Onondaga's centennial. Gleanings of a century, Vol. II, Part 29

Author: Bruce, Dwight H. (Dwight Hall), 1834-1908
Publication date: 1896
Publisher: [Boston] : The Boston History Company
Number of Pages: 1094

USA > New York > Onondaga County > Onondaga's centennial. Gleanings of a century, Vol. II > Part 29

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In 1865 Mr. Peters's half-brother, Jacob Knapp, was admitted to partnership under the firm name of Nicholas Peters & Brother, which continued until 1844, when his eldest son, Henry C. Peters, was given an interest under the style of Nicholas Peters, Brother & Son. Their trade had now spread to all parts of the city and in volume aggregated nearly $500,000 annually, but the small-pox epidemic of 1875 proved dis- astrous, not only to them, but to many of the best mercantile houses in Syracuse. The firm, however, weathered the general business depression until January 1, 1877, when it went into voluntary bankruptcy and compromised with its creditors for twenty cents on the dollar, receiving receipts in full on that basis. In 1883 Henry C. Peters withdrew from the concern and the old firm name of Nicholas Peters & Brother was restored, but in January, 1884, Mr. Knapp retired and Mr. Peters's son, Nicholas Peters, jr., came in under the style of Nicholas Peters & Co., which has ever since continued. January 1, 1889, another son, Jacob, and a nephew, Nicholas G. Peters, were admitted, and on January 1. 1894, Nicholas Peters, sr., permanently retired to private life, leaving the old established business in the hands of its present owners, Nicholas, jr., Jacob, and Nicholas G. Peters.

Before retiring from the establishment he had founded and so successfully con- ducted Mr. Peters voluntarily discharged an obligation which few men in like cir- cumstances have ever undertaken, and which stamps him par-excellence an honest citizen. After the firm settled with its creditors in 1877 for twenty per cent. of their indebtedness he resolved that, should fortune favor him, he would reimburse them for his share (one-half) of the remainder. With this end in view he laid aside small sums of money from time to time until February, 1892, fifteen years after the failure, he paid in full his portion of the outstanding obligations. This was wholly a vol- untary act, and was accomplished at great expense and time in looking up old creditors, many of whom had died or gone out of business. It was the crowning achievement of his long and eventful mercantile career.

Mr. Peters has traveled extensively, not only in America, but in many countries in Europe, and has acquired a large fund of general information. Born in Germany, and inheriting the sterling characteristics of his German ancestors, he naturally re- tains an imperishable love for fatherland, but being imbued from childhood with all those attributes of independence and self-reliance which make the successful citizen,

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he has ever been an enthusiastic admirer and supporter of the country of his adop- tion, where his most cherished ambitions have been fully realized. His career is the natural product of the sturdy German on Amerian soil, of one transplanted from amid the environments of royalty and favored rulers to the land of liberty and free- dom, surrounded by advantages and institutions which develop instead of impover- islı, and broaden instead of contract. Love of freedom and liberty is one of the strongest traits of his character, and in a large measure guided him in deciding to emigrate, a step he has never regretted. Thoroughly American in heart and mind, and imbued with unswerving patriotism and loyalty, his love for this country is per- haps stronger than that of the majority of native born citizens, for he can intelligently contrast the two governments with their respective perquisites and advantages. Mr. Peters is a man of the strictest integrity, upright, honest, and conscientious, enter- prising, energetic, and widely respected. He has always taken a keen interest in the general advancement of the city and especially of the German element, of which he is a leading representative. In politics he is a staunch Republican, but has never sought and only twice accepted public office. He was for one year supervisor from the Second ward, where he has resided since 1851, and during one term served as excise commissioner under Mayor Charles P. Clark. He was elected a trustee of the Syracuse Savings Bank about twenty-five years ago and still holds this position of trust, being one of the oldest directors of that institution in point of service 110W living.

