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 38

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

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Andrew Gautier, second of the name, was born in 1755 and educated in King's College, now Columbia University. His first wife, whom he married in 1772, and who became the ancestress of that branch of the family now referred to, was Mary Brown, daughter of Captain Thomas Brown, 1717-1782, and Mary Ten Eyck, of Bergen County, N. J. Captain Brown, who was of mingled English and Dutch parentage, followed the sea in his youth, and during the French wars was captain of a privateer. He owned the ferry across the Hackensack River, and acquired large estate in Bergen County. During the Revolution, he espoused the patriot cause, in 1775 was a member of the Committee of Correspondence for Bergen County, and occupied many positions of prominence. His second wife, the mother of Mary Brown, was Mary Ten Eyck, daughter of Samuel and Mary (Gurney) Ten Eyck.

Thomas Gautier, 1774-1802, the great-grandfather of Mr. Dudley G. Gautier, was a prominent lawyer in New Jersey and New York. His wife was Elizabeth Leavy, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Dickson) Leavy. Thomas Brown Gautier, their son, was born in 1797, graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York in 1823, and received the degree of M. D. from Rutgers College in 1831. He was an eminent physician of Hudson County, N. J. His first wife belonged to one of the most distinguished New Jersey families. She was Elizabeth Hornblower, daughter of Josiah and Anna (Merselis) Hornblower. Josiah Hornblower Gautier, their son, was born in 1818, and graduated from the University of New York and from its medical department in 1844. He engaged in the practice of medicine in Jersey City, but finally engaged in business, and in time became the principal partner in the firm of J. H. Gautier & Co., manufacturers of plumbago crucibles. His wife was Mary Louisa Gregory, daughter of the Honorable Dudley S. and Ann Maria Gregory. They had a family of seven children: Dudley Gregory, Thomas Brown, Maria Louisa, Josiah Hornblower, Anna Elizabeth, Charles Edward and Clara Sutton Gautier.

Mr. Dudley Gregory Gautier was born in Jersey City, February 2d, 1847, and received his education in Germany. He is engaged in the steel business, being head of the firm of D. G. Gautier & Co., and resides in Hempstead, Long Island. He is a member of the Union Club, the Meadow Brook Hunt Club and the Downtown Association.

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JAMES W. GERARD

A MONG the distinguished families that were compelled to flee from France by the persecutions of the reign of Louis XVI., were the Gerards. They went to Scotland, and there William Gerard was born. His parents were Robert and Elizabeth Gerard, who, in 1774, resided at Mill of Carnousie, near Banff. He was for a time a resident of Gibraltar, but previous to 1780 came to this country and engaged in business. The year after his arrival here he married Christina Glass, of a Sutherlandshire family. Her father was John Glass, of Tain, and her mother was a Monroe, from Ross-shire, a grandniece of Sir Thomas Hector Monroe, Governor of the East Indies, and a favorite niece of Dr. Alexander Monroe, one of the founders of the University of Edinburgh. A brother of Miss Glass, Alexander S. Glass, was a well-known New York merchant of the early part of the nineteenth century. Their mother came to this country, a widow with a family of young children, just before the Revolution, and afterwards married Alexander McLean, a Surgeon in the British Army. Her son was Dr. Hugh Monroe McLean, an eminent physician in New York City in the early part of this century. His home on Beekman Street and afterwards in Warren Street, where he lived with his two maiden half-sisters, was one of the social centres of the city.

William and Christina Gerard had seven children. Ann married Andrew Hosie and was the mother of Mrs. Schuyler Livingston. Christina married Dr. Jeremiah Fisher, a Surgeon in the United States Army in the War of 1812. James W. Gerard, born in 1794, was the youngest of the three sons, and was graduated from Columbia College in 1811. In 1812, he joined the "Iron Greys," a company organized for home defense. After the war, he entered the law office of George Griffin, who was then one of the giants of the New York bar, and in 1816 he took the degree of M. A. from Columbia, at the same time being admitted to the practice of his profession, in which he gained great distinction. He was by instinct a philanthropist, and it was mainly owing to his efforts that the first House of Refuge was established in this city in 1825. A uniformed police force of this city was also first advocated by him. He died in 1874, and during the latter part of his career devoted himself to the cause of public education, holding the offices of school trustee and inspector, and was assiduous in his attention to the public schools.

