USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume I > Part 10
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FREDERICK WILLIAM DEVOE
The firm was reorganized, in 1864, under the name of F. W. Devoe & Co., a name which became, through many years, one of the landmarks of the oil and paint trade in the United States and, indeed, in the world. Apart from the great business of this firm in oils, paints, and artists' materials, Mr. Devoe for some years did a large business in the refining and sale of petroleum, under the name of " Devoe's Brilliant Oil." This enterprise was afterward carried on under the name of the Devoe Manufacturing Company, and then, in 1873, was sold to other parties. In 1890 the F. W. Devoe Company was incorporated, with Mr. Devoe as president, as the successor of the firm of F. W. Devoe & Co., and in 1892 it was consolidated with the important house of C. T. Raynolds & Co., under the present name of the F. W. Devoe and C. T. Raynolds Company. The corporation still occupies the large building at the corner of Fulton and William streets, New York, which F. W. Devoe & Co. made the center of the American paint trade.
Mr. Devoe has cared little for politics. He has, however, served the public in various offices. In 1880, Mayor Cooper appointed him a member of the Board of Education, and he was reappointed by Mayors Edson, Hewitt, and Grant. He resigned in 1891. While in the board he exerted a most beneficent influence upon educational affairs, and did much for the establish- ment of the valuable industrial school system. Governor Hill appointed Mr. Devoe a trustee of the Middletown Asylum for the Insane in 1890. Mr. Devoe is also a trustee of the New York Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital. He became a director of the New York Juvenile Asylum in 1890, vice-president in 1893, and is now its president.
Mr. Devoe was married, in 1853, to Sarah M., daughter of Wal- ter Briggs, who has borne him five children. Of these a son and two daughters died in childhood. The other two, daughters, are living. The family home is a charming place on Jerome Avenue, in the borough of the Bronx.
Mr. Devoe has always preferred home life to club life. He is, however, a member of the Holland and St. Nicholas societies, and of the New York Microscopical Society, and he is a warden of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Zion and St. Timothy.
B. B. Dickerman
WATSON BRADLEY DICKERMAN
W ATSON BRADLEY DICKERMAN has every claim to the title of an American citizen, his ancestors in direct line and in all collateral branches having settled in New Eng- land prior to 1660. His father, Ezra Dickerman, was a lineal descendant of Abram Dickerman of New Haven, who was a deputy to the Connecticut General Assembly from 1683 to 1696. His son Isaac was also a deputy to the Assembly for a long term of years-from 1718 to 1757. Mr. Dickerman's mother was Sarah Jones, a daughter of Nicholas Jones of Wallingford, Con- necticut, and was descended from William Jones of New Haven, Deputy Governor of Connecticut in 1660.
Watson B. Dickerman was born at Mount Carmel, Connecti- cut, on January 4, 1846. His early life was spent on his father's farm, and he was educated at the Williston Academy, East- hampton, Massachusetts.
At the age of seventeen years he went West, and in 1864 be- gan his business life as a clerk in J. Bunn's Bank at Springfield, Illinois. Believing that the metropolis offered the largest chances of success, even while accompanied with the greatest hazards, he returned to New York in 1867, and engaged in the brokerage business. In November, 1868, he was admitted to membership in the Stock Exchange. In June, 1870, he formed a partnership with William Gayer Dominick, under the name of Dominick & Dickerman. In 1899 he became associated with the firm of Moore & Schley.
William Gayer Dominick died suddenly, on August 31, 1895, at the age of fifty. He belonged to an old New York family, and was a man of distinction in the business and social world. He served seventeen years in the Seventh Regiment, including
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ten years as a first lieutenant. He was captain of the Ninth Company of the Veteran Association, and a governor of the Seventh Regiment Veteran Club. In 1892 he, with his brothers, presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art the fine picture by Schrader, "Queen Elizabeth Signing the Death-Warrant of Mary Stuart," in acknowledgment of which a life membership of the museum was bestowed upon him.
Mr. Dickerman's reputation for business sagacity, and his well- known integrity, added to other attractive qualities of mind and heart, led to his election, in 1890, as president of the New York Stock Exchange, and his admirable administration of that important office assured him an easy reelection in the following year.
