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 34
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Mr. Amos Richards Eno, present head of this family, was born in Simsbury in 1810. When he was a young man about twenty-one years of age, he came to New York and, in partnership with his cousin, John J. Phelps, opened a dry goods store. The new firm was soon one of the leading wholesale houses in the city. Mr. Eno continued in this business for nearly twenty years, when the firm was dissolved. Meantime he had become largely interested in real estate in New York, and thenceforth devoted himself to those interests. Through his real estate transactions, he accumulated a handsome fortune, and has long been rated as one of the most substantial real estate owners in New York. He has been a director of the Second National Bank, and a member of the Reform Club and the New England Society, and has been connected with many other leading financial institutions and social organizations. Mr. Eno married Lucy Jane Phelps, daughter of the Honorable Elisha and Lucy (Smith) Phelps, of Simsbury. Mr. Phelps was a member of the National House of Representatives from Connecticut and Speaker of the House in 1821 and 1829.
Amos F. Eno is the eldest son of Mr. Amos R. Eno. He was born in New York and has been chiefly engaged throughout his business life in real estate transactions. He is a member of the Manhattan and Union League clubs, the Century Association, the Downtown Association, the New England Society and the American Geographical Society, and is a patron of the American Museum of Natural History.
Other children of Mr. Eno are: Mary J., Anna Maria, Henry Clay, Antoinette, John Chester, and William Phelps Eno. Henry Clay Eno was graduated from Yale College in 1860, received the degree of A. M. in 1863, and the degree of M. D. from Columbia College in 1864, and has resided for some years in Saugatuck, Conn.
204
JOHN ERVING
O NE of the most distinguished families of New York and New England is that to which Mr. John Erving belongs. He is descended from General William Shirley, Colonial Governor of Massachusetts Bay, and from the Langdons, who in early Colonial and Revolutionary times were prominent in the affairs of New Hampshire and have been related in marriage to the Astors, Kanes, Van Rensselaers and other great families of New York. The remote ancestors of Mr. Erving were King Henry 1., of France, and his wife, Anne of Russia, daughter of the Grand Duke Jaroslaus, of Russia. The line of lineage is through Prince Hugh, the Great, son of King Henry and his wife, Lady Adela, who was descended from Edward, King of England; Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester and Mellent, and his successors; the Barons and Baronesses of Dudley, down to Edmund Sutton de Dudley, in the sixteenth century, who married Lady Maud, daughter of the eighth Lord of Clifford, and was the father of Thomas Dudley, the great-grandfather of Thomas Dudley, the American immigrant.
Thomas Dudley was born in Cannon's Ashby about 1576. At the siege of Amiens, he commanded a company of Northamptonshire men. He was steward to the Earl of Lincoln until 1630, when he came to America with Governor John Winthrop. Before leaving England, he was chosen Assistant and Deputy-Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, was elected Governor in 1634, and for three times thereafter, and in 1644, was Commander-in-Chief of the Colonial forces. He died in Roxbury, Mass., in 1653. The Reverend Samuel Dudley, son of Thomas Dudley, was born in England about 1606, and came to this country with his father. He was a deputy to the General Court of Massachusetts for several years. By his first wife, Mary Winthrop, daughter of Governor John Winthrop, whom he married in 1632, he had a daughter, Elizabeth, who married Judge Kinsley Hall, of Exeter, N. H. The granddaughter of Judge Kinsley Hall and his wife, Elizabeth Dudley, was Mary Hall, who married John Langdon, of Portsmouth, N. H., and became the mother of Governor John Langdon.
Governor Langdon was one of the most distinguished members of a family that stood high in public councils and wielded great influence in New Hampshire in the last century. He was born in 1740 and died in 1819, was a delegate to the General Congress in 1775, a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1776, Speaker of the House of Representatives of New Hampshire, 1776-82 and 1804-05, delegate to the Continental Congress in 1783, a State Senator in 1784, Governor of the State, 1785-88 and 1805-11, and United States Senator for twelve years after 1789. A brother of Governor John Langdon was Judge Woodbury Langdon, delegate to the Continental Congress in 1779 and Judge of the Superior Court, 1762-91. Caroline Langdon,
daughter of Judge Woodbury Langdon, married Dr. William Eustis, who was Governor of the State of Massachusetts, 1823-25. Walter Langdon, son of Judge Woodbury Langdon, married Dorothea Astor, daughter of John Jacob Astor, and became the head of a family that has been prominent in New York business and social life for several generations. Governor Langdon was the grandfather of Mr. Erving. His wife, whom he married in 1777, was Elizabeth Sherburn. His eldest daughter, Catharine C. Langdon, married Benjamin Woolsey Rogers, and his second daughter, Eleanor E. Langdon, became the wife of Dr. Edmund Delafield. The father of Mr. Erving was Colonel John Erving, U. S. A., who died in 1862. His mother was Emily S. Elwyn Langdon, the fourth child of Governor Langdon.
