USA > New York > New York City > Prominent families of New York; being an account in biographical form of individuals and families distinguished as representatives of the social, professional and civic life of New York city > Part 15
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Mr. John L. Cadwalader is the grandson of Colonel Lambert Cadwalader. His father was Major-General Thomas Cadwalader, who was born in 1795 and died in 1873. His mother was Maria C. Gouverneur, daughter of Nicholas Gouverneur, of New York, and his wife, Hester Kortright, who was a daughter of Lawrence Kortright. Mr. Cadwalader was born November 17th, 1836. He was graduated from Princeton College, educated for the law and entered upon the practice of his profession in New York. In 1874, he was Assistant Secretary of State of the United States. His club membership includes the Metropolitan, Union, Knickerbocker, Century, University, Riding, Lawyers', Commonwealth, New York Yacht and Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht. He belongs also to the Tuxedo colony, is a member of the Bar Association, the Sons of the Revolution and the Downtown Association, and a patron of the American Museum of Natural History.
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JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN
A N Irish Presbyterian, James Calhoun, came from Donegal, Ireland, in 1733, and founded the Calhoun family in the United States. He first settled in Pennsylvania, subsequently removed to Kanawha, Va., and in 1756 went to South Carolina, where he established a settlement in the district of Abbeville. Patrick Calhoun, son of the pioneer, married Martha Cald- well, daughter of a Presbyterian emigrant from Ireland. Their third son was the Honorable John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, the great champion of the South in national politics. Born in 1782, he was graduated with honors from Yale College in 1804 and studied law in the Litchfield Law School. He began the practice of law in Abbeville and soon became actively engaged in politics. In 1807, he was in the State Legislature and, in 1811, became a Member of Congress, where he was one of the prominent advocates of the war with England. For seven years after 1817, he was Secretary of War under President Monroe, in 1825 he became Vice-President of the United States, and in 1829 was reelected upon the ticket with President Jackson. After his term expired, he was a Member of the United States Senate until his death, in 1850. Calhoun never advocated slavery or nullification for their own sakes. He was ardently in favor of preserving the Union, as is shown in his biography by Von Holst. He believed in the sovereignty of the States, and hence slavery was assailed ; it being a question for the States alone to decide, he incidentally defended that institution to protect the rights of the States in the Union. It was the same with nullification. He held it to be one of the reserved rights of the States under the Constitution, and that the exercise of it by the States did not necessarily dissolve the Union, but would strengthen it by preserving the autonomy of the States. He supported the annexation of Texas and cham- pioned the cause of peace when the war with England was threatened by the Oregon dispute. His wife was his cousin, Florida Calhoun, daughter of the Honorable John Ewing Calhoun, United States Senator from South Carolina.
The father of Colonel John Caldwell Calhoun, Andrew Pickens Calhoun, was the eldest son of South Carolina's great statesman. His mother, Margaret N. Calhoun, was a remarkable woman and a famuos belle, related to Chief Justice John Marshall. Andrew Pickens Calhoun owned an extensive plantation near Demopolis, Ala., and was a large cotton planter.
Colonel Calhoun has many distinguished ancestors. His maternal great-grandfather, William Green, was a soldier with Washington at Valley Forge, when only fifteen years old, and was with General Morgan at Cowpens in 1781. His maternal grandfather was General Duff Green, son of William Green. Duff Green was born in Kentucky about 1780 and died in Georgia in 1875. Ad- mitted to the bar in 1801, he was for several years publisher of a newspaper in Baltimore, entitled The Merchant, and from 1825 to 1829 edited a Washington newspaper in opposition to President John Quincy Adams. During the first term of President Jackson, he conducted The United States Telegram in Washington, in support of the administration, but in 1830 cast his lot with Calhoun upon the nullification question, and in 1836 supported South Carolina's great son for the presidency. General Duff Green's wife was Ann Willis, a daughter of Colonel Henry Willis and Mildred Wash- ington, cousin of George Washington. The maternal grandmother of Colonel Calhoun was Lucretia Edwards, daughter of the Honorable Ninian Edwards, 1775-1833, the distinguished jurist who was Chief Justice of Kentucky in 1808, Governor of the Territory of Illinois in 1809, and the first elected Governor of that commonwealth, in 1826.
