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 75

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

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The great-grandfather of Mr. Harrison Archibald Pell was William Ferris Pell, son of Benjamin Pell, grandson of Joshua Pell and great-grandson of Joseph Pell, the last Lord of the Manor. He married Mary M. Shipley, and left four sons, who were preeminently distinguished in the business and social world of New York, Clarence, Walden, Duncan C. and Morris Pell. The Honorable Duncan C. Pell, who was the grandfather of Mr. Harrison Archibald Pell, succeeded, with his brothers, to the business that his father had established. He was of splendid physique and was said to be one of the finest looking men in Wall Street. He had great commercial skill and was a lover of learning, being a founder of one of the prizes in the Free College, now the College of the City of New York. In the latter years of his life, he was a resident of Newport, and was elected Lieutenant-Governor of the State of Rhode Island in 1865. He died suddenly in January, 1874, at the age of sixty-eight. The wife of the Honorable Duncan C. Pell was Anne Clarke, of Hyde Hall, Otsego County, N. Y. She was the daughter of George Clarke, 1768-1835, and Eliza Rockford, daughter of General George Rockford, of Westmeath, Ireland, of the Royal Artillery. Through her father, who was a grandson of George Clarke, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of New York in the early part of the eighteenth century, she was descended through the Hydes, Nevilles, Beauchamps and Despencers from Edward I., King of England, and his wife, Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand III., King of Castile.

Duncan Archibald Pell, the father of Mr. Harrison A. Pell, was born in 1842. During the Civil War, he served on the staff of Major-General Ambrose E. Burnside. After the war, he was a resident of Staten Island until the time of his death, in 1874, and took an active interest in public affairs there, being at one time a supervisor of Castleton and a trustee of the village of New Brighton. He married Caroline Cheever and left three sons, Duncan C. Pell, who married Anna Ogden Pemberton; Harrison A. Pell and Alexander M. Peil.

Mr. Harrison Archibald Pell was born at Newport, R. I., September 22d, 1868. Educated at the celebrated Bishops College School in Canada, he then entered upon business life in New York. He has figured prominently in the social life of the metropolis and of Newport. He is a member of the Calumet Club, the Baltusrol Golf Club and of other social organizations. His wife, to whom he was married in 1893, was Sadie D. Price, a granddaughter of Chief Justice Price, of Maryland, a representative of an old and respected family in that State.

448

CHARLES LAWRENCE PERKINS

S EVERAL distinct families of the Perkins name were among the early emigrants to America. John Perkins and Isaac Perkins, of Ipswich, and Abraham Perkins, of Hampton, who came to Massachusetts in the first days of the settlement, were near relatives, descended from Peter Perkins, an officer in the household of Sir Hugh Despenser about 1300.

John Perkins, of Ipswich, the ancestor of that branch of the family now under consid- eration, was born in Newent, Gloucestershire, England, in 1590. Sailing from Bristol, in 1630, he settled in Boston, becoming a freeman of that place in the following year. In 1633, he removed to Ipswich, was a deputy to the General Court in 1636, was frequently a member of the Grand Jury, and died in 1654. John Perkins, his son, was born in England in 1614 and came to this country with his father. When he grew to manhood, he became a prominent man of the town of Ipswich, was quartermaster of the military organization of that place, and died in 1686. Isaac Perkins, 1650-1725, the son of the second John Perkins, married Hannah Knight, daughter of Alexander Knight. For four successive generations the descendants of Isaac Perkins lived in Ipswich. Jacob Perkins, 1678-1754, and his wife, Mrs. Susanna Butler, daughter of William and Susanna Cogswell, were the ancestors of the subject of this sketch.

Francis Perkins, the son of the last-mentioned couple, was born in Ipswich in 1732. His first wife was Hannah Cogswell, and his second wife was Martha Low, daughter of Captain David and Susanna Low. He was an ensign of the militia of Ipswich in 1774, became a Captain in 1776, and served in the Revolution. Removing to Lunenburg, Mass., he died in 1812. David Perkins, his son, was born in Ipswich in 1770. He was prominent in the community, and, removing to Salem, died there in 1859. He was engaged in manufacturing, was a member of the Salem Mechanics' Association and a director of the Salem Laboratory Company. The wife of David Perkins was Hannah Fabens, of Salem, Mass., whom he married in 1793. She was a daughter of Peard and Hannah (Lang) Fabens, was born in Salem in 1771, and died in 1851. Their son, Benjamin Perkins, was born in Salem in 1797, and died in Roxbury, Mass., in 1870. His early life was passed in Hanover, N. H., but in 1828 he removed to Boston. He was treasurer of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society, and actively interested in religious and philan- thropic undertakings. In 1823, he married Jane Lawrence, daughter of Abel and Abigail Law- rence, of Salem. Charles Lawrence Perkins, Sr., the offspring of this marriage, was born in Hanover, N. H., in 1824. Educated in Boston, he was in early life associated with his father in business, but afterwards came to New York, where he became prominent in the iron business. He married, in 1856, Elizabeth West Nevins, who survives her husband, and resides at Glen Cove, Long Island.