October 24, 1850, Mr. Peters was married in Syracuse to Miss Gertrude Falk, who was born in Haupschwenda, Hesse Castle, Germany, October 3, 1828, and came to America with her brother and sister July 1, 1849. They have had six children: Henry Conrad, born August 3, 1851; Nicholas, jr., born August 27, 1853; Jacob, born September 11, 1859; Frank George, born August 18, 1851, died May 13, 1893; John Matthew, born November 2, 1863; all in Syracuse; and Gertrude Martha, born September 24, 1869, in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. Mr. Peters was himself de- prived in early life of the advantages afforded by the schools and colleges of this country, and fully realizing by experience the necessity of a classical as well as an English training he has given to each of his children an excellent education, ably fitting them for the career for which they were best qualified by nature. All attended the public schools of Syracuse and became proficient in the ordinary branches of study. In February, 1869, the parents visited Germany, taking with them Nicholas, jr., Frank G., John M., and Jacob, of whom the latter was then in delicate health. They took up their their temporary residence in Dresden, where Nicholas, jr., re- mained two years attending the best schools of that city. Mr. Peters returned in August and his wife with three sons and babe in December. Frank G., after grad- uating from the Syracuse High school, entered Phillips Exeter Academy at Exeter, N. Il., and was graduated therefrom in 1882. In September of that year he entered Y'ale College, passing his examinations with unusual merit, and was graduated from that institution with high honors as A. B. in 1886, receiving the Townsend prize for oratory and literature. There he was a prominent athlete, being a member of the best boat crew and foot-ball team, and serving for one year as captain of the latter organization. After graduating he went St. Paul, Minn., read law with Lusk & Bunn, and was admitted to the bar of that State in 1889. He opened a law office in St. Paul in partnership with Mr. Booth, also a Yale graduate, and practiced his pro-

Chas In MageMD.

BIOGRAPHICAL.

fession there until 1891, when he took charge of the law departments of various busi- ness interests in West Superior, Wis., for Henry Minot, of Boston, and continued 11 that capacity till his death. John M. was also graduated with high honors from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1884, being historian of his class. He entered Harvard Medical College in Boston, received the degree of M. D., was immediately made house physician in Rhode Island Hospital at Providence, and eighteen months later was appointed by Governor Tafft superintendent of that excellent institution, which position he still holds. Gertrude M., the youngest child, is now a student at Barry, Mass. While Mr. Peters was educating these sons and starting them upon careers of usefulness he was also saving sufficient funds to voluntarily pay off his portion of the old indebtedness of the firm. This was accomplished only by continued self- denial and strict economy, but the end fully justified every effort and the fondest hopes. And now at the close of a long and active life, surrounded by a competency created by his own hands, and by children whose futures promise brilliant achieve- ments, he views with satisfaction and commendable pride the work of nearly half a century, the fruits of industry, ambition, and personal application, and the proud position of an honest man and respected citizen.

CHARLES M. MAGEE, M. D.

CHARLES MARQUIS MAGEE, M. D., is a son of Col. John and Marietta (Patchin) Magee, and was born in Groveland, Livingston county, N. Y., on the 6th day of De- cember, 1856. The family is of Scotch-Irish descent. His grandfather, William Magee, came with two brothers from the North of Ireland, settled in Livingston county, N. Y., and died there; one of the brothers went South, while a son of the other located in Bath and afterward in Watkins and founded that branch of the family. Col. John Magee, son of William, was appointed by Gov. William H. Seward lieutenant colonel of militia in 1836 and colonel in 1842, and died in Livings- ton county. He was also the father of Walter Warren Magee, now a prominent young lawyer in Syracuse.

Dr. Charles M. Magee's early education was received in common schools and in the State Normal School at Geneseo, N. Y. At an early age he decided to become a physician, and with that end in view he entered Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York city, from which he was graduated with distinction in the class of 1880. Since then he has resided in Syracuse, where by his energy and skill he has won a place in the front rank of his profession. For several years he steadily built up and maintained a large general practice, but his natural ability and untiring persever- ance led him into intricate surgical operations, in which he met with uniform success. In 1893, having determined to make abdominal surgery and diseases of women a specialty, he went to New York city and took special instruction under Dr. Florin Krug, the celebrated specialist in gynecology, and returning to Syracuse opened a private sanitarium for women to meet the needs and demands in this line of work. Since then he has devoted his time almost exclusively to the practice of abdominal surgery and the treatment of diseases of women, and during his short career in this direction he has acquired a wide and favorable reputation. He was the first in Syra-

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cuse to perform total hysterectomy, an operation at once difficult and rare, and was also the first surgeon in this city to perform intubation, which is now quite frequently practiced. Dr. Magee is a charter member of the Syracuse Academy of Medicine, and is also a member of the Onondaga County Medical Society, the New York Medi- cal Association, and Syracuse Lodge, No. 501, F. & A. M.

