USA > New York > New York state's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume III > Part 23
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Thomas Elliot Stewart was born in New York, September 22, 1824. He was educated in the public schools, and was a student under Sheppard Johnson, a noted educator of the forties, in a school on Broadway, between Prince and Spring streets.
In 1842 he entered the office of Elijah Paine, where he studied law, and in 1847 was admitted to the bar. Mr. Paine some time afterward was elected a judge of the New York Superior Court, and Mr. Stewart succeeded to his practice. This he carried on alone for a year or two, and then formed a partnership with Dunham Jones Crane, under the name of Stewart & Crane. In the next year the firm was changed to Stewart, Stallknecht & Crane, followed by Stewart, Lane & Thomas, Stewart, Child & Lane, and Stewart & Townley. Since the last-named partner- ship was dissolved, Mr. Stewart has practised alone.
Mr. Stewart in early life took an active part in State and na- tional politics. He was a member of the Republican State Com- mittee in 1866, when Hoffman and Pruyn were elected Governor and Lieutenant-Governor. He was again a member of the State Committee in 1868, and in 1872 was made chairman of the Lib- eral Republican General Committee. At this period he was
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president of the Lincoln Club, which had its rooms over Pur- cell's restaurant, near Twenty-first Street, and was a powerful factor in Republican polities of the day. He was a personal friend and an ardent admirer of Horace Greeley, and had the distinction of nominating him for the Presidency at the Liberal Republican Convention, held at Baltimore in 1872. In 1875 he was made a park commissioner, an office in which he did notably good work. He was appointed by Mayor Franklin Edson, in November of 1883, one of the five cable commissioners to decide on the introduction of cable roads into the city, and has held other positions of trust and honor.
Mr. Stewart belongs to the New York Athletic, the Repub- lican, and the Olympic clubs of New York, and the Islip Club of Suffolk County, Long Island. He is a life member of the Lotus Club, a fellow for life of the National Academy of De- sign, and an honorary member of the Mercantile Library Asso- ciation.
He was married, May 31, 1854, to Miss Harrietta Ellen Tay- lor, a daughter of Dr. George Taylor of New Milford, Con- nectient. Their only son, who bears his maternal grandfather's name, and has adopted his profession, was graduated from Trin- ity College, Hartford, and from Hanniman College, Philadel- phia, and is now chief of staff of the Metropolitan Hospital, Blackwell's Island. He married Miss May Fargo of San Fran- cisco, and they have one child.
ANSON PHELPS STOKES
THE subject of this sketch is a grandson of Thomas Stokes, a retired London merchant, who was born in London in 1765 ; married at Lowestoft, on August 21, 1793, Elizabeth Ann Boulter, daughter of James Boulter; and in 1798 came to New York, where he owned considerable real estate. While in Lon- don Thomas Stokes was one of the founders of the London Missionary Society, and was associated with Robert Raikes in the Sunday-school movement. On coming to New York he participated in founding the American Bible Society, the Amer- ican Tract Society, etc.
James Stokes, son of Thomas Stokes, was born in New York on January 31, 1804. He was for nearly forty years with Phelps, Dodge & Co., in which firm he was one of the senior partners, and finally he was one of the heads of the New York and foreign banking house of Phelps, Stokes & Co. He was active in benevolent work. He married, on April 12, 1837, Caroline Phelps, daughter of Anson Greene Phelps, the New York merchant and philanthropist, founder of Ansonia, Connec- ticut, and a descendant of George Phelps, who was among the founders of Boston, Windsor, and Westfield. Caroline Phelps, who was sixth in descent from George Phelps, was also de- scended from the three early colonial governors, Thomas Dudley, John Haynes, and George Wyllys, and from the Watson, Gris- wold, Woodbridge, Harlakenden, Egleston, Wolcott, and other early colonial families of New England.
Anson Phelps Stokes, eldest son of James and Caroline Stokes, was born at the Phelps country place on the East River, near where Thirtieth Street now is, in New York, on February 22, 1838. In January, 1861, he became partner in Phelps, Dodge
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& Co., and in January, 1879, with his father and his father-in- law, formed the banking house of Phelps. Stokes & Co.
