USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume II > Part 20
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After some law practice in Indiana, Mr. Niles came to New
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Pingby Wiliams New York
Yours Truly. Un. Miles.
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WILLIAM WATSON NILES
York and entered the same profession here. That was at a time when there were giants at the bar, such as David B. Ogden, Charles O'Conor, James Sandford, and James T. Brady. Among them, alone and without patronage or acquaintance, he began his work, and won his way to an honorable rank. He was ad- mitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the United States on motion of Attorney-General Cushing, and was engaged in almost every branch of legal practice, often in cases of the highest im- portance. Among his associates were the eminent lawyers already named and others of equal rank, and he was at times arrayed against them, and also against Daniel Webster, John P. Hale, Matthew Carpenter, and other famous advocates. At the same time he had other business interests, including real-estate operations in a dozen States from New York to California, cattle-raising in Indiana, and orange-growing in Florida.
In politics Mr. Niles began as a Jacksonian Democrat, then became a strong antislavery man and a Free-Soiler. He took part in the log-cabin campaign which elected Harrison President. At the outbreak of the war in 1861 he came to the fore as an uncompromising Union man, assisted in raising several regi- ments, and was one of the eleven organizers of the Loyal Leagues, which were to serve as home guards or to go to the front as needed, and which grew to number more than a hun- dred thousand men. He was also a life senator in the central organization of the Union Leagues. At the end of the war he followed the leadership of his lifelong friend, Horace Greeley, supported him in his campaign for the Presidency, entertained him at his home on the evening of his receipt of the announce- ment of his nomination at Baltimore, and finally was chairman of the committee that erected his statue in Greeley Square, New York. As a member of the New York Legislature from the First Assembly District of Westchester County, Mr. Niles was one of the managers of the impeachment of the corrupt Tweed Ring judges, and had charge of the bill incorporating the city of Yonkers, and of the first bill for underground rapid transit in New York, and was chiefly instrumental in securing legislation for the great railroad improvements in Park Avenue. Ten years later he returned to the Legislature and was again energetic in salutary legislation, such as resisting the extravagance in con-
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structing the new Capitol, and providing for many public im- provements in this city. After his retirement from Albany he was one of some half dozen who projected and secured the new parks in New York, and was appointed one of the commissioners who finally located them and provided for the parade-ground in Van Cortlandt Park, and provided for and did much to secure the Botanical and Zoological Gardens in Bronx Park. While on this commission he endeavored also to secure small parks acces- sible to the poorer more crowded parts of the city, and made a written report on that subject, a copy of which was submitted to Mayor Hewitt. He was, however, overruled, but has lived to see his ideas now being adopted. He was president of the North Side Association, which secured the opening of the Harlem River ship-canal, and was one of those who projected and secured the building of the Washington Bridge.
Mr. Niles is a member of the Order of Odd Fellows, the New York Geographical Society (of which he was one of the founders), the New England Society, the Museum of Natural History (of which he was one of the originators), and was a member of the Historical Society for many years, and the Young Men's Chris- tian Association. He has served on many committees for secur- ing municipal reforms and for other public purposes. He has assisted in building or rebuilding six churches in this city, and is now president of the society of the Bedford Park Congregational Church. He has been a traveler in all of the United States and most of the countries of Europe, and witnessed on his travels many historical incidents. He was married, on January 5, 1855, to Isabel White, daughter of the Hon. Hugh White, who was for many years a member of Congress for the Saratoga District, and was one of the builders of the Erie Canal and the Michigan Southern and other railroads. Miss White's uncle, Canvass White, was the active engineer of the Erie Canal, and one of her direct ancestors was Hugo White, once Lord Mayor of London, England. Mr. and Mrs. Niles have four sons, two of them bankers, one a member of the New York Stock Exchange, and another, William W. Niles, Jr., a lawyer and ex-member of the Legislature.
