USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume I > Part 32
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He received his education at private schools in New York city, at Williston Seminary, Northampton, Massachusetts, at Amherst College, where he received the degrees of A. B. in 1876 and A. M. in 1878, and at the Law School of Columbia University, under Professor Theodore W. Dwight, where he received the degree of LL. B. in 1878. He also spent a year in the office of that eminent lawyer and instructor, Austin Abbott, LL. D.
With such preparation Mr. Washburn was admitted to the bar immediately upon graduation from the law school. He formed a partnership with Ambrose E. Stone, under the name of Stone & Washburn. This lasted only a year, and since that time he has been in practice alone, with a staff of assistants.
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Mr. Washburn's practice has been successful in a gratifying degree. It has included a wide range of law cases, but in recent years has been more and more devoted to insurance law, general corporation law, and law involving ecclesiastical bodies.
Mr. Washburn has been notary of the American Exchange National Bank since 1886; general counsel for the Marine De- partment of the Home Insurance Company for some years; counsel for the American Missionary Association, the Congrega- tional Home Missionary Society, the Revere Rubber Company, the Ammunition Manufacturers' Association, and various other corporations, estates, and individuals. He was associated with Samuel Fessenden in the famous Worden will case at Bridge- port, Connecticut, and was counsel for the Madison Avenue Congregational Church of New York in its controversy with the Rev. Dr. John P. Newman.
He has been a member of the Broadway Tabernacle Congre- gational Church since 1868, was its clerk from 1879 to 1900, and is now a member of its board of trustees. He has been a mem- ber of the executive committee of the Congregational Home Missionary Society since 1885, and its chairman since 1890. He is, or has been, also, prominently connected with various other important societies of the Congregational Church.
He is judge advocate of the Fifth Brigade of the National Guard of New York, with the rank of major, and a trustee of the Hartford Theological Seminary. He belongs to the Bar Asso- ciation, Century Club, Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity and Club, Adirondack League Club, Congregational Club, Sons of the Rev- olution, Society of Colonial Wars, and Society of Descendants of Colonial Governors.
He was married, on November 15, 1883, to Miss Carrie W. Fisher, daughter of the late Nathaniel Fisher, a merchant of New York city. They have had three children : Grace Ives Wash- burn and William Ives Washburn, Jr., now living, and Nathalie Fisher Washburn, deceased. The family home in New York city is at No. 39 West Forty-seventh Street, and in the country at "Cedarcroft," at Greenwich, Connecticut.
WILLIAM HENRY WEBB
THE founder of Webb's Academy and Home for Ship-builders, a costly institution of admirable benevolence, reckoned his American ancestry from Richard Webb, who came from Glouces- tershire, England, and settled in Boston in the first years of that colony's existence. In the seventh generation from him, Isaac Webb was born at Stamford, Connecticut, in 1794. At an early age he was apprenticed to the famous ship-builder, Henry Eck- ford. After serving his apprenticeship he formed a partnership with two of his fellow-apprentices, under the name of Webb, Smith & Dimon. They built a number of noted vessels, includ- ing the Robert Fulton, the second steamer ever constructed. In 1825 Isaac Webb and his former chief formed a partnership, which was ended only by Mr. Eckford's retirement in extreme old age. Then the firm became that of Isaac Webb & Co., and then Webb & Allen.
William Henry Webb, son of Isaac Webb, was born in this city on June 19, 1816. He was educated in the Columbia Col- lege Grammar School, and began the study of marine archi- tecture. By the time he was twenty-three he had built under sub-contract with his father three packet-ships and two smaller vessels. In 1839 he sailed on one of these ships, the New York, for a much-needed rest in Europe. The death of his father summoned him home in the following year, when he succeeded the latter in business, forming a partnership with Mr. Allen, his father's old partner, which lasted until Mr. Allen's retirement, in 1843. For thirty years thereafter Mr. Webb continued the busi- ness alone. A record of the output of his yards would fall little short of an epitome of the history of American shipping. Among his achievements may be recalled the building of the Cherokee,
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in 1848, the first steamship run between New York and Savan- nah ; the General Admiral, built in 1858 for the Russian navy ; and the ram Dunderberg, built during the Civil War and afterward purchased by the French government. When he finally retired from business, in 1872, he had built more than one hundred and fifty vessels, and was the owner, wholly or partly, of more than fifty, most of them from his own yards.
