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A History of

Cleveland and fe Environs

The Heart of New Connecticut

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VOLUME 1 1_ BIOGRAPHY

ILLUSTRATED

THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK

1918

Copyright, 1918

BY

THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

1198369

Cleveland and Its Environs

John D. Eockefeller. It was in Cleveland that John D. Eockefeller grew from boyhood to manhood, married and brought up his faroily, got his first job, had his first exper- rience as a business man, and organized the Standard Oil Company along lines that have not only made him the richest man in the world but have served as the pattern of modern business organization everywhere. It Avas in Cleveland that he began in boyhood his habit of careful and systematic giving, al- though earning only sixteen dollars a month, the svstem wherebv he has up to the be- ginning of 1918 spent nearly $300,000,000 for the lasting good of mankind and seems likely to give many millions more ; though it is believed by those most familiar with i,li\ Eockefeller 's history that his connection with the upbuilding of industrial enterprises in this and other countries has done even more than all his beneficences for the good of humanity, in furnishing steady employment and sure pay to countless numbers of men. During a period of nearly sixty years his relation to business enterprises in Cleveland, including the oil refining, has furnished steady employ- ment to many thousands of Cleveland men. He and his associates have done more perhaps than any other group of men to build up the city.

John Davison Eockefeller was born at Rich- ford, Tioga County, New York, July 8, 1839, the second child of William Avery Rocke- feller and Eliza, daughter of John Davison, a well-to-do farmer of Niles Township, Cayuga County, New York. The Davisons were an old New jersey family of English and Scottish stock. William was the eldest son of Godfrey Eockefeller, who had been sheriff at Great Barrington, Massachusetts, but removed to a farm at Hudson, Columbia County, New York and thence to Richford. The Rocke- fellers have been traced back to a family of Huguenots, driven out of France by religious persecution. Their name was Rochefeuille, a

name significant of the power to endure and thrive in spite of adversity. Godfrey Rocke- feller was of the fourth or fifth generation of his family in this country. His wife was Lucy Avery, whom he married at Livingston, New York, in 1806, one of the seventh generation of the Groton Avery Clan, of Groton, Connect- icut, noted as pioneers, Indian fighters, trad- ers, and stubborn contenders for American liberty.

In the Battle of Groton Heights, September 6, 1781, it is recorded that eleven Averys were killed and seven wounded. No Avery was a Tory. Yet Lucy Avery's great-great-grand- mother, Susannah Palmes, wife of Samuel Avery of New London, Connecticut, was of royal descent, being the granddaughter of John Humfrey, who married in England the Lady Susan, daughter of the third Earl of Lincoln, who was descended from Edmund Ironside, king of England, and several kings of Scotland, aud France and Spain.

William A. Rockefeller was an unusually resourceful, active, aggressive, all around man of affairs in Cayuga County, New York near to ;\Ioravia, on the beautiful Owasco Lake. Among the first of his activities was the fell- ing of the wonderful pine forests of Tioga County and having these forests converted into lumber when the price of the best pine lumber was, say. $5 or $8 a thousand. In this work he was often up and off with the bob- . sleds at four o'clock in the winter mornings. He was a pioneer in securing a district school in the coiuitry above Moravia, New York, where the children had their early instruction. His wife was noted for her kindness, her excellent training and management of the children, and her deep interest in religion and benevolence. The girls had their household tasks, and the boys had to do their daily chores and keep the garden weeded and well culti- vated, though they still had time enough for school and play.

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

Young John raised a brood of turkeys when he was eight years old, their keep costing him nothing, and made a nice profit on them. The care of these fowls was a mere incident in the daily routine. He never knew a time when work was strange or a hardship to him, nor was there ever a time since childhood when he was not earning and saving money. The boy was sent out among the neighboring farms to buy the supply of wood for the winter — and he got full measure of wood, straight and solid. No crooked stuff.

The father would often trade with his boys, dicker and bargain with them as he would with grown men, seeking always to instil into them the truth that self-reliance was the best help for anyone. They knew how to milk cows, take care of the chickens and other fowls, how to harness and drive horses, and feed and clean them. Mr. Rockefeller would lend sums of money to his son John, which the hoy used to invest; yet at times, as a test of resourcefulness, the father woidd suddenly demand his own, and the boy always managed to pay him back on demand. With all their work and trading the boys still had time enough for a healthy amount of play. They swam and fished in beautiful Owasco Lake, and when the family removed to a home three miles above Owego, New York, they lived near the right bank of the Siisquehanna River in its most fascinating windings among the green hills of Tioga County, and the boys had a beautiful country to work and play in.

After three years in the Owego Academy, young John D. Rockefeller was enrolled as a pupil in the Cleveland High School, the only one in the small city ; it stood in Euclid Ave- nue, just below what was then called Erie Street, on the site now occupied by the Cit- zens' Savings and Triist Company. Emerson E. "White was the principal, a kind, courteous gentleman, who made it pleasant for the lads and girls to acquire learning. Young Rocke- feller was a quiet, hardworking student, rather serious — which is not to be wondered at when it is known that he spent hours every day practising on the piano. He was noted for being always on time. He was not briUiant in any study except mathematics, and even here he got results by unflagging application and his habit of never giving up a problem until he had solved it. He was a member of the Sunday school of the Erie Street Baptist Church, which later became the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church. He was one of the boys in the class of Deacon Sked. In 1854, at the age

of fifteen years, he became a member of the church, in which he served as clerk of the church while still a mere boy. He was grave and reserved, with the manner of a grown man. Yet he had his share of fun, too, and was for years a member of a singing school which met every week in the basement of an old church building in the lower end of Euclid Avenue.

After leaving high school, young Rocke- feller had intended to go through college, but on an intimation received from his father in regard to the expense of doing so he con- cluded it was best not to be a burden to his father; hence his decision to enter a com- mercial school and prepare to earn his own living. He took a course in E. G. Folsom's Commercial College in the Rouse Block, where the Marshall Building now stands, at Superior Avenue and the Public Square. For a fee ot $40 in advance the boys were initiated into the arts of fine handwriting, bookkeeping — single and double entry — and commercial work generally. Prom this school he was graduated in August, 1855, and he began at once to look for work. This was not the casual expedition of a lad who puts in a few days of alleged searching, then goes away to spend the summer with his family and hope for better luck in the fall. Morning after morning young John D. Rockefeller walked downtown — not so far in those days — and made the rounds of the stores and the ofiSces where a lad of sixteen might expect to find work as assistant to the bookkeeper.

Turned back again and again, he calmly walked home to Erie Street, had dinner, came downtown and tried again all afteimoon until closing time. Hot weather, crusty men who didn't want to be bothered by a youngster hunting a job, the constant succession of might-be employers whose only answer was "no!" seem not to have discouraged young Rockefeller.

"I didn't think of the discouragement: what I thought of was getting that job," he told some friends once when he was holding the annual celebration of Job Day. ' ' I simply had to get work ; for father had said if I could not find anything to do I might go back to the country, and the mere thought of support by my father gave me a cold chill — it gives me one now to think of it." He did not waste time on retail stores or small shops, but called — always on the head men — at banks, railroad offices, wholesale merchandising establish- ments, etc.

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

From the middle of August until near the end of September the quiet, thoughtful, determined boy plodded on his round, some- times revisiting offices where he had been refused, always politely urgent, never cast down by new refusals. In the forenoon of September 26, 1855, he went into the ofSce of Hewitt and Tuttle, commission merchants, in a three-story brick building in ilerwin Street, facing the Cuyahoga River. For the many hundredth time he repeated his request: "1 understand bookkeeping, and I'd like to get work. ' '

Mr. Tuttle told him he might come in again after dinner. Returning after dinner, he was overjoyed when Mr. Tuttle said: "I have talked it over with Mr. Hewitt, and we have decided to give you a trial. ' ' That was all the boy wanted — to get a chance. He was willing to stand or fall on his own merits. From that day until the end of the year — three months and four days — the quiet lad worked hard and faithfully, on trial. He did not ask, nor did his employers say, what the pay was to be. On the last day of December he was paid fifty dollars for his services up to date.

The first winter after obtaining a situation, though he lacked some necessary warm gar- ments, he did not acquaint his father with the fact, preferring the nip of frost to increasing dependence, and determining thereafter to pay his own way, especially as his father had always been so kind and considerate in pro- viding for all his needs.

Young Rockefeller took the place of the bookkeeper who retired from th.e firm in January, 1857. He served the firm faithfully for three years and six months, yet $1,525 was all the pay he got for all his work during that period. But he got much more than pay out of the job ; he got a business training and experience which, extended along the lines in which he had been instructed by his father, were soon to prove invaluable. He kept the books of the firm with scrupulous exactness, scrutinized every bill presented, and never put his 0. K. on one until he was sure every item was correct; collected rents and bills for the house, and settled disputes that arose over shipments of goods by rail and lake.

All this gave the ijoy a grasp on business and on the problems of transportation which later was to prove of the highest value to him. He became an adapt at negotiation, settling in a friendly way all sorts of disputes over goods damaged or delayed in transit, and learning how to deal with men. The work

was hard, the hours long; but the boy was preparing for something big, though he did not suspect what it was. He saved his money, too, against tlie day when he would need capital for his own business. Yet this was no novelty, for he had been saving money that he had earned from the time he was eight years old. He always had a little put away.

Besides carefully saving, the boy was con- stantly giving. The little memorandum book, its brown leather cover shiny from long wear and handling, on which one still can read the title, "Ledger A," inscribed by his boyish hand with the flourishes proper in a young bookkeeper, bears a careful record of his receipts and expenditures. He did not wait until he had made his fortune to begin giving. At a time when he was earning about $16 a month he was recording in "Ledger A" such items as, "For a present to the teacher, 12 cents," "For a poor man in church, 25 cents," and "For a poor woman in church, 50 cents." As his income grew, the size of his gifts increased with it ; but it is significant that his habit of deliberate, careful giving toward causes well worth while was begun early, and has continued throughout all his life since childhood.

When Mr. Hewitt could not see his way clear to pay John D. Rockefeller $800 a year, he gave up his job. He had saved his money, he had acquired familiarity with business dealings, had made small but profitable invest- ments, and had already put through one good- sized contract. In 1857, when he was only nineteen, his father had told him to build a house, giving him only the general outlines. Young Rockefeller decided upon the plans, got the material and found a builder. He put up a handsome structure of dark red brick at No. 33 Cheshire Street, which is still stand- ing at the time of this writing, its lines as true as on the day it was finished. Perhaps still more remarkable is the fact that the work was all done within the contract price with a little money left over after all was finished. Into this house the Rockefeller family moved and made their home for years.

In coming to Cleveland from the country as a poor boy, Mr. Rockefeller was fortunate in at once finding a good environment in church and schools, where kind friends inter- ested themselves in the young stranger; and still later, when he began his business career, he had exceptional opportunities in meeting the leading and most influental men in the

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

city, who were frequently in the ofSce of his employer. In this way lasting acquaintances and friendships were formed, which were of value to him in after life.

M. B. Clark, a young Englishman, some ten years older than John D. Rockefeller, wanted a partner to join him in the commission busi- ness. He had $2,000 capital. Young Rocke- feller had saved $1,000, and his father who had intended to give him $1,000 when he reached the age of twenty-one, lent him the money at ten per cent, interest, until that time. The firm of Clark and Rockefeller was formed in April, 1859. They at once began to do a large business in their ofSce in River Street, dealing in carload lots and cargoes of produce. Soon they needed more money to take care of their increasing trade. Young Rockefeller, still short of his twentieth birth- da.y, called on T. P. Handy, president of a Cleveland bank. He took tlie young man's note, with the warehouse receipts of his own firm as collateral, and lent him $2,000. "I believe, ' ' said the banker, ' ' that you will con- duct your business along conservative and proper lines." His confidence was justified. The junior partner went through the States of Indiana and Ohio, soliciting business from pretty nearly everybody in the commission line. The response was generous. In the first year the young firm's sales amounted to half a million dollars.

Both in the produce business and in the oil refining industry, which he entered a few years later, young Rockefeller was a frequent and heavy borrower. From the day that Mr. Handy lent him that first $2,000 his credit was always good, for he was noted for his strict attention to detail and the certainty of keeping his word. He was always a success- ful money -raiser, a good beggar, as he has since phrased it. When he was only eighteen, but alread.y a trustee of the Erie Street Baptist Church, the minister announced from the pulpit one Sunday morning that $2,000 would have to be raised within a few months, or a mortgage for that amount would be foreclosed and the church left without a home. Young Rockefeller took his stand at the door of the church, buttonholed each member who came by; pleaded, urged, almost threatened, and got a promise from each to help pay the debt. He recorded each promise in his little book. The campaign lasted for months, and although many of the subscriptions were for only twenty-five or fifty cents a week, the entire $2,000 was raised in good time. It is not

without significance in viewing his career to note that he worked as hard at eighteen to raise the $2,000 for the imperilled church as he did to raise the $2,000 with which he embarked in his first business at nineteen, and that though he was still at the age when many lads are at school, or, at mo.st, freshmen in college, he was already a grave and settled Inisiness man, addressed by those who had dealings with him as ' ' Mr. Rockefeller. ' '

Soon after Drake struck oil, near Titus- ville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, there was a rush for the hills and flats along Oil Creek. "Wells were drilled by the hundred when it was found that by the simple process of refining an excellent illuminating oil could be made fi"om the crude petroleum. The gold craze in California ten years before attracted no greater attention nor lured more men from their normal pursuits than did the oil craze of the early '60s. Drilling wells, transporting oil, refining oil, drew thousands of adven- turers from humdrum tasks into this great get-rich-quick enterprise.