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LUDWIG NISSEN
THE Danish element in the United States is not as numerous as some others, but it is particularly forceful and valuable. The name of George Nicholas von Nissen is well known in Danish history as that of an illustrious statesman. From that same family was descended Hans Friedrich Nissen of Husum, Schleswig-Holstein, a prosperous rope-maker. He married Lucie Dawartz, who was descended from the Polish patriot Von Dawartzky, who, being unsuccessful in his efforts to help liberate his country in the latter part of the last century, went to Meck- lenburg for asylum, and, to escape identification, changed his name to Dawartz.
Ludwig Nissen, son of Hans F. and Lucie Nissen, was born at Husum on December 2, 1855, before his native place was forcibly taken from Denmark and made a part of Prussia. He was edu- cated in the public schools of the town, and then became an assistant secretary of the Imperial District Court of Schleswig- Holstein. Seeing little hope of advancement at home, he decided to seek his fortune in America, and came hither in September, 1872. He had left home against the will of his parents, and had, on his landing here, only $2.50 in money. He had no friends here, and knew not a word of English. His first work here, to which he was driven by necessity, was that of a boot-black in a barber-shop at Chambers Street and New Bowery. Then he was successively dish-washer, waiter, clerk, and butcher. He gave up the proprietorship of a small butcher-shop to become partner in a restaurant. There he made a little money, which he invested in a wholesale wine business, and lost it all.
On May 1, 1881, he became partner in a small jewelry repair- shop, with assets some thousand dollars less than the liabilities.
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Hard work brought success. At the end of seven years he was able to buy out his partner and become the head of the house. He is now the head of the firm of Ludwig Nissen & Co., one of the leading jewelry and diamond houses of New York.' In 1895 he was elected president of the New York Jewelers' Association, the foremost organization of the kind in America. He was the youngest man, and the only one of foreign birth, that had held that place of honor. He is now, besides being the head of his own firm, a director of the Oriental Bank, of the People's Telephone Corporation, and of the New York Board of Trade and Transpor- tation, a member of the executive committee of the National Association of Manufacturers, and president of the Manufac- turers' Association of New York.
Mr. Nissen was appointed by Mayor Wurster a civil-service commissioner in Brooklyn, and declined the nomination for president of the Council on the ticket on which Seth Low ran for Mayor of New York in 1897. After the consolidation of Greater New York took effect, the Brooklyn League was organ- ized, and he was elected its first president.
Governor Black appointed him to be one of the New York State commissioners to the Paris Exposition of 1900. Mayor Schieren made him one of the Brooklyn commissioners to the Cotton States Exposition at Atlanta, Georgia, in 1895, and Mayor Wurster sent him in a like capacity to the Tennessee Centennial Exposition at Nashville, in 1897. He was treasurer of each of these commissions, and was one of the judges of awards at the latter exposition. He and Mr. Kunz, of Tiffany's, were the judges of all art goods, jewelry, bronzes, etc.
Mr. Nissen is a member of the Union League, Hanover, and Parkway Driving clubs of Brooklyn, in which borough of New York he makes his home. He was married, on December 27, 1882, to Miss Catherine Quick of New York, but has no children.
Com Church Osborn
WILLIAM CHURCH OSBORN
THE parents of William Church Osborn were of New England birth and ancestry. His father, William Henry Osborn, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, and his mother, Virginia Reed Sturges, was the daughter of Jonathan Sturges of Fairfield, Connecticut. William Henry Osborn was a well-known railroad man in the West, being president of the Illinois Central Railroad.
The son of this couple, William Church Osborn, was born at Chicago on December 21, 1862. He received a careful and thorough preparatory education, and was then sent to Princeton University. During his undergraduate years he began to manifest a strong bent toward public and political life, especially in the active part he took in the debates and other business of the Whig Debating Society. After an eminently creditable career as a student he was duly graduated in 1883. The interest in agri- culture, mining, and railroading which he had inherited from his father then led him to go to the West for a couple of years. There he rounded out his college education with practical experience on Western farms and railroads from Chicago to Denver, and in the mines. He also visited the mines of Alabama and Tennessee.
