USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume I > Part 5
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Justice Bookstaver is a member of the Manhattan, St. Nicho- las, and Zeta Psi clubs of this city, and was one of the founders of the last-named. He is also a member of the Casino Club of Newport, Rhode Island.
He was married, on September 6, 1865, to Miss Mary Bayliss Young of Orange County, New York.
HENRY PROSPER BOOTH
0 NE of the foremost names in the shipping world of New York to-day is that of Henry Prosper Booth, long identi- fied with the famous " Ward Line " of steamships. He is of New England ancestry, and was born in New York city on July 19, 1836. His education was acquired in local schools and in the Mechanics' Institute, and was eminently thorough and practical.
His business career was begun as a clerk for a firm of shipping merchants, and thus was begun his lifelong alliance and identifi- cation with the commercial interests of the port of New York. In 1856 he was admitted to partnership in the firm of James E. Ward & Co., and in time became the head of that firm, and finally president of the New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Line, commonly known as the "Ward Line."
He is a member of the Manhattan and Colonial clubs of New York, and is well known in social circles. The dominant feature of his busy life, however, has been his devotion to shipping and commercial interests, and the true and characteristic record of his life is found in the great commercial establishment of which he is the head and of which he has long been the directing force.
The Ward Line is one of the most important fleets of coast- wise steamships in the world. Its home port is New York. From New York its swift, stanch vessels ply with the regularity of shuttles in a loom to the Bahamas, Cuba, and Mexico. They touch at numerous ports of Cuba and all the Gulf ports of Mexico, and with their extensive railroad connections afford access to all parts of those countries. There are practically four distinct routes from New York, and many more short side routes in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, in all covering about ten thousand miles of service.
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The fleet comprises the steamers Havana and Mexico, of 6000 tons each; the Vigilancia and Seguranca, of 4115 tons each ; the Yucatan and Orizaba, of 3500 tons each; the Matanzas, of 3100 tons; and the Saratoga, City of Washington, Santiago, Niagara, Cienfuegos, City of San Antonio, Santiago de Cuba, Hidalgo, Cometa, Hebe, Juno, Manteo, Edwin Bailey, Atlantica, and Moran, of from 2820 tons down. At this writing there are under con- struction two more steamships of 5000 tons each and one of 7000.
The steamers of the Ward Line embrace as stanch and com- fortable ships as are in service from any part of the world. They are new full-powered steamers, of most modern construc- tion, built expressly for the service, and they offer all the luxu- ries of travel, including a most excellent and well-maintained cuisine, large and well-ventilated state-rooms, perfect beds, electric lights, handsome smoking-rooms and social halls, baths and barber shops, and all details necessary to insure comfort to the traveler in the tropics.
The freight facilities of these steamers have also been carefully provided for, and they are equipped with necessary appliances to provide not only for heavy machinery, etc., but also for fresh vegetables, fresh beef, etc., which places them in the lead of all means of transportation for rapidly advancing commercial indus- tries between this country and its Southern neighbors.
SIMON BORG
A FINE example of the "self-made " man is found in Simon Borg, the well-known banker and railroad president. He is of German origin, having been born on April 1, 1840, at Haupersweiler, a village in the Rhine Province of Prussia. His father, Model Borg, was a merchant, and was of German birth, though his ancestors came from Holland and, still earlier, from Sweden. His mother, Babetta Borg, was of pure German stock.
Simon Borg was educated in Germany until he was fourteen years old. Then he was left an orphan, both his parents dying within about fifteen months. He was the eldest of four chil- dren, and was largely thrown upon his own efforts for support. For a couple of years he remained in Germany, seeking to find a promising opening in some business, but without success. He then decided to emigrate to the United States. This he did, landing in New York, and thence proceeding to Memphis, Ten- nessee.
At Memphis he apprenticed himself to the firm of N. S. Bruce & Co., carriage manufacturers, in the trimming department, and from his seventeenth to his twenty-first year worked at the trade. His wages were two dollars and a half a week the first year, three dollars and a half a week the second year, five dollars the third, and seven dollars the fourth year of his apprenticeship. He was, however, permitted to work overtime and to earn extra pay, and thus he was enabled to make a comfortable living. Moreover, he received much encouragement from his employ- ers, who appreciated his efforts and took an interest in his wel- fare.
