USA > Pennsylvania > Encyclopedia of contemporary biography of Pennsylvania, Vol. I > Part 33
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* Notes for a History of White Lead, Wm. H. Pulsifer.
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CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
station of trust thus being in one family through three generations, or for one hundred and one con- secutive years. Mr. Lewis was a member of various organizations, among them that famous one organized in 1732, as "The Colony in Schuylkill," which after the Revolution asserted its indepen- dence by taking the title of "The State in Schuyl- kill." He was for many years Treasurer of this old fishing company, which is still flourishing. Mr. Lewis was married June 15, 1809, to Rebecca Clarkley Thompson, daughter of John and Rebecca Thompson .* Upon his death, February 3, 1841, he left to survive him his widow and nine children, viz : Martha S., John T., Saunders, Rebecca T., George T., James T., Samuel N., Lydia and Fran- cis S. George Thompson Lewis was born on the 3d of August, 1817, obtained a good schooling, and before he was eighteen years of age began his busi- ness career with his uncle and father, M. & S. N. Lewis, and laid the foundation of his future success in close application to and study of the particular line of manufactures conducted by the house, though in later years his knowledge of chemistry and mechanics, and his quick, intuitive, ingenious mind led him into the realization of important dis- coveries in other fields. The old firm name was retained after the death of his father, and until as late as 1850, when the firm dissolved and remodeled, soon achieving fresh fame and a large accession of business. In 1856 the firm title was constituted as John T. Lewis & Brothers, the members being John T. Lewis, Saunders Lewis and George T. Lewis. The history of the progress of this firm is in the record of its meritorious application for more than three score years. The works at Richmond cover fully six or seven acres, or the entire square bounded by Thompson street and Gunner's Run, Cumberland and Huntington streets. This large area is covered with buildings, in each one of which is carried on some peculiar branch of indus- try connected with the production of white lead, barrels, kegs, linseed oil, colors, sugar of lead, litharge, orange mineral, zinc white, etc. The estab- lishment is most complete in all respects, is supplied
* This Rebecca Thompson was the daughter of Abel James, head of the house of James & Drinker, importers and general merchants, and in 1773 one of the Import Commissioners. In that year a cargo of tea being known to be on its way up the Delaware, and it being supposed that James would allow it to be discharged, he was waited on by a throng of citizens who demanded his resignation. He addressed them, declin- ing to resign, but gave his word that the tea should not be allowed on shore, but returned to England. Then turning to his little daughter Rebecca, who was perched upon one of her father's hogsheads near by, he said that he would pledge her as a forfeit that his word should be kept inviolate. and it was.
with the best and most highly improved machinery, labor saving devices, fire protection apparatus, etc. The trade-mark of the firm is a guarantee of the trustworthy character of the goods, and is recog- nized as such in all quarters of the commercial world. George T. Lewis, through whose instru- mentality the business has achieved much of its wonderful increase, has been, as before intimated, and for that matter is now, identified with numer- ous other manufacturing and commercial projects. Ile was chiefly instrumental in regenerating, a num- ber of years ago, the almost defunct Lehigh Zinc Company, whose stock, when he became interested in it, was considered almost worthless. He was the founder and became a large stockholder in the Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Company, a mam- moth organization in the western part of the State, and he was also one of the originators and most ac- tive and valued members of the Charleston (S. C.) Mining and Manufacturing Company. His quick recognition of what is valuable in nature's stores, and his readiness in devising means to introduce those elements to the commercial world-faculties which have been developed by his life-long study of chemistry and mechanics-have been the means of his enriching himself and others, and of contrib- uting considerably to the sum total of modern dis- covery. As early as 1847 he brought cotton seed from the South and pressed it for its oil, and in the following year, in conjunction with M. H. Boyé, he refined cotton seed oil and practically proved its good qualities as a lamp burning oil, as a substi- tute for olive oil, and for the manufacture of soap. With Joseph and Rodman Wharton he demon- strated, too, that the " cake," after the extraction of the oil, was a valuable food for cattle. The cotton seed oil and cake trade,* it may be here remarked, has grown in value to the amount of some millions of dollars per annum. During the years 1846 to 1852 he was instrumental in introducing caustic soda, as a commercial article, in the United States and England, and it was also about this time that he founded the Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Company, heretofore alluded to, which is probably the largest and most prosperous chemical manufac- turing company of its kind in the world. In 1859 and 1860, when petroleum was in its infancy, this company was among the earliest, if not the very first, to refine and produce a satisfactory burning oil. In 1865 Mr. Lewis was instrumental in bring- ing the mineral kryolite from Greenland and pro- ducing alumina, alum, aluminate, carbonate, bi- carbonate and caustic soda. The importations of
* There are one and one-half pounds of seed to every pound of cotton produced.