Mr. John Caldwell Calhoun was born upon his father's plantation in Alabama, July 9th, 1843. When he was eleven years old, his parents returned to South Carolina, and settled at Fort Hill, upon the old homestead of his illustrious grandfather. He entered the State University of South Carolina in 1859. When the Civil War opened, he enlisted in the company of cadets which was organized among the students of the University, and went with his command to Charleston, where he was present at the bombardment of Fort Sumter. After the hostilities had fully opened, his company joined the army in Virginia and was attached to General Wade Hampton's Legion, and
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although he was not yet eighteen years old, he was elected Color-Sergeant of the Legion Cavalry. Having served upwards of a year, he was honorably discharged from the army on account of his extreme youth. Upon returning to his home in South Carolina, he was again influenced by the war spirit, organized a cavalry troop of one hundred and sixty men, of which he was placed in command, and with which he hastened back to the army in Virginia, and joined the Fourth South Carolina Cavalry, Donovan's Brigade of General M. C. Butler's Division. At that time he was said to be the youngest Captain in the Confederate service. At the battle of Trevellyn Station, he especially distinguished himself in a gallant charge against the brigade of General Custer.
After the close of the war, Colonel Calhoun returned to the family homestead in South Caro- lina and entered energetically upon the task of recreating his fallen fortunes and reviving the pros- perity of the section of the country in which he resided. He took the position at that date that the conditions which caused the war had been settled by the arbitrament of the sword, and urged upon the people of his section to devote themselves to the restoration of prosperity and the reestablish- ment of their fortunes. His father was dead and the support of his mother, sister and three younger brothers devolved upon him. He soon became the second largest cotton planter in the South, and also engaged in other business enterprises of considerable importance. One of his plans contem- plated the establishment and development of extensive plantations in the Yazoo Valley of Missis- sippi. Disposing of his interests in this successful enterprise, he then carried out a similar under- taking upon a larger scale in Arkansas, where he was president of the Calhoun Land Company and the Florence Land Company, and president of the Levee Commission of Arkansas. He was the first to organize the emigration movement of negroes from various parts of the South to the Mississippi Valley, colonizing more than five thousand freedmen in that section. In 1883, he was a delegate from Arkansas to the Cotton Exposition in Louisville, and again a delegate to the Cotton Exposition in New Orleans the following year. In 1884, he was vice-president of the convention in Washing- ton which petitioned Congress for the improvement of the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
Removing to New York some fifteen years ago, Colonel Calhoun soon became prominent in Wall Street circles and has been connected with many important railroad enterprises. His first conspicuous operation was the consolidation of the Southern Railway systems into the Richmond Terminal Company, and he had an active part in the operations connected with the control of the Central Railroad of Georgia, becoming a director and afterwards vice-president of that company under its new management, and chairman of the Finance Committee. He was elected to the directorate of the Richmond & West Point Terminal Company, and has been officially connected with many other railroads, chiefly in the Southern States.
In December, 1870, Colonel Calhoun married Linnie Adams, only daughter of David Adams, of Lexington, Ky., and grandniece of the Honorable Richard M. Johnson, former Vice-President of the United States. Colonel and Mrs. Calhoun have four children, James Edward, David Adams, Julia Johnson and John Caldwell Calhoun. The eldest son, James Edwards Calhoun, who was born in 1878, is now being prepared for admission to Yale College. The city residence of the family is in West End Avenue, and their country places are in Chicot County, Ark., and at Abbeville, S. C. Colonel Calhoun belongs to the Manhattan, Lawyers', Reform and Democratic clubs, and the Sons of the American Revolution, of which he is senior member of the board of managers. He was appointed special ambassador of the Sons of the American Revolution, to invite the President and Ministry of the French Republic and the descendants of Lafayette, Rochambeau and DeGrasse and the representatives of art, science and literature to attend the banquet given by the society on February 6th, 1897, in celebration of the one hundred and nineteenth anniversary of the signing of the treaty between France and America. In recognition of his services, the society, in October, 1897, made him an honorary life member and acknowledged his services, and the high esteem in which it held him, by formal resolutions, which were engrossed and presented to him. He is also a member of the Southern Society and the Gate City Club, of Atlanta, Ga. He has long been one of the most active supporters of the Southern Society, of which he was president in 1889, and it was mainly through his efforts that the society was incorporated and acquired a permanent home.
