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 46

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

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In 1862, Mr. Hewitt went to England, and brought home with him the most recent improvements in the manufacture of gun barrel iron, and later on was the first to introduce into the country the Martins-Siemens, or open-hearth, process for the manufacture of steel. In 1867, he was commissioned by President Grant to visit the Paris Exposition and report on the iron and steel exhibits there, and his report was of such a thorough character that it was translated into nearly all European languages. For more than a quarter of a century he has taken an active part in public affairs. He has been prominent in the councils of the Democratic party, and was a Member of Congress from New York City, 1874-86, with the exception of one term, was elected Mayor of New York in 1886, and was chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1876. On social, financial and industrial questions, Mr. Hewitt is a recognized authority, and is a frequent writer and public speaker upon such subjects. It was principally due to his advocacy of the plan that the United States Geological Survey was created by Congress. His address on A Century of Mining and Metallurgy in the United States, delivered upon his retirement from the presidency of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in 1876, was recognized as an important historical monograph.

Columbia College gave Mr. Hewitt the degree of LL. D. in 1887, and he was elected president of the Alumni Association in 1883. The industrial and educational benefactions of Peter Cooper, that are centred in the well-known Cooper Union, have been practically managed by him as the active member and secretary of the board of trustees for nearly forty years. Mr. Hewitt married, in 1855, Sarah A. Cooper, daughter of Peter Cooper, and with his family lives in Lexing- ton Avenue, near Gramercy Park. His sons are Peter Cooper Hewitt, who married Miss Work; Abram S. Hewitt, Jr., and Erskine Hewitt, Princeton, 1891. His daughters are Sarah Cooper and Eleanor G. Hewitt. The leading clubs of the city count him on their membership rolls, among them being the Metropolitan, Century, City, Church, Union, Engineers', Tuxedo, Players, Riding and South Side Sportsmen's.

276

CHARLES BETTS HILLHOUSE

F REEHALL, one of the large estates of Ireland, was the birthplace of the Reverend James Hillhouse, the second son of its owner, and the first representative of the name in America, to which he came in 1720. The property had long been, and is still in the family, but passed into the female line, owing to the part its American branch took in the Revolutionary War in this country. The family was of great local prominence in its native seat, an uncle of the Reverend James Hillhouse being Captain James Hillhouse, mentioned in Macauley's history for bravery at the siege of Londonderry, and afterwards its Mayor.

The Reverend James Hillhouse, who was Mr. Charles Betts Hillhouse's American ancestor, settled in Connecticut and married a great-granddaughter of the famous Captain John Mason,

"The Indian Killer." William Hillhouse, their son, was prominent in Connecticut during the Revolution. He was a member of the Continental Congress, which first met at Philadelphia, in September, 1774, and paved the way for the Declaration of Independence, became a Major of Cavalry in the Army of the Revolution, and represented his town in one hundred and six semi- annual State Legislatures. Sarah Griswold, his wife, was a daughter of John Griswold, of Lyme, Conn., and a sister of Governor Matthew Griswold, of Connecticut. Her grandfather, Matthew Griswold, was Deputy Governor of the Colony. Their son, Thomas Hillhouse, moved to Albany, and married Ann Van Schaick Ten Broeck, whose father, John Cornelius Ten Broeck, great-grand- father of Mr. Charles Betts Hillhouse, was a prominent Revolutionary patriot. He was a Major in the Continental Army, and was present at Valley Forge, Brandywine and the siege and surrender of Yorktown. His regiment, the First New York, formed part of Lafayette's division, and he was among the officers who originated the Order of the Cincinnati.

Mr. Charles Betts Hillhouse possesses other ancestors representing eminent names of our early Colonial history. He is a direct descendant of Colonel Olaf Stevensen Van Courtlandt, the last burgomaster of New Amsterdam under the Dutch rule; from Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, the first patroon of Rensselaerwyck; from Jeremias Van Rensselaer, Speaker of the Colonial Assembly of 1664; from Johannes Cuyler, Mayor of Albany ; from Henry Wolcott, the royal charterer, and from Major Dirk Wessels Ten Broeck, Mayor of Albany in 1696.

William Hillhouse, son of Thomas, married Frances J. Betts, daughter of Judge Samuel Rossiter Betts, who for forty years was Judge of the United States Court at New York, and of his wife, Caroline Dewey, of Massachusetts. Charles Betts Hillhouse, the son of William and Frances (Betts) Hillhouse, and the subject of this article, was born November 25th, 1856, and graduated from Yale College in the class of 1878.

