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 73

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

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The grandfather of the present Mr. James Otis was Harrison Gray Otis, son of Samuel Alleyne Otis and Elizabeth Gray, and one of the great orators of Boston in the first part of this cen- tury. Harrison Gray Otis was born in Boston in 1765, was graduated from Harvard College at the age of eighteen and was admitted to the bar when he had just attained his majority. Two years later, he began his career as an orator and a public man by delivering the Fourth of July oration in Boston. In 1787, he was Captain in the militia and aide-de-camp to General Brooks, in 1796 a member of the State Legislature, from 1797 to 1801 a Member of Congress, then United States District Attorney in 1801, Speaker of the House of Representatives 1803-05, president of the State Senate 1805-11, and Justice of the Court of Common Pleas 1814-18. He took a prominent part in the Hartford Convention in 1814, was United States Senator 1817-22 and was elected Mayor of Boston in 1829. He married Sally Foster and his death occurred in 1848. His son, James W. Otis, married Martha C. Church, and they were the parents of Mr. James Otis, of this generation.

Mr. James Otis was born in New York, October 12th, 1836, and has been engaged in mer- cantile pursuits in this city during his entire lifetime. He has taken an active interest in politics and in 1884-85 was a member of the State Senate from one of the New York City districts. During the Civil War, he was a member of the Twenty-Second New York Regiment, being Captain of Company A, and saw active service at the front. On the field, in 1863, he was elected Major of the regiment. He belongs to the Union League, Players and Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht clubs, and is also, by virtue of his ancestry, a member of the Sons of the American Revolution.

436

OSWALD OTTENDORFER

Nº TO one among the adopted citizens of the Republic who have come hither during the last half century has achieved a more substantial success, or has more fully merited the appro- bation of his fellow citizens by disinterested public services, than Mr. Oswald Ottendorfer, editor of The New York Staats Zeitung, the leading German newspaper of the United States. Mr. Ottendorfer is a native of Austria, having been born in Zwittau, in the Province of Moravia, February 28th, 1826. He studied law in the Universities of Vienna and Prague, and like other students of the Universities, embraced the revolutionary tenets that were secretly promulgated at that time. When the Revolution of 1848 broke out he identified himself with the movement and was a leader in all the proceedings against the Austrian Government. He was an active participant in the insurrection at Vienna, which led to the abdication of the Emperor Ferdinand, and when the uprising was suppresssed, in October, 1848. he was among those who escaped, going to Germany, where he took up his residence in Leipsic. In 1849, he participated in the revolutionary movements in Dresden, and later in the same year in Baden. When the liberal cause in Germany seemed totally lost, he became a political refugee, living for a time in Switzer- land. In 1850, finding that the active part he had taken in these insurrections made it unsafe for him to remain in Europe, he decided to emigrate to the United States. When he arrived here, he was only twenty-four years of age and was without capital or influential friends. At first he took a position in a factory, but acquiring a knowledge of the English language, secured a clerkship in the office of The Staats Zeitung. His ability quickly asserted itself and he was advanced from one position to another uritil he held important and confidential relations with the management of the paper. In 1859, he married the widow of the original proprietor of The Staats Zeitung and assumed the duties of editor and publisher of the paper, a position which he has maintained uninterruptedly to the present time.

Through the influential position which Mr. Ottendorfer has occupied he has been an impor- tant factor in the public affairs of the metropolis for a generation. In the municipal uprising against the Tweed Ring, he was a hearty supporter of Samuel J. Tilden and other reformers, and was a member of the famous Committee of Seventy. He was also a member of the Board of Aldermen in 1873-74. For many years he was a director in the German-American Bank, the German Savings Bank, the German Hospital and the Deutcher Leiderkranz Society. During the last fifteen years, he has, to a large extent, retired from active participation in general business affairs on account of ill health, confining his attention to his editorial work on The Staats Zeitung and to labor in the cause of municipal reform and wholesome politics, in which he is as deeply interested as when he stood shoulder to shoulder with the leading reformers in the days of the Tweed Ring.

Mrs. Ottendorfer, whose maiden name was Anna Behl, was devoted to charity, dispensing her wealth in a most generous manner. In 1875, she established a Home for Old Ladies in Astoria, Long Island, and set apart a fund for its support. This institution, which is now known as the Isabella Heimath, was removed in 1889 to Washington Heights, where it occupies one of the finest buildings devoted to such purposes in the city of New York. Several years before her death, which occurred in 1884, she made a donation for the assistance of schools in the city, and in 1881, she erected a woman's pavilion to the German Hospital. In 1883, she presented a hand- some building to the German Dispensary in Second Avenue, together with a valuable medical library. In 1884, Mr. Ottendorfer founded the Second Avenue branch of the Free Circulating Library, located in the centre of the German district on the East Side, and called the Ottendorfer Library.

