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 82
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Richardson Sands, the brother of Comfort Sands, was born in 1754, and was also prominent in his generation. He married Lucretia Ledyard, daughter of John Ledyard, of Hartford, Conn., their only son being Austin Ledyard Sands, one of the foremost men in the commercial affairs of the city during the first half of the century. After the death of Richardson Sands, his widow, Lucretia (Ledyard) Sands, married General Ebenezer Stevens. Joshua Sands, the youngest brother of Comfort and Richardson Sands, was a State Senator from 1792 to 1799, a Member of Congress from New York in 1803 and again in 1825, and Collector of the Port of New York under the administration of President John Adams. Austin Ledyard Sands died in 1859. His eldest son was Samuel Stevens Sands, who was long prominent in the mercantile and financial world, as well as in social circles. He married Mary E. Aymar, who also came of a family which represented the mercantile interests of the city. Her father was Benjamin Aymar, one of the greatest shipping merchants of the preceding generation. He was classed among the most enterprising men of his time; his ships carried the American flag to all parts of the world, and his financial standing was of the highest.
Mr. Benjamin Aymar Sands, representative of the family in this generation, is the son of Samuel Stevens Sands. He was born in New York, July 27th, 1853, and was graduated from Columbia College and also from the Law School of that institution, was admitted to the bar and has practiced his profession for over twenty years in this city. He is a member of the executive committee of the Bar Association, vice-president of the Colorado Midland Railroad Company, and a director of the New York Security and Trust Company, the National Safe Deposit Company, Greenwich Savings Bank, Hudson River Bank and Commonwealth Insurance Company. In Janu- ary, 1878, Mr. Sands married Amy Akin, daughter of William H. Akin, and has one daughter, Mary Emily Sands. The residence of the family is in West Forty-eighth Street, and their country home is at Southampton, Long Island. Mr. Sands is a member of the Union, University and City clubs and of the Downtown Association.
489
GEORGE HENRY SARGENT
H I UGH SARGENT, or Sariant, as the name was most commonly used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was the earliest known ancestor of the Sargent family, many mem- bers of which have borne a conspicuous and influential part in business and public life in the United States for two hundred years. He lived in Courteenhall, Northamptonshire, England, of which place he was a native. Courteenhall was an ancient inheritance of the Wake family, which traces its descent back to Hereward the Wake, in times previous to the Norman Conquest. The Sargent family was in Courteenhall early in the sixteenth century, and was of gentle blood, and it is quite possible that it had been established there even before the Wakes had entered into possession. The wife of Hugh Sargent was Margaret Gifford, daughter of Nicholas and Agnes (Masters) Gifford, of the Abbey of St. James, a suburb of the town of Northampton. Hugh Sargent was born about 1530, and had a family of fifteen children. He died in 1595.
William Sargent, the ancestor of the American family, was a son of Roger Sargent and grandson of Hugh Sargent. He came from Northampton, England, to Charlestown, Mass., in 1638, accompanied by his third wife, Sarah, and two daughters by his first wife. He first settled in Charlestown, but when a settlement was made on the banks of the Mystic River, he removed there with his family. In 1638, he was made a freeman and became one of the important men in the Colony. In 1648-50, he was a lay preacher in Malden, and was at one time a selectman. Removing to Barnstable, about 1656, he was a preacher there, and a freeman of Plymouth Colony in 1657. His death occurred in 1682, and his wife died in 1688.
John Sargent, son of William Sargent, was born in Charlestown. He made his home in Malden for the greater part of his lifetime, and was a selectman for six years. His son, John Sargent, born in 1639, was married three times. His first and third wives were born in Plymouth Colony, so that the mingled blood of Pilgrim and Puritan flows in the veins of his descendants. The mother of his son, Joseph, was Deborah Hillier, of Barnstable, 1643-1669, daughter of Hugh Hillier. Joseph Sargent, his son, was born in 1663, and died in 1717. He married Mary Green, 1668-1759, daughter of John Green, and was a resident of Malden and Charlestown, Mass. For four successive generations thereafter, sons of the family, the ancestors in direct line of the subject of this sketch, were named Joseph. The grandfather of Mr. George H. Sargent, Joseph Sargent, of Leicester, Mass., 1757-1787, was a great-grandson of Joseph and Mary (Green) Sargent. He married Mary Denny, daughter of Thomas Denny. His father, Colonel Joseph Denny Sargent, of Leicester, 1787-1849, married Mindwell Jones, daughter of Phineas Jones. The Denny and Jones families were among the most ancient in the history of New England. The lineage of Mr. George H. Sargent also goes back to the Baldwin family, another famous New England stock.