Early in 1862 the copartnership of An- drews, Clark & Company was formed, to engage in oil refining. M. B. Clark and Mr. Rockefeller were the "company" in this concern, while they yet continued in the produce commission business of Clark and Rockefeller, and at the same time took the financial and business management of the new oil firm. In their small refinery on Kings- bury Run, in Cleveland, were laid the founda- tions of the concern which was soon to supply light to a great part of mankind, in all parts of the world, and whose application of the principles of service, co-operation and economy were to serve as models in the organization of business enterprise among all civilized men.

The studious youth who was to do all this had no idea of the vastness of the work he was undertaking nor of the great fortune he was to achieve. "We were simply trying to com- pass a situation," is the answer he has often given when asked how he came to organize the Standard Oil Company. Born with a pre- disposition toward method, order, economy and industry, which qualities liad been fostered by his parents, he conducted his business with scrupulous care. He knew to a penny what every department in the business was costing and what profit it was showing. Other part- ners had been taken in, and there was in some quarters a resentment against so much exact- ness. When it was proposed, in a perfectly friendly way, to put the business up at auction

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

aucl let whichever partner would bid the highest take it, young Mr. Rockefeller as- sented. After a few bids, he calmly offered a bonus of $72,000 above the actual value as shown by the books, and the concern was knocked down to him. He had no attorney or other adviser present, but conducted alone all the negotiations with a group of men, all of whom were considerablv older than he.

Thus, on April 1, 1865, Mr. Rockefeller took over the oil business, kept Samuel Andrews with him and formed the firm of Rockefeller & Andrews ; at which time also he sold out his interest in the firm of Clark & Rockefeller in the produce commission business.

The reorganized business made money very fast at times, and at other times stood still. Though it showed a profit at the end of each year, it felt, as did all oil refining firms tliroughout the country, the fluctuations due to alternating scarcity and floods of crude oil, as old wells ran dry or new ones gushed in prodigal richness. Speculation in oil ran riot. Men were enriched or beggared in a few days. The wildest romances of the gold flelds were paralleled in the oil world. But the twenty- five or thirty firms engaged in refining and selling petroleum in Cleveland were much disturbed by the upward and downward leaps and plunges of the price of their com- modity.

"I want to tell you," recently said the venerable Manuel Halle, whom all Cleveland business men know and trust; "I want to tell you that until Mr. Rockefeller and his associates came in and organized the busi- ness, it was running along haphazard, up today and down tomorrow, with many men failing as the market jumped up or down. You might have a big stock on hand that you could not sell because the market was over- stocked; then you saw a big black smoke in the sky. somebody's refinery was burning, a big stock was destroyed, and oil would jump from fifteen cents a gallon to eighteen or nine- teen. IMr. Rockefeller got the best oil refiners of Cleveland into one concern and stabilized the business. We all owe him a debt of grati- tude."

This combination was not accomplished without long and arduous labors and many hard knocks. The beginning was not difficult. Mr. Rockefeller had a conference with Colonel 0. H. Payne, head of the biggest refinery in Cleveland, pointed out to him the conditions which were threatening the existence of all the oil refining firms, and declared in effect

that for them, as for the signers of the Decla- ration of Independence, the time had come when they must hang together or they'd hang separately. The two came to an agreement at once. The Clark, Payne & Company refinery was appraised and consolidated with the Rockefeller installation. One by one, most of the other refineries in Cleveland came in. Some came in at the first invitation; others held back for one, two, three or five years, or longer. The invitation to come in 'was ex- tended to all refiners in the country, including those who were weakest and least able to meet the increasing destructive competition, which had already brought loss and failure to many.

Mr. Rockefeller's old employer, Mr. Hewitt, was a member of Alexander, Scofield & Com- pany, one of the most important firms in. Cleveland, and desired to take stock for his interest in the firm when they came into the Standard Oil Company; but," turning to his former clerk, he said: "John, I cannot take it because, on account of the losses of our business, my equity is wiped out. ' ' To which Mr. Rockefeller responded that he would advance him the money and carry the stock for him. To this Mr. Hewitt gladly assented.

As the fluctuations of the business grew worse rather than better with the passing months, it was not very long before practically all the oil refiners of Cleveland were .joined with Mr. Rockefeller, his brother William, Henry M. Flagler, Samuel Andrews and Stephen V. Harkness in the corporation known as the Standard Oil Company, which was chartered on January 10, 1870, with a capital of one million dollars.

The whole venture was more or less uncer- tain as to its future. Many of the conserva- tive business men liked to characterize it as a "rope of sand." Cleveland merchants assured the young men at the head of the enterprise that a similar organization for mutual advantage had been attempted among the shipping men of Lake Erie, and that it ended in dismal failure. William Thaw, the power behind the throne in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, gravelv prophesied that "that young man (Mr. Rockefeller) will make a disastrous failure." — then, after a pause expressive of doubt— "or a great success."

Wliile a few of the old, conservative mer- chants of Cleveland did not feel so sure that this sober, methodical young man would make a success, William H. Vanderbilt, who began to have business dealings with him in the

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

early '70s, remarked of Mr. Rockefeller : ' ' He will become the richest man in the country." Mr. Rockefeller never had any doubt of the ultimate triumph of the principles upon which the Standard Oil Company was based: the greatest good to the greatest number, accom- plished by the co-operation of the best men in the oil business in buying, transporting, refin- ing, shipping and marketing petroleum and its products, the whole enterprise being con- ducted with the most rigid economy.

Cleveland now became one of the principal petroleum centres of the world, taking the place hitherto occupied by Pittsburgh. The Standard Oil Company provided its own pipe- lines for gathering the crude oil, its own tank cars for carrying it in train-load lots, thereby effecting a great saving, and its own depots and warehouses and docks at the shipping points for the European trade. Other com- panies bought barrels of coopers : the Stand- ard organized its own cooper shops, bought whole forests of timber, built drying houses and seasoned the wood before shipping, thus saving the greater cost of transportation on green wood, made its own glue and paint; in a word, saved money on every process that goes into the gathering, preparation and sell- ing of petroleum products. The Company's corps of scientists toiled incessantly in the laboratories, constantly discovering new ways, of using the by-products of crude petroleum, which hitherto had been wasted.

The Standard Oil Company from the first encouraged its employees to become stock- holders in the company, and, where necessary, loaned them money to do so. These are num- bered among the many who attribute their success in life to their connection with the company.

As the business grew, other refiners, in Philadelphia. Pittsburgh, and elsewhere, joined the successful Standard Oil Company. No other was able to do the work so eflScientiy and at such low cost. All who came into the new concern prospered. Probably never in the history of the world has such an aggrega- tion of able, loyal, devoted men been gathered together under the name of one organization. They provided light for the uttermost parts of the world and habituated all races of men to its use.

Mr. Rockefeller has often expressed his regret that every oil refiner in the country did notcome into the Standard Oil Company and enjoy the benefits of co-operation. All who were competing with him had the oppor-

tunity to merge their interests with his and get Standard Oil stock in return for their full value. This many of them failed to do, not only because it seemed to them impossible that the business could be restored to a con- dition of prosperity, but because they really had no equity on which to get a stock repre- sentation in the Standard Oil Company, owing to the losses in the refining business in the late '60s, when the competition became severe.

Cleveland greatly benefited by the activities of Mr. Rockefeller and his associates. When they began their co-operative organization, the city was fortj'-third in population and im- portance in the United States, and they played a large part in helping it to grow up to sixth place. During fifty-six years the Standard Oil Company and its predecessor in Cleveland has furnished steady employ- ment to many thousands of contented men, industrious and well paid, who have been of the most useful and valuable class in the com- munity. Soon after the Standard Oil Com- pany was firmly established, Mr. Rockefeller became interested in various manufacturing and other enterprises, which he conducted along the same general lines, and it was from the sum of the profits of all his ventures that he derived his vast fortune.

After the organization of the Standard Oil Company Mr. Rockefeller recommended to his old friend and first banker, Mr. Handy, the purchase of some of its stock. Mr. Handy responded that he would be pleased to make the purchase, but his funds were otherwise invested ; on which Mr. Rockefeller loaned him the money for the purpose, and the trans- action resulted to the entire satisfaction of Mr. Handy. StiUman Witt was another Cleveland capitalist who showed kindly inter- est in Mr. Rockefeller. The oil company had had a large fire, destroying their New York warehouses, and Mr. Rockefeller informed his Cleveland bankers of the loss and stated that the company might desire to borrow some money. It proved, however, that they did not need to borrow money on this account ; for the insurance company promptly paid the entire loss, amounting to several hundred thousands of dollars. Some years after, it came to the knowledge of Mr. Rockefeller that, when he indicated that he might want to make this loan, the question arose in the board as to whether the paper should be more closely scrutinized on account of the fire ; whereupon ]Mr. Stillman Witt, who was a member of the

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

board, pi'omptly called for his strong box, and, presenting it to the board, remarked: "Gentlemen, these young men are all right. If you want any more security, here it is!" Mr. Rockefeller never forgot the incident, and Mr. Witt never had occasion to regret his kindly interest and confidence in the young man.

When Mr. Rockefeller informed his part- ner, Mr. S. V. Hai'kness, that he might want to call upon him for some assistance on account of the fire — though, as it proved, he never had occasion to do so — Mr. Harkness responded: "All right, J. D.; you can have everything I've got."

These were some of many acts of confidence and kindness shown to Mr. Rockefeller from the beginning of his business career, and for them he never ceased to be grateful.

The confidence of his bankers in him increased with his confidence in requesting assistance, and the Cleveland bankers never had occasion to regard this bold, persistent borrower as lacking in this particular. While they wondered at his assurance, they did not fail to respond to his requests.

On one occasion an aged and conservative bank president said to Mr. Rockefeller: "You are borrowing a large amount of money from our bank, and our Board may want you to come and have a talk with them." To which Mr. Rockefeller answered : ' ' Mr. Otis, I shall be very pleased to do so; because we have got to have a great deal more." The bank did not request Mr. Rockefeller to meet the board.

The kindly treatment of the Cleveland bankers was very helpful and reassuring to Mr. Rockefeller, and gave him courage to push forward with business undertakings which in all the early years were so far in excess of his capital.

In after years, when Mr. Rockefeller had passed the stress of the borrowing stage, and, in turn, was 'able to render assistance to others, banks and business concerns as well as individuals, he took pleasure in doing this in every time of financial stress, in some in- stances amounting to many millions of dollars. In the panic of 1907 a leading New York financier early one morning telephoned him: "Rockefeller," I want forty or fifty millions to help out in this panic."

It was a day or two before this that Mr. Rockefeller" was called up at midnight and asked if he would meet Melville Stone of the Associated Press, if he would come

right up, for the purpose of agreeing upon a dispatch to send out to the public, with a view to reassure them in this time of critical financial stress. To which Mr. Rockefeller answered : "It won 't be necessary for you to come up. Let's agree upon the article right here and now, right over the telephone." Mr. Rockefeller gave him a message which was sent out, in which he pledged the half of his fortune, if necessary, to stop the panic. Men came to Mr. Rockefeller afterward from distant cities, and with the tears in their eyes expressed their gratitude for that message, which marked for them the turning point.

Mr. Rockefeller has always had the cordial support of his family in his philanthropic undertakings, and from the earliest recollec- tion of his children these topics were upper- most in the daily conversations in the home. Mr. Rockefeller found, in 1890, that the bur- den of examining the merits of causes here and there had grown too heavy to be borne. It was driving him toward a nervous break- down. For years it was the custom to read at table the letters received relating to the various benevolences, but now the task had grown beyond the possibility of accomplish- ment without trained help. Mr. Rockefeller had to appoint an aid or stop giving — and the latter, of course, was out of the question. The necessity was forced upon him to organize and plan this department of daily duties on as distinct lines of progress as he did his busi- ness affairs. His ideal was to contribute aU that he could, whether of money or service, to human progress. His great ability and his vast fortune were alike dedicated to that purpose.