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the mineral at the port of Philadelphia now amounts to ten thousand tons per annum. In 1867 our sub- ject, in conjunction with a few other notable men, founded the Charleston (S. C.) Mining and Manu- facturing Company, an institution worthy of more than the passing mention which has been made of it. This was almost from the beginning a very suc- cessful and prosperous company, and the first to develop practically the value of the phosphatic dc- posits of South Carolina, and introduce them to the world as a fertilizer. The company was capitalized by Mr. Lewis and Mr. Klett,* and several hundred thousand dollars were soon expended in buying lands and beginning the work of mining. In De- cember, 1867, sixteen barrels of the rock were brought up to Philadelphia by Mr. Lewis, and the first parcel of super-phosphates was manufactured from it by Potts & Klett. Early in the spring of 1868 the company shipped to the same city a cargo of 300 tons. Now the output of the State amounts to 450,000 tons, producing 900,000 tons of fertilizers, and it is increasing every year, greatly to the en- richment of the State, the country, the com- pany which acted as the pioneer of the project, and numerous other lesser concerns. Lands in which the phosphate rocks were found rose in value from twenty to one thousand dollars per acre. The Charleston Mining and Manufacturing Company owns about ten thousand acres of the best quality phosphate rock lands, and has mining leases on at least twelve hundred acres more. Mr. Lewis has also demonstrated and carried out practically, the collecting of lead fumes, which formerly went to waste from lead smelting furnaces, in a sanitary point of view a great nuisance, and in a pecuniary one a great loss. Over twelve thousand tons of valuable material has been collected in the past few ycars by this system, known as the Lewis & Bart- lett process. The process has also been introduced into Great Britain. Still another triumph of Mr. Lewis' was furnishing plans for a furnace to manu- facture spelter-metallic zinc, for the Pennsylvania and Lehigh Zinc Company, and being instrumental in having the same erected by the company, being the first practically working spelter furnace in the United States, (1858.) Also in erecting furnaces for the New Jersey Zinc Company at his own expense and risk, for a consideration if successful, for the production of metallic zinc from their Franklinite ores, all attempts heretofore proving costly and unsuccessful. These small beginnings were the
nucleus of the many now in operation, making the country, heretofore dependent, now independent of the world in its employment of zinc metal. Enough · has perhaps been said to indicate how useful to ap- plied science, and in commercial matters, has been Mr. Lewis' long, industrious life. While placing himself in enviable circumstances, he has doubtless done vastly more to bring wealth to others, and he has been a worthy steward of the fortune with which his business and scientific acumen has re- warded him. He has been liberal and generous to a fault, if such a thing is possible. His acts of un- ostentatious personal benevolence there is no means of estimating, but the aggregate must have been immensc, for charity has been a life-long character- istic of the man, and there is always an almost in- satiable demand for the exercise of this function, especially where the possessor is known to be in affluent circumstances. He has, too, been a lead- ing promoter of the best charitable organizations, and has acted as Treasurer of the Church House for Children, a well-known Philadelphia institution, for almost or quite a quarter of a century. The highest duties of the citizen and the patriot, too, have had in him a fine exemplification, and he has been en- gaged in many worthy movements, which entitle him to the regard and respect and gratitude of every man in the community. He was an ardent and consistent supporter of the Union cause, and when the Rebellion broke out he furnished and equipped many volunteers at his own expense, and also took a prominent part in the organization and life of the Corn Exchange Regiment. He was Treasurer of the Soldiers Reading Room Association, which during the war maintained an excellent reading room and resort for soldiers on Twentieth street between Market and Chestnut streets, and he was Chairman of the Gentlemen's Committee of the Restaurant Department at the Grand Central Fair held in Philadelphia, in June, 1864, under the aus- pices of the United States Sanitary Commission. To the duties of both of these stations he gave his constant personal supervision day and night, and performed most valuable services. In politics he is a Republican. Personally, Mr. Lewis has many ac- complishments and social gifts, but he has as a rule preferred the quieter walks of life to those which might more fully display his scholarship and ability. He is a remarkably well preserved man, and although seventy-one years of age, would be almost universally supposed many years younger, by those who do not happen to know that he was born in 1817. He was married May 18, 1843, to Sally Fox Fisher, and they have five children, viz : Samuel N., William Fisher, Mary Fisher, Sally Fisher and Nina Fisher Lewis.
