USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume I > Part 7
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32
While at the bar Mr. Cohen had a distinguished career. Be- sides a large general practice, he was counsel for a number of business corporations and benevolent institutions, among them being the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad Company, the Third Avenue Railroad Company, the Edison Electric Illuminating Company, the Consolidated Telegraph and Electrical Subway Company, the Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Society, and the Mount Sinai Training School for Nurses.
Justice Cohen was nominated for his place on the bench in 1898, at the earnest recommendation of the Bar Association and the bar generally, without regard to politics. He was, however, opposed by the Tammany organization because of his indepen- dence of political considerations, and was defeated in the election, to the general regret of the bench and bar.
He is a member of the Bar Association, the State Bar Associ- ation, the American Bar Association, the Lotos Club, the Alpha Delta Phi Club, the University Athletic Club, the Harmonie, Republican, and Lawyers' clubs, the Arion Society, the Society of Medical Jurisprudence, the Society of Fine Arts, the Dart- mouth College Alumni, and the Phi Beta Kappa Fraternity. He is unmarried.
Mr. Cohen takes high rank as a lawyer, owing to his training, reading, and accurate insight into legal problems, and his career on the bench showed him the possessor of a judicial mind, a master of good English, and the possessor of that inflexible in- tegrity and impartiality that should distinguish the acceptable administrator of justice.
BIRD SIM COLER
AB BOUT a century ago a family named Coler came to this country from the quaint old German city of Nuremberg, and soon became thoroughly identified with the young re- public. Half a century ago its head, William N. Coler, was a leading lawyer and Democratic politician of Illinois. He was for a time a member of the Democratic State Committee. After that he went to Chicago and became a banker, and became interested in lands and railroads in the Southwest. Finally, he came to New York city, making his home in Brooklyn, and engaged here in the business of a banker and broker. He married Cordelia Sim, a lady of Scotch descent, related to General Hugh Mercer of Revolutionary fame.
Bird Sim Coler, son of the foregoing, was born at Champaign, Champaign County, Illinois, on October 9, 1868. Two years later the family removed to Brooklyn, and there, in time, the boy was educated at the Polytechnic Institute, afterward taking a course at Phillips Andover Academy. On leaving school, he entered his father's banking house in New York city, and was initiated into the ways of Wall Street. He was at first a mere clerk and secretary in his father's office, but in 1889 had so far mastered the business as to be deemed worthy of a partnership. He also became a member of the New York Stock Exchange, not for speculative purposes, but in order to conduct a brokerage business for customers. The house was a large dealer in munici- pal bonds, and to these Mr. Coler paid particular attention. He traveled extensively in the West and Northwest, examining the financial condition of the cities whose securities he dealt in, and thus became an expert authority on municipal finance, a circum-
74
75
BIRD SIM COLER
stance which was destined to have an important bearing upon his after career.
From an early date Mr. Coler took a keen interest in politics, as a Democrat. He became a member of his ward association in Brooklyn, and then of the County Committee. For several years he was chairman of the Finance Committee of the County Com- mittee. He enjoyed the confidence of the party leaders, and was regarded as one of the rising men of the party. In 1893 he was nominated for the office of alderman at large, but that was a Republican year in Brooklyn, and he was defeated. He ran far ahead of his ticket, however. In 1897 his chance came again. The consolidation of the cities of Brooklyn and New York was about to go into effect, and officers were to be elected for the whole metropolis. Mr. Coler was nominated by the Democrats for the office of Controller, the chief financial post in the municipal government, and, after a hot campaign, he was elected. The term being four years, he is still in that office.
In addition to the Stock Exchange, Mr. Coler is a member of the Democratic, Brooklyn, and Grolier clubs. As his member- ship in the last-named club indicates, he is a book-lover, and has collected in his Brooklyn home a large and valuable library. He has traveled much, including several trips around the world. He is a lover of fishing, hunting, and similar sports. He is a member of one of the leading Methodist Episcopal churches of Brooklyn, and is active in all its work.
Mr. Coler was married, on October 10, 1888, to Miss Emily Moore, daughter of Benjamin Moore of Brooklyn, and they have one son, Eugene Coler.
7. hu Ceder.