Mr. George Henry Sargent was born in Leicester, Worcester County, Mass., October 29th, 1828. Educated at the academy in his native town, he then went to Harvard College, from which institution he was graduated in 1853. The same year that he graduated, he removed to New York and engaged in the hardware business. An elder brother, Joseph Bradford Sargent, who was already settled in that business, became associated with him, under the firm name of Sargent & Company, in 1853, and since then he has been continuously connected with the establishment of which he is now the head. His father established, in the town of Leicester, a manufactory of cards used for carding cotton and wool by hand, and upon his death, the business passed into the hands of the sons, Joseph B., Edward and George H. Sargent. The firm also has extensive factories in New Haven.
In 1855, Mr. Sargent married Sarah Shaw, daughter of the Honorable John H. Shaw, of Nantucket, Mass. His daughter, Emily Shaw Sargent, married, in 1895, Wilfred Lewis, of Philadelphia. Mr. Sargent belongs to the Union League, Harvard and Hardware clubs, and the New England Society, and is a patron of the National Academy of Design. Politically, he is a Repub- lican. He is a member of the Unitarian Church, and a director of the Mercantile National Bank.
490
LEWIS A. SAYRE, M. D.
E PHRAIM SAYRE, of New Jersey, was a soldier in the War of the Revolution, holding the office of quartermaster. General Washington occupied his house as headquarters before the battle of Springfield. The descendants of Ephraim Sayre have continued to live in New Jersey down to the present time. Archibald Sayre, son of Ephraim Sayre, was a resident of Morris County, and a man of wealth, and was active and influential in public affairs.
Dr. Lewis Albert Sayre was the son of Archibald Sayre, and was born at Battle Hill, now Madison, Morris County, N. J., February 29th, 1820. His education was begun in his native place, and continued at the Wantage Seminary, at Deckertown, N. J. He took a collegiate course at Transylvania University, Kentucky, where he was graduated in 1839. At that time he was living with his uncle, in Lexington, Ky., and was intended for the church. His uncle was David Austin Sayre, a wealthy merchant and banker who, during his lifetime, gave more than half a million dollars to benevolent institutions, and founded the Sayre Female Institute. The inclination of the young man was toward the study of medicine, and when his college career was completed he returned to the East and entered the office of Dr. David Green, of New York. Taking a course in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, he graduated in 1842. When he took his degree, he read a thesis upon Spinal Irritation that attracted considerable attention, and is now of special interest as indicative of the early leaning of his thoughts toward that branch of medical practice wherein he has since become famous.
In the year that he graduated, Dr. Sayre was appointed prosector to the Professor in Surgery of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Willard Parker, a position that he held until the pressure of private practice compelled him to resign it in 1852, when he was honored by the appointment of emeritus prosector. In 1855, he was made surgeon to Bellevue Hospital, and two years later became surgeon to the Charity Hospital and its consulting surgeon in 1873.
Dr. Sayre was one of the founders of the New York Pathological Society, the New York Academy of Medicine and was one of the first members of the American Medical Association; being its vice-president in 1866 and president in 1880. He was one of the first to advocate the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, in which he became the first Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, Fractures and Luxations. In 1866, he was resident physician of the City of New York. From 1871 to 1881 he went abroad several times, and his fame in surgery had spread so widely that he was received with great distinction. In his specialties he stands at the head of his profession. He was the first in America to successfully perform excision of the joint for hip disease, and his study and treatment of spinal complaints has revolutionized medical science. He has devised new methods of treatment and invented numerous appliances and instruments. Certain methods of treatment, now universally adopted, are known the world over by his name. The contributions of Dr. Sayre to medical literature have been abundant. He has written many papers for medical and other periodicals, and has published important medical and surgical treatises. His services to the afflicted have brought him recognition from all parts of the world. Many honors have been bestowed upon him. King Charles IV. of Sweden and Norway decorated him with the order of Wasa, and he was elected an Honorary Member of the Medical Society of Norway, and also of those of St. Petersburg and Edinburgh, and of the British Medical Association. At home he is an honored member of all the leading medical societies, belongs to the club of the _ + and other social organizations, and is a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the American Geographical Society.