Mr. Charles Lawrence Perkins is the eldest son of Charles Lawrence Perkins, Sr., and Elizabeth West Nevins. He was born in 1857 in Walton-on-Thames, England, and graduated from Harvard in the class of 1879. He entered business life in this city, and has been identified with large corporations, principally railroad, coal and iron interests. He is a trustee of the Bowery Savings Bank and a director of the Knickerbocker Trust Company. In 1882, Mr. Perkins married Margaret Gandy, and has one son, John Lawrence Perkins. He has taken great interest in military affairs, and holds the rank of Major and Commissary of the First Brigade of the National Guard on the staff of General Louis Fitzgerald. During the Brooklyn surface railroad strike of January, 1895, he was Chief Commissary for the united First and Second Brigades. Mr. Perkins' residence is in West Eleventh Street, and he has a summer home at Lawrence, Long Island. He is a member of the Union, Racquet, Players, Whist and Harvard clubs, the Downtown Association, the New England Society and the National Academy of Design.

The other children of Charles Lawrence Perkins, Sr., are two sons, George Endicott and Robert Paterson Perkins, and three daughters, Elsie Nevins, Frances de Forest and Mary Lawrence Perkins.

449

PHILLIPS PHOENIX

N TORTHUMBERLAND, England, was the seat of a great landed family, the Fenwicks, whose name is pronounced in accordance with the spelling adopted by its American representatives. The family here was founded by Alexander Phoenix, who often wrote his name Fenwick, and who arrived at New Amsterdam in 1640. He was a younger son of Sir John Fenwick, then head of the English family. Removing to Rhode Island, in 1652, he married for his second wife Abigail Sewall, ancestress of the Phoenix family, of New York. Jacob Phoenix, son of Alexander Phoenix, was born near New Orange (Albany), in 1651, was a freeman in 1698, and married Anna Van Vleeck. In the next generation was Alexander Phoenix, 1690-1770, a freeman in 1732, and a member of the Blue Artillery Company. His second wife was Elizabeth Burger, 1692-1757, daughter of George and Elizabeth (Thomas) Burger, and their son was Alexander Phoenix, who was born in 1726.

Daniel Phoenix (nephew of Daniel Phoenix, first treasurer of the City of New York), who was born in 1761, in New York, was the grandfather of Mr. Phillips Phoenix. He was a Major of the New Jersey troops in 1798. His wife was Anna Lewis Phillips, whom he married in 1784, and who died in 1854. His son, the Honorable Jonas Phillips Phoenix, was born in 1788, in Morristown, N. J., and became one of New York's most distinguished merchants. He was an alderman, 1838-9, and a Presidential Elector, in 1840. A prominent Whig, he was a candidate for Mayor and in 1842 was one of the commissioners of the Croton aqueduct. Elected a member of Congress, in 1843 and 1849, he was a member of the Assembly, in 1848.

On the female side of the house, Mr. Phillips Phoenix includes in his ancestry several of the great families of New England and New York. His mother was Mary Whitney, a daughter of Stephen and Harriet (Suydam) Whitney. Stephen Whitney was one of the leading merchants of New York in the last generation, and was descended from Henry Whitney, who came from England and settled on Long Island ; his wife belonged to the Suydam family, of Hallett's Cove, Long Island. The mother of Jonas Phillips Phoenix, Anna Lewis Phillips, was a daughter of Jonas Phillips and Anna Lewis, and descended on her father's side from the Reverend George Phillips, who came over on the ship Arabella, with Governor John Winthrop, in 1630. Her mother was the daughter of the Reverend Thomas Lewis, 1716-1777, of Yale College, 1741, a Presbyterian clergyman. Through the wife of her paternal great-grandfather, the Reverend George Phillips, she was descended from William Hallett, of Hallett's Cove, Long Island, and also from George Woolsey, one of the first settlers on Long Island.