* These facts are taken from a little work exhibiting great research : " The Phosphate Rocks of South Carolina ; Their History and Development," by Prof. Francis S. Holmes, and the gentlemen above named are included among a few to whose memory the volume is inscribed.
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EDMUND SMITH.
EDMUND SMITHI, for several years-until hc resigned on July 1, 1888-the First, or financial, Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Com- pany, and one of those few employees, or officials, who were in the service when the line was first laid out, was born in Philadelphia, April 5, 1829, and was a son of Robert Hobart and Mary (Potts) Smith, both natives of the city, and the former a member of the bar. As a boy Edmund Smith attended the old Fourth Street Friends' School, which stood where the Bullitt Building now is, and as a youth he was a pupil in the northwestern pub- lic schools, and the Philadelphia High School. His business beginning, while he was still in quite carly years, was made as a clerk in the counting house of Weiss & Schively, on Front street, Phila- delphia, and after remaining there about eighteen montlis he entered upon that line of employment which, in one form or another, he has followed for about forty-one years. He became connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company on June 1, 1847, going out as a rodman with a corps of engi- neers, who surveyed, located and superintended the construction of the line from Huntingdon to the summit of the Allegheny Mountains. He remained in this service until May, 1850, when he was trans- ferred to the Western Division, where lic carried on similar work and various surveyor's duties until September, 1852. It was then that he went to Phil- adelphia, which city has ever since been his home, and began work which brought him into the more direct observation of the chief officials, and ulti- mately led to his elevation in position. For a little over two years lie had charge of the construction of the shops and passenger and freight stations, and performed other service of a similar nature. In January, 1855, he was elected Secretary of the com- pany, which position he held until 1869. It was during this long period in an advantageous position that he obtained the intimate acquaintance with the financial and business methods of the company, which, supplementing his thorough knowledge of the operating department, made him an invaluable man to the great corporation, and assured his still further promotion. This intimate practical ac- quaintance with the details of two departments was also of immeasurable value to him in the higher positions which he subsequently filled. The office of Third Vice-President was given to him in May, 1869; that of Treasurer in March, 1873; that of Second Vice-President in June, 1874, and finally he was made First, or financial, Vice-President-an office involving the supervision of the Comptroller's
and Treasurer's departments-on September 13, 1882. This is a very brief and simple statement, but it is easy to read between the lines of the abil- ity, application and fidelity which made thesc repeated promotions favorable to one who had entered the service of the company as a rodman with a surveyor's corps. How successful the finan- cial operations of this company have been is mani- fest from the fact that its obligations, issued at a low rate of interest, command a premium among investors, not only in this country but abroad. Mr. Smith's long period of service has been one of great satisfaction to the directory, and one which, while pleasant and profitable personally, has been suffi- ciently arduous and responsible to make retirement and rest probably not only a desire but a duty. The esteem in which Mr. Smith has been held by the company is attested by the adoption, by the directors, of the following minute, upon the occa- sion of his resignation :
"In accepting, with deep regret, the resignation of Mr. Edmund Smith, First Vice-President, the Board desire to place upon their minutes a warm expression of their high esteem and recognition of his faithful service to the company, and his devo- tion to its interests, in many responsible positions held by him during a term of over forty-one years. In the severance of the ties which have bound the members of this board through so long a period of kindly intercourse, Mr. Smith will bear with him the heartfelt wishes of his associates for many years of health and happiness, as an honored citizen of the Commonwealth in which he has spent so great a portion of his useful and busy life."