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SIR RODERICK WILLIAM CAMERON
C LAN CAMERON has from immemorial times been one of the great races of the Scottish Highlands. A tradition exists that it descends from a younger son of the Danish royal family who assisted King Fergus 11. in regaining the Scotch throne in the fifth century. The more conservative historians of the family, however, consider, in view of all the evidence, direct or otherwise, that it is more probable that the Camerons sprang from the original inhabitants of the district of Lochaber, where their homes and possessions were found at the earliest times. There is, however, some ground for the theory that originally the Camerons and the Clan Chattan sprang from the same source, though the division, if there was one, took place in times so far remote that little or no importance was attached by either Clan to the alleged circumstance. Originally known in the Gaelic nomenclature of the Highlands as the Clan Maclauf haig, or Servants of the Prophet, they were divided, as far back as any records on the subject extend, into several distinct septs or divisions, a circumstance not uncommon among the larger Scottish Clans. The most conspicuous of them were the Camerons of Lochiel, whose lairds became the Captains of the Clan Cameron, and were for many centuries famous in the history of the Highlands and of that of Scotland, the various chiefs, among whom was the noted Sir Ewen Dhu Cameron, taking prominent part in all the Jacobite risings. The prominence which the Lochiel branch of the Camerons has assumed with reference to the entire Clan has also been increased by the number of romantic incidents connected with the careers of some of its chiefs. Passing as their names and achievements have done into history and romance, they have in common acceptation become the representatives of an entire race of which they and their immediate followings were but a part. . Another branch of the ruling family of Cameron chiefs, however, one which is asserted by good authorities to be an elder one, was the Cameron of Glenevis, to whose family and followers the appellation of Clan Soirlie was applied, and which was not less prolific in Highland warriors and statesmen. As far as the records are to be found, the Glenevis Camerons had lands in Lochaber, and from the circumstance that they were often at feud with the Lochiel Camerons, it has been asserted that they were originally of another Clan. The chief of Glenevis at the time of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, and his wife, a lady of the Cameron family of Lochiel, was cruelly persecuted by the English, about which a number of romantic traditions are still current in the Highlands, the silver plate which she preserved from the marauders being still preserved by the family. There was an offshoot of the Glenevis branch, which was known as the Camerons of Speyside, and from the same source came also the Camerons of Dawnie, both of them being families of importance in the Highlands.
Sir Roderick William Cameron, of New York, is a descendant of the Lairds of Glenevis, his ancestor being Donald Cameron, a cadet of that family, who received the lands of Morsheirlich, from one of the chiefs of Lochiel, with whom it would seem that he was on friendly terms, but he was ousted from them by the successor, who thus manifested the traditional hostility of the Lochiel Camerons for those of the Glenevis family. He then removed to Glenmoriston, Inverness-shire, where his descendants were people of property and note in that section. One of them, Alexander Cameron, born at Glenmoriston, in 1729, married, about 1760, Margaret Macdonell, of the same place, and came to the Province of New York, from which he removed to Canada about 1776, being one of the United Empire Loyalists, who have been a most important element in the development of the Canadian Provinces and the present Dominion. Alexander Cameron established himself in Williamstown, County of Glengarry, Canada, where he died in 1825. He was succeeded by his son, Duncan Cameron, born in Glenmoriston, Scotland, 1764, who became one of the founders of the Northwest Fur Company, of Canada, and passed a number of years in the far West, where he commanded Fort Garry, on the site of the City of Winnipeg. In 1818, he went to Great Britain, was presented at court and visited the Highlands, where he made the acquaintance of the lady, Margaret
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Macleod, daughter of Captain William Macleod, of Hammer, who in 1820 became his wife, having accompanied her brother, Dr. Roderick Macleod, to Canada. Duncan Cameron represented the County of Glengarry in the Parliament of Upper Canada from 1820 to 1824, and resided on an estate which was called Glenevis House, after the home of his ancestors, in Scotland. He died in 1848, aged eighty-four years.
Of his two sons, the eldest died in infancy. The second, Roderick William, was born July 25th, 1825. He was educated at local academies and at Kingston, Canada, and in his early youth hunted throughout the Canadian Northwest. He entered business life at an early age, and in 1852 came to the City of New York with the intention of going to Australia on a mercantile enterprise. Instead, however, of going permanently to Australia, he established a line of ships between that part of the world and New York, and thus laid the foundation of a commercial establishment of great importance to New York and to this country, and of which he remains the head. Successful from the outset, he not only sent many emigrants to Australia, but built up an export trade in American products there, which has been of much benefit to this country. Up to 1870, he did business alone, but in that year William A. Street was admitted and the style of the house was changed to R. W. Cameron & Co., the establishment having branches at Sydney, New South Wales, and London.