Early in life he married Eliza, daughter of the Honorable Increase and Elizabeth Sumner, of Boston, of the renowned New England family of that name, originally from Bicester, Oxfordshire, descended from William Sumner, a freeman of Dorchester, Mass., prior to 1637. The father of Eliza (Sumner) Gerard was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Governor of Massachusetts, and her brother, General William H. Sumner, was aide-de-camp to Governor Strong of Massachusetts during the War of 1812.

Mr. James W. Gerard, the second of the name, was born in New York City. He was graduated from Columbia College with the honors of valedictorian in 1843, and the same institution conferred the degree of LL. D. upon him in 1892. He followed his father in the legal profession and won an excellent reputation in the specialty to which he devoted himself, real estate and property, and became a recognized authority upon those subjects and was also an able advocate in the courts. He has devoted a great deal of his time to the schools of his native city, and was one of the Commissioners of Education and a State Senator in 1876-7. He is an author of repute, having written much on historical and legal subjects, and also in a

lighter vein.

The Peace of Utrecht is his most important historical work.

He is also the

author of Titles to Real Estate in the State of New York, a standard book of the legal profession. He married, in 1866, Jenny Angel, daughter of the Honorable B. F. Angel, formerly United States Minister to Sweden. He is a member of the Players, the Tuxedo, the St. Nicholas and Union clubs. Mrs. Gerard is a vice-president of the Society of Colonial Dames, being a descendant of Elder Brewster, who came over in the Mayflower.

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ELBRIDGE T. GERRY

E LBRIDGE GERRY, the grandfather of the present representative of the family, was a prominent patriot of the Revolutionary period and a statesman of eminence in the earlier annals of the United States Government. A native of the town of Marblehead, Mass., where he was born in 1744, and a graduate of Harvard in 1762, he became a leader in the move- ment which resulted in separating the Colonies from Great Britain. He was one of the Massachusetts delegates to the Continental Congress, and affixed his signature to the Declaration of Independence. His prominence continued throughout the struggle, and he again represented Massachusetts in the Convention of 1787, which framed the Constitution of the United States. At the same time he opposed the ratification of that instrument, and became one of the anti-Federal leaders, and then a founder of the party out of which the existing Democratic party in the United States was evolved. Massachusetts, however, chose him as one of its representatives to the first United States Congress, which met in New York in 1789, and he remained a member of that body until 1793. In 1797, he was one of the three envoys of this country sent to Paris to treat with the French Directory, and was elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1810, and again in 1811, while in 1812 he was elected Vice-President of the United States on the same ticket with President Madison. He did not complete his term of office, but died in Washington in 1814. Slight and small in stature, Elbridge Gerry was noted even among the gentlemen of those days for his attractive personality and urbane manners; and the political rivalries in which his life was passed never conflicted with the personal friendship of his leading contemporaries. His wife was Miss Thomp- son, who was one of the leaders of New York's social life in the early days of Washington's first administration.

Thomas R. Gerry, his son, became an officer in the United States Navy, and in 1835 married Hannah Goelet, of the old New York family of that name, a sister of Peter and Robert Goelet. Mrs. Gerry's husband died in 1845. She survived him for fifty years, dying, in 1895, in the old Goelet mansion at Nineteenth Street and Broadway. There were two children of this union, Mr. Elbridge T. Gerry and a daughter, who became thewife of Frederic Gallatin, grandson of Albert Gallatin.

Mr. Elbridge T. Gerry was born in New York, in 1837, and graduated from Columbia Col- lege in 1857. He adopted the profession of law, and soon became an active and successful practitioner. His law library is considered one of the finest private collections of the kind in the country. He has not taken an ambitious part in politics, and his principal efforts in public affairs have been in the field of philanthropy. He was associated with Henry Bergh in the early growth of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and was for many years its counsel. He is now its first vice-president and chairman of its executive committee.

In 1867, he served as a member of the State Constitutional Convention. He was appointed in 1892, by the Mayor of New York, chairman of the special commission of inquiry which investigated the public care of the insane. He is a governor of the New York Hospital, and was chairman of the New York State Commission on Capital Punishment. In 1875, he was a founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and became its president in 1879, a post in which he still continues.