In 1888, Mr. Hillhouse married Georgiana Delprat Remsen, daughter of Robert G. Remsen and his wife, Margaret Delprat. Robert G. Remsen, the father of Mrs. Hillhouse, was a conspicuous figure in the social life of New York in the last generation, and was one of the three gentlemen who organized the famous Patriarchs. He died in January, 1896. Mrs. Hillhouse also traces an ancestry to Revolutionary and Dutch families. Her paternal grandfather was Henry Remsen, private secretary to President Jefferson, his father being Hendrick Remsen, known in the American Revolution as Patriot Remsen. Through her paternal grandmother, Elizabeth de Peyster, she is descended from the Honorable Johannes de Peyster, burgomaster, of New Amsterdam, in 1674, as well as from Johannes de Peyster, Mayor of the city, in 1698. Another ancestor of Mrs. Hillhouse was Jans Joris de Rapelye, who came to America in 1623, his grandfather, Gaspard Colet de Rapelye, having been an officer of Francis I. and Henry Il. Among other families from which she descends are the Banckers, Rutgers and Roosevelts. Her maternal great-grandfather was the Reverend Daniel Delprat, court chaplain of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, and who later on had charge of the education of William III. when Prince of Orange. Through her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Steuart, of Baltimore, she is descended from the Steuart family, famous in the history of Scotland.

277

THOMAS HILLHOUSE

J OHN HILLHOUSE, of Freehall, County Londonderry, was the father of the Reverend James Hillhouse, circa 1688-1740, ancestor of the Hillhouse family of Connecticut and New York, of which the late General Thomas Hillhouse was a representative. The preceding page, relating to another branch, gives an account of the first three generations in America, and of their relationship to prominent Colonial families of Connecticut and New York.

The late General Thomas Hillhouse was the eldest son and second child of Thomas Hill- house and Ann Van Schaick Ten Broeck, his wife. His father was born at Montville, New London County, Conn., but removed to New York early in the present century, and made his home at Walnut Grove, an estate at Watervliet, near Troy, which once formed part of the Van Renssalaer Manor. General Hillhouse was born at Walnut Grove, March 10th, 1816. He was preparing for college at Chase's Academy, Chatham, N. Y., but the death of his father obliged him to assume the care of the estate and the position of head of the family. In 1851, he moved to Geneva, N. Y., where he resided until he came to New York.

Much of his leisure was devoted to the study of political and military science, and becoming deeply interested in the vital questions of the day, he was an opponent of slavery and a supporter of Fremont in 1856. He was elected State Senator in 1859, and in 1861 was called by Governor Morgan to assume the duties of Adjutant-General, which position he held for two years. In this post, he transformed a virtually civil place into an arm of the Government, organizing two hundred thousand men for service in the Union Army, and was appointed by President Lincoln Assistant Adjutant-General of Volunteers. In 1865-66, he was Comptroller of the State, and rendered important service in the foundation of Cornell University. In 1870, President Grant appointed General Hillhouse Assistant Treasurer of the United States in New York, which position he held until 1882, throughout the administrations of Grant and Hayes. In 1882, he founded the Metro- politan Trust Company, of New York, and was its president until his death, in July, 1897.

In 1844, General Hillhouse married Harriet Prouty, daughter of Phinehas Prouty, a lineal descendant of Richard Prouty, of Scituate, Mass., 1667. Her mother, Margaret Matilda Van Vranken, daughter of the Reverend Nicholas Van Vranken, was a descendant of the most eminent families of Colonial Rhode Island, among her ancestors being Richard and Thomas Arnold, Thomas Angell, the companion of Roger Williams, Captain Samuel Comstock, John Wickes, a royal charterer, Samuel Gorton, Randal Holden, and the Reverend Chad Brown. The children of General Hillhouse were Margaret Prouty Hillhouse, Thomas Griswold Hillhouse, who married Julia, daughter of the Honorable John C. Ten Eyck, United States Senator 'from New Jersey; Phinehas Prouty Hillhouse, who married his fourth cousin, Caroline Matilda, daughter of the Reverend Maunsell Van Rensselaer, D. D .; Harriet Augusta Hillhouse, who married Walter Wood Adams; Anna Hillhouse, who died young, and Adelaide Hillhouse.

In the voluminous correspondence which General Hillhouse left are included letters of some of the most distinguished men in public life for the last fifty years, the portion relating to the Civil War and financial affairs having a peculiar value. He wrote the Report on National Difficul- ties presented to the New York Legislature on the eve of the Rebellion, which had a decisive effect on the position taken by the Empire State in the Civil War; and another pamphlet written by him entitled, A Defense of the Conscription Act, had great influence upon public opinion. He also wrote other pamphlets and reports of importance, as well as occasional articles for the press. General Hillhouse was one of the earliest members of the Union League Club, and was also a member of the Grolier Club. He belonged to the New England Society, the New York Historical Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For many years he was a manager of the House of the Holy Comforter, served as president of the Hahnemann Hospital, and was connected with various benevolent institutions. The motto on the coat-of-arms borne by the Reverend James Hillhouse is Time Deum.

