USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume I > Part 30
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Lispenard Stewart was born at his father's country-seat, Brookwood, at Mount St. Vincent, on the Hudson, now in the upper part of this city, on June 19, 1855. He was educated at Anthon's and Charlier's schools, in this city, at a school at Peek- skill, and at Yale, where he was graduated A. B. in 1876. Later he entered the Columbia College Law School, and in 1878 was graduated LL. B. He was admitted to the bar, but soon gave up the practice of the profession in order to act as trustee of several large estates.
Mr. Stewart became interested in politics, as a Republican, at an early date. For many years he was a member of the New York Republican County Committee, and for some time its treasurer. Nominations for Congress, the Legislature, and the Board of Aldermen were offered to him from time to time, but he did not accept any until 1888. In that year he accepted nomination as a Presidential Elector on the Republican ticket, and, being elected, was made secretary of the New York Elec-
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toral College. The year following he was his party's candidate for State Senator in the Eighth District of this city, and, after a memorable contest, was elected, the only Republican Senator from the city of New York. He proved a valuable legislator, among his achievements being the introduction and passage of the bill creating the Rapid Transit Commission of this city. In 1893 he declined the treasurership of the National League of Republican Clubs. In that year he was one of the Committee of Thirty to reorganize the local Republican party. In 1894 he was prominently considered in connection with the Mayoralty nomination. In 1895 Governor Morton offered him a place on his staff, and also appointed him a State Commissioner of Prisons to represent the First Judicial District. He was elected by the commission its first president, and still holds this posi- tion for the fourth consecutive term. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1896.
Mr. Stewart has often served on important non-political com- mittees, such as that of one hundred leading citizens which escorted the body of General Grant from Saratoga to New York ; that on the Columbus Quadricentennial Celebration; that on celebrating the centenary of Washington's first inauguration ; that on the erection of the Washington Arch; and that on Man- hattan Day at the Chicago Columbian World's Fair.
Mr. Stewart has long been prominent in club and social life. He is a member of the Union League, Union, Metropolitan, Uni- versity, Riding, Down-Town, and Republican clubs, and has been a governor of several of them. He is a trustee of the Real Estate Trust Company, the Grant Monument Association, and the New York Zoological Society, and is on the governing boards of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, the Prison Association, and the Protestant Episcopal Missionary Society for Seamen. He has spent much time in travel in all parts of the world. He is not married.
WILLIAM RHINELANDER STEWART
THE late Lispenard Stewart was descended from the famous Scotch family of Stewart, kin to the Stuart sovereigns, and, on the maternal side, from the French Huguenot family of Lis- penard, members of which were prominent in the early history of this city. Mr. Stewart married Miss Mary Rhinelander, a mem- ber of the well-known family of that name, of German origin.
William Rhinelander Stewart, son of the foregoing, was born in New York, on December 3, 1852, and was educated at Char- lier's Institute, Anthon's Classical School, and the Law School of Columbia College. From the last he was graduated in 1873. He was admitted to the bar, and entered the law office of Platt, Gerard & Buckley. He remained with that firm for several years, meantime carrying on a private business.
Being of independent means, Mr. Stewart has been able to devote much time and labor to public interests. He was appointed by the President, in 1880, one of the commissioners for the World's Fair which it was proposed to hold in New York in 1883. In 1881 Governor Cornell made him a member of the committee of fifteen to receive and entertain the delegation of descendants of French officers who fought under Rochambeau and De Grasse in our Revolution. He thus did valuable service in connection with the centenary of the surrender of York- town. In 1882 Governor Cornell appointed Mr. Stewart a com- missioner of the State Board of Charities. By successive reappointments he has served in that capacity ever since. In Feb- ruary, 1894, he was unanimously elected president of the board.
It was Mr. Stewart who conceived the idea of commemorating the centenary of the inauguration of Washington as first Presi- dent of the United States by spanning Fifth Avenue, at its
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junction with Washington Square, with a triumphal arch. By personal efforts among his friends and neighbors, he secured the erection of the temporary arch in April, 1889, without expense to the city. The arch was deemed the finest decorative feature of the pageant, and a demand arose for its perpetuation in per- manent marble. A committee for the purpose was formed, with Mr. Stewart as treasurer. Largely through his personal efforts, the work was successfully completed. The last stone was laid on April 30, 1892, by Mr. Stewart, and on May 4, 1895, in behalf of the committee, he formally presented the structure to the city, with impressive ceremonies. The arch had cost one hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars, all of which was contributed from private funds.
