USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume I > Part 27
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John Ennis Searles was born on October 13, 1840, at the ancient village of Bedford, Westchester County, New York. His mother, before her marriage, was Miss Mary A. Dibble, of that village. His father was the Rev. John E. Searles, for fifty years a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The boy was educated, as was the wont of ministers' sons, at the New York Conference Seminary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and then entered commercial life.
His first engagement was as junior bookkeeper for the firm of W. J. Syms & Brother, at 177 Broadway, New York. That was in 1856, when he was sixteen years of age, and in 1857 he entered the employ of Cornell Brothers & Co., in Cortlandt
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Street, as entry clerk. That was a humble beginning for the future millionaire ; but he stuck to it so faithfully and effectively that at the end of four years' service, marked with occasional promotions, he was taken into the firm as a partner One would say that was a fine achievement for the young man, but it did not satisfy him. The very next year, 1862, he withdrew from the firm, and became identified with the business which was to see his greatest efforts.
This was the sugar trade. He became, in 1862, a member of the firm of L. W. & P. Armstrong, a West India shipping firm of New Haven, Connecticut. Partly through his vigorous initia- tive, that firm soon developed a large specialty in the sugar business, and, for the better prosecution of it, removed its head- quarters to New York. He remained in that firm for eighteen years, making for himself a handsome fortune and building up a business of great magnitude.
The first step toward the Sugar Trust was taken in 1880. In that year Mr. Searles withdrew from the Armstrong firm, and organized the Havemeyer Sugar Refining Company. This was effected by the consolidation of the two firms of Havemeyer Brothers & Co. and Havemeyer, Eastwick & Co. Then, in 1887, other concerns were associated with it in what was popularly called the Sugar Trust, with fifty million dollars capital. Of this Mr. Searles was secretary, treasurer, and chief executive officer. The trust was replaced, in 1891, by a corporation called the American Sugar Refining Company, though still popularly called the Sugar Trust, in which Mr. Searles held the same offices as before. In January, 1899, however, after a protracted illness, he resigned all official places in the Sugar Company, and also the presidency of the Western National Bank of this city. The latter place he had held for only three years, but in that time he had increased the bank's deposits from nine million to thirty-five million dollars, and had placed it in the foremost rank of financial institutions.
The list of business concerns with which Mr. Searles is or has been intimately connected, as part proprietor or officer, is a long and important one, rivaled by those of few of his contemporaries. Besides his important trusts in the American Sugar Refining Company and the Western National Bank, Mr. Searles is or has
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been interested in the following corporations : the American Coffee Company, as a director; American Cotton Company, president and director; American Deposit and Loan Company, trustee ; American Surety Company, trustee; American Type- founders' Company, president and director; Baltimore, Chesa- peake and Atlantic Railway Company, chairman; Brooklyn Cooperage Company, secretary and director; Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, trustee ; Hyatt Roller- Bearing Company, president and director; Mercantile Trust Company, director; Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad Com- pany, vice-president and director; People's Trust Company, director ; Preferred Accident Insurance Company, director ; Sprague Electric Company, director; Terminal Improvement Company, trustee and director ; Terminal Warehouse Company, director ; Union Traction and Electric Company, second vice- president and director; Universal Lasting and Machine Com- pany, director. His chief attention is now given, however, to the American Cotton Company, an organization formed by him in 1896, for putting up cotton directly from the seed cotton into cylindrical lap-bales, thus dispensing with the old crude process and the subsequent compression, and delivering the cotton directly to the spinner in a neat package, without waste, and in an advanced stage of preparation.
Mr. Searles is a member of the Lawyers' Club, and the Down- Town Association, of New York, and of the Union League Club, and of the Riding and Driving Club of Brooklyn. He has long been connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church, and has been a delegate to General Conferences, and manager in various societies. He is president of the Brooklyn Church Society, and trustee of the Methodist Episcopal Hospital, and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. He was married, in 1862, to Miss Caroline A. Pettit. They have had five children : Mrs. Louise Stearns, Mrs. F. O. Blackwell, Mrs. A. B. Roeder, Mrs. Win- throp M. Tuttle (deceased), and J. Foster Searles. His resi- dence on St. Mark's Avenue, Brooklyn, is one of the finest in the city.
