USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume I > Part 28
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organizations, especially those looking to the relief and education of the children of the poor.
Mr. Seligman takes an earnest and patriotic interest in public affairs, but has sought no political office. The only such office he has held is that of trustee of the Manhattan State Hospital, to which he was appointed by Governor Morton and reappointed by Governor Roosevelt. The direction his political interest and affiliations have taken is indicated by his official connection with the Sound Money League.
He is a member of a number of prominent clubs, among which may be named the Lotus, the Lawyers', the University, the Natural Arts, and the St. Andrew's Golf clubs of New York.
Mr. Seligman was married, in 1883, to Miss Guta Loeb, a daughter of Solomon Loeb, of the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., of New York and Frankfort, Germany. The wedding took place at Frankfort. Mr. and Mrs. Seligman have two chil- dren : Joseph Lionel Seligman and Margaret Valentine Seligman.
HENRY FRANCIS SHOEMAKER
H ENRY FRANCIS SHOEMAKER, banker and railroad president, was born in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1845. His ancestors were Dutch, and the first of them in this country were among the comrades of Pastorius, the German Quaker and friend of William Penn, who settled at Philadelphia in 1683. Peter Shoemaker, his great-great-grand- father, served in the Indian wars of the colonial period, and his son, John Shoemaker, served in the War of the Revolution. In the next generation both the grandfathers of Mr. Shoemaker, Henry Shoemaker and William Brock, were soldiers in the War of 1812. Mr. Shoemaker himself was an officer in the Civil War. Mr. Shoemaker's great-great-uncle, Colonel George Shoemaker, was the first to bring anthracite coal to the Philadelphia market, and his father, John W. Shoemaker, was a prominent coal oper- ator at Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. John W. Shoemaker married Mary A. Brock, daughter of William Brock, the latter a leading coal operator, and to them was born the subject of this sketch.
Mr. Shoemaker was educated in the schools of Tamaqua, and in the Genesee Seminary at Lima, New York. In his boyhood he manifested a keen interest in coal-mining, and when out of school was an almost daily visitor at his father's works. When the invasion of Pennsylvania occurred, in 1863, and Governor Curtin called for volunteers, he organized a company of sixty men at his father's mines, and took them to Harrisburg. He was elected captain, but declined the place in favor of an older man, and took that of first lieutenant. The company served until after the battle of Gettysburg, and was then mustered out.
The next year Mr. Shoemaker went to Philadelphia and en- tered one of the leading houses in the coal-shipping trade of that
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city. In 1866 he formed the firm of Shoemaker and McIntyre, and in 1870 he formed the firm of Fry, Shoemaker & Co., and engaged in the business of mining anthracite coal at Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. He soon saw, however, greater opportunities for himself in the transportation business than in coal-mining, and accordingly sold his coal interests and entered the railroad world. In 1876 he became secretary and treasurer of the Central Rail- road of Minnesota. Two years later he took an active part in the construction of the Rochester and State Line Railroad, at about the same time removing his residence to New York. To his railroad interests he added that of banking, in 1881, in opening the banking house of Shoemaker, Dillon & Co. in New York. That house has dealt largely in railroad securities.
Mr. Shoemaker became interested in the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad in 1886, president of the Mineral Range Railroad in 1887, chairman of the executive committee of the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad in 1889, and, in 1893, one of the chief owners of the Cleveland, Lorain and Wheeling Railroad. He also is, or recently has been, chairman of the board of directors of the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific, president of the Cincinnati, Dayton and Ironton, and the Dayton and Union railroads, vice-president of the Indiana, Decatur and Western Railway, and a director of the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Indianapolis, and the Alabama Great Southern railroads, and also of the English corporation controlling the last-named in London. He has been interested in coal-mining in the Kanawha valley, West Virginia, and in the New Jersey Rubber Shoe Company, now part of the United States Rubber Company. He is a trustee of the Trust Company of New York, and of the North American Trust Company, of the Mount Hope Cemetery, and of the Good Samaritan Dispensary.