Mr. Stewart joined Company K of the Seventh Regiment in 1871, and served with credit for nearly eight years. He has long been a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and for eight years was superintendent of the great mission Sunday- sohool of Grace Chapel, with over a thousand pupils. He is a vestryman and treasurer of Grace Church, a trustee of the Greenwich Savings Bank, and a director of the Corn Exchange Bank. In 1898 he was president of the Twenty-fifth National Conference of Charities and Correction, in this city, and made a notable address on "The Duty of the State to the Dependent and Erring." In politics Mr. Stewart was a Republican until 1883, since which time he has been independent of party lines. He has been much interested in the reform of municipal ad- ministration, and was a member of the Committee of Seventy in 1894, and of the Committee of Fifty in 1895.
He was married, in 1879, to Miss Anne M. Armstrong of Bal- timore. Of their three children, two, a son and a daughter, survive. He belongs to many clubs, including the Century, Metropolitan, Union, Tuxedo, and Down-Town, of which latter he is secretary.
JAMES STILLMAN
J "AMES STILLMAN was born on June 9, 1850, the son of Charles Stillman and Elizabeth Goodrich Stillman, who were both natives of Connecticut, where their English ancestors settled about the middle of the seventeenth century. His early education was at Hartford, Connecticut, where his parents then resided, and afterward at the Churchill School at Sing Sing, New York. At the age of eighteen he became a clerk in the office of Smith, Woodward & Stillman, cotton merchants of New York, in which firm his father had long been interested. Within two years he was admitted to full partnership in the reorganized firm of Woodward & Stillman. Since the death of Mr. Woodward, in 1899, Mr. Stillman has been at the head of the firm. Its credit has always been of the highest, and its capital far in excess of the requirements of its large business.
The relations formerly existing between this firm and the City Bank of New York brought Mr. Stillman into close rela- tions with Moses Taylor, the great merchant and president of that bank. On the death of Mr. Taylor, in 1882, his son-in-law, Percy R. Pyne, was elected president of the bank, then known as the National City Bank. Upon his retirement, in 1891, Mr. Stillman, then the youngest member of the board of directors of that bank, was elected and has ever since continued its presi- dent. When he assumed the presidency of the bank, its capital was $1,000,000, its surplus about $2,412,000, and its average deposits were about $12,000,000. In the early part of 1900, $9,000,000 of new capital was subscribed to the bank, thus mak- ing its capital stock $10,000,000, and its surplus was over $5,000,- 000. Its average deposits had been increased to about $120,000,- 000. This bank is to-day beyond question the greatest in the
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United States, and bids fair to become the great financial com- petitor of the Bank of England in controlling large aggregations of capital for the purpose of carrying on the great enterprises of the world. During the last year, the transactions in foreign exchange, for which Mr. Stillman has created a special depart- ment in his bank, have involved the active employment of more money than is used by the Bank of England, and, in fact, by any bank in the world.
This bank has not only kept on hand a large amount of cash in excess of its legal reserve, but kept almost the whole of it in actual gold or gold certificates. It has thus been enabled at various times to subscribe to a larger portion of government loans than any other bank or syndicate of bankers in the coun- try, and actually to pay for its subscriptions in the yellow metal. It has also been able to give the necessary security for deposits from the United States government to very large amounts. Thus in November, 1897, when the government, in making a settlement of the debt due it from the Union Pacific Railroad Company, decided to deposit the amount in New York banks and thus get it into circulation, Mr. Stillman promptly deposited with the Treasury Department $50,000,000 of United States bonds and securities, and thus gained for the City Bank the privilege and prestige of being designated as chief depositary and distributing agent for the millions thus paid over. A similar instance, though not quite to the same extent, occurred in De- cember, 1899, upon the temporary diversion of the internal revenue receipts from the Sub-Treasury to the banks.