M. tr. leder.
77
FRANK W. COLER
Mr. Coler organized the Twenty-fifth Illinois infantry regiment, and went to the front as its colonel. After the battle of Pea Ridge he resigned his commission and returned to Urbana and resumed his law practice. He made a specialty of laws relating to municipal bonds and finance, and became an authority upon that branch of practice.
That fact finally led him, in 1870, to come to New York city and found the house of W. N. Coler & Co., bankers and brokers, which has since enjoyed a highly prosperous career.
Colonel Coler married Miss Simm of Urbana, Illinois, a de- scendant of General Mercer, of Revolutionary fame, who bore him several sons. One of these is the subject of the present sketch.
Frank W. Coler was born at Urbana, Illinois, on August 22, 1871. He was brought to New York city in his infancy, and was educated at first in its schools. Then he studied succes- sively at Cornell University, at the University of Halle, Germany, at the School of Economics and Political Sciences, Paris, France, and at the Law Department of the Northwestern Uni- versity, Evanston, Illinois.
With such preparation he entered upon the practice of the law in the city of Chicago. He was a partner there of Judge Adams A. Goodrich and of Judge William A. Vincent. After three years of successful practice, however, he withdrew from it and left Chicago for the metropolis.
In New York Mr. Coler entered the banking house of W. N. Coler & Co., which had been founded by his father, and of which his father was head and his two brothers partners. In 1895 he became a partner in it, and still maintains that connec- tion. His father having retired from active business, Mr. Coler's elder brother, W. N. Coler, Jr., became, in 1898, the head of the firm. The third brother, Bird S. Coler, was in 1897 elected Controller of the city of New York.
Mr. Coler was married, on July 7, 1894, to Miss Cecile Ander- son. They have one child, Kenneth Anderson Coler.
WILLIAM NICHOLS COLER, JR.
T THE remote ancestors of the subject of this sketch were men of parts and substance in central and southern Ger- many. The archives of Nuremberg tell that, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, members of the family were wardens or custodians of the great forests which form so important a part of that region. Their services entitled them to elevation to noble rank, but, through their own choice, they steadfastly re- mained commoners. In later years the family became more widely dispersed throughout Europe, in various nations. In comparatively recent years one of its members was prevailed upon to accept the rank of a baron, in recognition of his services as Medical Director of the Germany army.
The family was first settled in America soon after the War of the Revolution. The pioneer member of it settled in Phila- delphia, Pennsylvania, and there two sons were born to him. One of these, Isaac Coler, removed to Knox County, Ohio, and became a farmer. There a son was born to him, to whom he gave the name of William Nichols Coler. The latter has had an interesting career as a private in the Mexican War, a law student and a practising lawyer at Bloomington, Illinois, a lead- ing lawyer and friend of Abraham Lincoln in Urbana, Illinois, a colonel in the Civil War, and the founder and head of a bank- ing house in New York city. He married a Miss Simm, who was maternally descended from General Mercer of Revolutionary fame, and she bore him several sons. The oldest of these re- ceived his father's name.
William Nichols Coler, Jr., was born at Urbana, Illinois, on July 6, 1858. His education was received in the public schools of that place and in Illinois University. While he was yet in
78
79
WILLIAM NICHOLS COLER, JR.
his boyhood his father left Urbana to become a banker in New York city, with a home in Brooklyn, and young Mr. Coler, of course, came with him to the metropolis.
His inclinations were toward the business in which his father was so successfully engaged, and he, therefore, entered his father's counting-house, at first as an employee to learn the business, but soon as a partner. With that house, W. N. Coler & Co., bankers and brokers, he has been continuously connected ever since. His father retired from the head of the firm on November 1, 1898, and Mr. Coler, Jr., succeeded him in that place.
Mr. Coler has been eminently successful in his business life, and has won the esteem and confidence of his acquaintance and of the public in an enviable degree. He has become officially connected with numerous other corporations, chiefly banks and trust companies. Many of these are out-of-town banks and other institutions. Among those in the metropolis may be mentioned the Western National Bank of New York, the Amer- ican Deposit and Loan Company of New York, the Brooklyn Bank of Brooklyn, and the Fidelity Trust Company of Newark, New Jersey, which, by reason of its proximity to New York, may practically be reckoned a metropolitan institution. Of all these Mr. Coler is a director.
Mr. Coler has held no political office, and taken no especially active part in political affairs, although his younger brother, Bird S. Coler, was, in the fall of 1897, elected Controller of the city of New York for a term of four years.