HENRY SEIBERT
C 1ORPORATIONS form the distinctive feature of the indus- trial and commercial world of to-day. The invention and development of machinery led, a couple of generations ago, to the organization of the factory system, superseding the old system of individual cottage industries. That, in turn, neces- sitated the employment of large capital in industrial ventures, and that naturally led to the formation of companies to take the place of individual operators. Finally these companies themselves have found it often to their advantage to combine into still larger organizations, with a corresponding reduction of the cost of production and distribution.
The history of successful men of business in this country is now largely a history of corporate enterprises, which they have founded or in which they have become interested. Such is the case with Henry Seibert, who has identified himself with a large number of corporations, in various lines of industry and in various parts of the United States.
Mr. Seibert is a native of Germany, where he was born in May, 1833. His parents and ancestors were all German. In early life he was brought to the United States, and settled in New York city. He received a good common-school education in the public schools of New York, and then entered the in- dustrial world to make a living and ultimately a fortune for himself.
His first occupation was that of a lithographer. In that there was a certain poetical fitness, seeing that the art of lithography had been invented by a countryman of his. He learned lithog- raphy thoroughly, and for years worked at it practically, and with success. More than twenty years ago, however, he retired
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from that business, and has since not been actively engaged therein.
Lithography was not only Mr. Seibert's first business ; it was also the only business in which he has ever engaged. On with- drawing from active participation in it, he devoted his attention to investment in and direction of corporations, and the list of such concerns with which he is or has been identified is a for- midable one.
Mr. Seibert's interests comprise a marked variety of industries, such as railroads, city street-railroads, mining, sugar-refining, brass manufacturing, electric lighting, and banking. He is a director of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad Company, whose lines extend from Chicago to Terre Haute, Indiana, and other points, and form an important transportation system in the Central West. He is a director of the Sea Beach Railroad Com- pany, whose line has long been one of the favorite routes from the city to the sea-shore at Coney Island. He is a director of the Brooklyn, Queens County and Suburban Railroad Company, whose electric lines extend to Rockaway Beach and numerous other suburban points on Long Island. He is a director of the Kings County Elevated Railroad, one of the principal overhead lines of transit in the borough of Brooklyn. He is a director of the Brooklyn Heights Railroad Company, a corporation which acquired the lines of the old Brooklyn City Railroad Company, transformed them from horse railroads to electric trolley roads, and revolutionized the whole system of local transit in Brooklyn. Finally, so far as railroads are concerned, Mr. Seibert is a director of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, the giant cor- poration which has absorbed the Brooklyn Heights, Kings County Elevated, and other systems, and to-day controls nearly every transit line in the borough of Brooklyn, and is one of the largest concerns of the kind in the world, if not the very largest.
So much for railroading in its various forms, general, subur- ban, surface, elevated, steam, cable, and electric. Active con- nection with such an array of companies would be deemed enough for the average man, but Mr. Seibert has extended his interests much further. He is a director and vice-president of the Minnesota Iron Company, and is thus a potent figure in the iron trade of the country. He is a director of the Lanyon Zinc
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Company, whose extensive works are located at Iola, Kansas, and a director also of the Manhattan Brass Company of New York. These latter are important concerns, of large capital and high standing.
Still another field of enterprise has been entered by Mr. Seibert, in sugar-refining, he being a director of the great Mol- lenhauer Sugar Refining Company of New York.
While thus interesting himself in industrial enterprises, Mr. Seibert has not neglected what we might term pure finance. He has not opened a banking house of his own, but he is a director of the Nassau Trust Company of Brooklyn, one of the chief banking institutions in that part of the metropolis.
Mr. Seibert is a naturalized citizen and a loyal American. He has not, however, sought any political prominence, but has contented himself with discharging the duties of an intelligent and patriotic private citizen. The only public place he has filled is that of World's Fair Commissioner, at the Columbian Exposi- tion at Chicago, to which he was appointed by Governor Flower.