Dr. Sayre married in 1849 Eliza A. Hall, daughter of Charles Henry Hall, of New York. His surviving son, Dr. Reginald Hall Sayre, is a graduate from Columbia College and the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He is engaged in practice with his father, and is a lecturer on orthopedic surgery in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. The only daughter of Dr. Sayre, Mary Hall Sayre, assists her father in his literary work. Dr. Sayre lives at 285 Fifth Avenue.
491
EDWARD HEARTT SCHELL
R ICHARD SCHELL, of Germany, who left the Old World about the middle of the eighteenth century, was the American ancestor of the Schells, who have been preëmi- nently distinguished in the political and business life of the metropolis in the last generation. He went to Dutchess County, N. Y., and settled upon the Rhinebeck patent, and marrying there, had a large family of children. Christian Schell, son of Richard Schell, married Elizabeth Hughes, of Staatsburg, whose parents were of Welsh origin. He was a prominent business man in Rhinebeck and of high standing in the community. During the War of 1812, he commanded a company of troops that were enlisted from that section of the State. He died in 1825, at the age of forty-six, and his widow survived him forty-one years, dying in 1866 at the age of eighty-three.
Several of the children of Christian and Elizabeth Schell attained to distinction in public affairs. There were two daughters and six sons in the family. Of the sons, Julius Schell died in boyhood, and Francis Schell died at the age of twenty-two. The eldest brother, Richard Schell, who was born in 1810, died in 1879. He was several times elected a member of the State Senate, and was also a member of the United States House of Representatives. Robert Schell, who was born in 1815, was president of the Bank of the Metropolis, of New York, for many years. The brother who was most conspicuous in political life was Augustus Schell, the third child and second son of the family. He served for several years as Collector of the Port, was a Democratic Presidential elector in 1876, and chairman of the Democratic National Committee the same year.
Edward Schell, the youngest male member of this interesting family, was born in Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, N. Y., November 5th, 1819. He was educated in Rhinebeck, under the instruction of Professor Holbrook, until he was seventeen years of age. Then he became junior clerk in the house of Littlefield & Shaw, of New York, importers of Irish linens. When he was about twenty-six years of age, he joined his elder brother, Robert, in business as the junior member of the firm of Lewis S. Fellows & Schell. After remaining in this business for seventeen years, he entered the banking business, principally engaged with the Man- hattan Savings Institution, of which, eight years previous, he had been elected a trustee. He became treasurer of that institution, and in a few years was its president, a position that he held for over thirty years.
Besides his connection with the Manhattan Savings Institution, Edward Schell was identi- fied with many other corporations, being a trustee of the Union Trust Company, and a director in the National Citizens' Bank, the Manhattan Life Insurance Company, the Citizens' Insurance Company and the Park Fire Insurance Company. He was also interested in the literary, art and philanthropic institutions that are the pride of New York. He was a life member of the New York Historical Society and the 'St. Nicholas Society, and for many years a trustee of the New York Society Library, the New York Institution for the Blind and St. Luke's Hospital, a member of the Century Association and a governor of the Manhattan Club, a member and vestryman of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Ascension and warden of Christ Church, Rye, N. Y. He died December 24th, 1893. The wife of Mr. Schell was Jane L. Heartt, daughter of the Honorable Jonas C. Heartt, of Troy, N. Y., Mayor of that city for several successive terms. Mrs. Schell died in 1880.
Mr. Edward Heartt Schell, son of Edward Schell, was born in Troy, N. Y., September 30th, 1848. He was graduated from Yale College, studied law under Professor Dwight, of Columbia Law College, and is now a practicing lawyer of New York. In 1886, he married Cornelia E. Barnes, daughter of William Evarts and Mary (Spies) Barnes. His town house is at 19 East Twenty-fourth Street and he has a country residence in Rye. His clubs are the Manhattan and St. Nicholas, and he also belongs to the Bar Association and the Yale Alumni Association.