At the end of these two profitable years, Mr. Osborn decided to fit himself for a professional and public career by special study. He accordingly came to the East and entered the Law School of Harvard University. There he pursued his course with credit and was graduated with the degree of LL. B. in 1888. A very careful paper, entitled "Analysis of the Liquor Statutes in the United States," written while a student at the Law School, attracted wide attention, and was reprinted in full in the "Maryland Law Review." After leaving Cambridge he came to
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New York and entered the law office of Bangs & Stetson, the firm with which Grover Cleveland was a partner after his first Presidential term. In May, 1890, the firm of Whitehead, Dexter & Osborn was formed, in which association Mr. Osborn still continues.
Although his family traditions were all Republican, Mr. Osborn cast his first vote for Mr. Cleveland in 1884, and remains a stanch Democrat up to the present time. His political activity has been largely in Putnam County, New York, where he served several years as chairman of the Democratic County Committee, and in 1894 and 1895 he was chosen to represent the county in the State Convention. He was also elected a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1894, and rendered notable services there as one of the most vigorous and effective members of the Democratic minority. He was placed upon the Labor, the Civil Service Reform, and the Legislative Organization committees, and his speeches in all three commanded the admiration and respect of opponents and partizans alike, by their fairness and the complete mastery of the subjects under debate. In 1895 he was the party nominee for the State Senate in the district composed of Putnam, Dutchess, and Columbia counties, but was not elected. He has recently been appointed a member of the State Lunacy Commission, to succeed Goodwin Brown.
Mr. Osborn's country home is at Garrison, Putnam County, where he finds diversion for his leisure hours in cultivating his farm of four hundred and fifty acres. His professional work is con- ducted in New York city, where he now votes. He has for many years been active in the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled, and in the Children's Aid Society, New York, in which he is chair- man of the committee upon the Farm School at Kensico, West- chester County, where a large number of city boys receive practical training for farm work and management.
Mr. Osborn is a member of the Manhattan, the University, the Century, and the Reform clubs, and the Down-Town Asso- ciation of New York city. He was appointed legal member of the State Commission on Lunacy in May, 1899, by Governor Roosevelt.
DSPackard
SILAS SADLER PACKARD
AT AMONG the foremost practical business educators of the world must always be ranked the late S. S. Packard, whose famous business college has long been a landmark of New York and a model for similar schools throughout this and other lands. He was a direct descendant of Samuel Packard, who came from England in 1638, and settled in what is now West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and the son of Chester Packard of Cummington, Massachusetts.
Silas Sadler Packard was born at Cummington on April 28, 1826, and seven years later was taken, with his family, to Fre- donia, Licking County, Ohio. He was educated in the common schools and for two terms at Granville Academy. He excelled in grammar, mathematics, and penmanship. At the age of sixteen he became himself a school-teacher, giving his first instruction in penmanship. At the age of nineteen he went to Kentucky, and remained there two years, teaching penmanship and painting portraits. The year 1848 found him teaching pen- manship in Cincinnati, and in 1851 he moved to Lockport, New York, to teach writing, drawing, and bookkeeping in the Lock- port Union School. Two years later he removed to Tona- wanda, New York, and established a newspaper, the "Niagara River Pilot," which he conducted successfully until 1856. Then he entered the final and chief work of his life by joining Messrs. Bryant & Stratton in their business college at Buffalo. From Buffalo he soon went to Chicago, and then, in May, 1858, he settled in New York city.
His work here at first was in connection with Bryant & Strat- ton. The business college was established in temporary quar- ters, under the combined management. Later Mr. Packard
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became its sole proprietor, and it bore his name alone. It was established in its present quarters, at Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, in 1887. In it young men and young women, on equal terms, were thoroughly instructed in the theory and practice of business of all kinds, and thus fitted to make their way in the active affairs of the world. To all his hosts of pupils Mr. Packard was at once schoolmaster, professor, lecturer, friend, and father. His personal influence guided them in right ways of life as surely as his knowledge instructed them in busi- ness duties. His life itself was a constant and lasting inspira- tion to them, to be felt all through their own lives.
In addition to conducting the school, Mr. Packard prepared a series of text-books on arithmetic, bookkeeping, penmanship, etc., which have become standard works of widest use. His work attracted attention abroad, and his school was taken as a model for the establishment of similar institutions in Europe. The business schools of France, particularly those at Paris and Rouen, and the Commercial School at Antwerp, are largely in- debted to him for their successful systems. In 1893 Mr. Pack- ard was president of the International Congress of Business Educators, held at the Chicago World's Fair.
