USA > New York > New York state's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume III > Part 9
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WILLIAM JOSEPH FANNING
TTHE names of Fanning and Fitzgerald are both redolent of 1 that " old sod " which has furnished so large and so valuable a part of the population of this country. It was, indeed, from County Tipperary, Ireland, that James Fanning and Johanna Fitzgerald, his wife, eame, many years ago, to make their new home in the State of New York. They settled in Saratoga County, where Mr. Fanning followed the trade of a builder, and there, at the village of Crescent, on July 12, 1850, was born their son, William Joseph Fanning.
The elder Fanning was prosperous in business and ambitious for his son, and especially intent upon his having a fine eduea- tion. So he sent him to the Half-Moon Institute, at Middletown, Saratoga County, then provided him with private tutors at home, and finally sent him to Rome, Italy, to study for a year. On his return to this country, the young man decided to enter the legal profession. Accordingly, he came to this city, and was enrolled as a student in the Law School of the University of the City of New York, as New York University was then called. He pur- sued a creditable course there, and in the spring of 1873 was graduated with the degree of LL. B. A few days later he was formally admitted to practice at the bar of New York, at the General Term of the Supreme Court, held in this city. It may be added, in passing, that he had in boyhood some business ex- perience as a elerk in a store in his native village, and the business training thus acquired has been of great service to him in all his career.
Mr. Fanning began the practice of his profession as the part- ner of his former preceptor, James F. Crawford, at Cohoes, his work being chiefly before the courts at Albany. Seven years later,
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in 1880, he removed to this city, where he has since practised his profession alone. He has paid especial attention to corporation law, and has done the legal work in organizing and incorporating many important companies. Among these may be mentioned the New York and College Point Ferry Company, the College Point Brewing Company, the New Rochelle and Pelham Rail- road Company, etc. He has also made a specialty of hotel law, and has drafted various statutes that have been enacted in this State in regard to hotels. In 1881 he was made counsel for the Hotel Association of this city, and later for the New York State Hotel Association, which places he still holds, besides being attor- ney for the Waldorf-Astoria, Fifth Avenue, Gilsey, Grand Union, Broadway Central, Continental, and other hotels of this city. It has been said that he has done more to advance the interests of hotel men than any other man in the country. He is also a director and vice-president of the Jamaica Electric Light Company, and director of the Waldorf Importation Company.
Mr. Fanning is a member of the Manhattan, Democratic, and Catholic clubs, the Board of Trade and Transportation, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has been a director and sec- retary of the New York Catholic Protectory, and is now counsel for the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin for the Protection of Homeless and Destitute Children, and of several other Catholic institutions.
In 1895 Mayor Strong appointed Mr. Fanning a city magis- trate for four years, at a salary of seven thousand dollars a year, but the latter declined the office.
He was married in this city, on October 19, 1881, to Miss Annie Ashman, daughter of A. L. Ashman, proprietor of the Sinclair House of New York, but has no children.
WILLIAM HILDRETH FIELD
THE tide of immigration to this country from Great Britain.
which began to flow nearly three centuries ago, has by no means ceased. In the last generation it maintained full volume, and in the present it has not yet begun to ebb. Many a man who now seems thoroughly American in all respects is of English birth, or, at least, of direct English parentage. The latter is the case with the subject of this sketch.
William Field, of the last generation, was a native of London, England. He came to the United States in 1837, and four years later married Miss Frances A. Hildreth of New Hampshire, a member of the well-known New England family of that name. He made his home in New York city, and was a man of means and fine culture. In 1845 he died, leaving his wife and one child, a son, who bore the names of both father and mother.
This son was William Hildreth Field, the subject of this sketch. He was born in New York city on April 16, 1843. Though left fatherless at the age of two years, he did not have to suffer the hardships of many orphans. On the contrary, he enjoyed the care and culture which his father's means and inclination had made possible. He was carefully educated at the Mount Wash- ington Collegiate Institute, on Washington Square, New York city, which was in those days justly esteemed as one of the fore- most and best preparatory schools in America. Then he went to Union College, which was then still under the presidency of Dr. Eliphalet Nott, one of the world's great educators. He was a fine student at Union, as he had been in the preparatory school, and was graduated there with honors, and with special distinction in mathematics and philosophy, in the class of 1863. Two years later he was graduated with honors at the Columbia College Law
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School, and immediately, in May, 1865, was admitted to the bar.