492
CHARLES STEWART SCHENCK
P ETER H. SCHENCK, grandfather of this gentleman, was one of the prominent merchants of New York City in the period after the Revolution. He was especially distinguished as being the first to begin the manufacture of domestic fabrics in this State. He established a cotton factory at Fishkill Landing, on the Hudson River, now Mattewan, called the Mattewan Company ; his associates being John Jacob Astor, William B. Astor, Philip Hone, Robert Hone, Gardiner and Samuel Howland and Joseph Kernochan. In 1812, when war was declared, the factory was fully under way. A British fleet blockaded New York and other Atlantic ports, but while the war lasted he had cotton for the factory hauled by wagons, from Charles- ton to Fishkill Landing, a distance of over nine hundred miles. Peter H. Schenck gave the Government earnest support in the war, contributing at one time ten thousand dollars. He had a residence at Fishkill, N. Y., and a city home in Bowling Green. His wife was Harriet Courtney, elder daughter of Sarah Henderson Courtney. The eldest daughter of their family, Margaret Matilda, married Russell Dart. Sarah Ann, another daughter, married for her first husband John A. Manning, and for her second husband, Lewis Timberlake, while Ellen Courtney married Peter Van Der Vort, and Harriet Eliza married Charles Wells. The father of Mr. Charles Stewart Schenck was Courtney Schenck, who was born in 1816, the oldest surviving son of his father's family. In 1837, he married Eliza Stewart, of Philadelphia.
The Schenck family is of ancient origin, the first of the name of whom mention is made being Edgar de Schecken, who, in 798, was Imperial Seneschal to Charlemagne. In America, the different branches of the family have sprung from two sources, both of them coming from the Schencks van Nydeck, of Holland. One comes from the brothers, Jan Martense Schenck and Roelof Martense Schenck, who settled in Flatlands, about 1650. The second branch is derived from Johannes Schenck, of Bushwick, Long Island, also of the Van Nydeck family.
Johannes Schenck, the progenitor of the Bushwick Schencks, was born in Holland, and emi- grated to America in 1683. His father, Martin, was a Lieutenant and Judge in the Province of Overyssel, an office that had been held in the family for several generations. Before coming to this country, he married Maria Magdalena Haes. After living in Bushwick some time, he removed to Esopus, but, in 1691, was town clerk of Flatbush, and in 1698, was a freeman of New York and again town clerk of Flatbush in 1700, Supervisor of Kings County in 1719, and died in 1748. His grandson, Judge Abraham Schenck, 1720-1790, son of Johannes Schenck and Maria Lock, married Elsie Vandervoort. He represented Kings County in the Colonial Legislature for several successive terms. He was the grandfather of Peter H. Schenck. The parents of Peter H. Schenck were Major Henry Schenck, 1743-1799, of Fishkill, and Hannah Brett. There have been many distinguished representatives of this ancient family, among them Admiral James Findley Schenck, U. S. N .; Robert C. Schenck, Major-General and Minister to Great Britain ; and the Reverend Noah Hunt Schenck. Mrs. Hicks Lord was a cousin of the subject of this sketch. Her great- great-grandfather was Sir Francis Rumbout, who settled at Fishkill nearly two centuries ago. A daughter of Sir Francis married a Schenck, and their great-granddaughter was Wilhelmina Wilkens, afterwards Mrs. Hicks Lord.
Mr. Charles Stewart Schenck was the eldest son of Courtney Schenck and his wife, Eliza Stewart. Born in Philadelphia, he was educated at College Hill, Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and has been engaged in mercantile life in New York City, being at the present time president of the Elevator Barge Company. During the Civil War, he was a Lieutenant of cavalry and a member of the Seventh Regiment of New York Volunteers. In 1865, Mr. Schenck married Harriet Chesebrough Kearny, of New York, a daughter of Philip R. Kearny, who was for many years president of the New York Life Insurance & Trust Company, of this city, a cousin of Major- General Philip Kearny. Mr. and Mrs. Schenck live at Rye, Westchester County. They have two daughters, Lulu L. and Helen Elise, and one son, Stewart Courtney Schenck.
493
FREDERICK AUGUSTUS SCHERMERHORN
O NE of the first settlers in New Netherland was Jacob Janse Schermerhorn, and his descendants have been conspicuous and influential in the city and State ever since that time. Jacob Janse Schermerhorn was a native of Holland, born in 1620, and came to this country in 1636, in the ship Van Rensselaerwyck. He was an enterprising man with consid- erable means, and settled in Beverwyck or Albany, then on the frontier, becoming an Indian trader. His business prospered, and he became one of the wealthiest men of his time. In 1648, he had trouble with Governor Petrus Stuyvesant, who accused him of selling guns and powder to the Indians, and he lost much of his property. He married Jannetje Van Voorhandt, daughter of Cornelius Sergense Van Voorhandt, and his family of nine children and their descendants married with the Beekmans, Van der Bogarts, Ten Eycks and other prominent Dutch families.