After completing his apprenticeship Mr. Borg worked for sev- eral years as a journeyman. But the Civil War had so im-
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poverished the people of the South that for a time there was little demand for fine carriages, and he was accordingly moved to seek another occupation. He became a cotton-buyer, but in that business met with another difficulty. Most of the planters would take nothing in payment for cotton except Southern bank- notes. As these notes varied according to the financial condition of the banks, dealings in them became necessary in order to facilitate the purchase of the cotton. Such dealing in notes increased in volume, while it became more and more the custom to leave the purchasing of cotton to the spinners and their agents. Mr. Borg accordingly gave up the latter business and devoted his entire attention to dealing in notes. The State of Tennessee, however, imposed so heavy a tax upon this busi- ness as to discourage him from pursuing it in its simple form, and he decided to become a fully fledged banker.
He accordingly entered into a partnership with Mr. Lazarus Levy, and the two opened at Memphis, Tennessee, a banking house under the firm-name of Levy & Borg. A little later Mr. Jacob Levy was also taken into the firm, and the business was successfully conducted for many years. The next change came when the State and city began to consider the adoption of legis- lation oppressive to private banking enterprises. Messrs. Levy & Borg then, in self-protection, applied to the State for a State bank charter, and thus established the Manhattan Bank of Memphis. Under this name the business went on prosperously for a time. Then it was transformed into the Manhattan Sav- ings Bank and Trust Company, which is still in profitable exis- tence and in which Mr. Borg still has an interest.
The closing of the old State banking system did away entirely with the State bank currency and with the business of dealing in it. But at this time the Southern people were in great need of funds, and accordingly began to sell their city and railroad bonds. Mr. Borg's bank engaged largely in the business of pur- chasing these securities and placing them upon the market, chiefly in New York. It became necessary for some one to attend to the business in New York as the bank's representative, to sell the securities in the money market of that city, and Mr. Borg was chosen for the task. He came to New York in 1865, and since that date has spent most of his time here. In 1869 he
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established the firm of Levy & Borg in New York, and it re- mained until 1881, when it was dissolved by mutual consent, and the present banking firm of Simon Borg & Co. took its place.
Mr. Borg has been much interested in railroads as well as banking. For five years, during its construction period, he was president of the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad. Under his direction the road was built from Stroudsburg to Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, about sixty-five miles, and from Little Ferry Junction to Edgewater, on the Hudson, with a double-track tunnel a mile long under the Palisades. He was also instrumental in constructing various other railroads, and in the development of the coal and coke industry at Lookout Mountain, and has served on the reorganization committees of many of the railroads throughout the United States.
Mr. Borg has held no political office. Neither has he actively entered into club life. He is interested in many benevolent enter- prises, however, being president of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews, a trustee of the United Savings Bank, a member of the Board of Trade and Transportation, and similarly connected with the Mount Sinai Hospital, the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, the Hebrew Technical Institute, the Young Men's Hebrew Association, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Charity Organization Society, the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Postgraduate Hospital, the New York Juvenile Asylum, the Children's Aid Society, the Dewey Arch Committee, and many others.
He was married, on August 10, 1870, to Miss Cecilia Lichten- stadter of New York, who has borne him seven children : Morti- mer S., Sidney C., Myron I., Walter B., Beatrice C., Edith D., and Elsie H. Borg. He declares that what success he has had in life is largely to be attributed to the good influence and wise counsel of his wife, and to the happy domestic life which she has created for him, and to the fact that he has taken pleasure in the faithful performance of his daily duties.
