USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume I > Part 3
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Mr. Baldwin was educated in the schools of his native city, completing his studies with the high school course. Then, having a decided bent for the mechanic arts, he entered the works of D. M. Osborne & Co., manufacturers of reapers, mowers, and general harvesting machinery. Beginning in his boyhood, and in a subordinate place, he effected a thorough mastery of the business in both its manufacturing and its com- mercial details. In consequence of his ability and application he was from time to time promoted in the service of the com- pany, and on attaining his majority he was sent to Europe as its
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WILLIAM DELAVAN BALDWIN
agent in those countries. For five years he filled that important place, and discharged its duties with great acceptability, being thus instrumental in effecting a great extension of the firm's business, and also of the prestige of American manufacturers in foreign lands.
This engagement was brought to an end in 1882, by Mr. Baldwin's resignation, not only of the European agency but of his entire connection with the firm. He took this step in order to be able to devote his fullest attention to another industry which was then growing to large proportions, and in which he had conceived a deep interest. This was the manufacture of elevators for conveying passengers and freight in tall modern buildings. The firm of Otis Brothers & Co. has already estab- lished a reputation for such devices. On resigning from the D. M. Osborne Company, Mr. Baldwin purchased an interest in the Otis Company, and became its treasurer. He devoted him- self with characteristic energy and effect to the extension of its business and the general promotion of its welfare. He was largely instrumental in bringing about the present organization of the concern as the Otis Elevator Company, and is now the president of that corporation.
In addition to this, his chief business enterprise, Mr. Baldwin is interested in various other corporations, and is a director and officer of several of them.
In politics Mr. Baldwin has always been a stanch Republican, and while he was a resident of the city of Yonkers, New York, where the Otis Elevator Works are situated, he took an active interest in political affairs.
He is a member of a number of clubs and other social organi- zations, in New York city and elsewhere. Among these are the Union League, the Lawyers', the Engineers', the Racquet and Tennis, and the Adirondack League clubs.
Mr. Baldwin was married in the year 1881 to Miss Helen Runyon, daughter of Nahum M. Sullivan of Montclair, New Jersey, a prominent New York merchant. Seven children have been born to them.
WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, JR.
N TEW ENGLAND has given to all parts of the land a large proportion of their most successful and eminent men in all walks of life. These are to be found in the ranks of the learned professions, in the standard " old line" businesses which have existed since human society was organized, and also in the newer enterprises which have grown up out of modern inventions to meet the needs of the most advanced modern conditions. Among the last-named the subject of the present sketch is honorably to be ranked. Both his paternal and maternal ancestors were set- tled in New England, in the Massachusetts Colony, in the seven- teenth century, and played an honorable and beneficent part in building that colony up into the great State it has now become. At the time of their first settlement, such a thing as a railroad would have been deemed palpable witchcraft and a device of the Evil One. Yet their descendant has become one of the fore- most promoters of that "strange device" in this land where rail- roads are one of the most familiar and most important features of industrial economy.
William Henry Baldwin, Jr., the well-known president of the Long Island Railroad Company, was born in the city of Boston on February 5, 1863. His mother's maiden name was the good old New England one of Mary Chaffee. His father, William Henry Baldwin, was and is a typical Bostonian, identified closely with the interests of that city, where for more than thirty years he has been president of the Young Men's Christian Union. The boy received a characteristic Bostonian education - first in the unrivaled public schools of that city, then in the Roxbury Latin School, and finally, of course, at Harvard University, being graduated from the last-named institution as a member of
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WILLIAM HENRY BALDWIN, JR.
the class of 1885. While in college he belonged to the Alpha Delta Phi and Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternities, the Hasty- Pudding and O. K. clubs, and was president and leader of the Glee Club, and president of the Memorial Hall Dining Associa- tion, and was actively interested in all athletic sports.
After receiving the degree of A. B., Mr. Baldwin took a year's course at the Harvard Law School, and then entered the employ of the Union Pacific Railroad as a clerk in the auditor's office, and later in the office of the general traffic manager at Omaha. From June, 1887, to June, 1888, he was division freight agent at Butte, Montana; then, to February, 1889, assistant general freight agent at Omaha; and to October, 1889, manager of the Leaven- worth division of the Union Pacific at Leavenworth, Kansas.