He received honors from several of the sovereigns of Europe, in addition to the unmeasured esteem of his fellow-countrymen. He might easily have filled many important political offices. Such places, however, he declined to seek, contenting himself with being for fourteen years president of the Council of Politi- cal Reform in this city, and with being for many years active in municipal affairs and influential for good government.
Mr. Webb's charities and public benefactions were numerous. Foremost among them is to be remembered Webb's Academy and Home for Ship-builders, a stately and commodious institu- tion on the bluff overlooking the Harlem and North rivers, at Sedgwick Avenue and One Hundred and Eighty-eighth Street, in the borough of the Bronx. The erection of this building was begun in the fall of 1890, and on May 5, 1894, the entire property, of great cost and value, was presented by Mr. Webb to a board of trustees, to be forever a free home for the aged, indi- gent, or otherwise needy men who have been engaged in build- ing hulls of ships or engines for the same, in any part of the United States, and for the wives or widows of such men, and, at the same time, a free school of the highest class in which young men, citizens of the United States, may be instructed thoroughly in the art, science, and profession of ship-building and marine- engine building.
Mr. Webb was married, in 1843, to Miss Henrietta A. Hidden, by whom he had two sons. His country home was Waldheim, a beautiful estate near Tarrytown. His city home was on Fifth Avenue. He was a member of the Century Association, and the Union League, Republican, and City clubs. He died at his city home on October 30, 1899, leaving a large share of his fortune for the prosecution of worthy works of benevolence and philan- thropy.
CHARLES WHITMAN WETMORE
THE name of Wetmore is of English origin, and is conspicu- ously identified with the history of the English colonies in North America, and of the United States which have been de- veloped therefrom. The first who bore it in this country came over in 1835, and settled in Connecticut. He was one of the seven original founders of the city of Middletown, Connecticut, which at one time was one of the principal mercantile centers of New England. Thereafter for many generations the family was identified with Middletown, though in time various members of it removed to other parts of the country and became men of mark and influence in their respective communities.
Among the most eminent members of the family in former generations the Rev. James Wetmore of Middletown will be remembered. Beginning his career as a Congregational clergy- man at New Haven, he presently became a Protestant Episco- palian, and was ordained a priest of that church in the Chapel Royal, St. James, London, England. He afterward served in Trinity Church, New York city, and as a missionary at Rye, White Plains, Bedford, and other places in Westchester County, New York, and adjacent parts of Connecticut. He was a con- siderable writer upon theological and ecclesiastical subjects, and was described as "a gentleman of extensive usefulness, a father and exemplary pattern to the clergy." His son, Timothy Wet- more, became Attorney-General of the Canadian province of New Brunswick.
The subject of the present sketch, Charles Whitman Wetmore, comes from that same Middletown stock, and inherits the char- acteristics that have marked the family with usefulness and success throughout many generations. He is the son of Fred-
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erick P. and Sarah M. Wetmore, his father having been a pros- perous merchant who removed from the East to seek enlarged opportunities in what was then the far West, to wit, Ohio and Michigan.
Charles Whitman Wetmore was born on October 6, 1854, at the town of Hinckley, in Medina County, Ohio, and spent his early childhood in that place. Later a removal was made to the State of Michigan, and there, in the high school of the city of Marquette, his preparatory education was promoted sufficiently to permit him to be matriculated in college.