HENRY GIFFORD.

THE ancestors of Henry Gifford were of English and more recently of Norman ex- traction, his family records extending back to the time of the Conquest, when Sire Randolphe de Gifforde was rewarded for services rendered at the battle of Hastings with lands in Somersetshire and Cheshire, England. A son of Sir Ambrose Gifford emigrated to Massachusetts Bay in 1630 and founded the family from which the sub- ject of this memoir was directly descended.

Henry Gifford was born in Harwich, Mass., September 4, 1801, passed lis child- hood and early youth in his native town, and while still young moved to South Yar- mouth, where, in a leading Quaker family, he formed prin- ciples and friendships which were never relinquished, and where he also acquired a prac- tical knowledge of the manu- facture of salt. This latter bus- iness induced him in 1821 to re- move, in company with Stephen Smith, of New Bedford, to the then village or hamlet of Syra- cuse, more generally known at that time as Cossit's Corners. Here he actively entered into the development of the great salt industry, with which he was so long identified. The Onondaga Salt Company was established through the enter- prise of Judge Joshua Forman, and Mr. Smith became its con- trolling agent, while Mr. Gif- ford superintended the con- struction. For more than fifty HENRY GIFFORD. years after this Mr. Gifford was successfully engaged in salt manufacturing, and though extensively engaged in various other enterprises he never entirely withdrew from his original investment.

In politics Mr. Gifford was first a Whig, and afterward a Republican of pronounced

BIOGRAPHICAL.

anti-slavery convictions, yet he never sought public office. Ile nevertheless wielded a powerful influence in the councils of his party and in all movements affecting the general welfare of the community, and this was always exercised on the part of moderation, humanity, and justice. He was extensively identified with the busi- ness interests and commercial prosperity of Syracuse, owning considerable real estate in various parts of the city, notably a large tract along Gifford street, which was named after him. He held several positions of trust and responsibility, being at the time of his death vice-president of the Syracuse Savings Bank (of which he was one of the incorporators) trustee of the Syracuse Water Works Company, and director in the Syracuse Gas Light Company and Salt Springs National Bank. Both he and his estimable wife were very early members of the First Presbyterian church and remained consistent communicants until their deaths. He was one of the build- ing committee which erected the present stone edifice, being one of the foremost in that worthy achievement. Mr. Gifford was a true gentleman of the old school, kind, considerate, dignified, and enterprising. He won universal respect and esteem, and during an active career achieved success and lasting reputation. In 1834 he pur- cliased of the Syracuse Land Company a building lot on the southwest corner of West Genesee and North West streets, the former then the Genesee turnpike, and in 1835 erected thereon the present Gifford homestead, in which most of his children were born and reared, and where three daughters still reside. It is believed that no other house in the city has been occupied during a longer period by the family for whom it was originally built. Mr. Gifford died June 20, 1872, at Avon Springs, N. Y., whither he had gone in search of health.

Mr. Gifford was married in 1826 to Miss Phebe, daughter of Obediah and Mary Thomas (Morse) Dickinson, who was born in Salisbury, Conn., November 20, 1801, became motherless at a tender age, and with an only sister was reared and educated by her maternal grandfather, a staunch and worthy representative of the old time school of gentlemen. They were married at the residence of her aunt, Mrs. Archi- bald Kasson, who lived where the old depot subsequently stood at the western ex- tremity of Vanderbilt Square. She was a lady of rare culture and refinement, a good French scholar, a correct artist in water colors, unostentatiously charitable, and a devoted Christian, wife and mother. She also possessed scientific attainments of a high order. She died April 13, 1871, after an illness covering a period of eight years. Their children were Phebe Kelly, Sylvanus Morse, Mary Ehza, Mary Eliza- beth (Mrs. J. N. Babcock), Henry Brooks, George Thomas, Francis P., Martha, Helen M., George Sylvanus, and Isabella Grahame, all of whom are deceased ex- cept Henry Brooks, of Grinnell, Iowa; and Mrs. Babcock, Frances P., and Helen M., of Syracuse.

ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, M. A., LL. D., L. H. D.