Mr. Shoemaker is a member of the Union League, Riding, Lawyers', Lotus, Riverside Yacht, and American Yacht clubs of New York, the Sons of the Revolution, the Grand Army of the Republic, and the Pennsylvania Society of New York. He was married, on April 22, 1874, to Miss Blanche Quiggle, daughter of the Hon. James W. Quiggle of Philadelphia, formerly United States minister to Belgium. Two sons and one daughter have been born to him.
EDWARD LYMAN SHORT
THE ancestry of Edward Lyman Short, so far as the United States is concerned, begins with some of the earliest New England colonists. Indeed, we may trace it back of them to Henry Sewall, who was Mayor of Coventry, England, of whose descendants five have been judges, three of them chief judges, in this country. The first of the Shorts in this country was Henry Short, who came over in the famous ship Mary and John, and arrived in Boston in 1634. The first of the Lymans had already come hither, three years earlier. This was Richard Lyman, who settled at Hartford in 1631. In later generations both these families were prominently identified with the interests of the rising nation, as witness the names and patriotic records of Lieu- tenant John Lyman, Major Elihu Lyman, Colonel Samuel Par- tridge, and Captain Timothy Dwight, who were all among Mr. Short's ancestors. Richard Lyman, it may be added, came from High Ongar, England, and his will was the first ever probated in the Connecticut Colony.
From Henry Short, a direct descendant, was the eminent theo- logian and educator, Charles Short, LL. D., who was one of the committee on the revision of the Bible from 1871 to 1882, presi- dent of Kenyon College from 1863 to 1868, and professor of the Latin language and literature in Columbia College from 1868 to 1886. In the same generation was descended from Rich- ard Lyman Miss Jean Ann Lyman of Greenfield, Massachusetts. She became the wife of Dr. Short, and to them the subject of the present sketch was born.
Edward Lyman Short was born, of such parentage and ances- try, in the city of Philadelphia, on September 30, 1854. When he was only nine years of age his father became a member of the
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THE ancestry of Edward Lyman Short, so far as the United States is concerned, begins with some of the earliest New England colonists. Indeed, we may trace it back of them to Henry Sewall, who was Mayor of Coventry, England, of whose descendants five have been judges, three of them chief judges, in this country. The first of the Shorts in this country was Henry Short, who came over in the famous ship Mary and John, and arrived in Boston in 1634. The first of the Lymans had already come hither, three years earlier .. This was Richard Lyman, who settled at Hartford in 1631. In later generations both these families were prominently identified with the interests of the rising nation, as witness the names and patriotic records of Lieu- tenant John Lyman, Major Elihu Lyman, Colonel Samuel Par- tridge, and Captain Timothy Dwight, who were all among Mr. Short's ancestors. Richard Lyman, it may be added, came from High Ongar, England, and his will was the first ever probated in the Connecticut Colony.
From Henry Short, a direct descendant, was the eminent theo- logian and educator, Charles Short, LL. D., who was one of the committee on the revision of the Bible from 1871 to 1882, presi- dent of Kenyon College from 1863 to 1868, and professor of the Latin language and literature in Columbia College from 1868 to 1886. In the same generation was descended from Rich- ard Lyman Miss Jean Ann Lyman of Greenfield, Massachusetts. She became the wife of Dr. Short, and to them the subject of the present sketch was born.
Edward Lyman Short was born, of such parentage and ances- try, in the city of Philadelphia, on September 30, 1854. When he was only nine years of age his father became a member of the
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faculty of Columbia College, and settled in New York, and the boy accordingly received his early education in schools in this city. He was prepared for college at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, where he was graduated in 1871. He then en- tered Columbia College, and was graduated there with high honors in 1875. Choosing the law for his profession, he began the study of it in private offices, and also in the Columbia College Law School, from which latter he was graduated in 1879. In the same year he was admitted to practice at the bar. In 1884 he became a member of the firm of Davies & Rapallo, and has remained in that connection to the present time, the firm mean- time changing its name to Davies, Cole & Rapallo, then to Davies, Short & Townsend, and finally, as at present, to Davies, Stone & Auerbach.