ALFRED S. GILLETT.
THAT great commercial institution known as "Underwriting " or " Insurance," which has devel- oped so fast and in so many directions in the past few years, and has absorbed so much of the highest business talent of the country, has in its ranks fewer abler or better known men than Alfred S. Gillett, the organizer and the present head of the Girard Fire and Marine Insurance Company of Philadel- phia. Although for forty years a resident of Phila- delphia, Mr. Gillett was a native of New England. He was born in the parish of Gilead, town (or town- ship) of Hebron, Connecticut, on March 17, 1818, and was the son of Rev. Nathan Gillett, who was a pastor there for about twenty-five years. His ances- tors, both upon his father's and mother's side, were among the earliest colonists of New England. He is a descendant of the seventh generation of Nathan Gillett, who with his brother Jonathan had emigra- ted from near Dorchester, England, (where the
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family had long before fled from France to avoid religious persecution) and settled at Dorchester, Massachusetts, not many years after the landing of the Pilgrims. From here the family scattered in the course of time to various parts of the country, the ancestors of our subject locating prior to 1700 in Windsor, Connecticut. On his mother's side Mr. Gillett is descendant from the Jones family, famous in the Colonial and Revolutionary annals, a partial history of whom is given from the records of the late Anson Jones, second President of the Republic of Texas. He graduated as a physician in Phila- delphia, and early went South. Subsequently he came North and visited his birthplace in Connecti- cut, his friends in New England, also his relatives in Philadelphia, among them the Hon. Joel Jones, the first President of Girard College, also the subject of this sketch. Doctor Anson Jones was a scholar and a gentleman, but never in his life time quite agreed politically with his old rival, President Sam Houston. Mr. Gillett neither denies nor admits the correctness of President Anson Jones' researches relating to his grandfather's genealogy, but sure it is that he has in his possession the commission granted the latter under King George II., as an officer in the Colonial War, and many other papers written by him when in the service under General Israel Putnam, both afterwards serving, under differ- ent auspices, during the War of the Revolution. "In 1648 Col. John Jones, the common ancestor of the American family, of which we shall here briefly treat, sat as one of the Judges of Charles I. of England. He had married in 1623 a sister of Oliver Cromwell. On the restoration of Charles II., he was put to death on the seventeenth of October, 1670. His son, William Jones, survived him. He had been married in 1659 to Miss Hannah Eaton, and he subsequently came to America with his father-in-law, the Hon. Theophilus Eaton, first Gov- ernor of the Colony of New Haven and Connecticut, and filled the office of Deputy Governor for some years, dying in 1706. He and his wife are both buried in New Haven, under the same stone with Governor Eaton. Isaac, the son of William, who married Miss Deborah Clark, of Hartford, died in New Haven in 1741, and left ten sons and five daughters, one of the former being the father of Captain Samuel Jones, of Hebron, Connecticut." He was an officer in the French and Indian War under General Israel Putnam, and also in the Revolution, and acquitted himself well as an officer. After the close of the Colonial War he returned to Hebron and married Miss Lydia Tarbox, by whom he had ten children, nine of whom lived to maturity, and all of them led useful lives. One son was a noted
lawyer, scholar and writer, and lived many years at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Another son was Doctor Silas Jones, who died in Philadelphia in 1813; an- . other was one of the pioneers of Conneaut, Ohio, the earliest settlement in the northern part of that State, and he died there in 1825. From another brother were descended the late Hon. Joel Jones, the first President of Girard College; the Rev. Joseph H. Jones, D.D .; the late Samuel Jones, M.D., of Philadelphia ; also Mathew Hale Jones, Esq., of Easton, Pennsylvania ; and from still another brother was descended Hon. Anson Jones, the second Presi- dent of the Republic of Texas-names which show something of the character and force of the family. It was Lydia Jones (1781-1865) daughter of Captain Samuel Jones, who became the wife of Rev. Nathan Gillett and the mother of our subject. She was a Christian woman, and esteemed by all for her many virtues and sterling character. She possessed a strong mind, retentive memory, and a good educa- tion for the time in which it was received, and it was therefore not strange that she became in her day a person of more than ordinary intelligence and worth. Rev. Nathan Gillett removed to Western New York about 