Despite his long residence in America and his interest in social and public affairs, Sir Roderick Cameron has always retained his allegiance to the British crown, and in 1883 his services in the development of Australia were recognized, the honor of knighthood being conferred on him by the Queen. He, however, earnestly supported the Union cause during the Civil War here and organized the Seventy-Ninth New York Regiment. In 1876, he was the honorary commissioner of Australia to the Philadelphia International Exposition, and served in the same capacity at Paris in 1878. In 1880 and 1881, the Dominion of Canada made him honorary commissioner to the Exposition at Sydney and Melbourne. His report on these expositions was an exhaustive document, valuable for its treatment of interesting statistical and commercial matters, and was published as a blue book by the Dominion Government. In early life, he married Miss Cummings, of Quebec, who died in 1859. Some years after he contracted a second matrimonial alliance, with Anne Fleming Leavenworth, daughter of Nathan Leavenworth, of New York, whose wife, Alice Johnston, was the daughter of a Scottish gentleman who settled in New York in the last century. The Leavenworth family is descended from a noted Puritan divine in early New England days. Mrs. Cameron died in 1879. The children of this marriage are Margaret S. E., Duncan Ewen Charles, Roderick McLeod, Catherine N., Anne Fleming, who in 1895 married Belmont Tiffany, son of the late George Tiffany, and Isabella Dorothea Cameron.
In many public and social capacities, Sir Roderick Cameron has shown his sympathy for the country of his residence. He is a member of the leading New York clubs, including the Metropolitan, Knickerbocker and New York, and the Downtown Association. In London, he belongs to the Junior Carleton, Turf, Hurlingham, Beefsteak and Wellington clubs, and is a member of various artistic and scientific bodies, including the American Geographical Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has been a member of the Highland Society of London since 1856, and spent some time in a prolonged visit to the Highland home of his ancestors. He long maintained an active interest in the turf and imported into this country Leamington, sire of Iroquois, the only American winner of the Epsom Derby. The city residence of Sir Roderick Cameron is 185 Madison Avenue, and he has a country house, Clifton Berley, on Staten Island, as well as a summer retreat at Tadousac, at the mouth of the Sagenany River, in Quebec, the latter place being formerly the property of the Earl of Dufferin, when Governor of Canada. Duncan E. C. Cameron, his elder son, is a member of the Knickerbocker Club, of New York, and the Bachelors and Junior Carleton, in London. His younger son, Roderick McL. Cameron, is a member of the Union, Knickerbocker and Racquet clubs, of New York, and of the Junior Carleton Club, in London.
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HUGH NESBITT CAMP
P ROMINENT among the New York merchants and men of affairs of the last generation was Hugh Nesbitt Camp. His parents were Isaac Brookfield Camp and Jeanette Ely, who were members of families that have been settled in New Jersey for many generations, and that have been distinguished from time to time in public affairs. His maternal grandfather was Calvin Ely, who lived in the town of Livingston, N. J., a small place about ten miles from Newark. Mr. Camp's parents were residents of New York, but he was born in the house of his grandfather in Livingston, October 14th, 1827. Brought to his parents' New York home a month later, he lived in New York from that time on throughout his long life. Educated in schools here, he began to work when he was fourteen years of age, finding employment in subordinate positions until 1843, when he entered the counting house of James A. Edgar, with which firm, and with the firm of Booth & Edgar, its successors as commission merchants, he remained for many years, gaining a large experience and becoming a successful man of business.
In 1854, Mr. Camp became interested in sugar refining. At that time, he organized a firm under the name of Camp, Brunsen & Sherry, and with a small capital, advanced by gentlemen who believed in his ability and integrity, established a plant in Bristol, R. I. Within a year the new firm was so successful that it was able to discharge its obligations in full, and thenceforward con- tinued a profitable business. The relations of the partners continued undisturbed for fourteen years, when the firm was dissolved. Mr. Camp bought out the interests of his associates and formed a new partnership under the name of Hugh N. Camp & Co., with George Robert- son and William McKay Chapman as partners. The over-stimulation in business brought about by the commercial inflation of the war period and the intense competition that ensued, proved disastrous to the firm, which, in 1870, was forced to relinquish business.