He has taken a lifelong interest in politics as an intelligent and loyal American citizen, and has been consistently affiliated with the Republican party, to the success of which in its cam- paigns he has often materially contributed. He has, however, never been an office-seeker, and, indeed, has never accepted nomination to any public office.
He is connected officially with a number of large business corporations in various parts of the country. Among these may be mentioned the Norfolk and Southern Railroad Company, of which he is president, and the Long Island Loan and Trust Company, of which he is a trustee.
Mr. Dickerman belongs to several of the best clubs of the me- tropolis, their character well reflecting his tastes and inclinations in social matters. Among these are the Century Association, with its distinctively literary and artistic flavor; the Union League Club, the stronghold of Republicanism; the Metropolitan, a purely social organization; and the Westchester Country Club, with its fine mingling of social and sportsmanlike qualities.
He was married, on February 18, 1869, to Miss Martha Eliza- beth Swift, a daughter of Samuel and Mary Phelps Swift of New York. His only son died in infancy in 1873. Mr. and Mrs. Dickerman made their residence in Brooklyn until 1885, and in June of that year removed to Mamaroneck, New York, where they have a beautiful country place, Hillanddale Farm, which has been their home ever since.
EN Dickerson
EDWARD NICOLL DICKERSON
THE ancestors of Edward N. Dickerson came from Eng- land in 1630, and settled at Southold, in the eastern part of Long Island. They afterward removed to New Jersey, near Morristown, where they became prominent and useful citizens. His grandfather, Philemon Dickerson, served one term as Gov- ernor of New Jersey, and was a United States district judge. Mahlon Dickerson, district judge of New Jersey and Secretary of the Navy under President Jackson, was his great-uncle. Mr. Dickerson is a son of Edward Nicoll Dickerson, a patent lawyer, and Mary Caroline Nystrom, and was born at Newport, Rhode Island, on May 23, 1853.
He was prepared for college at the historic St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire, and matriculated at Trinity College, from which latter institution he was graduated with honors in 1874, the valedictorian of a large class. From Trinity he passed to the Law School of Columbia College, and from there to his father's office, where his legal studies were completed, he after- ward becoming a member of the firm.
Mr. Dickerson is at present at the head of the firm of Dicker- son & Brown. He is counsel for many important corporations, among which are the Bell Telephone Company, the Western Union Telegraph, the General Electric, the Barber Asphalt Paving Company, the Farben Fabriken, and others. He is officially connected with several other large corporations, such as the Electro Gas Company, the Union Carbide Company, the Pressed Steel Car Company, and the American Car and Foundry Company.
Mr. Dickerson is a member of the Manhattan, the Lawyers', the Tuxedo, the St. Nicholas, the New York Yacht, the New
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York Riding, the Fencers', and the Rockaway Hunt clubs, the Metropolitan Club of Washington, the Order of the Cincinnati, the St. Nicholas Society, the Sons of the Revolution, and the Psi Upsilon Fraternity.
He was married, on January 5, 1898, to Miss Charlotte Surget Ogden, at Bartow, on the Sound, New York. Their infant daughter's name is Lillian Louise.
Mr. Dickerson is possessed of a striking personality, to which are due, in large measure, the successes he has achieved. He is gifted with a clear, strong mind, great energy and industry, and a wonderful versatility. He is an expert chemist, and as good a machinist and electrician as most men who make those things a profession.
He is an all-around sportsman, and can manage a yacht, ride, and drive a four-in-hand with equal skill. In the practice of his profession he has the reputation of drawing the most doubtful case up to the fighting-point, and his pleadings are distin- guished for their lucidity and power. He well exemplifies the advantages of liberal education of the most ample scope and thoroughness in the prosecution of business or professional duties. He is equally at home in the discussion of a point of law, or a question of chemistry, electrical science, or higher mathematics. It is, indeed, largely because of such complete intellectual equipment that he has been so successful in the practice of his profession. He has not had to depend upon the assistance of experts in preparing and conducting his cases, but has been his own expert, and has displayed the exceptional faculty of dealing with the most abstruse case in a manner con- vincing to the scientific mind, and at the same time perfectly lucid to the average unskilled layman. A like thoroughness and masterfulness in all the activities of life have made him an ex- ceptionally forceful figure in all relationships and associations.