The Honorable Jonas Phillips Phoenix had a large family of children. Stephen Whitney Phoenix, the second son, was born in 1839, graduated from Columbia College in 1859, and Columbia Law School in 1863, and devoted most of his life to antiquarian and genealogical research. When he died, in 1881, he left his herbarium to the American Museum of Natural History, his genealogical works and fifteen thousand dollars to the New York Historical Society, his works of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his library and fortune to Columbia College. Anna Lewis Phoenix, the youngest daughter, died in 1858, unmarried ; the second daughter, Harriet Whitney Phoenix, married Isaac Bronson, son of Dr. Oliver Bronson, and died in 1864. Mary Caroline Phoenix married George Henry Warren. The oldest child, Whitney Phoenix, died in 1833. Lloyd Phoenix, another son, was born in New York, in 1844, graduated from Annapolis, in 1861, and served in the Civil War, attaining to the rank of Lieutenant.

Mr. Phillips Phoenix, the eldest son and the representative of the family in the present generation, was born in New York, in 1834. Graduating from the Law School of Harvard University, in 1854, he is a practicing lawyer in New York, and lives in East Sixty-sixth Street. He is a member of the Metropolitan, City, Union League, Union, Knickerbocker, and New York Yacht clubs, the Downtown Association, the American Geographical Society, and New York Historical Society, and is a patron of the American Museum of Natural History.

450

HENRY EVELYN PIERREPONT

T WO sons of James Pierrepont, of the family of Holm Pierrepont, England, John and Robert Pierrepont, came to Roxbury, Mass., about 1636. John Pierrepont, 1619-1682, married Thankful Stowe. His eldest son died young. His second son, James Pierrepont, 1659-1714, graduated from Harvard in 1681, and settled, in the ministry, at New Haven in 1684. In 1689, he was one of three ministers who laid plans for the foundation of Yale College, and was one of the original trustees of Yale. In 1708, he was a member of the synod, at Saybrook, to formulate a plan to better enforce discipline in the churches of the Colony. The Reverend Mr. Pierrepont was married three times. His third wife was Mary Hooker, daughter of the Reverend Samuel Hooker, of Farmington. They had seven children. One of his daughters by this marriage became the wife of the celebrated Jonathan Edwards. Hezekiah Pierrepont, youngest son of the Reverend James and Mary (Hooker) Pierrepont, was born in 1712 and died in 1741, having married, in 1736, Lydia Hemenway, daughter of the Reverend Jacob Hemenway. He left a son, John Pierrepont, who was born in 1740, and died in 1805, and who married Sarah Beers, daughter of Nathan Beers, who came of an old family of Connecticut, his ancestors being numbered among the first settlers of that Colony. John Pierrepont and Sarah Beers were the great-grandparents of Mr. Henry Evelyn Pierrepont.

Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont, the grandfather of Mr. Henry E. Pierrepont, was born in New Haven in 1768, and died in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1838. He was carefully educated for commer- cial pursuits, and for several years was an official in the New York Custom House. Afterwards he became engaged in financial affairs, and in 1793 established the house of Leffingwell & Pierre- pont. His wife, whom he married in 1802, was Anna M. Constable. She was the daughter of William Constable, who bought a large tract of wild land in Northern New York, the territory including more than one million acres, and was one of the founders of the town of Constableville, that was named after him. Hezekiah B. Pierrepont left two sons, William C. and Henry E. Pierrepont, and several daughters.

Henry Evelyn Pierrepont, Sr., was born in Brooklyn, in 1808, and died there in 1888. Receiving an academic education, he was engaged in the real estate business, and in 1833, while absent in Europe, was appointed one of the Board of Commissioners to prepare plans for laying out the public grounds and streets of the new City of Brooklyn. He was one of the founders of Greenwood Cemetery, and was instrumental in planning and carrying out the water-front improvements of Brooklyn, at the foot of Brooklyn Heights. He was the first president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, was active in the organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church in that city, and altogether was one of Brooklyn's most prominent and most useful citizens. The wife of Mr. Pierrepont, whom he married in 1841, was Anna M. Jay. She was a daughter of Peter Augustus Jay and Mary Rutherfurd Clarkson, her mother being a daughter of General Matthew Clarkson and his wife, Mary Rutherfurd. The lineages and the history of the Jay, Rutherford and Clarkson families are among the most brilliant in the annals of New York, and are fully treated upon several pages of this volume. The children of Henry and Anna M. (Jay) Pierrepont were Mary Rutherfurd, Henry E., Jr., John Jay, Dr. William Augustus, Julia Jay and Anna Jay Pierrepont. Mary Rutherfurd Pierrepont, who died in 1879, was the wife of Rutherfurd Stuyvesant. John Jay Pierrepont married Elise de Rham, daughter of Charles de Rham.

