USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume II > Part 11
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Such use of the microscope and camera combined Dr. Fuller has since developed to a great degree. He has applied the sys- tem to the study of bacteria and other micro-organisms. His skill in applying the camera to the determination of the charac- ter and characteristics of skin diseases will be remembered as of
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great interest in his demonstrations as lecturer on dermatology in the Medical College of New York University.
After graduation Dr. Fuller applied himself to the practice of medicine. During the remainder of the Civil War he was Dr. Armsby's assistant in surgery in the Ira Harris United States Hospital at Albany. Many of the photographs which he there took of wounds have been used as illustrations in the official med- ical and surgical history of the war. In addition to his photo- graphic inventions, he conceived the now universally used system of preparing drugs in the form of triturate tablets, thus securing accuracy of measurement in dosage, and greater convenience in administration. In recognition of his service to the medical profession in this respect, Dr. Fuller was chosen as a delegate to the convention charged with the responsible task of revising the United States Pharmacopœia at Washington in 1880.
In addition to his medical pursuits, Dr. Fuller found time to engage actively with his father in the piano manufacturing in- dustry. While still a medical student he was detailed in the drug department of the Sixth Army Corps, at City Point, Vir- ginia. He was in Ford's Theater, Washington, on the night when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and is one of the few surviving witnesses of that tragedy. He has for many years been a frequent contributor to leading medical journals. For a quarter of a century he has served gratuitously at the chief dis- pensaries of this city. He has been an active member of the New York State Medical Society, the New York Academy of Medicine, the New York County Medical Society, the New York Pathological Society, the New York Dermatological Society, the Northwestern Medical and Surgical Society, the Medicolegal Society, the New York Microscopical Society, the Society of Am- ateur Photographers of New York, the New York Camera Club, the Knights Templar, and various other organizations.
LIVINGSTON GIFFORD
LIVINGSTON GIFFORD comes of north of England ances- tors, who came to this country in early colonial times and settled on farms along the Hudson River. For several genera- tions they were conspicuous among the thrifty and progressive men who made the Hudson valley one of the richest parts of the country. In the last generation, George Gifford was born and brought up on a farm in Dutchess County. He educated him- self, and did so to so good purpose that he was able to become a school-teacher. Then he came to New York city and entered the legal profession. In that he was chiefly self-taught, but his preparation was thorough, and his success at the bar was prompt and unmistakable. He was in all respects a fine type of the self- made man. It was about 1840 that he settled in New York. Not long after he married Eleanor C. Van Ranst, whose ances- tors had come from Holland about the year 1700 and had settled on Manhattan Island. Her mother was a member of the well- known New York family of Willett. Mrs. Gifford was born on Beekman Street, and lived there and on Broadway, near Fourth Street, until her marriage to George Gifford.
The son of this couple, Livingston Gifford, was born at South Bergen, Hudson County, New Jersey, on September 8, 1855. He was educated with all possible care and thoroughness. His preparation for college was gained at Phillips Academy, Ando- ver, Massachusetts. Thence he went to Yale, where he took the mechanical engineering course, and was graduated in 1875. He attended the Columbia College Law School, and took his degree in 1877. He was admitted to the bar, and almost immediately entered into partnership with his father, under the firm-name of Gifford & Gifford. The partnership was terminated only by the
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death of Mr. Gifford, Sr., which occurred in 1882. The firm of Gifford & Brown was formed soon afterward, and continued for several years. In 1894 Mr. Gifford entered into partnership with his present associate, under the firm-name of Gifford & Bull.
The firm has a large and interesting practice. Mr. Gifford has made a specialty of litigation in the United States courts touching patents, trade-marks, and copyrights. He is connected as counsel with several large companies and corporations, and has practised in almost every circuit in the United States. His litigations have related to inventions in almost every branch of chemistry, electricity, and mechanics. Among cases in which he has served as counsel have been some relating to telegraphs, telephones, coal-tar dyes, electric arc and incandescent lamps, electric motors, sewing-machinery, looms, mechanical rubber goods, rubber boots and shoes, bicycle tires, electrical distributing systems, converters, dynamos, etc., linoleum, wagons and other vehicles, hoisting and conveying apparatus, textile manufactures, lamps, refrigerators, gloves, hats, and clothing, steam-boilers, to- bacco, thread, dynamite, nails, and railroad-cars. This list does not exhaust the variety of his legal activities, but it gives some notion of the range of topics he has dealt with as an expert. It remains to be added merely that in all these cases Mr. Gifford has attained a gratifying and most creditable measure of success.