His actual law practice began in September, 1865, in partner- ship with the Hon. J. W. Edmonds. That partnership continued for nine years, and then was terminated by the death of Judge Edmonds. Thereafter Mr. Field continued the work of the firm alone for some time. He also edited the ninth volume of his late partner's well-known work, "Edmonds's Statutes."
A new partnership was formed in 1881, under the style of Field & Harrison, and especial attention was paid by it to real- estate business. A little later the firm of Field, Hildreth & Deshon was also formed for general law business. Mr. Field was the head of each of these firms, and has remained in those places to the present time.
Much of Mr. Field's practice has been confined to office work. He has, however, been prominently associated with many im- portant court cases, and has " tried many cases in which his con- struction of the statutes has settled the laws of the State by decision of the Court of Appeals." Among his cases were the suit of George W. Bowen to annul the will of Mme. Jumel, that of Swift against the Mayor of New York to recover on a contract which had not been awarded on a public letting, that in which the title of the. Hopper-Mott farm was confirmed to those in possession, and that of the Mayor against the Tenth National Bank for recovery of funds loaned to a court-house commissioner notwithstanding a misappropriation thereof by him.
Mr. Field is a Democrat in polities, but has never sought political office. In March, 1889, however, he was persuaded to accept from Mayor Grant an appointment as a member of the supervisory board of the Municipal Civil Service Commission.
Of his church activities much might be said. He is a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and one of its most energetic lay- men. He was one of the early members of the Xavier Union, and was its president in 1887. During his administration in the year named it was reorganized into the Catholic Club, and of that club he was the first president. He has for many years been a member of the board of management of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum of this city, and is actively interested in other philanthropie and religious enterprises of the church.
ARCHIE C. FISK
F ROM New York to the West, and back to New York again, is, in brief, the outline of the career of Colonel Archie C. Fisk. He was born in this State, in Steuben County, on Octo- ber 18, 1836, and at the age of two years was taken by his father to Lorain County, Ohio, where the family then settled. The father was a farmer, and the son grew up a farm-boy, working on the farm and attending the public school at Elyria. At the age of seventeen he became a clerk in a dry-goods store, and there remained for some years. The outbreak of the Civil War, however, called him from the counter to the camp. He organ- ized a company, which was added to the famous Twenty-third Ohio Regiment, which contained William S. Rosecrans, Stanley Matthews, Rutherford B. Hayes, William McKinley, and other men of more than ordinary prominence. He was commissioned as second lieutenant of Company K on June 1, 1861.
At the beginning of active service Lientenant Fisk was chosen by General Rosecrans as a member of his staff. He participated in the West Virginia campaign, the second Bull Run, South Mountain, and Antietam. Then he was transferred to Sher- man's army, and was in the Jackson and Vicksburg campaign, at Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge, and in the march to Knox- ville. He was appointed assistant adjutant-general, and in that capacity served in the Atlanta campaign. Then he was trans- ferred to the Department of the Mississippi, with headquarters at Vicksburg, where he remained until the close of the war. In that place he managed the release by exchange of more than eight thousand prisoners from Andersonville, Libby, and other Southern prisons, and at the end of the war he signed the paroles of a number of prominent Confederate officers. He was fre-
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quently mentioned and commended for meritorious and gallant conduet by his commanding officers during the war, and was finally honorably mustered out with the rank of colonel.
At the return of peace, Colonel Fisk entered the cotton busi- ness at Vicksburg as a planter, merchant, and manufacturer. He also published a newspaper, the Vicksburg "Daily Times." In 1873 he removed to Denver, Colorado, and engaged in farm- ing, stock-raising, and real-estate and other enterprises, identify- ing himself largely with the growth of that city. He was the president of the Denver Land and Improvement Company, the Denver Circle Real Estate Company, and the American Trust Company, and a leading member of the Denver Cirele Railroad Company, the Denver Chamber of Commerce, and the Denver Real Estate Exchange. It was he who suggested the Trans- Mississippi Congresses, and he has been a member of them since their organization. He was also one of the chief founders of the silver organizations of the country, and was chosen president of the Pan-American Bimetallic League on its formation in 1892. In 1895 Colonel Fisk removed to New York city, and has here since made his home.
