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 22

Author: Weeks, Lyman Horace, ed
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: New York, The Historical company
Number of Pages: 650

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 22

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

In the ensuing three generations, the ancestors of Mr. Edmund Cogswell Converse were John Converse, of Woburn, 1673-1708, and his wife, Abigail Sawyer, daughter of Joshua Sawyer; Joshua Converse, of Woburn and Litchfield, N. H., 1704-1744, and his wife, Rachael Blanchard, daughter of Joseph and Abiah (Hassel) Blanchard, and Joseph Converse, of Litchfield and Chester- field, N. H., 1739-1828, and his wife, Elizabeth Davis. Joshua Converse was a selectman of Litch- field in 1741, and a representative to the General Court the same year. His son, Joseph Converse, who lived in Bedford, Mass., at the beginning of the Revolution, was a member of the Lexington alarm company in 1775.

The Reverend James Converse, son of Joseph Converse, and grandfather of Mr. Edmund Cogswell Converse, was born in Bedford, Mass., in 1772, and died in Wethersfield, Vt., in 1839. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1799, and ordained a minister of the Church of Christ in Wethersfield, Vt., in 1802. He was a member of the Vermont Legislature in 1819, and was elected State Chaplain. His first wife, Mehitable Cogswell, was a daughter of William and Abigail Cogswell, of Marlborough, Mass. She was a descendant in the sixth generation of John Cogswell, of Wiltshire, England, who settled in Ipswich, Mass., in 1635. Their son, William Cogswell, married Susanna Hawkes; their grandson, Jonathan Cogswell, married Elizabeth Wainwright; their great-grandson, Francis Cogswell, married Elizabeth Rogers, daughter of the Reverend John Rogers, and was the grandfather of Mehitable (Cogswell) Converse. James Cogswell Converse, father of Mr. Edmund Cogswell Converse, was born in 1807, and died in 1891. He received an academic education, and engaged in business in Vermont and afterwards in Boston. He was one of the founders of the Boston Board of Trade, of which he was president. In 1869, he became president of the National Tube Works of Mckeesport, Pa. He married Sarah Ann Peabody.

Mr. Edmund Cogswell Converse was born in Boston, November 7th, 1849. He was educated in the Boston Latin School, entered into active business, and has been connected for twenty-five years with the National Tube Works Company, of which he is president and general manager. He has made New York his residence for a number of years. In 1879, he married Jessie Macdonough Green, who is related to the Macdonough and Van Nyce family, of Long Island. They have three children, Antoinette Macdonough, Edmund Cogswell, and Katherine Peabody Converse. The winter residence of the family is 8 East Sixty-seventh Street. Mr. Converse belongs to the Metropolitan, Union League, Lawyers', New York Athletic and other clubs, and to the Society of Colonial Wars, and the Sons of the American Revolution.

133

HENRY HARVEY COOK

O F Norman origin, the Cook family was settled in Leeds, England, before the middle of the twelfth century. A hundred years later one branch of it was well established in Ireland. Edward Cook, who was born in 1450, and was Mayor of Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, in 1504, was the ancestor of the English family as it exists to-day. In the sixth generation from Edward Cook, George Cook, the head of the family, was made a baronet in 1661, and in the next generation, Sir George Cook, who succeeded to the estate and title of his uncle as third baronet, married Catherine Copley, daughter of Sir Godfrey Copley, of a family which descends from William the Conqueror, and which through collateral lines is represented in the peerage of the mother country.

Captain Thomas Cook, of Earle's Colne, Essex County, who founded the family fortunes in America, was born in England in 1603, and came across the Atlantic in 1635, when he was thirty- two years of age. Settling first in Boston, he afterwards removed to Taunton, Mass., in 1637, becoming one of the original proprietors of that place. Subsequently he was a founder of Portsmouth, R. I., and lived there the rest of his life, being at one time deputy to the General Assembly of Rhode Island. John Cook, the second son of Captain Thomas Cook, was born in England in 1631. In 1665, he married a sister of Matthew Borden, who was the first white person born in the Colony of Rhode Island. He had a family of four sons and thirteen daughters, and died in 1691.

