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 33
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General Elisha Dyer, son of the Honorable Elisha Dyer, was born in Providence in 1839. He studied in Brown University and at the University of Geissen, in Germany, and graduated from the latter in 1860 with the degree of Ph. D. During the Civil War, he served in the Rhode Island Light Artillery as Lieutenant, and was wounded and promoted to be Major. In 1863, Governor James Y. Smith appointed him on his military staff with the rank of Colonel, and after the war he commanded the artillery of the State of Rhode Island. His public career began in 1877, when he was elected to the State Senate, and in 1881 he was a member of the General Assembly. In 1896, he was elected Governor of the State, and was inaugurated in 1897, forty years after his father's assumption of that office. In 1861, General Dyer married Nancy Anthony Viall, daughter of William and Mary B. (Anthony) Viall. They have three sons, Elisha Dyer, Jr., George Rathbone Dyer and Hezekiah Anthony Dyer.
Mr. Elisha Dyer, Jr., was born in Providence, R. I., in 1862. He was educated in St. Paul's School, Concord, N. H., and was graduated from Brown University. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar, but coming to New York engaged in the banking business, and for some years has been secretary and treasurer of the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad Company. In 1891, Mr. Dyer married Sidney (Turner) Swan, of Newport, R. ]. Mrs. Dyer's family has been prominent in Baltimore, Md. She is a descendant of the Turners of Virginia and the Pattersons of Maryland, her grandfather having been a brother of Madame Jerome Bonaparte. Mr. and Mrs. Dyer's residence is in West Thirty-second Street, and their Newport home is Wayside, in Bellevue Avenue. He is a member of the Knickerbocker Club. His brother, George Rathbone Dyer, a graduate of Brown University, is engaged in business in New York, and is a Captain in the Twelfth Regiment, N. G. S. N. Y.
198
HENRY EARLE
F OR nearly five hundred years previous to the beginning of the migration from England to this country, members of the Earle family were inhabitants of the territory included in the adjoining counties of Dorset, Somerset and Devon. The family is of ancient origin, dating to Saxon ancestry prior to the Roman Conquest. Sir Walter Earle, of Charborough, was one of the first patriots of the English Revolution of 1649. Ralph Earle, 1606-1678, the American progenitor of the family, was contemporary with and probably a kinsman of Sir Walter Earle. He came to this country in 1638 or before. In the records of the City of Newport, he appears in a list arranged in October, 1638, as " A catalogue of such persons who, by the general consent of the company, were admitted to the inhabitants of the island, now called Aqueednec, having sub- mitted themselves to the government that is or shall be established according to the word of God therein." In 1655, he was a juryman and again in 1669, and was also Captain of the troop of horse. By his wife, Joan Savage, he had two sons and three daughters.
A son of Ralph Earle and the ancestor of the branch of the family to which Mr. Henry Earle belongs, was William Earle, who died in 1715. He was a freeman of Portsmouth, R. I., in 1658, and afterwards removed to Dartmouth, Mass., where he was living in 1670. He was a deputy from Portsmouth to the General Assembly in Providence in 1704, and again to the General Assembly in Newport in 1706. His wife was Mary Walker, daughter of John and Katherine Walker. His son, Thomas Earle, lived in Portsmouth and Swansea, and died in Warwick, R. I., in 1727. The wife of Thomas Earle was Mary Taber, daughter of Philip and Mary Taber, of Dart- mouth, Mass. Oliver Earle, of the next generation, was a native of Swansea. For several years he lived in New York, where he was engaged in the East India trade. His wife was Rebecca Sherman, of Portsmouth, daughter of Samuel and Martha (Trip) Sherman.