Colonel Fisk has long taken an active interest in politics. He was in 1868 a delegate from Mississippi to the Republican Na- tional Convention, and for the next four years was a member of the Republican National Committee. He thereafter was an energetie member of the Republican party for many years. When party schisms over the silver question arose, however, he drew away from his old associates and identified himself with the Free Silver and Populist parties. He was the candidate of the silver party for Congress in the Fifteenth District of New York in 1896, and in the campaign of that year was a leading speaker and writer on that side.
Colonel Fisk is a member of the Society of the Army of the Ten- nessee, the Grand Army of the Republic, and the Loyal Legion. and has long been active in their councils and efficient in pro- moting their welfare.
JAMES PEERS FOSTER
TAMES PEERS FOSTER, a well-known lawyer and polit- ical leader in the city of New York, is amply entitled to be considered a typical American, as well as, in some degree, a citizen of the world. He comes from a line of ancestors distin- guished for their patriotic services in the development of the colonies into States, and the upbuilding of the States into a great nation. Their services were rendered in both civil and military life. Several of his ancestors were officers in the War of 1812 and in the Mexican War, and his maternal grandfather died from the effect of wounds received in battle.
His parents were people of means and culture, living at Flush- ing, Long Island, and there he was born to them, on August 31, 1848. The early years of his life were spent in or near New York city, and his education began in its public schools. After pass- ing through these, he entered the Law School of Columbia Col- lege, and pursued its course with credit. He was duly gradu- ated from that institution in 1873, with the degree of LL. B.
Thorough American though he was, Mr. Foster was not un- mindful of the special educational advantages to be enjoyed in the Old World. Accordingly, on leaving Columbia College, he repaired to Germany, and was for four years a student in the University of Berlin. He was graduated there in 1877 with the degree of LL. D., and his graduating thesis, an elaborate dis- sertation on "The Public Lands of America," written in Ger- man, was accepted as the best authority on the subject in the German language, and had a wide sale as a standard work.
Thus prepared for duty, Mr. Foster returned to America, and began the practice of his profession in this city. He rapidly acquired a large and important clientage, and rose to a leading
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rank at the American bar. At the request of Professor Dambach of the University of Berlin, he made a special study of the patent laws of the United States, for the benefit of the Ger- man Empire. As a result of his studies, he drafted a patent code for Germany, based upon that of this country. This was submitted to Prince Bismarck. who was so favorably impressed with it that he at once secured its enactment by the imperial Parliament, and it was enacted as the patent law of Germany.
Mr. Foster has always been a Republican, and has taken a keen and active interest in politics. He joined the Republican Club of the city of New York in 1881, and has done much to strengthen it and to promote its work. He secured permanent headquarters for the club in 1886, personally assuming all pecu- niary responsibility therefor, and the next year was elected presi- dent of the club. He suggested, in 1887, a National League of Republican Clubs, and on its formation was chosen its first presi- dent. He devoted almost his entire time and energy to it for more than a year, until it was an established success. He was urged at that time, and often since, to become a candidato for public office, but invariably declined.
In his boyhood, as early as 1865, Mr. Foster became a member of the Hamilton Literary Society of Brooklyn, and held in suc- cession every office in it. He was still a member of it when it was transformed into the Hamilton Club, now one of the fore- most clubs of that borough. At college he joined the Psi Upsilon Fraternity. He has been identified with several clubs and so- cieties of Manhattan Island.
While he was yet a student in the Columbia Law School, Mr. Foster was married to Miss Sara M. Haight of New York.
EUGENE FULLER
"THE Fuller family, which has given many worthy names and one supremely distinguished name to American history, was founded in this country by Thomas Fuller, who came from Eng- land and settled in Massachusetts in 1638. His great-grandson, Timothy Fuller, was the first settled minister of the church at Princeton, Massachusetts. The son of the latter, also named Timothy, was graduated from Harvard College in 1801 with second honors, and had a distinguished career as a lawyer, mem- ber of the State Legislature, member of the State Council, and Representative in Congress, where he was a friend and follower of John Quincy Adams, and ranked as one of the foremost orators of his time. Three of his children attained eminence. One of these, the oldest, was Sarah Margaret Fuller, who by her marriage became the Marchioness d'Ossoli. Her name is one of the glories of American journalism and literature, of scholarship and philanthropy. The second child was Richard Frederick Fuller, a Harvard graduate, who became one of the leading lawyers of Boston, and published a volume of verse, a biography of his brother, and other works. The third was Arthur Buck- minster Fuller, a clergyman and educator of prominence, and author of numerous books, who went into the Civil War as a chaplain, and was killed in battle.