Mr. Henry E. Pierrepont, the eldest son of this family, was born in Brooklyn, in 1845, and educated in Columbia College, graduating in the class of 1867, and holds the degree of M. A. He married, in 1869, Ellen A. Low, daughter of Abiel Abbot Low, and has six children: Anne Low Pierrepont, who married Lea Mcilvaine Luquer; Ellen Low Pierrepont, who married R. Burnham Moffat, and Henry Evelyn, Jr., Robert Low, Rutherfurd Stuyvesant and Seth Low Pierrepont. The residence of the Pierrepont family is on Columbia Heights, Brooklyn. Mr. Pierrepont is a member of the Hamilton Club of Brooklyn and the Sons of the Revolution.

45I

JOHN FRED PIERSON

M EMBERS of the Pierson family have been distinguished as merchants, clergymen and soldiers for more than two centuries of American history. Abraham Pierson, born in Yorkshire, England, in 1608, graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1632. Becoming a non-conformist, he emigrated to America in 1639, living for a time in Boston, where he was the friend of Governor John Winthrop. In 1640, he led a party from Boston to Long Island, where they purchased land and founded the town of Southampton. He was pastor of the church there for seven years, and in 1647 moved to the New Haven Colony and founded the town of Branford, where he remained as pastor and engaged in evangelizing the Indians for twenty-five years. He was chaplain of the forces raised against the Dutch of the New Netherland in 1662-5, and when the difficulty was finally settled in a manner not agreeable to him, moved again and founded Newark, N. J., which he called after the town in England where he was first ordained. He took with him nearly the entire population of Branford to the new settlement on the banks of the Passaic, and died in Newark in 1678.

Abraham Pierson, Jr., graduated from Harvard College in 1668. He was ordained to the ministry the following year, and was successively pastor of the Congregational churches at Southampton, Long Island; Branford, Conn .; Newark, N. J., and Killingworth, now Clinton, Conn. While at Clinton, in 1700, he was chosen as one of a committee to erect a college, and when the institution that in after years became Yale College was chartered, in 1701, he became its first rector and remained its head till his death, in 1707. The descendants of the Reverend Abraham Pierson, Jr., were active in public life. Josiah G. Pierson founded the Ramapo Iron Works, at Ramapo, N. Y., in 1795, and a younger brother, the Honorable Jeremiah Halsey Pierson, born in 1766, became interested in the same enterprise and maintained his connection therewith up to his death, in 1855. He was preeminently a man of affairs, an inventor, one of the prime movers in the opening of the Erie Railroad and a Member of Congress in 1821.

Henry L. Pierson, son of the Honorable Jeremiah H. Pierson and the father of Mr. John F. Pierson, was born in Ramapo in 1807. He assisted on the survey that led to the building of the Erie Railroad, and in 1828 entered the firm of J. G. Pierson & Brothers, taking charge of its New York office. In 1830, he suggested the Erie Railroad from Lake Erie to the Hudson, was a director of the Erie Company, and for a time its treasurer, carrying through many of the early financial plans of the road in conjunction with his brother-in-law, Eleazar Lord. Upon the death of his father, in 1869, he became the sole proprietor of the Ramapo Iron Works.

General John Fred Pierson, his son, soldier and merchant, was born in New York City, February 25th, 1839. Before he was twenty-one years of age, he joined the engineer corps of the Seventh Regiment, and was placed on detached service as aide-de-camp on the staff of General William Hall. When the Civil War began, he recruited a company, and in May, 1861, was commissioned a Captain in the First Regiment, New York Volunteers. Promotion came rapidly, and in July, 1861, he was Major; in September, 1861, he was a Lieutenant-Colonel; in October, 1862, a Colonel, and in March, 1865, a brevet Brigadier-General. He served under General Hooker in the Army of the Potomac, participated in the battles of Big Bethel, Fair Oaks, Glendale, Malvern Hill, Fredericksburg and other engagements, was wounded at Chancellorsville and Glendale, and captured at Chantilly, and confined in Libby Prison in 1862. He was the youngest officer of his rank in the army, and at times commanded a brigade at the age of twenty- three in a way that called out the heartiest appreciation of his superiors, leaving the service with a brilliant military record.

General Pierson married, on December 9th, 1869, S. Augusta Rhodes, and since the war he has been at the head of the New York house of Pierson & Co. He lives at 20 West Fifty-second Street, and has a residence, Rose Lawn, at Newport, and also one at Ramapo, N. Y. He belongs to the Tuxedo, Union, New York Yacht, United Service and other clubs.