From early youth, he has been an enthusiastic yachtsman, making himself practically acquainted with the details of the sport. The steam yacht Electra, of which he is owner, master and pilot, was built for him in 1884, and from 1886 to 1893, he was Commodore of the New York Yacht Club. He is a member of the Metropolitan, Knickerbocker, and other clubs of New York, and the Fort Orange Club, of Albany. Since 1882, he has been president of the X Y fraternity. Commodore Gerry married Louisa M. Livingston, daughter of the late Robert J. Livingston, of New York, and has two sons and two daughters. His town house is at the corner of Sixty-first Street and Fifth Avenue. He also has a summer home in Newport.

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ROBERT GOELET

L IKE many of the families which have assumed the lead in all phases of life in New York, the Goelets are of Huguenot descent. Their ancestors lived in La Rochelle, and during one of the persecutions to which the members of their faith were exposed, during the seventeenth century, escaped to Holland, the records of the Dutch City showing their presence in Amsterdam in 1621. Francis Goelet, the youngest son of the family, came to the New Netherland in 1676, bringing with him his son, Jacobus, a lad about ten years of age. Returning to Holland on business, Francis Goelet was presumably lost at sea, the ship which carried him never having been heard from, and the orphan lad, Jacobus, was brought up by Frederick Phillipse, the famous merchant of New York's early history. He married Jannetje Coessar, who was also a member of a Huguenot family, and at his death, in 1731, left a family of six children. His third son was John Goelet, who, in 1718, married Jannetje Cannon, daughter of Jean, or Jan, Cannon, a merchant of New York, who was also of French Protestant ancestry. John Goelet died in 1753, and was the father of several children.

Peter Goelet, the fourth son of John, was born in 1727, and became an eminent and opulent merchant in New York. His place of business was in Hanover Square, being designated according to the custom of that time by the sign of the Golden Key. He was at first in partnership with Peter T. Curtenius, but from 1763 onward carried on business by himself, his name appearing frequently in the public journals and official records of the city as a man of prominence in mercan- tile life. In 1755, he married Elizabeth Ratse, daughter of a wealthy merchant who had his residence in lower Broadway near the Bowling Green, which locality was then the abode of the leading men of the community.

Peter P. Goelet, son of Peter Goelet, was born in 1764 and died in 1828. He inherited considerable real estate and other property, and throughout his life steadily added to his posses- sions. In 1799, he married Almy Buchanan, daughter of Thomas Buchanan, one of the leading merchants of the Revolutionary period and a member of the Committee of One Hundred, which took charge of the city in 1775. The Buchanan mansion was in Wall Street, and in it the marriage of his daughter to Peter P. Goelet was celebrated. They had four children, Peter, Jean B., Hannah and Robert. Their daughter, Hannah, married Captain Thomas R. Gerry, U. S. N., son of Elbridge Gerry, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, Governor of Massachusetts and Vice-President of the United States. Her son is Elbridge T. Gerry, ex-Commodore of the New York Yacht Club.

Peter and Robert Goelet were closely associated throughout their lives. Peter Goelet was born in 1800 and died in 1879. He was unmarried and resided in the house at the corner of Broadway and Nineteenth Street, which until its removal, a short time since, was one of the land- marks of Broadway. He was retiring in his habits, but was charitable and contributed generously to aid the sick and wounded soldiers of the Civil War. His brother, Robert Goelet, was born in 1809 and died in 1879, two months before Peter Goelet's decease. He married Sarah Ogden, daughter of Jonathan Ogden, of the famous family of that name which has been conspicuous in New York and New Jersey for fully two centuries, and was the father of Mr. Robert Goelet and of the late Ogden Goelet. The brothers, Peter and Robert Goelet, continued the policy which had been pursued by their father of investing in real estate, upon the lines of the city's growth and improvement, and in this manner became the owners of one of the largest and most valuable estates in New York. They were also numbered among the founders of that famous New York financial institution, the Chemical Bank.