Though he had contributed for years to many philanthropic objects, one of the first great benevolent enterprises founded by Mr. Rockefeller was the University of Chicago, To combat ignorance, to extend true educa- tion, appealed to him as one of the best ways to help men to help themselves. His first gift, $600,000, toward the founding of the uni- versity was made in 1889. In making his last gift, of $10,000,000, in 1910, which brought the total contribution up to $35,000,- 000, Mr. Rockefeller definitely ended his per- sonal connection with the project. He wrote : "I am acting on an early and permanent con- viction that this great institution, being the property of the people, should be controlled, conducted and supported by the people, in whose generous efforts for its upbuilding I have been permitted simply to co-operate."

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

As Mr. Rockefeller's ability increased to enlarge his contributions in the interest of humanity, he began to feel that it would be desirable to crystallize into separate oi-ganiza- tions the work which he had been carrying on himself. Beginning with a pledge of $200,000, in 1901, he established the Rocke- feller Institute for Medical Research, to seek the cause and the cure of diseases that afflict mankind. A corps of doctors of the highest ability, provided with proper salaries and thus enabled to give all their time to study, have already discovered in the hospital and laboratories of the Institute the means of cur- ing several obscure and virulent diseases. These discoveries, given free to all the woi-ld, have saved thousands of lives, and will prob- ably save many thousands more. The Insti- tute has thus "far used $10,000,000, and has assets of $17,000,000.

The General Education Board was estab- lished in 1902 for the purpose of promoting "education within the United States of Amer- ica without distinction of race, sex or creed." The board consists of business men and able educators, who seek to make its benefactions afford the greatest good to the greatest num- ber. It has given aid to public education of white and colored people, in fourteen southern states, has made large gifts to the medical departments in four great universities, and has helped more than one hundred schools and colleges. The board has already thus bestowed nearly $24,000,000. It has remain- ing a fund of about $35,000,000.

The Rockefeller Foundation, chartered in 1913, "to promote the wellbeing of mankind throughout the world," was established in order to provide an agency, not dependent upon the life of any individual, which should deal with the problems of philanthropy in accord with the principles and methods approved in each generation. Mr. Rockefeller has thus far given $132,000,000 to the Founda- tion. Its most important achievements have been, the establishment of the International Health Board, which has already restored hundreds of thousands of suiferers; the appointment of the China Medical Board, to help improve the public health in China, and the formation of a War Relief Commission, which has given first aid to stricken Belgium and already aided in the work of the Ameri- can Red Cross with many millions of dollars. It is believed that the Rockefeller Foundation will be of benefit and a blessing to countless generations of men.

Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Junior, testified before the United States Commission on. Industrial Relations, in January, 1915, his belief that his father had given a quarter of a billion dollars for philanthropy, and it is known that in the succeeding three years he gave $50,000,000 more.

Mr. Rockefeller married, in 1864, Miss Laura C. Spelman, daughter of Mr. H. B. Spelman, of Cleveland. Five children were born to them. Their home for some years was a spacious house with grounds bounded by Euclid and Case avenues and Prospect Street, whence they removed in 1876 to the Forest Hill estate of 200 acres in what is now the eastern part of the City of Cleveland. Here during the most active years of his career Mr. Rockefeller spent hours of many business days in planting trees and building roads. Here he laid out his private golf course, on which he still loves to play when he visits in the summer his former home ; and here he has received from j^ear to year visits of his old neighbors, delegations of the lead- ing citizens of Cleveland, who came to con- gratulate him on his birthday and to thank him for his great part in building up the prosperity of their city as well as for his munificent gifts to it.

Mr. and Mrs. Rockefeller had much to do with the growth and support of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church not only, but of many other of the benevolent institutions of Cleve- land. And though he has spent much of his time in New York, beginning in the late '60s, and has made his home there since the early '80s, Mr. Rockefeller still retains his member- ship in the old church and his deep, abiding, cordial interest in the welfare of its people, the survivors and the children and grand- children of his old friends in Cleveland.

Horace Kelley. Every citizen of Cleve- land knows and appreciates the name and services of Horace Kelley, if for no other rea.son than because his liberality gave the bulk of the fortune which enabled the city to erect and maintain its magnificent museum of art.

Nearly all his fortune, estimated of upwards of $600,000, Horace Kelley left to trustees for the purpose of founding a museum of art in Cleveland. This sum, together with subse- quent accumulations, was combined with funds given by the late John Huntington and made it possible to found in Cleveland a museum of art that is todaj' one of the chief

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

sources of civic pride among the people of Cleveland.

Horace Kelley was bom at Cleveland July 18, 1819, and spent his life in that city, where he died December 4, 1890. He was a member of the Kelley family that from the earliest times in Cleveland have been factors in its historj' and development. He was a son of Joseph Eeynolds and Betsey (Gould) Kelley and was a grandson of Judge Daniel Kelley, who with his sons Datus, Alfred, Irad, Joseph R. and Thomas Moore Kelley inaugurated the Kellev family activities in Cleveland during the years from 1810 to 1814.

Horace Kelley spent his active life largely in the management of extensive properties, including lands in the heart of Cleveland, and also the Isle St. George, now North Bass Island. One of the wealthy men of the city, he employed his means not only as a public benefactor but also in following his tastes as a traveler, and altogetlier he spent a number of years of his life abroad. Horace Kelley married Fanny Miles, of Elyria, Ohio. Mrs. Kelley is now living at Los Angeles, Cali- fornia. They had no children.

Hermon a. Kelley. It would be difficult to find in Ohio or in any other state a group of lawyers with a higher degree of specializa- tion of ability and more thoroughly covering the general branches of .iurisprudence than those who are members of or practicing un- der the firm Iloj^t, Dustin, Kelley, McKee- han & Andrews in the Western Reserve Build- ing at Cleveland.

Of this firm Hermon A. Kelley has long en- joyed first rank as an admiralty lawyer. Be- sides his well won distinctions in the profes- sion, his career is interesting in a history of Cleveland because he represents family names of the oldest antiquity and prominence in Northern Ohio. In his paternal line the rec- ord goes back to Joseph Kelley, who was bom in 1690 and was one of the early settlers at Norwich, Connecticut, where he died in 1716. Of a later generation Daniel Kelley was bom in Norwich March 15, 1726, and died in Ver- mont in 1814. He was the father of Judge Daniel Kelley, the great-grandfather of Her- mon A.

Judge Daniel Kelley was prominent in Cleveland's early history. He was bom at Norwich, Connecticut, November 27, 1755, and died at Cleveland, Ohio, August 7, 1831. Judge Daniel Kelley was the second president or mayor of the Village of Cleveland. The

first president of the village upon its incor- poration in 1814 was Judge Daniel's son, Al- fred Kelley, to whose career a special biogi-aphy is devoted on other pages. Alfred Kelley resigned his post as village president on ilarch 19, 1816, and was succeeded by his father. Judge Daniel, who received a unani- mous election. Considering his standing as a man and other qualifications it is not strange that he was the unanimous choice of the twelve voters who then composed the electo- rate of the village. Thus members of the Kel- ley family had an active part in shaping the policy of Cleveland when it was in no spe- cial way distinguished from other settlements along the Lake Erie shore.

Judge Daniel Kelley mamed Jemima Stow. Her father, Elihu Stow, was a soldier of the American army throughout the period of the Revolutionary war. On account of that serv- ice his descendants in the Kelley family have eligibility to membersliip in the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution. Joshua Stow, a brother of Jemima, was a member of the Connecticut Land Company which acquired by purchase most of the West- ern Reserve from the State of Connecticut. Joshua Stow was a member of the surveying party which, under the leadership of Gen. Moses Cleaveland, landed at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River and founded the City of Cleveland in 1796.

Datus Kelley, oldest son of Judge Daniel Kelley and grandfather of the Cleveland law- ver, was born at Middlefield, Connecticut, April 24, 1788. For a number of years he lived on his farm near Rocky Run, but in 1833 bought the entire island since known as Kelley 's Island in Lake Erie, near the City of Sandusky. That island comprises about 3,000 acres.' Datus Kelley moved his family to this island in 1836, and with the aid of his six sons most of the early development of that island was carried on. Datus Kelley died at Kelley 's Island Januaiy 24. 1866. Be- sides his six .sons he had three daughters. Of his sons Alfred S. Kelley. father of Hermon A., was the business head of the family.

Alfred S. Kellev was born at Rockport. Ohio, December 23, 1826. He planned and put into execution the cultivation and im- provement of Kelley 's Island, and the indus- trial development there even to the present day has been influenced by his work. He was also a prominent business man, was a merchant, banker, owned docks and steam- boat lines, and in his time was considered one

10

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

of the most prominent business men of North- em Ohio.

Alfred S. Kelley married Hannah Farr. She was bom at Rockport, Ohio, August 9, 1837, and died February 4, 1889. Her an- cestry is traced back to Stephen Farr of Ac- ton, Massachusetts, who was married May 23, 1674. The line of descent comes down through Joseph Farr, Sr., of Acton, Joseph Farr, Jr., who was born at Acton August 3, 1743, Eliel Farr, who was bom at Cumming- ton, Massachusetts, June 16, 1777, and died at Rockport, Ohio, September 6, 1865, and Aurelius Farr, father of Hannah Farr Kel- ley, who was bom September 18, 1798, and died December 11, 1862.

Hermon A. Kelley began life with the heri- tage of a good family name and with all the advantages that considerable wealth and social position can bestow. He was born at Kelley 's Island May 15, 1859, was educated in piiblic schools and Buchtel College at Akron, where he graduated A. B. in 1879 and soon after- wards put into execution his plan to study law. In 1882 he was granted the degree of Bachelor of Laws by Harvard Law School, and he also had the privileges of a student residence abroad, during which time he took special work in Roman law at the University of Goettingen, Germany. In 1897 his alma mater conferred upon him the honorary de- gree Doctor of Laws.

Mr. Kelley began practice in 1884 at De- troit, but a year later removed to Cleveland, where he was a partner with Arthur A. Stearns until 1891. In that year Mr. Kelley became first assistant corporation counsel of Cleveland, and on retiring from that office in 1893 became junior partner of the firm of Hoj't, Dustin & Kelley. During its exist- ence of more than twenty years this partner- .ship has grown in strength and ability until it is reckoned as second to none among the law firms of the state. Later Homer H. Mc- Keehan and Horace Andrews were admitted to the partnership.

Mr. Kelley 's specialty, as already noted, is admiralty law. His knowledge of marine law and affairs is so comprehensive and exact that his opinions have come to be accepted as authority by his fellow lawyers and are seldom seriously questioned in courts.

While devoted to his profession and strictly a lawyer, Mr. Kelley has taken a commend- able interest in public affairs in his home city, and at every opportunity has sought to strengthen the arms of good government and

extend the work and prestige of the city. He is an active republican, is a member of the L^nion Club, University Club, Country Club, Roadside Club and Euclid Club. He also be- longs to the Cleveland, Ohio State and Amer- ican Bar associations. Mr. Kelley is presi- dent of the Ohio Society of the Sons of the American Revolution and also of the Western Reserve Society of the same order. He is a trustee and is secretary and treasurer of the Cleveland Museum of Art and was a member of the building committee which had charge of the erection of the beautiful new Art Build- ing. He is also a member of the board of trustees of Buchtel College, now the Munici- pal University of Cleveland.

Mr. Kelley was married September 3, 1889, to Miss Florence A. Kendall. Her father was I\Iaj. Frederick A. Kendall of the United States Regular Army. Her mother, Virginia (Hutchinson) Kendall, was a daughter of one of the noted Hutchinson familj' of singers of New Hampshire. Mr. and Mrs. Kelley have three children : Virginia Hutchinson, Alfred Kendall and Hayward Kendall.

Judge Daniel Kelley was one of the most prominent of the early settlers of Cleveland, and numerous references to his name and career are found elsewhere in this publica- tion. To concentrate a few of the more im- portant facts of his personal history the following sketch is. given:

He was born at Norwich, Connecticut, No- vember 27, 1755. He was a son of Daniel Kelley and Abigail Refolds Kelley, and a grandson of Joseph and Lydia (Caulkins) Kelley. These grandparents were among the early settlers of Norwich, Connecticut, where they established their home in 1698.

judge Daniel Kelley moved to Middle- town, Connecticut, where in 1787 he married Jemima Stow. Her brother, Joshua Stow, was one of the thirty-five original members of the Connecticut Land Company and one of the surveying party which with Moses Cleaveland founded the City of Cleveland in 1796.

In 1798 Daniel Kelley removed to Lowville, New York, and while there was elected first judge of Lewis County. In the fall of 1814 he came to Cleveland, whither his previous reputation followed him, so that he was al- most at once a man of importance in the com- munity.

In March, 1816, he was elected to succeed his son Alfred as president of the Village of

3 1833 02481 0910

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

11

Cleveland, an office to which he was re-elected in 1817, 1818 and 1819. He was also post- master of Cleveland until 1817, when he was succeeded by his son, Irad Kelley. In 1816, with his son, Alfred, Datus and Irad, Judge Kelley was among the incorporators of a com- pany for the building of the first pier at the mouth of the Cu.yahoga River.

In many other ways he was a factor in movements of importance in the early life of the city and he lived here until his death on August 7, 1831.