278

THOMAS HITCHCOCK

O N the ship Susan and Ellen, in 1635, came Matthias Hitchcock from London to America. Landing in Boston, he settled in Watertown, Mass. In 1639, he removed to New Haven, of which place he was one of the original founders. This pioneer belonged to an old English family, one branch of which had been established in Wiltshire from the time of William the Conqueror. Anciently there were two families. The arms of one were: Argent, on a cross, azure, five fleurs de lis, or., in the dexter chief quarter, a'lion rampant, gules; crest, a castle, gules, on the tower a lion's head erased, in the mouth a round buckle ; motto, Esse quod opto. The arms of the other branch were: Gules, a chevron, argent, between three alligators; crest, an alligator. Luke Hitchcock, brother of Matthias, was a freeman of New Haven in 1644. He married a sister of William Gibbens, one of the original settlers of Hartford, who came in 1636. He was a large landowner in Wethersfield, Conn., and established very friendly relations with the Indians. His eldest son, John, married a daughter of the famous Deacon Samuel Chapin, of Springfield, Mass., and became the progenitor of a family that has been prominent and influential in the western part of the State of Massachusetts for several generations.

Eliakim Hitchcock, son of Matthias Hitchcock, married, in 1666, Sarah Merrick, daughter of Thomas Merrick, of Springfield, Mass., who came from Wales in 1630, settled first in Roxbury, Mass., and removed to Springfield in 1636, one of the company of pioneers who pushed through the wilderness to make new homes for themselves on the banks of the Connecticut. The great-great- grandfather of Mr. Thomas Hitchcock was Joseph Hitchcock, youngest son of Eliakim Hitchcock. He was born in 1686 and died in 1758, was a large landowner in Norwalk, Conn., a vestryman of the church and generally prominent in public affairs. His second son, John, was born in Norwalk, in 1726, and bought land in Greenwich of John Coscob, the Indian who gave his name to that part of the town, an appellation that has been retained in local annals to this day.

Thomas Hitchcock, the grandson of Eliakim Hitchcock, was born in Greenwich, in 1757, and died in 1813. He was a patriot of the Revolutionary period and served as a soldier in the war, being a Lieutenant in the company of Captain Nehemiah Mead. In 1784, he married Clemence Reynolds, daughter of William Reynolds. William Reynolds Hitchcock, son of Thomas Hitchcock and father of the subject of this sketch, was the sixth child in his father's family. He was born in Greenwich in 1794 and died in New York in 1857. His wife was Elithea Lockwood.

Mr. Thomas Hitchcock was born in New York, December 1st, 1831. He was educated in private schools and was graduated from the University of the City of New York in 1849. Then he studied law in the law department of Harvard College and was graduated in 1851. Until 1864, he was engaged in the practice of law, but since that time has devoted himself to journalistic and literary pursuits. In 1868, he joined the editorial staff of The New York Sun, and his work upon that newspaper has been principally on book reviews and philosophical and religious topics. His regular Monday morning financial letter, under the signature of Matthew Marshall, who, by the way, was chief clerk of the Bank of England fifty years ago, has become one of the many valuable features of The Sun, and is regarded by the commercial and financial world generally as one of the most important periodical contributions to the financial literature of the day.

Mr. Hitchcock resides in East Twenty-ninth Street, and is a member of the Century Association and the National Academy of Design. His son, Center Hitchcock, is a prominent figure in social circles and a member of the Metropolitan, Union, Knickerbocker and other clubs. Another son, Francis R. Hitchcock, is a graduate from Columbia College, is a steward of the Jockey Club, for many years has been master of the Meadow Brook Hunt, and belongs to the Union, Knickerbocker and other clubs. His third son, Thomas Hitchcock, Jr., married, in 1891, Louise Eustis, only daughter of the late George Eustis, of New Orleans, and granddaughter of the late W. W. Corcoran, the famous banker of Washington; he lives in Westbury, Long Island, and is a member of the Meadow Brook Hunt, Metropolitan, Knickerbocker, Union and other clubs.

279

GEORGE HOADLY

I N the Revolutionary War, Timothy Hoadley, of Northford, Conn., a representative of a family which settled in New England at the beginning of the colonization, was Captain in the Second Regiment, Connecticut Militia, and as such was repeatedly in active service during the contest. After the peace, he was prominent in civil life, being twenty-six times a member of the Connecticut Legislature. He married Rebecca Linley, and their son, George Hoadly, was the father of the Honorable George Hoadly, of New York.