Mr. Stokes is a trustee in the United States Trust Company, and a director of the Ansonia Clock Company. of the Pennsyl- vania Joint Lumber & Land Company, etc. He founded the Dudley Company, the Woodbridge Company, and the Haynes Company, which are real-estate companies owning property in the business portions of New York city. He is a trustee of the Home for Incurables, of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, ete .. and has been active in free trade and civil service reform and municipal reform movements. He has written a work on "Joint-Metallism." the fifth edition of which was published in 1896. He has also written " Dangers of the Proposed National Paper Money Trust," and has contributed many articles to the newspapers, and in 1900 was president of the National Associ- ation of Anti-Imperialist Clubs.
Mr. Stokes was the first president of the Reform Club of New York, and for two terms was vice-commodore of the New York Yacht Club. He has made a number of cruises in his yachts to Bermuda, the West Indies, etc. He has visited much in the Midlands, England, where he hunted during many winters before he lost his left leg, in 1899, by his horse bolting and crushing his knee against a tree. He is a member of the Cen- tury, Knickerbocker, Reform. City, Lawyers', New York Yacht, Seawanhaka Yacht, and other New York clubs, and of the Wellington Club of London. Mr. Stokes is a Free Trade Dem- oerat and has always opposed Tammany. While active and successful in business, he has preferred his library to his office, and after the death of his father he retired and resigned from the boards of most of the companies in which he was interested.
He married, on October 17, 1865. Helen L. Phelps, daughter of Isaac N. Phelps, a leading banker of New York. She is sixth in descent from George Phelps of Windsor, Connectient, and is also descended from the early colonial families of Grant, Wyatt, Porter, Stoughton, Wadsworth, Emerson, Graham, etc.
Their city home is at No. 229 Madison Avenue, and their country places are Shadow Brook, near Lenox, Massachusetts; Birch Island, in Upper St. Regis Lake, Adirondacks, New York ; and Long Neck, Darien, Connecticut.
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J. G. PHELPS STOKES
YTHE first American ancestor of James Graham Phelps Stokes was George Phelps, who came over from England in 1630, on the Mary and John, the first of Governor Winthrop's ships to arrive in Massachusetts Bay. He settled at first in Massachu- setts, but the family soon removed to Connecticut, where it has been established for more than two and a half centuries. Through his first wife George Phelps was a direct progenitor of the mother of our present subject, and through his second wife a progenitor of his father. Another carly American ances- tor of Mr. Stokes was the Rev. John Woodbridge of Newbury, Massachusetts, who arrived in that colony in 1634. Other New . England branches of his genealogical tree bear the well-known names of Dudley, Lamb, Wyllys, Haynes, Wolcott, Egleston, and Talcott. The first to bear the name of Stokes in this coun- try was Thomas Stokes, who came from London and settled in New York city in 1798. He was a descendant of George Phelps, and a direct ancestor of the subject of this sketch.
James Graham Phelps Stokes was born in New York, on March 18, 1872, the son of Anson Phelps Stokes and Helen Louisa Phelps. His father was one of the most prominent bankers of this city. He was educated at the Berkeley School, New York, and while there was president of the Interscholastic Athletic Association of New York. In 1889 he entered the Shef- field Scientific School, Yale University, where he was an editor of the " Yale Record," vice-president of the College Young Men's Christian Association, director of the Cooperative Association, and a member of the Delta Psi Fraternity. He was graduated in 1892, with the degree of Ph. B., and spent the next year in traveling around the world. In the fall of 1893 he entered the
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College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, and was graduated in 1896, with the degree of M. D. He served for some time as assistant ambulance surgeon at Roosevelt Hospital. He did not take up regular medical practice, however, but used his education as an instrument in sociologieal work. In 1896 he became a resident at the University Settlement, and a sanitary inspector for the then East Side Sanitary Union. He spent the college year of 1896-97 studying sociology, pauperism, and penology at Columbia University.
For some years he has been a member of the executive com- mittee of the Armstrong Association, a trustee of the Tuskegee Institute, a manager of the Association for Improving the Con- dition of the Poor, chairman of Hartley House, a director of the Institution for Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, chairman of the People's Institute, a member of the executive committee of the Federation of Churches and Christian Workers, a member of the council of the University Settlement Society, a director of the Legal Aid Society, a trustee of the City Club, ete., and has recently become a director of the Prison Association.