Alfred Kelley. Local history gives Al- fred Kelley the distinction of being the first resident attorney of Cleveland, the first presi- dent of its village government, active in the organization of its first bank, and in several other things a priority of action and influ- ence. However, his life is not to be measured by these minor evidences of leadership. It was in connection with the broader, more per- manent and significant issues of early Ohio and the City of Cleveland that his life and work were most important. No other man was so vitally identified with that great move- ment, common to the entire United States at the time, known as the era of internal im- provements, which began early in the eight- eenth century and came to a somewhat disastrous conclusion in the middle '30s, the great financial panic of 1837 coming as a eon- .sequenee upon this period of industrial build- ing and inflation rather than a cause of the decline. One notable result of this era of internal improvements was the construction of the old Ohio Canal, a transportation route largely conceived and carried out by the genius of Alfred Kelley. This canal was soon superseded by railroads, but in the mean- time Cleveland, at the northern end of the canal, had been fortified against all time as one of the great cities of Ohio.

Hardly less important was the service ren- dered by Alfred Kelley during the hard times that followed the panic of 1837. When state credit was at a low ebb and when citi- zens everywhere were clamoring for a relief from the burdens of an onerous state debt, Alfred Kelley set himself sternly against re- pudiation and largely through his own re- sources and his personal credit he saved the financial honor of Ohio.

Alfred Kelley was born in Middlefield, near Middletown, Connecticut, November 7, 1789. He was the second son of Judge Daniel and Jemima (Stow) Kelley. A more complete

account of his family connections will be found on other pages. Alfred Kelley was a New Englander and had the best characteris- tics of its people. From his mother's family he inherited intellectual force, tenacity of purpose and a strong will. Through his father he was left with a cool judgment, a disposition for thorough investigation and an evenly balanced temperament. His early as- sociations were with the sturdy and well ordered inhabitants of New England. His early life was also spent in what might might be called the heroic age of America. It was a time when the brilliant success of the inde- pendence struggle filled men's hearts and minds and when Americans carried their patriotic zeal almost to excess and were pos- sessed of indomitable energy and enterprise for conquering the obstacles and dangers of environment and the new fields of the West.

Alfred Kelley had the advantages of the common schools and of Fairfield Academy. When he was about ten years old his parents moved to Lowville, New York. In 1807 he entered the law offices of Judge Jonas Piatt, of the Supreme Court of New York. In 1810, being well qualified by his previous studies, he came out to Cleveland, fourteen years after the first settlement had been planted there. He rode horseback from New York in com- pany with his uncle. Judge Joshua Stow, and with Jared P. Kirtland, who was then a young medical student. When they arrived at Cleveland they found a settlement containing three frame houses and six log houses. Mr. KeUey was the first attorney to become a pei-manent resident of Cleveland. He was admitted to the bar November 7, 1810, and on the same day the court appointed him prose- cuting attorney. By successive appointments he held that office until 1822. His career as a lawyer is obscured by his more important activities as a statesman and financier, but all accounts agree that he was a man of power in the advocacy of the interests entrusted to him professionally, and for a number of years he enjoyed as large and lucrative a practice as any attorney in Northern Ohio.

Cleveland was chartered as a village De- cember 23, 1814, and on the first Monday of June, 1815, its first village election was held. There were twelve votes and all of them were cast for Alfred Kelley as president of the vil- lage. He filled that office only a few months, resigning March 19, 1816, and being suc- ceeded by his father. Judge Daniel Kelley, who was the second president of the village.

12

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

On August 25, 1817, Alfred Kelley married Mary Seymour Welles, of LowTrille, New York. To bring his bride out to the Ohio wilderness and the Village of Cleveland, then contain- ing 100 inhabitants, Mr. Kelley bought a one- horse chaise made in Albany, New York, and some days after the marriage he and his bride drove through the Village of Cleveland, and the villagers not only showed a cordial greet- ing to the bride and groom, but expressed admiration over the first carriage brought to the town. Mr. and Mrs. Kelley went to live in a brick house on Water Street, now West Ninth Street, near Superior Street. It was the best residence district and also the busi- ness center of the town. Mr. Kelley 's home was the second brick house of the village, and a picture of the old house is still extant. Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Kelley had eleven children.

In 1814 Mr. Kelley had been elected a mem- ber of the Ohio House of Representatives. He and William H. Harper represented a dis- trict then comprising the counties of Cuya- hoga, Ashtabula and Geauga. The Legisla- ture was still meeting at Chillicothe, the first capital of the State of Ohio. In the session following his election Mr. Kelley was the youngest member of the House. He continued at intervals a member of the Legislature, first as representative and then as senator, from Cuyahoga and adjoining counties until 1823.

Wher the Commercial Bank of Erie, the first bank in Cleveland, was organized in 1816, Alfred Kelley was elected its president. In 1818, while a member of the Legislature, he introduced the first bill, either in the United States or Europe, providing for the abolition of imprisonment for debt. This bill failed to pass but was a notable step toward a great reform, which was not long delayed, and send- ing people to prison for debt is now so obso- lete that the custom has passed almost from traditional memory.

In 1823 Mr. Kelley became one of the State Canal Commission. This commission accom- plished its great task of building the Ohio Canal from Cleveland, its northern terminus, to the Ohio River. In many respects the canal was a monument to the enterprise, en- ergy and sagacity of Alfred Kelley, and as already stated it did more than anything else to fortify Cleveland's position as a great ship- ping center and commercial city. During the construction ot this canal Mr. Kelley removed first to Akron and then to Columbus, and he spent the last years of his life at the state capital. Wlien' the canal was completed he

resigned from the commission to recuperate his health and look after his private affairs.

In October, 1836, Mr. Kelley was again elected a member of the Ohio House of Rep- resentatives from Franklin and re-elected for a succeeding term. He was chairman of the Whig State Central Committee in 1840 and did a great deal to arouse support in Ohio for the presidential candidate Harrison, who was the first whig sent to the White House.

From the beginning of the great panic of 1837 for a number of years Mr. Kelley worked unceasingly to strengthen and preserve the credit of the state at home and abroad. In 1840 he was appointed state fund commis- sioner and held that ofiSce until 1842. He did everything in his power to combat that grow- ing popular influence in the state which ad- vocated the non-payment of interest on the state debt and even argued for repudiation of the debt itself. Rather than have Ohio face dishonor Mr. Kelley went to New York and to Europe and on his personal credit raised the money to pay the interest, and in later years, when a saner reaction followed, he was designated as the ' ' savior of the honor of the state."

In 1844 Mr. Kelley was elected to the State Senate and served two consecutive tenns. While in the Senate he originated the bill to organize the State Bank ef Ohio and other banking companies. This measure, so care- fully cTrawm up by him, afterwards became the basis of the national banking law pre- pared by Secretary of the Treasury Chase and known as the National Bank Act of 1863. Mr. Kelley closed his public career as a mem- ber from" Columbus of the State Senate in 1857. His health was gradually declining, yet it was characteristic of his fidelity to his work that he went daily to the Senate and helped carry out a number of important measures. He "was especially concerned with financial legislation, and at every opportunity sought to improve the condition of the state treasury and secure the safety of the public funds. He also recognized the heavy burdens borne by the people and was active in remodeling the tax laws so as to relieve land owners from excessive taxation.

He shoiild also be remembered as a construc- tive factor in the upbuilding of Ohio's sys- tem of railways. He was president of the Columbus and Xenia Railroad, and in 1845 he was elected president of the Cleveland, Co- lumbus & Cincinnati Railroad, most of which was constructed under his direction. The

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

13

Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati was one of the first two railroads built out of tbe City of Cleveland. It is now part of the Big Four system. A great celebration occurred in Cleveland on Februai-y 21, 1851, attended by Governor Wood and many other promi- nent officials. This was the occasion of the running of the first train on the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati. It is said that when Alfred Kelley was elected president of the road he assumed tremendous responsibility in the task of raising money for its completion. By his influence the city voted $200,000. Mr. Kelley then called a mass meeting in Empire Hall, had the doors locked, and it was an- nounced that no one should be allowed to leave until enough money had been raised to make a start on construction work. Subscrip- tions came so rapidly that in a short time the doors were opened. In 1850 Mr. Kelley was elected president of the Cleveland, Painsville & Ashtabula Railroad, now a part of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern of the New York Central lines. This road began operating east from Cleveland in 1851. Mr. Kelley finally resigned his executive ofSces with these railroad companies, but remained a director until his death.

Alfred Kelley died at Columbus December 2, 1859, a few weeks past the age of seventy. He had given nearly half a centuiy of his life to Ohio and its interests. He was a stren- uous worker, accomplished big things, and practically wore himself out by faithful at- tention to his duties as a financier and pub- lie official.

Hon. Virgil P. Kline. One of the most distinctive personalities and for years an emi- nent lawyer of Ohio was the late Virgil P. Kline, whose sudden death at his home in Cleveland January 18, 1917, brought a long and eventful career to a close.

Mr. Kline had been a resident of Cleveland nearly half a century, for many years was personal attorney of John D. Rockefeller, and for thirtv veai-s was attorney for the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. The last professional work he did was obtaining an injunction against the collection of taxes on Rockefeller's personal property in East Cleveland. He was noted as being as powerful and resourceful in intellect as he was vigorous and determined in contesting the interests of his clients before court or jury. He was a master of many in- volved and complicated branches of learning aside from the law itself, and had made a

close study of financial and economic ques- tions. He served the Standard Oil Company in all its legal fights in Ohio.

No lawyer in Ohio was a more ready or powerful advocate, or more industrious as a student of his cases. To a remarkable degree he commanded the confidence of the court and enjoyed many warm friendships among the judges and members of the bar. He possessed an extraordinary talent for etfective work and was a genius for quick and comprehensive perception and safe judgment. Wherever he went he was recognized as a man of forceful ability, of decided opinions and distinctive personality. In physique lie resembled Na- poleon and that resemblance was freciuently noted since he possessed the same ciualities as- a fighter as did the Little Corporal. In his personal relations he was regarded . as most approachable and kindly, and many younger members of the Cleveland bar have reason to be grateful for his assistance and advice. Speaking of Mr. Kline's individual traits,, one who was a very close friend says : "I have known many men, but he less than any man of my acquaintance manifested the least jealousy of rivals. He was so big, strong and courageous he did not need to see or fear them."

Virgil P. Kline was born at Congi-ess in Wayne County, Ohio, November 3, 18-14, and was in his seventy -third year when he died. His parents were Anthony and Eliza Jane (Montgomei-y) Kline. When he was a boy his parents removed to Conneaut in Ashtabula County, and he grew up and received his early "education in the public schools there. At Conneaut in 1860, when not yet sixteen years of age, young Kline and a boy com- panion 0. il. ilall, also an Ohioan by birth and who afterwards attained distinction as a congressman from Minnesota, started a little ne^-spaper, publishing it as partners under the firm name Kline & Hall, editors and pro- prietors. It was a year full of national des- tiny, when Lincoln and Douglas were the rival candidates of their respective parties in the North. The boys published the paper until the opening of the presidential campaign. Young Kline was an ardent Douglas democrat and Hall was equally zealous in behalf of the republican partv. Differing in politics, the boys determined to break up partnership. Kline told Hall he would pay him two dollars and a half if the latter would publish the re- maining two issues of the little paper which they had been issuing monthly. Hall accepte(J

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CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

the offer and the next two issues were highly colored with his views on politics and with his fervid republican principles. The paper was called "The Young American," and was de- voted to literature, uews, fun, poetry, etc. While it did not have a large circulation, it was an enterprise of considerable distinction considering the youth of the editors, and was read in many family circles. The i^aper con- tained four pages, and was a nine by eleven inch sheet. Not long afterward Hall moved to Minnesota and became a democrat himself, and he and Mr. Kline were always the best of friends.

During the early '60s Mr. Kline pursued preparatory studies in the Eclectic Institute at Hiram, Ohio, and in 1866 was graduated from Williams College. His first important responsibility in life was as a teacher, and for two years he was superintendent of schools at Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. He then came to Cleveland and took up the study of law in the office of Albert T. Slade. Admitted to the bar of Ohio September 15, 1869, he began practice in association with Mr. Slade under the finn name of Slade & Kline, and that partnership continued until the death of the senior partner in 1876. Subsequently Mr. Kline was associa- ted with John M. Henderson, and when S. H. Tolles joined the firm it took the name of Hen- derson, Kline & Tolles. Mr. Henderson with- drew in 1895, and a year later W. F. Carr and F. H. Goff were admitted, making the firm title, Kline, Carr, Tolles & Goff. This was succeeded by Kline, Tolles & Morley. At the time of his death Mr. Kline was senior member of the firm of Kline, Clevenger, Buss & HoUiday. Their offices were in the East Ohio Gas Building.