The second son of John Cook was Joseph Cook, who was born in 1662, and was a deputy to the General Assembly of Rhode Island in 1704. Constant Cook, grandson of Joseph Cook, was born in 1724 and died in 1800. He lived in Portsmouth and Newport, but before the War of the Revolution removed to Springfield, N. Y. He was the head of the New York branch of the family. His wife was Isabel Duell, daughter of Joseph Duell, of Dartmouth, Mass. The grandson of Constant Cook and the father of the subject of this sketch, was Judge Constant Cook, lawyer, banker and contractor of Warren, N. Y. He was born in Warren in 1797. In early life he was a farmer, and also owned and managed several passenger and mail routes in that section of the State. In 1843, he removed to Bath, N. Y., and took a contract for building part of the Erie Railroad. Subsequently he built the Buffalo, New York & Corning road, and as a contractor in other enterprises accumulated a fortune. He established a private banking house in Bath, which afterwards became the First National Bank. He was a generous man, and gave abundantly to the support of religious and educational institutions. In 1840, he was made a county Judge of the community in which he lived.

Mr. Henry Harvey Cook, the oldest surviving son of Judge Constant Cook, was one of a family of eight children. He was born in Cohocton, Steuben County, N. Y., May 13th, 1822. Educated at first in local schools, he then attended an academy in Canandaigua, after which he was for two years in business houses in Auburn and Bath. From 1844 to 1854 he was engaged in mercantile pursuits in Bath, and was highly successful. For a few years he was connected with the Bank of Bath, serving first as cashier and then as president. In 1875, he removed to New York City. Becoming interested in railroad enterprises, he has been active in the management of some of the largest railroads of the country, having been a director of the Union Pacific, the New York, Lake Erie & Western and the Buffalo, New York & Erie companies. He is also a director of the American Surety Company, the State Trust Company, and the National Bank of North America, in this city.

Mr. Cook married Mary McCay, daughter of William W. McCay, of Bath, N. Y. Their children are, Mrs. Clinton D. McDougal, Mrs. M. Rumsey Miller, Mrs. C. F. Gansen and Mrs. C. de Heredia. Mr. Cook is a member of the Metropolitan and Union League clubs, is a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and belongs to the New York Historical and the New York Geographical societies.

I34

EDWARD COOPER

N TO New Yorker is more gratefully remembered by his fellow-citizens for his manifold good deeds, or held in higher esteem for his integrity, than Peter Cooper, the distinguished philanthropist, who was the father of the Honorable Edward Cooper. His ancestors were citizens of New York from about the middle of the seventeenth century. On his father's side, his mother was the daughter of John Campbell, who was a successful business man and by his industry and business ability accumulated a considerable fortune before the Revolutionary period. He was an unflinching patriot in the stirring times that preceded the Revolution, and when the war finally broke out, he entered the Continental Army and served as Deputy-Quartermaster. His patriotism impelled him not only to give his services, but also to devote his means gener- ously to the cause of the struggling Colonies, and he was a large contributor to the Continental treasury, sacrificing the greater part of his ample fortune to the needs of his country. After the war, he was an alderman of New York. The father and the grandfather of Peter Cooper were of English origin. Both served in the Continental Army and the former held a commission as Lieutenant.

When peace had been declared between Great Britain and the United States, Lieutenant Cooper resumed his business, which was that of hatter, and resided in a house near Coenties Slip. There his son, Peter Cooper, was born, February 12th, 1791. The school education of Peter Cooper was limited. Most of his time he was employed in assisting his father in business. He learned the carriage making trade as an apprentice, but upon coming of age began the manufacture of machines for shearing cloth, and in a few years succeeded in laying the foundations for the great fortune that he subsequently acquired. He was engaged in other business enterprises until 1828, when he established the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore, Md., where he built, from his own designs, the first locomotive engine constructed on this continent. After that, he built other iron factories, rolling mills and blast-furnaces in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. Mr. Cooper established the famous Cooper Union and liberally endowed it both during his life time and by his will, and the institution has ever since been the special care of the Cooper family. He was an earnest student of political economy, and in 1876 was a candidate of the National Independent Party for the Presidency of the United States. He died April 4th, 1883.

