USA > New York > New York state's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume III > Part 21
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Mr. Roach makes his home in New York city, and is a mem- ber of the Republican, Lotus, Lambs', New York Athletic, Amer- ican Yacht, Larchmont Yacht, and the Manhasset Bay Yacht clubs, the Board of Trade and Transportation, and the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. He is also a member of the Union League Club, and in December last was elected commodore of the Manhasset Bay Yacht Club.
MATHEW ROCK
INCE first man learned to clothe himself in garments, whether in fig-leaves or in the skins of beasts, the philosophy of elothes has been an important part of the philosophy of human life. Clothing has been for ages a mark of distinction between the eivilized man and the savage, and also between different elasses in the same state. The wearers of " purple and fine linen " on the one hand, and the " sansculottes" on the other, typify the extremes of society.
It has naturally fallen to the lot of New York, the chief eity of the Western world, to take the lead in the practice of the trade, or art, or profession of tailoring- for each of these it has been ealled. In New York may be found a multitude of tailor- ing establishments, ranging from the bottom to the top of the seale in fashion and in price. Nowhere are the needs of the very poorest more abundantly catered to with the cheapest of ready- made goods, and nowhere are finer goods produced and the work of the tailor raised so nearly to the rank of a fine art than in such establishments as are to be found in New York, of which that conducted by the subject of this present sketch may be taken as an example.
Prominent among the enterprising and successful men who have made at once the tailoring trade one of the foremost in New York itself, the foremost eity in the United States in that trade, is the subject of this sketch - Mathew Rock. He is, like a large proportion of the other successful merchants and manu- facturers of the New World, of German origin.
His parents, Mathew and Elizabeth Rock, were Prussians, and in that kingdom he was born, on May 6, 1832. His education was somewhat more limited than is customary in that country
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so far as actual school studying was concerned, for he was com- pelled at the early age of thirteen years to lay aside his books and to begin to make his own way in that industrial world in which he has for years now been a commanding figure.
The business of his choiee was that of a tailor, one of the most ancient and not least honorable in human industry. As early as his thirteenth year he was apprentieed to it. and he devoted himself to it with characteristic German thoroughness and energy.
When he was only fifteen years old he was so far a master of the trade that he was emboldened to leave home and set himself up as a journeyman tailor. He thereupon went to Metz, in Lorraine, which was then still a French eity, though containing a considerable element of German origin. There he worked for four years with success, and then went to Paris, long the chief eenter of the world's fashions. In that eity he spent four years in successful prosecution of his calling, meantime perfecting himself in its various details.
His next move was to London, where he remained for six years. His European experience in the sartorial trade thus covered the foremost three countries of western Europe.
From the British capital Mr. Roek came to the United States, and settled in New York city. For three years he found profit- able employment as a cutter in the tailoring establishment of James R. Cullin. At the end of that time he opened a shop of his own.
This was at No. 793 Broadway, then the heart of the fashion- able shopping district of the city. In that place he remained for eight years, winning a prominent rank in the trade as one of the leading tailors of New York.
With the general movement of such classes of trade up-town. he then removed to a new building at No. 224 Fifth Avenue. There he remained for ten years, and then again joined the up- town movement. and removed to his present place of business at No. 315 Fifth Avenue.
It was on March 19, 1866, in the " flush time" following the Civil War, that Mr. Rock began business in the city of New York on his own aecount. He has remained active in it ever since, with a noteworthy measure of steady and substantial success. He
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has sought no other occupation, and has not taken a public part in politics, but has devoted his time, abilities, and attention entirely to his chosen trade. To such application his enviable success is justly to be attributed.
Mr. Rock is a member of the New York Athletic Club, and of the Republican Club of the City of New York.
He was first married, in 1866, to Miss Virginia L. Croney, who died childless in 1873. He was married again, in 1876, to Miss Eliza L. Schneider, who died in 1896, leaving him two children : Mathew Rock, Jr., and Elizabeth, now Mrs. Daniell.