George Hoadly, the elder, was born in Northfield in 1781, graduated from Yale College in 1801, and was a tutor there from 1803 to 1806. He pursued his professional studies with Judge Nathaniel Chauncey and practiced law for some years in New Haven, Conn. For one term he was Mayor of the city, and also became president of the Eagle Bank of New Haven. In 1830, however, after the failure of the bank, he removed to Cleveland, O., of which city he also became Mayor, and in which he died in 1857. He was a man of great learning and marked public spirit, and wherever he lived was a leading citizen.

Through his mother, who was Mary Anne Woolsey, widow of Jared Scarborough, the present George Hoadly traces his descent from one of the oldest pioneer families of Long Island. His first American maternal ancestor was George Woolsey, a resident of Yarmouth, England, in 1610, who afterwards went to Holland and finally came to New York with the Dutch immigrants in 1623, settling in New Amsterdam as a clerk in the employ of Isaac Allerton, of Mayflower fame, afterwards removing to Jamaica, Long Island. His son, George Woolsey, had two sons; the Reverend Benjamin Woolsey, the younger, being the ancestor of that branch of the family to which attention is now directed.

The Reverend Benjamin Woolsey, the great-grandfather of Mary Anne (Woolsey) Hoadly, was born in Jamaica, Long Island, and graduated from Yale College in 1707. In 1720, he succeeded the Reverend Joshua Hobart in the pastorate of the First Congregational Church at Southold, Long Island. His son, Benjamin Woolsey, Jr., who was born in 1720, was graduated from Yale in 1744, and resided at Dosoris, Long Island, where he died in 1771. He was, by his second wife, the father of Major Benjamin Woolsey, who was an officer in the Queen's Rangers during the Revolution; of William Walton Woolsey, born in 1766, and George Muirson Woolsey, and of Elizabeth (Woolsey) Dunlap, wife of the renowned artist, author and stage manager, William Dunlap. Both William W. and George M. Woolsey were prominent figures among the leading merchants of New York in the closing years of the last century, and the first quarter of the present one. William W. Woolsey was in the hardware trade, and was a partner of Moses Rogers, of Stamford, who married his elder half-sister ; while George M. Woolsey engaged in business as a sugar refiner, and made a large fortune. When William Walton Woolsey died, in 1839, he was president of the Boston & Providence Railroad Company, and at an earlier date of the New York Merchants' Exchange.

The wives of these members of the Woolsey family came from ancestors not less eminent than those of their husbands. The Reverend Benjamin Woolsey married Abigail Taylor, daughter of John Taylor, of Oyster Bay, Long Island, and Mary Whitehead, his wife. The Taylors and the Whiteheads were among the first families to settle in that part of the New York Colony. Through his wife, the Reverend Benjamin acquired a great landed estate on Long Island, to which he gave the name of Dosoris, by which the property is still known, the title being formed from the two Latin words, dos uxoris, and was applied to the property because it was his wife's dowry. Benjamin Woolsey, Jr., married for his second wife, who was the grandmother of Mary Anne (Woolsey) Hoadly, Anne Muirson, daughter of Dr. George Muirson, and granddaughter of William Smith, of Tangier, Chief Justice and a member of the Council of the Colony of New York. The wife of William Walton Woolsey, and the mother of Mary Anne (Woolsey) Hoadly, was Elizabeth Dwight, daughter of Major Timothy Dwight, of Northampton, Mass., and his wife,

280

Mary Edwards. Mary (Edwards) Dwight was one of the daughters of the celebrated New England divine, Jonathan Edwards, and was a sister of the mother of Lieutenant-Colonel Aaron Burr. Timothy Dwight, the first president of that name of Yale College, was the eldest son of Mary (Edwards) Dwight, and thus uncle of Mary Anne Woolsey. Major Dwight was a gallant soldier of the Colonial forces during the French and Indian wars, and died in an unsuccessful effort to colonize Mississippi, then owned by the English, at Natchez, just before the Revolution.