For higher educational advantages he instinctively turned back to that New England which had been the home of his an- cestors. He went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and there, in 1871, passed the entrance examinations for America's most ven- erable institution of liberal learning, Harvard University. A four years' course followed, which he pursued with admirable success, and he was duly graduated in the early summer of 1875, with the degree of B. A. Then, choosing the profession of the law as most fitted to his abilities and most congruous with his tastes, he entered the famous law school of his Alma Mater, and there, two years later, was graduated with the degree of LL. B. While at Harvard he was interested in rowing, and was a mem- ber of his class crew for three years, and of the university crew in his senior year. He decided to practise his profession in the great metropolis of the nation, where the range of legal activity is widest, the competition keenest, the requirements for high success the most exacting, and the possibilities of achievement most promising. After spending a year abroad he came to New York in 1879, and in 1881 he was admitted to the New York bar, and entered upon the career which has since been so brilliant.
Immediately upon his admission to the bar, Mr. Wetmore began the practice of law in New York, and in 1885 he became asso- ciated in partnership with General Francis C. Barlow. The lat- ter, like himself, was of New England ancestry, but was some twenty years older than Mr. Wetmore. General Barlow had had a distinguished career in the army during the Civil War, and had since that struggle been Secretary of State of New York, United States Marshal, and Attorney-General of the State of New York. Association with a man of so great experience and prestige was,
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of course, valuable to the young lawyer. At the same time, Mr. Wetmore's fine scholarship and high abilities, not to mention his youthful energies, made him an amply worthy member of the firm. The partnership lasted, under the firm-name of Barlow & Wet- more, until 1894, which was not long before General Barlow's death.
Meantime, in addition to this conspicuously successful and profitable law practice, Mr. Wetmore became interested in other business enterprises, especially those relating to railroads and industrial applications of electric power. In 1893 he became president of the North American Company, which place he still holds. He is deeply interested in the Milwaukee Electric Rail- way and Light Company, being at this time chairman of the executive and finance committees thereof. He is also a director and chairman of the executive and financial committees of the Cincinnati Edison Electric Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, and is similarly connected with various other corporations.
Mr. Wetmore has not held public office nor sought political promotion. His favorite sport and relaxation are found in yachting, and he has for many years been a conspicuous figure in the yachting world. Between 1885 and 1893 he sailed and raced the well-known yachts Naiad, Iseult, Nameless, and Liris. He has been actively identified with race committee work in the Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht Club of New York since 1895, and is now chairman of that committee and a trustee of the club.
Mr. Wetmore is also a member of the University Club, the Harvard Club, the Down-Town Association, and the Bar Asso- ciation of the city of New York, and of the Nassau County Club of Long Island.
Mr. Wetmore was married, on October 6, 1891, to Miss Eliza- beth Bisland of New York. They have no children. Their winter home is in New York city, and their summer home is on Center Island, Oyster Bay, Long Island.
Charles Wham
CHARLES WHANN
TN the halcyon days "before the war," meaning, of course, the Civil War, the name of William Whann was among the best-known in the great Southern metropolis of New Orleans. It was borne by a man descended from that sturdy, thrifty, and progressive Scotch stock which contributed to the upbuilding of the Virginia Colony, and which comprised not a few of the "first families" of the "Old Dominion." Mr. Whann was born in Virginia, but spent most of his active life in New Orleans. He was a man of numerous activities, and achieved marked success in them all. He was one of the fore- most bankers of that city, and an acknowledged leader of its financial life. He was the owner of one of the largest of those lines of towboats which formed so essential an adjunct to the commercial greatness of the city, boats flying his flag being fa- miliar all along the Lower Mississippi and at the passes of the delta. He was the president, also, of the principal telegraph company in that part of the country. Indeed, his name was known and respected, and his influence felt, throughout all the business world of the South and Southwest.
In himself William Whann united the Scotch Covenanter and the Cavalier. It was fitting, then, that he should add the Puri- tan strain to the family in his choice of a wife. Miss Georgiana Stickney was of Massachusetts birth and of Puritan ancestry. The famous Adams family, which gave to the republic two of its early Presidents and most valuable statesmen in John and John Quincy Adams, was among her blood-relations. She be- came the wife of William Whann, and spent much of her life in a Southern home.