Mr. Packard held no political office, but he was an earnest Republican, and took an active interest, working with tongue and pen, in every movement for better government in the city, State, and nation. He was a member of the Union League, Lotos, Colonial, Patria, Twilight, Schoolmasters', and West Side Republican clubs, the Ohio Society, the Commercial Teachers' Association, the Institute of Accounts, and various other organ- izations. In April, 1896, more than six hundred of his former pupils entertained him at a seventieth birthday anniversary din- ner at Delmonico's, and presented to him a beautiful loving-cup. He died at his home in this city on October 27, 1898, honored and mourned by thousands who had come under his instruction, and by myriads who had known and admired his useful life.
A Pagenstecher
ALBRECHT PAGENSTECHER
TH THE " father of the wood-pulp industry in America," Albrecht Pagenstecher, comes of Saxon-German stock. His geneal- ogy is to be traced back in unbroken line as far as 1360, at which time the then head of the family, Johann Pagenstecher, was burgomaster of the town of Warendorf, in Westphalia. In that region the family dwelt for many generations, and there, in the town of Osnabrück, Albrecht Pagenstecher was born, on April 11, 1839. He received a first-rate education at the gymnasium at Osnabrück, and afterward for a time in Bremen. He then came to America, the first member of his family to leave the province of Osnabrück, or, at least, that part of Germany, for five hundred years. He soon became thoroughly " Americanized," wherefore he may justly claim to be, not an Anglo-Saxon, but a pure Americo-Saxon.
His first attention in this country was paid to the trade of ex- porting petroleum and provisions. But in the summer of 1866 he became interested in the manufacture of paper from wood- pulp, with his cousin, Albert Pagenstecher. Their friend, Theo- dore Steinway, the piano manufacturer, told them paper was thus being made in Germany. The process had been invented by Friedrich Gottlob Keller, and the needed machinery devised by Henry Voelter. Mr. Pagenstecher corresponded with his brother Rudolph, who had remained in Germany, and presently imported two machines and set them up at Curtisville, near Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There, on March 5, 1867, the first pulp was made in America, and three days later the Smith Paper Company, near by, used it for the manufacture of paper.
For more than a year the pulp-mill was operated at Curtisville, the Smith Company taking all its output and keeping the know-
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ledge of the new material entirely to itself. In 1868 Mr. Pagen- stecher induced his cousin and his brother to buy the Voelter patent on joint account. This was done in the fall of 1869. Several small mills for making pulp were started at Lee, Fitch- burg, and Lawrence, Massachusetts, at Norway, Maine, at Lanesville, Connecticut, and at Luzerne, New York. The last- named was Mr. Pagenstecher's own mill. It was the first pulp- mill equipped with machinery made in America, and it was the origin of the great Hudson River Pulp and Paper Company. At Luzerne and elsewhere Mr. Pagenstecher joined forces with Warner Miller, who was already identified with the new industry.
The mill at Lawrence, Massachusetts, was started by a Mr. Maynadier, a friend of Mr. Pagenstecher's cousin. It soon at- tracted the attention of William A. Russell, who saw the impor- tance of the industry and bought the New England rights to engage in it. He built new factories in various places, and pushed the business to a great success. Indeed, the triumvirate that revolutionized the paper and publishing trades was composed of Albrecht Pagenstecher, Warner Miller, and William A. Russell.
In 1870 Mr. Pagenstecher was left alone to attend to the affairs of his company, his cousin having returned to Germany. He had much trouble with many infringements upon the patent, but defended his and the inventor's rights with success, and secured a renewal of the original patent, keeping it in force until 1884. At first the pulp was sold at eight cents a pound, then it dropped to four and five, at which figures it remained for a long time. Then it declined to one cent a pound, and even less. Similarly, the price of white paper for newspapers has been reduced from sixteen or seventeen cents a pound to two cents. The output of pulp in the country to-day is thousands of tons a day. Half a ton was the output of the first mill at Curtisville.
