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 9

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

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Mr. Elias Cornelius Benedict is one of the leading representatives of the family in this generation. He is the son of the Reverend Henry Benedict and his wife, Mary Betts Lockwood, and was born January 24th, 1834, in the town of Somers, Westchester County, N. Y., where his father was pastor of a church. He was educated in schools at Westport, Conn., and Buffalo, N. Y., part of his early youth having been spent in the latter city. When fifteen years of age, he entered upon business life as a clerk in the Wall Street office of Corning & Co. In 1857, when twenty-three years old, he succeeded to their business, organizing the banking firm of Benedict & Co., of which he has ever since been at the head. In 1871, Roswell P. Flower, who at a later date was Governor of New York, joined the firm which took the name of Benedict, Flower & Co., this partnership continuing for about four years. The firm has made a specialty of investment securities and in recent years has been largely interested in gas securities. Mr. Benedict is also connected with many financial institutions. The Gold Exchange Bank, which grew out of the gold speculation of the war time, was founded by him and his brother, and he has been prominent in the management of railroad and financial enterprises of great magnitude. He is a Democrat, but has never taken any active part in politics, although political preferment has often been tendered to him. He is an intimate friend of ex-President Cleveland.

In 1859, Mr. Benedict married Sarah C. Hart, daughter of Lucius Hart, of New York. They have four children. Frederic Hart Benedict, the only son, married first Jennie Flagler, daughter of Henry M. Flagler, of New York, and after her death married Virginie Coudert, daughter of Frederic R. Coudert. Martha Benedict, the eldest daughter, married Ramsay Turnbull and lives in Bernardsville, N. J. The two unmarried daughters are Helen Ripley and Louise Adele Benedict.

The family residence is 10 West Fifty-first Street and Mr. Benedict owns an estate at Indian Harbor, Greenwich, Conn., once the site of the famous Americus Club. Yachting engages much of his leisure time. He owns the steam yacht Oneida, belongs to the New York, American, Seawanhaka-Corinthian and other yacht clubs and is also a member of the Manhattan, Players and City clubs and the New England Society. He is also a trustee of the New York Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital, and a director of the New York Ophthalmic Hospital, having served as its treasurer for over twenty-five years.

HENRY HARPER BENEDICT

A S far back as the beginning of the sixteenth century, William Benedict is mentioned in the records of Nottinghamshire, England, as a man of substance and member of a family that for several generations had been resident in the same county. Thomas Benedict, the great-grandson of William Benedict, who was born in Nottinghamshire in 1617, came to America when he was twenty-one years of age and was the founder of the family in this country. At first he lived on Long Island and was one of the founders and a deacon of the first Presbyterian Church of Jamaica, held several important local offices and was a delegate to Governor Nicolls' convention which was called to make laws for the inhabitants of Long island. For five years, from 1670 to 1675, he was a member of the Assembly of the Province of New York. Removing afterwards to the Connecticut Colony, he died in Norwalk in 1690.

James Benedict, a son of Thomas Benedict, the pioneer, was one of the company that settled the City of Danbury, Conn., where his son, James, was born in 1685, being the first male child born in that place. John Benedict, a grandson of James Benedict, Sr., was prominent in the administration of public affairs, being a Captain in the militia and for many years a member of the Legislature. After the Revolution, James Benedict, the son of John Benedict, removed to New York State, where he settled originally in Ballston, and finally in 1793 in Auburn. One of the first settlers of Herkimer County, N. Y., in 1790, when that section was far upon the frontier, was Elias Benedict, the son of James Benedict, of Auburn. He owned a farm in the wilderness and built one of the first houses ever erected in that part of the country. There his son, Micaiah, the father of Mr. Henry Harper Benedict, was born in 1801. Micaiah Benedict was an energetic, enterprising man of the most approved frontier stamp and made his own way in the world. Throughout most of his life an ardent Jackson Democrat, he became a Republican in the period just before the Civil War, casting his last Democratic vote for Franklin Pierce in the Presidential campaign of 1852. He was a member of the Order of Free Masons, and for several years Deputy Grand Master in New York State. His death occurred in 1881.

Mr. Henry Harper Benedict was born in German Flats, Herkimer County, N. Y., October 9th, 1844. He was educated in the Little Falls Academy, the Fairfield Seminary, and the Marshall Institute in Easton, and then took a regular course in Hamilton College, from which institution he was graduated in 1869. During a portion of the time that he was in college, he was also engaged as professor of Latin and higher mathematics in Fairfield Seminary. He was a member of the A K E fraternity.