After his affairs were readjusted, Mr. Camp, however, went into the real estate business as a broker and auctioneer and met with instantaneous and gratifying success. In a few years he became a large real estate investor on his own account, and was particularly interested in real property in the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth wards of the city, north of the Harlem. He was also heavily engaged in lead mining in Missouri and in the cement business in Pennsylvania. In 1880, Mayor Franklin Edson appointed him one of a committee of seven to investigate and report upon the necessity of an additional water supply for the city, and in that position he rendered important service to the municipality.
During his lifetime, he was a trustee of the National Life Insurance Company, a director of the Mechanics' National Bank, the Continental Trust Company, the Twenty-third Ward Bank, the Title Guarantee and Trust Company, of which he was vice-president ; a trustee of the Clinton Hall Association, of which he was secretary for thirty years ; and a trustee of the Skin and Cancer Hospital and the House of Rest for Consumptives. He was secretary and treasurer of the St. Joseph Lead Company, the Doe Run Lead Company, and the Mississippi River and Bonne-Terre Railroad. Mr. Camp died September 20th, 1895. For many years he was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, belonged to the Century, Union League, Grolier and other clubs, and was a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History.
In 1854, Mr. Camp married Elizabeth Dorothea Mckesson, daughter of John Mckesson. There were eight children of this alliance, six of whom survived their father. Edward B. Camp is a broker, residing in New Jersey. Maria Lefferts Camp became the wife of Perry P. Williams. John Mckesson Camp is a broker. Frederick Edgar Camp is a merchant and treasurer of several of the corporations in which his father had interests. The present Hugh Nesbitt Camp is the youngest son and was associated with his father in the management of the real estate business for a number of years. He resides at Morris Heights, in the old homestead, Fairlawn, which was built by his father in 1863. He belongs to the Union League and Seventh Regiment Veteran clubs, having been a member of the Seventh Regiment for several years.
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HENRY WHITE CANNON
O NE of the facts which explains New York's preeminence as the real centre of the Western Hemisphere is its capacity to attract and incorporate in its citizenship the ablest and most prominent men that all other sections of the country develop. Mr. Cannon, though his career commenced in the West, is of a New England and New York family. His grandfather, Benjamin Persis Cannon, a native of Hebron, Tolland County, Conn., was born in 1776, while his wife was born at Fairfield, in the same State, in 1799. Removing to New York in 1810, Benjamin P. Cannon settled in Tompkins, the name of which was changed to Cannonsville in his honor. He was noted as a sagacious business man and had a deserved reputation for integrity. His son, George Bliss Cannon, the father of the subject of this article, was born in Cannonsville, N. Y., in 1820. In 1849, he removed to Delhi and was prominent in both business and politics, being a close personal friend of Horace Greeley. He made New York City his residence in his later years and died in 1890, survived by his widow, who was Ann Eliza White, daughter of Elijah and Marietta White, of Franklin, N. Y., where she was born in 1825. On his mother's side Mr. Cannon descends from Peregrine White, who was born on the Mayflower as she lay in Cape Cod Harbor in 1620, and was the first European child to see the light in New England. His maternal grand- mother, Marietta Jennings, was a descendant of William Jennings, of Suffolk, England, and his maternal great-grandfather was a soldier of the Revolution, who died, while a prisoner of war, in the old Sugar House of New York.
Mr. Henry W. Cannon was born in Delhi, Delaware County, in 1850. He was educated in private schools, and before attaining his majority became an official of a bank. He soon removed to the West and entered the banking business in St. Paul. When barely twenty-one years of age, he successfully organized a National Bank in Stillwater, Minn., and became its president. Recog- nized as one of the foremost bankers of the Northwest, Mr. Cannon was appointed in 1884, by President Arthur, Comptroller of the Currency of the United States as the successor to the late Hon- orable John Jay Knox. He had no sooner taken office than the panic of 1884 swept over the country. His practical experience was of the greatest benefit at this crisis, not the smallest of his services being to avert contemplated interference by Congress with the efforts of the banks, and particularly those of New York, to allay the panic. President Cleveland, in 1885, requested Mr. Cannon to continue as Comptroller, but he resigned in 1886.
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