For many years, Mr. and Mrs. Ottendorfer resided on an estate on Washington Heights, overlooking the Hudson River. Mr. Ottendorfer now lives in Fifty-ninth Street, opposite Central Park. He is a member of the Manhattan, City, Century, Reform and Commonwealth clubs, the Leiderkranz and the American Geographical Society.

437

RICHARD CHANNING MANN PAGE, M. D.

O NE of the most distinguished families in the history of Virginia is that of Page. The American pioneer was John Page, son of Francis Page, of Bedfont, Middlesex County, England, who belonged to a branch of the family that had for its arms: or., a fesse dan- cette between three martlets azure, a bordure of the last. Crest, a demi-horse forcene, per pale dancette, or. and azure. Motto: Spe labor levis. John Page was born in Bedfont in 1627; was a prosperous merchant in the mother country, and in Virginia became one of the most influential members of that Colony, being a member of the Royal Colonial Council. He died in 1692.

Matthew Page, 1659-1703, son of John Page, was a wealthy planter, married Mary Mann, was an original member of the board of trustees of William and Mary College, and a mem- ber of the Royal Council under Queen Anne. In the third generation, Mann Page, 1691-1730, was, next to Lord Fairfax, the largest landowner in Virginia, holding at one time over seventy thousand acres in several counties. John Page, 1720-1780, second son of Mann Page, was a member of the Colonial Council in 1776. After his father's death, he was the head of the North End branch of the family. His mother was Judith Carter, daughter of Robert Carter, president of the Virginia Colony. His wife was Jane Byrd, daughter of Colonel William E. Byrd, of Westover.

Eleven children of John Page survived their parents. Major Carter Page, the fourth son, 1758-1825, left William and Mary College in 1776 to join the Continental Army, and became Major and aide-de-camp to General Lafayette. He married Mary Carey, daughter of Colonel Archibald Carey, a descendant of Colonel Miles Carey of the Royal Navy, and in the sixth generation from Pocahontas and John Rolfe. Dr. Mann Page, 1791-1850, third surviving son of Major Carter Page, was educated at Hampden-Sidney College, and graduated from the Philadelphia Medical College in 1813. He married Jane Frances Walker, descended from the Nelsons of Yorktown, Va., and from Colonel John Washington, the ancestor of General George Washington.

Dr. Richard Channing Mann Page was the twelfth child and eighth son in his father's family. He was born in Keswick, Albermarle County, Va., January 2d, 1841. A student in the University of Virginia, when the Civil War broke out, he followed the example of his grand- father and other ancestors of the Revolutionary period, and, abandoning his books, enlisted in Pendleton's Rockbridge Battery, attached to Stonewall Jackson's Brigade in the army of General Joseph E. Johnston. Engaged in the first battle of Bull Run in 1861, he was transferred to the Morris Artillery Company, and promoted to be Second Gun Sergeant. After the battle of Williams- burg he was brevetted Captain of Artillery. He was present at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, served in the campaign of the Wilderness, and was promoted to be Major and Chief of Artillery on the staff of Major-General John C. Breckinridge. In the Chancellorsville campaign in 1863, Page's Battery accompanied Stonewall Jackson's corps on that famous march to General Hooker's rear. It had the honor of firing the gun at sunrise on that historic third of May, as a signal for the commencement of the battle. It occupied and held Hazel Grove, the possession of which was an important factor in compassing the defeat of the Union forces.

After the war, Dr. Page completed his studies, and graduated from the New York University. Serving as house physician to Bellevue Hospital, he was afterward district physician and then house surgeon to the Woman's Hospital, and since 1871 has been engaged in private practice. In 1880, he was appointed professor in the New York Polyclinic, was honorary vice- president of the Paris Congress for the study of tuberculosis, and is the author of many works on medicine, including several important text books. He is a member of the New York His- torical Society, the New York Southern Society, the Confederate Veteran Camp of New York, the Society of Medical Jurisprudence and the Sons of the Revolution. In 1874, he married Mary Elizabeth (Fitch) Winslow, of Westport, Conn., widow of Richard Henry Winslow, a founder of the banking house of Winslow, Lanier & Co. Mrs. Winslow is descended on her mother's side from Sarah Wilson, of Boston, and Edward Cornell, of England.

