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 29
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In 1878, having arranged the Cypriote collection at the Metropolitan Museum, the General was elected a trustee and secretary of the institution, and in 1879, he was also made its director. In this position during nearly twenty years General di Cesnola's executive ability, learning and artistic taste have been of incalculable service to the museum, the city and the cause of art and archæology.
Madame di Cesnola, whose marriage to the General, in 1861, has already been referred to, is of a parentage illustrious in our country's history. She was the second daughter of Captain Reid, the hero of the naval battle of Fayal. Her grandfather was Lieutenant John Reid, of the British Navy, a lineal descendant of Henry Reid, Earl of Orkney. While in command of a British expedition against New London, Conn., in 1778, Lieutenant Reid was captured by the Americans, and after a lengthy detention as a prisoner of war, resigned his commission, remained in this country, and in 1781, married Rebecca Chester, daughter of Colonel John Chester, of Norwich, Conn. The Chesters were descended from the ancient Earls of Chester. Sir Robert Chester, who was knighted by James I., in 1603, had a son, Captain Samuel Chester, who, in 1662, emigrated to Connecticut and settled in New London. His grandson, John Chester, served at Lexington and Bunker Hill, and was an officer in the Army of the Revolution.
Samuel Chester Reid was born at Norwich, Conn., in 1783. At eleven years of age he went to sea, and afterwards entered the United States Navy as a midshipman, and on the outbreak of the War of 1812, took command of the American privateer brig, General Armstrong, of New York, which he made one of the efficient vessels of its class. So great was the exaspera- tion of the British Navy against the General Armstrong, that, finding her in the harbor of Fayal, in September, 1814, a British squadron endeavored to cut the Armstrong out. Captain Reid's crew was ninety men. Under his leadership they fought with superhuman valor, and the British only gained the deck to retire repulsed after one of the most desperate conflicts in naval history. Captain Reid then scuttled and abandoned his vessel rather than allow her to be captured, and on his return to New York, he was received with the distinction his heroism merited, among other marks of honor being the presentation by the city of a silver service, and a gold sword, in company with General Scott and General P. B. Porter. For some years afterwards he was an officer in the navy, but retiring, became Warden of the Port of New York. He organized the present pilot system, established a marine telegraph between Sandy Hook and New York City, and founded the Marine Society. Another of his notable services was the designing, in 1818, of the national flag in its present form, so as to symbolize the motto of the United States, "E Pluribus Unum." Stripes and stars were then being added to it, on the admission of each new State, and the flag had become unwieldy in form. Captain Reid proposed that in future the stripes should be reduced to thirteen, commemorative of the original States, and the stars formed into one great star, Government flags to have stars in paralled lines. This design was adopted by an Act of Congress to Establish the Flag of the United States, approved 31st March, 1818. The first flag of this design was made by the wife of Captain Reid, and was first raised over the capitol at Washington, on the 13th of April, 1818. Captain Reid died in 1861, after a useful and honored life. His wife was Mary, daughter of Captain Nathan Jennings, of Wilmington, Conn., who fought at Lexington, at the battle of Trenton, and other engagements of the Revolution.
General and Madame di Cesnola have two daughters, Eugenie Gabrielle and Louise Irene di Cesnola. The family residence is 109 East Fifty-seventh Street. The General's country seat, La Favorita, is an estate of seventy-six acres, in the village of New Castle, Westchester County, N. Y. The arms of Palma di Cesnola are : a palm tree, proper ; crest, a count's coronet, supported by a lion and a crowned eagle, proper. Motto : Oppressa Resurgit.
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HORACE EDWARD DICKINSON
T HE Dickinsons are descended from an old English county family of Yorkshire. Through one of his ancestors in the sixteenth century, Mr. Horace E. Dickinson can trace his lineage direct to King Edward III., of England. The line of descent from this royal ancestor is through Joan of Beaufort, daughter of King Edward's son, John, of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Joan of Beaufort married Ralph Nevill, the first Earl of Westmoreland, and her great- grandson, Richard Nevill, second Lord Latimer, had a daughter, Elizabeth Nevill. The husband of Elizabeth Nevill was Sir Christopher Danby, High Sheriff of Yorkshire, in 1545, and great- grandson of Sir Richard Danby, of Farnley, who was Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, 1460-72. Elizabeth Danby, the daughter of Sir Christopher Danby and his wife, Elizabeth, married John Dickinson, of Leeds, one of the leading woolen merchants and cloth manufacturers of his day, and an alderman of the city from 1525 until the time of his death, in 1554. John Dickinson and his wife, Elizabeth, were the ancestors of Mr. Horace E. Dickinson.