Mr. Coler is a member of the Hamilton Club of Brooklyn, the Lawyers', Calumet, and Knickerbocker clubs of New York, and the Essex Club of Newark, New Jersey.
He was married, on February 8, 1888, to Miss Lillie E. Seeley, and has two sons: William Nichols Coler III, born in August, 1889, and Eugene Seeley Coler, born in January, 1896.
WASHINGTON EVERETT CONNOR
"THE " old Ninth Ward" of this city was the birthplace of Washington Everett Connor-the old village of Green- wich, where his father and grandfather had lived, and indeed been born, before him. He was born on December 15, 1849, and was educated at the public schools and the College of the City of New York. He was an excellent scholar, especially in mathe- matical studies. On leaving college at the end of his first year, he entered the banking and brokerage house of H. C. Stimson & Co. as a clerk, and there acquired a thorough training in the business of Wall Street, and made the acquaintance of many leaders of finance.
Mr. Connor became a member of the Stock Exchange on Oc- tober 6, 1871, and soon became a conspicuous figure in that body. Clear-headed, prompt, devoted to the interests of his clients, and agreeable in manner, he won a large number of important patrons. He soon attracted the notice of Jay Gould, and was intrusted by him with some important commissions. These Mr. Connor executed with brilliant success, and the result was that Mr. Gould, a keen judge of men, in 1881 formed a partner- ship with the young broker, under the name of W. E. Connor & Co. Of this firm George J. Gould became a member on attain- ing his majority. For many years Mr. Connor was Jay Gould's confidential representative, and had the management of most of his important operations on Wall Street. Mr. Connor was also a favorite broker of Russell Sage and other prominent capitalists.
In all his operations Mr. Connor has been distinguished by his ability to keep his own counsel. When, for example, Jay Gould made his famous Western Union Telegraph campaign, which re-
80
81
WASHINGTON EVERETT CONNOR
sulted in the transfer of the control of that corporation from the Vanderbilts to him, Mr. Connor personally conducted all the operations, and did it so skilfully that Wall Street was under the impression that his firm was heavily short of the stock, when, in fact, it was the principal buyer of it.
In the panic of 1884 it was ascertained that W. E. Connor & Co. were borrowers to the extent of twelve million dollars, and a combination was promptly formed to drive them into bankruptcy. The attack was made chiefly upon Missouri Pacific stock. But Mr. Connor and Mr. Gould were more than a match for the Street. They not only held their own, but, when the day of reckoning came, no less than one hundred and forty-seven houses were found short of Missouri Pacific, and were forced to " cover" at heavy losses to themselves, and at great profit to W. E. Connor & Co.
Mr. Gould retired from Wall Street in 1886, and a year later Mr. Connor, having amassed an ample fortune, followed his example. He retained, however, an active interest in many railroad and other corporations. Among these are the Louis- ville, New Albany and Chicago, and the Wheeling and Lake Erie railroads, the Western Union Telegraph, the Crédit Mobilier, the Texas and Colorado Improvement Company, the Manhattan Elevated Railway, the New Jersey Southern Railroad, and the Central Construction Company.
Mr. Connor has a fine home in New York city, and a summer home at Seabright, New Jersey. He is devoted to yachting and other forms of recreation, and is a conspicuous figure in metropolitan society. He belongs to the Union League, Lo- tus, Republican, American Yacht, and various other clubs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Natural His- tory, and the Metropolitan Opera House Company. He is a member of the highest standing of the Masonic fraternity. In 1877-78 he was master of St. Nicholas Lodge 321; in 1879 he was District Deputy Grand Master of the Sixth Masonic Dis- trict ; in 1884 he was Grand Representative of the Grand Lodge of New York, and in 1887-89 Grand Treasurer of the same. He has also been Grand Representative of the Grand Lodge of England.
HENRY HARVEY COOK
F IROM ancient records it appears that Captain Thomas Cook of Earle's Colne, Essex, England, came to Boston early in the seventeenth century, and in 1637 settled at Taunton, in the Plymouth Colony, of which place he was one of the pro- prietors, and finally, in 1643, removed to Pocasset, now Ports- mouth, Rhode Island. His family in England was of noble extraction, with annals dating back almost to the Norman Con- quest. In New England the family became conspicuous for its private virtues and its energy in promoting the public weal.