The son of this couple, Charles Whann, was born in the city
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of New Orleans, Louisiana, on February 17, 1857. That was a troublous time in the history of the nation and of New Orleans. Not a few of the residents of that city, seeing the coming of the storm of war, hastened to leave it for a more secure abode. Others remained faithful to it, enduring its varying fortunes. Of these latter some, in turn, afterward sought other scenes when the war had passed away.
Among these last Charles Whann is to be numbered. His early life was spent in New Orleans, and part of his education was acquired there. Then he came North, and lived and studied for a time in Brooklyn, New York, and also in New Hampshire. Thus he became acclimated to the life and business methods of the North, and on reaching manhood chose to make his home permanently in this part of the country.
His first business experience was gained in the dry-goods com- mission house of Denny, Poor & Co. of New York. There he mastered the sound principles of dealing which are common to all legitimate and successful lines of business. But the dry- goods trade did not sufficiently appeal to him to lead him to adopt it permanently. New York was then, as now, the financial center of the country, and its financial operations greatly ap- pealed to him. Moreover, his father had been a banker, and a taste for that calling had possibly been inherited.
At any rate, after serving his apprenticeship in the dry-goods trade, Mr. Whann left the firm which had first employed him, and secured an engagement in the banking house of Edmund D. Randolph & Co. of New York. There he felt more at home and better satisfied. He applied himself diligently to mastering the details of the business and to perfecting his knowledge of finan- cial operations. His career in that house was successful, from the point of view both of himself and of his employers.
Nor was his earlier experience in another calling by any means unprofitable. Upon the face of it, there seems little in common between dry-goods and banking. Nevertheless, there are many principles of business which prevail in both, and which are essential to success in either. These he had acquired in the one, and he made good use of them in the other. Moreover, there is much in business discipline and in the cultivation of the business faculties. These advantages had been enjoyed by
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him in the dry-goods trade, and they were of profit to him when he entered the vastly different practices and methods of Wall Street. The result was that he rapidly rose in the esteem of his employers, and seemed assured of a long and profitable connec- tion with the firm of Randolph & Co.
Such, however, was not his own intention. He meant to be- come the master spirit of a firm of his own. When a fitting opportunity came, Mr. Whann opened an office of his own, and entered upon business operations upon his own account. His business is that of a stock-broker, dealing in general lines of sound securities, but paying especial attention to sales of railroad and municipal bonds. In this business he has achieved a gratifying success. His place in the financial world has long been recog- nized as secure and honorable, and his office is a well-known center of important transactions.
Mr. Whann has not found time nor developed inclination for seeking many extraneous interests, business or political. He has not been a politician in the ordinary sense of the word, certainly not an office-seeker. His only office has been that of justice of the peace in the town of Pelham, Westchester County, New York, in which delightful suburb he makes his home. That is an office which betokens the esteem in which he is held by his neighbors, more than any considerable participation in politics.
Mr. Whann is a member of a few select social organizations, among which may be mentioned the Lawyers' Club and the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club of New York.
He was married in New York, in 1886, to Miss Lillian A. Mc- Clelland, who died on August 23, 1897, leaving him one son, Charles Whann, Jr.
CLARENCE WHITMAN
TN the foremost rank of New York's mercantile interests is the trade in dry-goods. Not only is the city the great import mart for foreign goods, but it has long enjoyed equal preëminence as the chief domestic market and center of distinction. In New York are the agencies and commission houses of all the greatest manufacturing establishments of the New England and other States, and the wholesale and jobbing houses to which trades- men from all parts of the United States turn their supplies. The "dry-goods district" is one of the well-known parts of New York, and one of the richest centers of storage of goods and of transaction of business to be found in all the world. Its leaders of business are what would in old times have been called merchant princes, with reference to their wealth, their leadership of affairs, and their dominant place in relation to the whole business community.
