The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884 Volume I, Part 121

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed. cn; Brockett, L. P. (Linus Pierpont), 1820-1893; Proctor, L. B. (Lucien Brock), 1830-1900. 1n
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York : W. W. Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1114

USA > New York > Kings County > Brooklyn > The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884 Volume I > Part 121

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The Superintendent of the Almshouse reports 673 inmates re- maining in it on July 31, 1881; received during the year upon Commissioners' orders, 1, 798; received on vagrant commitments, 20; from other institutions, 740; total, 2,558; which, with the 673 in the institution July 31, 1881, makes 3,231; discharged during the year, 1,750; transferred to other institutions, 610; absconded, 7; died, 75; number remaining July 31, 1882, 789; County paupers, 76; males, 306; females, 483; children, 73; adults, 716; natives, 285; foreigners, 501.

The report of Dr. John A. Arnold, Medical Superintendent of the Kings County Hospital, for the year, shows that there were remaining there on July 31, 1881, 197 males, 184 females; total, 381; admitted during the year, 2,372 males, 1,979 females; total, 4,351; recovered, males, 1,448; females, 1,228; total, 2,676; im- proved, males, 409; females, 272; total, 681; unimproved, males, 62; females, 53; total, 115; died, males, 304; females, 237; total, 541; total number discharged and died, males, 2,223; females, 1,790; total, 4,013; remaining July 31, 1882, males, 149; females, 189; total, 338; totals, males, 2,372; females, 1,979; total, 4,351.

The total number of patients shows an increase of 670, and an increase of 1,431 over the year ending July 31, 1880. The total number of patients treated, known as "out-door patients," for the year ending July 31, 1882, was 1,521; these are not included in the fore- going. There were 124 children born in the Hospital during the year; of the mothers 58 were married, and 63 single.

During the year Dr. H. Plimpton resigned the posi- tion of Acting Medical Superintendent, to accept a position on the Asylum staff. Drs. Talmage, Brewster, Little and Newman also resigned, and the consulting staff was increased to its original number, by the ap- pointment of Dr. P. L. Schenck as surgeon, and Dr. J. S. Prout as physician. The ladies of the " Fruit and Flower Mission," Madame Rosalie, Commissioner Ropes, of the State Board of Charities, and the ladies of the Local Visiting Committee, continued their visits and errands of mercy to the inmates.

Dr. John C. Shaw, Medical Superintendent of the Insane Asylum, for the year ending July 31, 1882, recommended venti-

lating turrets to back of the wings, for the purpose of keeping the wards free from disagreeable odor; also changes in the heat- ing apparatus, so the sleeping rooms in certain wards could be warmed. At that time, there was not a sleeping room in the Asylum that could be warmed, which was a source of great anxiety to the medical staff and danger to the patients. He also recom- mended an addition of lands to the Asylum grounds, providing more accommodation, and a better diet, namely: milk, eggs, fruit, vegetables, &c., for the patients, and the erection of a special building, for the proper accommodation of the 100 patients paying board in the institution, as advantageous both to these boarders and to the county, and as increasing the in- come of the county; the erection of a (frame) amusement hall, at a cost of not more than from $1,500 to $3,000.

A strong effort was made during the year to find occupation for as many of the patients as was possible, and in this way a large quantity of valuable and much needed articles of apparel, underwear, bedding, towels, table spreads, embroidery, knitting and other fancy work was made by them.

The report shows that there were remaining in the Asylum on the 31st of July, 1881, males, 329; females, 539; total, 868; ad- mitted during the year, males, 180; females, 173; total, 353; total treated during the year, mnales, 509; females, 712; total, 1221; total number discharged, males, 153; females, 194; total, 347; died, males, 52; females, 39; total 91; total died and discharged, males, 205; females, 233; total, 438; remaining August 1, 1882, males, 304; females, 479; total, 783; on probation, males, 6; females, 8; total, 14; recovered, males, 30; females, 34; total, 64; improved, males, 37; females, 48; total, 85; unimproved, males, 84; females, 108; total, 192; improper subjects, males, 2; females, 4; total, 6; totals, males, 153; females, 194; whole total, 347. There were 44 State paupers admitted into the Asylum and dis- charged therefrom during the year.