He has not made himself prominent in club life, either, pre- ferring to spend his leisure time within the domestic circle. He is, however, a member of the Hanover Club, one of the foremost social organizations of Brooklyn.
Mr. Seibert was married in Brooklyn, in 1860, and has three sons and one daughter, to the preparation of whom for worthy careers in life he has delighted to devote his most earnest attention.
HENRY SELIGMAN
T THE Seligman family, which for many years has been iden- tified with great financial interests in New York city and throughout the United States, and has been one of the chief forces in the financial world of America, presents a remark- able example of the achievements of industry, energy, and integ- rity, in spite of original circumstances of the most discouraging kind. In the last generation it consisted of eight brothers, who came, not all together, to this country from Baiersdorf, Bavaria, more than half a century ago, and entered upon business here in a small way. The eldest of these, and the pioneer in this country, was Joseph Seligman. He was educated at the University of Erlangen, and studied both medicine and theology. Neither of those professions, however, proved to be to his liking. The bent of his mind was toward practical business affairs. His activity of mind and love of freedom impelled him to seek some ampler field of action than the Old World could afford. Therefore, at the age of seventeen, in 1836, he came to the United States, and thus founded the family of Seligman in this country.
The young man found his first employment under that master of business, Asa Packer, who was then just beginning his great career as a contractor. Mr. Seligman remained in his employ for a couple of years, and then went South and engaged in business on his own account at Greensboro, Alabama. There he was successful, and he determined to make this country the scene of his life-work. He, moreover, reckoned it a most promising field for his younger brothers to seek or to make their for- tunes in. He accordingly wrote to them, advising them to fol- low in his footsteps. This advice they acted upon as soon as they were old enough.
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The fourth of them, with whom we at present have most con- cern, was Jesse Seligman, who came hither in 1841, at the age of twenty years. He had scanty means, and at first engaged in the business of a peddler in the suburbs of New York. Thus accumulating one thousand dollars capital, he went to Selma, Alabama, and joined his brother Joseph in a small general store. In 1848 he removed to Watertown, New York, and then came to New York city, where he opened a wholesale clothing store. When gold was discovered in California he went thither, and in 1850 opened a general store in San Francisco, where he greatly prospered. He was also a leader among those who strove to give California a stable and honest government. He was mar- ried, in 1854, to Miss Henrietta Hellman, at Munich, Bavaria, and a few years later settled in New York, joining his brothers Joseph and James in the wholesale clothing and importing business.
In 1865 the brothers organized the great banking-house of J. & W. Seligman & Co., which soon rose to the foremost rank. Jesse Seligman took especial interest in national finance, and was the trusted adviser of more than one Secretary of the Trea- sury. He was of great service to the government in placing its bonds in the European market, and his firm has for the last twenty years been conspicuous in every syndicate formed for that purpose. He was prominent in many other enterprises, and in the vast Hebrew charities of New York city. He died at Coronado Beach, California, on April 23, 1894, universally esteemed and lamented.
The second of the six children of Jesse Seligman is Henry Seligman, who was born in San Francisco, California, on March 31, 1857. In his childhood he was brought by his parents to New York city, where he has since chiefly made his home. He was educated in local schools and in New York University, from which latter institution he was graduated in the class of 1875, being then only eighteen years of age. He naturally decided to follow the business in which his father and uncles had won such success. He was under no necessity of working hard, for his father was already very rich. But, with character- istic energy and thoroughness, he resolved to begin at the be- ginning and learn the business from the bottom upward.
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Accordingly he went, in September, 1875, three months after his graduation from the university, to San Francisco, and there became an errand-boy in his father's Anglo-Californian Bank. He worked diligently and studied, and was from time to time promoted according to his attainments and merits, until he became assistant cashier. Then he was called back to New York, in 1880, and entered the firm of J. & W. Seligman & Co., with which he has since been identified. Since the death of his father he has been especially prominent in the management of the firm and the successful conduct of its vast business, now extending to all parts of the world and exercising an influence in the money markets of Europe and America.