Mr. John Erving was born in 1833 and was graduated from Harvard College in 1853. He has been in the active practice of his profession as a lawyer in New York for more than forty years. He married Cornelia Van Rensselaer, daughter of William and Sarah (Rogers) Van Rensselaer, of Albany, N. Y. His sons are J. Langdon Erving and William Van Rensselaer Erving, and he has several daughters. His city residence is in West Twenty-second Street, and he has a country home at Manursing Island, Rye, N. Y. He is a member of the Union League, Harvard and City clubs and the Bar Association.
205
WILLIAM MAXWELL EVARTS
L IKE many of New York's most eminent citizens, Mr. William M. Evarts is of New England descent. His father, Jeremiah Evarts, was born at Sunderland, Vt., in 1781, was graduated from Yale College in 1802, and in 1804 married Mrs. Mehitabel Barnes, daughter of Roger Sherman, 1721-1793, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and a member of the committee which drafted it. Jeremiah Evarts practiced law at New Haven for some years, but becoming interested in religious work, he removed in 1810 to Charlestown, Mass., and till his death, in 1831, was identified with the cause of foreign missions. He was editor of The Panoplist, and of its successor, The Missionary Herald. In 1812, he became treasurer of the American Board of Foreign Missions, and in 1821 was made its corresponding secretary, a position he retained till his death. The Honorable William Maxwell Evarts, his son, was born at Charlestown, Mass., February 6th, 1818. He received his education at the Boston Latin School, and entering Yale College graduated in 1837. He then taught school, attended the Harvard Law School, and finally entered the law office of Daniel Lord, the celebrated lawyer in this city. Admitted to the bar in 1841, he formed a partnership from which the law firm of Evarts, Choate & Beaman originated. Mr. Evarts' legal and political career were to a large extent interwoven, owing to the fact that he was universally recognized by the profession and the public as one of the ablest constitutional and international lawyers this country ever possessed. In 1860, he was chairman of the New York delegation to the Republican National Convention at Chicago, supporting William H. Seward. For some years afterwards he was mainly occupied with causes before the Supreme Court, but in 1863 went to England, for the Government, on a confidential mission.
In 1868, he came prominently before the country for his defense of Andrew Johnson in the impeachment proceedings. At their conclusion, he was appointed by President Johnson Attorney- General of the United States, which office he held for the remainder of that administration. In 1871, President Grant appointed him the leading counsel for the United States (his associates being the late Chief Justice Waite and Caleb Cushing) to present this country's case before the international tribunal at Geneva, under the treaty of Washington. The result, an award of fifteen million dollars, paid by England to the United States, for depredations on our commerce committed by the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers fitted out in England during the Civil War, was largely due to Mr. Evarts' diplomatic skill and the knowledge of international law displayed in his presentation of the case. In 1875-76, Mr. Evarts was senior counsel in the defense of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher. In the early months of 1877, he appeared as the leading counsel for the Republicans before the Electoral Commission. President Hayes then appointed Mr. Evarts Secretary of State, which office he filled with honor to himself and the country. In 1881, he was appointed by President Garfield a delegate to the International Monetary Conference at Paris, and in 1885 one of his few personal ambitions was fulfilled by an election as United States Senator for this State. At the conclusion of his Senatorial term he gradually retired from public life.
Few lawyers of such eminence have ever been so popular with their professional associates as Mr. Evarts. He was the first president of the New York Bar Association, which office he held for ten years, and he has long been a member of the Union, Union League, Century and other clubs, of the New England Society and of many social and literary bodies. His reputation as an orator is also deservedly high. The public occasions on which he appeared in this rôle include a eulogy of Chief Justice Chase at Dartmouth College in 1875, the Centennial oration at Philadelphia in 1876, and that at Newburgh in 1893, as well as addresses at the unveiling of the Seward and Webster statues in New York, and of Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty.