The report of the Warden of the Penitentiary for the same year shows that while it was more than self-sustaining during the year, the earnings for convicts' labor were not as large as those of the previous year, notwithstanding the system of furnishing runners or shop waiters, that had been adopted by the Commis- sioners, added at least $2,000 per annum to the receipts of the institution, from the fact that the daily average number of con- victs on the shoe contract was considerably less than the last year. This was due to the practice of sentencing prisoners to the Jail instead of to the Penitentiary, where they would have to work, thereby relieving the county from their support.

The bill that passed the Legislature the previous winter, mainly through the efforts of the Commissioners of Charities, &c., exempting the Kings County Penitentiary from the opera- tion of the Penal Code, which the Governor failed to sign, was a serious injury to that institution, as it causes the withdrawal of long term prisoners from the Penitentiary, that will have the effect of again making that institution a burden upon the tax- payers of the county.

The daily average number of convicts during the year was 563, a decrease of 55, as compared with the seven months com- prising the last year's report. The whole number received was 1,000 ; the whole number discharged was 1,073. The prisoners were kept constantly employed, unless in the judgment of the physicians they were mentally or physically incapacitated for work. The increase in per capita cost over the previous year was owing to the lesser number of prisoners and a higher cost of provisions.

Dr. Homer L. Bartlett, physician in charge of the Peniten- tiary Hospital, reports briefly, but ably, the sanitary condition of the Penitentiary, and calls attention to the law regulating punishment of prisoners to confinement in dark cells, as the only punishment inflicted in the Kings County Penitentiary. He had visited all prisoners in such confinement three times in each week, ordering their release when he deemed it necessary.

The highest number of prisoners in the institution was on the

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HISTORY OF KINGS COUNTY.

12th day of August, 1881, when there were 658. The lowest num- ber during the same period was on the 3d day of May, 1882, when there were 506. The amount of stock on hand Aug. 1, 1881, was valued at $1,362.98 ; there were expended for supplies during the year $38,134.65 ; stock on hand July 31, 1882, was valued at $1,601.92 ; supplies consumed during the year amounted to $37,895.91.

John S. Woodside, M.D., Medical Superintendent of the Hospital for Incurables, reports the main building of that insti- tution as much overcrowded ; that the cubic space per patient in the sleeping rooms being but 350 cubic feet, when it should be in the neighborhood of 1,000 cubic feet ; another defect was a want of proper accommodations for sick, violent or filthy patients ; there were no single rooms ; the smallest number sleeping to- gether in one room was ten or twelve ; the health of the pa- tients during the year had been unusually good, though several cases of small-pox had occurred during the winter ; that the pa- tients, both men and women, had been generally employed. The hospital had received elose attention from the Ladies of the State Charities Aid Association, with very favorable results. The "Fruit and Flower Mission," of Brooklyn, had exhibited their usual beneficence in bestowing fruits, flowers and other delicacies upon the patients. The death rate had been very low -about 43 per cent., not a single death having occurred during the last four months of the fiscal year. The number of patients remaining in the Hospital July 31, 1881, was 144 males, 164 females ; total 308; admitted during the year, 36 males, 74 females ; total, 110 ; totals, 180 males, 238 females ; total, 418 ; discharged during the year, 18 males, 7 females ; total, 25 ; died during the year, 12 males, 5 females ; total, 17; total number remaining July 31, 1882, was 150 males, 226 females ; total, 376.

The report of the Keeper of the Morgue, from the 15th of October, 1881, ending on the 31st July, 1882, shows that dur- ing the months of August and September, 1881, the building was undergoing repairs, and that no bodies were received. The total number of bodies for the ten months was 114, of which 66 were identified, and 48 not identified. Of the 66 identified, 21 were interred by the county, making the total number interred by the county 69, 45 being interred by their friends; 25 of these were drowned, 13 were foundlings. Of the whole number brought to the Morgue, 23 were women, 24 still-born infants, and 6 unknown children.

Thus closes the history of the Superintendent of the Poor, the subsequent Commissioners of Charities, and the later Commissioners of Charities and Corrections for the County of Kings.

It is to be regretted that the records and reports of the Commissioners for the year 1883 are not so far completed, at this writing, as to permit of our availing ourselves of them for the conclusion of this chapter.

It is proper, also, to say, in taking leave of the history of the Poor Establishment of Kings County, that the present Board of Commissioners of Charities and Cor- rections, although less than three years in office, has already inspired the public with confidence in its ability and in the humane manner in which it wields the im- portant administrative duties committed to it.