Mr. Short has made a specialty of cases involving railway in- terests, taxation, insurance, and corporation law, and has come to be recognized as an authority in such matters. He has written a standard work on "Railway Bonds and Mortgages." Among railroad companies in whose litigation he has par- ticipated are the Wabash, the Scioto Valley, the Minneapolis and St. Louis, and the Lackawanna and Pittsburg. He has for some time been general solicitor for the Mutual Life Insurance Com- pany of this city. He was also engaged in the important tax case of the Horn Silver Mining Company, the Hillman fraud case, and the Runk suicide case, before the Supreme Court of the United States.
He has never held nor sought political office, but has devoted his attention almost exclusively to the practice of his profession. He has found recreation and intellectual elevation in travel abroad, and in the cultivation of artistic and literary tastes. He is a member of many of the best social organizations of the city, among them being the University, Metropolitan, Church, Law- yers', and Down-Town clubs, the Riding Club, the Sons of the Revolution, and the Society of Colonial Wars.
Mr. Short was married in this city, in November, 1887, to Miss Livingston Petit, daughter of John Jules Petit, and has one daughter, Anna Livingston, and one son, Livingston Lyman Short.
CHARLES STEWART SMITH
C (HARLES STEWART SMITH comes, on his father's side, from the early English stock that settled in the Connecti- cut valley in 1641, and is sixth in descent from Lieutenant Sam- uel Smith, Sr., and the Hon. Richard Treat, both distinguished in colonial history ; and, on his mother's side, from the best stock of New Jersey, her father, Aaron Dickinson Woodruff, having been for many years Attorney-General and one of the foremost lawyers of that State. He was born on March 2, 1832, at Exeter, New Hampshire, where his father was a Congregational minister. From his father he acquired the rudiments of a good education, including Latin and Greek. Then he went to the village school and academy, and at the age of fifteen was able himself to be- come a school-teacher in a Connecticut village. A few years later he came to New York, and at once fell into the business pursuit which was to claim his life's attention, and in which he was to achieve a greater than ordinary measure of success.
He became a clerk in a dry-goods jobbing-house. In a short time he became master of the details of the business, and showed himself to be industrious and trustworthy. Promotion followed as a matter of course. At the age of twenty-one he was admitted to partnership in the important house of S. B. Chittenden & Co., and thereafter lived abroad for several years as its European rep- resentative. His experience there was just what was needed to complete his training as a man of affairs.
On his return to America, he organized a firm of his own, un- der the name of Smith, Hogg & Gardiner, which succeeded to the dry-goods commission business of the Boston house of A. & A. Lawrence, and for a quarter of a century had a prosperous
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career. In 1887 he retired from active labor, though his firm continued under the same name.
His ability as a financier naturally led him into other enter- prises, especially banking. He was one of the founders of the Fifth Avenue Bank, and of the German-American Insurance Company. He is a director of the United States Trust Com- pany, the Fourth National Bank, the Merchants' National Bank, the Fifth Avenue Bank, the Greenwich Savings Bank, and the Equitable Life Assurance Society. He is also a trustee of the Presbyterian Hospital.
The esteem in which he is held by his associates in the busi- ness world has been strikingly shown by his election, in 1887, as twenty-sixth president of the Chamber of Commerce, and his unanimous reëlection for seven successive terms. He has taken a good citizen's active interest in politics, but has never held political office. The nomination to the Mayoralty of the city was once offered to him, but declined. Mr. Smith was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Committee on Railroad Transpor- tation which caused the investigation to be made by the Hepburn Committee, in 1879, which secured for New York State the Rail- road Commission. He was chairman of the executive committee of the Committee of Seventy that overthrew Tammany and elected Mayor Strong in 1894, and was also chairman of the Cit- izens' Union, in 1897, that nominated Seth Low for Mayor, and, with an organization existing but six months, cast one hundred and fifty thousand votes for its candidate, and was only defeated by the hostility of the machines, which feared a municipal gov- ernment untrammeled by party obligations.
He is a member of the Union League, Century, Metropolitan, Merchants', City, Lawyers', and Players' clubs, and is a member of the New England Society, the Sons of the American Revolu- tion, and the Society of Colonial Wars, and is a well-known figure and frequently toast-master or speaker at many public dinners and meetings. He is a life member of the Academy of Design and of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and possesses a valu- able collection of paintings. He has presented to the Metropol- itan Museum a collection of Japanese and Chinese porcelains and other objects. Mr. Smith has been a frequent contributor to some of the best magazines and reviews.