The Schermerhorns were long active in the affairs of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck, that great feudal estate of Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, which included the entire territory comprised in the present counties of Albany, Columbia and Rensselaer. A son of Jacob Janse Schermerhorn, named after his father, Jacob, born in 1662 and died in 1740, married Gerritje Hendrickse Van Buren, daughter of Hendrick Van Buren and granddaughter of Cornelius Maas and Catalyntje (Martense) Van Buren. Several of the Schermerhorns were among the original settlers of Schenec- tady. When that village was destroyed and its inhabitants massacred by the Indians in 1690, it was Simon Schermerhorn who carried the news of the disaster through the wilderness to Albany.
In more recent times Abraham Schermerhorn was a well-known New Yorker, the son of Peter and Elizabeth Bussing Schermerhorn, and great-grandson of Maria Beekman, who was a granddaughter of the famous William Beekman, founder of the Beekman family in New York. Abraham Schermerhorn married Helen White, a descendant of the Yonkers branch of the Van Cortlandt family. One of his sons married a daughter of James A. Bayard, of Delaware; one of his daughters married Charles Suydam, and another daughter is Mrs. Caroline Astor, who, the widow of William Astor, has long been at the head of the celebrated Astor family, and a recognized leader of New York society. John P. Schermerhorn, brother of Abraham, married Rebecca, daughter of General Ebenezer Stevens, and his sister married the Reverend William Creighton.
Captain Frederick Augustus Schermerhorn, representative of this old family in the present generation, was born in New York, November 1st, 1844. He was educated in private schools, and entered Columbia College in the class of 1865. Desiring to prepare for the United States Mili- tary Academy at West Point, he did not continue his course at Columbia, but the breaking out of the Civil War changed all his plans, and he enlisted in 1864, being commissioned as Second Lieu- tenant in the One Hundred and Eighty-Fifth Regiment, New York Infantry. In January, 1865, he was mustered in as First Lieutenant of Company C in the same regiment. He went to the front with the Army of the Potomac, and was aide-de-camp to Major-General Charles Griffin. He served until peace was declared, and was brevetted Captain for gallant conduct at the battle of Five Forks in 1865.
After the war, Captain Schermerhorn returned to his studies, entering the School of Mines of Columbia College, in 1865, and graduating in 1868 with the degree of Mining Engineer. He served seven years in the National Guard of the State of New York, as private, Corporal, Sergeant and First Lieutenant of Company K, Seventh Regiment. A prominent society and club man, he belongs to the Tuxedo, Metropolitan, Coaching, Riding, Country, Rockaway Hunt, Union, City, and Knickerbocker clubs. His interest in yachting is indicated by his membership in the New York and Sewanhaka-Corinthian Yacht clubs. Since 1877, he has been a trustee of Columbia College, is manager and recording secretary of the New York Institution for the Blind, is a supporter of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a member of the Loyal Legion, and a member of the American Geographical Society.
494
GEORGE RICHARD SCHIEFFELIN
J ACOB SCHIEFFELIN, of Weilheim, Germany, came to America early in the last century. His family has been traced in that country back to the thirteenth century, but his own ancestor was Conrad Schieffelin, son of Franz Schieffelin, of Nuremberg, who had migrated to Switzer- land. The first Jacob Schieffelin died in 1746, in which year his son, also named Jacob, 1732- 1769, came to Philadelphia. The wife of the second Jacob Schieffelin was Regina Margaretta Kraften Ritschaurin and their son, Jacob Schieffelin, third of the name and founder of the New York Schieffelin family, was born in Philadelphia in 1757.
Early in life, Jacob Schieffelin, the third, was secretary at the then frontier post of Detroit and acquired property there. In the Revolution he was a loyalist, served as aide to the English General, Henry Hamilton, and, coming to New York in 1780, held a commission in the British Army. After the war he removed to Montreal, and spent some time in London. His wife, Hannah Law- rence, was a member of the notable Long Island family of that name, being the daughter of John and Ann (Burling) Lawrence, and in 1794 Jacob Schieffelin returned to New York and became the partner of his brother-in-law, John Burling Lawrence, in the wholesale drug business. In 1799, he became the sole proprietor of the establishment which has remained in the name of his descendants to this day, its centennary anniversary having been celebrated in 1894. He retired from business in 1814 and died in 1835, his sons being Henry Hamilton, Effingham, Jacob and Richard Lawrence Schieffelin.
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