Mr. Gifford was married in 1884, his bride being Miss Marie L. Davis of Richmond, Virginia. One child, a daughter, has been born to them, to whom they have given the name of Evelyn.
HENRY AUGUSTUS GLASSFORD
H ENRY AUGUSTUS GLASSFORD is the son of James Glassford and Elsie McIntyre Glassford of Montreal, Canada. He was born in Montreal on January 23, 1826, and re- ceived his education there, in the academy of the late Dr. Black, a Presbyterian clergyman and a scholar of high rank. At the age of fifteen he was employed as a clerk in a wholesale grocery store in his native city, where he served an apprenticeship of five years, and remained another year as salesman. Then he became a commission merchant, and was for a time general agent of an English fire-insurance company. Leaving Canada in 1858, he came to the United States, and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. There he remained until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, when he entered the naval service of the Federal government.
He was first appointed second master in the Mississippi flo- tilla, commanded by Captain Foote, U. S. N., as an adjunct to the army. In October, 1862, the flotilla was formally transferred to the Navy Department. He was in command of a division of six mortar-boats at Island No. 10, at Fort Pillow, and at Memphis. He was then promoted to first master, and ordered to the steamer Sumter, a captured vessel, as executive officer, under Lieutenant-Commander, now Rear-Admiral, Henry Erben. The Sumter took part in the engagements at Vicksburg and Port Hudson, running the batteries at both places. It covered the left flank of the troops at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, during the battle there, and was present at the fight between the ironclad Essex and the Confederate ram Arkansas. Later Mr. Glassford was transferred to the Essex as her executive officer. At the end of 1862 he was made acting volunteer lieutenant, and later was ordered to report at Washington. Then he was sent back
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to the Mississippi squadron at Mound City, Illinois, and was subsequently in command of various light-draft gunboats, under the lead of Admirals Davis and Porter, on the Ohio, Tennessee, Cumberland, and other rivers. He was in command of the steamer Reindeer at the siege of Nashville, and at Bell's Mills on the Cumberland River. He was honorably mustered out of the service in November, 1865, having served four years and one month with less than a week's leave of absence.
After the war Mr. Glassford returned to Cincinnati, and for several years was a prominent figure in the insurance business in that city, being secretary and superintendent of an important company. Then, in 1871, he removed to Albany, New York, and there continued in the same business, as a fire underwriter, being a general agent and manager.
In the end his road led to New York. He came hither in 1885, and, giving up the insurance business, became associated with his brother-in-law, Charles T. Wing, in the business of a banker and broker, at No. 18 Wall Street. That connection was main- tained until Mr. Wing's death, which occurred in 1888. The concern was then reorganized under the name of Charles T. Wing & Co., with Mr. Glassford as one of the members of the firm. The other partners were Frank E. Wing and Ed- ward N. Gibbs, the latter being a special partner. In that form the firm has remained to the present time, enjoying marked prosperity.
Mr. Glassford belongs to a number of social organizations in various parts of the country. Among these are the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, a national organization, to which his services in the war made him eligible ; the Fort Orange Club of Albany, one of the foremost of that city; the Army and Navy Club and the Ohio Society, of this city; and the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York.
Mr. Glassford married Miss Maria I. Scanlan, a daughter of the late Stephen Scanlan, who was the principal of a prominent school for boys at Montreal, Canada. They have had two chil- dren. One of these was a son, who died in infancy. The other is a daughter named Alice Maude, who is now the wife of Dr. James P. Boyd of Albany, New York.