Mr. Kline was a lifelong democrat. He had a reputation as an orator that was not con- fined entirely to the court room. He always took a lively interest in public questions and affairs, and his addresses on various topics were accorded the closest of attention as ex- pressions of the unusual personality of the or- ator and also because they were full of in- formation and meaning. In 1891 he was men- tioned as the democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, and on several occasions was the candidate for his party for the Com- mon Pleas, Circuit and Supreme Benches. Mr. Kline was a member of the LTnion and University Clubs and the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity; was a member of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce and belonged to the Castalia Fishing Club of Castalia, Ohio, and

the University Club of New York. Much of his wide information he gained by reading in his private library, which is said to have been one of the finest in Cleveland. Though a man of wealth, he led the simple life and his tastes ran chiefly to books, bronzes and orien- tal rugs. He was one of the founders of the Cleveland Bar Association, and at its first meeting in March, 1873, was elected corre- sponding secretary. Subsequently he served as president of the Ohio Bar Association. He did much to elevate the courts of Ohio to their present high standards.

Mr. Kline was survived by his widow, one son and two daughters. Mrs. Kline was form- erly Miss Effie Ober. The son, Virgil P. Kline, Jr., is a resident of Parkersburg, West Vir- ginia. The daughters are Mrs. Charles S. Brooks of New York City and ilrs. Carlyle Pope of Cleveland, wife of Dr. Carlyle Pope.

The Warner & Swaset Company. No in- stitution in Cleveland has more of the dis- tinguishing assets and characteristics of age, strength, integrity and tested and proved re- liability of status than the Warner & Swasey Company. Employment with that company has always been regarded as a badge of effi- ciency and of honor. The two men whose names are borne in the company title are sub- jects of sketches elsewhere, and the following paragraphs represent an effort to give briefly and concisely some idea of the scope and the history of this business.

The partnership of Warner and Swasey was established at Cleveland in 1881. The firm were designers and manufacturers of machine tools and special machinery. That was a rather general field and the company did not long remain without important departures in specializations therefrom. The accomplish- ments of Warner & Swasey in mechanical and engineering lines early brought them commis- sions for the construction of great telescopes and other scientific instruments for astronom- ical observatories. That has ever since been one of the distinguishing features of the com- pany's equipment and facilities and output.

While the design and construction of astronomical instruments has made the War- ner & Swasey Company renowned in the sci- entific world, the manufacture of machine tools has brought equal reputation in the world of manufacturing, until today machine tools manufactured by this concern are in use in the leading factories of practically every manufacturing country in the universe.

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

15

Among the most noted telescopes designed and constructed by this company are included the great 36-ineh Lick Telescope, of the Lick Observatory, University of California. This telescope was completed in 1887 and for years was the largest refractor in the world. In 1893 the 40-inch Yerkes Telescope at Yerkes Observatory, University of Chicago, was com- pleted, and this telescope still remains the largest refractor yet constructed. Other large telescopes include the 26-inch telescope of the United States Naval Observatory at Washing- ton, and many others.

The VTarner & Swasey Company recently completed a 72-ineh reflecting telescope for the Dominion of Canada, containing the largest reflector yet completed. It is also manufactur- ing a 60-inch reflecting telescope recently de- signed and now under construction for the Argentine Republic.

The products of the Warner & Swasey Com- pany have been awarded high honors at every exposition where they have been exhibited, beginning with the Paris Exposition of 1889. Grand prizes for separate exhibits of machine tools and astronomical instruments — outrank- ing the gold medal — were awarded at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

In 1900 the Warner & Swasey Company was incorporated. With a world reputation as manufacturers of machine tools and optical instruments of precision, the facilities of their great plants have been tested to full capacity in recent years in the production of optical instruments for the army and navy. In addi- tion to the works and main office in Cleveland the Warner & Swasey Company has branch of- fices in New York. Boston. Buffalo, Detroit and Chicago and sales agencies in the principal foreign countries.

Worcester Reed Warxer, senior member of the old partnership and the present cor- poration of the Warner & Swasey Company, bears, together with his honored partner, one of the most honored names in American in- dustry.

He was born at Cummington, Hampshire County. l\Iassachusetts. May 16. 1846, a son of Franklin J. and Vesta Wales (Reed) War- ner. His Americanship is a matter of two centuries of family residence. The first Amer- ican of the name was Andrew Warner, who settled at Cambridge, ^Massachusetts, about 1632, and moved to Hadley in 16.50. The suc- cessive heads of generations with their wives

are as follows: Andrew Warner married Esther Selden; Daniel, who niarried Jlartha Boltwood; Daniel, who married Mary Hub- bard; Joseph, who married Mary Whipple; Joseph, who married Olive Holbrook; Frank- lin J., who married Vesta Wales Reed; and Worcester Reed Warner, who married at Cleveland June 26, 1890, Cornelia F. Blake- more of Philadelphia. Mr. and Mrs. Warner have one daughter, Helen Blakemore Warner.

ilr. Warner was born on a farm, was edu- cated in the district schools of Cummington and left home at the age of nineteen to serve as an apprentice machinist. He learned his trade at. Boston, Massachusetts, and Exeter, New Hampshire, where he worked as a me- chanical draftsman, and in 1869 went to the shops of the Pratt & Whitney Company as foreman. He was with that companv at Hart- ford. Connecticut, from 1870 to 1880. and while in Exeter. New Hampshire, met Ambrose Swasey. beginning an acquaintance and com- radeship which they recently celebrated as forty-eight years of partnership. While at Hartford Mr. Warner pursued studies in astronomy and other scientific branches and experimented in telescope building as a recrea- tion. He and his partner, Mr. Swasey, made their first independent venture together in Chi- cago with a capital of $10,000, but soon dis- covered that it was impossible to secure trained workers that far west, and therefore in 1881 they began their partnership as machine tool makers at Cleveland.

Mr. Warner, like his partner, has enjoyed many individual distinctions both in Cleve- land and elsewhere. In 1897 the Western Uni- versity of Pennsylvania conferred upon him the degree Doctor of Mechanical Science. He served as manager from 1890 to 1893 and as president in 1896-97 of the American Society of I\Iechanical Engineers, is past president of the Civil Engineers' Club of Cleveland, is a past president of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Association for the Advancement of Science, member of the British Astronomical Society. Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, trustee of West- ern Reserve University and of the Case School of Applied Science. "He is a director of the Guardians Savings and Trust Company, and the Cleveland Society for Savings, member of the Union Club. Country Club, University Club, Sleepy Hollow Country Club of New York and is "a republican in polities. :Mr. War- ner's home is at Tarry town-on-Hudson, and

16

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

he also maintains offices both in Cleveland and in New York. .

Ambrose Swaset. So much that is strong, lasting and good, so many movements and or- ganizations have proceeded directly from the heart and brain and executive power of Am- brose Swasey in Cleveland that an adequate sketch of his life and influence would cover many pages and it is manifestly impossible to convey even an approximate outline of his achievements in the few brief paragraphs and sentences to which this article is limited.

j\Ir. Swasey is of New England birth and ancestry, was born at E.xeter, New Hampshire, December 19, 1846, a son of Nathaniel and Abigail Chesley (Peavey) Swasey. His early education was accjuired in the public schools of his native to^ATi. There he learned the ma- chinists' trade and while there made the ac- quaintance of "W. R. Warner, thus beginning a partnership which has now endured for forty-eight years, thirty-seven years as an actual firm of Warner & Swasey and since 1900 as the Warner & Swasey Company in Cleveland.

Reference has already been made to the his- tory and product of the Warner & Swasey Company of Cleveland. Mr. Swasey 's indi- vidual talents have contributed much to the success of this Cleveland industrial institu- tion. He invented the Swasey Range and Position Finder, adopted by the United States Government. He has contributed to various engineering sub.jects, and particularly to the article published under the title "A New Process for Generating and Cutting the Teeth of Spur Wheels and Some Refinements of Me- chanical Science."

IMany honors have been bestowed upon Mr. Swasey. In 1900 he was decorated by the French government as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for his achievements in the design and construction of astronomical in- struments. In 1905 Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland, Ohio, conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering, and in 1910 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from Denison University, Granville, Ohio. He was one of the original forty-eight men to organize the American So- ciety of Mechanical Engineers, serving as vice president in 1900-1902, and as president in 1904. In 1916 he was made an honorary mem- ber of the society. He is past president and honorary member of the Cleveland Engineer- ing Society. His connection with foreign en-

gineering and scientific societies includes mem- bership in the Institution of Mechanical En- gineers of Great Britain, the British Astron- omical Society, and he is a Fellow of the Roj'al Astronomical Society.

In 1914 Mr. Swasey made the initial gift to- wards the establishment of the Engineering Foundation. So far as is known, this is the first instance of a foundation devoted to en- gineering purposes, an establishment of a means of promoting the good of mankind through the work of the engineer along the broadest lines. In 1917 the income of the foundation was devoted to the work of the Na- tional Research Council.

]\Ir. Swasej' served as a member of the jury of awards of the Nashvile, Pan-American and St. Louis expositions, and as vice president of the jury of awards of the Jamestown Exposi- tion.

Mr. Swasey has held many positions of trust in the business world, and is deeply interested in civic afi'airs. In 1905 he served as president of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce. He has traveled extensively at home and abroad, having been twice around the world, and in 1917 for the third time visited China, where for many years he has given special attention to the promotion of education.

He was married at Hampton, New Hamp- shire, October 24, 1871, to Lavinia D., daugh- ter of David and Sarah Ann (Dearborn) ^larston. She died in January, 1913.

Alex.vxder McIntosh had an active and honorable part in the life and affairs of Cleve- land for forty-five years. His name is one that can be recalled without apolog;\' and deserves to stand in the list of those who maintained progress and stability here during the middle period of the last century.

His birth occurred in Scotland, March 10, 1808, and he died at his home on Superior Sti-eet, where he had lived continuously for twenty-seven years, November S, 1883, when past seventy-five years of age. He was reared and educated in his native land and immedi- ately after his marriage in 1833 came to America and in 1842 removed to Cleveland. His first home in this city was an old frame house that still stands on St. Clair street near Perry street.

Alexander Mcintosh was an expert nur- seryman and conducted a business which sup- plied fruit and ornamental trees throughout Cleveland and a large section of Northern

f^^M^ln-'&^^^ C^Jc(y~i^-^

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

17

Ohio. He was very capable as a gardener and also as a landscape artist and made that his business nntil 1873, when he retired.

Ostentation was no part of his character, but in a quiet effective way, characteristic of the true Scotchman, he did much that ma.y be estimated as of public value. Politically he was a democrat of the old school. Different positions of official responsibility and honor were thrust upon him and he might have held many other offices had he so desired. In 1849 he was elected from the old second ward to the city council. At that time Flavel V. Bing- ham was mayor, William Case was president of the council, and among his colleagues were such well known old timers as D. W. Cross, Arthur Hughes, Azariah Everett and Abner C. Brownell. At that time Cleveland had a bicameral system of government, with a board of aldermen as well as a council. The city had only three wards. During the second year of Mr. Mcintosh's service in the council Wil- liam Case was mayor and Alexander Seymour president of the council, and other aldermen and councilmen were John Gill, L. M. Hovey, William Given, George Whitelaw, Buckley Stedman, William Bingham, Samuel AVilliam- son, Arthur Hughes, Abner C. Brownell and Levi Johnson. Alexander Mcintosh served in the council for three years. Later he was elected street commissioner and for four years was a member of the board of improvements under Mayors Buhrer and Payne. He was for forty years an active member of the Masonic Order, and his fellow ilasons had charge of the burial services.

In the words of a newspajjer editorial at the time of his death Mr. ilclntosh "was a man of great force of character, firm in his judg- ment, but not hasty to form an opinion nor seeking to obtrude his views upon others. His integrity was beyond question and he was possessed of these traits of character which command esteem and inspire respect. Truly a good man has been taken from among us."

In May, 1833, in Scotland, he married Miss Agnes Nicol. She was born in Fedden, Scot- land, and died at the old home at 1090 Su- perior Street in Cleveland September 18, 1892, when nearly eighty-three. Hers was a life of usefulness, of sound health and great vitality and was lived peacefully and happily until its close. As a bride she accompanied her hus- band to America and they lived at Astoria, New York, for five years, removing in 1838 to Twinsburg, Ohio, and to Cleveland in 1842. She is remembered for her charitable deeds as

well as for the ability with which she reared a family of capable sons and daughters. For many years she was an active worker in the Dorcas Society and at one time filled the office of vice president. Eight children were born to their marriage. In order of age they are mentioned as follows: Eliza Maria, who died in infancy: ]Mrs. J. S. Cleland, who died in Alliance, Ohio, in 1870; Mrs. F. H. Baldwin, deceased; Mrs. R. W. Teeters, who died in 1916 ; John L. Mcintosh, who at one time served as city clerk of Cleveland and died in 1877: Alexander Mcintosh, Jr., a New York City merchant ; Henry P. ^Iclntosh, president of The Guardian Savings & Trust Company, one of Cleveland's largest banking houses; and George T. Mclnto.sh, secretary of The National One-Cent Letter Postage Association.