In October, 1889, he became general manager, and afterward, for a short time, president, of the Montana Union Railroad, a feeder of the Union Pacific and Northern Pacific railroads, under their joint control.
In August, 1890, Mr. Baldwin was made assistant vice-presi- dent of the Union Pacific at Omaha. From June, 1891, to July, 1894, he was general manager of the Flint and Père Marquette Railroad, in Michigan, and from the latter date to October, 1895, third vice-president of the Southern Railroad, with headquarters at Washington, D. C.
In 1895 he was made second vice-president of the Southern, in charge of both the traffic and operating departments.
On October 1, 1896, he took charge of the Long Island Rail- road as its president, and still occupies that position. He is also interested in various other enterprises on Long Island.
In addition to his business occupations, Mr. Baldwin has paid considerable attention to social, economic, and educational questions.
He is a trustee of the Tuskeegee Industrial School for negroes in Alabama, and a trustee of Smith College at Northampton, Massachusetts.
He is a member of the University and Harvard clubs of New York, and of the Hamilton Club of Brooklyn.
Mr. Baldwin was married, on October 30, 1889, to Ruth Stan- dish Bowles of Springfield, Massachusetts, daughter of the late Samuel Bowles, editor of the "Springfield Republican."
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AMZI LORENZO BARBER
A MZI LORENZO BARBER is a descendant, in the fourth generation, of Thomas Barber, who, with his two brothers, came to America in ante-Revolutionary days and settled in Ver- mont. They were of Scotch-Irish stock, but were born in Eng- land. Mr. Barber's father, the Rev. Amzi Doolittle Barber, was graduated from the theological department of Oberlin Col- lege in 1841. Oberlin was at that time celebrated for its ad- vanced and fearless attitude on the slavery question, just then bitterly agitating all classes in the United States. The Rev. Mr. Barber, after leaving college, returned to Vermont, where for many years he was pastor of the Congregational church at Saxton's River, Windham County. His wife was Nancy Irene Bailey of Westmoreland, Oneida County, New York, a descen- dant of English and French ancestors.
Amzi Lorenzo Barber was born at Saxton's River, Vermont, in 1843. In his early childhood his parents moved to Ohio, and he received his education in that State. He was graduated from Oberlin College in 1867, and took a postgraduate course of a few months in theology. He then went to Washington and assumed the charge of the Normal Department in the Howard University, at the request and under the direction of General O. O. Howard. After filling several positions in the university he resigned from the staff, and in 1872 went into real-estate busi- ness in Washington.
He devoted much thought and study to questions of street- paving and improvements, and they coming finally to claim his entire attention, he went into the occupation of constructing as- phalt pavement on a large scale. In 1883 the Barber Asphalt Paving Company, known all over the country, was incorporated.
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AMZI LORENZO BARBER
Besides being at the head of this company, Mr. Barber is a director in the Washington Loan and Trust Company of Wash- ington, D. C., and in the Knickerbocker Trust Company, West- chester Trust Company, New Amsterdam Casualty Company, and other companies in New York.
He is a member of the Metropolitan, the University, the Engi- neers', the Riding, and the Lawyers' clubs, the New England and Ohio societies, and the American Geographical Society. He is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a member of the Society of Arts in London. Mr. Barber's favorite diversion is yachting, and he gives much of his time not devoted to business to this pleasure. He keeps a steam-yacht in commission throughout the season, and has made many voyages, with his family, in American waters, the Mediterranean and other European seas. He is a member of the New York, the Atlantic, the American, and the Larchmont yacht clubs of America, and of the Royal Thames Yacht Club of London.
Mr. Barber has been twice married. His first wife was Celia M. Bradley of Geneva, Ohio. She died in 1870, two years after her marriage with Mr. Barber. His second wife was Miss Julia Louise Langdon, a daughter of J. Le Droict Langdon of Bel- mont, New York. They have four children : Le Droict, Lorena, Bertha, and Rowland Langdon Barber. The eldest daughter is the wife of Samuel Todd Davis, Jr., of Washington. Mr. Bar- ber lives most of the year at Ardsley Towers, a large and beau- tiful country estate at Irvington, New York. It was once the property of Cyrus W. Field. For many years Mr. Barber's town house was the Stuart mansion, at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-eighth Street, now owned by William C. Whitney. His winter home is the beautiful and well-known Belmont at Washington, D. C.
