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 43
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The fourth son of this interesting and notable family, Colonel John Church Hamilton, was the father of Mr. William Gaston Hamilton. Born in Philadelphia, in 1792, he was graduated from Columbia College in 1809, and was admitted to the bar. When war with Great Britain was declared in 1812, he offered his services and was commissioned a Lieutenant. Later he was an aide on the staff of General Harrison, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. The greater part of his life was given to literary pursuits, His important literary work related to the life and career of his distinguished father. In 1834-40, he edited and published the Memoirs of Alexander Hamilton; in 1851, his Works of Alexander Hamilton appeared in two volumes, and in 1850-58 he published, in seven volumes, A History of the Republic as Traced in the Writings of Alexander Hamilton.
Mr. William Gaston Hamilton, the fourth son of Colonel John Church Hamilton, was born in New York in 1832. Through his grandmother, Elizabeth Schuyler, sister of General Philip Schuyler, he is descended from another noted Colonial family. His mother was Maria Eliza Van den Heuvel, daughter of Baron John Corneilus Van den Heuvel, once Governor of Dutch Guiana, and a resident of New York. The brothers of Mr. Hamilton are Alexander Hamilton, of Tarry- town, General Schuyler Hamilton and Judge Charles A. Hamilton, of the Supreme Court of Wis- consin. His sister Elizabeth married, first, Major-General Henry W. Halleck, and, second, Major- General George W. Cullum.
Mr. Hamilton is a civil and mechanical engineer, and has been connected with many important business enterprises, having been president and engineer of the Jersey City Locomotive Works, vice-president of the Ramapo Wheel and Foundry Company, president of the Hamilton Steeled Wheel Company, Consulting Mechanical Engineer to the Pennsylvania Railroad, and vice-president and director of the Mexican & Central and the South American Telegraph Com- panies. He is a vice-president of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, vice-president of the Demilt Dispensary, a manager of the New York Cancer Hospital, the Woman's Hospital, and the New York Blind Asylum, and chairman of the Mayor's advisory committee on public baths. In his clubs he includes the Century, Metropolitan, Tuxedo and Church, and he is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Sons of the Revolution, the American Geographical Society, and the St. Nicholas Society, and a patron of the Academy of Design and the American Museum of Natural History. He married Charlotte ( Jeffrey) Pierson. His city residence is at 105 East Twenty-first Street, and he has a country home in Ramapo, N. Y. His son, William Pierson Hamilton, married Juliet P. Morgan, daughter of J. Pierpont Morgan. His daughters are Helen M. and Marie V. Hamilton.
258
WILLIAM ALEXANDER HAMMOND, M. D.
T HE Hammonds of Maryland inherit the blood of Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy. Among the principal followers of William the Conqueror, and of his son, William Rufus, were Robert Fitz Hammon, Earl of Corbeille, and his brother Hammon, Viscount of Thonars, from the last of whom the Hammonds of Acrise are directly descended, as well as the Hammonds of Kent and various other parts of England. John Hammond, who came to Maryland in the reign of Charles I., was a cadet of that noble house. He was an earnest royalist, though other representatives of his name had espoused the Parliamentary side, and in 1654-1655 played an energetic part in opposing the Puritan faction in Maryland. His son, the Honorable John Hammond, was Major-General of the Province, a member of its Council and Judge in Admiralty. He died in 1705, and was buried at the family estate in Anne Arundel County, where the inscription on his tomb is still legible after nearly two hundred years and where his descendants continued to reside. His great-grandson, Philip, married Nancy Joyce, noted for her beauty, one of their children being Dr. John W. Hammond. The latter married Sarah Pinkney, of Annapolis, daughter of Jonathan Pinkney, and niece of the famous statesman, William Pinkney, United States Senator, Minister to England, and Attorney-General of the United States.
Dr. William Alexander Hammond, who was born at Annapolis in 1828, was the second son of this marriage, but by the death of his elder brother, the Reverend J. Pinkney Hammond, D. D., he became the head of the family. Educated at St. John's College, Annapolis, and receiving his medical degree from the University of the City of New York, he was appointed in 1849 First Lieutenant and Assistant Surgeon in the army. After about ten years' service, he resigned to accept the position of Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the University of Maryland, at Baltimore. On the beginning of the Civil War, he returned to the army and was soon afterwards made Surgeon-General with the rank of Brigadier-General. He was removed from his office about the end of the war, but was reinstated in 1879, after full inquiry, and is now Surgeon-General and Brigadier-General on the retired list of the army.