Henry Payne McIntosh. The presidency of such an institution as The Guardian Sav- ings & Trust Company of Cleveland carries with it some of the finest dignities and honors of American financial life.

Henry Payne ^Mcintosh, its president, has attainecl this eminence through a long service. It is a fulfillment of many years of careful and conscientious performance of those duties that lay nearest him at consecutive periods since boyhood. His has not been a spectacular rise to fortune. There is romance attaching to the careers of all successful business men, but with few exceptions it is romance of prosaic, unremitting and undramatic industry and fidelity.

;Mr. Mcintosh, a son of the late Alexander and Agnes (Nicol) ilclntosh, whose plain and substantial careers have been noted elsewhere, was born at Cleveland October 27, 1846. He acquired his education in the Cleveland public schools. He became a telegrapher when that science was in its infancy and from 1860 to 1868 was in the employ of the Cleveland & Erie Railway Company in its telegraphic department. ' When he resigned from the rail- way company he was its chief operator. In ]\Iarch, 1868, "Mr. Mcintosh moved to Alliance, Ohio, in which eitv he lived for about twelve years He became bookkeeper for E. Teeters ■& Sons bankers, and was also secretary of the Alliance & Lake Erie Railway Company. Mr. Mcintosh returned to Cleveland m November, 1876 to take charge of the business uiterests of Hon Henrv B. Payne, and retanied the mana<^ement of the extensive Payne properties in this city until he resigned to become presi- dent of The Guardian Savings & Trust Com-

18

CLE^'ELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

pany in 1898, when its i-esources were about $1,500,000. At present, July, 1917, its re- sources are about $53,000,000.

This banking institution was only four years old when he took charge. It was established and opened for business on December 10, 189-4, its first quarters being in the Wade Building at 108 Superior Street. Mr. Mcintosh became president of the institution while it was still in that building, and subsequently it was moved to a more commodious structure which it erected at 322 Euclid Avenue. Since Mr. Mcintosh became president The Guardian Savings & Trust Company has become one of the largest financial and fiduciary institutions of Ohio. In 1916 it completed a home appro- priate to the strength and resources of the bank. This is known as The Guardian Build- ing, a lofty banking and office structure occu- pying the former site of the New England Building and acknowledged to be one of the finest banking homes in the United States. In this building The Guardian Savings & Trust Company has had its home since December 11, 1916, the removal having been made ju.st twen- ty-two years after the openiug of the bank for business in the Wade Building. It has com- plete facilities and resources for every depart- ment of general banking and as a trust com- pany. Its officers and directors comprise al- most a directory of the foremost business men and capitalists of Cleveland.

Mr. Mcintosh's position as a financier is directly the result of an ever widening knowl- edge of business conditions gained during half a century of contact with commercial affairs in the Middle West. Besides his office as presi- dent and director of this company he is presi- dent and director of the Cleveland & Eastern Traction Company and the Cleveland & Chag- rin Falls Railway Company, director of the Chicago, Lake Shore & South Bend Railway Company, the Cleveland Metal Products Com- pany, the Cleveland Railway Company, chair- man of the board of directors and director of The Cleveland National Bank ; director of The Hydraulic Pressed Steel Company, The Inter- lake Steamship Company, The Standard Parts Company ; vice president, treasurer and direc- tor of The Standard Tool Company ; president and director of The Trumbull & Mahoning Water Company. He is a member of the American Bankers Association, and during 1909-1910 he served as president of the trust company section of that association.

Mr. Mclnto.sh is one of the leading ]\Iasons of Ohio. He is affiliated with Iris Lodge No.

229, Free and Accepted Masons, Cleveland Chapter No. 148, Royal Arch JMasons, Holy- rood Commandery No. 32, Knights Templar, of which he is a past eminent commander, and is also past right eminent grand commander of the Knights Templar of Ohio, is a member of Elidah Lodge of Perfection, Bahurim Coun- cil, P. J., Ariel Chapter, Rose Croix, H. R. D. M., Lake Erie Consistory, S. P. R. S., Supreme Council Sovereign Grand Inspectors General and has attained the thirty-third and supreme degree of Scottish Rite Masonry with the Northern ]\Iasonic Jurisdiction of the United States. He is also a member of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, the Country, ilasonic, Rowfant, Union and Bankers' clubs and the Old Time Telegraphers' Association.

The family residence is at 7311 Euclid Ave- nue. January 19, 1871, while a bank employee in Alliance, Mr. Mcintosh married j\Iiss Olive Manfull, daughter of C. C. and Hannah J. (Shourds) Manfull. :Mrs. Mcintosh died March 14, 1915. ilr. and Mrs. ]\IcIntosh were active members of the Calvary Presbyterian Church, in which he has long been an official, while Mrs. Mcintosh found constant oppor- tunity to exercise her charitable deeds throi;gh the church and also through other local organ- , izations, particularly the Dorcas Invalids' Home and the Home for Aged Women. In politics Mr. ]\IcIntosh is a democrat, though a voter for the best candidate regardless of party and never an aspirant for public honors. He and his wife were the parents of six chil- dren : Ralph, deceased ; Fanny, who married John Sherwin, president of The First National Bank of Cleveland ; Alexandrine, who married j{ Robert D. Beatty, secretary and general man- ager of The Cleveland & Eastern Traction Company; Olive ]\Iarie, wife of Edwin H. Brown, vice president of The General Alumi- num & Brass Jlanufacturing Company; Henry Payne, Jr., now one of the vice presi- dents of The Guardian Savings & Trust Com- pany ; and John IManfidl.

Henry Payne McIntosh, Jr., vice presi- dent of The Guardian Savings & Trust Com- pany, is one of Cleveland's young men of col- lege training and prominent social affiliations who have made a notable success in business affairs. Mr. Mcintosh is a son of Henry Payne and Olive (Manfull) ilclntosh, of whom reference is made on other pages of this work.

IMr. Mcintosh, Jr., was born at Cleveland November 23, 1884. He was educated in the

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

19

University School of Cleveland and completed his training in the Wharton School of Eco- nomies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of Sigma Chapter of the Zeta Psi of Philadelphia.

During several vacations and while still in college Mr. Mcintosh was employed as a mes- senger in The Guardian Savings & Trust Company. From college he went directly into the bank, in the real estate department, and for several years served as assistant real estate officer. In April, 1916, he was made assistant secretary of tlie bank and in Juh- of the same year was promoted to vice president.

Besides his active official relations with this bank Mr. Mcintosh is vice president and di- rector of The Hydraulic Pressed Steel Com- pan}% secretary and director of The General Aluminum & Brass Manufacturing Company, treasurer and director of The Cleveland Brass & Copper ilills Incorporated ; and is also a director in the following well known institu- tions: The Cleveland National Bank, The Standard Parts Company, The Standard Tool Company, The Cleveland & Eastern Railway Company, and The Cleveland & Chagrin Falls Railway Company.

For three years Mr. ]McIntosh was a member of Troop A of the Ohio National Guard. He is a member of the Union Club, the Hermit Club, the Country Club, the Cleveland Cham- ber of Commerce, the Cleveland Bankers Club and Cleveland Automobile Club.

February 19, 1908, he married Miss Isabel Strong, daughter of Harry B. and Jennie (Gregory) Strong of Cleveland. Her father is a member of the firm C. H. Strong & Son, general contractors. Mr. and Sirs, ilclntosh have two children, both born in Cleveland, Henry P. jMcIntosh III, and Gregory Strong Mcintosh.

Charles Francis Brush. Cleveland will always take a special pride in the fact that the first successful application of the electric fluid to the illumination of streets, and the first successful application of electric power to the propulsion of street cars was performed in this city. This pride is heightened by the fact that the inventor and scientist responsible for both these acliievements was born in the environs of Cleveland and has made this city his home all his life.

The earlv home of the Brush family was in Euclid Township of Cuyahoga County. There Charles Francis Brush was born Slarch 17, 1849. His parents were Col. Isaac Elbert and

Delia Wisner (Phillips) Brush. Mr. Brush is thoroughly an American. His first American ancestor in the paternal line, Thomas Brush, came from England in 1652 and settled near Huntington, Long Island. In the maternal line his lineage goes back to Rev. George Phillips, an Episcopal clergj-man who came with Governor Winthrop and settled near Boston in the ilassachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Col. Isaac E. Bnish was a manufac- turer of woolen goods in Orange County, New Yoi-k, but after he came to Ohio in 1846 fol- lowed farming near Cleveland.

Charles F. Bi-ush was educated in the pub- lic schools of Cleveland. While in high school he invented a device for automatically turn- ing off the Cleveland street lights. His apti- tude for scientific studies was pronounced from early youth. While a student in the University of Michigan, from which he was graduated in 1869, he pursued special courses in scientific and technical lines, and was grad- uated with the degree of mining engineer. Because of his subsequent distinguished seiw- ices Mr. Brush has been the recipient of many honorary- degrees. His alma mater conferred upon him the degree master of science in 1899 and doctor of science in 1912. He was given the honorary degree doctor of philosophy by Western Reserve University in 1880 and LL.D. in 1900. and has the honoraiy degree doctor of laws from Kenyon College.

After his university degi-ee Mr. Brush lo- cated at Cleveland and for three j^ears was an analytical chemist and consulting expert and from 1873 to 1877 was engaged in the iron ore and pig iron industry. He took up the study of electricity from a practical stand- point in 1873. He soon invented a dynamo and from 1877 he devoted his time entirely to the development of electric lighting. The in- candescent electric light had already been given to the world, but its practical utility was confined to the illumination of buildings. Mr. Brush sought to improve upon the prin- ciple of electric lighting so as to adapt it for street illumination. In 1878 he perfected and gave to the world the Bnish electric arc light.

The first public demonstration of this new light was given on April 29, 1879, when twelve arc lights, invented and made by Mr. Brush, flashed their dazzling illumination over the public square in Cleveland. It was a wonder- ful triumph for :\Ir. Brush, and the arc light's use was rapidly extended, at first in the down- town District of Cleveland, and then to New York and soon all over the world. By 1881

20

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

the light was introduced into England and on the European continent. The essential prin- ciple of the Brush arc light is still retained through all the numerous minor modifications and improvements. In ISSO The Brush Elec- tric Company was formed and a large plant established for the manufacture of the arc lights and of Mr. Brush's other electrical in- ventions.

The first electric motor street car was put in operation at Cleveland Jul.v 26, ISSi. The car itself was only one of the ordinary horse cars of that period, with a box bolted under- neath containing a dynamo, the invention of Mr. Brush, and a motor from which the power was communicated to the wheels by pulleys. The Brush system of electric propulsion also grew rapidly in favor, though his lasting fame will rest most securely upon his invention of the electric arc light.

Recognition of his achievements was not long delayed. In 1881 the French Govern- ment, in recognition of his discoveries in elec- tricity, decorated him as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. In 1899 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded him the Rumf ord medal for ' ' the practical develop- ment of electric arc lighting." He was awarded the Edison medal in 1913 bj- the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

Mr. Brush largely withdrew from the active management of the technical side of his busi- ness in 1891, but has ever since maintained a laboratory at his home and in it he has spent many of his happiest hours. For many years Mr. Brush has been president of The Cleve- land Arcade Company and was organizer and first president of The Linde Air Products Company.

He has contributed numerous papers to scientific societies and publications embodying the results of his investigations, and he has membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and of the British Association (life member) of the Royal Society of Arts, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the National Electric Light Association, the Archaeological Institute of America, the American Historical Associa- tion, the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, the American Chemical Society, the American Philosopliical Society, and the American Phy- sical Society.

Mr. Brush is a trustee of the Western Re- serve University, the Adelbert College, the University School, Cleveland School of Art,

and the Lake View Cemetery. He was one of the incorporators of the Case School of Applied Science, is a warden of Trinity Cathedral, and a member of the Sinking Fund Commission of Cleveland. He is also a life member and former president of the Cleve- land Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Ohio State Board of Conrmerce, of the Na- tional Board of Trade and of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. His mem- bership in clubs include the Union Club, of which he was president two terms, the Uni- versity, Country, and Mayfield clubs of Cleve- land ; is a member and president of the Winous Point Shooting Club and a member of the University Club of New York City and the Royal Societies Club of England.

Mr. Brush married in 1875 Miss ilary E. Morris, of Cleveland. Their three children are : Edna, Mrs. R. G. Perkins ; Helene ; and Charles Francis Brush, Jr., who graduated from Harvard in 1915.

WiLUAM S. LouGEE, One of the best known architects of Cleveland, has practiced his pro- fession in this city for over a quarter of a century. Of the architectural profession more than any other, perhaps it is possible to say, "By their works shall they be known." The work of Mr. Lougee at Cleveland can be esti- mated by a large number of practical in- stances, both in public and private archi- tecture.