DE WITT SMITH
AMONG the younger financiers of New York, the financial capital of the Western world, there are few who are as suc- cessful and as favorably known, both locally and throughout the country at large, as De Witt Smith, the president of the Rich- mond, Petersburg and Carolina Railroad Company.
Mr. Smith is a native of the northern part of New York State, where his father was for many years prominent and honored in transportation and financial circles. He was born at Cape Vin- cent, New York, on March 31, 1858, but spent most of his boy- hood in the city of Oswego, New York, and acquired his early education in its schools. The family remained at Oswego until the year 1876, when it removed to St. Louis, where Mr. Smith's father was extensively interested in the lumber trade. Mr. Smith, who was then eighteen years old and through with the common and grammar schools, of course accompanied his family to Michigan, and there began his own business career.
His inclination was strongly toward finance, and accordingly his first employment was in the Gratiot County Bank of St. Louis, Michigan. He had not had previous experience in such work, but he entered into his duties more as an expert than as a novice. From the hour of his entry into the bank he showed exceptional aptitude for financial transactions, and rare good judgment in conducting them - the qualities which, more fully developed, have marked his subsequent career with so great a measure of success. Promotion after promotion came in rapid sequence, and within a year he became practically the manager of the bank. But Mr. Smith was a firm believer in the " higher education," for business men as well as for members of the learned professions. It had been his boyish ambition to pursue
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a regular collegiate course, deeming such culture as an advan- tageous preparation for any worthy career. His parents also encouraged him in this ambition, especially his mother, who was a lady of remarkable intellectuality and wide culture.
Accordingly he resigned his place in the Gratiot County Bank, with all its bright prospects of preferment in the financial world, and came back to the East to become a college student. Yale was the university of his choice, and he was matriculated there as a member of the class of 1886. In that venerable institution he soon attained high rank as a scholar. During his course at Yale he found time to pursue the theological studies of the Yale Divinity School, in which he was specially interested as an intellectual pursuit.
After Mr. Smith left Yale he became fully persuaded that his most suitable course was to be found in the business world. So he entered business in New York city. Here he devoted his attention to financial enterprises. One of the first and closest friends of Mr. Smith in New York was Professor Charles Top- pan, who was known as an "oil genius," as well as a man of sterling worth. The fact that Mr. Smith became his intimate friend and associate is in itself a fine indication of the young man's admirable character. Through this acquaintance Mr. Smith was placed upon the threshold of a promising career in the oil trade. He was soon brought into close relations with the officers of the Standard Oil Company, and made with that corporation some contracts of great importance. Unfortunately, before he was fully launched upon this course of operations, his friend Professor Toppan died, and he was accordingly compelled to abandon that promising field.
He immediately turned his attention to another and more promising field - namely, that of railroading. He was quick to appreciate the advantages that might be gained in many places by consolidating under one management a number of roads, thus making a profitable trunk-line out of what had been a series of separate and struggling railroads. He found an opportunity for such work along the Southern Atlantic seaboard, and acquired by purchase from the city of Petersburg its control of the Richmond, Petersburg, and Carolina Railroad. He forthwith financed and constructed a one-hundred-mile extension south
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into North Carolina, making connection with the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad. During 1898 he person- ally conducted the negotiations for the purpose of the various railroad properties composing the entire Seaboard Air Line in behalf of the syndicate of which he was a member, and was a prime factor in the amalgamation of a number of Southern roads into the greater Seaboard Air Line, which caused so marked a sensation in the railroad and financial world in the fall of 1899.
Mr. Smith is still an important member of the Seaboard Air Line Syndicate, but he has also turned his attention to other enterprises of a similar nature, to all of which his direction seems to be an assurance of profitable progress. He is now, as already stated, president of the Richmond, Petersburg and Caro- lina Railroad, the affairs of which company he directs with signal skill. He is also the principal owner, as he was the organizer, of the Colonial Construction Company, a corporation which controls a number of railroad construction contracts amounting to many millions of dollars.