He is president of the Nevada Central Railroad, of the Nevada Company, and of the Woodbridge Company of New York, and is connected in an executive capacity with various other enter- prises. In 1896 he was chairman of the finance committee of the Civil Service Reform Association of New York, and since 1896 has been an officer of the Berkshire (Burnham) Industrial Farm. In 1897 he was one of the managers of the West Side Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association.
Mr. Stokes is a member of Squadron A, N. G. S. N. Y .. of the Knickerbocker, University, Riding, City, Yale, St. Anthony, and Drug Trade clubs, and of the Yew York Zoological Society. He is a life member of the Charity Organization Society. He is president of the Stokes Trust Corporation of New Haven, which built St. Anthony Hall, the dormitory and club-house of the Sigma Chapter of the Delta Psi Fraternity. He is also a director of the Yale Alumni University Fund Association, and is actively interested in the welfare of his Alma Mater and his fraternity, as well as in the larger welfare of society in general.
RICHARD ALSOP STORRS
RI ICHARD ALSOP STORRS came of good old New England stock. His father, Joseph Storrs, was a prom- inent merchant of Oyster Bay, Long Island. His grandfather, Dr. Justus Storrs, was a native of Mansfield, Connecticut, and was a surgeon in the Revolutionary army. Both Justus and Joseph Storrs also served in the War of 1812. The mother of Mr. Storrs was, before her marriage, Ann Townsend Alsop, the Alsops and Townsends being old and well-known families of Oyster Bay, who had in early times gone thither from New England. Richard Alsop Storrs was born at Oyster Bay on January 10, 1830. He was educated in the Oyster Bay Academy. At the age of sixteen years he completed his school course and entered business life in New York as a clerk in the old book- store of Lewis Colby on Nassau Street, where he spent five years. In 1851 he entered the publishing-house of Cady & Burgess on John Street. In August of the next year Mr. Cady withdrew from the firm, and Mr. Storrs became a partner in it, the name then becoming Daniel Burgess & Co. This firm pub- lished many educational books of standard rank, such as Roswell C. Smith's arithmetics, Asa Smith's astronomy, Tower's readers and algebra, Walker's book on elocution, and Dr. Guernsey's histories. The firm also did a large business as wholesale dealers in the publications of the Harpers, Appletons, and other leading houses. In 1856 Mr. Burgess died, and Mr. Storrs soon after closed out the business.
He then entered the public service. A. C. Flagg, Controller of the city of New York, selected him in 1857 for an important place in his office, which Mr. Storrs accepted in December of that year, and which he held during the administrations of Mr.
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Flagg and his successor, Controller Brennan. In 1863 William E. Warren resigned the Deputy Controllership, and Mr. Storrs was promoted to take his place. Mr. Storrs remained in the latter office until the Controllership of Andrew H. Green. Later Mr. Storrs was reappointed Deputy Controller by JJohn Kelly, and he remained in that place to the end of his life.
Mr. Storrs was also secretary of the Sinking Fund Commission, and did much important work in the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. He was for some time clerk to the Board of Revision and Correction of Assessments, was secretary to the Criminal Court-house Commission, and discharged many other publie duties. He was a member and trustee of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, and a member of the building committee of its new edifice. He was one of the organizers of the Hahnemann Hospital. He was a patron of the Christian Home for Intemperate Men, and president of the Moderation Society, which maintained free drinking-fountains. He was a member of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, a trustee of the Bowery Savings Bank, and, by right of descent from Dr. Justus Storrs, a Connecticut member of the Society of the Cincinnati and a member of the Empire State Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.
Mr. Storrs was married, on April 3, 1852, to Miss Cornelia Keeler, daughter of Walter Keeler, a prominent real-estate owner of New York. Their only child, Isabel Madeline, was born on January 14, 1853, and died on December 25, 1860. Mr. Storrs died, almost literally at his post of publie duty. on May 11, 1896. Resolutions of regret and tribute were adopted by his associates in the municipal government, and by the corporations of St. Paul's Church and the Bowery Savings Bank. Controller Ashbel P. Fitch declared him to have been "the ideal public servant"; and the Rev. F. A. M. Chapman, who had long known him, said in an address at the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church : " As a man, he was manly ; as a friend, he was true ; as a husband, he was tender and loving; as a Christian, he was humble and unpretending, but genuine."