Dr. Hammond's first wife was Helen, daughter of Michael Nisbet, of Philadelphia, his second alliance being with Esther Dyer, daughter of John F. Chapin, of Providence, a lady related to prominent New England families and a descendant of Baron de Bernon, the Huguenot settler in Rhode Island. The two surviving children of Dr. Hammond are Clara, who married the Marquis Lanza di Brolo, cousin of Cardinal Rampolla, and Graeme Monroe Hammond, M. D., who married Louisa Elsworth, a descendant of Oliver Elsworth. The Marquise Lanza has inherited her father's literary talent.
After residing in New York for twenty years, Dr. Hammond returned to Washington in 1888, his house, Belcourt, Columbia Heights, being the finest reproduction of a French château in America. Identified socially as well as professionally with New York, he has long figured in its most exclusive circles and still retains his membership in the Manhattan Club. His Washington clubs include the Metropolitan, Army and Navy, Country and Chevy Chase. Though not an active sportsman, he was a member of both the New York Yacht and American Jockey clubs.
Dr. Hammond's professional career has placed him in the front rank of modern scientists. It is possible to speak only briefly of his honors, which include professorships in the leading medical schools of the country and membership in the foremost scientific bodies of the United States and Europe. He is the author of many professional works which have been translated and reproduced in Europe, and is a frequent contributor to both scientific and popular periodicals. He has also found relaxation and fame as a writer in a lighter vein, being the author of five successful novels and many short stories. His son, Dr. Graeme Monroe Hammond, succeeded his father as professor in the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital, and is the author of many articles and monographs upon medical subjects.
259
WAINWRIGHT HARDIE
S HORTLY after the close of the Revolutionary War, two young men of good family, John and James Hardie, natives of Aberdeen, Scotland, came to America. James Hardie was a scholar and writer, at one time a professor in Columbia College, and the author of several standard works, among them a history of the State of New York. John Hardie settled at Sharon, Conn., and married Elene Bogardus, a direct descendant of the famous Anneke Jans by her second husband, Domine Everardus Bogardus (her first husband having been a member of the princely house of Orange), the exceedingly prominent place which she occupies in the ancestry of many New York families of distinction being well known, while her gifts to Trinity Church, it is needless to say, created the prosperity of that corporation.
Allen Wardwell Hardie, the son of John and Elene Bogardus Hardie, was born at Sharon, in 1799, and died in 1849. He was prominent in politics and business in New York City and State, and operated largely in lands, having offices both in Albany and New York. He was an old-fashioned Democrat, possessed great influence in the Hudson River counties, and was the intimate associate of the prominent statesmen of his time, including President Van Buren, the Honorable Gulian Ver Planck, and others of similar eminence. He was also Captain in the Ninth Regiment, New York State Artillery Militia, his commission, signed by De Witt Clinton, Governor of the State of New York, being preserved among the family papers. His correspond- ence with various prominent statesmen of the time was also very extensive, and was conducted on a footing which indicates not only confidence and intimacy, personal and political, but also shows the respect which men of that standing entertained for him.
His wife, Caroline Cock Hardie, 1800-1876, born in New York, belonged to a well- known Quaker family of Long Island, the Cocks, of Oyster Bay. She was present at the reception given by the Society of New York to the Marquis de Lafayette on September 10th, 1826, her card of invitation being also preserved among the family archives, with other interesting mementoes of the early social life of the city, in which Mrs. Hardie was prominent. The family residence was then in Cortlandt Street.
Mr. Wainwright Hardie is a son of this marriage. He was born in this city, and was baptized at old St. Anne's Church, Fishkill-on-Hudson, where the family at that time had a country seat. He was named after the famous Bishop Wainwright, then rector of old Grace Church, Broadway and Rector Street, of which his parents were attendants and pew holders.
His education was received principally at St. John's School, Varick Street, over which Doctor Wainwright, then rector of St. John's Chapel, presided as founder and patron. His business career commenced with the Commercial Mutual Marine Insurance Company, at the time of its organization, and after many years' service in various positions, latterly as the company's vice-president, he retired for rest and recreation, and made an extended tour in Europe. Mr. Hardie is unmarried ; he resides at 8 East Twelfth Street, and devotes himself to business and to the affairs of charitable organizations.