The development of this vast business, which has so power- fully affected many other businesses, has been sufficient for one man's life-work. Mr. Pagenstecher has, nevertheless, taken an active interest in the general industrial and commercial welfare of the country of which he is an adopted son. He has long been a member of the New York Produce Exchange. He was its man- ager in 1883-84, and a member of the committee which decided upon the erection of the present building of the Exchange.
FRANK D. PAVEY
MONG the younger men of New York who have attained an enviable prominence in public affairs, none is better known than the Hon. Frank D. Pavey. He is a native of Ohio, having been born at Washington Court-house, in that State, on Novem- ber 10, 1860, the son of the Hon. Madison Pavey and Mary L. Pavey. He was prepared for college at the local schools, and then came East and entered Yale. He was graduated from that university in 1884, with the degree of A. B., and in the class of one hundred and fifty members was one of seven who held "philosophical oration " rank. Two years later he was gradu- ated from the Yale Law School, with the degree of LL. B., and was one of the three chosen to represent the class in the "Town- send Oratorical Prize Contest." For three years following he lived in New Haven, but made several extended trips through the West. In 1889 the Yale Law School gave him the degree of LL. M.
In the last-named year Mr. Pavey removed to New York and made it his home. He began the practice of law here, first in the law department of the Title Guaranty and Trust Company, and then in the office of Daly, Hoyt & Mason. Finally he became the head of the firm of Pavey & Moore, with which he is still identified.
Mr. Pavey early took an active interest in politics. In 1890 he worked for the People's Municipal League, and in 1897 for the Citizens' Union. He has served upon various committees in the Republican Club. He was secretary of the committee on city and State affairs in that club in 1893, and of the campaign committee in 1894 and 1895. Since 1892 he has been a member of the regular Republican organization of the old Eleventh and
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new Twenty-seventh Assembly District. He was elected to the State Assembly from that district in 1894, and served as a mem- ber of the committee on cities and the committee on public edu- cation, and did admirable service.
In the fall of 1895 he was elected to the State Senate as the Republican candidate, supported also by the Good Government clubs. He was the first Senator from the Fifteenth Senate Dis- trict under the new constitutional apportionment. He served as a member of the committees on judiciary, canals, public printing, penal institutions, and revision. He was particularly identi- fied with legislation for the public schools and police depart- ment of New York city, and for the improvement of the primary election system. He also introduced the proposed amendment of the State Constitution permitting the improvement of the canals of the State by the federal government. He served three years in the Senate, 1896, 1897, and 1898. In the spring of 1896 he was one of the organizers of the Mckinley League, and was throughout that campaign one of Mr. McKinley's strongest supporters.
In college Mr. Pavey was a member of the Delta Kappa Ep- silon fraternity. He was also elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He is now a member of the Union League Club, the Republican Club, the Yale Club, the Association of the Bar, the Ohio Society, the Delta Kappa Epsilon Club, the Phi Beta Kappa Alumni, and the Ardsley Club. He remains unmarried.
Mr. Pavey has been a consistent supporter of the policy of the Republican party in national affairs. As an advocate of a pro- tective tariff he has held that it should be so applied as to impose the least possible restrictions upon commerce, while at the same time giving American industry the fullest benefit of protection.
Nor has his attention been confined within the limits of na- tional affairs, wide as they are. He became earnestly interested in the movement, in 1898-99, toward a more friendly and mu- tually beneficent understanding between the United States and Great Britain, and was chosen secretary of the committee, com- posed of hundreds of eminent and representative Americans in all parts of the country.
Mr. Pavey has contributed articles to magazines and reviews upon topics of public interest.
Ēngily AHARtenue
ABerry
ANDREW J. PERRY
THE name Andrew Jackson Perry is unmistakably Ameri- can, though in both lines the ancestry is English. The Perrys were among the early settlers of Rhode Island, whence some of them removed into Connecticut, and thence into Sara- toga County, New York, whence the great-great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch, Rowland Perry, settled over one hun- dred and fifty years ago, with a small family, to subdue the wil- derness in a section now known as the town of Wilton. Later other kin of the same name joined themselves to his settlement, so that it became known as the Perry neighborhood.
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