452

HENRY BRADLEY PLANT

J OHN PLANT, the progenitor of the Plant family, came to Connecticut, from England, in 1636. Mr. Henry B. Plant is descended in direct line from this ancestor. His paternal great-grandfather was a patriot in the War of the Revolution and served in the Continental Army, being attached to a regiment which was stationed at Washington's headquarters, in New- burgh, and he was one of the guards at the execution of Major Andre. The maternal great- grandfather of Mr. Plant was a Major in the Continental Army.

Mr. Plant was born in Branford, Conn., October 27th, 1819. He was instructed by the Reverend Timothy O. Gillette, and then studied at the Lancastarian School, in New Haven. When eighteen years of age, he entered the employ of the New Haven Steamboat Company, and soon after was placed in charge of the express business upon the steamboat and railroad lines between New York and New Haven. When the Adams Express Company was organized, he went to the South in its interest, and in 1854 was made superintendent of the Southern Division of the company, with his office at Augusta, Ga. Mr. Plant remained in this position until 1861, when he organized the Southern Express Company, which succeeded to the business of the Adams Express Company in that section, and of which its founder has been continually president down to the present time. During the progress of the Civil War, his health failed, and he went to Bermuda and thence to Europe, remaining abroad until after peace was declared, when he returned and resumed charge of his express interests. Soon after the war, Mr. Plant became interested in developing the transportation facilities of the South, and started upon a career which has gained him a high rank among the great railway man- agers and financiers of the present period in the United States.

In 1879, he was the leading member of a syndicate which purchased the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad, of Georgia, and reorganized it under the title of the Savannah, Florida & Western Railroad Company. He developed and improved this line, rebuilt the Savannah & Charleston Railroad and has been active in the prosecution of other large Southern railroad enterprises.

In 1882, the charter of the Plant Investment Company was secured by Mr. Plant, in associa- tion with several prominent gentlemen of New York and other cities, including W. T. Walters, Henry M. Flagler, Morris K. Jesup, Henry Sanford, Lynde Harrison and H. P. Hoadley, the object being the purchase and development on a large scale of railway, steamship and other enterprises in the South. This work included the improvement of Florida railroads, the extension of several railways from Florida to connections with Northern and Western systems, the establishment of lines of fast mail steamships between Tampa, Fla., and Havana, Cuba, between various Southern ports, between New York City and Florida and between Boston and Halifax, and the creation of large modern hotels of the highest type, notably those at Tampa and Winter Park, Fla. It is not too much to say that the development of Florida, since the Civil War ended, has been very largely due to the Plant Investment Company. That State has been brought into close connec- tion with the North, and the attention of investors, as well as of pleasure-seekers, has been drawn thither by improved means of communication. Mr. Plant has been the head of this remarkable development, which has not been rivaled in either magnitude or success by any enterprise of similar character ever undertaken in the United States.

Mr. Plant has a city residence at 586 Fifth Avenue and his country home is at Branford, Conn. He belongs to the Union League Club and the New England Society, and is a patron of the American Museum of Natural History. In 1842, he married Ellen Elizabeth Blackstone, daughter of the Honorable James Blackstone, of Connecticut. She died in 1861, and in 1873 Mr. Plant married Margaret Josephine Loughman, only daughter of Martin Loughman, of New York. His one living son, Morton Plant, is vice-president of the railroads of the Plant system, vice- president of the Southern Express Company and vice-president and manager of the Canada, Atlantic and Plant Steamship Company.

453

GILBERT MOTIER PLYMPTON

T HIS gentleman is the son of Colonel Joseph Plympton, and was born January 15th, 1835, at Fort Wood, Bedloe's Island, New York Harbor, then a military post under the command of his father, who at that time was a Captain in the United States Army. His education began at Fort Snelling, Minn., when he was five years old, with the Chaplain for an instructor, and was continued in a private school at Sackett's Harbor, N. Y. On the com- mencement of the war with Mexico, his father was ordered, with his regiment, to join General Scott's Army, whereupon the lad went to the home of his uncle, Gerard W. Livingston, in Hackensack, N. J., and continued his studies in that place. When his father, then Lieutenant- Colonel Plympton, returned from the Mexican War, he took his family to Jefferson Barracks, Mo., which post he commanded. The subject of this sketch then entered Shurtleff College, Alton, Ill., and remained there until he was promised a West Point cadet's warrant, when he accompanied his parents to this city and entered John Sedgwick's school to prepare for the Military Academy. Not receiving the appointment, he read law and entered a law office at his father's request, and was admitted to practice in November, 1860. Shortly after, in order to perfect his professional knowledge, he entered the law department of the University of the City of New York and graduated from that institution with the degree of LL. B. in 1863.

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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 75

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