Mr. Barber has for many years been a trustee of Oberlin Col- lege in Ohio, and takes great interest in the success of that institution.
GEORGE CARTER BARRETT
U PON the side of his father, the Rev. Gilbert Carter Barrett of the Church of England, Justice Barrett is of English descent. He has in his possession a Waterloo medal which was given to his grand-uncle, Lieutenant John Carter Barrett, for distinguished gallantry on the field of that "world's earth- quake." Upon the side of his mother, whose maiden name was Jane M. Brown, he is of Celtic and Irish descent.
George Carter Barrett was born in Dublin, Ireland, on July 28, 1838, and in early life was brought to North America by his father, who was sent as a missionary to the Muncey and Oneida tribes of Canadian Indians. For six years he lived with his father at the Canadian mission, and subsequently went to school at Delaware, Ontario, then Canada West.
At the age of fifteen he came to New York and attended Co- lumbia College Grammar-School and Columbia College. At the end of his freshman year he was compelled to leave college to earn his own living and to help other members of his family, especially a younger brother, who subsequently died at sea. When he was sixteen years old he began writing for various newspapers. In his work he was greatly aided by Charles G. Halpine ("Miles O'Reilly "), who was a good friend to him. At eighteen he became a law clerk, and devoted his attention to preparing himself to practise law. Upon his majority he was admitted to the bar, and at the age of twenty-five was elected justice of the Sixth Judicial District Court for a term of six years. After serving four years in that place he was elected to the bench of the Court of Common Pleas. There he served for nearly two years in company with Chief Judge Charles P. Daly
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and Judge John R. Brady, two of the most respected jurists of the day. He then resigned his place and went back to his law office for two years. In 1871 he was elected a justice of the Supreme Court by an overwhelming majority, and at the end of his term, fourteen years later, was reëlected without opposition, being nominated by Democrats and Republicans alike. When the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court was created, in 1894, Justice Barrett was appointed one of its original seven members.
Justice Barrett has held no political office, in his high view of the case judicial offices being entirely non-political. He has, however, taken an important part in political affairs as a lawyer and a citizen. He resigned his place on the Common Pleas bench just as the popular uprising against the corrupt Tweed Ring was taking form. He promptly identified himself with that movement. He was president of the Young Men's Munici- pal Reform Association, which strenuously fought against the Ring, and was a prominent member of the famous Committee of Seventy. He spoke at a great anti-Ring meeting at Cooper Union, with Samuel J. Tilden and Henry Ward Beecher, and was one of the counsel for the Committee of Seventy and also for John Foley in the great injunction suit against the Ring, which was tried before Justice Barnard, and which resulted in the appointment of Andrew D. Green as deputy controller, and the exposure of the rascalities of the Ring.
Justice Barrett is a member of the Century, Metropolitan, Manhattan, Democratic, Barnard, Riding, and Mendelssohn Glee clubs of this city. He was married in November, 1866, to Mrs. Gertrude F. Vingut, widow of Professor Francisco Ja- vier Vingut, and daughter of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, the New England writer and poet. Only one child was born to them- a daughter, Angela Carter Barrett, now deceased. Justice Bar- rett has made his home in New York ever since he came here at the age of fifteen. His father died at that time, and his mother had died before his father and he left Ireland. He has throughout his long and distinguished career commanded the fullest measure of esteem and confidence of the entire commu- nity, "unsullied in reputation, either as a man, a lawyer, or a judge."
J.O.Barthur
JOHN RICHARD BARTLETT
"THE paternal ancestors of John Richard Bartlett were, as the name indicates, of English origin. The name of Oakes, borne by Mr. Bartlett's mother, similarly indicates English an- cestry on the maternal side. The Bartletts came to this coun- try about the year 1700, and settled in Boston, Massachusetts. The name has since that date been conspicuously identified with the growth of the New England colonies and States. The latter fact is equally applicable to the family name of Oakes.
