USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume II > Part 23
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Colonel Rowe, who is still unmarried, is very popular in soci- ety and with his business associates. He is a thirty-second degree Mason, and a member of the Psi Upsilon college frater- nity, as well as of a number of clubs in both New York and Troy.
He manifests a keen and practical interest in the welfare of young men and women, and through his discriminating bounty many have been enabled to get good educations, which, but for him, would have been beyond their reach. His personal presence and his conversational ability make him a favorite figure in society, and one commanding the respect and confidence of those with whom he comes into contact.
JACOB RUPPERT
TACOB RUPPERT was born on March 4, 1842, the son of a brewer of Germany who came here late in the thirties to set up a plant. Early, his natural faculty aided by hard work, he found he had the qualifications for a successful "brew-mas- ter." Then he started on his own account a little brewery, in 1867, in the old brick house on Third Avenue, near Ninety-second Street. There was not a "brew " of those early days that Jacob Ruppert himself did not personally toil over. It was a case of keen foresightedness and aptitude from the start. Despite dis- couragements the concern grew to huge proportions. The original building was soon far too small, and, little by little, addi- tional buildings were taken, the present structures being finally raised, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thus the brewery of Ruppert has increased in a quarter of a century from a capacity of next to nothing a day to an average of one thou- sand barrels each twenty-four hours. Four hundred men are needed to perform this work, two hundred horses to draw the barrels back and forth, filled and empty, and nearly one hundred and fifty delivery-wagons.
No "brew-master" in the country, responsible as this post is, is more of an expert than Jacob Ruppert himself. To Colonel Ruppert, his son, is delegated the work of selling the huge prod- uct, but its mixing and the processes that go to turn out each " brew" are Jacob Ruppert's especial charge. This is the reason why "Ruppiner," the dark beer made by the Rupperts, and their more popular marks, " Extra Pale " and " Extra," have shown so little variation in quality and have enjoyed such repute for so many years. "Ruppiner," it may interest readers to know, is not named after the Rupperts (similar as the sound is), but from
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a little town in Germany, Ruppina, where this peculiar kind of dark beer was first made.
Yet Mr. Ruppert does not stop there in his business interests. He is the president and the main power of the De La Vergne Ice Machine Company, which has a plant at Morrisania. He is a director of the Astoria Silk Company, of which enterprise his son, Jacob Ruppert, Jr., is president. In this he is a large holder of stock. There are many other enterprises he is interested in.
Outside of his business and his farm Mr. Ruppert has but few interests. His hobby in the city is the Central Opera House, which he owns, and where he is often to be found of an evening. He is a Mason and a member of Trinity Lodge. He also belongs to the Arion, the Liederkranz, and the Manhattan clubs.
Mr. Ruppert's country place at Rhinebeck is exceedingly com- plete and well fitted out. He has two chief enthusiasms here - his horses and his chickens. There are hundreds of chickens of all breeds, very many of the finest fowl. These he keeps and raises for pleasure, though he makes the pursuit pay. Mr. Rup- pert bought, about ten years ago, the Hudson River Driving Park property in Poughkeepsie. This he now uses as a stock- farm, and raises trotting horses. He breeds these in large num- bers, now having over two hundred. Several, a dozen or so, are famous in speed, but he never races them, and seldom, if ever, drives one.
He lives in a handsome house on Fifth Avenue at the corner of Ninety-second Street. His children are five in number : Colo- nel Ruppert; Frank Ruppert, who has charge of the out-of- town business of the brewery; George Ruppert, who is now in the Columbia Law School; Mrs. Herman Schalk; and one un- married daughter, Amanda.
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JACOB RUPPERT, JR.