Six children were born to Peter Cooper and his wife, Sarah Bedel, whom he married in 1813. Two only survived. Sarah A. is the wife of Abram S. Hewitt. The son, Mr. Edward Cooper, was born in New York, October 26th, 1824. He was educated in the public schools and in Columbia College. After a short time spent in traveling in Europe, he returned to associate himself with his father in business. He organized the firm of Cooper, Hewitt & Co., with his college classmate and friend, Abram S. Hewitt, and in the course of time the new concern succeeded to the vast interests of the Peter Cooper iron business. As an iron master and a practical and scientific metallurgical engineer, he stands at the head of his profession.

Politically, Mr. Cooper is a Democrat and has taken a prominent part in the councils of the party locally and nationally. About his first appearance in public affairs was as a member of the Committee of Seventy, through whose efforts the Tweed ring was overthrown, and there his labors were energetic and capable. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Charleston in 1860, and since then has been a delegate to nearly all the National Conventions of his party. He was Mayor of New York, 1879-81, and has been mentioned for the Democratic nomi- nation for Governor of the State. He has been identified with many corporations, including the United States Trust Company. As one of the trustees of the Cooper Union, he has been active in fostering and developing the institution that his father founded. Mr. Cooper resides at 12 Washington Square, North, and is a member of many social and benevolent organizations. His club membership includes the Union, Metropolitan, University and Knickerbocker clubs and the Century Association.

I35

AUSTIN CORBIN

T HE Corbin family is of sturdy New England stock. New Hampshire was the residence and birthplace of the ancestors of the subject of this article for many generations, and in that State the family has always been well known and of high standing. The present Mr. Corbin's grandfather on his father's side was one of the substantial landowners of the Granite State, and for several years sat in the Senate of New Hampshire.

The father of Mr. Austin Corbin brought the family name into high prominence in the business world during the last generation. The senior Austin Corbin, financier and railroad manager, was a native of Newport, N. H., where he was born July 11th, 1827. His father's circumstances afforded him every opportunity for a liberal education, and he was sent to an academy and to Harvard College, graduating finally from the Harvard Law School. Having been admitted to the bar, he practiced law for two years or more in New Hampshire, his partner at that time being Ralph Metcalf, who afterwards became Governor of the State.

In 1851, Mr. Corbin went West, and, taking up his residence in Davenport, la., soon met with an even greater degree of success in his profession than he had achieved in New Hampshire. Gradually he became interested in the banking business, and established a private bank in Daven- port, an institution that weathered the financial storms of 1857 and was reorganized in 1863 as the First National Bank of Davenport, being the first banking establishment in the United States to begin business under the Federal Banking Law that had then just been passed.

In 1865, Mr. Corbin removed to New York and devoted himself especially to banking and negotiating mortgage loans on farms in lowa and other Western States, a business that was then beginning to attract considerable attention in financial circles. In 1873, he established the Corbin Banking Company, of which he was the head. He undertook the reorganization of the Indiana, Bloomington & Western Railroad, and in 1880 became receiver of the Long Island Railroad, being made president of the corporation a year later.

His success in reorganizing the Long Island road and in developing the attractions of the summer resorts on Long Island in the interest of increased travel over the road are so well known that they need not be dwelt upon here. He was also prominently identified with the reorgan- ization of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, of which he was first a receiver and afterwards president. He was also president of the New York & New England, and the Elmira, Cortlandt & Northern Railroad, of the Manhattan Beach Company, and the New York & Rockaway Beach Railway, and a director of the American Exchange National Bank, the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Nassau Fire Insurance Company, and the Mercantile Trust Company. He was a member of the Manhattan, Players, Lawyers', Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht, Meadowbrook Hunt and Southside Sportsmen's clubs, and the New England Society of New York, and of the Somerset Club in Boston.

The mother of Austin Corbin, Jr., whom his father married in 1853, was Hannah M. Wheeler, daughter of Simeon Wheeler, a prominent citizen of Newport, N. H. Isabella, a daughter of this union, married George S. Edgell, and another daughter, Anna, was married in 1896 to Hallet Alsop Borrowe, son of the late Samuel Borrowe. Mary, the eldest daughter, married Rene Cherennot Champollion, grandson of Jean Francois Champollion, one of the first and most distinguished of French Egyptologists. Both M. Champollion and his wife are dead, her death occurring in Paris, in 1892. Their only son, Andre, the sole male descendant of the illustrious Champollion family, is being educated in America. Mr. Austin Corbin, Sr., died in 1896, as the result of an accident, being thrown from his carriage at his country estate in Newport, N. H.