In the early part of the nineteenth century, however, some members of the families were settled in the British colony of New Brunswick. There Richard Bartlett was successively a school-teacher, a farmer, a lumber manufacturer, and merchant. He married Louisa Oakes, and to them was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, on May 17, 1839, the subject of this sketch.
John Richard Bartlett was educated at first in the schools of Fredericton, then at St. John, New Brunswick, and finally in Boston, Massachusetts. He was not, however, left to devote his youth undisturbedly to the pursuit of knowledge. At the age of fourteen he was called from school to work for the sup- port of himself and his mother and sisters. Thereafter, with invincible determination, he pursued his studies as best he could at night, on holidays, and during the winter seasons.
His first occupation, at the age of fourteen, was that of carry- ing the measuring-line for a party of surveyors. Three years later he was engaged in designing and building carriages of various kinds ; and so great was his success in this work that at the age of twenty he engaged in the business of manufactur- ing on his own account, at Haverhill and in Boston, Massachu- setts.
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Desiring, however, still more extended scope for his executive abilities, he in 1865 engaged in a mercantile career in Boston, presently embracing New York city also in his business relation- ships. In 1873 he removed his home and office to New York city, and has since been chiefly identified with that city's business life. His early training in constructive mechanism and his mercantile experience proved of great service to him in laying the founda- tions of his eminently successful career.
Mr. Bartlett is to-day a unique figure in the business life of New York, having for the past fifteen years been the moving spirit in the creation and reorganization of a number of large corporations. A good illustration of his peculiar creative ability may be found in his conception and successful creation of the great water system now supplying the cities and towns of north- ern New Jersey. The needs of these large communities had for many years baffled all attempts at solution, until Mr. Bartlett took up the subject, and gathering about him the necessary legal, engineering, and financial aid, formulated and put into execution the plans which are to-day responsible for the public supplies of potable water to Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Passaic, Montclair, the Oranges, and other communities. This successful accomplishment by private enterprise of what the State had been trying in vain to do for years did not proceed without opposition, but he pushed the work with such courage and vigor that in a short time its completion, in spite of all opposition, was an accomplished fact. The accomplishment of this great work engaged his attention between the years of 1885 and 1890.
In the latter year he relinquished the management of the sev- eral water corporations which he had created to others, and responded to a call from stock-holders and bankers of the American Cotton Oil Company, to reorganize and rehabilitate the manufacturing and commercial business of that corporation in this country and Europe. An idea of the magnitude of this work can be had from the mention of the fact that this com- pany embraced thirty-five separate corporations, with mills and refineries located in seventeen States of the Union, as well as in Europe, and involved a capital of more than thirty-three million dollars. On the successful completion of this reorganization,
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Mr. Bartlett was elected to the presidency of the company. In 1893, needing rest, he resigned the presidency, leaving the busi- ness in a highly prosperous condition, but was almost imme- diately elected to the chairmanship of the Reorganization Com- mittee of the Nicaragua Canal Company, which had passed into receivers' hands.
The reorganization of the Nicaragua Canal presented a rather complicated problem ; but the plan formulated by Mr. Bartlett so well fulfilled the requirements of the situation that it received unanimous adoption by the stock-holders, and secured to the American pioneers in this great work a preservation of the rights originally granted the company, and which had been imperiled by the financial distress into which the company had fallen before he was called upon to take control.
An outline of the various other enterprises, in the organiza- tion or reorganization of which Mr. Bartlett has taken a leading part, would require more space than can be allotted to this sketch; but the largest and perhaps most remarkable of his achievements was the organization of a great British industrial corporation, styled the British Oil and Cake Mills, Limited, with a capital of eleven million two hundred and fifty thousand dol- lars. This corporation is an amalgamation of twenty-eight mills and twelve refineries in Great Britain, engaged in manufactur- ing and refining cotton-seed and linseed oil and cake. It is simi- lar to big industrial consolidations with which we are familiar in the United States, except that, unlike most large American industrials, Mr. Bartlett organized it on a cash basis, with abso- lutely no " water" in the capital stock. He strenuously opposed any attempt at over-capitalization, and in this was supported by the leading English interests, the good will of each business being purchased at its cash value.
