a . Trustee of the South Brooklyn Savings Institution. He was formerly Vice-President of the New York Produce Exchange Bank. and a di- rector of the Standard Mining Company, of California. He was en- gaged in the storage warehouse business from 1845 to 1868, as head of the firm of R. H. Laimbeer & Company. Upon the organization of the Grain Warehouse Company in 1872, he became its Treasurer, and with the organization of the Grain Warehousing Company in 1874 he also became its Treasurer. He was born June 22, 1825. the son of the late William Laimbeer and Thomazine Harper, his father being a prominent Brooklyn merchant. May 21, 1848, he married Kate J., daughter of John Radcliffe, of Port Jackson, N. Y., and has a son. Hon. Richard H. Laimbeer, Jr., and two daughters.
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LAMONT, DANIEL SCOTT, Secretary of War during the second term of President Cleveland, is Vice-President of the Northern Pacific Railway Company, and is a director of more than forty railroad cor- porations, constituting the great Northern Pacific system, standing in administrative relation to this system somewhat like Chauncey M. Depew to the Vanderbilt system. He is also President of the Northern Pacific Express Company, trustee of the American Surety Company, director of the National Union Bank, Vice-President of the Northwestern Improvement Company, and trustee of the Puget Sound and Alaska Steamship Company and the Vir- ginia Land and Townsite Company. Of Scotch-Irish descent, he was born on a farm in McGrawville, Cortland County, N. Y., February 9, 1831. He left Union College before fin- ishing the course to accept the editorship of the Demo- crat, in his native county. Becoming active in Demo- cratic politics, in 1870, he was appointed Engrossing Clerk of the New York Assembly, and Chief Clerk, Department of State. He also served on the staff of the Albany Argus. He rendered as- sistance in the preparation of Grover Cleveland's first message as Governor, and was appointed Private Secretary. Ile held the sameposition during DANIEL SCOTT LAMONT. Cleveland's first term as President, and distinguished himself for tact and discretion. At the close of the administration he began to enter upon his present affilia- tions with a syndicate of capitalists. Following his able administra- tion of the portfolio of War, from the spring of 1893 to that of 1897, he resumed these engagements. He edited a volume of Cleveland's speeches under the title, " Public Office a Public Trust."
GAUTIER, DUDLEY GREGORY, steel manufacturer, is head of the firm of D. G. Gautier & Company, with extensive works in Jersey City and main offices in this city. He is a member of the Union and
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the Meadowbrook Hunt clubs and the Downtown Association. He resides at Hempstead, L. I. Born in Jersey City, February 2, 1847, and educated in Germany, he is the eldest son of the late Dr. Josiah Hornblower Gautier, of Jersey City, and his wife, Mary Louisa, daughter of Hon. Dudley S. Gregory. His father was graduated from the University of New York, and from its Medical Department, and, after practicing for some time in Jersey City, became founder and head of J. Il. Gautier & Company, manufacturers of plumbago crucibles. Mr. Gautier's grandfather, Dr. Thomas Brown Gautier, was an eminent physician of Hudson County, New Jersey; was grad- uated from the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1823. also receiving the degree of M.D. from Rutgers College in 1831, and married Elizabeth, daughter of Josiah Hornblower and Anna Mer- selis. Mr. Gautier is also fourth in descent from Thomas Gautier, a prominent lawyer of New York and New Jersey, and is fifth from Andrew Gautier, educated in King's College (now Columbia). whose wife was Mary, daughter of Captain Brown and Mary Ten Eyck. of Bergen County, New Jersey. Captain Brown commanded a privateer in the French wars and during the Revolution was a member of the Bergen County Committee of Correspondence and otherwise promi- nent in the patriot cause. Andrew Gautier, sixth in the line, was a wealthy New Yorker, Assistant Alderman from 1765 to 1777, and Alderman from 1769 to 1773. He was the son of Daniel Gautier aud Maria Bogaert, and grandson of Jacques Gautier, original emigrant, of an ancient family of St. Blanchard, Languedoc. France.