ALBERT AMMERMAN.

T HE subject of this sketch was born in Monmouth County, New Jersey, in the year 1838, and received a common school education in that vicinity. Very early in life he entered actively into business in Squan village, but soon found his way to the nearest commercial centre, the city of New Brunswick, where he remained until the outbreak of the Civil War. While a resident of New Brunswick he took an active part in the politics of that most exciting period, and was a leading spirit among the "Wide-Awakes" and the " Minute Men" of the city in the memorable Presidential campaign that preceded the secession of the Southern States. He cast his first ballot for the local Republican candidates in 1859, and in 1860 his first Presidential vote was polled for Abraham Lincoln. From that day forward Mr. Ammerman has been a staunch and de- voted adherent of the Republican party. When the call to arms was sounded in the North the young and enthusiastic Republi- can went to the front with the Seventh Regiment of New York Volunteers, which afterwards furnished so many efficient officers to the Union arms.

On his return from the war Mr. Ammerman settled in Brook- lyn, where he embarked extensively in the lumber and timber business, on Gowanus Canal. In 1865, in the City of Churches, he married Miss Louise B. Day, of Westfield, Mass., a lady who had recently graduated from Brooklyn Heights Seminary, under Professor West, and who was rich in every endowment that makes a refined and happy home. In a few years he became the head of a model household ; indeed, his home on South Elliot place was as well ordered and as happy as any in the city, whose peculiar boast is the domestic refinement of her people. While

yet a young man Mr. Ammerman was selected by the chief magis- trate of Brooklyn to serve on the Board of Education, and he held a seat in that body for nine years. In that time he left the impress of an active mind and of keen practical judgment on the public schools of the city of his adoption; but particu- larly on those which came under his immediate supervision as a member of Local School Committees. In this sphere he was known as the ardent advocate of broad, liberal education, not only in the elementary branches and commercial studies, but in the gentler arts, like music and drawing, which give the humblest life an unspeakable charm, and whose refining in- fluence is afterwards felt in the home. One of the results of Mr. Ammerman's course in the Board of Education was that he achieved a large personal popularity through the city, which stood him in good stead when his party named him for the discharge of still more important official functions in the civic government.

In the fall of the year 1878, many of the leading Republicans of Brooklyn urged Mr. Ammerman to allow his name to be used in the City Convention of the party, in connection with the nomination to the City Auditorship. Yielding to their solicita- tions and to the argument that his candidature would help the whole ticket, he consented, and became the unanimous nominee of his party for this important office. It was one of the most stirring campaigns in the history of Brooklyn. To the great delight of his friends, and the profound satisfaction of leading Republicans of the city, he was elected by a handsome majority. His elevation to the City Auditorship necessitated, under the terms of an unwritten law, his resignation from the Board of

ALBERT AMMERMAN.

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ALITTLE

Education, and he reluctantly severed his connection with a department to which he had become endeared by long and pleasant associations, and in which he had found a most con- genial sphere for his activities. After the election of 1878, and while Mr. Ammerman was still City Auditor of Brooklyn, the Legislature of the State passed a measure remodeling the entire civic government, and throwing on his shoulders, in conjunction with the Mayor and Comptroller, enormous respon- sibility in the selection of heads of municipal departments. In the discharge of the new and difficult duties which fell upon him through the action of the State Legislature, he displayed sagacity, ripe judgment and keen knowledge of men, which won him the golden opinions of friends and challenged the admiration of political opponents. During his term of office a persistent and powerfully organized attempt was made to change the management of the great bridge over the East River, includ. ing the chief engineer, Colonel Washington A. Roebling, and his corps of able assistants. As an official, in whose hands the power of appointing trustees of the bridge was vested, Mr. Ammerman set his face against this attempt to turn ont men who had been connected with the prodigious enterprise from its inception, and just as they were about to reap the well-merited rewards of their long waiting and their unswerving fidelity to

the work, through fair weather and foul. Through the City Auditor's vote, the bridge management remained practically unchanged to the end ; and the result amply vindicated his judgment. At the close of his term as City Auditor, Mr. Am- merman abandoned the turmoil of politics, and became a mem- ber of the great furniture house of Cowperthwait Company. His official career covered one of the most critical epochs in the history of the municipal government of Brooklyn. He was a leading actor in the stormiest episodes of a changeful period. He came out of the ordeal triumphantly, and with the plaudits of friends and opponents.