Richard Frederick Fuller, mentioned above, was born at Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, on May 15, 1821, was graduated at Har- vard in 1844, and died at Wayland, Massachusetts, on May 30, 1869, the latter place being his home during much of his life. He married Miss Addie Reeves of Wayland, a member of a family of old colonial descent. The subject of the present sketeh is their son.
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Eugene Fuller was born at Wayland, Massachusetts, on May 8, 1858. He received the careful education characteristic of the Fuller family for several generations. After a thorough prepara- tory course he was sent to Harvard College to receive that liberal general culture which is not easily to be secured outside of such an institution. In that ancient seat of learning his career was highly creditable as a scholar and as a man. Having been duly graduated with honorable rank in his class with the degree of A. B., he decided upon the practice of medicine as his calling in life. With that end in view he entered the Medical School of Harvard, and pursued its course with his characteristic and, one might say, hereditary thoroughness. Having completed that course, he was graduated with the degree of M. D., and commis- sioned to undertake the healing of the sick. To that beneficent work his life has since been devoted with a marked degree of success. He has not been diverted from it by any extraneous interests, taking no part in politics beyond that of a citizen, and seeking no business enterprises which might detract from the close attention the physician needs to pay to his profession. To-day he occupies an enviable rank among the younger genera- tion of practising physicians.
HENRY J. FURLONG
H ENRY J. FURLONG, the head of the law firm of Furlong & O'Connell, is of English birth. He is a grandson of the Countess of Leigh of Malvern, Sussex, England, and a son of Major the Hon. Charles Harman Furlong, a British army officer and member of the diplomatic service. He was not, however, actually born on British soil, but in the south of Spain, near Gibraltar, in 1863. He was carefully educated by tutors and in English schools, and finally at King's College, London, and Liverpool College, Liverpool.
When he was about twenty-one years old Mr. Furlong came to this country and sought engagements in commercial life. For several years he was thus employed, with a satisfactory measure of success. Then he decided to abandon commercial pursuits for the practice of the law. Accordingly he entered the Metropolis Law School of the city of New York, which has since been consolidated with the Law School of New York Uni- versity, and of which Abner C. Thomas, author of " Thomas on Mortgages," ete., was then dean. Dr. Ashley, now dean of the New York University Law School, was also one of the faculty. At this school Mr. Furlong pursued a thorough course, and in 1894 was graduated with the degree of LL. B., and at about the same time was admitted to practice at the bar of New York State. Later, in 1895, having attained eminent rank in the profession, he was admitted to practice before the United States courts as a proctor advocate in admiralty.
Mr. Furlong has from the outset of his career addressed him- self chiefly to civil law practice, and especially to commercial, admiralty, and probate cases. In these important departments of practice he has long been a recognized authority. For years
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he practised alone and with increasing success. Then the press of business necessitated the taking in of a partner. Accordingly in 1896 he formed a partnership with his former classmate in the Law School Elmer S. White, and removed from his old office to more commodious quarters at Nos. 93-99 Nassau Street. Still later the firm was enlarged by the admission of John J. O'Connell, under the name of Furlong, White & O'Connell. This firm was dissolved in 1899, and was succeeded by that of Furlong & O'Con- nell, which, after being in the New York Life Building for a time, removed to its present quarters in the Vincent Building at No. 302 Broadway.
Mr. Furlong is an earnest Democrat in politics, and has taken an active share in party affairs in city, State, and nation. In 1900 he was appointed by Mayor Van Wyck a city magistrate in the Borough of Brooklyn. At the beginning of 1902 an attempt was made to remove him from office under the provisions of the new charter ; but an appeal to the courts was decided in his favor, and he was reinstated upon the bench until such time as his term should legally expire.
Mr. Furlong lives on Sunnyside Avenue, Brooklyn. He is a member of the Demoeratie Club, the chief political and social club of the party in this city. He is also a prominent member of the Masonie Order, being a member of Adelphi Lodge of this city. He belongs to various other professional and social or- ganizations, in all of which he is popular and esteemed.
