USA > New York > Oneida County > Utica > Memorial history of Utica, N.Y. : from its settlement to the present time > Part 70
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His active interest in public affairs and his prominent connection with some of the most stirring events happening in his time have necessarily made him to a certain ex- tent a conspicuous figure among his fellow citizens, by whom he is held in universal esteem. Notwithstanding the fact that he has persistently held aloof from politics, preferring the more congenial pursuits of literature and historical research, he has sev- eral times been asked to become a candidate for municipal positions, but while ap-
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preciating the honor he has declined all political preferment. His work is performed quietly among his books, from which he feels that nothing save the gravest condition of public affairs can separate him. For several years he held the office of president of the Young Men's Christian Association of Utica, his present adopted home, and he is now one of its directors. Those who are familiar with the past struggles of that association for life concede that he carried it through the most critical period of its history. As n re- sult of those ardnous undertakings an elegant structure has been erected for the Utien Young Men's Christian Association by its friends, and the building is considered one of the most conspicuous ornaments of the city. General Darling was also a member of the State Executive Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations and on the ex- piration of his term of office in 1888 he was elected one of its trustees. His interest in religious matters, however, is not confined to affairs connected with this department of Christian work. He is a ruling elder in the First Presbyterinn Church of Utica, and in the private life to which he has retired he is the object of the warm regard of a large circle of friends. Through his connection with the Oneidn Historical Society he has culti- vated his taste for historical studies and his literary productions are numerous. He never writes for pecumary compensation, and the monographs, brochures, essays, ex- cerpta, etc., which he frequently sends out are printed for private distribution.
On the 21st of December, 1857, General Darling married Angeline E., second daugh- ter of Jacob A. Robertson, a wealthy and highly respected citizen of New York, His father was Archibald Robertson, the Scotch artist who painted from life the celebrated miniatures on ivory of General and Martha Washington, during the time when he was sojourning as a guest in the family of the "First President." His brothers were An- drew J., Alexander H. (who nt the time of his decease was grand master of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York), and Anthony L., sur- rogate of New York in 1848 and chief justice of the Superior Court m 1860-69. A sister of these brothers married Henry Winslow, founder of the banking house bearing his name. Another sister married Robert N. Tinson, of England and well known as a resident of New York city. General Darling has no children to inherit the honor of n good name, but his fondness for the little ones makes him always a favorite with them.
In 1891 he was elected president of the Uplands Park Investment Company, of Pu- eblo, Col., and when this company merged its interests in the South Side Land Syndi- cate Company, of the same place, he became its president. This organization hns n capital paid in of $518,000; it was incorporated under the Inws of Colorado and its home office is in Denver. W. H. Chamberlin, of the Chamberlin Investment Company, is associated with him as first vice-president and A. W. Chamberlin, of the same com- pany, is treasurer. With such strong influence ns this company can command it bids fair to become an important factor in building up the young city of Pueblo, which is already becoming a formidable rival of Denver, 150 miles distant. General Darling hna also recently been selected as a member of the advisory council of the World's Con- gress Auxiliary of the World's Columbian Exposition on historical literature. This congress is authorized and supported by the Exposition corporation for the purpose of bringing about a series of conventions of the leaders, at home and abroad, in the vari- ous departments of human progress during the Exposition season of 1893. It has been
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approved and recognized by the government of the United States, and its general an- nouncement has been sent to foreign governments by the Department of State. An appropriation on account of its expenses has been made by an act of Congress.
General Darling is a "Son of the Revolution " by reason of his being a great-grand- son of Gen. Robert Davis, of the artillery under General Washington. He is also a member of the American Historical Association and of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society ; Fellow of the Society of Science, Letters, and Art, Lon- don, England, and associate member of the Victoria Institute; honorary member of the Chautauqua Society of History and Natural Science, New York; Waterloo His- torical Society, New York; New Jersey Historical Society, Alabama Historical Society, Mississippi Historical Society, Iowa Historical Society, and Alaska Historical Society ; and corresponding member of the American Ethnological Society, Academy of Anthro- pology, American Numismatic and Archeological Society, Buffalo Historical Society, and the Cayuga County Historical Society, all of New York. In the State of Maine he is in the same manner connected with the Bangor Historical Society ; in New Hamp- shire with the Historical Society of Concord; in Vermont with the Middlebury Historical Society ; in Massachusetts with the New England Historic-Genealogical So- ciety, the Dedham Historical Society, the Old Colony Historical Society, and the Ips- wich Historical Society ; in Rhode Island with the Newport Historical Society; in Connecticut with the Connecticut Historical Society, the New Haven Colony Histor- ical Society, the Fairfield County Historical Society, and the Saugatuck Historical So- ciety ; in Ohio with the State Archaeological and Historical Society and the Western Reserve Historical Society ; in Pennsylvania with the Numismatic and Antiquarian So- ciety, the Linnean Historical and Scientific Society, and the Wyoming Geological and Historical Society ; in New Jersey with the Burlington County Lyceum of History and Natural Science; in North Carolina with the Historical Society of Chapel Hill; in In- diana with the Geological and Historical Society at Indianapolis ; in Maryland with the Historical Society of Baltimore; in Virginia with the Historical Society at Richmond; in Georgia with the Historical Society at Savannah; in Tennessee with the Historical Society at Nashville; in Wisconsin with the Historical Society at Madison ; in Minne- sota with the Historical Society of St. Paul; in Kansas with the Historical Society at Topeka; in Nebraska with the Historical Society at Lincoln; in California with the Historical Society at San Francisco and Los Angeles; and in Canada with the Quebec Historical Society. He is a life member of the Oneida Historical Society at Utica, N. Y., and its corresponding secretary.