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CHARLES BROADWAY ROUSS
THE ancestry of Charles Broadway Rouss is traced baek to George Rouss, who, in 1500, was a member of the City Council of Kronstadt, Austria, and whose descendants held hon- orable rank in that country. On his mother's side he came from the Baltzell family, which was conspicuous in this country in colonial and Revolutionary days. His parents were Peter Hoke Rouss and Belinda Baltzell Rouss, who lived at Woodsboro, Maryland, and then removed to Runnymead, near Winchester, in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, where the elder Rouss was a prosperous farmer.
Charles was born at Woodsboro on February 11, 1836, and received a good education at the academy in Winchester, whither the family removed when he was five years old. At the age of fifteen he became a clerk in a Winchester store, despite the wish of his father that he should become a farmer. He showed unusual aptitude for business, and at the end of three years began operations on his own account on the strength of five hundred dollars capital which he had saved. In six years more he was the proprietor of the largest mercantile establishment in Winchester. Then the Civil War came on, and he took up arms on the Southern side. He followed the standard of Lee, and was among those who surrendered at Appomattox.
Done with war, he quickly resumed the occupations of peace. He helped to secure what harvest could be got from the old farm in the fall of 1865, and then came North to New York to engage in business. He made a promising start, but came to grief through an unfortunate partnership and too great indulgence in the credit system. He next started alone, with "Cash before Delivery" as his motto. His place was on Church Street,
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whence he removed to Broadway. He founded and published as an advertising medium for his own business the "Auction Trade Journal," which soon gained a wide circulation. In a few years he was rated as a millionaire. Then he put up a new building at 549-553 Broadway, with two basements and ten stories, costing one million dollars. In it he has an army of clerks, an enormous stock of everything in the dry-goods line, and conducts dealings with more than thirty thousand retail stores in all parts of America.
Mr. Rouss is a man of wide beneficence. To his loved home city of Winchester, which he visits yearly, he gave large sums of money for its water-supply, its fire department, its public ceme- tery, and to maintain its annual fair. He gave five thousand dollars for the Confederates' monument in Mount Hope Ceme- tery, near New York, and thirty-five thousand dollars for a phys- ical laboratory at the University of Virginia. He was the founder and the chief patron and promoter of the scheme for a great Confederate Memorial Hall, to contain all Southern relics of the Civil War, to which he contributed one hundred thousand dollars.
Mr. Rouss was married, in 1859, to Miss Maggie Keenan of Winchester. She bore him two sons and a daughter. The elder son, Charles H. B. Rouss, died at the age of thirty-one. The second, Peter Winchester Rouss, is now his father's asso- ciate in business.
Although his sympathies with the South are keen and imper- ishable, Mr. Rouss is not unmindful of the city which has long been his home and in which his fortune has been made. It was he who gave to New York the fine replica of Bartholdi's statue of Washington and Lafayette, the original of which is in one of the parks of Paris. He has in many other ways endeared him- self to the metropolis, and he has made of his business house here one of the most notable of its commercial landmarks.
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SCHUYLER SCHIEFFELIN
THE Schieffelin family, which has for more than a hundred years been conspicuous in the business and social life in New York, was founded here by Jacob Schieffelin, who came from Weilheim, Germany, early in the eighteenth century. His son and grandson, both named Jacob, lived in Philadelphia. The latter, as lieutenant in the British army, entered upon an adven- turous life in the far West and Canada, was taken prisoner near Detroit, escaping from a prison in Virginia, and at the close of the Revolution came to New York, and with his brother- in-law, John Burling Lawrence, engaged in the wholesale drug business.
Jacob Schieffelin, the third of the name, had four sons, of whom the eldest, Henry Hamilton Schieffelin, became his partner and finally his successor in the drug business. The latter married Miss Maria Theresa Bradhurst, and had seven sons. Three of these entered the drug business, and upon their father's retirement reorganized the firm under the name of Schieffelin Brothers & Co. One of these was Sidney Augustus Schieffelin, the fifth of the family, who was born in 1818 and died in 1894. He married Miss Harriet A. Schuyler, daughter of Arent Henry and Mary C. (Kingsland) Schuyler, who was born in 1836 and died in 1882. To this couple were born two sons, Henry Hamilton Schieffelin and Schuyler Schieffelin, with the latter of whom we are now concerned.