Mr. Evarts married Helen Minerva Wardner, daughter of Allen Wardner, of Windsor, Vt. Their surviving children are Allen Wardner Evarts, Mrs. Charles C. Beaman, Mary Evarts, Mrs. Charles H. Tweed, Mrs. Edward C. Perkins, Sherman Evarts, the Reverend Prescott Evarts, Mrs. Charles D. Scudder, and Maxwell Evarts.
206
CHARLES STEBBINS FAIRCHILD
F OR two generations, in the person of father and son, the Fairchilds have exercised a potent influence in the business and political life of the Empire State. The father, Sidney T. Fairchild, eldest son of John and Flavia Fairchild, was born in Norwich, N. Y., November 15th, 1808. His parents removed to Cazenovia when he was a mere child, and he attended the seminary in that place, going afterwards to Hamilton College and then to Union College, being graduated from the latter institution in 1829. After studying law in Cazenovia, he was admitted to the bar in 1831, and removed to Utica, where he began the practice of his profession. His marriage in 1834 to Helen Childs, daughter of Perry G. Childs, of Cazenovia, brought him back to that place to reside, and there, in 1835, he became a member of the law firm of Stebbins & Fairchild. Corporation law was his specialty, and he soon became one of the leading members of the bar in that section of the State. He was made attorney of the Syracuse & Utica Railroad, which afterwards became a part of the New York Central system, and from 1858 until his death, in 1889, was the general attorney of the New York Central Railroad.
An accomplished gentleman and lawyer, Sidney T. Fairchild made a great reputation, and was very successful in his professional career. Outside of his legal practice, he had important business interests. He was a director and the secretary and treasurer of the third Great Western Turnpike Railroad Company, a director of the Madison County Bank, president of the Cazenovia & Canastota Railroad, and a trustee of the Union Trust Company of New York. He was a Democrat of deep convictions and active in the party councils. Although a leader in conventions and in shaping the party policy in the State, he never accepted public office, although such honors were many times tendered him. He was the valued adviser and esteemed friend of such great Democrats as Horatio Seymour, Dean Richmond, John T. Hoffman, Samuel J. Tilden, Lucius Robinson and Grover Cleveland.
The Honorable Charles Stebbins Fairchild was born in Cazenovia, N. Y., April 30th, 1842. Prepared for college in the Cazenovia Seminary, he was graduated from Harvard College in 1863 and from the Law School of Harvard in 1865. He studied law in Albany, was admitted to the bar in 1866, and a few years later became a member of the firm of Hand, Hall & Swartz. In 1874, Attorney-General Daniel Pratt appointed him Deputy Attorney-General of the State, and in the following year he was nominated for the position of Attorney-General on the Democratic ticket, and elected by a substantial majority. After a term of two years as Attorney-General, he spent two years in travel and study in Europe, and then settled to the practice of law in New York City.
In 1885, Mr. Fairchild entered upon a larger career of public usefulness, when President Grover Cleveland appointed him Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury. When Secre- tary Daniel Manning broke down in health under the strain of the labors of the Treasury Department, Mr. Fairchild became Acting Secretary, and upon the resignation of Mr. Manning in 1887, was advanced to the position of Secretary, remaining a member of the Cabinet until the close of President Cleveland's first administration in 1889.
Since 1889, Mr. Fairchild has been the president of the New York Security & Trust Company. He is one of the leaders of the anti-machine Democrats of the State, and as such took an active and influential part in the campaign for the nomination and election of Grover Cleveland to the presidency in 1892, and in the municipal reform movement that resulted in the overthrow of Tammany Hall in 1894. In 1897, he was prominent in the Citizens' Union political movement, and was a candidate of that party for Comptroller in the first Greater New York municipal campaign. He belongs to many of the leading clubs, including the Metropolitan, University, Century and Reform. He married, in 1871, Helen Lincklean, daughter of Ledyard and Helen Clarissa (Seymour) Lincklean, of Cazenovia, N. Y. The city residence of Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild is in Clinton Place, and they have a country home, Lorenzo, at Cazenovia.
207
WILLIAM HENRY FALCONER
P IERRE FAUCONIER, a Huguenot of Tours, came to England with his wife, Magdalene Pasquereau, and was naturalized in London in 1685. In 1702, he migrated to New York and became a merchant here, being also high in favor with the two Colonial Governors, Lords Bellamont and Cornbury. In 1705, he was made Collector of Customs and Receiver-General of the Province, and obtained large grants of land, among them being a patent to a tract within the town of Rye, and it was in Westchester County that the family he founded became permanently established; the name of Fauconier after the first generation being changed to its English equivalent, Falconer.