John Dickinson was in the ninth generation from the first of the family name in England, Johnne Dykonson, who was a freeholder of Kingston-upon-Hull, East Riding, of Yorkshire, in the reigns of Henry Ill. and Edward I. and II. His wife was Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Lambert, of Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire, and of the Well Close, in Hull, an estate that came into her possession after her father's death. Well Close was originally an old Saxon monastery, dating from the time of St. Cuthbert and the Danes, and took its name from an old well in the close to whose waters peculiar curative powers were ascribed. Hugh Dykensonne, of Hull, a grandson of Johnne Dykonson, was a prominent merchant of that city, and one of the original Governors of the Guild of the Holy Trinity, now called Trinity House. His son, Anthoyne Dickensonne, of Hull, was a merchant and master-builder. He made some extensive repairs to York Minster, in 1385, and also erected the Priory and Hospital of St. Michael, founded by his father-in-law, Sir William de la Pole, who was First Gentleman of the Bed Chamber to Edward III., second Baron of the Exchequer, Collector of the Ports of Boston and Hull, 1338-56, and first Mayor of Hull from 1332-35, and again from 1338-56.
The grandson of Anthoyne Dickensonne was Thomas Dickinson, of Hull, who was the first to spell his name as it is now most commonly used. He was an alderman in 1443, and Mayor in 1444. He married his kinswoman, Margaret Lambert, daughter of Sir Thomas Lambert, of Oulton, County Durham, standard bearer to Richard II. The mother of Margaret Lambert was Joan Umfravill, daughter of Sir Thomas Umfravill, of Harbottle Castle, Northumberland County, and sister of Sir Robert Umfravill, Knight of the Garter and Lord High Admiral of England.
Hugh Dickinson, of Hull, the son of Mayor Thomas Dickinson, and the seventh in descent from the first of the family name, sold the family homestead, Well Close, on the Humber, and bought Kenson Manor, on the Aire, near Leeds. His son, William Dickinson, of Kenson Manor, married Isabel Langton, of Ecclesfield, daughter of John Langton, of Ecclesfield, High Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1509, and his grandson was the John Dickinson who, in the sixteenth century, became the husband of a descendant from King Edward 111. To this John Dickinson was granted the coat of arms to which the family has since been entitled : Azure, a fesse ermine between two lions passant, or .; crest, a demi-lion rampant, per pale ermine and azure. Motto : Esse Quam Videri.
William Dickinson, the son of John Dickinson and Elizabeth Danby, removed to the parish of Bradley, South Staffordshire, where his father erected for him a substantial mansion, the lower story of stone and the upper stories of timber. This he named Bradley Hall, and it has remained standing and in good preservation down to this generation, as one of the most substantial and picturesque of the old English manor houses. Thomas Dickinson, the grandson of William Dickinson, was connected with the Portsmouth Navy Yard from 1567 to 1587, and settled in Cambridge in 1587, where he married Judith Carey, daughter of William Carey, of Bristol.
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Three grandsons of Thomas Dickinson, sons of William Dickinson, barrister at law, of Cambridge, came to America in the seventeenth century. The second son, John Dickinson, arrived in Boston, in 1630, and went to live, first at Barnstable, Mass., then at Salisbury, Mass , and finally at Oyster Bay, Long Island. He was a sea captain and became a Quaker. The third son, Thomas Dickinson, also came to Boston, in 1630, and settled at New Haven, in 1643, and Fairfield, Conn., in 1645, dying in the latter place in 1658.
Nathaniel Dickinson, the elder of these three brothers, and from whom the subject of this sketch is descended, was born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England, in 1600, the fourteenth in descent from the original Johanne Dykonson, of the thirteenth century. Educated at Cambridge, he became a non-conformist and joined the Cambridge Company that was formed in August, 1629, by Winthrop, Dudley and Saltonstall, and sailed from Southampton for Massachusetts in March of the next year. He first settled at Watertown, Mass., where he remained for five years, and then removed to Wethersfield, Conn. In 1637, he was a freeman of that town, recorder or town clerk, 1640-59, and a representative to the General Court and selectmen, 1646-56. With the Reverend Mr. Russell, he was appointed to lay out the town of Hadley, Mass., to which place he removed in 1659. There he was town clerk in 1660, rate maker, 1661-76 ; selectman, 1660 and 1666 ; member of the Hampshire Troop of Horse, 1663; one of the committee to build the meeting house in 1661, and school director, 1669-76. He was the progenitor of all the New England Dickinsons.