After he had completed his college course, he entered the establishment of E. Remington & Sons, at Ilion, N. Y., in a confidential position. Within a short time, he became one of the directors of Remington & Sons, and the treasurer of the Remington Sewing Machine Company. In 1882, he became a member of the firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict, and removed to New York. He is now the president of the corporation of the same name, having the foreign interests of the company under his care.

While living in llion, N. Y., Mr. Benedict assisted in organizing the first Presbyterian Church of that place, and of which he was an elder, trustee and treasurer. He was also president of the Herkimer County Bible Society and for many years president of the llion Literary Association. Since his removal to New York, he has made his home on the Heights, in Brooklyn. He has intimate social relations in New York City, however, and is a member of the Fifth Avenue Presby- terian Church. He belongs to the Hamilton Club, the Riding and Driving Club, and the Long Island Historical Society of Brooklyn, and to the Grolier, A K E, Republican and Union League clubs of New York. He is a trustee of Hamilton College and of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. In 1867, he married Maria Nellis, a daughter of Henry G. Nellis and granddaughter of General George H. Nellis, of Fort Plain, N. Y. Mr. and Mrs. Benedict have one daughter, Helen Elizabeth Benedict.

LE GRAND LOCKWOOD BENEDICT

T HE family name of Benedict is of very ancient origin. It is derived from the Latin Benedictus, or Blessed, and in different forms is common in all languages. First it was undoubtedly applied as a designation of ecclesiastics, but after a time it became secularized and adopted as the family name of those who had no special connection with the church. The ancestors of the American Benedicts are believed to have been originally Huguenots. Thomas Benedict, of Nottinghamshire, was living there in the seventeenth century, but his progenitors had removed from France, first to Germany, then to Holland, and finally to England in successive generations. He was an only son and bore a name that had been confined to only sons in the family for more than a hundred years. About the middle of the sixteenth century, to escape the oppressions of King Charles and Archbishop Laud, he exiled himself to this country. Upon the vessel in which he came to New England, in 1638, was Mary Brigdum, daughter of a widow, who had been his father's second wife.

Thomas Benedict and Mary Brigdum were married soon after they arrived in this country, and resided for some time in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Afterwards they removed to Long Island, where they lived at Huntington, Southold and Jamaica, and finally at Norwalk, Conn. Thomas Benedict was a freeholder of Jamaica in 1663 and a magistrate the same year, a commissioner of Huntington in 1662, a Lieutenant in 1663, town clerk of Norwalk, Conn., in 1665, and the following year was reappointed to that position, which he retained until 1674. He was a representative to the General Assembly in 1670 and 1675. John Benedict, son of Thomas Benedict, was a freeman of Norwalk, Conn., in 1680, selectman in 1689, 1692-4, and 1699, and representative to the General Assembly in 1722 and 1725. In the third generation, John Benedict was a selectman in 1705 and 1715, a Sergeant of the troops in 1711 and held other local offices. Nathaniel Benedict, son of the second John Benedict, was a selectman in 1755-1778, a Lieutenant of the militia in 1762 and a representative to the General Assembly the same year. The second Nathaniel Benedict, who was born in 1744 and died in 1833, was a justice of the peace, a surveyor and a grand juror. Seth Williston Benedict, grandson of the second Nathaniel Benedict and the descendant in the seventh generation from Thomas Benedict, the pioneer, was the grandfather of the present Mr. Benedict. He was born in 1803 and became one of the leading newspaper owners and editors of the early part of the present century. Originally he was proprietor of The Norwalk (Conn.) Gazette. He removed to New York in 1833, and became proprietor and publisher of The New York Evangelist, a business relation that he maintained until 1837. In the latter year, he became publisher of The Emancipator and was also connected with other literary enterprises. In 1848, he commenced the publication of The New York Independent, but gave up his connection with that periodical in 1853. He was prominent in the religious life of the metropolis in the first half of the century, being a trustee and elder of the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church, and for many years a trustee and deacon of the Broadway Tabernacle. He died in 1869.

James Hoyt Benedict, son of Seth Williston Benedict, was born in 1830, in Norfolk, Conn., and throughout the active years of his life was one of the leading bankers in New York City. His first wife, who was the mother of Mr. Le Grand Lockwood Benedict, was Mary Elizabeth Andrews, daughter of Samuel Andrews. The children of James Hoyt Benedict were Alida Andrews, Le Grand Lockwood, James Henry, Charles Williston, Howard Robinson and Elliot S. Benedict.