ACKER, DAVID D .. one of the founders, and. prior to his death, the head of the firm of Acker, Merrall & Condit, large retail grocers. was Vice-President of the New York National Exchange Bank, and an influential member of the Chamber of Commerce, Produce Ex- change, and Maritime Exchange. He was a member of the Holland Society, and of St. Thomas's Church. He declined a nomination for Congress in New Jersey, where he also maintained a residence. Born in Bergen County, New Jersey, June 13, 1822, of old Dutch stock. in 1833 he entered the employ of T. & A. S. Hope. of this city, faner grocers. Thomas Hope & Company. as the firm had become, was succeeded in 1857 by Acker, Merrall & Company, William J. Merrall and John W. Condit being Mr. Acker's partners. In 1868 the present style of Acker. Merrall & Condit was adopted. Three large stores in - this city and one in Yonkers have been established. Mr. Acker died March 23, 1888, leaving a wife and seven children.
ACKER, CHARLES LIVINGSTON, at the time of his death. in 1891, was a member of the firm of Acker, Merrall & Condit, of which his father, the late David de Peyster Acker, was the founder and so long the head. He was also an officer of a number of important
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corporations. He was Vice-President of the Hudson River Bank. He was a member of the Holland Society and of several clubs. He was born in New York City in 1846, and married Helena, daughter of Hon. James J. Brinckerhoff, formerly a member of the New Jersey Senate. Three daughters and his son, Charles Livingston, Jr., survive him.
ACKER, FRANKLIN, son of the late David de Peyster Acker, founder of the firm of Acker, Merrall & Condit, was born in New York City, February 16, 1853. He attended the public schools of the city, an academy at Weston, Conn., and in 1870 entered the employ of his father's firm. He became a partner in 1888, but retired in 1892. He is a director of the Fiberite Company and the David D. Acker Com- pany, and a member of the Holland Society, and the Colonial, Com- mercial, and Hardware clubs. He married, in 1884, Emma, daughter of Hon. James J. Brinckerhoff, formerly State Senator of New Jersey, and has two sons, David de Peyster and Irving Fairchild Acker.
BISSELL, PELHAM ST. GEORGE, is engaged in the management of the large real estate interests inherited from his father, the late George H. Bissell, and is also interested in the manufacture of paper. He organized the Adirondacks Pulp Company, and is one of its larg- est owners. He was born in New York City, December 5, 1858; at- tended the Columbia Grammar School, and in 1880 was graduated from Columbia College. He is a member of the New York Athletic Club, the New York Historical Society, the Sons of the Revolution, and the Columbia College Alumni Association. IIe married Helen Alsop, daughter of Colonel Thomas J. French, and has one son. Pel- ham St. George, Jr. Mr. Bissell's mother was Ophie Louise Griffin, while through his distinguished father he descends from the Hugue- not, John Bissell, who was one of the founders of Windsor, Conn., hav- ing arrived in Plymouth Colony as early as 1628.
RENWICK. EDWARD S .. enjoys a high reputation. both as an able engineer and as a solicitor and expert in patent cases. It is be- lieved that no one now living has been engaged as an expert in a greater number of notable patent cases. He is a member of the Union, Engineers, New York Yacht. and Adirondack League clubs. the Scientific Alliance, and the American Geographical Society. He was born in this city. January 3. 1823. and is the son of the late James Renwick, LL.D., who occupied a chair in Columbia College. After being himself graduated from Columbia, he engaged for some time as an iron manufacturer until the enactment of the tariff of 1846 dis- couraged such enterprise. In April. 1849. he established himself at Washington as a patent solicitor in partnership with Peter II. Wat- son, under the firm style of Watson & Renwick. On May 13. 1851. they obtained the first patent for a self-binding reaper, and shortly
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after patented certain improvements. All the machines of the pres- ent day embody these patents. In 1855 Mr. Renwick returned and established himself in this city. With his brother, H. B. Renwick, he - was at one time engaged in repairing the steamship Great Eastern. He was married to Alice Brevoort in 1862, and has two sons and a daughter. One of the sons, Edward B., is a member of the firm of Pirsson & Renwick, stone merchants; the other, William W., is a member of the well-known firm of Renwick, Aspinwall & Renwick, architects.