438

EDWARD WINSLOW PAIGE

A BOUT the middle of the seventeenth century, Nathaniel Paige came to Massachusetts, was one of the proprietors of Hardwick, Leicester, and Spencer, and marshal of Suffolk County, 1686. His son, Deacon Christopher Paige, of Hardwick, married Elizabeth Reed. Their son, John Paige, served in two campaigns of the French War, and was at the battle of the Plains of Abraham, where he was wounded. He married Hannah Winslow, 1740-1812, daughter of Captain Edward Winslow, 1703-1780, of Rochester, Mass., the son of Major Edward Winslow, 1681-1760, and grandson of Colonel Kenelm Winslow, 1635-1715. Colonel Winslow's father was Kenelm Winslow, 1599-1672, brother of Edward Winslow; he came to Plymouth in 1869.

The Reverend Winslow Paige, 1767-1838, son of John, was born at Hardwick, Mass., and became a Dutch minister. His first charge was at Stephentown, N. Y., in 1790, whither his father then removed. In 1793, he was pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church at Schaghticoke, and remained there fourteen years, after which he had successively the Dutch churches of Florida, N. Y., and Gilboa, N. Y., where he died. In 1787, he married Clarissa Keyes, of Ashford, Conn., daughter of General John and Mary (Wales) Keyes. John Keyes was a Captain under Knowlton, behind the rail fence at Bunker Hill. He was at Harlem Heights, Trenton and Princeton, and was the first Adjutant-General of Connecticut, continuing until the end of the war.

Alonzo Christopher Paige, father of Edward Winslow Paige, was the son of Winslow Paige. He was born at Schaghticoke, N. Y., in 1798, and died at Schenectady in 1868. Graduated from Williams College in 1812, he was, from 1828 to 1846, reporter of the Court of Chancery. During the four years, from 1826 on, he was a member of the New York Assembly, and a State Senator, 1837-1842. In 1848 he became a Justice of the Supreme Court, and in 1867 was a member of the Constitutional Convention. He was a trustee of Union College, and with other positions of trust, was a director of the Utica & Schenectady and New York Central Railroads, 1832-1867.

Harriet Bowers Mumford, wife of Alonzo Christopher Paige, and mother of the present Mr. Paige, was born in New York in 1807. She was the daughter of Benjamin Maverick Mumford, born on Groton Bank, Conn., in 1772. The first American ancestor of the family was Thomas Mumford, one of the "gentlemen " who accompanied Captain John Smith in his exploring expeditions from Jamestown, Va., in 1608. He returned to England, and was a member of the Virginia Company. Thomas Mumford, second of the name, came to Rhode Island, and in 1657 made the Pettaquamscutt purchase, which included Narragansett Pier and the adjacent region. He married Sarah Sherman, daughter of Philip Sherman, one of the founders of Rhode Island. Thomas Mumford, third of the name, born 1656, was a deputy of Rhode Island, and his son, Thomas Mumford, fourth of the name, born at Kingstown, R. I., 1687, married Hannah Remington, and moved to Groton Bank, Conn. He founded St. James' Church, New London. Its rector, Dr. Seabury, who married his daughter, was the father of Bishop Seabury. The fifth Thomas Mumford, born 1707, was a Captain in 1736, and married Abigail Chesebrough. His son, Thomas Mum- ford, born on Groton Bank, 1728, was one of the seven who furnished the means for the expedition which captured Ticonderoga. He was State Commissary and a member of the Assembly or Council throughout the Revolution. When Arnold took New London in 1781, Mr. Mumford's house was particularly singled out for destruction. He married a granddaughter of William Nicoll and Annetje Van Rensselaer. Benjamin Maverick Mumford was their son.

Mr. Edward Winslow Paige was born July 11th, 1844, at Schenectady. He was graduated from Union College in 1864, and from the Harvard Law School in 1866, and was LL. D., Hobart, in 1887. For nearly thirty years he has been in the active practice of his profession. His residence is Schenectady. His place, which overlooks the "Groot Vlacht," is the site of the former residence of Hiawat-ha, the founder of the Iroquois Indian Confederacy. In New York, he lives at 29 Washington Square. He is a [member of the Bar Association, the Metropolitan, University and other clubs, the Union Alumni Association and the Society of Colonial wars.