In the succeeding generations from Oliver Earle to Mr. Henry Earle, came Caleb Earle, of Swansea, 1729-1812; Weston Earle, of Swansea, 1750-1838; Caleb Earle, of Providence, 1771 -! 851, and Henry Earle, of Providence, 1815-1854. The first Caleb Earle married Sarah Buffington, daughter of Benjamin and Isabel Buffington, and she was the ancestress in the fifth generation of Mr. Henry Earle. After the death of his first wife, he married Hannah Chace, daughter of Daniel and Mary Chace. Weston Earle, 1750-1838, son of Caleb Earle, married Hepzibeth Terry for his first wife, and their son, Caleb Earle, second of the name, the grandfather of Mr. Henry Earle, was a prominent citizen of Providence and served for one term as Lieutenant-Governor of the State of Rhode Island. His wife was Amey Arnold, daughter of Nehemiah and Alice Arnold, of Foster, R. I. The father of Mr. Henry Earle was Henry Earle, a son of Lieutenant-Governor Caleb Earle, his mother being Mary T. Pitman, daughter of Judge John and Rhoda (Talbot) Pitman, of Providence. The children of Henry and Mary T. (Pitman) Earle were: Mary T., who died in infancy; Henry, William P., and Joseph Pitman Earle.
Mr. Henry Earle, the eldest son of Henry and Mary T. (Pitman) Earle, was born in Provi- dence, R. 1., November 20th, 1843. He is engaged in mercantile business in New York and lives in Brooklyn. He married, in 1874, Alice Morse, daughter of Edwin and Abby M. (Clary) Morse, of Worcester, Mass., and has had four children, Alice Clary, Mary Pitman, Alexander Morse, and Henry Earle, his youngest child, who died in 1892. He belongs to the Downtown Association, the Marine and Field, Crescent Athletic, Barnard and Twentieth Century clubs, and is secretary of the Brooklyn Club.
The youngest brother of Mr. Earle, Joseph P. Earle, born in Providence in 1847, was graduated from Brown University in the class of 1871, and for many years has been engaged in business in New York. He is a member of the Tuxedo, Union League, Union, University, New York Yacht, Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht, Atlantic Yacht and other clubs, belongs to the Down- town Association and the Geographical Society, and is a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a member of the Chamber of Commerce. He lives in East Twenty-sixth Street.
199
DORMAN BRIDGEMAN EATON
A MONG the passengers on the ship Elizabeth and Ann, that sailed from London to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, were John Eaton, his wife Abigail and two children. They settled in Watertown, Mass., and the head of the family was a freeman in 1636. Subsequently he removed to Dedham, where he died in 1658. He was the ancestor of a family that is known in the history of New England as the Dedham Eatons, and which includes many representatives who have been distinguished in business and professional life. His son, John Eaton, who was born in 1636 and died in 1694, had by his wife Alice seven sons and one daughter, and of these sons, Thomas Eaton, who was born in 1675 and died in 1748, having married Lydia Gay in 1697, removed to Connecticut and was a man of much influence in Woodstock. David Eaton, 1706-1777, son of Thomas and Lydia (Gay) Eaton, was three times married: First to Dinah Davis; second to Bethia Tiffany, and third, to Patience Kendall. His son, David Eaton, removed to Hanover, N. H., and was a prominent citizen there, being an elder in the Presbyterian church in 1775 and a soldier in one of the Hanover companies of militia in the general alarm of 1777. He was the great-grandfather of the Honorable Dorman Bridgeman Eaton. Some of his descendants removed to Vermont and became the heads of families of prominence in that State. His grandson was the Honorable Nathaniel Eaton, who married Ruth Bridgeman, who was also of the best Vermont stock, coming from one of the old families of Caledonia County, in that State.