HARTLEY, MARCELLUS, prominent gun and rifle merchant of New York City, is an officer of a large number of important corpora- tions. He is President of the Remington Arms Company, President of the Bridgeport Gun Implement Company, of Bridgeport, Conn .; President of the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, of the same; a Trustee of the American Surety Company and the American Deposit and Loan Company, and a Director of the German-American Bank. the Lincoln National Bank, the Western National Bank, the Mercan- tile Trust Company, the Fifth Avenue Trust Company, the Manhattan Railway, the Equitable Life Assurance Society, the American District Telegraph Company, the Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing Company, and the Audit Company. He is a member of the Union League. Riding, Lawyers', Presbyterian, Republican, and Essex County Country clubs, and the New England Society. He married Frances Chester, daughter of Dr. S. Pomroy White. He is the eldest son of the late Robert Milbam Hartley and Catherine, daughter of Reuben Munson, his father having been a well-known philanthropist of this city, and his maternal grandfather a prominent merchant. an Alderman, and Member of the Assembly.
JAMES, THOMAS LEMUEL, Postmaster of New York under Pres- ident Grant and President Hayes, and Postmaster-General of the United States in the Cabinet of President Garfield. has been Presi- dent of the Lincoln National Bank of this city since January. 1882. when he retired as Postmaster-General, and is President of the Ar- verne Improvement Company, and a director of the Franklin National Bank, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the Anglo-American Savings and Loan Association, the International Pulp Company, the : Love Electric Traction Company. the Hall Signal Company. the New Jersey Shore Line Railroad Company, and the Harriman and North- eastern Railroad, being also Treasurer of the latter. Born in Utica. N. Y., March 29, 1831, he was educated in the public schools, learned the printer's trade, and became joint proprietor of the Madison County Journal, which he subsequently consolidated with the Democratic Reflector as the Democratic Republican. He was Canal Collector at
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Hamilton, N. Y .. from 1854 to 1856. Coming to New York in 1861, he held the positions of Inspector and Weigher of Teas under Col- lector of the Port Hiram Barney, and under his successor, Thomas Murphy was Deputy Collector of the Third Division. Entering. March 17. 1873, upon his duties of Postmaster of New York, under appoint- ment by President Grant, he won renown by his vigorous reorganiza- tion of an indifferent service, making it adequate to the business ne- cessities of the city. He reduced the employees to a disciplined work- ing force. President Hayes re-appointed him. He refused the offer of the latter to make him Collector of the Port, as he did also the portfolio of Postmaster-Gen-
eral, offered him in 1880, when Postmaster-General Key was made United States
Circuit Judge. But he en- tered the Cabinet of Garfield as Postmaster-General, and again distinguished himself by a reorganization and in- vestigation, which ferreted out the notorious " Star
Route " frauds. " News- papers were subsidized at the capital and in other cities to attack the Postmaster- General and his assistants in the most obnoxious and de- termined manner, but none of these affected Mr. James in the way of causing him to lessen his efforts to break up the nest of dishonest officials, whose nefarious work was speedily laid bare before THOMAS LEMUEL JAMES. him. The dishonest mail routes were cut off, faithless employees were dismissed, and the gen- eral tone of the service was strengthened and improved. He had been met on his entrance into office by the fact of an annual deficit of $2,000,000. The reductions which he made in the Star Route serv- ice and the steamboat service amounted to over $2,000,000; while his thorough investigation into the abuses and frauds of the Post- office department resulted in the famous. Star Route trials, and re- vealed the scandals which had existed in that service prior to his assuming charge of it. Applying, as far as it was practicable, the . civil-service methods which had been in operation in the New York Postoffice to his new field of operations, the postal service was made
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self-sustaining, up to the time when the rate of postage was reduced by Act of Congress." Several institutions have conferred the degrees of A.M. and LL.D. upon Mr. James.