1826, when that region was rapidly filling with immigrants from the New England States, and he preached there for many years, but returning eventually to the land of his fathers, passed his old age there, and died in 1845, almost exactly a score of years before his wife's death. He was a man of fair talent, good education, a graduate of Williams College, a sincere Christian, a clergy- man of the old school, and in character plain and unostentatious, peculiar almost to the verge of ec- centricity, yet pure, upright and respected by all. Two sons of Nathan and Lydia (Jones) Gillett are all that remain, viz : Ralph, residing in Hartford, Conn., and Alfred S. in Philadelphia. Albert J. died in Hartford a few weeks after his mother's decease in 1865, and Edward Nathan in Illinois since then. Alfred S. Gillett, as a boy, went to Western New York with his parents, but was sent back to Connecticut to finish his education, and subsequent- ly to enter the counting house of an older brother, where he remained until 1837. He then went to Georgia as book-keeper for a large house, who soon after determined to open a branch in Texas, and if possible to induce young Gillett to enter into a part- nership with them in that enterprise. But like most self-reliant natures, the young man had begun to feel a desire to be his own master, and so he returned to New England and invested his savings in such merchandise as he deemed salable in the Texas Re- public. This was in 1840, four years after the revolt from Mexico, and the war with the mother
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country was still in progress. The tenure of prop- erty was uncertain, and business of all kinds haz- ardous, but Gillett was successful in his ventures, and realized handsomely from his enterprise. Dur- ing this time he made the acquaintance of Samuel Houston, then President of the Republic. Mr. Gillett delights in relating what he saw of Texas iu those early days, and of its chief officials. He says :
" It is well known that President Sam Houston had led a somewhat nomadic, as well as romantic and military life in Texas. He was not an earuest ad- vocate of temperance, but rather inclined to the customs of the country, and sometimes to drink too much. But perhaps the last time he was ever known to do this was in the spring of 1840, when on the way to Alabama to marry his second wife. She was a very estimable lady, and had a controll- ing influence after marriage over the President's habits. The first time I ever saw him was on that wedding occasion. In 1840 the capital of the Re- public was located at Houston. The most comfort- able way of reaching Galveston from that point, was by a very old tug boat, plying the waters of the bay and bayou. It was an unsteady, rickety craft at best, and the General's condition on the afternoon he came from Houston to Galveston Island did not afford the best of ballast. His friends, among whom I wish to be numbered, were ready to meet him upon his arrival, and to escort the President to the only hotel then on the Island. It was an old frame building, with but few whole lights of glass in its windows. Yet it served a purpose, and accommo- dated President Houston and his many admirers on this occasion. A sort of committee of the whole people awaited his coming with no little anxiety. An old Concord coach, much like that now in use by " Buffalo Bill," had been landed on the wharf of Kinney and Williams, Goverument Agents. This was also found to be the most safe landing place for the President. A more serious difficulty now con- fronted his friends. It was that of finding suitable horses and harness to attach to the old stage coach. Opportunely, four " mustangs " were soon obtained. But these once wild horses had not long been on the Island, and were not in any respect well mated, broken, nor accustomed to civilized life. Probably not one of them had ever seen a whole set of horse gearing, for such an article could hardly be found in the Republic. But it may be pardonable to add here that I had in cargo (on board the 'Good Brig Galveston,' Captain Jonathan Burr, Master, ) a heavy army wagon and harness consigned to my care, and which I afterwards sold to Kinney and Williams, agents of the Lone Star. It was said to have been the first and best of the kind purchased by the Gov- ernment. Also in cargo, an article quite as useful, to wit :- Five thousand papers of vegetable seeds, from the gardens of the "Shaking Quakers," at Enfield, Connecticut, and the first ever entered at a custom house in the Republic of Texas. They found a most ready sale at one dollar for each paper and the settlers from the interior came great dis- tances to obtain them. My old friend Henry Hub- bell had paid me only twelve hundred dollars for that small package of seeds. He however realized much more profit from the sale of them than from the pistols and bowie knives also consigned to my
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