Mr. Austin Corbin, Jr., who succeeds to his father's name and to the care of the family estate, was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1873. He graduated at Harvard in the class of 1896, and is a member of the Somerset Club, of Boston. His residence is at 763 Fifth Avenue.

136

JOHN CORNELL

T HOMAS CORNELL, who came to Boston in 1636 from Essex, England, was born in 1595, of a family which is numbered among the nobility and gentry of England, the name being originally Cornewall. The founder of the American branch of the family and ancestor of the subject of this article probably accompanied the celebrated Ann Hutchinson when she and her followers left Massachusetts in 1640. In 1646, he received a grant of about 160 acres from the local authorities at Portsmouth, R. I., which is still in the possession of the family. Later in the same year, he was in the New Netherland and received from Director General Kieft a grant of 700 acres on the East River, in Westchester County, which is still known as Cornell's Neck. Driven from this place by the Indians, he returned to Portsmouth, R. I., where he died in 1655, and was interred in the family burial ground upon the Cornell homestead, which has ever since been used for that purpose by the family. The Cornell's Neck tract passed to the Willett family through Sarah Cornell, daughter of Thomas, who married Thomas Willett.

Before leaving England, Thomas Cornell had married Rebecca Briggs and had five sons and four daughters. It is to Richard, the second son, that the Reverend Mr. Cornell traces his ancestry. Richard Cornell became the grantee of Rockaway, Long Island, and had a numerous family, his second son, William, 1670-1743, being the father of John Cornell, who married Abigail Whitehead. Their son, Whitehead Cornell, married Margaret Sebring and was father of John Cornell, of Brooklyn, 1753-1820, whose wife was Sarah Cortilyou, of New Utrecht. The Cortilyou property was acquired from the Najak Indians by Jacques Cortilyou, a learned Huguenot refugee, who was both a physician and sworn land surveyor to the Dutch Colony.

The family connection is a large one, and its representatives were found throughout the New England and Middle Colonies, whence branches have now reached all parts of the United States, the family name being in some instances changed or modified. Among its noteworthy members in early days were, John Cornell, a son of Richard, of Rockaway, who in 1741 was Colonel of the Queens County Militia. Ezekiel Cornell, a Rhode Island Revolutionary patriot, was Lieutenant-Colonel of Hitchcock's Regiment, became Deputy Adjutant-General of the Continental Army in 1776, and afterwards commanded a brigade of State troops. In 1780-83 he was delegate to Congress. In the last generation the name was rendered famous by the munificence of Ezra Cornell, who founded Cornell University at Ithaca, N. Y.

Isaac Russell Cornell, the father of the subject of this article, was the son of John and Sarah Cortilyou Cornell. He was born in Brooklyn in 1805 and married Elizabeth Mary Duyckinck, of New Brunswick, N. J., their son, Mr. John Cornell, being born in New York in 1839. He was educated at the Churchill School at Sing Sing, and was graduated at Princeton College in 1859 with the degree of B. A., receiving that of M. A. three years later. Adopting the clerical profession, he studied theology at the General Theological Seminary and was ordained to the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1863. In 1878 Mr. Cornell married Margaret Kathrine Osterberg, of Stockholm, Sweden.

A large portion of Mr. Cornell's life has been spent in foreign travel and residence. For nearly eighteen years he was Rector of the American Episcopal Church at Nice, France. He has visited all the chief cities and countries of Europe, and also traveled through the Holy Land and the Levant. Since his return to America, a few years since, Mr. Cornell has not taken a parish and has resided in the main at Washington, D. C.

Mr. Cornell owns the homestead of his first American ancestor, at Portsmouth, R. I., as well as the family burial ground, the whole comprising eighty acres of the original one hundred and sixty. The original Colonial house, parts of which dated back over two hundred years, was burned in 1889, but he has restored it upon the old foundation and substantially upon the old plan. The Cornell arms, borne by the family both in England and America and as given in Bolton's History of Westchester County, are: five castles in a cross, sable. Motto, Deus Noster Salus.