During 1901-05 Mr. Lougee was assistant architect of the Board of Education. On April 4, 1905, he was appointed deputy inspector of buildings and on March 4, l907, was made chief building inspector. This ofiSce he re- signed at the close of the Johnson administra- tion on January 1, 1910. Thus he gave nearly ten years of his professional service to the school board and the municipality. Most im- portant of the work which he did in this time was the supervision of the erection and com- pletion of the New City Hall.

A more adequate estimate of his professional practice and ideals would be based upon the following partial list of buildings for which he has drawn plans and supervised construc- tion. Of public or semi-public buildings there are Cuyahoga County Criminal Court and Jail Buildings, the I\Iarshall Buildings on the Pub- lic Square, West Twentj^-fifth and Lorain, West Twenty -fifth and Denison; Cleveland and Buffalo and Detroit and Cleveland Boat Tei*- minals; The William Edwards Company Warehouse, Factory and OfiSce Building; Wil-

\Ji.d*u.

r

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

21

liam Edwards Canning Factory; Morgan Lithogi-aph Studio; Royal Motor Car Build- ing ; Temple Motor Car Building ; the Weide- man Company Warehouse and factory addi- tion ; Cadillac Service Station ; Loyal Order of Moose Building; St. John's Hospital; Woodland Avenue Bath House; Cuyahoga County Detention Home; Colonial Woolen Mills Factory; Clarke-Kessler Chemical Fac- tory; Towell Building; Vlehek Tool Company Factory; Cleveland Bronze and Brass Fac- tory ; D. C. Hurchcroft Factory ; Osboru-Crew Factory; Albert Strauss Warehouse; Tacoma Garage; Engine House; Luna Park Dancing Pavilion and Luna Park Skating Pavilion; Park Theater at Youngstown ; Summit-Cherry Market House at Toledo; St. Philomena's Parish House ; and Russell Hall Apartments.

William Samuel Lougee was born at Buck- field, Maine, January 29, 1867, son of Samuel C. and Catherine Lougee. He received his early education at Boston, in the common schools and one year in high school, and in 1884 began the study of architecture in the office of Tristram Griffin at 172 Washington Street in Boston. He remained a student and apprentice with Mr. Griffin six years, and in 1890 came to Cleveland and was associated with the well known architect John Eisen- mann until 1900. Following that he became connected with the Board of Education and the city government and since resigning his position as chief building inspector has prac- ticed architecture privately at 500 Marshall Building.

In his office hangs a large fine picture of the late Tom L. Johnson, showing that Mr. Lougee is one of the many followers and ad- mirers of that notable figure in Cleveland politics. He is a democrat, a member of the Athletic Club, the Gentleman's Driving Club, the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, the Loyal Order of Moose, Cleveland City Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons, and Cleveland Chapter, Royal Arch Masons.

0. P. AND M. J. Van Sweringen are a fii'm of Cleveland business men with offices occupy- ing the twelfth floor of the ilarshall Building on the Public Square. Their stationer^' bears this simple combination of names, which con- tains little hint of the extraordinary activities and energies which emanate from the com- bination. It is significant, however, that the press and the general public seldom refer to the firm by their exact title but merely as '"the Van Sweringens" or the "Van Swerin-

gen niterest. " Thus these two young brothers, among the keenest and most resourceful busi- ness men and real estate operators in the Jhddle West, have attained to that dignity where they are referred to somewhat as an institution or a big corporation, which in fact they are.

These young men began their operations in the local real estate field in 1907. They pos- sessed not only the aggressive energy and ability associated with the able.st men of their class, but more important they had visions and ideals and the power to translate those visions into practical achievement.

It is probably unnecessary to speak here at length of that marvelous transformation and improvement which Clevelanders generally re- fer to a-s Shaker Heights Village and its immediate connection with the heart of the Cleveland business district. The site chosen for their big work wa.s a tract of wooded and rugged acreage just outside the city limits of Cleveland. It took its name from being occu- pied by a colony of Shakers from 1826 to 1889. Its topography was such that it had never been in the direct line of suburban de- velopment. The Van Sweringens had a vision that it might be made to become in time the fashionable residence district of the sixth city in the United States. Young men, with only a moderate amount of capital between them, and with no influential financial connections, tliey took their plans to men of money. Men of money are proverbially conservative and practical. They insisted that Shaker Heights was too far from the city and that the land was practically inaccessible by street car or automobile road. The Van Sweringens brouglit against this argument their indi- vidual faith and enthusiasm and an astonish- ing number of practical arguments. Capital was won over and in time they had platted more than 4,000 acres as a high grade resi- dence allotment. They built two street car lines into the city, gave Cleveland some him- dreds of acres for public parks, built miles of winding boulevards and started the con- struction work on what ha.s since grown into homes worth millions of dollars. Within four years Shaker Heights Village had begun to a-s- sume the concrete expression of the dreams and visions of the Van Sweringen Brothers.

The site of this village possessed every ideal of situation and topogi-aphy for the desired purpose. The primary obstacle to its develop- ment was its comparative inaccessibility to the business center of the city. In overcoming

22

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

tliis obstacle the Van SweringeDS have over- turued all precedence and have achieved their real distinction among real estate operators. The success of the enterprise depended upon real rapid transit connection. The primary route which the.y desired to utilize was the Nickel Plate Railroad. Unable to get satis- factory terms for the use of this right of way, the Van Sweringens and other associates bought outright the entire railroad. This is probably the only instance in which a group of real estate developers have acquired an en- tire railroad to serve their purpose. They gradually acquired right of waj' throughout the distance from Shaker Heights Village to the Public Square of Cleveland, and at the present writing the Van Sweringens are erect- ing a large interurban passenger station, freight terminal and hotel on one of the cost- liest downtown sites in Cleveland.

Their hotel, to be known as the Hotel Cleve- land, is now in process of construction on the site of the old Forest City House at Public Square and Superior Avenue. The ground and building together will cost $5,000,000 and the hotel will contain 1,000 gi^est rooms and when completed will be one of the most splen- did additions to the architecture surroundmg the public square.

The Van Sweringens may be credited with- out exaggeration with having done wonders for Cleveland and at the same time accom- plished a great deal for themselves. It is their idea that what helps Cleveland will help them, and first and last they stand for a bigger and better city. As one examines tlie plans as well as the construction work which has already been completed, he is impressed with the re- markable ingenuity and the foresight ex- hibited in every detail. In laying out the boulevard and car lines the Van Sweringeiis looked ahead to the time when traffic would be so dense that overhead crossings would be necessary. Already one overhead crossing in the big allotment has been completed and the boulevards and thoroughfares have been so ar- ranged that when overhead crossings are a necessity they can be constructed with the least possible expense and inconvenience. The various streets are laid out in curves and in such way that they cross the car tracks in groups, making the fewest possible number of car stops. These are situated at intervals of about a third of a mile, and it is obvious that this means a great quickening of service over an arrangement which would compel a ear to stop at every ordinary city block.

From the very beginning Shaker Heights

Village has been a high grade, carefully re- stricted residence district, and those restric- tions have been so carefully worked out in all the deeds of title that the high character of the subdivision is safeguarded in perpetuity. At the present time a splendid new grammar school and high school are being built in the village, but before the local school facilities were provided the Van Sweringens used auto- mobiles to take the children of the local resi- dents to the nearest schoolhouses and fur- nished this transportation free of charge.

Concerning the obvious material facts of the development of Shaker Heights Village and the means by which it has been brought, through rapid transit and automobile road building, within easy reach of the Public Square, the people of Cleveland are generally informed. Something should now be said in a brief paragraph or two of the Van Sweringen brothers.

0. P. Van Sweringen, the older, is thirty- eight years old, and his brother M. J. is thirty- six years old. Both were born near "Wooster, Ohio. They are sons of the late ^Iv. and Mrs. James Van Sweringen. Their father was a Civil war veteran and was wounded at the battle of Gettysburg. There were three boys and two girls in the family. The only one now married is H. C. Van Sweringen, the oldest of the brothers, who has offices with his younger brothers in the ilarshall Building, but is an independent operator in the real estate field. From Wooster the family moved to Geneva, Ohio, and when 0. P. Van Swer- ingen was about six years of age the family came to Cleveland. Their father was not a man of wealth and they grew up in a home of simple comforts and high ideals, and were educated in the local public schools. Both of them are Cleveland products, and the city takes a great deal of pride in these young men, who, utilizing the resources of their minds and characters rather than inherited capital or influence, have developed a business which represents millions and which involves easily the most stupendous real estate develop- ment in or around the cit.y. Both of them are members of the Cleveland Chamber of Com- merce, the Union Club, Shaker Heights Coun- try Club, Willowick Club and the Hermit Club. 0. P. Sweringen at this writing is a member of the Cleveland City Planning Com- mission.

Hon. David Courtney Westenhaver. After John H. Clarke was called from Cleveland to a place on the United States Supreme Bench

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

23

iu the summer of 1915, there existed a vaeaucy in the Uuitecl States district jiadgeship for Northern Ohio for seven or eight months. Finally, acting upon the direct recommenda- tion of Attorney General Gregory, President Wilson in February, 1917, sent the appoint- ment of David C. Westenhaver to the Senate for confirmation.

In purely political circles Judge Westen- haver was scarcely known at all until his ap- pointment for the office of district judge. He has been a Cleveland lawyer since 1903, and he grew up and began the practice of law many years ago iu that section of West Vir- ginia, where the former Cleveland mayor, Baker, now Secretary of War, was also get- ting his first distinctions. A very close friend- ship has existed between Secretary Baker and Judge Westenhaver for many years. Judge Westenhaver in Cleveland has given his time almost solely to the practice of law, and gained an enviable place in his profession.

He was born in Berkeley County, West Vir- ginia, January 13, 1865, of Dutch lineage and a son of David Westenhaver, who spent his active life as a farmer. The mother was Har- riet (Turner) Westenhaver, of an old Vir- ginia family of English origin. She died July 26, 1886.

Fifth in a family of eight children, seven of whom are still living, Judge Westenhaver attended the public and private schools of his native county, and took his higher educa- tion in Georgetown College at Georgetown, District Columbia. Before completing his classical course he entered the law department and was graduated with the class of 1885 and the degree LL. B. He was admitted to the bar at Martinsburg, West Virginia, in the same year and at the age of twenty-one was appointed prosecuting attorney to fill out an unexpired term. He was a candidate for the next term but his ticket met defeat. He also served as a member of the city council of 'M&r- tinsburg. He soon became known as a hard working, able and skillful lawyer and had a large practice in West Virginia, part of the time being associated with W. H. H. Flick under the firm name Flick & Westenhaver. To Mr. Flick Judge Westenhaver credits a large amount of his practical technical train- ing as a lawyer. '

On coming to Cleveland in the fall of 1903, Jiidge Westenhaver became connected with the law firm of Garfield, Howe & Westenhaver. The older members of this firm were Harry A. and James R. Garfield and Frederick C. Howe, all of whom were men of national prom-

inence. The Garfields at that time retired from the partnership and in 1906 .Mr. Howe also withdrew. Since then Mr. Westenhaver has practiced as head of the firm of Westen- haver, Boyd & Brooks. His associates are William H. Boyd and James C. Brooks. West- enhaver, Boyd & Brooks stood easily among the strongest law firms of Cleveland and Northern Ohio, and handled a large and im- portant general practice of law.

The ease of Judge Westenhaver is conspic- uous among those who have depended entirely upon devotion to a chosen profession for their advancement in the world. He has seldom allowed outside interests to interfere with his practice, and his friends and associates have not known of any special recreation or hobby. While in West Virginia he was chosen presi- dent of the State Bar Association, and had the distinction of being the youngest presiding officer that organization ever had. He is a member of the Ohio State and Cleveland Bar associations.

In early life he was what might be termed a philosophic democrat, but for many years has been a political independent. He is the kind of democrat who spells his affiliation witli a small "d." He has rather avoided purely partisan politics and the only office he held in Cleveland was as a member of the School Board and for two years was its president. While his law practice has brought him broad and varied knowledge of men and affairs, he has found much of the inspiration for his life iu books, and his thorough knowledge and acquaintance with literature covers a broad range, but with emphasis upon sociologv* and economics. For many years he has been a member of the American Economical Associa- tion and the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and was president of the Cleveland Coiuicil of Sociology in 1906-07. He is a member of the Nisi Prius Club, the noted legal club of Cleveland and a very exclusive organization. He belongs to the Cleveland Athletic Club and University Club of Cleve- land, and the Columbus Club of Columbus, Ohio. Judge Westenhaver has been an oc- casional contributor to legal and economical publications. Whatever he has written is characterized by a clarity and conciseness, and that quality will prove invaluable in his service as a federal .judge.

Judge Westenhaver was married at Martins- burg, West Virginia, in June, 1888, to Miss :\rary C. Paull, daughter of Henry W. Paull of that place. They have one son, Edward P., who is a graduate of Princeton LTniversity and

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CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

is now an active member of the bar associated with his father's firm.

A writer in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, after his appointment to the Federal Bench, told some of the facts of his early career, in which he had to struggle with poverty and adverse conditions during his youth in order to secure an education, and he paid his way for his university training by teaching district school, by farm work and by loans from his friends.