W JILLIAMS, ROBERT STANTON, the youngest surviving child of William and Sophia Williams, was born in Utica, September 10, 1828. His father being at this time in rather straightened circumstances the boy learned in early youth to un- derstand the restrictions and trials inseparable from poverty. After the sale of his book store Colonel Williams removed in 1836 with his family to Tonawanda to take charge of an estate of which he was part owner in connection with Henry Huntington, of Rome. Life on an Erie County farm in the earlier years of the century meant hard
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work and little recreation, exterior conditions not likely to teach a child much un- less it were the art of going deep, of tracing to their sources the ways of nature, and obtaining those sound and thorough habits which spring from intimacy with country living. Whatever childhood in a Western village may be to the imagination its reality in the case of Robert Williams was not sufficiently attractive to have crowded his memory in after years with many recollections of the place. Having passed his tenth birthday he was placed with Henry Ivison (his father's former apprentice in the Utica book-bindery), at that time a prosperous bookseller in Auburn. An agreement was made under which the boy was received in the family of his employer and allowed to pay for the cost of board and schooling by doing odd jobs in the store and learning the book-binder's trade. But Mr. Ivison, though a just man, was a Scotchman, and as the lad became increasingly useful his duties developed to the detriment of his lessons until hardly any time at all remained for study. Under these circumstances he served in some respects a rather painful apprenticeship in Auburn, the reminiscence of which has occasion- ally returned to him as a fitful cause of dejection. Eager and industrious as he normally was he naturally failed of success in his classes when continually kept away from them to assist in the bindery or at the book store. Of his education he has been heard to speak with disparagement, asserting that he got little by the brief and irregular periods of his schooling. To a mind, nevertheless, accustomed from the first to self-instruction with its subjective development, mere presence in a class-room is of secondary importance His training was one which fits men to deal with real persons and things, though it never became simply an outgrowth of worldly wisdom. He did not neglect the duty every mind owes to itself of making steps forward in culture, and even as a hard- worked boy he often renounced the pleasures dear to children of his age in order to sat- isfy an appetite for literature, whetted, probably, by his environment in the book store. Cultivation which comes in this way is never a thing to be afterward forgotten or set aside in a busy career ; it is a matter of the heart as well as of the intellect and estab- lishes that balance and unity with oneself which is, next to spiritual peace, the highest service of mind to material happiness.
If at this time Mr. Williams's contention was true in the conventional sense that he learned nothing he at least became something. But the strain of over-many duties presently told on his health, and by the summer of 1842 he was compelled to seek the rest and change of country life. During the two following years he lived on the farm of his uncle, James Wells, at New Hartford, where with his brother Edward he became acquainted with the approved methods of Oneida County farming. In 1844 he went to Brooklyn, where his brother Dwight, now of Utica, was living, and there attended school for a term. Returning in the winter to Auburn he re-entered Mr. Ivison's em- ploy, remaining with him until September, 1846. The appetite for learning was not yet appeased in spite of this hopeful opening in a business career. Broken in health his father was quite unable to aid his younger children in their education, but by some additional exertion, furthered doubtless by the interest of older brothers, the young man was able to resume his schooling. This time, with better success in his selection than before, he entered the Cortland Academy at Homer, then under the management of Samuel B. Woolworth, afterward secretary of the Regents of the University of the
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State of New York, and in this institution he remained until March, 1848, nearly com- pleting his preparation for college.