As we have stated, he was married in 1865; there were four interesting children born of this marriage, one son and three daughters, all of whom are living. In March, 1878, his devoted and accomplished wife, to whom he was most tenderly attached, was taken from him by death. Though the blow was at first almost insupportable, the consciousness of the duty he owed to his children, and his strong native character, enabled him to endure it, and to discharge his domestic and business duties in a successful manner; his children are being educated and reared under those fortunate circumstances that give undoubted as- surance of their future welfare and happiness.

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HISTORY OF KINGS COUNTY.

EDMUND DRIGGS.

THE biography of the venerable President of the Williams- burg City Fire Insurance Company is replete with valu- able instruction. Young men, particularly, will find in it incentives to persevering industry, integrity, and the cultiva- tion of that benevolence, manifested in all the relations of life, which is at once the strength and crowning grace of character. In a ripe and vigorous old age, with competence and honor, the head of a family circle in which love reigns, Mr. Driggs is an example to all disposed to follow the same simple rules of life, by persistency in which he has achieved his position among the most respected and beloved of American citizens.

Edmund Driggs was born in Columbia County, New York State, on the twenty-fifth of February, 1809. His parents were Connecticut people, his father being a native of Middletown, and his mother, whose maiden name was Eva Smith, a native of the same State. They removed into New York State at an early period in their married life, and cultivated a farm, in the homestead of which Edmund first saw the light. He attended the district school and acquired a good elementary education. At the age of fifteen he left home to learn the freighting busi- ness from a half brother, the only son by his father's first mar- riage. This half brother was the master of a vessel belonging to a line of thirty sloops running between New York City and Troy. At that time the whole of the freighting business on the Hudson River was done by sloops. Mr. Driggs remembers the first tow-boat which carried freight on the river. She was towed by the steamer New London, commanded by Captain Fitch, and her first trip was made in 1825. The increasing use of steam drove sailing vessels out of the freighting business. When Mr. Driggs found his occupation gone, in the year 1826, he went to New York City, and appropriated a part of his sav- ings in attendance at a public school for about a year. When eighteen years old he opened a store for the sale of groceries on West street, and realized good profits, supplying stores to the boats on the Hudson River. He continued in this business a few years, and then engaged himself with Henry H. Panton, a wholesale grocer well known in those days, whose place of business was at No. 57 Front street. Having spent two years there, Mr. Driggs became a general outside shipping and receiv- ing clerk for Messrs. Brigham & Fay, two young merchants from Boston, who had established themselves in trade a few doors distant from Mr. Panton's. The great fire of December, 1835, swept away the whole of the stores owned by Mr. Drigg's em- ployers, and of course threw him out of employment.

Shortly after the historic calamity to which reference is made, the Legislature passed a law authorizing the Governor to appoint weighing masters, whose duties should be to weigh merchandise in the City of New York. Mr. Driggs applied for and received an appointment under this law, and found profitable work weighing the wire, steel and other metal collected from the ruins left by the fire. He pursued this occupation until ap- pointed by Jesse Hoyt, Collector of the Port of New York, to the position of inspector of the customs, in which he remained until 1840. By that year he had built up a good business as a family grocer at the corner of Broadway and Twelfth street, a very eligible place; and upon the appointment of Collector Curtis to succeed Jesse Hoyt, resigned his position as inspector, with the intention of giving an undivided attention to his store. In 1843 the Governor of the State appointed a friend of Mr. Driggs, one Mr. Stevens, inspector of potash and pearlash for the Em- pire City, and this gentleman engaged Mr. Driggs to act as deputy inspector. He thereupon disposed of his grocery busi- ness, and began the performance of new duties, in which he continued until the expiration of Mr. Stevens' term of office.

He was then appointed by Governor Silas Wright to the general inspectorship. This appointment he held until the law had been passed which abolished the compulsory inspection of merchan- dise of all kinds throughout the State. He was thus the last in- spector of potash and pearlash appointed by the Governor of New York. Mr. Driggs now converted a part of the premises he had used for the purpose of inspection into a storage warehouse, in which he stored largely for the Government of the United States. When, in 1846, Congress passed the General Warehousing Law, his store was bonded under its provisions, the first bond filed in Washington under the new law.