O F the Ruppert stock through and through, cast in a some- what different mold, but nevertheless the son of his father, is Colonel Jacob Ruppert, Jr. He is at his desk as early as are any of his clerks, and long before the first of the invariably numerous visitors arrive is planning the campaign of the day with his private secretary, Mr. Maidhof. The finances of the establishment - a task of the most complicated sort in a mod- ern brewery where advances are made widely - are his especial charge, and it was his well-known skill in this regard that sug- gested to Tammany Hall, a year or two ago, the advisability of nominating him as its candidate for president of the Council, a nomination that he promptly declined. Fourteen years ago he left Columbia Grammar School (after passing the entrance exam- inations of the School of Mines) and took the humblest position in the brewery. The heir of its owner, he went to work as hard as any workman, starting his apprenticeship as a "keg-washer." The succeeding six or seven years saw him advance through every department, now as a workman, now as an assistant, now as an expert brewer. Then he became a clerk in the office, and finally - about 1890 - his father made him general superinten- dent, advancing him by degrees until some four years ago he was placed in the post he holds to-day.
Such has been the career of Colonel Jacob Ruppert, Jr. Up to a few years ago it was all preparatory work, a life of early to bed and early rising. It is only since 1889 or so that he has come forward in political and social life as a figure of promi- nence. His rapid rise was, at first, military. For three years a private in the Seventh Regiment, he was invited, in 1889, to the staff of Governor Hill, with the rank of colonel and aide-de-camp.
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When the Flower administration came in he was advanced to senior aide, and in that capacity participated in the celebration of the Columbian year, delivering the address for the State of New York in acceptance of the Columbian monument. He also took active official part in the Cleveland inauguration of 1892.
Colonel Ruppert belongs to the Manhattan, the New York Athletic, the Democratic, the Suburban, the Military, the Jockey, the Catholic, the Arion, the Liederkranz, the Larchmont Yacht, the Atlantic Yacht, and the New York Yacht clubs.
Besides the affairs of the brewery, it should be said, he has a number of outside business interests, the most important of which are the Astoria Silk Company (Colonel Ruppert being the president of this concern) and the De La Vergne Ice Machine Company, where he is an active director.
He has now practically given up the famous Ruppert stable, which a few years ago had hardly an equal in America. Three years ago it was in its height, and cleared profits as great as fifty- five thousand dollars per annum.
Dogs are one of Colonel Ruppert's keenest enthusiasms. He has one of the finest collections of St. Bernards in the country, and latterly he has taken up Boston terriers, a curious breed that is coming into great popularity among experts. Some years ago he started in to breed and own this type of dog, the first man in America to take them up.
Next to his dogs and his horses, Colonel Ruppert enjoys yacht- ing. His yacht Albatross is one hundred and fourteen feet over all, ninety-five in the water, a twenty-mile craft, with very little free-board, and looking much larger than she actually is.
Latest of all this young clubman's enthusiasms is his library and his bindings. He has now some fifteen hundred volumes, purchased at a cost of many thousands of dollars. These books are expensive sets, especially bound in his own private bindings of crushed levant, green and red. Modern literature and the English classics have the greatest charm for him, two sets of this library, for example, being the Waverley Novels (forty-eight vol- umes), of an edition of which there are only twenty-four sets in the country, and De Foe's works, of which there are but ten like sets. The library includes only special editions of this class.
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LEWIS ALBERT SAYRE
EWIS ALBERT SAYRE comes of fine old colonial stock, his grandfather, Ephraim Sayre, having been a member of the patriot army in the Revolution, and his father, Archibald Sayre, a prominent farmer in Morris County, New Jersey. There, at Bottle Hill, now Madison, he was born, on February 29, 1820. He was educated at the Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, graduating there in 1839. He then returned to the East, and entered the office of Dr. David Green while studying at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York city, where he was graduated a Doctor of Medicine in 1842.
Dr. Sayre was at once made a prosector of surgery in the Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons, and served that institution faithfully for ten years, when, owing to the demands made upon him by his practice, he was compelled to resign, and was ap- pointed emeritus prosector. In 1853 he was appointed surgeon to Bellevue Hospital, and in 1859 surgeon to the Charity Hospi- tal on Blackwells Island. Of the latter institution he became consulting surgeon in 1873. In 1861 he was foremost among the organizers of the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, and became professor of orthopædic surgery, fractures, and luxations, in its faculty. He afterward became also professor of clinical surgery, and continued to hold both of those chairs down to 1898, when the college became united with the New York Uni- versity, when he was made emeritus professor of orthopedic and clinical surgery in the consolidated institution. He was among the founders of the New York Academy of Medicine, the American Medical Association, and the New York Pathological Society. He was elected vice-president of the American Medical Association in 1866, and its president in 1880. In 1866 he was
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appointed resident physician of the city of New York, and in that capacity was of inestimable benefit to the community, being par- ticularly energetic in his efforts to secure compulsory vaccination and improvement in the sanitary condition of the tenement- houses. Owing to the prompt and vigorous measures which he instituted, the cholera, which had been brought to the harbor, was stopped in the lower bay and never spread beyond the vessel in which it had first appeared.