In the last generation Judge Constant Cook lived at Warren, New York, and married Maria Whitney. To them was born at Cohocton, New York, on May 22, 1822, a son, to whom they gave the name of Henry Harvey Cook. The boy was sent to school at Cohocton until his eighteenth year, and then to an academy at Canandaigua for two years, thus completing his studies. After leaving school he served for a year as a dry-goods clerk at Auburn, New York, and then another year in the same capacity at Bath. Then, in 1844, he opened a store of his own at Bath, and conducted it with such success that at the end of ten years he was able to retire from it with a handsome fortune.
Mr. Cook's next venture was the organization, in company with his father, of the Bank of Bath, a State institution, in April, 1854. Of it he was cashier, and it had a prosperous career for just ten years. Then, in April, 1864, it was organized as a national bank, and again for just ten years Mr. Cook served as its cashier, and its prosperity remained unabated. In 1874 his father, the president of the bank, died, and Mr. Cook was elected its president in his place, and still holds that office.
The presidency of the bank was not sufficient, however, to
82
Henry, dx. Cooky
83
HENRY HARVEY COOK
engross all his attention. In 1875 he came to New York and entered its financial and railroad businesses, in which he has achieved marked success. He has become a director of the Union Pacific, the New York, Lake Erie and Western, and the Buffalo, New York and Erie railroads, the American Surety Com- pany, the State Trust Company, the National Bank of North America, and the Washington Life Insurance Company.
Mr. Cook has made his home chiefly in this city since 1875, his house on the upper part of Fifth Avenue ranking among the finest on Manhattan Island. He has also a splendid place at Lenox, Massachusetts, which he has named " Wheatleigh," after the estate of one of his ancestors, Sir Henry Cook of Yorkshire, England. In his houses he has large and valuable libraries and collections of paintings and other works of art.
The clubs of which Mr. Cook is a member include the Union League, Metropolitan, and Riding, of New York, and he belongs also to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Natural History Museum, the American Fine Arts Society, the New York Geological Society, and the New York Historical Society. Like his father, he belongs to the Protestant Episcopal Church, and is a vestryman of St. Thomas's parish in New York.
Mr. Cook was married, on September 27, 1848, to Miss Mary McCay, daughter of William Wallace McCay of Bath, New York, who for many years was the principal agent and manager of the Poultney estate. They have five daughters : Mariana, wife of Clinton D. McDougall of Auburn, New York; Maria Louise, wife of Judge M. Rumsey Miller of Bath ; Sarah McCay, wife of Charles F. Gansen of Buffalo; Fanny Howell, wife of John Henry Keene of Baltimore, Maryland; and Georgie Bruce, wife of Carlos de Heredia of Paris, France.
PAUL DRENNAN CRAVATH
THOSE who remember the days " before the war," the days of antislavery agitation and of the realinement of political par- ties, will readily recall the name of Orren B. Cravath, of Homer, New York. He was one of the most earnest of antislavery men, and one of the founders of the Republican party in the State of New York, being a delegate to its first State Convention. He had come to New York from Connecticut, and his ancestors, originally from England, had lived for five generations in Massa- chusetts. His son, Erastus Milo Cravath, became a clergyman, lived for some years in Ohio, and has now been for a long time president of Fisk University, at Nashville, Tennessee. He mar- ried Miss Ruth Jackson, daughter of Caleb Sharpless Jackson of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, a prominent abolitionist and member of the Society of Friends, and descendant of a family that had come from England and had lived in Chester County, Pennsylvania, for six generations before him.
To the Rev. Dr. Erastus Cravath a son was born at Berlin Heights, Ohio, on July 14, 1861, to whom he gave the names of Paul Drennan, and whom, when he became old enough, he sent to that institution beloved of antislavery folk, Oberlin College. There Paul D. Cravath was graduated in 1882. Four years later he was graduated from the Law School of Columbia College, receiving the first prize in municipal law and the prize appointment as instructor in the law school for three years following graduation. It may be added that he had gone from Oberlin to Minneapolis in 1882, and had read law at the latter place for some months, until his studies were interrupted by illness. Then he traveled and engaged in business for more than a year, not coming to Columbia until the fall of 1884.
84
85
PAUL DRENNAN CRAVATH
After graduation in law, and while acting as instructor in Colum- bia, he served as a clerk in the law office of Messrs. Carter, Hornblower & Byrne.