HENRY ALOYSIUS GUMBLETON
H ENRY ALOYSIUS GUMBLETON, who has attained prominence in New York city as a lawyer, politician, and public office-holder, is, like so many other successful New-York- ers, of Irish parentage. His father and mother were both natives of Ireland, but spent much of their lives in New York. The father, Richard Gumbleton, belonged to one of the important county families of Waterford and Cork counties, which had been transplanted into Ireland from England in the seventeenth cen- tury. In his boyhood Richard Gumbleton came to America, and was employed successively in Nova Scotia, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. Then he came to New York city, and pursued a long and successful career as a clothing manufacturer. When he died in New York, at the age of ninety years, he had been in this country about three quarters of a century. Richard Gumbleton married, in New York, Miss Catherine A. Murphy, who was also of Irish birth and descent.
The son of this couple, and subject of this sketch, was born in New York city on September 14, 1846. He was educated in the public schools of the city, and in the Free Academy, from which latter he was graduated in 1863, when it had received its present name, the College of the City of New York. Then, inclining to the legal profession, he entered the Columbia College Law School, and there pursued a course of study under Professor Theodore W. Dwight.
Mr. Gumbleton was admitted to practise law at the bar of New York in 1869, but did not actually begin professional work until ten years later, in the latter part of 1879. Since the latter date, however, he has been steadily engaged in the practice of the law, with good success.
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This gap between admission to the bar and entry upon legal practice was filled with public services. In April, 1865, Mr. Gumbleton became a clerk in the office of the County Clerk of the county of New York. From that beginning he was promoted in due course to be an assistant deputy and then deputy to the County Clerk. Years of such service were deemed to qualify him to fill the highest office in that department, and accordingly, in 1876, he was nominated by the Democratic party, and elected to the office of County Clerk of the county of New York.
It should be added that in 1875 he was appointed Deputy Commissioner of Public Works by General Fitz-John Porter, who was then Commissioner, and held that place under General Porter and his successor, Allan Campbell, until he was elected County Clerk, when he resigned it to accept the latter office.
Mr. Gumbleton was in 1883 a member of the Board of Asses- sors of New York. He was again appointed to that office by Mayor Gilroy, in 1891, and acted as chairman of the board.
Mr. Gumbleton has various business interests, and is connected with a number of companies and organizations. He is a charter member and vice-president of the North Side Board of Trade, counsel for the Twenty-third Ward Property Owners' Associa- tion, and attorney and counsel for the People's Guaranty and Indemnity Company, the J. and M. Haffen Brewery Company, and the Standard Malt and Hop Brewery Company.
In politics he is a Democrat, and is affiliated with Tammany Hall. He belongs to the Tammany Society or Columbian Order, and to the Democratic Club.
Mr. Gumbleton has twice been married - once in 1872, and again in 1900.
FRANK LORENZO HALL
MONG the Rev. Henry Whitfield's company, who came A from Kent, England, to the New Haven Colony, in Con- necticut, early in the seventeenth century, was Francis Hall, who became one of the leading participants in the historic meet- ing in Newman's barn, on June 4, 1639, and who, as a lawyer, was counsel for the New Haven Colony and the town of Fairfield. A portion of the original land grant made to him is now in the possession of his descendant in the eighth generation, Frank Lorenzo Hall. The latter is, on his mother's side, the descen- dant, also in the eighth generation, of Richard Hubbell, who came from England to the New Haven Colony in 1645, and was one of the original proprietors of the town of Fairfield. His parents, Lorenzo Hall and Mary Jane Hubbell Hall, lived first at Bridge- port, Connecticut, and then removed to Akron, Ohio.
Frank Lorenzo Hall was born of such parentage and such ancestry, at Bridgeport, Connecticut, on July 4, 1850. At seven years of age he was taken to Akron, Ohio, and was prepared for college at the Harcourt School, Gambier, Ohio. In the fall of 1867 he entered Kenyon College, taking and keeping his place at the head of the freshman class. The next year he entered Yale's freshman class, and was duly graduated, with the degree of A. B., in 1872. That fall he entered the Columbia College Law School, and two years later was graduated from it with the degree of LL. B., and was admitted to practice at the New York bar. It may be added that in college he was prominent as an oarsman, and was a member of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity.