Mr. Smith's various enterprises have entailed upon him a great amount of traveling about the country. His home and his principal office are, however, in New York city. His private offices are connected with the sumptuous suite of rooms occu- pied by the Richmond, Petersburg and Carolina Railroad Com- pany, including the entire front of the fourteenth floor of the Washington Life Insurance Company's Building, on the lower part of Broadway. He has a handsome home on West Eighty- fifth Street, and there spends most of his leisure time, for his tastes are decidedly domestic. He is a member of the Lawyers' Club and a number of other clubs, but holds that clubs are made for men, not men for clubs. Welcomed as he always is wherever he goes, therefore, he makes his club associates a mere incident of his life, his chief attention being given to his offices and his home.
He is a man of much "personal magnetism" and charm of manner, and eminently fitted to become a social leader, or to pursue a successful career in politics. To the latter, however, he has paid little attention beyond discharging the duties of an intelligent and public-spirited citizen.
Eng by Williams New York
JOHN SABINE SMITH
"THE subject of this sketch comes of a family that was honor- ably known in England many generations ago. On his father's side his ancestry includes Captain James Parker, who was engaged in the King Philip War in 1676. His great-grand- father was the founder of Windsor, Vermont; his grandfather was the first white child born in that town; and his father was for more than fifty years a prominent physician, practising at Randolph, Vermont.
John Sabine Smith was born at Randolph, on April 24, 1843. He was forced to gain an education through his own energies. After a preparatory course, he went to Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, at the age of sixteen, and though compelled to spend much time in working to pay his way, he was graduated, four years later, at the head of his class. Then for five years he taught school at Troy and at Westchester, New York, meanwhile study- ing law. In May, 1868, he was admitted to practice at the bar, and then came to this city to engage in the practice of his chosen profession. Here for many years he has ranked among the most diligent, hard-working, and successful lawyers in the city. He has been connected with many important cases, and has won many signal victories.
He joined the Young Men's Republican Club in 1879, and when it was transformed into the Republican Club he remained one of its leading members. He was one of the organizers of the Republican League of the United States, and was actively con- cerned in the first National Convention of Republican Clubs, held in New York in 1887. The next year he helped to make the Republican clubs potent forces in the campaigns. In 1890 he was the leader in the fight for a straight Republican local
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ticket, and the next year saw him directing the campaign to make Mr. Fassett, if possible, Governor of the State. His ser- vices to the party in 1892, as chairman of the campaign commit- tee of the Republican Club, were recognized by that club the next year in making him its president. In 1892 he ran for the office of surrogate of the County of New York, and, though de- feated, had the satisfaction of polling the largest vote ever given for any straight candidate of his party for any office in this city. In 1893 he was president of the Republican County Committee of New York, and the next year was a member of the committee of thirty which reorganized the local Republican party. At this time he prepared plans for the enlargement of the Legislature and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, which were favor- ably acted upon by the State Constitutional Convention. He was the author of the new law regulating primary elections, which was passed by the Legislature in 1897. For several years he was a member of the Republican State Committee. In 1896-97 he was chairman of the committee on speakers and meetings of the Republican County Committee.
Mr. Smith is a member of the City, State, and National Bar associations, of the Republican, University, Lawyers', Church, and other clubs, and of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the New England Society, and the Society of Colonial Wars, the Chancel- lor Walworth Masonic Lodge, the Columbian Commandery, and Mecca Temple of the Mystic Shrine, a member of Grace Protestant Episcopal Church, and a trustee of Trinity College. Mr. Smith was for some time president of the Society of Medical Jurisprudence, also treasurer of the East Side House, a university settlement, from the time of its foundation. He is a member of many other social, charitable, and religious organizations.
R. A. C. SMITH
T THE ancient town of Dover, England, was the native place of R. A. C. Smith, who has now become so prominent and forceful a figure in the financial operations of New York and of the island of Cuba. He was born there on February 22, 1857, and soon thereafter was taken to Spain, where twelve years of his early life were spent. After that he returned to England and there began to devote himself to study.
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