The slender accumulation of means seems to have been at length exhausted. Those were the days when universities, by an all but absolute custom, were closed to poor boys who had no distinct aims toward professional careers, the knowledge which is in- bibed from contact with great seats of learning being supposed to benefit only the not- ably rich or clever lads in a community. Though for this reason " defrauded," as Charles Lamb somewhere says of himself, "of the sweet food of academic instruction " he did not, while earning a living, suffer his mind to starve for want of such nourish- ment as good and plentiful reading could supply. After a year spent in Utica he re- ceived an appointment (July, 1849) in the railway mail service as route agent between Albany and Buffalo. The work was fatiguing in the extreme, and railway travel in that day was not only tiresome, but rendered dangerous by frequent accidents. An incident is related which illustrates his broad conception of duty in this position, charac- terizing a man who is more than his words, whose moral size is measured by disinter- ested fidelity to others. He soon discovered that an immense amount of petty pur- loinings was practiced by government servants. Doubtless the checks upon dishonesty were not as systematic and effective then as now, but operations of this sort when- ever he met them outraged that irrefragable rectitude which is a part of his Puritan heredity and prompted him to especial efforts in behalf of the service. On one occa- sion, when the unaccountable consumption of canvas mail-bags along his route was suf- ficient to palpably cripple the distribution of the newspaper mails, he got permission to employ a holiday in investigating the deficit. He observed in a certain village where the postmaster was a miller that the flour sacks appeared to be of an unusually stout make, and following up the clue found at the mill a heap of canvas mail-bags which the thrifty operator had accumulated and made fit for his private purposes by turning inside out to conceal the government mark. Such disclosures of fraud were not unat- tended with discomfort to the agent who made them, for officials with a political "pull" did not scruple to revenge their disgrace if they could ; but Mr. Williams has always believed that real evils were to be combated and overthrown at every hazard, and the peril of pursuing them probably never occupied his thoughts.
Early in the year 1852 he resigned his position to attend his brother James during a fatal illness, which terminated in March of that year, and with his return to his native town begins Mr. Williams's permanent and intimate association with its progress and interests. Without marked predilection for any particular occupation it was perhaps an accident at first that secured him a place as book-keeper in the City Bank, but the choice once made was most fortunate for the exercise of his abilities to their best ad- vantage. Emphatically masculine, robust, and sane, accomplishing his ends by shere force of honesty, of being in the right rather than by mere cleverness, he soon won from those who could best judge his course that confidence and respect which constitute the necessary moral capital of every successful banker. To a man of his singleness and intensity there could be no question of the indispensable nature of this kind of credit. Since to the great majority actual genius is denied to some a compensating gift of in- dustry is given, the value of which is often higher in correlation to the conditions of
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modern life, and it was the development of this quality which earned the young clerk the precious reputation in the community of being " prompt, accurate, and reliable." While in his subordinate position he lost no opportunity of improving his technical knowledge. To this end, when one of his senior fellow clerks became restless by being kept long after banking hours, he induced him as a favor to teach him the method used in his department, and was soon able to take care of part of his and all of his own books, while his friend prolonged his restful sessions in the pursuit of literary fame. This sort of devoted diligence earns its reward even outside of the region of moral fic- tion ; the directors of the Oneida Bank had, it may be inferred, a pretty definite con- ception of his working capacity when they induced him to enter their employ in Octo- ber, 1854, the same month in which he was married. During his term of nearly forty years, the longest service of any individual in this bank, Mr. Williams has passed successively through all its grades and concerned himself heartily in its welfare. As one of Utica's business institutions its history belongs elsewhere and we need not lin- ger in this place to repeat his share in the story. After a few months in the position of book-keeper he was made teller in February, 1855; from this, in 1863, he was pro- moted to the chair of managing cashier and at the same time elected a director. As cashier he conducted for nearly a quarter of a century the affairs and policy of the bank, which he has retained in his control during his term as president, an office given him upon the death of A. J. Williams in 1886.
With increasing years have come multiplying opportunities for good and faithful serv- ice in many fields, while the essential characteristics of the inan remain unchanged. His performances in the business and industrial community have latterly been on a larger scale, but they are of a piece with his early work and have fitly crowned it with success. To examine these in detail would carry us into almost every important industrial concern that Utica has known during a generation. Before them all in his own estimation would come the First Presbyterian Church and Sunday school, the church of his father, whose successor he has been, both as ruling elder and Sunday school superintendent. In the work of establishing mission branches in Deerfield and East and West Utica he has displayed the same practical zeal which characterized both his parents as Christian laborers among their fellow citizens. His interest in educational matters has engaged him actively in behalf of both public and private schools. Soon after the destruction by fire of the Utica Female Academy, in 1865, he was elected a trustee and placed upon the executive committee in charge of erecting the new building. As an expression of the committee's foresight and faithful stewardship the building is more successful, per- haps, than as an æsthetic ornament to the town. In the progress and success of the school itself, with which Mr. Williams has ever since been closely associated, he takes the liveliest satisfaction, a good part of which comes from his personal share in calling Mrs. Piatt to her felicitous and effective career as its principal. He was elected in 1870 a public school commissioner, serving three years, at a time when the board ex- ercised its discretion in deciding upon text-books and studies within its jurisdiction, and there was rather more room than exists now for individual initiative. Among other in- novations he advocated teaching music in the public schools, and secured for this end the permanent employment of a qualified teacher.