Mr. Le Grand Lockwood Benedict was born in New York City August 24th, 1855, and is a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N. Y. In 1881, Mr. Benedict married Sarah Collier Blaine and has two children, Le Grand Lockwood, Jr., and Margaret Dewitt Benedict. Mr. Benedict's residence is at Cedarhurst, Long Island, and he is a member of the Union and Rockaway Hunt clubs.

FREDERICK HENRY BETTS

F OR seven generations, members of the Betts family have been prominent in Connecticut and New York, and by marriage have been connected with many other leading families of the Connecticut and Massachusetts Colonies. The lineage of Mr. Frederick Henry Betts goes back to distinguished ancestry. Thomas Betts, the head of the family in England, was the owner, in 1386, of Hastings and Whitefoots Hall manors, Norfolk. One of his descendants, Thomas Betts, born in England in 1618, emigrated to America in 1639 and was among the original founders of Guilford, Conn., and an early settler in Norwalk. Made a freeman of Norwalk in 1664, with fourteen others he received a grant of land in Wilton. He died in 1688. Daniel Betts, son of Thomas Betts, was born in 1657. He was a large land owner and lived to be over one hundred years old. His grandson, Samuel C. Betts, 1732-1823, was one of the first settlers of Berkshire County, Mass. He was a member of the Ninth Regiment of Foot in the Revolution. Uriah Betts, the great-grandson of Sergeant Daniel Betts, born in Norwalk in 1761, died in Newburgh, N. Y., in 1843. With his five brothers, he went into the Continental Army and served throughout the war.

The father of Mr. Frederick Henry Betts was Frederick J. Betts, son of Uriah Betts. He was prominent in the military and civil life of New York half a century and more ago. Born in Richmond, Mass., in 1803, he was graduated from Williams College in 1821, became District Attorney of Orange County, N, Y., in 1824, and later on Master in Chancery. In 1826, he was Quartermaster of the Second Brigade of Cavalry and on the staff of Governor George Clinton. From 1827 to 1841, he was clerk of the United States District and Circuit Courts in New York, and 1868-69, Judge of the Hastings Court, Campbell County, Va.

A review of the female ancestry of Mr. Betts brings up a long line of personages dis- tinguished in the first two centuries of the country. His mother, whom his father married in 1833, was Mary Ward Scoville, who was descended on her father's side directly from John Scovil, one of the original proprietors of Waterbury, Conn., and on her mother's side from John Eliot, the famous apostle to the Indians, and Andrew Ward, who was a Colonel in the Colonial wars. She was also descended from George Wyllys, one of the first settlers in Hart- ford, Conn., and the second Governor of the Colony. Mr. Betts' grandmother was a daughter of the Honorable Nathan Rossiter, of Richmond, Mass., and a descendant in the third generation from the Honorable Josiah Rossiter, Assistant-Governor of Connecticut. His great-grandmother was a descendant from Captain John Taylor, of Northampton, Mass., and a generation further back the female head of the house was Sarah Comstock, granddaughter of Christopher Comstock, representaive to the General Assembly of Connecticut, 1686-90.

Mr. Frederick Henry Betts was born in Newburgh, N. Y., March 8th, 1843. He was graduated from Yale College in 1864, and studied law in the law department of Columbia College, graduating therefrom with the degree of LL. B. in 1866. Yale gave him the degree of A. M. in 1867. He entered at once upon the practice of law and established a large practice. In 1872-73, he was counsel for the Insurance Department of the State of New York, and was lecturer on patent law in Yale College, 1873-84. In 1879, he published the Policy of Patent Laws, and he is recognized as one of the leading patent lawyers of the United States. Deeply interested in public affairs and a Republican in politics, he was a member of the Republican County Committee, 1884-85, a member of the Citizens' Committee of Seventy in 1882, a member of the Citizens' Committee of One Hundred in 1883, vice-president of the City Reform Club, vice-president of the Republican Club in 1885 and a member of the People's Municipal League in 1890-91. He belongs to the University, Century, Grolier, Riding and other clubs. He married, in 1867, Louise, daughter of John F. Holbrook; they have three children, Louis Frederick H. Betts, Yale 1891; M. Eliot Betts, who married Russell H. Hoadley, Jr .; and Wyllys Rossiter Betts, Yale 1898. In 1875, he founded the Betts prize in the law department of Yale College.