HUGH RICHARDSON GARDEN
H UGH RICHARDSON GARDEN descends from several of the most honorable Southern colonial families. The Rev. Alexander Garden, first of the name in this country, came from England in the early part of the eighteenth century, as the head of the English Church in the Carolinas. He was descended from George Garden, Laird of Banchory, Scotland, in 1655, whose son, Dr. Alexander Garden, born in 1730, was a physician in Charleston until the War of the Revolution, when he returned to England, his sympathies being with the Royalist party. Dr. Garden's son, however, was the most ardent of patriots, and entered the Continental Army as a lieutenant under General Lee's command. He was afterward aide-de-camp to General Nathaniel Greene, and at the close of the war was made a major. He married Mary Ann Gibbes, but having no children, they adopted a nephew of Mrs. Garden, Aleestor Garden Gibbes, who thereupon changed his name to Garden. His father, Wilmot Gibbes, was a descendant of Stephen Gibbes, 1594, of Edmond- stone Court, England. His mother, Anna de Saussure Gibbes, was a daughter of an old Huguenot family whielt settled in South Carolina in 1700. Daniel de Saussure was a Revolutionary patriot, a member of the Provincial Congress, and a State Senator after the war. His son Henry William de Saussure, the great-grand- father of Hugh Richardson Garden, although a mere lad at the time of the Revolution, fought at the defense of Charleston, and was made prisoner. He distinguished himself in later life as a legislator, was director of the United States Mint in 1794, and Chancellor of the State of South Carolina from 1808 to 1837.
Hugh Richardson Garden was born at Sumter, South Carolina, July 9, 1840. He was graduated with honors from the South
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Carolina College in 1860. When war was declared Mr. Garden, true to his Sonthern ancestry, east his lot with the cause of the Confederacy. He served at Fort Sumter and Manassas, and, entirely at his own expense, raised and equipped the Palmetto Battery, of which he was captain. At the battle of Appomattox he was in command of the artillery of General Lee's rear-guard.
At the close of the war Mr. Garden entered the Law Depart- ment of the University of Virginia, and, after his admission to the bar, practised in various places in the South until 1883, when he removed to New York city. Here he has been very success- ful, especially in the branch to which he has been most devoted- corporation law. The part taken by him in the settlement of the Virginia debt gave him an international reputation. In 1892 he received the degree of D. C.L. from the University of the South.
Mr. Garden's tastes do not ineline to club life, but he is a prominent member of the Southern Society of New York, and was at one time president of the organization.
He was married, in 1868, to Miss Lucy Gordon Robertson, a daughter of the Hon. William J. Robertson, judge of the Vir- ginia Court of Appeals. Her maternal grandfather was William F. Gordon, a famous soldier, and a friend of Thomas Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.
EDWIN VAN DEUSEN GAZZAM
D R. EDWIN VAN DEUSEN GAZZAM comes of an his- torie family, members of which have played a prominent part in two continents. His paternal great-grandfather was William Gazzam, Jr., an English journalist, who was compelled to leave England and seek refuge in America because of his out- spoken and unsparing criticisms of the king. His paternal grandfather was Edward D. Gazzam, M. D., who was one of the founders of the famous Free-soil party, a member of the State Senate of Pennsylvania, and one of the foremost practising phy- sicians of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. His father was General Audley William Gazzam, who was a successful lawyer, and who served in the National army throughout the Civil War, having raised a company at Pittsburg, of which he was chosen captain, and being breveted brigadier-general at the close of the war. Dr. Gazzam's paternal grandmother (Dr. Edward D. Gazzam's wife) was Elizabeth Antoinette Beelen, daughter of Constan- tine Antoine de Beelen, and granddaughter of Baron Antoine de Beelen de Bertholt, who was the first Austrian ambassador to the United States, in 1783. On the maternal side Dr. Gazzam is descended from some of the earliest Dutch colonists in this country. His great-great-grandfather, Jacob Laird Van Deusen, was a prominent citizen in his time, and his grandfather, the Rev. Edwin M. Van Deusen, D. D., was a leading clergyman and theologian, who married Maria Eliza Gilbert, and was the father of Mary Elizabeth Van Deusen, wife of General Andley William Gazzam.
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