Active participation in the affairs of so great. a corporation might be deemed sufficient to absorb the energies of any one man, but it is by no means the measure of Mr. Seligman's activities. He is interested in numerous other enterprises, some of them of great importance. Among his business connections the following may be mentioned : He is director and chairman of the exec- utive committee of the United States Smelting and Refining Company, and a director of the American Steel and Wire Company, the Buffalo Gas Company, the Syracuse Gas Company, the Welsbach Commercial Company, which controls the famous Welsbach incandescent gas-lighting system, and the Cramp Ship and Engine Company, one of the foremost ship-building corporations in the world. To all of these Mr. Seligman gives a considerable share of his personal attention, and promotes their success by the application of his great executive ability and business foresight.
Mr. Seligman follows in the footsteps of his father in his interest in the great charities and other public benefactions with which the Hebrew element of New York is so honorably identi- fied. He is also a prominent figure in many of the best social organizations, including the Lawyers' Club, the Lotus Club, the Criterion Club, the Country Club, and the Hollywood Golf Club.
Mr. Seligman was married in this city, on March 11, 1899, to Mrs. Addie Walter Seligman, widow of David Seligman and daughter of the late J. D. Walter, the wedding ceremony being performed by Justice George C. Barrett of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
leave a eligman
ISAAC NEWTON SELIGMAN
THE name of Seligman has long stood among the foremost in America for successful financiering and for business integrity ; and the city of New York has had no foreign-born citizen who has been held in higher and more deserved esteem than the late founder of the banking house which bears that name, the house of J. & W. Seligman & Co. Joseph Seligman was born at Baiersdorf, Bavaria, Germany, on September 22, 1819, the son of a family of means and culture. He received an admirable education, which included a course at the University of Erlangen, from which he was graduated in 1838. He was noted for his proficiency in the classics, especially in Greek, in which language he was able to converse fluently. After gradu- ation he studied medicine for some time, and also evinced a partiality for theological studies. Thus he secured a general culture of far more than ordinary scope and thoroughness.
His inclination finally led him, however, into commercial and financial pursuits. Impressed with the extent of opportunities offered by the United States, he came to this country in 1845. His first occupation here was that of a teacher, for which he was admirably fitted and in which he might easily have attained lasting and distinguished success. It was to him, however, only a stop-gap until he could find a place in the business world. The latter was presently secured in the capacity of cashier and private secretary to Asa Packer, who was then just beginning his famous career as a contractor at Nesquehoning, Pennsyl- vania, and who afterward became the millionaire president of the Lehigh Valley Railroad system.
From that service Mr. Seligman passed into a mercantile enter- prise at Greensboro, Alabama. There he was moderately suc-
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cessful, and he soon accumulated enough capital to assure him of his business future. He then wrote to his brothers in Ger- many, of whom he had seven, telling them of the advantages offered by the United States and urging them to come hither. Three of them did so at once, and all the rest followed later. Of the first comers, Jesse and Harry Seligman settled at Watertown, New York, and for seven years conducted a prosper- ous dry-goods business. Joseph Seligman, the pioneer, mean- while remained in the South, where he was finding increasing prosperity.
When the brothers had accumulated enough capital for the purpose, and felt sufficiently sure of their ground in the new country, they came to New York city, united their resources, and opened an importing house. To the firm thus formed they in time admitted their other brothers, when the latter came over from Europe.
Thus they were engaged at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War in the United States. Joseph Seligman then real- ized that there was a magnificent opportunity for beginning a career in the banking business. He communicated his views to his brothers, and quickly gained their agreement. Accordingly, the banking house of J. & W. Seligman was opened, in New York city, in 1862. This was the beginning of one of the most marvelous financial careers in the history of America or the world.
The Seligman Bank met with extraordinary success from almost the very first. The New York house rose to commanding proportions, of national importance, and branches were estab- lished in London, Paris, and Frankfort. Branches were also opened in two American cities, namely, San Francisco, where a consolidation was afterward formed with the Anglo-California Bank, and New Orleans, the latter branch being known as the Seligman and Hellman Bank, Mr. Hellman being a son-in-law of Mr. Seligman.