Schuyler Schieffelin was born in New York city in 1867, and, after passing through various preparatory schools abroad and in this country, entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, in 1886. It was his intention to pursue the entire course, but he left the institute in his junior year to enter the
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firm with which his family had so long been identified and which is now known as Schieffelin & Co.
Mr. Schieffelin has had a conspicuous career in the military service. He enlisted in the Seventh Regiment, N. G. S. N. Y., on June 10, 1889; became commissary of subsistence of the Twelfth Regiment in April, 1893; inspector of rifle practice, with rank of captain, in March, 1895; and brigade inspector of rifle practice, with rank of major, in 1896. He showed himself to be a good rifle shot, and his teams made some phenomenal records at the butts.
He was commissioned a lieutenant in the United States volun- teer service on June 4, 1898, and served as aide-de-camp to General F. V. Greene, at Camp Merritt, San Francisco, at Camp Dewey, Manila, at Camp Cuba Libre, Jacksonville, Florida, at Camp Onward, Savannah, and in Havana, Cuba. He took part in the battle of Malate and in the capture of Manila. After the latter engagement he was specially mentioned by General Greene in orders for faithful and intelligent service. He was honorably mustered out with his regiment on March 31, 1899.
Mr. Schieffelin lives at No. 173 Fifth Avenue, New York, and is a well-known figure in the business and in the social circles of the city. He is a member of the Union, Fencers', Badminton, Army and Navy, and Ardsley Country clubs, the St. Nicholas Society, the Colonial Order, the Society of Colonial Wars, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Historical Society.
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FRANCIS JOSEPH SCHNUGG
F RANCIS JOSEPH SCHNUGG, for many years one of the most prominent builders and real-estate operators of New York, was born in the city of New York on June 4, 1859. His father, the late John Schnugg, who died in 1901, was a builder and real-estate operator, and for nearly twenty years was a director of the German Exchange Bank of New York. His mother, Maria Ann Sehnugg, born Stenger, was, like her hus- band, of German origin. The elder Mr. and Mrs. Schnugg came to this country from Bavaria, in 1851, as people of de- cidedly modest means. They settled in New York, and through their industry and frugality slowly but surely acquired a com- fortable fortune.
The subject of this sketch was thoroughly educated at several of the best local institutions. He first attended the St. Nicholas Parish School, and then went to the De La Salle Academy. After his course at the latter, he entered practical business life as an employee of the German Exchange Bank, of which his father was a director. There he served for five years, gaining a knowledge of the banking business and a first-rate general busi- ness education. Then he returned to his text-books, as a stu- dent at the College of St. Francis Xavier, where he was gradu- ated with honors as a member of the class of 1882. Finally he went to the Law School of Columbia College, and was there graduated a Bachelor of Laws in 1884.
With such preparation, Mr. Schnugg applied himself to busi- ness. He had, indeed, already engaged in real-estate operations while a student. During his two years in the Columbia Col- lege Law School he speculated in real estate, both improved and unimproved. especially in the northern part of Manhattan Island.
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He foresaw that the then lately constructed elevated railroads would greatly increase the value of property in that part of the city, and that thus large profits would be realized from judicious investments.
In addition to dealing in land, Mr. Schnugg soon began build- ing operations, both on his own account and under contract for others. He was the builder of Proctor's Pleasure Palace, one of the first and largest fire-proof theaters in New York. He was also one of the first and chief builders of large apartment-honses in the region just north of Central Park. It was his theory that such buildings could be constructed in first-class style, and equipped with passenger-elevators, electric lighting, refrigeration, etc., and yet, because of their size and the number of apartments served by the same force of employees, be rented at moderate figures and yield a good profit.
After a busy career of fifteen years in building, Mr. Schnugg has gradually withdrawn from that department of business, at least for a time. He believes that the business has been some- what overdone, especially by the mad rush of irresponsible and unscrupulous speculators who have put up unworthy and un- suitable buildings, and that the market will be benefited by a rest of a few years.
In addition to his real-estate and building interests, Mr. Schnugg is the principal owner of the American Brewing Com- pany of New York. In politics he has always been a strong Republican, and an npholder of protection and the gold stan- dard. In the Presidential campaign of 1888 he organized the Francis J. Schnugg Battery in support of General Harrison.