HENRY ADGATE STRONG
THE Anglo-Saxon race loves men who are at onee brave and true, such as are characteristic of itself. Its con- fidenee and support are given to those who are at onee resolute fighters and serupulous maintainers of their integrity and honor. The subject of the present sketch is an example of that kind of man, and his career demonstrates what success awaits those who unwaveringly pursue a campaign, be it in polities or any other occupation, and jealously guard their integrity and their deserts of popular trust. Twice Mayor and now City Attorney of the municipality in which he has made his home for more than a quarter of a century, Henry Adgate Strong has proved the possibility of being an active and successful politician without forfeiting the confidence and high esteem of all who know him. In all his active and successful career it is his gratifying boast that he has never onee found it necessary in any matter, great or small, to violate his conscience or to abjure his faith by making compromise with evil.
Henry Adgate Strong was born of sturdy, intelligent, and progressive New England stock, at Colchester, Connecticut, September 10, 1846, a son of Edward Henry and Eunice (Loomis) Strong. He prepared himself for a collegiate course at Phillips Academy, at Andover, Massachusetts, and subsequently at Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire. He left the latter preparatory school in his middle year to enter Yale with the class of '73, and was graduated with that class. He was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity. He studied law at the Albany Law School, and took his degree in 1874, and spent that summer studying law in Troy. In September, 1874, he began the practice of law in Cohoes, New York.
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His character and attainments instantly won for him the respect and confidence of the community. He was elected a school commissioner in 1878, for two years, but resigned when appointed City Attorney on March 18, 1879. He ran for Mayor on the Republican ticket in 1888, and was defeated. He was again nominated in 1892, and eleeted, and was reelected in 1894. During the campaign of 1894, he was invited to become a can- didate of the Albany Independents for Surrogate on the ticket headed by Oren E. Wilson, but he declined this compliment. At the expiration of his mayoralty term he was reappointed City Attorney.
He is a member of the Presbyterian Church. He married Esther L. Hastings of Schenectady, and has no children.
This bald recital of the conspicuous events in the public career of Mr. Strong gives but slight indication of his character and the value of his work and example. Men are measured by their opportunities. It is not unreasonable to assume that the indi- vidual who is a leader in his own community would show him- self possessed of commanding qualities in any community. The recognition which has been given to Mr. Strong for his inde- pendence, honesty, publie spirit, and absolute devotion to the highest ideal of publie service and responsibility, in spite of his repeated and flagrant objections to partizan management and methods, determines that what he has proved himself to be in Cohoes he would be in any other city. A man of powerful and impressive personality, he compels attention in all circumstances. He is a most persuasive pleader and thoroughly well-equipped lawyer, and has shown himself possessed of judicial tempera- ment and capacity. No citizen of Cohoes would be astonished at any honor that might be conferred upon the City Attorney. He is a man who would fill well any station which he might be called upon to occupy.
EDWARD BAKER TALCOTT
0 NE of the most enterprising and successful brokers in the New York Stock Exchange is a descendant of the old Tal- cott family of Warwiekshire and Essex, England. The family was transplanted to America by John Talcott, who came to Bos- ton in 1632, and four years later removed to Hartford, where he became a magistrate. His son, born in England, became trea- surer of the colony, and in King Philip's War arose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In the next generation Hezekiah Talcott was one of the founders of Durham, Connecticut. In the fifth generation Noah Talcott became a prominent merchant in New York city, and was one of the founders of the New England Society of New York. His son, Frederick L. Talcott, with his two sons, Frederick L. Talcott, Jr., and August B. Taleott, founded the banking-house of Talcott & Sons, and also the or- ganization of merchants from which grew the Cotton Exchange. Frederick L. Taleott, the elder, married Miss Harriet Newell Burnham, and had seven children, four sons and three daughters. The fourth son and sixth child is the subject of this sketeh.