137

JOHN M. CORNELL

F IRST of the Cornell name to appear in the New World was Thomas Cornell, a son of Richard Cornell, of London. Arriving in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636, he removed to Rhode Island after a year or two, and thence to New Netherland, settling in Flushing, Long Island, where, in 1643, he received a grant of land from Governor Kieft. He also acquired real estate on the main land, afterwards called Cornell's Neck, now known as Willet's Neck or Point. From Thomas Cornell have come many distinguished descendants. Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University, Alonzo B. Cornell, former Governor of the State of New York, Thomas Cor- nell, of Rondout, one of the first steamboat men of the Hudson River and a Member of Congress, ex-President Theodore Woolsey of Yale College, and Colonel Marinus Willett, the eminent Revolu- tionary patriot, and other noted Americans, are among those who have pointed to him as their common ancestor.

The eldest son of Thomas Cornell was Richard Cornell, one of the most influential citizens of Flushing during the latter years of the Dutch regime. He was a deputy to the convention called by Governor Richard Nicolls in 1665, and under the English rule held the office of justice of the peace. He acquired considerable land by purchase from the Indians and other owners, and much of this property has remained in the hands of the family down to the present genera- tion. Richard Cornell left five sons, and his grandson, Thomas Cornell, became one of the wealth- iest and most influential residents of Long Island, serving continuously, save for one term, as a member of the Colonial Assembly, from 1739 until his death, in 1764. Three of the grandsons of Thomas Cornell remained loyal to the mother country in Revolutionary times, and two of them were Captains in the British Army, removing to Nova Scotia, with other royalists, at the close of the war. The third brother of this family was Whitehead Cornell, grandfather of the celebrated iron merchants who, in the last generation, made the name famous the world over. Whitehead Cornell held himself neutral during the Revolution, and afterwards was several times elected to the General Assembly of the State. He married Abigail Hicks, a descendant of John Hicks, one of the first settlers in Flushing.

Six of the grandchildren of Whitehead Cornell, children of his son Thomas, were boys, and born mechanics, and all of them were possessed of remarkable mechanical ability. One of the youngest, John B. Cornell, born in Far Rockaway in 1821, entered the iron business in 1836 with a firm of which his elder brother was the head, and which was the pioneer in its line in the United States. In 1847, he founded a new firm, and in 1848, when the elder brother died, the business that he had built up fell largely to the younger members of the family. The business prospered and soon became one of the largest and most important of its kind in this country. Mr. Cornell, who died in 1887, had completed fifty years of active business and accumulated a fortune, and was one of the most public-spirited and benevolent men of his generation. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a staunch abolitionist and a devoted temperance man. Much of his time and much of his wealth was given to educational, religious and philan- thropic enterprises. He was a working member of the boards of trustees of many of the benevolent and other societies of the Methodist Church, president for fourteen years of the New York City Church Extension and Missionary Society, president of the board of trustees of the Drew Theolog- ical Seminary, and a member of the board of trustees of several of the leading charitable institutions of New York.

Mr. John M. Cornell, who succeeded his father at the head of the concern that still retains the name of J. B. & J. M. Cornell, is the eldest of a family of seven. He was born in New York, August 27th, 1846. After his education in Mount Washington Collegiate Institute, he entered his father's establishment to learn the business. It was not long before he was taken into the concern as a partner of which he is now the sole owner. He married, in 1873, Sarah Keen, lives in East Thirty-Seventh Street, and has a summer residence in Seabright, N. J.

138

CHARLES HENRY COSTER

S INCE the latter part of the last century, the name of Coster has been prominent in both the business and the social world of New York. Its first representatives were two brothers, Henry A. and John Gerard Coster, natives of the City of Harlem, in the Netherlands, who came hither about the end of the last century. John G. Coster, the younger brother, had been educated as a physician, and had served in the Dutch Navy, but after the independence of America had been secured, and New York became the seat of [an active and increasing commerce, he joined his brother in founding a mercantile house which in time became, under their guidance, one of the most important in the city. Having connections with their native Holland, their business was at first mainly in the products of that country; but as their operations extended, they became the owners of numerous vessels and traded with the East and West Indies, and exported American commodities to Europe. At the same time that the brothers Coster were conspicuous for their success and enterprise, they were noted for their integrity and personal standing at a period when the merchants of New York were the most influential class in the community, and both were directors in many of the financial corporations of that date.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

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 22

Author: Weeks, Lyman Horace, ed Publication date: 1897 Publisher: New York, The Historical company Number of Pages: 650

Author: Weeks, Lyman Horace, ed
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: New York, The Historical company
Number of Pages: 650