439

RICHARD SUYDAM PALMER

O NE of the stirring incidents of the War of 1812 was the bombardment of the town of Stonington, Conn., by a British fleet in August, 1814. Sir Thomas M. Hardy, who commanded three British ships of war, the Ramilies, the Pactolus and the Dispatch, sailed into the harbor one day and announced his purpose of destroying the town. The little com- pany of militia, reinforced by the citizens of the place, valiantly defended their homes, although they had only two eighteen-pound cannon and one four-pounder, but a good supply of ammuni- tion, and after four days of unequal combat, drove off the British vessels in a half sinking condition. Philip Freneau, the balladist of that time, celebrated this victory in one of the most popular war songs of the early part of this century.

Captain Amos Palmer, the great-grandfather of Mr. Richard Suydam Palmer, was the senior warden of the borough of Stonington at the time of that famous fight, and took prominent part in the defense of the town. He was Chairman of the Committee of Citizens that had been intrusted with preparations for the defense of the town many months previously, the attack upon it having been long anticipated, and his report of the affair to the Secretary of War in Washington is one of the interesting war documents of that period. He was born in 1747, and his death occurred in 1816. He came of an old and respected Colonial family, being lineally descended from Walter Palmer, the American emigrant, who was a member of an ancient English family, and arrived from England in 1629. Locating first in Charlestown, Mass., Walter Palmer was made a freeman of that place in 1631. Removing to Rehoboth in the Plymouth Colony in 1642, he was a deputy to the General Court in 1643-47, and was frequently elected by his townsmen to important town offices. In 1653, he removed to Connecticut, and purchased land from Governor Haynes. Subsequently receiving other grants from the town of Pequot, he became one of the original proprietors of Stonington. He died in 1662. His wife, whom he married in Charlestown, was Rebecca Short.

Courtlandt Palmer, the grandfather of Mr. Richard Suydam Palmer, was a son of Captain Amos Palmer. He was born in Stonington, in 1800, became a prominent merchant of New York, and died in 1874. At the age of eighteen, he engaged with an older brother who was in business in Maiden Lane, but started in business for himself when he was twenty-one years of age, and was at once successful. Soon after the panic of 1837, he began to invest in real estate in New York and in the West, and became very wealthy. He was the first president of the Stonington & Provi- dence Railroad, 1844-48, one of the founders and a director of the Safe Deposit Company, and a director of the Mutual Bank and Trust Company.

The first wife of Courtlandt Palmer was Eliza Thurston, daughter of Governor Thurston, of Connecticut. His second wife, whom he married in 1832, and who became the mother of all his children, was a daughter of Richard Suydam. He had four children, Courtlandt, Charles Phelps, Mary Anna, and Richard Suydam Palmer, who married Fannie Arnot, and was the father of the subject of this sketch. Courtlandt Palmer, 1843-1888, was the distinguished lawyer and author. Graduated from Williams College and the Law School of Columbia College, he devoted himself principally to the management of his father's estate, and to literary pursuits. He was an advanced and radical thinker, and established the famous Nineteenth Century Club, of which he was presi- dent during his life. Mary Anna Palmer married Henry Draper, who died several years ago. She lives in Madison Avenue, and has a country place, Wykaska, at Dobbs' Ferry.

Mr. Richard Suydam Palmer was born in New York, September 12th, 1868, and educated in Columbia University, being graduated in the class of 1891. His residence is in East Thirty-ninth Street, near Fifth Avenue. He is a member of the Metropolitan, Union, Knickerbocker, Calumet, Riding, St. Anthony, University and Meadow Brook Hunt clubs, the Country Club of Westchester County, the Columbia College Alumni Association, and the New York, Seawanhaka-Corinthian and Larchmont Yacht clubs. He is especially devoted to yachting, and has three times crossed the Atlantic in his yacht, Yampa, one of the finest cruising schooner yachts in the world.

440

TRENOR LUTHER PARK

O NE of the oldest New England families is that founded by Richard Park, of Hadleigh, Suffolk, England, who came to this country as early as 1630. Among the distinguished descendants of this pioneer, was Trenor W. Park, the eminent lawyer, railroad manager and financier, of the last generation, who was the father of Mr. Trenor Luther Park. Trenor W. Park was born in Woodford, Vt., in 1823. His parents removed to Bennington when he was a child, and he received his education there, after which he studied law for five years and was admitted to practice at the Vermont bar, in 1844, the same year he attained his majority. For the next ten years he pursued his profession in his native State with considerable success. In 1852, he left Vermont and went to California, where he became a junior member of the law firm of Halleck, Peachy, Billings & Park, of which General Henry W. Halleck was the senior member. He soon became one of the most eminent lawyers on the Pacific coast, his specialty being land titles. Incidentally, he became interested in lands and mines, and accumulated wealth through business operations.