He continued in the bonded warehouse business until 1849, one year after his removal to Williamsburg, now Brooklyn, E.D., which then contained about sixty thousand inhabitants. In 1850 he was elected the first president of that village by the vote of its inhabitants. Previously to this date its head official had been appointed by the Williamsburg Board of Trustees. About two years afterwards Williamsburg was incorporated as a city. On its being consolidated with Brooklyn, Mr. Driggs was elected an alderman of the First Ward. At an election held in 1859, he was made collector of taxes for the city of Brooklyn, re-elected "to the same office in 1862, and served to the end of his second term.

The year 1853 was one of the most active in Mr. Driggs's career. He was at that time conspicuously identified with the origina- tion of three successful institutions, virtually the work of the same men. The Williamsburg City Bank, now the First National, was one of these, active connection with which Mr. Driggs had subsequently to abandon on account of imperative and heavy demands upon his time and energy in other directions. Another was that useful institution, the Williamsburg Savings Bank, the fourth or fifth institution of its kind in magnitude in the State of New York, and in which the sum of about twenty-two million dollars is now on deposit. Mr. Driggs is a trustee of this bank and a member of its funding committee. The Williamsburg City Fire Insurance Company, the third of the institutions to which reference is made, was organized in March, 1853. Mr. Driggs was its first president, and so continued for several years, when he resigned in order to give greater attention to his other busi- ness; but he still continued a member of its board of directors. When his last term of office as collector of taxes had ended, in July, 1865, he was re-elected president, and has continued ever since and is now at the head of that distinguished corporation. His eminent qualifications for the office appear in the remarkable success of the company, which has survived the two great fires of Chicago and Boston. In consequence of the last-named calam- ity, the company paid in claims more than its entire capital. To-day, there is but one other fire insurance company than the Williamsburg City, having an office in the City of New York, and doing business under the laws of the State, the stock of which is quoted higher in the market. At the last sale the stock of the Williamsburg City was quoted at 250.

In politics Mr. Driggs has been always an earnest Democrat. He was a member of the conventions which nominated to the Governorship of New York, William L. Marcy (his last term), William C. Bouck, Horatio Seymour and Silas Wright; of the national convention at Baltimore which nominated Lewis Cass to the Presidency, and of the memorable Charleston Convention of 1860.

Mr. Driggs was married in his nineteenth year to Miss Delia Ann Marshall, of Stamford, Connecticut, sister of the Rev. Joseph D. Marshall, a Methodist Episcopal minister and member of the New York East Conference until his death. Ten children have been born to the couple, an equal number of sons and daughters,

Ing &by & H Auch:

Comment Doigts

Eng't-Geo E Perine JVI

SETH LOW.

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of whom three sons survive. These are engaged in the bonded warehouse business, and two of them are at the head of prosper- ous firms of New York City. Mr. Driggs has been a member of the Methodist Episcopal body since the year 1826, when he joined the Duane Street Church, New York, worshiping in an edifice long since taken down, and which was situated between Hudson and Greenwich streets. He was made a class-leader when about twenty-one years of age, and has held office as a trustee, presi- dent of the board of trustees, steward, superintendent of the Sunday school, president of the Juvenile Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, member of the Foreign Mission Board, and, in short, almost, if not quite, as many offices as a layman can hold. Heis known throughout the United States as an earnest Methodist, and receives innumerable calls from strug- gling churches. Mr. Driggs, whose most active years of church

work were during his membership in the South Second Street Church, Brooklyn, E. D., attends now the Summerfield Church, Brooklyn, as a private member, leaving to younger men the dis- charge of official duty.

Of Mr. Driggs's quiet and graceful acts of charity, many have had occasion to speak with gratitude, and his liberality enlarges with his years. The large-heartedness of the man appears not less in his business than in his gifts to philanthropic organiza- tions, and to such objects of his bounty as he encounters by personal observation. He is emphatically a good man, and " that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedi- ence, troops of friends," are his in abundance. In his seventy- fourth year, he is still active in business, giving regular atten- tion to the diversified interests which claim his attention six days in every week.

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The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884 Volume I, Part 121

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed. cn; Brockett, L. P. (Linus Pierpont), 1820-1893; Proctor, L. B. (Lucien Brock), 1830-1900. 1n Publication date: 1884 Publisher: New York : W. W. Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1114

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed. cn; Brockett, L. P. (Linus Pierpont), 1820-1893; Proctor, L. B. (Lucien Brock), 1830-1900. 1n
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York : W. W. Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1114