JAMES B. DILL
P ROBABLY the most important phase of the economic de- velopment of the United States during the last few years has been the movement for the consolidation of the manufac- turing and mercantile firms and companies into large corpora- tions, and with that movement no one has been more promi- nently identified than James B. Dill of New York, whose repu- tation as an authority on corporation law is more than national. Mr. Dill is still in early middle life, having been born on July 24, 1854, at Spencerport, near Rochester, New York. He is of New England descent on both sides, his father, the Rev. James H. Dill, having been a native of Massachusetts, and his mother, Catharine Brooks Dill, a member of the well-known Brooks family of Connecticut. In 1859 the Rev. Mr. Dill removed, with his family, from western New York to Chicago, where he was installed as pastor of the South Congregational Church. When the Civil War broke out he went to the front as chaplain of the famous "Illinois Railroad Regiment." The exposure and privation incident to active campaigning resulted in his death, in 1862. In 1868 the boy entered the preparatory department of Oberlin College, and four years later was admitted to Yale, among his classmates being Arthur T. Hadley, now president of the university. Upon his graduation from college in 1876, young Dill took up the study of the law, reading in an office for one year to such good purpose that at the end of that period he was enabled to enter the New York University Law School as a member of the senior class. He was graduated in 1878 from the law school, being salutatorian of his class, although coincidently with his attendance at the law lectures he had been engaged in teaching at Stevens Institute.
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The first case of importance in which he was engaged was connected with the failure of the commercial agency of McKillop & Sprague. The directors of this corporation had neglected to file certain statements required by law, and were therefore held to be personally liable for its debts. This responsibility they disputed in court, but were beaten-or all but one of them. That one had retained Mr. Dill as counsel, and he won the case on a novel point of law. That was the beginning of Mr. Dill's career as a corporation lawyer.
The opening of the era of industrial consolidation, two or three years ago, found the corporation laws of New Jersey at once the most flexible and the most equitable to be discovered on the statute-books of any State, and the projectors of the giant industrial combinations of to-day turned to New Jersey as the State in which to incorporate their new companies. The beginning of this period also found one lawyer preeminently well versed in the intricacies of New Jersey corporation law and cor- poration practice-Mr. Dill.
As a natural result Mr. Dill was concerned in the incorporation of a large number of the more important consolidations, either , drawing up the charters himself, or, as consulting counsel, pass- ing upon the work of other attorneys. Among the host of com- panies the incorporation of which he has effected, and of which he is a director as well as counsel, are the National Steel Com- pany, the American Tin Plate Company, and, latest and greatest, the Carnegie Company, with its unwatered stock and bond issue of three hundred and twenty million dollars. The incorporation of the Carnegie Company represented probably the most pro- nounced success of Mr. Dill's professional life, for it became possible only as the result of the adjustment of the differences between Andrew Carnegie and Henry C. Frick, the suspension of the litigation begun by the latter, and the ascertainment of a basis on which the two men and their respective associates in the old Carnegie Steel Company should enter the new Carnegie Company, in the negotiations on all of which matters Mr. Dill took an active part, receiving for his services a fee said to have been the largest ever paid to an American lawyer.
Mr. Dill was chairman, a year or two ago, of a State com- mission which revised the laws of New Jersey relating to banks,
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trust companies, and safe-deposit companies ; he is a director of the North American Trust Company of New York, and of the People's Bank of Orange, New Jersey, vice-president of the Savings Investment and Trust Company of East Orange, New Jersey, and chairman of the executive committee of the Corpora- tion Trust Company of New Jersey. He is also a director in more than thirty additional companies. He has been counsel for the Merchants' Association of New York since the organization of that active and influential body, and for twenty years has been counsel to the Loan Relief Association of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York city.
Despite the drafts made upon his time and his strength by his corporation practice, Mr. Dill contrives to find opportunity for work on collateral lines also. "Dill on New Jersey Corpora- tions," of which book he is the author, is the standard authority upon the subject.