Dr. Sayre's first operation for the cure of hip-disease was per- formed in 1854, and was a perfect success. It was the first suc- cessful operation of the kind in America. In 1871 he made a tour in Europe, and by invitation gave demonstrations of his method before numerous medical societies. Five years later he was a delegate to the International Medical Congress at Phila- delphia, and performed before that body an operation for hip- disease which elicited the highest encomiums from the most eminent foreign delegates, Lister, the founder of antiseptic sur- gery, saying, "I feel that this demonstration would of itself have been a sufficient reward for my voyage across the Atlantic." The next year, 1877, he was sent as a delegate, by the American Med- ical Association, to the meeting of the British Medical Associa- tion at Manchester, England, where he demonstrated his new treatment of diseases and deformities of the spine by suspension and the application of plaster-of-Paris bandages, which demon- strations were afterward repeated, by request, in the principal hospitals throughout the kingdom.
Dr. Sayre has been a voluminous writer, chiefly on topics con- nected with the department of surgery, which he has made his specialty. He has invented many instruments for use in opera- tions, and numerous appliances for the relief of deformities, which have proved most useful and are now widely employed. In addition to the professorships and other positions of honor already mentioned, Dr. Sayre is consulting surgeon to St. Eliza- beth's Hospital, the Northwestern Dispensary, and the Home for Incurables, in New York. He is a member of the principal med- ical associations of this city and State, and an honorary member of several of the leading European societies. In 1872 the King of Sweden made him a Knight of the Order of Wasa, in recogni- tion of his eminent achievements.
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Dr. Sayre was married, in 1849, to Miss Eliza A. Hall of this city, who died in 1894. He has one daughter, Miss Mary Hall Sayre, who has greatly assisted her father in his literary work. His eldest son, Dr. Charles H. H. Sayre, was killed by a fall, after a few years of practice, and the second, Dr. Lewis H. Sayre, died of heart-disease in 1890. The third son, Dr. Reginald H. Sayre, is professionally associated with his father, holding also the posi- tion of clinical professor of orthopedic surgery in the University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College.
ALFRED FREDERICK SELIGSBERG
F ROM the East by way of the West is the itinerary pursued by Alfred Frederick Seligsberg, in making his entry into New York. His ancestry, as we might unhesitatingly assume from his name, was German. His paternal grandfather was the well-known Dr. Max Seligsberg of Bavaria, one of the foremost Hebrew theologians and rabbis of his time. The son of Dr. Seligsberg was William Seligsberg, who came to the United States and settled in California. There, in San Francisco, he en- gaged successfully in the business of a stock-broker, and amassed a considerable fortune. He married Miss Regina Jacobi, who came of a family long settled at Worms, in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, and occupying an honored position there.
Alfred Frederick Seligsberg, the son of this couple, was born in San Francisco, California, on June 27, 1869. His parents in- tended that he should grow up a citizen of the land of their adoption and of his nativity, but they decided that part of his education should be gained in the land of his ancestors. He was accordingly sent to Germany in his childhood, and there spent some years in study. He was graduated in 1887 from the gym- nasium - seminary, or even college, it would be called in America -at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and received therefrom a certificate or diploma entitling him to enter a German university.
It was more to his taste, however, and was entirely to his parents' liking, for him to enter an American university. Ac- cordingly, he returned to the United States to complete his scho- lastic training, and matriculated at Harvard University. There he pursued the regular academic course, and having entered an advanced class, owing to the amplitude of his German prepara- tory studies, was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts
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in 1890. He had already made up his mind to adopt the legal profession as his own, and with that end in view he came from Harvard to New York city, and became a student in the Law School of Columbia University. His course there extended through three years, and in 1893 he was graduated with the de- gree of Bachelor of Laws.