George Hoadly and his wife had several children. Their second child, Elizabeth Dwight Hoadly, was born in 1822 and married the Honorable Joshua Hall Bates, son of Dr. George Bates, of Boston, Mass. Joshua Hall Bates graduated from West Point in 1837, is a lawyer, was a member of the Ohio State Senate in 1864, and 1877, a Lieutenant in the United States Army during the Florida War, and a Brigadier-General of Ohio Volunteers in 1861. The eldest daughter of George Hoadly, Sr., Mary Anne Hoadly, was born in 1820, and married Dr. Thomas Fuller Pomeroy, son of Dr. Theodore Pomeroy, of Utica, N. Y. Dr. Thomas F. Pomeroy was a graduate of Union College in 1835, and afterwards a physician in Detroit, Mich. His wife died in 1862 and he died in 1896. A noteworthy fact connected with Governor Hoadly's family is that among his ancestors and relatives, including those on the maternal side, there have been three presidents and nine professors of American colleges. The late President Woolsey, of Yale College, was the youngest son of William Walton Woolsey, and brother of Mary Anne (Woolsey) Hoadly.

The Honorable George Hoadly, of New York City, is his father's only son, and was born July 31st, 1826. He was educated at the Western Reserve College, from which institution he was graduated in 1844. Afterwards he studied at the Harvard College Law School. His own alma mater gave him the degree of Doctor of Laws, and the same distinction was conferred on him by Yale in 1885 and by Dartmouth College in 1887. In 1847, he was admitted to the bar, beginning the practice of his profession in Cincinnati, O., as a junior partner of the Honorable Salmon P. Chase, afterwards the famous Secretary of the Treasury in President Lincoln's Cabinet and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and who was Governor Hoadly's lifelong friend. In 1851, he was elected Judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, and was City Solicitor in 1855. In 1859, he was again returned to the bench of the Second Superior Court, holding his seat there for nearly seven years, when he resigned to engage once more in private practice. From 1864 onward, he was for twenty years a professor of law in the Cincinnati Law School. In 1873-74, he was a member of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Ohio, and in 1883 was elected Governor of the State, and served a term in that high office. In 1887, he moved to New York City, where he has since been a member of a leading law firm.

The wife of the Honorable George Hoadly was Mary Burnet Perry, daughter of Samuel Perry, one of the pioneers of Cincinnati and of Ohio, and his wife, Mary Burnet Thew, of Rockland Lake, then known as Thew's Pond, in Rockland County, N. Y. Her father, Abraham Thew, was a lawyer in New York, who lost his health in one of the epidemics which afflicted the city early in the century, and, retiring to his ancestral home, at Rockland, soon died, leaving two daughters, afterwards known by their married names as Mrs. Samuel Perry and Mrs. Nathaniel Wright, the latter being the wife of a very distinguished lawyer of Cincinnati. The two orphan girls were taken by their uncle, Judge Jacob Burnet, on a visit to Ohio in 1815, where both married ; Mrs. Samuel Perry, the elder, dying at the advanced age of eighty-seven in 1881.

Mr. Hoadly's family consists of his son George, a graduate of Harvard, Class of 1879; Laura, the widow of Theodore Woolsey Scarborough; and Edward, who graduated from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1889. George Hoadly, Jr., who is a lawyer at Cincinnati, O., married Genevieve Groesbeck, daughter of the late Colonel John Groesbeck, Thirty-Ninth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and has two children, George, the fourth of this name, and Genevieve Olivia. Laura (Hoadly) Scarborough has a daughter, Mary Hoadly Scarborough, born in 1891.

Governor George Hoadly is a member of the Bar Association, the Ohio Society and the American Geographical Society, as well as of the Manhattan, Metropolitan, Century, Lawyers' and Reform clubs, while he is also a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

28I

CORNELIUS NEVIUS HOAGLAND, M. D.

O N his father's side, Dr. Cornelius Nevius Hoagland is descended from Christoffel Hoog- landt, a native of Holland, born in 1634. Coming from Haarlem to New Amsterdam in early youth, he engaged in business, united with the Dutch Church in 1661, was an alderman in 1669 and a Lieutenant of the militia. He married Catharine Cregier, daughter of Captain Martin Cregier, who was one of the prominent citizens in New Amsterdam, Captain of the military company and often in command of expeditions into the interior. In 1653, he was one of the first burgomasters of New Amsterdam, his associate being Arent Van Hattan.

In the second generation, Christopher Hooglandt, 1669-1748, was a resident of Long Island and afterwards of New Jersey. His second wife, the ancestress of the branch of the family to which Dr. Cornelius N. Hoagland belongs, was Helena Middagh, daughter of John and Adriana Middagh. His son, Christopher, 1699-1777, married Catalyntie Schenck. His grandson, Christopher, 1727-1805, who changed the spelling of his family name to Hoagland, was a prominent citizen of Somerset County, N. J., where he was a justice of the peace in 1776, an elder in the church and a member of the New Jersey Legislature in 1778. The wife of Christopher Hoagland, whom he married in 1752, was Sarah Voorhis.

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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 46

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