Upon admission to the bar, in 1874, Mr. Hall became connected with the law department of the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey There he was associated with the Hon. Benjamin Wil-
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liamson, formerly Chancellor of the State of New Jersey, and with Robert W. De Forest, with the latter of whom and his brother, Henry De Forest, he subsequently entered into partnership. The latter connection lasted until 1890, when the firm was dissolved. Since that time Mr. Hall has practised his profession alone. He has paid especial attention to the laws pertaining to corporations and estates, and the legal reports of the courts of New York, includ- ing the federal courts, show him to have been prominently connected with many important cases.
Mr. Hall was one of the organizers of the University Club of New York, in 1879, and is now one of its life members. He was also one of the founders of the Psi Upsilon Club of this city, and is a member of the executive council of that fraternity at large. He is also a member of the Yale Club, the Down-Town Associa- tion, the Bar Association of the City of New York, the American Historical Society, the New England Society, and the St. George's Society. He is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and actively interested in its welfare. Apart from his legal business, he is a director of several railroad companies, and president of the Baltimore and Delaware Bay Railroad Company.
Mr. Hall is a member of the South Side Sportsmen's Club of Long Island, and finds his favorite recreation in fishing and shooting.
LEWIS A. HALL
O NE of the heroic eras of American history -to wit, that covering the great struggle against the extension of slavery and for the abolition of that "twin relic of barbarism " - has now moved so far into the past as to be familiar to few save by tradition or by reading. The number of those who actually participated in its stirring events, or personally witnessed them, is now small indeed, and swiftly diminishing toward the vanish- ing-point. To the few who still survive, however, and to the many more who have become acquainted with those times through historical study, the name of Lewis Hall is familiar. It was borne by one of the leaders in the fight for freedom, one of the most outspoken abolitionists, one of the associates of William Lloyd Garrison, and one of the managers of that famous " underground railway" which so baffled and mystified slave- owners, and which assisted so many fugitives to make good their escape from bondage to the freedom of British soil in Canada. Mr. Hall inherited his love of freedom from a long line of free- dom-loving ancestors. These had in old time, no doubt, been settled in Scotland. In later generations they dwelt in the north of Ireland and became fully identified with the thrifty and sturdy life of that country. He himself spent most of his life at Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts, where he was a prosperous banker. He lived, as did so many of the antislavery leaders, to a good old age, dying in 1897. His wife was a woman of English ancestry.
To this couple the subject of the present sketch, Lewis A. Hall, was born, at Cambridge, in 1843, early enough to receive in his boyhood the impress of the heroic age in which his father lived and moved and acted to so good effect. He was educated in the
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admirable local schools of Cambridge, and then, at the age of eighteen years, began business life as an inmate of his father's office. The elder Hall was at that time engaged in a general trade with South America and other foreign countries, as a mem- ber of the firm of Flint & Hall. That firm continued in business until 1870, ranking among the foremost in that department of commerce. In the year named the two elder partners retired, and Lewis A. Hall, forming a copartnership with others, suc- ceeded to the conduct of the business, with offices at Boston and at Burlington, Vermont. He carried the business on with much success, at first on the original lines, and then on such broader lines as developing interests seemed to indicate.
In 1873 Mr. Hall formed the Lumber Export Company, with its principal offices and storage-yards in New York city, and with branches in Boston, Montreal, and Ottawa, and with large prop- erties in Michigan and some of the Southern States. This com- pany immediately attained great success, and has maintained it steadfastly ever since. Its property interests in this country have been extended, and an enormous export trade in various kinds of lumber has been built up with practically all the impor- tant seaboard markets of the world.
Mr. Hall is the president of this corporation, with offices at No. 52 Broadway, New York. He has other extensive business interests in both the East and West, and is a recognized power not only in the lumber trade, but in the general commercial and business affairs of the metropolis and the nation. He is also largely interested in many other large lumber corporations. He has not taken any part in political affairs, save to fulfil the duties of a loyal and intelligent private citizen. His principal social affiliation is membership in the Union League Club of New York, which he has long held.