Mr. Robert Goelet, of the present generation, was born at his father's house, 5 State Street, fronting the Battery, September 29th, 1841. He graduated from Columbia College in 1860, was admitted to the bar, but has devoted his attention to the care of the large estate left by his father and uncle. He has been distinguished, not only by remarkable discernment and foresight in the

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conduct of affairs, but for the policy he has pursued of improving his properties in a manner which would beautify the city. In this connection, Mr. Goelet has not only displayed a notable degree of civic pride in the municipality with which his family has been so long identified, but has given a useful lesson to other large real estate owners in New York of the advantage of taking into consid- eration such features apart from any mere question of revenue. He is a director in some of the largest financial institutions of the country, including the Chemical National Bank, and, while declining public office, takes an active interest in national and city affairs. His tastes are intellectual, and he has been the guiding influence in administering the extensive estates which he and his younger brother, the late Ogden Goelet, inherited. In 1879, Mr. Goelet married Henrietta Louise, daughter of George Henry Warren, Sr., a distinguished lawyer of this city. They have two children, Robert Walton Goelet and Beatrice Goelet. Mr. Goelet's city residence is 591 Fifth Avenue, and he also has country places at Newport, R. I., and Tuxedo, N. Y. He is a member of the Bar Association and of the Holland and St. Nicholas societies, while among the many clubs to which he belongs the Union, Metropolitan, Knickerbocker, Racquet, New York Yacht and Players of this city may be mentioned, as well as the Metropolitan of Washington and the Philadel- phia Club. He is also a member of the Royal Clyde Yacht Club and the Royal Northern Yacht Club, of Glasgow, Scotland, and is the owner of the steam yacht Nahma, which was designed by George L. Watson and built at Thompson's works on the Clyde, and completed in 1897. This vessel is three hundred and six feet over all in length, and is equipped for lengthy cruises, its machinery and other features making it a representative modern yacht of the highest type.

The late Ogden Goelet, the younger son of Robert and Sarah (Ogden) Goelet, was also born at the family residence, 5 State Street, in this city, on June 11th, 1846, and died August 27th, 1897, on board his yacht, the Mayflower, at Cowes, Isle of Wight, England. He devoted himself in youth to the business interests connected with the family property. In 1877, he married Mary R. Wilson, eldest daughter of Richard T. Wilson, of this city. Their family consisted of two children, a son, Robert Goelet, and a daughter, Mary Goelet. The family residence is on Fifth Avenue, at the corner of Forty-ninth Street, and they also have a country home at Newport. Ogden Goelet was a member of the Union, Metropolitan and other leading clubs, and a member of prominent scientific, artistic and patriotic societies. He was, however, during his life most prominently identified with yachting. He was long a member of the New York Yacht Club and other institu- tions in this country for the promotion of the sport, and owned at one time the fine schooner yacht Norseman. In 1882, he gave to the club the Goelet Cups, which are annually contested for by sloops and schooners respectively, the possession of which are considered the chief prizes of the American yachting world.

For some years before his death, the late Ogden Goelet spent most of his time abroad, pursuing his favorite sport. He chartered the steam yacht White Ladye, in which he cruised in English waters and in the Mediterranean, and was a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, and of the principal Continental clubs connected with the sport. He also, while abroad, gave a number of handsome cups and prizes to be raced for at the important regattas, one of which was won in the Mediterranean by the famous cutter Britannia, belonging to the Prince of Wales. In 1896, he commissioned the noted designer, George L. Watson, to build for him a steam yacht representing the most advanced ideas that had yet been applied to the construction of such craft. This was the Mayflower, which was built on the Clyde at the works of the Messrs. Thompson, the builders of the New York, Paris and other celebrated ocean steamers. The Mayflower, which was launched in November, 1896, is of eighteen hundred tons and three hundred and twenty-one feet over all in length, with nine water-tight compartments. Many novel ideas were included in the machinery, fittings and adornment of the yacht, which was in fact a luxurious floating home for its owner. In it he contemplated some extended cruises, and among the other features, making it suitable for voyages to distant and little visited portions of the world, are the six rapid fire guns on the bridge deck. Mr. Goelet made the Mayflower his home from her completion until his lamented death, in August, 1897.

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BRENT GOOD

T HE English surnames Goode and Good seem to have been derived through various trans- formations from the Anglo-Saxon Goda, a name which frequently occurs in early English history. In the Domesday Book, which records the ownership of the lands of England, after the occupation of the country by William the Conqueror, between thirty and forty Godes and Godas appear as holding possessions in various parts of England under the new monarchy. It was toward the end of the fourteenth century that the name first assumed the form of Goode or Good. In 1398, Richard Gode was rector of Busham, St. Andrew, in Norfolk, and afterwards rector of St. Mary's, at Peak Hall, Norfolk. Early in the fifteenth century, Richard Goode was a rector in Norfolk County, and in 1500 one of the same name was a tenant of Trinity corporation of Windsor. William Good was a Jesuit priest and missionary to Ireland, Sweden and Poland in the sixteenth century. Representatives of the name were widely distributed throughout Lincolnshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Cornwall and elsewhere, though families bearing it were most numerous in the western part of England.