JOHN BIGELOW

J JOURNALIST, historian, statesman and diplomat, the Honorable John Bigelow comes of one of the oldest New England families. John Bigelow, the ancestor of the Bigelows of America, was an Englishman who settled in Watertown, Mass., before 1642. His son Joshua, 1655- 1745, was a soldier in King Philip's War, where he was wounded. For his valiant services he received a grant of land in Westminster, Mass., and became one of the first citizens of that place. His grandson John, 1681-1770, went in early life to Hartford, Conn., and thence to Colchester, Conn., where he was a prominent man, being ensign and Lieutenant in the militia. In subsequent generations, the descendants of the first John Bigelow were prominent in Colchester, Marlborough and Glastonbury, Conn., and in Malden, N. Y. The father of the Honorable John Bigelow was Asa Bigelow, of Malden, who was born in Marlborough, Conn., in 1779 and died in Malden, in 1850. He was of the sixth generation in descent from John Bigelow, of Watertown, Mass.

The Honorable John Bigelow was born in Malden, N. Y., November 25th, 1817, and was graduated from Union College in the class of 1835. Admitted to the bar in 1839, he engaged in active practice for several years, but becoming interested in journalism was editor of The Plebeian and The Democratic Review. From 1845 to 1848, he was an inspector of the State prison at Sing Sing. In 1849, he began an active journalistic career that lasted for several years. Becoming associated with William Cullen Bryant as joint owner of The Evening Post, he was managing editor of that journal until 1861. With the accession of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency his most conspicuous public service began. In 1861, he was appointed to the United States Consulate in Paris, and after the death of Minister Dayton, in 1865, was advanced to the position of United States Minister to the Court of France, which position he retained until 1867. Returning home at the expiration of his term of service he was elected Secretary of State of New York in 1868.

During the last twenty-five years, Mr. Bigelow has been principally engaged in literary work. In 1886, he inspected the Panama Canal for the New York Chamber of Commerce and made a valuable report of that undertaking as a result of his investigations. The same year he received the honorary degree of LL. D. from Racine College, Wisconsin, and was made an honorary member of the Chamber of Commerce. His first book, Jamaica in 1850; the Effects of Sixteen Years of Freedom on a Slave Colony, the result of several trips made to the West Indies, was published in 1850. In 1856, he published A Life of Fremont and, in Paris, in 1863, Les Etats Unis d'Amerique. While in Paris he discovered original manuscripts of Benjamin Franklin which he edited in an Autobiography of Franklin published in 1868, and the following year he published Some Recollections of the late Antoine Pierre Berryer. His other literary productions include The Wit and Wisdom of the Haytiens, Molines the Quietist, Life of William Cullen Bryant, Some Recollections of Edouard Laboulaye, the Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, and France and Hereditary Monarchy.

Mr. Bigelow has come again into special public prominence during the last few years through his connection with the estate of Samuel J. Tilden. When Mr. Tilden died, in 1886, he made Mr. Bigelow one of his executors and his authorized biographer, and a two-volume edition of the writings and speeches of Mr. Tilden has been one of the results of this trust. He is president of the Tilden Trust, that has the management of Mr. Tilden's bequest for a free public library in New York, and is president of the board of trustees of the New York Public Library.

Mr. Bigelow has a city residence in Gramercy Park and a country home at Highland Falls. He belongs to the Century Association and other clubs, is a member of the New England Society and a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and connected with other literary and social organizations. In 1850, he married Jane Tunis Poultney, of Baltimore, Md. His eldest son is Captain John Bigelow, U. S. A., and another son is Poultney Bigelow, the traveler and author. His daughter, Grace Bigelow, has also done some excellent literary work.

ARTHUR F. BISSELL, M. D.

O N the female side of his house Dr. Arthur F. Bissell traces his ancestry back to the Wolcott family, famous in the early annals of New England. The Wolcotts were aristocratic English folk, and Henry Wolcott, who came to America in 1630, was one of the first settlers in Windsor, Conn. Among his numerous descendants within two centuries were eleven Governors of States, thirty judges and many lawyers and clergymen of prominence. In Connecticut, Governors Roger, Oliver and Oliver Wolcott, Jr., and Governors Matthew and Roger Griswold, were most distinguished in the family in the last century. Branches of the family have since become established in other parts of the United States, and the bearers of the name have in many instances displayed an hereditary talent for public life, as well as for professional, literary and business pursuits.