The signal triumph scored by Mr. Bartlett in the creation of this British combination attracted considerable attention, both in this country and in Europe, because it offered a convincing proof that great industrial corporations, against which there is such an outcry in this country, can be formed with facility in Great Britain, when undertaken with the intelligence, tact, and good business judgment which Mr. Bartlett displayed in the accomplishment of this work.
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JOHN RICHARD BARTLETT
A catalogue of the places held by Mr. Bartlett in important corporations includes the following: managing director of the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures (founded by Alex- ander Hamilton, in 1772); vice-president and treasurer of the Maconpin Railroad; vice-president of the New Jersey General Security Company ; treasurer of the West Milford Water Storage Company, and of the Montclair Water Company; director of the Passaic Water Company, of the Acquackanock Water Com- pany, of the Fairbanks Company, of the W. J. Wilcox Lard and Refining Company, of the Union Oil Company of New Orleans, of the Maritime Canal Company, of the Pennsylvania Iron Works Company, and of the Siemens and Halske Electric Com- pany of Chicago; and president of the Drawbaugh Tele- phone and Telegraph Company, of the American Cotton Oil Company, of the Niagara Canal Company, and of the Bay State Gas Company of Boston.
At the present time Mr. Bartlett is connected with a large number of corporations, in many of which he is a director, and is a member of a number of social organizations of the first class in several countries, among them being the Union League Club, the Lotus Club, the Lawyers' Club, and the New England Soci- ety, of New York, the Laurentian Club of Montreal, and the American Society of London, England.
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HENRY RUTGERS BEEKMAN
A MAN who bears a distinguished name, and has himself pur- sued a distinguished career, is the subject of this sketch. On his father's side he is descended from Gerardus Beekman, a sturdy Hollander who was a member of the Council of New Amsterdam at the time of the Revolution of 1688, and was for a time acting Governor of New York early in the eighteenth cen- tury. The father of Henry R. Beekman was William F. Beek- man, in his day one of the foremost citizens of New York; and his mother was Catherine A. Neilson Beekman, a daughter of William Neilson, a prominent New-Yorker of Irish origin.
Henry Rutgers Beekman was born in this city on December 8, 1845. At the age of sixteen he entered Columbia College, where he was known as a careful and industrious student. At the end of his four years' course he was graduated in the class of 1865, and at once entered the Law School of Columbia, from which, two years later, he was graduated with the degree of LL. B. He was then admitted to the bar, and at once began the practice of his profession. For many years he was associated in the practice of the law in this city with David B. Ogden and Thomas L. Ogden.
Although he has taken an interest in public affairs all his life, Mr. Beekman did not hold office until 1884, when he was ap- pointed a school trustee for the Eighteenth Ward. The next year Mayor Grace made him park commissioner. The year after that he was elected president of the Board of Aldermen, on the ticket of the United Democracy. Two years later Mayor Hewitt appointed him corporation counsel, to succeed Morgan J. O'Brien, who had been elected a justice of the Supreme Court. In this latter office Mr. Beekman gained the reputation of being the
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most forcible and effective legal representative New York had ever had before the legislative committees at Albany. Governor Hill afterward appointed him a member of the commission on uniformity of marriage, divorce, and other laws. He also served as counsel to the Rapid Transit Commission. Finally, in 1894, he was nominated by the Committee of Seventy for a place on the Superior Court bench, and was elected by an overwhelming majority. When the new constitution went into force, that court was merged into the Supreme Court, and he became a justice of the latter tribunal.
While he was president of the Board of Aldermen he secured the enactment of the law creating a system of small parks in this city, and also established the policy of maintaining public bath-houses for the poor in the crowded parts of the city. In many other directions he gave his attention to promoting the welfare of the people.
Justice Beekman is a conspicuous figure in the best social life of the metropolis. He belongs to many organizations, among which may be named the University, Century, Union, Reform, Manhattan, and Democratic clubs. He was married, in 1870, to Miss Isabella Lawrence, daughter of Richard Lawrence, a promi- nent East Indian merchant. They have four children : Jose- phine L., William F., Mary, and Henry R. Beekman, Jr.
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