Prominent among the dry-goods merchants of New York is Clarence Whitman, head of the firm of Clarence Whitman & Co. He is a native of Nova Scotia, having been born at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. He was educated at Cambridge, Massachu- setts, and nearly all of his life has been spent in the United States, and, indeed, in or near the city of New York.
He was between sixteen and seventeen years of age when, in 1864, he began business life as an employee of J. C. Howe & Co., a dry-goods commission house of Boston, Massachusetts. There he began his practical education in the business to which his life has largely been devoted and in which he has attained excep- tional success. Later he entered the employ of James M. Beebe & Co., also of Boston. In 1866, however, he left the New Eng- land metropolis and came to New York, where he entered the
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service of J. S. & E. Wright & Co., dry-goods commission mer- chants. This firm was in time succeeded by that of Wright, Bliss & Fabyan, and that in turn was reorganized into the present well-known firm of Bliss, Fabyan & Co.
Mr. Whitman spent nine years in the service of this house, and then left it to join his brother, E. C. Whitman, with whom he presently formed a partnership, under the style of E. C. & C. Whitman, which at a later date became known as Clarence Whit- man & Co., as at the present time, Mr. Whitman being, of course, its head.
This firm is the selling agent for a number of important manu- factories, including the Ponemah Mills of Taftville, Connecticut, the Stevens Manufacturing Company, the Barnaby Manufactur- ing Company, and the Davol Mills of Fall River, Massachusetts, the Wauregan Mills of Wauregan, Connecticut, and the Wilkes- barre Lace Manufacturing Company of Wilkesbarre, Pennsyl- vania. In addition to this extensive business, Mr. Whitman is interested in several other enterprises. He was the organizer and is vice-president of the Pantasote Leather Company of Pas- saic, New Jersey, and is treasurer of the Wilkesbarre Lace Manufacturing Company of Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, and a director of the Trust Company of New York.
Mr. Whitman is a member of the New England Society of New York, and of the Lawyers', Merchants', Riding, and Union League clubs.
He was married at Andover, Massachusetts, to Miss Mary Hoppin Morton, daughter of the late Chief Justice Morton of Massachusetts. Mr. and Mrs. Whitman have four children, as follows : Clarence Morton Whitman, Harold Cutler Whitman, Esmond Whitman, and Gerald Whitman. They make their home in New York city, and their summer home on a large country estate at Katonah, New York.
STEWART LYNDON WOODFORD
THE founder of the Woodford family in America was Thomas Woodford, who came from Boston, in Lincolnshire, Eng- land, and landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1635, and was a founder of Hartford, Connecticut, and of Northampton, Mas- sachusetts. One of his direct descendants was Josiah Curtis Woodford, who came to New York and became a merchant. He married Susan Terry, and to them was born, in New York city, on September 3, 1835, a son, to whom was given the name of Stewart Lyndon Woodford.
Young Woodford was educated at home and in primary schools, and then at the Columbia College Grammar School. His sopho- more and junior years of college life were spent at Yale, and the senior year at Columbia, where he was graduated with the degree of B. A. in the class of 1854. Since that time he has received the degree of M. A. from Yale, Columbia, and Trinity colleges, that of LL. D. from Trinity and Dickinson, and that of D. C. L. from Syracuse University. On leaving college, he began the study of law in this city ; but the failure of his father compelled him to enter upon the earning of a livelihood. For a time he worked as a reporter, bookkeeper, tutor, etc .; then he resumed his law studies, and in 1857 was admitted to the bar. He formed a partnership with a former classmate at Yale, Thomas G. Ritch, in 1858, and has maintained the association ever since.
Apart from the regular practice of the law, in which he has been eminently successful, Mr. Woodford has been much engaged in public services. He was appointed messenger of the New York Electoral College in December, 1860, to convey to Wash- ington its vote for Lincoln and Hamlin. The next March he was appointed Assistant United States Attorney in New York.