The Wolcott ladies were celebrated for their beauty, and none more so than Jerusha, grand- daughter of Governor Roger Wolcott, who married Epaphras Bissell and became the mother of a family that has given many able men and women to professional and business life both in the States of Connecticut, New York and elsewhere. Dr. Arthur F. Bissell is the grandson of Epaphras and Jerusha (Wolcott) Bissell. His father, Edward Bissell, the second child of Epaphras Bissell, was born in 1797. He married Jane Loring Reed, and became a leading merchant and manufacturer in the western part of New York State. He built and operated mills in Lockport, and conducted other important business interests. In 1833, he moved to Toledo, O., was one of the founders of that city and very largely instrumental in its development. The Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad, from Toledo to Kalamazoo, was constructed by him in the face of much opposition, and this was the beginning of the railroad operations in that section which resulted in making Toledo the commer- cial centre that it is to-day. Edward Bissell died in 1861. A condensed history of Toledo, published in 1869, says : "Whatever Toledo may become in the future, she will always owe her first start in life to Edward Bissell, a gentleman of high education and refinement, of great fore- sight and sagacity."

The Bissells, paternal ancestors of the gentleman whose descent is traced in this page, were French Huguenots. The arms of the family, as described by Burke, are : gules, on a bend or .; three escallops, sable, crest a demi-eagle, with wings displayed, sable ; charged on the neck with an escallop shell or. Motto, In Recto Decus. Leaving France after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, members of the family went to England. John Bissell emigrated to America, coming to Plymouth, Mass., in 1628. He afterwards removed to Connecticut, and was among the first founders of the settlement of Windsor, a community that stands preeminent in the annals of New England as the home from which have sprung so many families of great distinction in public service, and in professional and commercial life. Epaphras Bissell's father was a Captain in the Revolutionary war, and the fourth in descent from the original John Bissell, through his second son, Thomas.

Dr. Arthur F. Bissell, son of Edward Bissell, is of the seventh generation from John Bissell of Windsor. Born in Geneseo, N. Y., June, 1826, he studied medicine in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York City, from which institution he was graduated in 1848. Until 1863, he practiced medicine in Toledo, O., where he built up a large practice. Since that date he has been actively engaged in manufacturing business in New York City. In 1851, he married Anna E., daughter of Judge Nehemiah Browne, of Rye, N. Y., a descendant of Thomas Browne, of Rye, England, who was a descendant of Sir Anthony Browne, Standard Bearer of all England in the reign of Henry VII., and who married Lady Lucy Neville, fourth daughter of Sir John Neville, Marquis of Montague. In 1664, Thomas and Haekaliah Browne, with their friend, Peter Disbrow, removed to Rye, Westchester County, N. Y., where they became its largest land owners, naming the town from Rye, in the County of Sussex, England, which had been their former home in the mother country.

PELHAM ST. GEORGE BISSELL

O NE of the first individuals to divine the vast stores of wealth that were hidden for centuries in the petroleum fields of Pennsylvania was George H. Bissell, college professor, journalist and scientist. He was a descendant in direct line from John Bissell, the American pioneer, who was one of the first settlers of the town of Windsor, Conn. A member of a noble and ancient Huguenot family, John Bissell came from England to the Plymouth Colony in 1628. His numerous descendants have been conspicuous in business and in public life in Connecticut and elsewhere in every generation since his time. One of them, Isaac Bissell, the father of George H. Bissell and a Revolutionary soldier, born in Connecticut, was noted as a fur trader in Mackinaw and Detroit.

The mother of George H. Bissell was Nancy Wemple, daughter of Captain John Wemple, of Revolutionary fame, and herself the owner of an estate on the Mohawk River, near Johnstown, N. Y. Captain John Wemple commanded the Tryon Company of Militia in 1775. His father, who died in Schenectady in 1749, was one of the patentees of that place, and his grandfather, Myndert Wemple, a justice of the peace, who was killed in the massacre of the Mohawk Valley in 1690, married Diewie, daughter of Evert Janse Wendel, a member of another noted Dutch family of Western New York. Jan Barentse Wemple, the first of the name in this country, was the ancestor of George H. Bissell in the fifth generation. Born in Dort, Lower Netherlands, in 1620, he came to America in 1640 and settled in Esopus, now Kingston. He moved to Albany about 1643, and was one of the fifteen original settlers of Schenectady. In the old records, he is set down as the owner of the bouwery in Lubberdes Land, now Troy. He died in 1663, and his widow, Maritie Myndertse Wemple, who spent the remaining years of her life with her son Myndert in Schenec- tady, perished in the massacre of 1690, when the Indians destroyed that little settlement and nearly all its inhabitants.

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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 9

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