The Honorable Dorman Bridgeman Eaton, the son of Nathaniel Eaton and Ruth Bridgeman, was born in Hardwick, Vt., in 1823. He was graduated from the University of Vermont in 1848 and from the Law School of Harvard College in 1850. Admitted to the New York bar in 1851, he was early associated with Judge William Kent, whom he assisted in editing the Commentaries of the illustrious Chancellor James Kent. He has practiced with success at the bar and is the author of several legal works, and of many articles and addresses on similar subjects. Mr. Eaton has been one of the conspicuous leaders in the political reform movement, that has characterised the closing years of the century, in the United States. His life has been spent in New York, but his labors in the cause of civil service reform have given him an international reputation, while he is also an authority on municipal administration. An early member of the Union League Club, he was for many years chairman of its committee on political reform, and he drafted the laws under which the salaried fire department and the metropolitan Board of Health were created. In 1867, he drew up the sanitary code for New York and the act organizing the police courts of the city.
He has made the reform of the civil service virtually his life work. In this cause, he was a pioneer and has been the most uncompromising opponent that the spoils system has ever been called upon to face. In 1870, he went to Europe and spent three years studying the civil service systems of England and the Continental countries. The value of his work was acknowledged by President Grant, who made him a member of the first National Civil Service Commission, his pred- ecessor being the late George William Curtis. In 1877, he again visited Europe, the result of his investigations this time being a volume upon the Civil Service of Great Britain, which was published by authority of Congress and by Harper & Brothers. ' He drafted the act passed in 1883 organizing the United States Civil Service Commission, and was the first commissioner appointed thereto by President Arthur. In 1874, he drafted a code for the Government of the District of Columbia, at the request of the joint committee of both Houses of Congress.
Mr. Eaton has written much for the magazines and other periodicals, principally upon sub- jects relating to municipal and national government, among his most important essays having been The Independent Movement in New York, 1880, Term and Tenure of Office, and Secret Sessions of the United States Senate. He married Annie S. Foster and resides in East Twenty-ninth Street. He is a member of the Century Association, the Union League and Reform clubs, the leading legal societies, including the Bar Association, and the various organizations for municipal and civil service reform.
200
DAVID S. EGLESTON
E XETER, Devonshire, was the home of Bagot Egleston, who was born in 1590 and came to America in 1630. He married, while in England, Mary Talcott, of Braintree, in Essex. In 1631, he was a freeman of Dorchester and a man of influence. Afterwards he removed to Windsor, Conn., and died in 1674. His eldest son, John Egleston, married Hester Williams, sister of Morgan Williams, and was prominent in the Pequot War. Joseph Egleston, 1700-1774, of Windsor, Conn., and Sheffield, Mass., married, in 1730, Abigail Ashley, and thus became allied with many prominent New England families. Indeed, the Eglestons, Pattersons, Ashleys and Hydes frequently intermarried during the Colonial period. Seth Egleston, 1731-1772, the son of Joseph, was born in Westfield, Mass., and died in Sheffield. In 1754, he married Rachel Church, 1736-1825.
Major Azariah Egleston, paternal grandfather of the gentleman whose name appears at the head of this sketch, was the son of Seth and Rachel (Church) Egleston. He was one of the prominent men of western Masssachusetts in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the early years of the present century. He was born in Sheffield, Mass., in 1757 and died in Lenox in 1822. He was an active promoter of the famous Berkshire Convention, and it was very largely owing to his energetic work that the Solemn League and Covenant was adopted by that body. When the Revolution began, he, with his three brothers, enlisted in Captain Noble's Company. He was engaged in the battle of Bunker Hill, made the Canadian Campaign and fought at the battle of the Cedars and for his gallant conduct there was promoted to be ensign in 1777. He participated in the battles of Trenton and Princeton and endured the trials of Valley Forge with the army in the winter of 1777-78. He was a Lieutenant in the Massachusetts line in 1780. In 1786 he was aide-de-camp to Major-General Paterson, with the rank of Major and was active in the suppression of Shay's Rebellion, He was subsequently on the staff of Major-General Astley. He was a valued friend of Generals Lafayette and Kosciusko, and enjoyed confidential relations with General Washington. After the war, he was one of the founders of the Society of the Cincinnati and of the Massachusetts branch of that order. He held the position of justice of the peace of Berkshire County for nearly thirty years, was a representative to the General Court of Massa- chusetts, 1796-99, a State Senator, 1807-09 and Associate Judge of the Court of Sessions in 1808.