ALMOST in the exact geographical center of the State of New York there suns itself in the upper valley of a tributary of the Susquehanna a tidy village on which the impoverished fancy of an official map-maker has set the ancient name of Homer. Ancient, indeed, for its region is the village itself. The settlers from Massachusetts

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and from Connecticut who pushed westward along the valleys of the Mohawk and the Susquehanna, reaching these uplands in the last decade of the eighteenth cent- ury, settled here more thickly than elsewhere, and for half a century-till its neigh- bor settlement of Cortland, once its suburb but soon its rival, crowded it from the pre-eminence-it was, not only in the number of its citizens, but in their thrift, their piety, and their public spirit, the recognized metropolis of the district.

It was here, in the midst of all that is conservative in American life, that on the 7th of November, 1832, was born a man destined in much to be a leader of the fresher thought- Andrew Dickson White. His grandfather, Asa White, a migrant from southern Massachusetts in 1798, was long the well-to-do miller of the little com- munity, but in 1815 a conflagration brought him in a day to poverty, and his eldest son, Horace, the father of Andrew, was forced, though but a lad of thirteen, to turn from the education of the schools to that of business. So well he learned its lessons that before the age of thirty he had not only won a reputation for unusual mercantile sagacity and enterprise, but had already amassed a moderate fortune when in 1831 he married Clara Dickson, only daughter of a village magnate. Her father, the Hon. Andrew Dickson, like the Whites of Massachusetts birth, had come a young man to Homer and was, in the year of his grandson's advent, the representative of his county in the Legislature of the State.

The fortunes of Horace White still prospered, and in 1839 he took advantage of the new banking law of the State to establish himself as one of the earliest bankers at Syracuse, the rising metropolis of Central New York, then a town of some 5,000 people. There his energy found a worthier field; identified with all the interests of his city, he rapidly amassed wealth, and all the advantages his own youth had missed he could well afford his son.

The earliest tastes of the boy were, however, not bookish; all his love was for machinery and for the wonders of out of doors; and, though he early picked up the power to read, it was not until after the removal to Syracuse that he was first put into school. Of his education he has himself told the story:

"After much time lost in various poor schools, I was sent to the preparatory de- partment of the Syracuse Academy, and there, by good luck, found Joseph A. Allen, the best teacher of English branches I have ever known. He seemed to divine the character and enter into the purpose of every boy." There young White perfected himself in spelling, in arithmetic, in geometry, the only mathematical study he ever loved, in grammar, of which he thinks there was too much; there he gained the rudiments of natural science and even of music, becoming "proficient enough to play the organ occasionally in church." There, too, literature was first opened to him. "Great attention was given to reading aloud from a book made up of selections from the best authors, and to recitals from these. Thus I stored up not only some of the best things in the older English writers, but in- spiring poems of Whittier, Longfellow, and other moderns," and the treasures thus gained were never lost. "As to the moral side, Mr. Allen influenced many of us strongly by liberalizing and broadening our horizon. He was a disciple at that time of Channing, and an abolitionist; but he . never made the slightest attempt to proselyte any of his students. Yet the very atmosphere of the school made sectarian bigotry and narrowness impossible."

But the boy was destined for college, and was now sent to a classical school, where

BIOGRAPHICAL.

Stoddard, the story writer, was among his fellow pupils, and where, though the methods in classical teaching were imperfect, "the want in grammatical drill was more than made up by the love of manliness and the dislike of meanness which was in those days our very atmosphere."

Outside the school his imagination had been stimulated by desultory reading and by pictures of travel, and he had stumbled upon the novels of Scott, to which above all was due the birth of his interest in historical studies. The public meetings of the time, especially those of the anti-slavery party, took also a deep hold upon his mind.

He had dreamed of entering one of the great New England universities, but the zealous young churchman into whose hands he was put for his final training per- suaded his father to send him instead to the young and struggling Episcopal college at the neighboring town of Geneva. There he matriculated in the fall of 1849. With all his loyalty to his father's church and to his father's wish, the college could not con- tent him. Dependent on the wealthy patrons whose sons it sought to educate, its discipline was lax and its means too feeble for the work it undertook. "Only about half a dozen of our number studied at all; the rest, by translations, promptings, and evasions of various sorts, escaped without labor."