Mr. Hall was married, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1864, to Miss Emma F. Hunt, a daughter of the Hon. Freeman Hunt. They have two children, a son who bears the name of his father and grandfather, Lewis, and a daughter named Ethel. Their home has been in this city for many years.
HAMILTON HARRIS
AM MONG the pioneers of Cortland County, New York, was the Harris family, whose members settled there in the latter part of the last century. There, at the village of Preble, Hamil- ton Harris was born, on May 1, 1820. His parents were natives of the State of New York, his father being of English and his mother of Scotch descent. The family lived upon a farm, and there Hamilton Harris spent his early years. His first schooling was had in the local district school. Then he went to Homer Academy and Albany Academy. Finally he entered Union Col- lege in 1837. In 1841 he was graduated with honor, and soon thereafter entered the law office of his elder brother, Ira Harris, who was then a leader of the Albany bar and afterward became a judge and United States Senator. In 1845 he was admitted to the bar and began the practice of his profession in Albany.
The career of Mr. Harris as a lawyer has been a successful and distinguished one. He formed a partnership in 1848 with Hooper C. Van Vorst, afterward a judge of the Superior Court of New York. In 1854 he was associated with Samuel G. Court- ney, afterward United States District Attorney. In 1857 he formed a third partnership with Clark B. Cochrane and John H. Reynolds, both of whom became members of Congress. Nearly a score of years afterward this firm was dissolved by the death of his partners, and then Mr. Harris formed another with his son, Frederick Harris, and William P. Rudd. In 1854-56 Mr. Harris was District Attorney of Albany County, and in that office con- ducted numerous noteworthy cases for the people.
Early in life Mr. Harris became interested in politics as a Whig. He was elected to the State Assembly in 1850, and was the leader of the movement in the Legislature that culminated in
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the establishment of the State Library and the building of the new State Capitol. He was a member of the Whig Committee of Six which called a State convention and prepared a new plat- form, and thus organized the Republican party in this State. With that party he has since been identified. From 1862 to 1870 he was a member of the State committee, and in the first two years chairman of the executive committee, and in the other six chairman of the whole committee. In many years he has been a conspicuous figure in State and national conventions of the party, and in electoral campaigns. From 1865 to 1875 he was president of the Board of Capitol Commissioners, charged with the construction of the new Capitol. In 1875 he was elected to the State Senate, and was handsomely reelected in 1877. An- other renomination was offered to him, but he declined it. In 1884 he was a candidate for Presidential Elector. In 1885 he was elected by the Legislature a regent of the State University.
Mr. Harris has long been known as an indefatigable and dis- criminating collector of books, and as, in consequence, the pos- sessor of one of the finest private libraries in the State of New York. His general library contains more than thirty-five hundred volumes, covering with peculiar completeness the field of the world's best literature in all essential departments. It is, as we might expect, especially rich in the departments of history, biography, and statesmanship. An interesting feature of it is a group of works relating to Alexander Hamilton, of whom Mr. Harris has ever been a profound admirer. Mr. Harris has also a law library of more than three thousand volumes, se- lected with regard chiefly to the practical wants of a lawyer.
It should be added that Mr. Harris has made some worthy contributions to literature, and enjoys an enviable fame as a lec- turer and occasional orator. He received, in 1891, the honorary degree of LL. D. from Union College, his Alma Mater. He was married, in 1850, to Miss Lucy Rogers, daughter of the late Na- thaniel Rogers of Buffalo. They have two children : Frederick Harris, Mr. Harris's law partner, and Lucy Hamilton Harris. The family home in Albany is a center of social culture and re- fined intercourse in that city, and the name of its head is hon- ored throughout the State whose public service he has so greatly adorned.
EDWIN ALONZO HARTSHORN
COME members of the Hartshorn family claim the village of Hartshorne, in England, as its former home, while others declare it was once settled among the Hartz Mountains, in Ger- many. The member under present consideration has not puzzled himself with inquiries into these matters, but is content to know that his grandparents came to New York State from Rhode Island and settled in the upper valley of the Hudson, where his father and mother, Sanford and Susan Hartshorn, lived on a farm at Petersburg, Rensselaer County.
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