His second son, John Falconer, of East Chester, who was born in 1747 and married Elizabeth Purdy, had a distinguished Revolutionary record. He is named among the officers of the Revolutionary Army in the military archives of the State of New York. At the outbreak of the revolt from Great Britain, he raised a company of troops in Westchester and fought as Captain and aide-de-camp to General Washington at the battle of Chatterton Hill, near White Plains. In a subsequent engagement, he was captured by the British, and was for a long time confined on the Jersey prison ship. When the French allies moved from Rhode Island to the South, prior to the Yorktown campaign, the Duc de Lauzan, second in command to Rochambeau, made the Falconer mansion, on Broadway, White Plains, his headquarters, the circumstances connected with this event being described in an article in The Magazine of American History. The entertainment of the French commander and his officers was for years remembered in that vicinity. After the war, General Falconer, as he was called, was one of the most influential citizens of Westchester County, and was elected for eighteen consecutive terms supervisor of the town of White Plains.
The present representative of this family in New York society, Mr. William Henry Falconer, is a great-grandson of the Revolutionary hero. He was born in this city in 1830, and is the son of David Falconer, of New York, a grandson of Rodger Falconer, of White Plains. Mr. Falconer was educated at Canandaigua Academy, New York, and was for many years identified with large real estate operations, but has withdrawn from all active cares concerning the details of his extensive property in the city, and has devoted himself to a life of cultured leisure and travel.
Mr. Falconer married Margaret Culbertson McLean, of Fayetteville, Pa., a lady whose family were old settlers in the Cumberland Valley, and prominent in the Revolution. The Culbertsons, from whom Mrs. Falconer is descended, through her mother, were also highly distinguished among the pioneers of Western Pennsylvania, and took an active part in the historical events which occurred in that region before and subsequent to the Revolution. Their family history and genealogy constitutes a record of great interest. They have three children, Bruce McLean Falconer, Elizabeth DeHass Falconer and Sarah Louise Falconer, none of whom are as yet married.
Mr. Falconer is a member of the Union League, and a life member of the St. Nicholas Society. His travels have been of an extensive character, embracing all portions of the United States, from Mexico to Alaska, as well as several visits to Europe. In the year 1890, his entire family accompanied him in a journey around the world. China, Japan, India, the Nile, the Orient, and the Continent of Europe were visited in turn; this tour, which occupied three years, terminating in 1892, being replete with interest of every kind. During their journey, Mr. and Mrs. Falconer and their family, who were specially accredited by the late Mr. Blaine (then Secretary of State) to the representatives of the United States at foreign courts, were presented to Queen Victoria, the Princesses Louise and Beatrice, His Holiness Pope Leo XIII., the Empress of Japan, the King of Greece, the Sultan of Turkey, and the Khedive of Egypt.
No small portion of Mr. Falconer's attention has been given to hospitals and benevolent institutions, which he has served as trustee and in other capacities. He is also the owner of a collection of fine paintings, his tastes and preferences in that direction being for the work of American artists.
208
GUSTAVUS FARLEY
T HE first Farley in New England was Michael, who came from England to Ipswich, Mass., with his two sons about 1675. The object of his coming was to attend to some of the American interests of Sir Richard Saltonstall. Mesheck Farley, of Ipswich, Mass., the son of Michael Farley, the pioneer, was born in England about 1662, and came to this country with his father and his brother Michael. He married here Sarah Burnham, daughter of Lieutenant Thomas Burnham, of Ipswich, and died in 1696. Lieutenant Thomas Burnham was a member of the expeditions against the Pequot Indians under Endicott in 1636, and Stoughton in 1637.
A grandson of Michael Farley, the American founder of the family, was General Michael Farley, of Ipswich, who was born there in 1719 and died in 1789. For many years he was a representative to the General Court of the Massachusetts Colony, and was a member of the Provincial Congress, 1766-79. In 1774, he was chosen a councilor, but his election was negatived by General Gage, who had placed him under the ban with such other eminent patriots as Bowdoin, Winthrop and Adams. At one time, he was a Major-General of the militia, succeeding General Warren, and also a member of the executive council of the Governor of Massachusetts. He married, in 1745, Elizabeth Choate, of the notable Essex family of that name. The epitaph upon his tomb, in North Cemetery, at Ipswich, Mass., refers to him "the Honorable Michael Farley, Esq., Major-General of the militia and Sheriff of the County of Essex, who died June 20th, 1789, Æt. 70. With a mind open, honest and generous, with a heart alive to humanity and compassion, he served for many years in various stations, public, private and honorable, his neighbors and his country, with such integrity, zeal and diligence as merited an extensive approbation and rendered his death justly regretted." The epitaph of his wife refers to her as "Mrs. Elizabeth Farley, consort of the late General Farley."