Archer Brown
ARCHER BROWN
AR BOUT the time of the Revolutionary War, or a little before it, two families, named respectively Brown and Phelps, came from England, settled in Connecticut, and then migrated as pioneers to what is now the central part of New York State. Thomas Brown, a member of the one, became a member of the New York Legislature from Chenango County. He was blessed with no less than sixteen children, of whom the youngest was E. Huntington Brown, a farmer of Otsego County. Elisha Phelps, a member of the other family named, was a farmer who, because of his enthusiasm in Whig politics, left his crops un- harvested and took the stump to speak and sing for " Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!" His daughter, Henrietta Phelps, became the wife of E. Huntington Brown, but was soon left a widow with a six-months-old boy, the subject of this sketch. Some years later she married Hiram Adams of Flint, Michigan, and removed to the latter place.
Archer Brown was born near the village of New Berlin, Otsego County, New York, on March 7, 1851. In 1859 he was taken by his mother, as above stated, to Flint, Michigan, and was pre- pared for college in the schools of that place. In 1868 he en- tered the University of Michigan, and four years later was graduated with the degree of A. B. During his college life he showed a strong inclination toward literary and journalistic work, and was one of the editors of the "University Chronicle."
On leaving the college in 1872, Mr. Brown decided to enter the newspaper profession. He accordingly went down to Cincinnati and became attached to the staff of the Cincinnati "Gazette," then controlled by Richard Smith. He was successively telegraph editor, correspondent, reporter, and managing editor, holding the
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last-named place for five years, ending in 1880. In 1874 he wrote a history of the famous Woman's Temperance Crusade in Ohio, from which he realized enough money to pay for a European trip. During his life in the " Gazette " office he served as correspondent for the New York " Times " and Chicago " Tribune."
In the fall of 1880 Mr. Brown gave up newspaper work, and joined W. A. Rogers in forming the pig-iron firm of Rogers, Brown & Co. of Cincinnati. His capital was eight thousand dollars, the savings of his years of newspaper work. The firm identified itself with the new iron district then being developed in Alabama, and prospered. It soon established a branch in St. Louis, then another in Chicago, and later six more in other lead- ing cities. In 1890 an enlargement and reorganization of the firm took place, Mr. Rogers going to Buffalo, New York, to take charge of the Tonawanda Iron and Steel Company as president. Five years later Mr. Brown came to New York to direct the affairs of the firm in the East. At the present time the firm is reputed to handle about one third of the iron marketed in the United States.
Mr. Brown is vice-president of the Tonawanda Iron and Steel Company, chairman of the executive committee of the Em- pire State Steel and Iron Company, and a director of the Plano Manufacturing Company of Chicago. He has held no political office, save that of member of the School Board of Avondale, Cincinnati. He is a member of the Commercial Club of Cin- cinnati, the Lawyers' Club of New York, the Essex County Club, New Jersey, and is president of the Mosaic Club of East Orange, New Jersey. He removed his home to East Orange in 1896. He was married, on June 29, 1880, to Miss Adelaide Hitchcock, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Luke Hitchcock, of Hitch- cock & Walden, the Methodist Book Concern firm of Cincinnati. They have four children : Archer H., Lowell H., Marjorie, and Constance.
ALONZO NORMAN BURBANK
TT is not only in new lands and places that great new enter- prises are undertaken. Vast is the development and wonder- ful is the enterprise of our Western States, beyond all question But in the oldest States of the East, even of that New England which is now so old, we may find energy and enterprise, and op- portunity too, equally great. Many of the pushing, successful men of the West have gone thither from the East, or are sons of those who did so. But those who remain behind in New England and the Middle States are not lacking in the same success-compel- ling qualities. We shall find that in these old States some of the greatest of the new enterprises have been conceived, organized, and developed into full success, and that by those who began life in the more quiet and conservative ways of their ancestors.
There is, for example, no more settled and conservative State than the old commonwealth of New Hampshire. Its citizens have for generations been pursuing their routine ways of agri- culture, manufactures, and shipping. Its name is not identi- fied with "hustling" or "booms"; yet we shall find some of its citizens taking leading parts in some of the greatest new enter- prises of the day.