Mr. Stillman is also president of the Second National Bank, and one of the leading directors of the Hanover National Bank and the Bank of the Metropolis. He is a trustee and member of the executive committee of the United States Trust Company, the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, and the New York Security and Trust Company; and a director of the Central Realty Bond and Trust Company, of the American Surety Com- pany, the Bowery Savings Bank, and the Fifth Avenue Safe Deposit Company. He is a director of the Union Pacific, Northern Pacific, Baltimore and Ohio, Chicago and Northwest- ern, and Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, and other leading railroads. He has been a member of numerous syndicates, one
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of the latest of which was the Harriman Syndicate, which pur- chased the Chicago and Alton Railroad. He is largely inter- ested in the Consolidated Gas Company of New York, of which he has been a trustee for many years, and has recently been one of the most important factors in bringing about a combination of all the gas and electric light interests in the city of New York. He is also a director of the Western Union Telegraph Company.
With all his varied interests, he has always contrived to find leisure for outdoor recreation. Since 1874 he has been a mem- ber of the New York Yacht Club, and his victorious sails have brought him many trophies. He has also taken great interest in farming and cattle-breeding, and has on his large estate at Cornwall-on-Hudson one of the finest herds of Jerseys in the United States. He was one of the founders and is still an active member of the organization known as the "New York Farmers." He depends for healthful exercise upon his bicycle. He is a great reader and much devoted to art and music, and is a skilled amateur photographer.
His winter residence is at No. 7 East Fortieth Street, New York city, and his family divide their time in summer between his beautiful residences at Newport and Cornwall-on-Hudson. Among the many clubs of which he is a member are the Union, Union League, Metropolitan, Reform, Lawyers', Century, and the Turf and Field. He is also a member of the Tuxedo Club and of the Washington Metropolitan Club.
His private charities are numerous and varied. His latest act of public generosity consists of the gift of a hundred thousand dollars to Harvard University for the erection of an infirmary for students, and an endowment for defraying the ex- penses of its maintenance.
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GAGE ELI TARBELL
TI THE career of Gage E. Tarbell is a striking example of the success that is bound to follow real merit and intelligent and well-directed energy. To these qualities and the exercise of them has been due every advancement achieved in all his honorable and brilliant progress in business life.
He comes of good New England stock. His father, Charles T. Tarbell, was a farmer and lumberman. His mother's maiden name was Mabel M. Tillotson. He was born on September 20, 1856, at Smithville Flats, among the hills of Chenango County, New York, and received his education at the local school and at the Clinton Liberal Institute. His boyhood was spent on the farm and in the woods where lumber was being cut for market. For one year he taught a district school. Then he studied law three years, and practised it for four years. Finally he entered the business of life-insurance, with which he has ever since been associated, and in which he has attained honored prominence and marked success.
Mr. Tarbell was admitted to the bar of New York in 1880, and practised law in this State for four years. In connection with that profession, he also became a solicitor for the Equitable Life Assurance Society, and developed such aptitude for that busi- ness that, in 1884, he turned his entire attention to it, becoming in that year manager of the Southern New York Department. For two years his headquarters were at Binghamton, New York. Then, in 1886, he was made general agent for Wisconsin and Northern Michigan, with offices at Milwaukee. His power as a manager of men and a writer of insurance was soon felt in the West, and in 1889 he received a partnership interest in the Northwestern Department of the society, with headquarters at
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Chicago. The agency of which he then took charge soon be- came, under his skilful management, one of the largest in the country, and the volume of business which he, personally and through his agents, secured for the Equitable has probably never been surpassed, if equaled, in the history of life-insur- ance. In fact, only seven or eight life-insurance companies transacted in all the country a larger amount of business than this one agency of this one company did under Mr. Tarbell's management.
Henry B. Hyde, then president of the Equitable, was noted for his discrimination in his choice of lieutenants and associates, and achieved his great success largely through the exercise of this invaluable talent. He was not slow in discovering the value of Mr. Tarbell's services to the company, and early marked him as one of the "coming men" of the great corporation. At length he concluded that Mr. Tarbell's abilities would be exer- cised to greater advantage in New York than in a Western city, and in the home office than in a mere agency. Accordingly he summoned him to New York, and in September, 1893, secured his election as third vice-president of the Equitable.