The seventh son of Nathaniel Dickinson, the American pioneer, himself named Nathaniel Dickinson, lived in Wethersfield, Conn., and Hadley and Hatfield, Mass., being a selectman and surveyor of the latter town. He died in 1710. His grandson, John Dickinson, 1707-1799, was a Colonel and Revolutionary soldier, a Captain in the French-Indian Wars, and, in the War for Independence, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Second Hampshire Regiment of Militia.
General Lemuel Dickinson, son of Lieutenant-Colonel John Dickinson, was also a soldier of the Revolution. He was born in Hatfield, Mass., in 1753. In the Revolutionary War he was a private, in Captain Joseph Raymond's company, that formed a part of Colonel Hyde's Regiment of Massachusetts Militia. Afterwards he was commissioned Captain, and then a Colonel, in the Massachusetts Militia, and during Shay's Rebellion was Brigadier General of the troops. His wife, whom he married in 1770, was Molly Little, who was a descendant of Richard Warren, who came over in the Mayflower. Richard Warren was a descendant in the direct male line from William, first Earl de Warrenre, who married Gundred, daughter of William the Conqueror. Molly Little was also a descendant of three Colonial Governors, John Haynes, of Massachusetts and Connecticut, Thomas Dudley, of Massachusetts, and George Wyllys, of Connecticut. General Dickinson died in 1835. His eldest son, Horace Dickinson, was born in Hatfield, Mass., in 1780. Horace Dickinson removed to Canada, when he was about thirty years of age, and became a prosperous merchant in Montreal, establishing a line of mail and passenger steamers and coaches from Montreal to Kingston. He married Amelia, daughter of Abijah Bigelow, of Waltham, Mass., who was a minute man at Lexington, fought at Bunker Hill, and in the Revolutionary War.
Mr. Horace Edward Dickinson, the grandson of Horace Dickinson, of Montreal, Canada, is in the twenty-first generation of descent from Johanne Dykonson, of England, and in the seventh generation of descent from Nathaniel Dickinson, who came to America in 1630. He was born in New York City, in 1858, and is now engaged in the dry goods importing business. He lives at 85 East Sixty-fifth Street, and belongs to the New York Athletic and Knickerbocker Riding clubs, and is a member of the Sons of the Revolution.
In 1887, Mr. Dickinson married Nellie R. Poulet, daughter of Alexis Poulet and Rebecca Acton. Through her mother, Mrs. Dickinson is a lineal descendant of Captain Richard Acton, of the English Navy, the third son of Sir Edward Acton, Baronet of Aldenham Hall, County Salop. He fought under Admiral Blake against the Dutch in 1650-60, and came to Maryland with Governor Charles Calvert, about 1665, settling at Calverton, in Anne Arundel County, where he died.
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JOHN FORREST DILLON
B ORN in Northampton, Montgomery County, N. Y., December 25th, 1831, John Forrest Dillon was only seven years of age when his parents removed to Davenport, la., which at that time was a village far upon the frontier. There the family lived for many years, and there the future Judge Dillon was brought up and made his home for forty years. In early life, he had an inclination to the study of medicine, and applied himself to that pursuit for about three years. Eventually, however, he determined to become a lawyer, but when he was about twenty years of age, the death of his father led him to go into business life, in which he was engaged until 1852. During this time, however, he continued his legal studies, and in 1852 was admitted to the bar, becoming a partner in the firm of Cook & Dillon, which was afterwards Cook, Dillon & Lindley.
The same year that he began to practice, he was elected State prosecuting attorney for Scott County, la. In 1858, he was elected Judge of the Seventh Judicial District of lowa, and from that time on his judicial career was uninterrupted for about twenty years. He served two terms as incumbent of the judicial office to which he was first elected, and six years as a Judge of the Supreme Court of Iowa. Reelected to that position in 1869, he resigned to accept an appointment as United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Judicial Circuit, which embraced the States of Minne- sota, lowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Colorado. As a Judge he had a reputation throughout the country for his uprightness, for the fullness of his legal knowledge and for the breadth, originality and soundness of his opinions.