After spending eleven years in California, he returned to his native State with a competence and settled in Bennington to a life of retirement. It was not long, however, before he turned his attention to railroad and financial affairs, in which he achieved a success quite equal to that which he had won in the law. He obtained control of the Western Vermont Railroad, and reorganized the company as the Bennington & Rutland Railroad, and was also interested in the development of several large Western mining properties. He was a director in the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and president of the Panama Railroad, for the eight years following 1874. He was generous in his benefactions, and founded an art gallery at the University of Vermont, and presented a free library and a home for veterans of the late war to the town of Bennington, Vt.

The first wife of Trenor W. Park was Laura V. Hall, daughter of the Honorable Hiland Hall, of Vermont. She died in 1875, and in 1882 Mr. Park married Ella Nichols, daughter of A. C. Nichols, of San Francisco. His children, who were by his first wife, are: Trenor Luther Park, Eliza Park, who became the wife of General John G. Mccullough, and Laura Hall Park, who married Frederick B. Jennings. The maternal grandfather of the present Mr. Park, the Honorable Hiland Hall, was one of Vermont's most distinguished citizens. He was born in Bennington in 1795, being the son of Nathaniel and Abigail (Hubbard) Hall. John Hall, his Puritan ancestor, was in the early emigration, and after living in Boston and Hartford, was one of the first settlers of Middletown, Conn., in 1650. George Hubbard, his maternal ancestor, was also one of the first settlers of Middletown. Hiland Hall was admitted to the bar in 1819, was elected a member of the Vermont Legislature in 1827, and was State Attorney from 1828 to 1831, and a Whig Mem- ber of Congress for ten years, from 1833 to 1843. Afterwards, he was bank commissioner of the State for four years, Judge of the Supreme Court in 1846, and in 1850 became second comptroller of the United States Treasury, and commissioner to settle disputed titles of land in California between the citizens of the United States and the Mexicans. One of the earliest Republicans, he was a delegate to the first National Republican Convention in 1856. In 1858, and again in 1859, he was elected Governor of Vermont, and was a delegate to the Peace Congress in Washington, in 1861. Governor Hall was president of the Vermont Historical Society, vice-president of the New England Historic-Genealogical Society, and the author of a History of Vermont. He died at Springfield, Mass., in 1885.

Mr. Trenor Luther Park was born in San Francisco, in 1861, and was graduated from Harvard in 1883. He has been for a number of years engaged in business in this city. He married Julia H. Catlin, the residence of the family being at White Plains, Westchester County. Mr. Park is a member of the Metropolitan, Union League, Lotos, New York Yacht, Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht, Harvard, Racquet, St. Nicholas, New York Athletic, St. Andrew's Golf and A K E clubs, the Country Club of Westchester County, and the New England Society.

441

SCHUYLER LIVINGSTON PARSONS

A DOUBLE wedding interested New York in the summer of 1775. John Watts, a son of Councilor John Watts, who had been recently graduated from King's College, was married to his cousin Jane, daughter of Peter de Lancey, of Westchester. The other bride was her sister, Susan de Lancey, who married Colonel Thomas Barclay. The guests drove from the city to the de Lancey mansion in Westchester, and the assemblage was extremely brilliant.

Colonel Thomas Barclay and his wife Susan were ancestors of the Parsons family, which has been conspicuous in New York society for several generations. Colonel Barclay, 1753-1830, was the eldest son of the Reverend Dr. Henry Barclay, the rector of Trinity Church. John Barclay, his ancestor and great-grandfather, was Governor of East Jersey, married Cornelia Van Schaick, and died in 1731. Governor John Barclay was the son of Colonel David Barclay, of Ury, 1610-86, and of Lady Catherine Gordon, 1621-63, who was in the thirteenth generation from Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, and his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry de Brugh, Earl of Ulster. The line of descent was through a daughter of Robert Bruce, the Princess Margaret Bruce, who married William, the Sixth Earl of Sutherland, and thence through the Sutherlands and Gordons to Lady Catherine Gordon. Through the Honorable Adam Gordon, in the eighth generation from Robert Bruce, who married Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, the Barclays could trace their descent from King James of Scotland, whose daughter Princess Janette was the mother of Adam Gordon. Colonel Thomas Barclay was for a long time British Consul General In the United States. Through his wife, Susan de Lancey, the subject of this sketch is related to the ancient families of de Lancey, Van Cortlandt and Colden, famous in the early history of Manhattan. The grand- father of Susan de Lancey was Etienne de Lancey, Viscount of Lavalle; her grandmother was Ann Van Cortland, and her mother was Elizabeth Colden, daughter of Cadwalader Colden.

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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 73

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