A year of this was all that he could stand, and when, at the opening of another, his protest was still unheeded, he took French leave of his reluctant alma mater and went into hiding at the home of an old instructor until his father at last gave con- sent to his transfer to Yale College. There he was admitted in January, 1851, to what has since become "the famous class of '53." But, even among such classmates as Billings and Davies and Gibson and Lewis and MacVeagh and Robinson and Shiras and Smalley and Stedman, he soon won for himself a high place-not so much by his work in the class-room, though that was good, as by the breadth of his information and of his sympathies, and by his facility with pen and voice. He be- came an editor of the college magazine, The Lit., and before his graduation won the first Clark prize for the best discussion of a political subject in the senior class. The Yale literary prize, which he also won, was a gold medal for the best essay, the con- test being open to all students in the university. The result of the contest caused some comment, for the victory was generally conceded to the senior class, and the speculation was as to who would take it, no one thinking it would go to the junior class, of which Mr. White was a member. The De Forest prize, which was awarded to him for an oration on "The Diplomatic History of Modern Times," open to all members of the senior class was a medal of the value of $100. Nor were physical and social claims neglected. He belonged to the earliest Yale crew, and he became a member of Psi Upsilon and of the mystic Skull and Bones, as well as of the more lit- erary Linonia. His room-mate and bosom friend was his classmate Davies, to-day Bishop of Michigan. Of his college work, perhaps that which left the deepest impres- sion upon him was his study of Guizot's Civilization in Europe, under Dr. Woolsey.

In December, 1853, he went abroad for further study, having as fellow-traveler his college mate, Daniel C. Gilman (now the well-known president of Johns Hopkins, and at this moment his colleague on the Venezuelan Commission). After a few weeks in England and several months in France, spent in studying French, reading the French historians (Thierry, Mignet, Thiers, Chateaubriand), listening to lecturers like Laboulaye at the Sorbonne and the College of France, chatting with the old

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soldiers of the Revolution at the Invalides, making historical pilgrimages through- out the northern and central provinces, everywhere reveling in architecture and music and haunting the old book shops, he was invited by the American minister to Russia, ex-Governor Seymour, of Connecticut, to join that legation as an attaché.

Accordingly, in October of 1854 he made his way, via Brussels. Cologne, and Ber- lin, to St. Petersburg. It was the stirring time of the Crimean war, and the young diplomat found his attachéship no sinecure. His knowledge of French made him val- uable as an interpreter; he became the companion of the minister in his interviews at court and at the foreign office, and took a most interested part in the ceremonial at- tending the death of the Czar Nicholas and the accession of Alexander II. Yet he found much time for study. Huge scrap books were filled with clippings on the progress of the war; the book stalls afforded rich store for his rapidly growing col- lection on Russia and Poland ; and the archives of the legation even gave him ma- terial for research in American history. He there, under the inspiration of Mr. Sey- mour, became interested in the character and policy of Jefferson, and drew up the nucleus of the study later published in the Atlantic Monthly on Jefferson and Slavery.

But he tired of the restraints of official life, and in June, 1855, resumed the career of a student, first wandering in Germany and Switzerland, then matriculating at the University of Berlin. There he heard Boeckh, Lepsius, Friedrich von Raumer, Karl Ritter, and tried in vain to follow the lectures of Ranke. With the Easter vacation he was off for Austria and Italy, and lingered till late spring beyond the Alps, in the company of his fellow student and close friend, Frieze, the Latinist. Crossing then the Alps, and lingering but a little among the Roman ruins of Southern France, he turned his footsteps homeward, reaching America in time to share the commence- ment festivities of his alma mater and to receive at her hands his Mastership of Arts.

It was then, with his future profession all undecided, that he chanced to stray within sound of the voice of President Francis Wayland, who was delivering at Yale one of the addresses of the commencement season ; and the orator's plea for the new and growing West as the field for the young scholar sank deep into his mind. The next year he spent in graduate study at Yale, and before its end, declining all other offers, he had accepted the chair of History and English Literature at the University of Michigan.

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Onondaga's centennial. Gleanings of a century, Vol. II, Part 29

Author: Bruce, Dwight H. (Dwight Hall), 1834-1908 Publication date: 1896 Publisher: [Boston] : The Boston History Company Number of Pages: 1094

Author: Bruce, Dwight H. (Dwight Hall), 1834-1908
Publication date: 1896
Publisher: [Boston] : The Boston History Company
Number of Pages: 1094