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In 1862 he enlisted in the army, became successively captain, lieutenant-colonel, chief of staff to General Gillmore, colonel (for gallantry on the field), brevet brigadier-general, and Military Governor of Charleston, South Carolina, and of Savannah, Georgia. In 1866 he was elected Lieutenant-Governor of New York for two years. He was the Republican candidate for Gov- ernor of New York in 1870, and was really elected, but was counted out by the fraudulent work of the Tweed Ring in favor of John T. Hoffman. In 1872 he was elected to Congress from the Third District of New York, and the same year was chosen elector at large, and was president of the New York Elec- toral College which voted for President Grant for a second term. In 1875 he aided the Republicans of Ohio in their great fight for sound money, and by his debate with General Thomas Ewing turned the scale in their favor. From 1877 to 1883 he was United States District Attorney in New York. In 1896 he was one of the commissioners who prepared the charter for the en- larged city of New York. In 1897 he was sent by President McKinley as minister to Spain, and served with distinction in the trying times before the war with that country. On the sev- ering of diplomatic relations with Spain, on April 21, 1898, he left Madrid and returned to New York, where he resumed the practice of his profession with his old firm.
Mr. Woodford is a director and general counsel of the Metro- politan Life Insurance Company, a trustee of the Franklin Trust Company and the City Savings Bank, and resident American trustee of the Svea Fire and Life Insurance Company of Swe- den. He is a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, the Military Order of Foreign Wars, the Society of Colonial Wars, the New England Society, the Sons of the American Rev- olution, the Order of Founders and Patriots, the University, Lawyers', Union League (Brooklyn), and Hamilton clubs, and the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
He was married, on October 15, 1857, to Miss Julia Evelyn Capen. They have had one son and three daughters, of whom only one daughter, Miss Susan Curtis Woodford, now survives. Mrs. Woodford died on June 14, 1899.
A. M. YOUNG
0 NE of the most prominent and energetic leaders in the electrical field is Alden M. Young of New York. Mr. Young is a native of New York State, having been born at Hadley, Saratoga County, September 6, 1853. After receiving a good early education, he began work as a telegrapher in the employment of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, at Fort Plain, New York, where he took charge of the local office. His advancement was rapid, and in quick succession he held the position of manager at Saratoga in 1871, Syracuse in 1872, Albany in 1873, and Buffalo in 1874-77. He was but just twenty-one years of age when he assumed charge of the Buffalo office. In 1878 he was transferred to New York city, where he remained until 1880. Mr. Young then made his residence at Waterbury, Connecticut, and organized a telephone company. He acted as its manager for ten years. Having become interested in electric lighting, Mr. Young, about 1890, organized in Waterbury its first and only electric-lighting company. From that time on his interests in electrical companies have rapidly increased. Having gained control in 1892 of the old Waterbury Horse Railroad Company, he reorganized it into the Waterbury Traction Com- pany, and later merged it with the lighting company. This con- solidated company, in which Mr. Young retained a controlling interest, now operates all the street-cars and electric lights in Waterbury.
To increase further his business the New England Engineering Company, of which Mr. Young is the president, was incorpo- rated in 1890 in Waterbury. It conducts an immense business in installing electric-light plants, railways, and power stations. The plants are in New London, Norwich, and a dozen other towns
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in Connecticut, in Palmer, Massachusetts, in Poughkeepsie and several other New York towns, and in Paterson, Elizabeth, Do- ver, Somerville, Morristown, and Boonton, New Jersey.
In addition to being president of the New England Engineer- ing Company, Mr. Young is secretary of the Waterbury Trac- tion Company, president of the Central Railway and Electric Company of New Britain, Connecticut; secretary of the Nor- wich (Connecticut) Gas and Electric Company, and an officer in a dozen or more similar companies. One of the latest and most successful of Mr. Young's enterprises is the Kings County Elec- tric Light and Power Company. He purchased the franchise of this company in May, 1897. It was not long before he suc- ceeded in interesting some of the wealthy men of Brooklyn and Manhattan and organized a strong company. Its directors were Felix Campbell, president; W. J. Wilson, vice-president and treasurer ; E. F. Peck, secretary; and Seth L. Keeny, Silas B. Dutcher, William Berri, J. S. Williams, Hugh J. Grant, Walton Ferguson, Jr., Charles Cooper, and George E. Terry.