With such preparation for the work which lay before him, Mr. Seligsberg was admitted to the bar of New York in April, 1893, and immediately began the practice of his profession. He found, as do all young lawyers in New York, the competition in the profession most intense, and the requirements of success most arduous. But he addressed himself to the tasks before him with characteristic energy and tact, and soon found an in- creasing throng of clients visiting his office, and his name stead- ily rising into honorable prominence. He has continued in the active pursuit of his profession in New York to the present time, and has achieved an established position, and a fine mea- sure of success.
In addition to his legal labors, Mr. Seligsberg has found both time and inclination to devote considerable attention to politi- cal matters. He associated himself with the Democratic party, though reserving to himself full freedom of action. In the cam- paign of 1897, in New York city, he was identified with the Citi- zens' Union movement, and was elected a member of the State Assembly from the Twenty-ninth District of New York city on the Citizens' Union and National Democratic tickets.
He is a member of the Reform Club, Harvard Club, Har- monie Club, Country Club, and Bar Association.
FREDERICK SEYMOUR
RICHARD SEYMOUR, the founder of the Seymour family in America, came from England in 1639, and settled at Hart- ford, Connecticut. From one of his three sons were descended the late Governor Horatio Seymour of New York, the late Judge Edward W. Seymour of Connecticut, and Chief Justice Origen S. Seymour of Connecticut. From another came the late Governor Thomas Seymour of Connecticut. From the third is descended the subject of this sketch. In the last generation, the seventh from Richard Seymour, George Whitfield Seymour married Mary Freeman, a descendant in the sixth generation of Edmund Freeman, who was admitted to the General Court at Plymouth, and, with ten others, founded the town of Sandwich, Massachusetts. Edmund Freeman was for six years assistant to Governor Bradford, and was the progenitor of a family noted in New England annals.
Frederick Seymour, son of George W. and Mary Freeman Seymour, and eighth in line from Richard Seymour, was born at Whitney Point, New York, on August 2, 1856. He was edu- cated in the local schools, including the Whitney Point High School, and at Yale University, from which latter he was gradu- ated with the degree of A. B. in 1881. Having chosen the pro- fession of the law, he then entered the Law School of Columbia University, New York, and was there prepared for his life- work.
He was admitted to the bar in New York city in September, 1882, and immediately entered upon the practice of his pro- fession, in which he has been ever since continuously engaged. Although well fitted for general practice, and engaging therein to some extent, he has paid chief attention to corporation law,
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which in New York is one of the most important branches of the profession. In this he has attained gratifying success and won an enviable rank at the bar and in the esteeem of his colleagues.
A material change was effected in his professional work in April, 1899, when, dissolving other associations, he organized the law firm of Seymour, Seymour & Harmon, with offices at No. 40 Wall Street, New York. His partners were and are his brother, John S. Seymour of Washington and New York, and Eugene M. Harmon of Cincinnati and New York.
These two associates brought to the new firm an extended ex- perience in and a comprehensive knowledge of the laws of patents and trade-marks, together with much technical skill in dealing with the same. John S. Seymour had been United States Com- missioner of Patents under the second Cleveland administration, and Mr. Harmon had at the same time been the principal exam- iner of patents. The firm has already assumed a foremost rank among the patent lawyers of New York and the whole country.
Mr. Seymour is a Democrat in politics, and an advocate of tariff reform and the gold standard of value. He has held no public office, but has been an energetic worker in behalf of clean and patriotic politics, rational and progressive humanitarian- ism, and the maintenance of true American principles of gov- ernment and social order. He has organized at his home a Biblical club, the object of which is to maintain a just balance between the older "orthodoxy " and the later "higher criti- cisms." He is a member of the Essex County Court Club, the Civics Club, and the Democratic Club of East Orange, New Jersey, and the Lawyers' Club of New York city, of Hope Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons, Orange Chapter Royal Arch Masons, Damascus Commandery Knights Templar, and the bodies of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. He is a member of Grace Church, Orange, New Jersey.