Members of the families of Mr. Hardie's mother and grandmother fought in the Revolu- tionary War and in the War of 1812. In the war between the States, a distinguished representative was furnished in the person of a brother of the subject of this article, General James Allen Hardie, U. S. A. The latter, born in New York in 1823, entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, and was a classmate of General Ulysses S. Grant. General Hardie served throughout the Civil War with distinction, and enjoyed the confidence and friendship of Generals Grant and Sherman, and was the intimate friend of Lincoln and Stanton. His military record is set forth in full in the annals of the War Department. After the close of the war, he was appointed Assistant Inspector-General of the United States Army, and died in 1876. His son is Captain Francis Hunter Hardie, of the Third Cavalry, United States Army, who, like his father, is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, at West Point.
260
ORLANDO METCALF HARPER
OHN HUMFREY, who was born in Dorchester, England, about 1600, died in his native place, in 1661. For fifteen or twenty years he was notably identified with the first English enterprises that resulted in the settlement of New England. Educated as a lawyer, he became renowned in his profession, and was a man of considerable wealth, for those times. In 1628, he was one of a company of six individuals of similar views to his own, who were the original purchasers of the territory that subsequently became the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and was the first treasurer of the Plymouth Colony. J
At the second meeting of the Massachusetts Bay Company, John Humfrey was chosen Deputy-Governor, and came to New England in the discharge of the duties of his position. On his voyage to the New World he was accompanied by his wife, Lady Susan Clinton, daughter of Thomas Clinton, third Earl of Lincoln, and Lady Elizabeth, his wife. Six children of Governor Humfrey came with their parents. He settled in Swampscott, Mass., and was chosen the first Major-General of the Colony. With several of his associates he laid out the town of Ipswich, in 1636. He returned to England, in 1641, but several of his children remained in the New World, and from them have come many illustrious descendants.
Mr. Orlando Metcalf Harper is the descendant in the ninth generation on his mother's side from Governor John Humfrey. The great-grandfather of Mr. Harper was Arunah Metcalf, a man of distinction in public affairs, in the central part of the State of New York, in the early years of this century. During most of his life he resided in Otsego County. In 1810, he was elected to represent the Otsego County district as a Democrat in the Twelfth United States Congress, and was returned to the State Assembly, in 1814-16, and 1828.
Mr. Orlando Metcalf Harper was born in Pittsburg, Pa., September 17th, 1846. His father, John Harper, was president of the Bank of Pittsburg, and identified with other large financial institutions and public enterprises. He was especially interested in the cause of philanthropy, and gave considerable attention to the object of caring for the insane, and improv- ing their condition. He was a descendant of a good English family, of considerable antiquity and prominence. His son, the present Mr. Harper, was primarily educated in the academic schools of his native city, and then went to Yale College. Before he had completed his collegiate course, an injury to his eyes compelled him to forego further study, but Yale University has since conferred upon him the honorary degree of M. A.
Returning to Pittsburg in 1867, he engaged in the cotton manufacturing business there, in which he was eminently successful for nearly twenty years. He was president of the Eagle Cotton Mills Company, director of the Bank of Pittsburg, and of the Pittsburg and Alleghany Suspension Bridge Company, president of the Eagle Mills, at Madison, Ind., and for a time vice-president of the Association of Southern and Western Cotton Manufacturers. He was also editorially connected with one of the daily newspapers in the city of Pittsburg.
In 1886, Mr. Harper removed to New York City and established the cotton dry goods commission business, in which he is still engaged. He is a member of the New York Cotton Exchange, of the Chamber of Commerce, the Pennsylvania Historical Society, the New York Historical Society, the New York Geographical Society, the New England Society and the Yale Alumni Association. His club memberships include the Union League, the Merchants', and the Riding clubs. He is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His business connections, outside of his commission house, include the Merchants' Reliance Company, of which he is president.
In November, 1877, Mr. Harper married Kathleen Theodora Ludlow, daughter of John Livingston Ludlow, and granddaughter of the Reverend Dr. John Ludlow, an eminent Dutch Reformed clergyman, and a member of one of the oldest and most distinguished Colonial families of New York.
261
SAMUEL CARMAN HARRIOT
H ERIOT'S Hospital, one of the historical monuments of the ancient city of Edinburgh, was founded in 1628 under a bequest by George Heriot, the friend and courtier of King James l. of England and VI. of Scotland, and a figure of prominence in the times when England and Scotland were united under one crown by the accession of the monarch in question to the throne of the former country. In the capacity of a man of business, as well as a courtier, Heriot accumulated great wealth for those days.