That firm was dissolved in 1888, and Mr. Cravath then became a member of the firm of Carter, Hughes & Cravath. Two years later it, too, dissolved, and then the firm of Cravath & Houston was formed, which still exists. Mr. Cravath has since his admis- sion to the bar applied himself exclusively to the practice of his profession, and has achieved marked success. He has been for some years counsel for the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, and several important electric illuminating companies in New York, Brooklyn, and elsewhere. His professional work has, in fact, been largely in connection with corporations.
Mr. Cravath has long taken a loyal citizen's interest in public affairs, and has lent his time and influence to the cause of good government. He has been conspicuously identified with various movements for political reform, but has never allowed the use of his name as a candidate for office. His only approach to office-holding was his service as a delegate to the Republican State Convention in 1898. He is a member of the Union League Club, the University Club, the Lawyers' Club, the New England Society, and the Ohio Society, and takes an active interest in promoting the prosperity of them all.
In 1893 Mr. Cravath was married to Miss Agnes Huntington, a member of the well-known New York family of that name, who was at that time famed as one of the most accomplished singers of the world. They have one child, who bears the name of Vera Agnes Huntington Cravath.
GEORGE CROCKER
THE history of the world is rudely divided into the records of various so-called ages. There is the half-mythical stone age. There is the golden age, of which we have prophecy of a better repetition in this land. There are the dark ages. And so the story goes, each era being designated according to its most conspicuous feature. The present age has many claims to dis- tinction for many of its salient features. Perhaps it might be as worthily known as in any way as the age of railroading, or, at any rate, of engineering. It is probable that no feature of nine- teenth-century civilization has been more potent for changing the face of the world and improving the condition of the race than the use of steam-power for transportation on land and sea, and especially on land, for the contrast between the sailing- ship and the steamship is scarcely as great as between the stage- coach and the express-train.
There were also, of old, certain classes of men who dominated their respective ages, such as the knights in the age of chivalry. There were merchant princes in the days of Tyre and Sidon who almost vied with monarchs in wealth and power. We have to- day our merchant princes and captains of industry. But to none are we to give higher rank than to the railroad kings, who have literally cast up a highway and made the rough places smooth. They have covered the lands of the earth with roads for the facilitation of commerce, of industry, and of social inter- course. They have all but abolished time and space. They have made near neighbors of those who dwell at opposite sides of the continent.
The careers of such men are supremely typical of the genius of the century which produced them, and which they, in turn, so
86
87
GEORGE CROCKER
largely shaped ; and among them, in this country, there are none more worthy of attention than the members of that remarkable group of men who developed the interests of the Pacific coast, and connected that region with the Eastern States, and with all the nation, with great highways of steel.
The Crocker family is of English ancestry, and was settled in the United States several generations ago. In the last genera- tion it rose to especial distinction in the person of Charles Crocker, the son of a storekeeper at Troy, New York. He was compelled by his father's reverses in his early boyhood to take to selling newspapers and other occupations for self-support. His earnings went into the common fund of the family, which in time amounted to enough for the purchase of a farm in Indiana, whither the family removed when he was fourteen years old. Three years later the boy left home to make his own way in the world. He successively worked on a farm, in a sawmill, and at a forge, getting what schooling he could meanwhile. At twenty- three he started iron-works of his own at Michawaka, Indiana, and conducted that enterprise successfully for four years. Then, in 1849, gold was discovered in California, and he joined the great procession of fortune-seekers that removed to the Pacific coast.
Mr. Crocker did not, however, spend much time in the mines. He opened a dry-goods store at Sacramento, which soon became the leading concern of the kind in that place, and proved highly profitable. In 1854 he was elected to the Common Council, and in 1860 to the Legislature. Then he became impressed with the importance of having railroad communication between California and the Eastern States, and in 1861 gave up his other business and devoted all his energy, ability, attention, and fortune to the task of building the Central Pacific Railroad. He was one of the four men who agreed to pay, out of their own pockets, for the labor of eight hundred men for one year, and who pledged their entire fortunes to the accomplishment of the great task before them. The others were Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Collis P. Huntington. Each of these men played a separate part in the enterprise. Mr. Crocker was the superintendent of construction. He personally directed the building of some of the most difficult parts of the line over the Sierra Nevada, and never relaxed his efforts until the line was completed in 1869.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.