Since the latter date Mr. Tarbell has had charge of the entire agency force of the society. The ability he has shown in this position is in accordance with his former achievements, and forms a brilliant chapter in the history of the corporation. As an evidence of the way in which his work has been appreciated by his associates, he was advanced in May, 1899, to the place of second vice-president, which office he still holds.
Mr. Tarbell's absorption in life-insurance has precluded his participation in any other businesses, or in political activities. He is a popular member of numerous social organizations, among which are the Union League Club, the Colonial Club, the Law- yers' Club, the New York Athletic Club, the Atlantic Yacht Club, the Ardsley Club, the Marine and Field Club, and the Dyker Meadow Golf Club.
Mr. Tarbell was married at Marathon, New York, on December 21, 1881, to Miss Ella Swift, daughter of George L. Swift. They have two children, Swift Tarbell and Louise Tarbell.
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FRANK TILFORD
T TAILLEFER, the old Normans called the family name, and you will find it often in the early annals of that masterful race. The ancient Counts of Angoulême were the founders of the family, as is witnessed by the illustration of the surname in their heraldic devices for many generations. One of the first- known members of the family received great possessions from the hand of Charles the Bald of France, in return for his ser- vices in uniting Normandy with France, and his son, Guillaume de Taillefer, was the first to bear this name, which came to him because of an act of valor and extraordinary strength performed by him in war in the year 916. From him the family line and the name may be traced without a break down to the present day.
Tilford the name became in Scotland, when some of the family settled in that country, and Tilford it has remained in this country ever since it was brought hither by James Tilford, who settled at Argyle, near Albany, New York, a hundred and fifty years ago. That pioneer was a soldier in the American army throughout the Revolutionary War, and his son, James Tilford, was a captain in the War of 1812. The latter's son, John M. Tilford, came to New York in 1835, at the age of twenty years, and served five years as a clerk in the grocery store of Benjamin Albro. Then, with his fellow-clerk, Joseph Park, he organized the now world-famous grocery house of Park & Tilford.
Frank Tilford, the youngest son and business successor of John M. Tilford, was born in New York on July 22, 1852, and was educated in the then well-known Mount Washington Col- legiate Institute. Then he entered his father's store, at Sixth
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Avenue and Ninth Street, and worked faithfully in one depart- ment after another until he had acquired a practical mastery of all the details of the business. In 1890 the company was trans- formed into a joint-stock corporation, and the senior Mr. Tilford became its vice-president. At his death, in January, 1891, Mr. Frank Tilford succeeded him in that office, and has continued to hold it ever since. Important as that office is, it does not monopolize Mr. Tilford's business attention. He has been a member of the Real Estate Exchange since 1873, and has made some "extensive dealings in real estate, chiefly of an investment character, in the upper West Side of the city. He became a director of the Sixth National Bank in 1874, and a trustee of the North River Savings Bank in 1885. In 1889 he was one of the organizers of the Bank of New Amsterdam, of which he is now president, and he is also one of the organizers and a trustee of the Fifth Avenue Trust Company, vice-president of the Stan- dard Gas-Light Company, and a director in many of the powerful corporations of New York city and in many of the gas compa- nies throughout the country. He is also a member of the Chamber of Commerce, president of the New Amsterdam Eye and Ear Hospital, a trustee of the Babies' Hospital, and a member of the executive committee of the Grant Monument Association.
Mr. Tilford was married, in 1881, to Miss Julia Greer, daughter of James A. Greer and granddaughter of George Greer, a famous sugar-refiner of the past generation. They have two daughters, Julia and Elsie Tilford. Mr. Tilford has long been a member of the Union League Club, and is also a member of the Repub- lican, Colonial, Lotos, Press, New York Athletic, and other clubs, and of the Sons of the Revolution. His city home is on West Seventy-second Street. It was chiefly designed by Mr. Tilford himself, and ranks as one of the handsomest edifices in that particularly handsome part of the city.