The Scottish philanthropist figures as one of the characters in Sir Walter Scott's Fortunes of Nigel. His own romance connected him with the Primroses of Rosebery, the family of which the former Prime Minister of England, the Earl of Rosebery, is the representative. George Heriot's wife, Alison Primrose, daughter of James Primrose, clerk of the privy council, having died before her twenty-first year, it was in memory of her that his large fortune was mainly devoted, on his death, to the foundation of the hospital for the education of the children of citizens of Edinburgh, which bears his name, and which to the present day is regarded as one of the chief charitable and educational institutions of the city to which his noble benefaction was dedicated nearly three hundred years ago. All visitors to the historic capitol of the Scottish Kingdom have, without doubt, heard of this fact.
Mr. Samuel Carman Harriot bears the same arms as the famous George Heriot, and is descended from a brother of the latter; members of the family having aided in the establishment of the Colony of West Jersey, where they attained wealth and prominence. His grandfather, Samuel Harriot, of New Jersey, married Abigail Carman, and was the father of Samuel Carman Harriot, born at Woodbridge, N. J.
The elder Samuel C. Harriot inherited an ample fortune and estate from his father, and was not engaged in active business pursuits, but accepted the presidency of the Greenwich Fire Insurance Company of New York, a post which he filled for over thirty-one years, being an influential and esteemed citizen. His wife, the mother of the gentleman to whom this refers, was Martha Crozier Dawes, daughter of Charles Dawes, of Philadelphia, and Deborah Williams Elliott, of Darby, Pa., her grandfather, Rumford Dawes, having been a famous shipping merchant of Philadelphia, and an elder of the Friends or Quaker Society. On her mother's side, Mrs. Harriot is descended from the Earls of Guys, her great-grandmother, Elizabeth Guy, who married John Elliott, having also been a niece of William Penn, the famous founder of the State of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Harriot was born of this ancestry in the City of New York, in 1863. He was educated under private tutors here and pursued a course of study at Paris. Care of his large real estate interests has filled the place of professional employment. He is still unmarried, and resides with his mother and sister, Florence Harriot, at 454 West Twenty-third Street, the house in which he was born, a residence containing many paintings by celebrated artists, statuary, mosaics and other works of art collected by members of the family in Europe, as well as a carefully selected library. Mr. Harriot's own tastes are literary, artistic and musical. He has spent no inconsiderable portion of his life in travel, and has visited nearly every part of Europe, including some countries and districts to which ordinary tourists rarely penetrate. He has been presented to many representatives of royalty, and numbers among his friends numerous members of the nobility. While in England, during the Queen's Jubilee year, 1887, he was present at the ball given in London in honor of the late Crown Prince Rudolph, of Austro-Hungary, at which the latter, with the Prince of Wales and other representatives of royalty, were the prominent guests. He is a member of the City Club, and is also a member of the St. Andrew's Society and the New York Society of the Sons of the Revolution, in both of which organizations he takes an active interest as befits the descent from Colonial and Revolutionary ancestors which he represents.
262
MARCELLUS HARTLEY
I N the collateral line of Mr. Marcellus Hartley's ancestry, a notable name is that of David Hartley, the English diplomat, who was born in 1729, and died in 1813, and was prominently identified with the early history of the American Republic. He was educated at Oxford, and became a member of Parliament for Kingston-upon-Hull. His name appears conspicuously in the history of our country from the fact that he was the British Plenipotentiary appointed to arrange for terms of peace with John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and Charles Laurens, the American commissioners in Paris after the War of the Revolution.
The father of David Hartley was David Hartley, the elder, founder of the English Association of Psychologists, author of Observations on Man, published in 1749, and whose life was that of a benevolent and studious physician, principally in London and Bath. The father of Dr. Hartley was the Reverend David Hartley, vicar of Armley, in Yorkshire, an eminent clergyman, whose family, of great antiquity, was descended from the Hartleys of Chorton.