Thomas Jefferson Egleston, father of the gentleman whose name heads this article, was the son of Major Azariah Egleston. He was born in Lenox in 1800, and for more than twenty-five years was a prominent merchant in New York, where he died in 1861. In 1828, he married Sarah Jesup Stebbins, who was born in 1809. The children of this alliance were Thomas Stebbins Egleston, who was born in 1829 and died in 1831; David S. Egleston, born in 1830 ; Thomas Egleston, born in 1832; Theophilus S. Egleston, born in 1835 and died in 1838; Sarah Elizabeth, born in 1837; William Couch, born in 1839; George Washington Egleston, born in 1843; and Henry Paris Egleston, born in 1848 and died in 1886.
Mr. David S. Egleston is the eldest surviving child of the family. Early in life, he engaged in business as a merchant in New York. He married Fannie Hawley and resides in East Thirty- fifth Street, near Fifth Avenue. Mr. Egleston is a member of the Metropolitan, Union, and New York Yacht clubs, the Century Association, the Downtown Association, the National Academy of Design and the New England Society.
Professor Thomas Egleston, the second son, is a graduate of Yale College and of the School of Mines at Paris, France, and became a distinguished professor in Columbia College. He is an officer of the Legion of Honor of France. He married Miss McVickar and lives in Washington Square. He is a member of the Century Association and the Grolier Club. William Couch Egleston, the third surviving son of Thomas J. Egleston, is a graduate of Yale College, a member of the Metropolitan and Union clubs and a patron of the National Academy of Design. He resides in West Fifty-sixth Street.
201
1
GEORGE WILLIAM ELY
I T N the first two American generations of the Ely family were Nathaniel Ely and his wife, Martha, and Samuel Ely and his wife, Mary Day, daughter of Robert Day and Editha Stebbins. Nathaniel Ely, who was born in England in 1605, came to Massachusetts in 1634 and was one of the first settlers of the town of Hartford. His son, Samuel Ely, was a large property owner in Hartford, where he died in 1692. In the third American generation, Samuel Ely, second of the name, grandson of the pioneer, was the ancestor in the sixth generation of Mr. George William Ely. He was born in Springfield, Mass., in 1668, and died in West Springfield, in 1732. One of the earlier settlers of the town of Springfield, he was prominent in the local affairs of that community, being a selectman in 1702, 1716 and 1719. He was clerk of the town of West Springfield for nineteen years, beginning with 1702. He was twice married. His first wife was Martha Bliss, daughter of Samuel and Mary (Leonard) Bliss. She was born in Longmeadow, Mass., in 1674, and died in West Springfield in 1702, and was a member of the famous Bliss family, that has been prominent and influential in Western Massachusetts since the earliest Colonial days. His second wife, whom he married in 1704 and who died in 1766, was Sarah Bodurtha, daughter of Joseph and Lydia Bodurtha.
The third Samuel Ely was born in Springfield, in 1701, and died in West Springfield in 1758. He married, in 1722, Abigail Warriner, daughter of Samuel and Abigail (Day) Warriner. Abigail Warriner was descended on both sides from several of the oldest Colonial families of Western Massachusetts. She was born in 1703 and died in 1762. Thomas Ely, son of the second Samuel Ely, was born in West Springfield in 1725 and died in 1790. His wife, whom he married in 1756 and who died in 1807, was Sarah Merrick, daughter of Joseph and Mary (Leonard) Merrick. Their son, Captain Darius Ely, was born in West Springfield in 1761 and was among the early pioneers to the Western Reserve. He settled in Ravenna, Portage County, O., where he died in 1844. His wife was Margaret Ashley, daughter of Joseph Ashley, of West Springfield. She was born in 1765, married in 1786, and died in Ravenna in 1838. Joseph Merrick Ely, son of Darius and Margaret (Ashley) Ely, was born in West Springfield in 1802. Entering Yale College, he was graduated from that institution in 1829, and became one of the prominent educators of his generation, being principal of a classical school in New York for more than twenty-five years. The latter part of his life was spent in Pennsylvania, and he died in Athens, Bradford County, in that State, in 1873. His wife, whom he married in 1834, was Juliette Marie Camp, daughter of William and Abigail (Whittlesey) Camp.