Brent Good, the elder of that name, was of the Somersetshire branch of the family, and established himself in this country in the early part of the present century. He was a descend- ant from the Goods of Hutton Court, Weston Super Mare, Somersetshire. His ancestors had long held that manor, which came into their possession through a marriage with the heiress of the Brent family. Certain representatives of the Brents, it may be remarked, came to this country and settled in Virginia about a century and a half ago. There they intermarried with the descendants of another branch of the Good family, representative of the Cornwall Goodes, who had also established themselves in Virginia at an early date in its history. Brent Good, the first of the name when he came to this country, settled in Troy, N. Y., where he died in 1837. He left a son, Brent Good, second of the name in America, who died in Buffalo in 1839, and upon his death the English estate, to which the American members of the family were heirs, was disposed of.

One of the sons of the second Brent Good is Mr. Brent Good, of New York, who has been distinguished in the commercial life of the metropolis in this generation. He was born in Rochester, N. Y., in 1837. When he was two years old his family removed to Canada and settled upon a property at the Bay of Quinte, in upper Canada, where he was brought up and received his education. When old enough to enter upon a business career, he began his experience in a drug establishment at Belleville, Ont. In 1856, when nineteen years of age, he came to New York and entered the employ of Demas Barnes & Co.

Mr. Good became a partner in 1863, but retired from the firm in 1869, to become the senior partner of an importing house, Good, Roof & Co., which he established, remaining in that business for more than fifteen years. Since 1879, however, he has been interested in the manufacture of medicinal articles and organized the Carter Medicine Company, of which he is the president. He has been connected with other business enterprises, having served as president of several corporations and as director of the Franklin National Bank, of which, in 1890, he was one of the founders. He is also the owner of the Lyceum Theatre, in this city, and president of the Tutt Manufacturing Company.

Mr. Good married a daughter of Henry I. Hoyt, of Norwalk, Conn. She was of a family that has been long noted in Connecticut and New York, and died in 1894. In 1896, he married Frances Colfax Colwell, of Brooklyn, a member of a Virginia family which removed from that State at the time of the Civil War. Mr. Good's surviving children are Henry Hoyt and Kate Hamilton Good. He is interested in yachting and is a member of the New York Yacht Club, and also belongs to the New York Athletic, Lotos, Manhattan, Hardware and Wa-Wa-Yonda clubs, and to the St. James Club, of Montreal. He lives at 130 West Fifty-seventh Street and has a country residence at Monmouth Beach, N. J.

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FREDERIC GOODRIDGE

T HE American ancestor of the Goodridge family was William Goodridge, who came from England and settled in Watertown, Mass., in 1636, being a freeman of that place in 1642. From him Mr. Frederic Goodridge was descended in the seventh generation. Benjamin Goodridge, son of the pioneer, was born in Watertown in 1642. He was a man of consequence in the town of Newbury, where he grew up. He was killed in 1692 by the Indians. Samuel Goodridge, son of Benjamin Goodridge, was born in Newbury in 1682, and afterwards moved to Boxford, where he became prominent. His wife was Hannah Frazer, daughter of Colin and Anna (Stewart) Frazer, of Newbury. John Goodridge, in the fourth generation from the pioneer of the family, was born in Boxford in 1729, and lived in that place until he was twenty-eight years of age. He married in 1751, Abigail Hall, daughter of Ambrose and Joanna (Dodge) Hall, and in 1757 removed with his wife to Marblehead, going to Keene, N. H., in 1773, and to Grafton, Vt., in 1783. He died in 1815, and she died in 1821. John Goodridge was the great-grandfather of Mr. Frederic Goodridge, and his wife, a daughter of Ambrose Hall, was a granddaughter of Joseph Hall, of Newbury, great-granddaughter of Thomas Hall, of Newbury, and great-great-grand- daughter of Thomas Hall, who emigrated to New England and settled in Newbury in 1637. One generation further back, she was descended from Thomas Hall, of the parish of Walton-at-Stone, Hertfordshire, England, and his wife, Joan Kirby.

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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 38

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