Edward Baker Taleott was born, as above, in New York, on January 21, 1858. He was carefully educated, with especial view to a business eareer, and at an early age began an active business life. His first engagement was at the age of sixteen years, in 1874, in the banking-house of his father and elder brothers, mentioned above. There his training in financial mat- ters was admirable, and he rapidly developed more than ordinary aptitude for the business of the Street. His next engagement to which he soon went was in the house of Charles F. Hardy & Co., for which he made several trips to Europe, and acquitted himself so well that he was presently offered a membership in
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the firm. This he declined, and then, in 1880, after four years of service, withdrew from Hardy & Co., and entered the firm of Talcott & Sons. At the same time he became a member of the New York Stock Exchange. For three years he remained with his father and brothers, and then became an operator on his own account. In this he was highly prosperous, and became one of the most notable figures on the floor of the Exchange. Finally, in January, 1897, he entered the important house of Bell & Co., and has ever since represented it in the Exchange.
Apart from his Wall Street enterprises, Mr. Taleott has been conspicuously identified with athletic sports. He had long been interested in base-ball, and in 1890 beeame actively interested in the management of the New York team of the National League. On his return from a European trip in 1892 he found that organ- ization in a bad plight. It was overwhelmed with debts and almost at the point of dissolution. He went to its rescue, was made managing director with full control, and by his good man- agement soon put it on its feet again. By the end of the season of 1894 he had all the debts paid off and the elub on a paying basis. Then he sold out his interests and retired from the man- agement.
Mr. Taleott is a member of the Manhattan, Democratic, New York Athletic, Atlantic Yacht, Colonial, and other clubs. He has for years been an active and influential member of the Democratic party, but has persistently declined to be a candi- date for public office.
He was married, in 1879, to Miss Sara T. Roberson, daughter of W. H. Roberson of this city. Their only child, a son, was born in 1880 and died in 1886.
ERNST THALMANN
THE ancient city of Mannheim, in the grand duchy of Baden, Germany, at the junetion of the Neckar with the Rhine, is famed for its trade and its industries, as well as for its noble ducal palace and stately churches. Only the little state of Hesse-Darmstadt lies between it and Frankfort-on-the-Main, so that it may be reckoned to be within the "sphere of influence" of that great financial center. It is a fitting place in which to look for captains of industry, merchant princes, and masters of finance.
It was at Mannheim that the subject of this sketch, Ernst Thalmann, was born in 1851. He was the son of M. Thalmann, one of the foremost merchants of the city, and inherited a taste and an aptitude for business rather than for professional life. There are no better schools and colleges in the world than those of Germany, whether for professional or for industrial students, and in these, at Mannheim, Mr. Thalmann was carefully educated.
While yet a mere youth, in September, 1868, he came to the United States, seeking here opportunities of business advance- ment more ample and immediate than his native country afforded. In New York he found occupation with the financial firm of Greenbaum Brothers & Co., and there remained for six years with profit, gaining valuable practical experience as well as pecuniary remuneration for his labors. Then he returned to Europe for a year, in which time he was able to acquaint himself with European conditions and methods in finance.
Mr. Thalmann finally returned to the United States, and, naturally settling in the financial capital, New York, established in 1876 the banking house of Limburger & Thalmann. Four years later the firm was reorganized with the admission of Adolf
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Ladenburg to membership, and its name was changed to that of Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co. This latter style has ever since been retained, despite some further changes in the composition of the firm. The general partners of the firm at the present time are Ernst Thalmann, Richard Limburger, Walter T. Rosen, and B. J. Guinness. The special partners are Hans von Bleich- röder, Dr. Georg von Bleichröder, and Dr. Paul Schwalbach.
The firm of Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co. transacts a general banking and brokerage business of great extent and importance, its operations being not only national but international and world-wide. Its rating by Dun's Commercial Agency is the highest, " AA," and its reputation among its patrons and in the financial world at large amply sustains that record. Its partners are members of the New York Stock Exchange, and are thus enabled personally to conduct any desired operations upon the floor of that great institution, but the bulk of their business is banking rather than speculative brokerage. The offices of the firm were formerly at No. 46 Wall Street, but are now in the great Broad Exchange Building, where they occupy more than half of the third floor and display a magnificence of equipment and furnishing worthy of a great financial house.
The names of the special partners in this firm suggest an im- portant European connection which it has long enjoyed. Since 1881 the firm of Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co. has been the American agent for the great German banking house of Bleich- röder & Co. of Berlin, a house that ranks with the Rothschilds among the leaders and rulers of European finance, and that has played a historie part in the monetary affairs of European governments.
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