Peleg N. Burbank, in the last generation, was a steady and successful shoe manufacturer at Franklin, New Hampshire. To him and his wife, Sarah, was born, at that place, on October 9, 1843, a son, to whom the name of Alonzo Norman Burbank was given. The boy was sent to the common school at Franklin, and then to the local high school or academy. These were excel- lent institutions, as were most New England schools, though, of course, not of collegiate rank. Young Burbank was an apt scholar, and learned, with practical thoroughness, all there was
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to learn in those schools, and a great deal besides from inquiry and observation outside of the school-room. His training was not, however, of a professional type, and he was apparently des- tined to enter some such occupation as his father's.
His first work, indeed, was in his father's factory, and consisted of the simple task of putting strings and laces into shoes. That was work he was able to do in his childhood. Later he became a clerk in a local store, dealing out dry-goods, groceries, and what not, to the rural customer. From the counter of the " general store " he went to the railroad, and became a brake- man, and then a station agent and telegraph operator. Such have been the occupations of thousands of New England youths who have never risen to more lucrative or important places. There was little to indicate that this one was to make a "new departure." But he presently did so.
From the railroad he went to a paper-mill, as bookkeeper. That was in the old days of paper-making, when the materials used were linen, straw, old paper, etc. But the trade was on the verge of a mighty revolution, of which New England and New York were to be the chief scenes. The experiment of making paper from wood was essayed. At first success seemed doubtful. But persistence won the day. It was found that paper could be made thus, with a promise of far greater cheapness than from any other material. The vast spruce and hemlock forests with which the New England hills were clothed thus became store- houses of raw material, while close at hand, in the unfailing mountain streams, lay the water-power that would transfer the logs into pulp and then into sheets of paper. The first process was to reduce the logs to pulp by grinding mechanically. Later, the same end was attained by chemical treatment. Thus, within the last quarter of a century, the paper trade of the country, and indeed of the world, has been completely revolutionized.
Nor is it merely the paper trade, in itself, that is thus revolu- tionized. The publishing trade in all its branches is equally affected. The reduction of the price of paper stock to a small fraction of what it formerly was, has made possible the reduction in price of newspapers, magazines, and books, in a manner not dreamed of a generation ago. This has caused an enormous increase in the circulation and sale of publications of all kinds,
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and a commensurately wider diffusion of knowledge and exten- sion of those influences which are exerted through the agency of the printing-press. In brief, this great cheapening of paper is to be ranked second only to the invention of printing itself.
It has been Mr. Burbank's lot to play a prominent part in this work, and last of all to be a member of the gigantic corporation which has combined within itself a large proportion of the paper- manufacturing business of the North American Continent. To this his clerkship in the paper-mill directly led. Without enu- merating all the successive steps in his advancement it will suf- fice to say that he has been treasurer of the Fall Mountain Paper Company, and an officer also of the Winnipiseogee Paper Com- pany, the Green Mountain Pulp Company, the Mount Tom Sul- phite Company, and the Garvin's Falls Company. Finally, when a short time ago the International Paper Company was organ- ized, including within itself more than a score of the leading paper, pulp, and sulphite works in the country, and dominat- ing the major part of the paper trade of America, Mr. Burbank became an active and influential member of it.
In addition to these interests, Mr. Burbank is a director of the International Trust Company of Boston, and of the Mercantile Trust Company of the same city.
Mr. Burbank now makes his home in New York, and is here a member of the Metropolitan and Colonial clubs. He is also a member of the Algonquin, Temple, and Exchange clubs of Boston, and of the Westminster Club of Bellows Falls, Ver- mont.
Mr. Burbank was married in 1865, at Andover, New Hamp- shire, to Miss Anna M. Gale. They have four children : Etta M., Frederick W., Margaret H., and Harriet.
SAMUEL ROGER CALLAWAY
THE executive head of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, which forms the backbone of one of the greatest railroad systems in the world, is perhaps as typical a "railroad man " as can anywhere be found. He has been a rail- road man all his business life. He started at the bottom of the ladder, and step by step, through sheer energy, industry, and integrity, has made his way to the top. At middle age he stands at the head of and the acknowledged master of one of the greatest business enterprises of the nineteenth century.