The Financial Laws of New Jersey are in part his handiwork, and he has also annotated and compiled for the State its banking laws and general corporation laws. Mr. Dill was one of the framers of the Corporation Act, prepared for New York upon the suggestion of Governor Roosevelt, the New York Business Companies Act of 1900, and early in 1900 was called upon by the government of Quebec to assist in framing a similar act for that Canadian province. He has also delivered addresses before economic and scientific bodies and at colleges on the subject of the so-called " trusts," pointing out in these addresses the dis- tinctions between the honest and dishonest "trusts," and urging compulsory publicity as to methods of operation as the most efficacious remedy for "trust evils."
Mr. Dill married, in October, 1880, Miss Mary W. Hansell of Philadelphia, and has three daughters. Their home is at East Orange, New Jersey, and they also have a summer cottage at Huntington, Long Island, and a camp in the Rangeley region in Maine. Mr. Dill is a member of the Lawyers' Club and the Merchants' Club of New York, president of the Orange Riding Club of Orange, New Jersey, and a member of the Essex County Country Club. The style of his law firm is Dill, Bomeisler & Baldwin, with offices at No. 27 Pine Street, New York.
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LOUIS F. DOYLE
THE lawyers of New York hold an important position among its influential men, not only by their work in the courts, but quite as much by their share in guiding great commercial and financial transactions. Louis F. Doyle has a recognized place among the successful lawyers of his native city, and among its prominent men.
Born in the city of New York, on June 7, 1861, the son of James Doyle and his wife, Lucinda M. Loss, both also natives of the city, and the former long engaged in mercantile pursuits there, Louis F. Doyle, before he came of age, had chosen his career and entered himself as a student in the Law Department of the University of the City of New York. Before and during his course at the law school, he was also a student in the office of Douglass & Minton, a firm doing a large commercial business, and counsel for R. G. Dun & Co. of the well-known mercantile agency. In this office Mr. Doyle not only had wide experience in the practice of law, but also laid the foundation of that prac- tical acquaintance with business which is so necessary to the modern lawyer. In 1882 Mr. Doyle was graduated from the university with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. After contin- uing for about three years in the office of Douglass & Minton, he opened an office of his own, at 317 Broadway, and began practice independently. In 1889 he removed to the New York Times Building, where he now has one of the best-equipped offices in the city. From the beginning of his practice, Mr. Doyle has given his attention chiefly to the law of banking and commerce. Since 1885 he has acted as an attorney for the National Park Bank of New York, and for several years past he has been the general attorney and counsel of that bank. Among the impor-
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LOUIS F. DOYLE
tant cases, involving new and doubtful points of commercial law, in which he has been engaged, are those of Harmon vs. the National Park Bank, reported in the 79th Federal Reporter 891 and in 172 United States Supreme Court Reports 644; the Clin- ton National Bank vs. the National Park Bank, reported in 37 Appellate Division Reports 601; Washington Savings Bank vs. Ferguson, reported in 43 Appellate Division Reports 74; and the litigation over the affairs of the Domestic Sewing Machine Com- pany, which was finally disposed of by the decision of the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, reported as Blake vs. Domes- tic Manufacturing Company in 38 Atlantic Reporter 241.
Mr. Doyle has always taken an earnest and practical interest in politics as a Democrat and a member of the local political organization, but he has never been an office-seeker and has held no public office. He is a member of the Manhattan and Demo- cratic clubs, of the American, New York State and New York city bar associations, and, among purely social organizations, of the Metropolitan, New York Athletic, and Suburban Riding and Driving clubs. He is unmarried and lives alone in apart- ments at Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street, his only near relative being a sister, the wife of Colonel John M. Carter, Jr., of the Baltimore "News."
SILAS BELDEN DUTCHER
THE Dutcher family in New York is descended from Ruloff
T Dutcher and his wife Jannettie Brussy, who came to this country from Holland early in the seventeenth century. Their son Gabriel married Elizabeth Knickerbocker, a granddaughter of Harman Janse van Wye Knickerbocker of Dutchess County, New York. They were the great-grandparents of Silas B. Dutcher. Mr. Dutcher's parents were Parcefor Carr Dutcher and Johanna Low Frinck. The latter was a daughter of Stephen and Ann Low Frinck. She was descended from Cornelius Janse Vanderveer, who came from Alkmaan, Holland, in the ship Otter, in 1659, and settled in Flatbush, Long Island, and also from Conrad Ten Eyck, who came from Amsterdam in 1650, and was the owner of what is now known as Coenties Slip, New York city. Her grandfather, Captain Peter Low, was an officer in the Continental Army.