FULTON, ROBERT (for portrait, see Volume I. of this work, page 259), although not the inventor of the steamboat, was the first to dem- onstrate its commercial utility. He was born in Little Britain, Pa .. in 1765, and died February 24, 1815. He early developed mechanical and artistic talent. From 1782 to 1786 he resided in Philadelphia, supporting himself as a mechanical draughtsman and a painter of miniatures and landscapes. He went to London in 1786, and studied under Benjamin West, the famous artist. Under the influence of the Duke of Bridgewater he subsequently took up civil engineering. He made several inventions of utility in canal improvement, and pub- lished a treatise on this subject, which attracted some attention. During the next few years he was at Paris, living with the family of Joel Barlow. The first panorama in Paris, exhibited in 1800, was contrived by Fulton. In 1797 he engaged in experiments in sub- marine torpedoes. His submarine explosives attracted the attention of the governments of France and Great Britain, his experiments in blowing up hulk's being successful; but as he refused to give exclusive rights to either government, they dropped the matter. He also con- structed a submarine boat, which he could manage under water for several hours at a time. In 1801, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, then United States Minister to France, interested him in the subject of steamboat invention, Livingston having acquired the monopoly of steam navigation on the Hudson, originally conferred by the New York Legislature on Fitch, the inventor of the steamboat. In 1803 Fulton completed a steamboat on the Seine. It sank to the bottom on the first trial, but was resurrected and repaired and made success- ful trips. Livingston and Fulton returned to America in 1806, and Fulton began the construction of the steamboat Clermont, on the Hudson. In August, 1807, this boat began to make trips between New York City and Albany. The following year Fulton married Livingston's niece, while the Chancellor transferred to him the monop- oly of steam navigation on the Hudson. Fulton enjoyed these rights during life, but after his death the courts declared the monopoly · unconstitutional. In 1812, Fulton constructed his first steam ferry- boat, to ply between New York and Jersey City. A little later he put ferryboats in operation between New York and Brooklyn. From his plans the first steamboat on the Mississippi was built in 1811. In 1814. Fulton launched the first steam frigate for the United States- Fulton the First-authorized by Congress for the defense of New York Harbor. Fulton did not live to see its completion.
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MORSE, SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE, the first to devise a success- ful system of communicating intelligence by means of electricity, was born in Charlestown, Mass., April 27, 1791, and died in New York City, April 2, 1872. He was graduated from Yale in 1810, and studied painting in London under Washington Allston and Benjamin West. Returning to America in 1815, he established a studio in Boston. A little later he traveled in New England and the South, and among his commissions, painted a portrait of President Monroe for the city of Charleston, S. C. In 1820 he removed to New Haven, Conn., while from 1823 he resided in New York City. In 1824 he was appointed attaché to the Mexican Legation. In 1825 he painted a portrait of Lafayette for the City of New York. From 1826 to 1845 he was Presi- dent of the National Academy of Design. Engaged in the study of the old masters in Europe from 1829 to 1832, he also became interested in the various experiments looking to the conveying of intelligence by electricity. While returning to America on the ship Sully, in Octo- ber, 1832, the principle of his alpha- bet of " dots and dashes " occurred to him, and was enthusiastically communicated to his fellow-pas- sengers. The alphabet was formu- lated by the time he arrived on shore, but years of tedious and trying ex- perimentation followed. In 1835 he was able to send messages on a half- mile of wire arranged in his room. In 1837 he applied for a patent, and also to Congress for an appropria- tion for an experimental line. It SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE. was not until March 4, 1843, that the
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