Mr. George William Ely, the son of Joseph M. Ely, was born in New York, January 6th, 1840. After a thorough education, principally in private schools, he entered upon business life and has been for many years one of the prominent stock brokers of Wall Street. He has a seat in the Stock Exchange and is a member of the New York, Lawyers', Barnard and Whist clubs. Early in life, he joined the Seventh Regiment, and in 1862 went to the front as Captain, being the youngest Captain that the Seventh Regiment ever had. In 1864, Mr. Ely married, in Sey- mour, Conn., Frances Almira Wheeler, daughter of Henry and Nancy (Hotchkiss) Wheeler. For many years the residence of the family was in Brooklyn, but is now in West Eighty-eighth Street, near Central Park.
Mr. and Mrs. Ely have three children. Their elder son, Henry Bidwell Ely, who was born in New York in 1866, graduated from Columbia College in the class of 1888, is a lawyer, and one of the trustees of the William Astor estate. He belongs to the University, New York Athletic, Church and A 4 + clubs and to the Columbia College Alumni Association. He married Lillian E. Kissam and lives in West Twenty-sixth Street. The second son, Leonard W. Ely, who was born in Brooklyn in 1868, is a graduate from Columbia College and a practicing physician. He belongs to the New York Athletic Club and the Columbia College Alumni Association. The youngest child of the family is Agnes Merrick Ely.
202
THOMAS ADDIS EMMET, M. D.
T HE Emmets, who have been prominent in New York for three-quarters of a century, come from the stock made famous by the Irish patriot, Robert Emmet, who was executed in Dublin in 1803, and whose name has been from that time a rallying cry of Irish liberty. The father of Robert Emmet was a prominent physician in Dublin. His eldest son, Thomas Addis Emmet, who was the first of the family to come to this country, was born in Cork, April 24th, 1764. He was graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, and from Edinburgh Uni- versity in 1784, studied law in the Temple and was admitted to the Dublin bar in 1791. Becoming a leader of the United Irishmen, he was apprehended by the British authorities and confined in Kilmainham Jail, Dublin, and in Fort George, Scotland, for nearly four years, being liberated and exiled from his native land after the Treaty of Amiens. In 1804, he came to the United States.
In this country the talented advocate and Irish patriot soon rose to a position of prominence as a leader of the New York bar, and in 1812 became Attorney-General of the State. He died suddenly in 1827, while conducting a case in the United States Circuit Court, and was buried in the Marble Cemetery in Second Street, near Second Avenue. A monument to his memory stands in St. Paul's churchyard, in Broadway. Close by, in the same cemetery, is another shaft to the memory of Dr. William J. McNevin, the personal friend and revolutionary associate of Emmet, in collaboration with whom he wrote Pieces of Irish History. Several sons of Thomas Addis Emmet were prominent in New York during the first half of the present century. Robert Emmet, 1792-1873, was a lawyer and a leader in the contemplated Irish insurrection of 1848. Another son, Thomas Addis Emmet, 1798-1863, was a lawyer and Master in Chancery. A grandson, Thomas Addis Emmet, 1818-1880, was a civil engineer, for a long time connected with the aqueduct department of the City of New York.
The second son of Thomas Addis Emmet was Dr. John Patten Emmet, who was born in Dublin in 1797 and died in New York in 1842. He was at West Point for three years, and studied medicine for four years under Dr. William J. McNevin. Graduating with the degree of M. D. from the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons, he practiced in Charleston, S. C., 1822-24, and was then for many years professor of chemistry and natural history in the University of Virginia. He published many papers, principally upon chemistry, and was a sculptor of considerable skill.
Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, the present representative of the name, is the son of Dr. John Patten Emmet, and was born in Virginia, May 29th, 1828. He studied in the institution with which his father was connected, and then, graduating in medicine from the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia in 1850, began the practice of his profession in New York. In 1855, he became assistant surgeon to the Woman's Hospital, and in 1862 was promoted to be surgeon- in-chief, which position he held for ten years and then became one of the board of surgeons, and has remained as a visiting surgeon until the present time. He has written many papers upon medical subjects, and is the author of several publications in book form, among them, The Treatment and Removal of Fibroids, and The Principles and Practice of Gynecology, the latter being a standard work, published in the United States, England, Germany and France.
Dr. Emmet married Kate Duncan and has several children, his son, Dr. J. Duncan Emmet, being one of the assistant surgeons of the Woman's Hospital. The other children are Mrs. Charles N. Harris, Kathleen Emmet, Thomas Addis Emmet, Jr., and Robert Emmet, who, in 1897, married Louise, daughter of James A. Garland, of this city. Belonging to the chief medical societies of this country, Dr. Emmet has been elected an honorary member of many prominent bodies of that character in Europe. In 1897, Notre Dame University, of La Porte, Ind., awarded him the Laetare Medal, which is annually bestowed upon the most distinguished Ameri- can Roman Catholic and which is regarded as one of the highest honors that can be paid in this country to lay members of that church.
203
AMOS RICHARDS ENO
U UNDOUBTEDLY of Huguenot origin, the Eno family emigrated to England from France, where the name was Hennot, or Henno, and also existed in other forms of spelling. For a long time the family was established in Colchester, Essex County, England, where its members were people of high standing and influence. In this country the name has been variously spelled, Enno, Eno, Enos, Enoe, Eanos. The Rhode Island branch of the family has always used the name with a final s; the Delaware Enos are descended from the Rhode Island family. James Enno, the first American ancestor of that branch of the family to which the subject of this sketch belongs, was a native of London. He studied medicine and surgery in the institution in which the celebrated Sir Astley Cooper and others were afterwards apprentices, and, coming to this country in the early part of the seventeenth century, settled in Windsor, Conn., in 1648, where he married Anna Bidwell, daughter of Richard Bidwell. She died in 1657, and he married for his second wife Elizabeth Holcombe, widow. For his third wife, he married Hester Egleston, who was born Williams, the first white child in Hartford.
In the second generation, James Eno, son of the pioneer, was a soldier in the Indian Wars and fought in the famous Swamp Fight against the King Philip Indians. He married Abigail Bissell, daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth (Holcombe) Bissell, and died in 1714. The son of the second James Eno was David Eno, of Simsbury, Conn., 1702-1745. David Eno was a soldier in the French-Indian War, and died while taking part in the Cape Breton campaign. He married Mary Gillet, daughter of Nathan Gillet, and descended in the third generation from Nathan Gillet, who came from England to Connecticut in 1634. Jonathan Eno, of Simsbury, son of David Eno, was the grandfather of Mr. Amos Richards Eno. He died in 1813. His wife was Mary Hart, daugh- ter of Elijah and Abigail (Goodrich) Hart, of Berlin, Conn., and a descendant from Stephen Hart, who came to Cambridge, Mass., in 1630. She was born in 1744 and died in 1834. Salmon Eno, 1779-1842, father of Mr. Amos Richards Eno, was a man of prominence in Simsbury, and a member of the Connecticut Legislature in 1834. He had a family of six children; Emmeline, who married Ozias B. Bassett; Aaron Richards; Salmon Chester; Mary, who married Milton Humphrey; Jane, who married, first, Horatio Lewis, and second, Paris Barber; and Amos Richards.
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