In 1879, Judge Dillon was offered the position of professor of real estate and equity jurispru- dence in the Law School of Columbia College. That position he accepted and removed to New York in September, 1879, returning to private practice in conjunction with his duties in the law school. He became general counsel for the Union Pacific Railroad Company and formed a law partnership with General Wager Swayne, which continued for several years. He is now the senior member of the firm of Dillon & Hubbard, is counsel for the Union Pacific Railroad, and also general counsel in New York for the Missouri Pacific Railway system and other railroad corporations.
Judge Dillon is recognized as one of the greatest corporation lawyers of the United States, and also has a high reputation as an author of legal works. During his career in lowa, he estab- lished and edited The Central Law Journal, the only law periodical published in the Mississippi Valley at that time. He also edited and published The Digest of lowa Reports and a five-volume edition of United States Circuit Court Reports. He is the author of Dillon on Municipal Corpora- tions, a work which has passed through many editions and has been characterized as a legal classic. It is constantly cited as an authority by the courts, not only in the United States, but in all English- speaking countries. Another of his works is The Laws and Jurisprudence of England and America, which was originally a series of lectures delivered at the Yale Law School. He has also published many occasional addresses and lectures on legal subjects. In 1875, Judge Dillon made a tour of Europe and attended the third annual conference of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations, which met at The Hague, and of which he was a member. He made a second tour of Europe in 1883, and the following year was elected a member of L'Institut de Droit International. In 1896, he was a member of the commission appointed to draw up the charter for the Greater New York.
In 1853, Judge Dillon married a daughter of the Honorable Hiram Price, of Davenport, la., and has had a family of two sons and two daughters. His elder son, Hiram Price Dillon, was graduated from the Law School of the University of Iowa, and is now a practicing lawyer in Kansas. The other son, John M. Dillon, is also a lawyer, and a graduate from the Columbia Law School. He married Lucy Downing. Judge Dillon is a member of the Bar Association of the City of New York and of the Union League, Lawyers' and University clubs, and is a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He resides at his country home, Knowlcroft, in Far Hills, N. J.
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WILLIAM B. DINSMORE
IN Ireland and Scotland, the names of Dunsmore, Dinsmuir and Dinsmore are frequently found, the different forms all pertaining to different branches of the same family. In Ireland, many Dinsmoors have been located from time immemorial in the vicinity of Ballymoney, County Antrim. They are probably descended from John Dinsmoor, who emigrated from Scotland to Ulster. Laird Dinsmoor, the progenitor of the family and the earliest known ancestor, was a Scotchman, who was born about 1600. John Dinsmore, the son of Laird Dinsmoor, who was born in Scotland about 1650, left the paternal home and removed to the Province of Ulster.
John Dinsmore, who was born in Ballywattick, Ballymoney, County Antrim, Ireland, as early as 1671, was the son of John Dinsmore and grandson of Laird Dinsmoor. He was the pro- genitor of nearly all the Dinsmoors or Dinsmores who have been distinguished in the history of New England. Coming to America about 1723, he was early taken prisoner by the Indians, but finally settled in the Scotch Colony of Londonderry, N. H. Afterwards he made his home in what is now Windham, Vt., where he prospered as a farmer and died in 1741. Robert Dinsmore, son of the American pioneer, came to New Hampshire in 1730 with his wife, Margaret Orr, whom he had married in Ireland. He became prominent in town affairs and held many public offices. He died in 1751 and his wife died the following year. From Robert Dinsmore and his wife, Margaret Orr, have come many distinguished descendants. One of his grandsons was Colonel Silas Dinsmore, who was born in Windham, N. H., in 1766 and died in Kentucky in 1847. Another distinguished descendant was Governor Samuel Dinsmore, who was born in 1766, graduated from Dartmouth College, was a member of the National House of Representatives and Governor of the State of New Hampshire. His son, Samuel Dinsmore, was also Governor of New Hampshire. Among other distinguished descendants from Robert Dinsmore, have been the Honorable Leonard Allison Morrison, member of the House and Senate of the New Hampshire Legislature, and the Reverend C. M. Dinsmore, the Methodist clergyman.
A prominent representative of the family in the last generation, and in the eighth generation of descent from Laird Dinsmoor, was William B. Dinsmore, well known in the business world from his long-time connection with the Adams Express Company. He was born in Boston in 1810 and spent his boyhood days upon a farm in New Hampshire. Returning to Boston when still a young man, Mr. Dinsmore became associated with Alvin Adams, who was then starting an express line between Boston and New York. Mr. Dinsmore came to New York in 1842 to take charge of the business here, while Mr. Adams was its manager in Boston. His success here from the outset was decided, and soon afterwards he became associated with John Hoey, who in the course of time became his partner. To Mr. Dinsmore and Mr. Hoey, after Alvin Adams, was entirely due the phenomenal success of the Adams Express Company. Upon the death of Alvin Adams, Mr. Dinsmore became president of the company. He was a director in the American Exchange Bank, the Pennsylvania Railroad and other corporations. He owned one of the largest herds of Alderney cattle in the United States, and made his home principally at Staatsburgh, N. Y. His wife was Augusta M. Snow, of Brewster, Mass., and when he died, in 1888, he left two sons, William B. and Clarence Gray Dinsmore.