K
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Though with no greater relish than most refined and domestic natures for public life Mr. Williams has not been disposed to keep adriotly away from the real contest when asked to use his influence or his energies in political affairs. During two terms as alder- man from 1874 to 1878 he labored for economy in the management of municipal mat- ters, and, though on the minority side of the council, succeeded simply by strength of integrity in carrying out some reforms of lasting benefit. His measures as chairman of the finance committee dealt with the things of a technical rather than of a general inter- est, but in his resolute effort to raise the City Library from a mere assortment of juvenile literature to be a medium of substantial benefit to the whole community he won the thanks of every citizen. He also strongly advocated and assisted in the change from a volunteer to a paid fire department. His active connection with local politics terminated in 1878, when he became a candidate for the mayoralty. He accepted the nomination, as he declares in a card announcing his determination, " with considerable reluctance and at some personal sacrifice, solely in behalf of strict economy and honesty in every branch of city government." Aspirants for suffrages in this country who confine their efforts during election to announcing a platform of plain truth and honesty are not generally successful, nor was Mr. Williams in this instance, though well supported by the tax- payers. His defeat was almost wholly due to his unwillingness to bind himself by pledges of any sort to political managers, who were so impressed with his fearlessness and independence as to prefer to see a candidate of the opposite party elected. Mr. Williams has also served as one of the railroad commissioners for the city of Utica, being appointed in 1871 under the law of 1869 providing for the municipal aid of railroads. In this capacity he assisted in the issue of $200,000 in bonds of the city of Utica, in aid of the Utica, Clinton, and Binghamton Railroad, and was elected in 1872 a director of this road to represent the city's interest. In 1881 he was made secretary and treasurer of the company and has, since its re-organization, been prominent in its management.
The list of business organizations in which Mr. Williams has been more or less directly concerned is much too long for comprehensive notice; there remains space to indicate only a few, to the success of which his judgment and energy have largely contributed. Since 1879 he has been on the executive committee of the Utica Cemetery Associa- tion, which induced the association to buy the tract of 150 acres adjoining Forest Hill Cemetery when it could be procured at a reasonable figure, thus adding to its beauty and insuring room for its enlargement for many years. Upon the first introduction of the Edison telephone, in 1879, Mr. Williams, with others, organized a company for pro- viding telephone service within a fifteen-mile circuit about Utica. The license for five years obtained by this company was in 1882, in connection with similar licenses held by four other companies, voluntarily surrendered in exchange for a perpetual license from the Bell Telephone Company covering a territory of twelve counties in Central New York, and a new company was formed known as the Central New York Telephone and Telegraph Company with a capital of $500,000, of which Mr. Williams was made presi- dent. Another project which originated at about this time (1880), when after the re- sumption of specie payment money was comparatively plenty and capital sought em- ployment, was the "Mohawk Valley Cotton-Mills," a company for the manufacture of cotton cloth. In association with Messrs. T. K. Butler, Ephraim Chamberlain, Addison C.
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Miller, P. V. Rogers, Nicholas E. Kernan, and others the scheme was promptly started and Mr. Williams elected vice-president. The call for such legitimate and promising investments being still greater than the supply the "Skenandoa Cotton Company " was organized in 1881 by nearly the same gentlemen to manufacture yarn. Its success has been due principally to its reputation for making the best possible quality of goods, and in the second place to its practice of selling directly to consumers, avoiding in this way the middlemen with their commissions. Still a third venture of this sort, the "Utica Willowvale Bleaching Company," originated under the same auspices in 1881 and like . wise numbers Mr. Williams among it directors.
This is but the bare enumeration, indeed, of some of the chief lines of his activity, omitting from the list many other movements, like those of the street railways, the gas and water works, the Oneida Historical Society, etc., in which he has at one time or another borne his share of risk or effort. Of his social and intellectual qualities it is hardly fitting to speak while he continues to hold his cherished place in the hearts and homes of many Uticans. His private library, one of the largest collections in the city, is the accumulation of many years and represents pretty accurately the subjects of gen- eral and particular interest with which he has stored his mind; in the association of such companions he has acquired an intelligent comprehension of extraordinarily wide range, fulfilling in his intellectual life the high mission to which sound culture calls each of us. It is due to the dignity and simplicity of such a career that its history should be told briefly, if at all. In lives like these there is a freedom from tumult, an absence of strong color, that makes it easy and natural for the world to forget when they are gone. Labor and frugality, with no adventure or excitement except that which comes from strict and invariable adherence to the line of duty, are not attributes in themselves suit- able for picturesque treatment. Yet there is a genuine satisfaction in beholding and considering each example of such triumph of sober and right conduct over temptation achieved in the station of life where the great majority are placed. It is not the special situation, but the type, which is all-important and interesting.
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