Chasth . Tilling hast
CHARLES WHITNEY TILLINGHAST
A AN admirable specimen of the intelligent, enterprising, and efficient New England stock of British origin, which has not only built up the New England States to their present mag- nificent proportions, but has also contributed immeasurably to the best development of New York and other States of this Union, is to be found in Charles Whitney Tillinghast of Troy, New York. He bears the names, which have come to him through descent, of two families noted in the annals of Massa- chusetts, Rhode Island, and Providence plantations. The fami- lies came from England in early colonial times, and were active in the industrial, political, and social affairs of the new com- munities of which they became members. In the last generation the Tillinghast family was represented by Benjamin Allen Til- linghast, who was born at Wrentham, Massachusetts, and afterward lived at Greenwich, Rhode Island. In the same generation of the Whitney family was Miss Julia Whitney, daughter of Moses Whitney of Wrentham, Massachusetts, a major in the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Allen Tillinghast and Julia Whitney were married, and to them was born the sub- ject of this sketch.
Charles W. Tillinghast was born at East Greenwich, Rhode Island, on May 23, 1824, and received his education there and at Lanesboro, Massachusetts. His parents having removed to Troy, New York, he became a resident of that city at the end of his school-days, and entered business there. He was only sixteen years old when, in 1840, he became a clerk in the hardware store of Warrens, Hart & Leslie, afterward J. M. Warren & Co. There he remained, applying himself diligently to the business, and steadily working his way, by sheer merit, to
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higher and higher places in the establishment. Forty-seven years after his entry into the establishment, to wit, in 1887, the firm was transformed into a corporation, and he was chosen its vice-president, which place he held for some years, and then was made president. Thus, for nearly sixty years, he has been iden- tified with one business house, in which time he has made his way from the lowest place in it to the highest.
That, however, is not the full measure of his activities. He has other important business interests. He is vice-president of the Troy Savings Bank, a director of the United National Bank, and a director of various railroad and manufacturing companies at Troy and elsewhere. He is president of the Troy Orphan Asylum, the Troy Female Seminary, and trustee of the Marshall Infirmary and several other public institutions. He was the prime mover in securing the Post-office Building at Troy, and has long been a leader in most important public enterprises in that city. One of its most highly respected citizens, he is closely identified with its best civic, social, financial, and political interests.
Mr. Tillinghast has for many years taken an active interest in politics. He is an earnest Republican, and has worked unspar- ingly for the success of that party and for the promotion of the cause of good government in city, State, and nation. He has held no public office of a political character, although frequently urged to do so. He has preferred to use his influence as a pri- vate citizen, as a broad-minded, liberal man of affairs, of genial disposition and the highest integrity.
He is an active member and warden of St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church at Troy, and is a member of the Troy Club. He was married, in 1852, to Miss Mary B. Southwick of Troy, and has one daughter, Frances, who is now Mrs. Barker.
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CHARLES HARRISON TWEED
D' ESPITE the absence of any law of primogeniture or any system of hereditary dignities, political or social, the claims of honorable descent are by no means to be ignored in this coun- try. To be a worthy descendant of worthy ancestors is a matter of legitimate personal gratification. To be able to number among one's direct ancestors some of the foremost founders of this na- tion is a circumstance not idly to be passed by in the record of a man's life. The names of Winthrop, Dudley, and Sargent, for example, are to be prized in the genealogical line of any one who can truly claim them.
The ancestry of Charles Harrison Tweed includes Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay Colony, Governor John Winthrop, Jr., of Connecticut, and Governor Thomas Dudley and Governor Joseph Dudley of Massachusetts Bay Colony, those families having been united by the marriage, in 1707, of John Winthrop, F. R. S., grandson of Governor Winthrop of Connecticut, with Ann Dudley, daughter of Governor Joseph Dudley. The daughter of this latter couple married Epes Sargent, and was the mother of Colonel Paul Dudley Sargent of the Revolutionary army. The father of Charles Harrison Tweed was the Hon. Harrison Tweed, treasurer of the Taunton (Massachusetts) Locomotive Manufacturing Company, Repre- sentative and Senator in the Massachusetts Legislature, and a member of the Governor's Council. He married Huldah Ann Pond, and to them was born during their temporary residence at Calais, Maine, on September 26, 1844, the subject of this sketch.
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