With a capital of two million five hundred thousand dollars, almost unlimited backing, and new and improved methods of installing electric-lighting plants and of distributing the cur- rent in improved conduits, the new company immediately loomed up as a most formidable rival of the old Edison Company. Its brick power-house, which is now completed, occupies a site one hundred and sixty-five by two hundred and twenty-five feet at Gold Street and the East River. It is equipped throughout with most improved and effective machinery. This company now controls all the electric-lighting companies of Brooklyn, and is one of the most powerful organizations of its kind in the United States.
Mr. Young's latest enterprise is the consolidation of the elec- tric-light, gas, and electric-railway companies of Connecticut. A company has been formed which, under the name of the Con- necticut Lighting and Power Company, already controls some of the largest and most successful companies of the State.
In 1898, Mr. Young was elected president of the National Electric Light Association, an organization representing two thirds of the electric-lighting interests in this country.
GEORGE WASHINGTON YOUNG
THE ancestors of George Washington Young were of the race known as Scotch-Irish. His parents were, however, thoroughly Americanized, and from the name they gave to him it is evident that they meant him to be a genuine American citizen. His father was Peter Young, whose occupation was that of night superintendent of the great soap factory of Colgate & Co., in Jersey City, New Jersey. Peter Young married Miss Mary Crosby, and the two made their home in Jersey City.
Of such parentage George Washington Young was born, in Jersey City, on July 1, 1864. His boyhood was spent at home, and his education was begun in the common schools of the city. In due time he was promoted to the high school, and completed its course with credit to himself. Thence he went to the Scien- tific School of the Cooper Institute in New York, and completed its course.
It is not to be supposed, however, that during these years he had nothing to do but study his books and recite his lessons. The family was in too narrow circumstances for that. It was necessary for him at an early age to engage in some wage-earn- ing occupation, and to combine practical business activities with his schooling.
He was only thirteen years old when he was employed as an office boy by the law firm of L. & A. Zabriskie of Jersey City. It was a good opportunity for him to study law and make his way into that profession. But that was not to his liking, and he presently entered the employ of the Hudson County Bank of Jersey City.
At the age of eighteen years he aspired to enter the military service of the country, and accordingly entered a competitive
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examination for appointment to a cadetship in the United States Military Academy at West Point. In this the thorough- ness of his schooling served him well. He was successful over all competitors, and received his commission as a cadet from President Arthur. But a little later his father died, and a change of plans became necessary, and therefore he relinquished the cadetship, and remained in the banking business.
At the age of nineteen he was promoted to the position of receiving teller. Three years later he became secretary and treasurer of the Title Guaranty and Trust Company of Jersey City. This was rapid progress for so young a man, but it was based upon solid merit, and was followed by further promotion. At twenty-eight he filled a still more important place in a much larger field, being vice-president and treasurer of the United States Mortgage and Trust Company.
Mr. Young has various other business interests of no little magnitudes. He is a director of the Brooklyn Wharf and Warehouse Company, the Long Island Railroad Company, and numerous other concerns. To all of these he has devoted a con- siderable amount of attention, and his influence is felt in the affairs of all.
Mr. Young has never held public office, nor permitted the use of his name as a candidate for any, but is content with the status of a private citizen.
He is a member of a number of prominent clubs in New York, including the Lawyers', the Players', the Colonial, the Racquet and Tennis, the Down-Town, the Democratic, the Ardsley, and others.
He was married in Jersey City, on November 28, 1889, to Miss Natalie Bray of that city. They have two children : Dorothy, aged six years, and George Washington, Jr., aged three years.
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