Samuel Roger Callaway is of Scotch ancestry and of Canadian birth. He was born in the province of Ontario, Canada, on December 24, 1850, and was educated in the local public schools. While yet a mere boy, however, he began railroad work in the employ of the Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada. He was only thirteen years old when, in 1863, he filled a junior clerkship in the auditor's office of that corporation. His first salary was eight dollars and thirty-three cents a month. For eleven years he remained in the service of the Grand Trunk, in which time he became proficient in many departments of railroad work.
Mr. Callaway came to the United States in 1874 to act as superintendent of the Detroit and Milwaukee Railroad. The president of that road was C. C. Trowbridge, and it is interesting to recall that he one day gave Mr. Callaway a note of introduc- tion to Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, in which he said that Mr. Callaway was the kind of man for whom the Vander- bilts would have use some day. But not at once was Mr. Calla- way to realize that prophecy. He went from the Detroit and Milwaukee road to the Grand Trunk, and had charge of its lines west of the St. Clair River. Next he was president of the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad, and then vice-president
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and general manager of the Union Pacific. During the con- struction period of the Toledo, St. Louis and Kansas City Rail- road he was its president, and afterward he was its receiver.
It was from this latter place that he went into the service of the great Vanderbilt railroad system. He was first called to become president of the New York, Chicago and St. Louis or "Nickel Plate" Railroad. This was in 1895. John Newell, president of the Lake Shore Railroad, had died, D. W. Caldwell, president of the "Nickel Plate," had been promoted to succeed him, and Mr. Callaway was made Mr. Caldwell's successor. Upon Mr. Caldwell's death, Mr. Callaway was chosen to succeed him again, as president of the Lake Shore Railroad. Thus he was at the same time president of those two roads, and also of the Pittsburg and Lake Erie Railroad. This was in August, 1897.
While Mr. Callaway was holding these offices, Chauncey M. Depew, president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, resigned his place to become chairman of the combined boards of directors of all the Vanderbilt roads, and Mr. Calla- way was promptly elected to succeed him on March 30, 1898. He at the same time, by virtue of the latter election, assumed executive control of the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad and a number of minor lines. Thus he became the immediate head of the gigantic railroad system with which his name is now inseparably connected, and the prophecy of Presi- dent Trowbridge, made twenty-four years previously, was strik- ingly fulfilled.
Mr. Callaway's capacity for work is prodigious. He is syste- matic, careful, reticent, yet straightforward and frank in all that he has to say. He is prompt and decisive, and a strict dis- ciplinarian, yet popular with his subordinates, for the reason that, like all real leaders of men, he subjects himself to the same discipline that he imposes upon them. He is genial, and makes and holds many friends.
His social side is as charming and attractive as his business side is masterful and successful. Mrs. Callaway has borne to him a daughter and two sons. The family had just settled in a fine home in Cleveland, Ohio, when Mr. Callaway was called to New York. Their home is now in the latter city, and it is a well-known center of delightful hospitality.
JUAN MANUEL CEBALLOS
A LTHOUGH the Spaniards planted no colonies on the North American continent north of the Floridas, there is a con- siderable sprinkling of their race in the northern parts of the United States, and especially in the city of New York. Some of these Spanish residents and citizens are of comparatively recent immigration to these shores, while others, of the purest blood, have been settled here for several generations. Among them are not a few who occupy the foremost rank in business affairs and in social life.
Conspicuous among these is Juan Manuel Ceballos, who, while a native of New York city, may be taken as a representative Spaniard. Indeed, he is peculiarly representative of all Spain, for his father, Juan M. Ceballos, long established in New York as a merchant, came from Santander, in the north of Spain, while his mother, whose maiden name was Juana Sanchez de Herrera, came from Malaga, in the southern part of the peninsula.
Of this parentage Mr. Ceballos was born in New York on September 19, 1859. He was educated at the then famous Charlier Institute, up to the age of fifteen years. Being an apt scholar, and maturing early, as is the rule with the Southern Latin races, he then left school and entered his father's office to begin the career of a merchant. There he showed an aptitude similar to that displayed at school, and consequently soon mas- tered the details of the business and won promotion. Before he was twenty-one years old he was invested with full power of attorney, and was admitted into the firm as a partner.
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