One of the earliest enterprises of the Seligmans was the intro- duction of United States government bonds into the money markets of Europe, and especially of Germany. This was under- taken in 1862, in what was the darkest hour of the Union cause. This nation needed at that time both money and sympathy, and
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of neither had it received much from the Old World. The under- taking of the Seligmans was successful. United States credit was established in Europe, confidence in the stability of this government was promoted, and much sympathy with the national cause was thus secured. These services were of incalculable value to the nation, and were none the less appreciated because they were also profitable to those who made them. The govern- ment fittingly recognized them by making the London branch of the Seligman Bank the authorized European depository for the funds of the State and Naval departments. Nor was this the only patriotic service rendered by Joseph Seligman. On many another occasion he greatly assisted the government, and indeed saved its credit from impairment, by carrying for it large sums of money. Again, in 1871-72, when the government decided to refund the two hundred and fifty bonds, it was Mr. Seligman who formulated the plans for the operation and materially assisted in executing them. He was a warm personal friend of General Grant, and was asked by him to accept the office of Secretary of the Treasury in his first administration. But loyalty to his bank- ing interests and to his many connections with large corporations -from which he would have had to separate himself-led him to decline this tempting offer.
Joseph Seligman was a man of broad and liberal sympathies, in whom all beneficent causes found a cordial friend, without regard to distinctions of race or creed. He was the founder of the great Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York, and was in many ways the benefactor of his fellow-Hebrews. But he also aided many non-Hebrew institutions and benevolent enterprises, and he was one of the organizers of the Society for Ethical Culture, to which he gave the sum of seventy thousand dollars.
He was married in 1848, and to him and his wife, Babette Seligman, were born nine children, of whom the third son is Isaac Newton Seligman, his successor as the present head of the banking house. Mr. Seligman died at New Orleans on April 25, 1880, universally honored and lamented.
Isaac Newton Seligman, above mentioned, was born to Joseph and Babette Seligman, in the city of New York, on July 10, 1855. His education was received entirely in his native city, at the Columbia Grammar School, which he entered at the age of ten
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years, and at Columbia College, from which he was graduated with honors in 1876. During his college course he was prominent in athletics as well as in scholarship, and was an efficient mem- ber of the famous winning Columbia crew which won the race at Saratoga in 1874 over Yale, Harvard, and nine other college crews. He has always been a loyal alumnus of Columbia, was for a long time president of the boat club, and was active in raising funds for the new college grounds.
For two years after his graduation from Columbia, Mr. Selig- man was connected with the New Orleans branch of his father's banking house. He there evinced a marked aptitude for finance in the earliest stages of his business career, and was soon looked upon as the "coming man" in the rising generation of the Selig- man family.
In 1878 Mr. Seligman came to New York city, and entered the banking house of J. and W. Seligman & Co. There he showed himself as capable as his New Orleans career had promised he would be, and he immediately became a conspicuous and domi- nant figure in the banking world of the American metropolis. Upon the death of his father in 1880, he, with his uncle Jesse, succeeded to the management of the firm, and at the present time Mr. Seligman is the sole head of the famous house.
Mr. Seligman is a director of the St. Louis and Santa Fe Rail- road, and of the North Shore (Boston and Lynn) Railway, a trustee of the Munich Reinsurance Fire Company, the National Sound Money League, the People's Institute, the Cooperative Committee on Playgrounds, the New York Audit Company, the St. John's Guild, and the Hebrew Charities Building. He is a life member of the New York Sailors' and Soldiers' Association, and of the National Historic Museum. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York and was a lead- ing subscriber to its building fund, and was a delegate from it to the London Chamber of Commerce celebration. He is vice-presi- dent of the Baron De Hirsch Memorial Fund, and was treasurer of the Waring Fund. He is a director of the City and Subur- ban Homes Company, which is erecting improved tenements and dwellings. He has been a delegate to the National Conference of Charities and Corrections. He takes a great and active inter- est in charitable work, and is connected with many charitable
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