Silas Belden Dutcher was born in Springfield, Otsego County, New York, on July 12, 1829. He attended the public schools of his native town, and for a short time the Cazenovia Academy. From sixteen to twenty-two he taught school during the winter months, working on his father's farm in the summers. From 1851 to 1855 he was employed in the building and operation of the railroad running between Elmira and Niagara Falls.
In 1855 he came to New York and for some years was engaged in a mercantile business. In 1859 he became a charter trustee of the Union Dime Savings Institution, of which he was presi- dent from 1886 until 1891, and with which he is still connected. He is president of the Hamilton Trust Company and of the Ramapo Water Company, treasurer of the Columbia Mutual Building and Loan Association, a director of the Garfield Safe
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S. R. Dutch.
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SILAS BELDEN DUTCHER
Deposit, the Kings County Electric Light and Power, the Nassau Electric Railway, the German-American Real Estate Title Guar- anty, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance companies. The last-named trusteeship he has held for over twenty years.
Since his early manhood Mr. Dutcher has been a prominent figure in the political world. Originally a Whig, he has been a Republican since the organization of the party, has given his services as a speaker in nearly every Presidential campaign until 1888, and has been a delegate to several national conventions. In 1858-59 he was president of the Young Men's Republican Committee of New York city, and in the following year was president of the Wide-Awake Organization of New York. He removed to Brooklyn in 1861, and for four years was president of the Kings County Republican Committee. He was chairman of the Republican Executive Committee in 1876, and was for many years a member of the Republican State Committee.
He has held a number of important State and United States offices, among them those of supervisor of internal revenue, United States pension agent, United States appraiser of the port of New York, superintendent of public works for the State of New York, and manager of the Long Island State Hospital. Mr. Dutcher was one of the earliest and most ardent advocates of the idea of consolidating the different boroughs which now form the city of New York, and did much to effect the consumma- tion of the plan. In recognition of his services, Governor Morton appointed him one of the commission which framed the charter for Greater New York.
Mr. Dutcher was married, on February 19, 1859, to Rebecca J. Alwaise, a descendant of French Huguenots who came to Philadelphia in 1740. They have six children. Their home is in Brooklyn, where Mr. Dutcher is a member of several well- known clubs of the Masonic fraternity, and of many charitable and benevolent societies.
AMOS RICHARDS ENO
THE name of Eno is often met with in early American his- tory, always in some worthy connection. Its first owners in this country settled at Simsbury, Connecticut, about 1635, hav- ing come from England and spent five years at Dorchester, Massachusetts. They soon came into prominence through their unsuccessful efforts to resist unjust taxation. They became owners of much land at and around Simsbury, and some of it remains in the possession of the family to this day. The late Amos R. Eno had his summer home there, on land that had belonged to his ancestors for more than two hundred and fifty years. Several members of the family rendered distinguished services in the colonial and Revolutionary wars. One of them married a daughter of Ethan Allen.
Amos Richards Eno was born at Simsbury on November 1, 1810. He was educated at the local school, and at an early age set out to make his own way in the world. He was for a time a clerk in a dry-goods store at Hartford, among his friends and fellow-clerks at that time being E. D. Morgan, afterward Gov- ernor of New York, and Junius S. Morgan, the banker. In the spring of 1833 he was able to establish himself in the wholesale dry-goods trade in New York, soon after taking his cousin, John J. Phelps, into partnership with him. The firm of Eno & Phelps was thereafter for years one of the foremost in the city, and second to none in reputation for integrity. The firm was dissolved in 1850.
Mr. Eno then began investments in real estate on a large scale. In 1854 he bought land at Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third Street and built the Fifth Avenue Hotel. This was regarded at the time as a mad undertaking, and the hotel was dubbed " Eno's Folly."
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Amos Re Enco
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AMOS RICHARDS ENO
But it soon became, what it has ever since been, one of the best- paying hotels in the world. Mr. Eno purchased various plots of ground on Broadway, Fifth Avenue, the Boulevard, and else- where, all of which investments proved profitable. He lived to see much of his property increase in value a hundredfold.
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