Mr. Schnugg is a member of the Catholic Club, the Arion Society, and various taxpayers' and kindred organizations. He was married, some years ago, to Miss Caroline Hillenbrand, danghter of the late Colonel Hillenbrand, and has three children : Joseph Francis, Elizabeth, and Marion.
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Walaran Seville
DELEVAN SCOVILLE
D ELEVAN SCOVILLE, a splendid specimen of what the New World can do in the way of building a human being, comes of English and Scotch ancestry. His forefathers were New-Englanders, but in the first years of this century removed to what was known as the "Black River Country," in New York State. Delevan's father was born there, and the son also, in what was then little more than a forest hamlet. The father was a pioneer of heroic mold, a man of mark for his time and place. The mother was a woman of extraordinary character and great personal charms. The son inherited the iron frame and marvelous strength of the father, combined with the gentleness and fine bearing of the mother. He was born, August 14, 1843, on the famous old "Tug Hills" of Lewis County, New York. His boyhood was passed on the farm in northern Oneida County. He quickly absorbed what learning the local schools afforded. and later pursued his studies at Falley and Cazenovia seminaries, preparing himself by further study in private for the junior elass of Harvard University. His father's business reverses prevented him from realizing his cherished purpose, though he later re- ceived degrees from Wesleyan and Columbia universities.
At sixteen years of age he began teaching in the country schools of his vicinity, and was afterward professor of mathe- matics in Falley and Genesee Wesleyan seminaries, and of Greek and Latin in Cazenovia Seminary. At twenty-five he was elected Superintendent of Public Schools in Bay City, Michigan, was made vice-president of the State Teachers' Association, and took a prominent part in the educational affairs of that State. He is a graduate of Columbia University Law College. After his re- moval to New York city, where he entered on the practice of law,
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he was for eleven years president of the New York Educational Society. For many years he was prominent on the lyceum platforms in the East and West, and attained high rank and rep- utation as an orator and scholar. His numerous contributions to periodical literature have reached a wider audience. But this record accounts for only a part of his activities. The story of his adventures by flood and field would of itself make a volume, and a most fascinating one. The best summary which can be given to him is that everywhere he has been a man among men, strong, steadfast, unconquerable. He has to-day the mental vigor and energy which few men show at half his age, while his physical strength and endurance are a wonder to all who know him.
Real estate, manufacturing, and mining have engaged his attention in the East, South, and West. He owns or controls fifty gold-mining claims in Colorado, besides several copper claims, and is interested in phosphate- and antimony-mining as well. He projected the Golden Rule Tunnel and Mining Company, now operating nine mines, and the Kenneth Gold Mines Syndicate, which owns nearly twenty claims, and is now forming a timmel company which will construct and operate, in Colorado, one of the deepest mining tunnels in the world.
In 1874 Mr. Scoville married Kate Lazelle Westover of Bay City, Michigan, who died after bearing him two daughters and three sons. Two boys died in early childhood. The third, a promising youth, died at sixteen, while a student at Syracuse University. The daughters were graduated with distinction at the same university, and now live with their father in New York. Mr. Scoville's second marriage, to Elizabeth Augusta Wiggins of Southampton, New York, took place in 1888. Their only child, a son, is now ten years old.
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CHARLES HITCHCOCK SHERRILL
A MONG the early Dutch settlers who planted New York and contributed so largely to its growth into the metropolis of the Western world was a family named Wynkoop,- a name still well known,-which was established here in 1636. Nearly forty years later, in 1674, members of the good old Devonshire family of Sherrill came over from England and settled at East- hampton, Long Island. In the middle of the nineteenth century representatives of these two families, to wit, Charles Hitchcock Sherrill and Sarah Fulton Wynkoop, became husband and wife, and to them was born at Washington, D. C., on April 13, 1867, a son to whom they gave his father's name, Charles Hitchcock Sherrill.