Robert Farley, who was born in Ipswich in 1760, the son of General Michael Farley, died in the place of his birth in 1823. Although he was only fifteen years of age when the Revolution began, he enlisted in the following year and served throughout the war. Part of the time he was confined in the English prison ship Jersey, in New York harbor. After the war he maintained his interest in military matters and became Major in the militia. In civil life, he was High Sheriff of Essex County, and at one time Collector of Internal Revenue. The wife of Robert Farley, whom he married in 1786, was Susannah Kendall, descended from Francis Kendall, who came to this country from England before 1640, when a young man under twenty years of age, and was one of the earliest settlers in the town of Woburn, Mass.
Mr. Gustavus Farley is the grandson of Robert Farley and his wife, Susannah Kendall. His father was Gustavus Farley, of Cambridge, Mass., who was born in Ipswich in 1814 and died at Cambridge in 1897, and who married Amelia Frederika Neuman, of Ipswich, a native of Gotten- burg, Sweden. The subject of this sketch was born in Chelsea, Mass., July 4th, 1844. He was educated in private schools, and soon after he was seventeen years of age went to England. After several years abroad, he returned to his home, and in 1864 went to Hong Kong, China. He spent two years in China and then resided in Japan, where he was in business for seventeen years. Returning to the United States in 1883, he has since been in mercantile life in New York City. The wife of Mr. Farley was Katharine Sedgwick Cheney, daughter of Frank Cheney, of South Manchester, Conn. The father of Mrs. Farley belongs to the celebrated Cheney family, which has been so prominent in the development of silk manufacturing in the United States. Distinguished members of the family have been Charles Cheney, the father of Colonel Frank W. Cheney, now the head of the firm of Cheney Brothers; Ward Cheney; Seth Wells Cheney, the artist; John Cheney, the engraver, and Ednah D. Cheney, the authoress and wife of Seth Wells Cheney.
Mr. and Mrs. Farley live at 42 East Twenty-fifth Street. They have one son, Frank Cheney Farley, born at Yokohama, Japan, in 1880. Mr. Farley is a member of the Union, Century and New York Yacht clubs, the Downtown Association, and the Sons of the Revolution.
209
PERCIVAL FARQUHAR
T HE family to which Mr. Percival Farquhar belongs is or mingled Scotch, English and German ancestry. His great-great-great-grandfather, William Farquhar, came from Scotland in the closing years of the seventeenth century, on account of religious causes, and brought with him a company of his coreligionists, settling in Frederick County, Md. The earlier ancestors of the family were chiefs of the Scottish clan Farquhar.
On the maternal side, Mr. Farquhar descends from Robert Brook, of the House of War- wick, who was born in London, in 1602, and who in 1635 married Mary Baker Mainwaring, daughter of Roger Mainwaring, Dean of Worcester. In 1650, Robert Brook, with his wife, ten children and twenty-eight servants, came to this country and settled in Charles County, Md. He became commandant of the county and president of the Council of Maryland. His descendants spread throughout that Colony, some of them settling in Montgomery County, where they married into the Farquhar family.
The great-grandfather of Mr. Percival Farquhar, Amos Farquhar, removed to Pennsylvania, in 1812, and became a cotton manufacturer. This business not proving successful, after the close of the War of 1812, he returned to Maryland, where he had charge of a seminary at Fair Hill. Arthur B. Farquhar, grandson of Amos Farquhar, and the father of the present Mr. Farquhar, was born in Montgomery County, Md., in 1838. He was instructed at a private school for boys at Alexandria, Va., and his talent for mechanics showing itself early, his education was completed in the line of a thorough practical mechanical instruction. He then went to York, Pa., engaged in the manufacture of agricultural implements, and finally established the A. B. Farquhar Company of that place. Arthur B. Farquhar has been a student of political economy, finance and the tariff throughout his life, and has written many essays and pamphlets on finance, and a book entitled, Economic and Industrial Delusions. He has held many responsible public positions, especially in connection with the World's Columbian Exposition, of which he was a commissioner, and president of the National Organization of Executive Commissioners. He married Elizabeth N. Jessop, daughter of Edward Jessop, of Baltimore, president of the Short Mountain and Tunnelton Coal Companies, and head of the firm of Jessop & Fulton.
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