Mr. William B. Dinsmore, second of the name, was born in New York in 1844 and is secre- tary of the express company with which his father was so long identified. He married, in 1866, Helen F. Adams, daughter of Alvin Adams, his father's business associate. The home of the family is in East Forty-seventh Street. Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore have two daughters, Helen Gray, who married R. P. Huntington, and Madeleine I. Dinsmore. Their only son, William B. Dinsmore, Jr., graduated from Harvard University in the class of 1893 and married Marion de Peyster Carey. The senior Mr. Dinsmore is a member of the Union League, New York Athletic, Racquet and New York Yacht clubs. His brother,. Clarence Gray Dinsmore, married Kate Jerome and is a member of the Metropolitan and Tuxedo clubs and prominent in social life.
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CHARLES HEALY DITSON
N O name is better known in the annals of music in the United States than that of Ditson. Oliver Ditson, who was the first of the family so prominently identified with it, was a native of Boston, where he was born in 1811. His family belonged to the old North End, which a century ago and less was the aristocratic section of the city. Opposite to the home of his boyhood, was the residence of Paul Revere, of Revolutionary renown. The father of Oliver Ditson was a ship owner, and both his parents were of Scottish descent. Oliver Ditson attended school in Boston until prepared for a business life. At an early age, he entered the book store of Colonel Samuel H. Parker, and within a few years was a partner with his employer, under the firm name of Parker & Ditson. His musical tastes had already manifested themselves, and before he was out of his teens he was organist and choir leader in the Bulfinch Street Baptist Church, and had organized and led the Malibran Glee Club. In 1840, he bought out his partner and became the sole proprietor of the establishment, entering upon a business that soon brought him both fame and fortune.
Soon after acquiring possession of this business, he gave up bookselling entirely, and begar. to publish music, an employment for which his natural musical tastes, combined with a keen business sagacity, eminently qualified him. From that time on, he became exclusively a music publisher, and before many years had elapsed the house he had established was one of the foremost concerns in the world in that particular line. He absorbed several other music publishing houses and concentrated the entire business in Boston, investing a large amount of capital in so doing. In 1867, Mr. Ditson opened a branch house in New York City, under the direction of his son, with the firm name of Charles H. Ditson & Co. The Philadelphia house of J. E. Ditson & Co., with another son at its head, was established in 1875 ; the Chicago branch, known as Lyon & Healy, became the largest of its kind in the Northwest, and there was another branch in Boston, known as John C. Haynes & Co. For twenty-one years, Oliver Ditson was president of the Continental National Bank of Boston, and a trustee of the Franklin Savings Bank and of the Boston Safe Deposit Company.
Apart from his services to music in his business, Mr. Ditson was one of the most active and generous supporters of all musical enterprises. He sent talented young people to Europe for study, promoted many orchestral and musical societies and saved the first Peace Jubilee in Boston from failure by subscribing some twenty-five thousand dollars to carry through the enterprise at a time when its discouraged promoters were about to abandon it.
Mr. Charles Healy Ditson, who has been at the head of the New York branch of the Ditson publishing house for thirty years, is the eldest son of Oliver Ditson and was born in Boston, Mass., August 11th, 1845, receiving his education in that city. His mother, whom his father married in 1840, was Catharine Delano, of Kingston, Mass., daughter of Benjamin Delano, who was a direct descendant of William Bradford, the second Governor of the Ply- mouth Colony. Mr. Ditson has one elder sister, the widow of Colonel Burr Porter. He had two brothers, James Edward Ditson, who died in 1881, and Frank Oliver Ditson, who died in 1885. For twelve years, Mr. Charles H. Ditson was secretary and treasurer of the Music Publishers' Association of the United States. He is now treasurer of the Oliver Ditson Co., of Boston, of Charles H. Ditson & Co., of New York, and of the Oliver Ditson Society for the Relief of Needy Musicians, and is also a trustee of his late father's estate.
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