He was married to Miss Julia C. Dikeman, daughter of the late Nathan Dikeman of Waterbury, Connecticut, who has borne him three children : Helen, Margaret, and Frederick. The family home is on Prospect Street, Brick Church, Orange, New Jersey.
NEWTON MELMAN SHAFFER
"THE best way to illustrate the motives and objects in life of Dr. Newton Melman Shaffer is to give a short account of his actual work and achievements.
When he was just past seventeen years old, and after receiv- ing a liberal education, he left the New York Free Academy, now the College of the City of New York, to commence the study of medicine in the office of the New York Society for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled, on May 1, 1863, the day the institu- tion opened its doors for the reception of patients. Here, under the tutelage of Dr. James Knight, the founder of this hospital, he laid the foundation for much of his future success, and was, at a very impressionable age, brought into contact with a class of deformed children whose sufferings and needs have ever since always appealed to his sympathies. After serving in this hospi- tal for three years, he was made an acting assistant resident sur- geon two years before he was graduated. Graduating in 1867 from the University Medical College, he was at once made a full assistant resident surgeon. From this place he resigned in 1868, and being without capital, he borrowed enough money to buy a drug store, his object being to gain a business experience, to familiarize himself with drugs, and to secure enough money to render his first years of work in his chosen profession free from the pecuniary annoyances which generally beset every beginner.
While still engaged in this work he was invited by the late Theodore Roosevelt (the father of the present Governor) and the late Dr. C. Fayette Taylor to become an assistant surgeon to the New York Orthopædic Dispensary and Hospital. He entered upon this duty in March, 1871, and his work soon attracted the attention of the authorities. In 1872 he was made the executive
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officer of this institution, and at the same time he was asked to accept a provisional position in St. Luke's Hospital as its ortho- pædic surgeon. In 1873 this appointment was made permanent, and he held this place until 1888, when he resigned. When Dr. Taylor resigned from the Orthopedic Hospital in 1875, Dr. Shaffer was called upon to assume the duties of chief surgeon, and to this work he brought all his energies, inasmuch as both Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Potter, the founders of the institution, told him that the future of the work depended on his efforts.
In the meantime he had also a daily service at St. Luke's Hos- pital, and in 1882 he was appointed clinical professor of ortho- pædic surgery at the University Medical College. This triple duty was more than one man could maintain, and after consult- ing with the late Dr. H. B. Sands and Mr. Potter, he resigned both his college and St. Luke's positions in order to devote him- self wholly to the work of the Orthopedic Hospital. He resigned from the University College in 1886, and from St. Luke's two years later. At this time, and as a result of Dr. Shaffer's concen- trated efforts, and especially as the result of the many thousands of dollars which his friends had given him for his work (two contributions alone being for forty-five thousand dollars), the Orthopedic Hospital commenced to occupy the place its founders desired, and from that time to 1898, when Dr. Shaffer resigned this important work, the institution went forward on the lines laid down by Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Potter.
In 1896 Dr. Shaffer was recalled to the chair of orthopedic surgery in the University Medical College, and again he resigned this position in 1898, to join with those of his colleagues who also resigned to form the Cornell University Medical College, founded by Colonel Oliver H. Payne. He holds this place at present. He is also consulting orthopedic surgeon to St. Luke's and the Presbyterian Hospital, and consulting physician to the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.
In the matter of the advancement of orthopaedic surgery, which, when Dr. Shaffer entered the medical profession, was scarcely recognized, he has been foremost. He was chief among the promoters of the New York Orthopedic Society (now a sec- tion of the Academy of Medicine), the first organization of the kind in this country. He invited the members of this society
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to meet at his house in January, 1887, and then and there formed the American Orthopedic Association, a national organization of great importance. He secured, without any assistance from his colleagues, the admission of this association to the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, the first recognition of ortho- pædic surgery by any representative national organization. He also secured the recognition of orthopedic surgery by the great International Medical Congress at Berlin, in 1890.
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