The boy was intended by his parents for a professional career. and accordingly was carefully educated. After passing through the preparatory studies, he was sent, in 1885, to Yale University, and there was graduated four years later, with the degree of B. A. Thenee he proceeded, in the fall of the same year, 1889. to the Yale Law School, and there in turn was graduated in 1891, with the degree of LL. B., being one of the three " Town- send speakers" at commencement. His postgraduate studies were further continued, and led to his receipt of the degree of M. A. from Yale, upon examination and thesis, in 1892.
Mr. Sherrill was equally conspicuous in college as a scholar and as an athlete. For five years he was a member of the Yale track team, and acquitted himself so well as to win no less than seven intercollegiate athletic championships, and in 1887 the hundred-yards championship of the United States. Since leaving college he has maintained his interest in athletics, and particularly in international athleties, he having arranged and
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conducted the Yale-Oxford match in London, July, 1894, and the Yale-Cambridge match in New York, October, 1895, and being also one of the committee of four in charge of the Yale-Harvard vs. Oxford-Cambridge match in London, July, 1899. In 1893 he was captain of the New York Athletic Club's senior eight-oared crew, and he has written the treatise on "American Track Ath- letics" in the volume on track athletics in the "Badminton Library." He is now a member of the Advisory Committee on Sports of the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition.
With the academic preparation described above, Mr. Sherrill, in the fall of 1891, came to New York city to begin the practice of his profession. For four years he was in the office of Messrs. Carter & Ledyard, in the meantime being, in December, 1892, admitted to the bar of the State of New York. He is now a member of the law firm of Sherrill & Lockwood, with offices at No. 30 Broad Street, and is prominent among the rising young men of the legal profession.
Mr. Sherrill is earnestly interested in political matters, but has by his own choice held no public office. In the Presidential campaign of 1896, and again in 1900, he was secretary of the Lawyers' Sound Money Club, and the representative of the club on the Executive Committee of the Business Men's Association of New York, which organized the two great sound-money parades. He has recently been appointed by Governor Odell as captain on the Governor's staff.
Among the social organizations with which Mr. Sherrill is identified are the Union League, University, New York Athletic, and Yale clubs, the Bar Association, and the Sons of the Revolu- tion of New York, the Metropolitan Club of Washington, the Graduates' Club of New Haven, and the Isthmian, the Leander Rowing, and the Sports clubs of London, England. He has been a member of the boards of governors of the New York Athletic and Yale clubs.
Marmer Herwood
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WARNER SHERWOOD
THE subject of the present sketch, Warner Sherwood, repre- sents in himself a mingling of the two races which founded the city and State of New York and have most of all contributed to their growth into their present imperial estate. Upon the paternal side he is of English ancestry, while upon the maternal side he is descended from the Dutch founders of New Am- sterdam, and is connected with the old Brevoort family, the name of which is so indelibly impressed upon the records of New York.
Warner Sherwood, son of George and Emily Sherwood, was born in New York city, on May 22, 1832, and was educated at the Coudert School, an institution of admirable rank, conducted by the father of the eminent lawyer Frederic R. Coudert. His inclinations were toward a business rather than a professional career. His father was a banker; but instead of seeking to enter business with him, the boy obtained employment under the well- known firm of A. Iselin & Co.
While thus engaged, and at a very early age, he entered a business undertaking on his own account, and thus manifested the possession of exceptional aptitude for a mercantile career. The firm of Iselin & Co. having given him a vacation, he improved it by accompanying his mother on a trip to Europe. While there, amid his sight-seeing and pleasure-seeking, he had an eye to business. He purchased a small amount of merchan- dise at advantage, and was able to sell it at a considerable profit. In this transaction his judgment, talent, and enterprise won recognition, and his employers advanced him rapidly to places of more importance and influence in their house.
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Long before reaching middle age, however, Mr. Sherwood retired from employment to become one of the heads of a busi- ness of his own. In 1865, being then at the age of thirty-three, he entered the firm of Elliot C. Cowdin & Co. as a junior partner. This firm was engaged in the import trade in silks, dress-goods, etc., and already had an excellent standing in the mercantile community. Mr. Sherwood entered into its operations with characteristic energy and shrewdness of judgment, and it was largely through his efforts that its business was vastly enlarged and it became one of the very foremost commercial houses of America.
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