Another son, Dr. David Hartley, was James Hartley, of Boughton, England, where he was born in 1736, and died in 1776. He was a business man, chiefly engaged in manufacturing, and was noted for his piety and intellectual vigor. Robert Hartley, son of James Hartley, was a native of Boughton, where he was born in 1736, and succeeded to his father's business as a manufacturer. During the latter part of his life, he lived at Cockermouth, England, where he died in 1803. His wife, whom he married in 1754, was Martha Smithson, daughter of Isaac Smithson, a son of Sir Hugh Smithson, baronet, head of a family whose name is identified with the United States through the Smithsonian Institution, which was endowed by one of its members in a latter generation.
Isaac Hartley, the son of Robert Hartley and his wife, Martha, was born in Cockermouth, England, in 1766, and was the first of his family to remove to the United States. He married Isabella, daughter of Joseph Johnson, of Embleton, England.
He settled in Perth, N. Y., and died in 1851. His wife died in Schenectady, in 1806. Robert Milham Hartley, son of Isaac Hartley, was born in Cockermouth, England, in 1796, and died in New York in 1881. He was educated in Fairfield Academy, New York, and became one of the distinguished philanthropists of the metropolis in the first half of the present century. In 1829, he was one of the founders of the New York City Temperance Society, of which he was the secretary for nine years. He was also active in founding the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor in 1844. The Workingmen's Home, the Demilt Dispensary, the Juvenile Asylum, the New York Society for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled, and the Presbyterian Hospital were other benevolent undertakings fostered by him. The wife of Robert Milham Hartley, whom he married in 1824, was Catharine Munson, daughter of Reuben Munson. Her father, a New York merchant, was an alderman, 1813-23, and a member of the Assembly, 1820-22.
Mr. Marcellus Hartley, the elder son of Robert Milham and Catharine (Munson) Hartley, is a prominent New York merchant and financier, a member of the Union League, Lawyers', Riding and Presbyterian clubs, and the New England Society, and a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He married Frances Chester White, daughter of Dr. S. Pomroy White, and lives in Madison Avenue.
Joseph Wilfrid Hartley, another son of Robert M. Hartley, was born in New York, and early in life began a business career. For more than thirty years he was a shipping merchant, but later became interested in electrical science, an occupation that engages his attention at the present time. He married, in 1854, Florinda Morton, daughter of Henry Grant and Florinda (Berga) Morton. Mrs. Hartley's father was a native of East Windsor, Conn., a descendant of one of the early settlers of that Colony. Mrs. Hartley died in 1871. The city residence of Mr. Hartley is at 34 Gramercy Park, where he lives with his two daughters, Florinda Morton and Isabel S. Hartley.
263
LEWIS CRUGER HASELL
T HE bearings which constitute the coat of arms of the Hasell family, of England and America, comprise a gold shield with a blue band, on which are three silver crescents, between three hazel nuts, proper. The crest is a silver squirrel feeding on a hazel nut proper, encircled with hazel branches, and the motto is Labor omnia vincit. These arms and crest were granted shortly after the English Herald's College became an incorporated body, during the reign of Richard III. At that time and since "every gentleman entitled to bear coat armor was noble, whether titled or not, though this fact has been forgotten in recent times, and the term nobility appropriated exclusively to the peerage."
An account of this ancient family (whose name is pronounced Hazel), which was first established in Cambridgeshire, England, and a description of their coat of arms is given in Sir Bernard Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary, commencing with John Hasell, who was buried in Bottisham Church in 1572. From him was descended Sir Edward Hasell, who was knighted by William Ill., and who settled in Cumberland, having purchased in 1665 the estate of Dalemain, Parish of Dacre, which property is still in the possession of kinsmen of the American branch of the family, and who entertain a cordial family correspondence with the latter. The Reverend Thomas Hasell was the first of John Hasell's descendants who came to America and settled in South Carolina, in 1705. He was a graduate of Cambridge University, was ordained deacon in 1705, and priest in 1709, by Bishop Compton, of London. He was the first Episcopalian minister of the Parish of St. Thomas and St. Dennis, South Carolina. An account of his long and eminent services is given in Dalchos's History of the Church in South Carolina. Among his descendants was Bishop Gadsden, of South Carolina. The Reverend Thomas Hasell died in 1744, leaving, by his wife, Elizabeth Ashby, whom he married in 1714, eight children. One of them was Andrew Hasell, 1729-1763, who married Sarah Wigfall in 1751, and was the father of Andrew Hasell, the second of that name. The latter, 1755-1789, married in 1778 Mary, daughter of General Job Milner, of the British Army, whose wife, Mary, was the daughter of Jacob Bond and his wife, Susan Maybank.
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