Of some of his interests tlie Plain Dealer said: "Above his desk is a bronze head of Lincoln. He has read practically everything ever printed about the martyred president. There is another picture, showing Tom L. Johnson at work, with intimate glimpses into his life. Their friendship developed when "Westenhaver was counsel for the Forest Cit.y Railwav and Municipal Traction Company from 1905 to 1913.

' ' Law is first and la.st with him but he has a few other hobbies, chief among them books, real books of history, economics, philosophy and biography. He is a heaw-framed, quiet man. The new judge's face is determined, but there are long smile wrinkles beside the mouth."

Owing to the rush of business at the close of Congress in 1917 President Wilson's ap- pointment of Judge Westenhaver was deferred for confirmation until the extra session of the Senate after March 4th. The appointment was confirmed on March 14th.

Charles E. Adams. If Cleveland should strive to seek from among its citizens one in- dividual who best approximated the ideal combination of constructive biisiness energy with disinterested public service there would be none to question a choice that fell upon Charles E. Adams. As president of the Cleve- land Hardware Company for more than a quarter of a century he has built up one of the city's largest manufacturing institutions. His public spirit has been as conspicuous as his private business record. Probably not a single important movement has been under- taken during the last twenty-five or thirty yeai"s with which his name has not been iden- tified. These services have risen to their su- preme exertion in recent months when the en- tire nation ha,s been subject to the strain of war times. No community in the country with respect to proportionate share based upon population has done more to swell the war funds and resources needed in the different

lines of service than Cleveland. Sir. Adams has furnished a boundless amount of enthusi- asm, energy and wise judgment in all the va- rious campaigns. He was head of the local organization which in the closing weeks of 1917 raised' nearly $400,000 more than the quota assigned to Cleveland for the Y. il. C. A. fund. This had hardly been completed when he was called upon to direct much of the policy and the plans for the Red Cross membership drive. These are only very recent instances, and going back only a few years examples might be multiplied by the score of Mr. Adams' contributions individually and through organized movements in behalf of some undertaking for the benefit of Cleveland as a community and for the upbuilding of the prestige of this city as one of the great and progressive centers of America.

Mr. Adams was born in Cleveland June 8, 1859, a son of Edgar and Mary Jane Adams. He grew up in the city, obtained a public scliool education, and early took up a business career. From 1884 to 1891 he was connected with the Chandler & Rudd Company of Cleve- land. Since June, 1891, he has been president of the Cleveland Hardware Company, con- cerning whose importance as an industrial as- set little need be said. The company main- tains two plants in Cleveland, its special lines of manufacture being drop forgings. In this respect it is the largest institution of its kind in America.

Mr. Adams is also a director of the Cleve- land Trust Compan.v, the First National Bank, the Cleveland Life Insurance Comj^any, and has many other financial and business inter- ests. In 1910-11 he was president of the Cleve- land Chamber of Commerce. He is a mem- lier of the LTnion Club, the Engineering Club, the Mayfield Country Club, belongs to the Presbyterian Church and is a republican in politics. On June 11, 1884, he married Miss Jennie M. Bowlej' of Cleveland.

Hon. Theodore E. Burton. Whatever may have been true in the earlier life of the Ameri- can republic, it is now quite generally recog- nized that being elected to Congress is a some- what uncertain and temporary distinction. The names and deeds of congressmen are writ- ten in the sand, and the nation has no long memory of them. Only the few and the ex- ceptional, and those endowed with something of the primeval qualities of leadership and power, become really national figures and forces. It is doubtful if even a well informed

ftu^oL^ ^/^AA/t^

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

25

stndent and obsei'ver of ijublie affairs could readily name more tlian a dozen congressmen and senators since the beginning of tliis cen- tury wliose names still have significance and vitality and stand out clearly in the national consciousness.

That approximation of political fame has been as nearly attained by Theodore E. Bur- ton of Cleveland as by any of his contempo- raries. There was an elemental ruggedne.ss, a definiteness of conviction, and a certain loftiness of purpose in Mr. Burton's career in the House of Representatives and the Sen- ate during the twenty-two years he was a member of those bodies which men do not forget and which they do not choose to for- get. In Ohio, of course, and in Cleveland, his home city in particular, hundreds of associa- tions have been built up around his name. But considering him as a national figure, his work as an expert in finance and as a deter- mined enemy of unscientific appropriations for internal improvements, has gained him hundreds of friends and admirers who per- haps do not know and have never known from what state he comes or anything about his private life except his service in Congress.

Theodore E. IBurton is a native of Ohio. In January, 1917, he was elected president of the Merchants National Bank of the City of New York. The duties of that position take him much to the national metropolis, but now as for more than forty years past his home is in Cleveland and that is his legal place of residence.

He was born at Jefferson, Ohio, December 20, 1851. Jefferson was the old home of Joshua R. Giddings and Senator Ben "Wade, while other men of national stature and fame came from the same section. It was a com- munity well calculated to inspire high ideals in a boy. But Theodore Burton did not need to look outside his own family for such in- spiration. He was of New England stock. His father. Rev. William Burton, was a high- minded minister of the Presbyterian Church and held many pastorates in Soiithern and Eastern Ohio. In Southern Ohio, Rev. Mr. Burton was intimately a.ssociated with Rev. Thomas "Woodrnw and Rev. Joseph R. "Wil- son, grandfather and father, respectively, of "Woodrow "Wilson. Senator Burton's mother was Elizabeth Grant, a distant cousin of the father of Gen. Ulysses Grant.

Senator Burton's people were in moderate circumstances. They could give him just enough advantages away from home to in-

spire his zeal and ambition to acquire more. As a boy he attended Grand River Institute at Austinburg, Ohio. "When he was still only a boy he moved to Grinnell, Iowa, lived on a farm, and from the farm entered Grinnell College. Returning to Ohio, he graduated from Oberlin College in 1872, and owing to his special proficiency in the classics he re- mained as a tutor at Oberlin. "While there he acquired a considerable knowledge of the Hebrew languages and afterwards he familiarized himself with the French lan- guage. It is said that Senator Burton even to this day can quote entire pages from some of the Latin authors.

He studied law at Chicago with Lyman Trumbull, a contemporary and friend of Lin- coln and for eighteen years United States senator from Illinois. It might be mentioned incidentally that "William Jennings Brj-an was subsequently a student of law in the same office.

Mr. Burton was admitted to the bar at Mount Gilead, Ohio, July 1, 1875, and at once began practice at Cleveland with his cash capi- tal of $150, which he had borrowed.

Mr. Burton's first public ser\-ice was as a member of the city council of Cleveland. An associate in the council was Myron T. Her- rick, later governor of Ohio and ambassador to France. It was characteristic of Mr. Bur- ton that he did not accept the duties of city eoimcilor lightly. In fact, he gained consid- erable distinction by his diligent study of municipal problems and a thorough mastery of the questions of city finance.

It was some years later, and after he had acquired a secure position in the Cleveland bar that Mr. Burton was first elected to Con- gress. He was elected in 1888, and was asso- ciated with "William McKinley in framing the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890. In the latter year he was defeated for re-election. He then resumed practice but in 1894 again became a candidate for Congress and defeated the late Tom L. Johnson. From 1895 until March 4, 1909, a period of fourteen yeare, Theodore E. Burton was continuously a member of the House of Representatives. Frequently no candidate was nominated in opposition to him. During much of this sei-vice he was a mem- ber and for ten years the ehainnan of the committee on rivers and harbors. He ap- pointed all the resources of a trained legal mind to the study of the vast and intricate problems that came before this committee for solution. From that study and work was

26

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evolved his reputation as the leading author- ity in the United States on waterways and river and harbor development. President Roosevelt appointed him first cliainnan of the Inland Waterways Commission and sub- sequently he was chairman of the National Waterwa.ys Commission. These commissions under the direction of Mr. Burton published a series of reports which have become the standard library of waterway problems.

Another subject to which Mr. Burton gave special attention while in the House was mone- tary and banking legislation. He was promi- nent in framing the Aldrich-Vreeland Emer- gency Currency Act, and was a member of the Monetai-y Commission and author of much of its exhaustive report on the subject of finan- cial legislation and conditions throughout the world. His was one of the strongest influ- ences, both in the House and later in the Senate, in shaping and strengthening the Federal Reserve Law.

It would be impossible to describe in de- tail all his work while in the House of Repre- sentatives. But at least another point should be mentioned. One of the chief questions before the country at that time was tlie con- struction of a canal linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It will be recalled that a powerful contingent, headed by the late Sena- tor Morgan, favored the construction along the Nicaragua route, ilr. Burton had made an exhaustive study of both routes, and his presentation of data on the subject proved such a forceful argument for the Panama route that the House supported his conten- tion by a large majority. In a single speech he afterwards changed the opinion of the House from favoring a sea level canal to one of lock type.

On March 4, 1909, Mr. Burton took his seat in the United States Senate. He was elected a member of that body after a spec- tacular contest with ex-Senator Joseph Poraker and Charles P. Taft. The reputation for sound wisdom he had made in the House preceded him into the Senate, and he at once became a leader in the debates and delibera- tions of the body. One measure championed by him in Congress, if none other, would make him a proper object of gi'atitude on the part of the American people. This was the Burton Law, the enactment of which prevents the spoliation of the beauty of Niagara Falls by private corporations. His support to other matters of the conservation of natural resources was always consistently and force-

fidly given. He fought against the ship pur- chase i^rogi-am of the democratic administra- tion, and was especially powerful dui'ing the consideration of the tariff bills submitted while he was a member of the Senate.

But more than all else he gained the appro- bation of right thinking citizens by his work in connection with waterways ancl other in- ternal improvements. He took a firm stand for the application of business standards to the treatment of rivers and harbors and fought, both in committee and on the floor of the Senate, against the waste of public money by lavish appropriations for streams which by nature or experience were found unfitted for practical use. Those who have followed the work of recent congresses •noil recall how by a single-handed filibuster Senator Burton defeated the River and Harbor Bill of 1914. By that act he was credited with .saving the Government the sum of more than $30,000,000. It required a speech seventeen hours long, during which he exposed the indefensible items contained in the measure. A prophecy made by him in the course of that speech, while not yet fulfilled, is as applicable to- day as it was then, and contains a political wisdom the country is slowly realizing. He said: "We must test government projects by the same economic males as a successful business concern would apply to its enterprise and investments. Unless the whole system is overhauled, it wiU soon be impossible to pass any kind of a river and hai-bor bill. A commission should be created, preferably com- posed of the Secretaries of War, of the In- terior and of Commence, with or without other members from civil and militai-y life, to study the whole question and recommend a proper policy for inland waterway and har- bor projects. The time is perhaps not far distant when the making of these appropria- tions will cease to be a legislative function and will depend on the recommendations of a commission, possibly appointed by the presi- dent."

Senator Burton declined to become a can- j didate for re-election and retired from the Senate J\larch 4. 1915. Since then he has been prominent in public life only in his capacity as a private citizen. In 1916 the Ohio repub- licans gave him their enthusiastic endorse- ment as a candidate for the republican nomi- nation for President.

Mr. Burton has been for many years, whether in public life or as a lawyer, a student of business and monetary affairs. These

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

27

studies have found espi'essiou iu several books, including "The Life of John Shennan." "Fi- nancial Crises and Depressions," and "Cor- porations and the State."

"William A. Otis. It would not be possible within the limits of a brief sketch to indicate with proper discrimination the part played and the place occupied by the late William A. Otis in the life and affairs of Cleveland. His was one of the big constructive minds, or rather the forcefulness which is an emana- tion of both mind and body which organized, planned, and brought to fruition many of those energies and movements which have been most important not alone in Cleveland, but in the history of Ohio and even of the na- tion. It is the very highest praise to say that a man belongs among "the makers of a na- tion," but in view of what "William A. Otis accomplished, whether individually or as lead- er of a group of associates, it is not an exag- gerated distinction to place him in such a group.

While his life belongs so much to the broad- er issues of Ohio history, his residence in Cleveland for a third of a century is justi- fication for a somewhat detailed account of his career and experiences.

He had within him the best blood of New England. His first American ancestor was John Otis, who was born in Devonshire, Eng- land, in 1581, and arrived at Ingham, Mas- sachusetts in 1635. One of his descendants was James Otis, who as an orator and patriot was a remarkable figure in the period of the Revolutionary war. President John Adams said of him : "I know of no man whose serv- ices were so important and essential to the cause of his country and whose love for it was more ardent and sincere than that of Mr. Otis." Another eminent contemporary said: "Mr. Otis was looked upon as the safeguard and ornament of our cause. The splendor of his intellect threw into shade all the great con- temporary lights ; the cause of American inde- pendence was identified at home and abroad with his name."

This orator and statesman was one of the direct ancestors of William A. Otis. The lat- ter was born in Massachusetts, February 2, 1794. About 1818 he started westward, travel- ing on foot to Pittsburgh. Here he found a humble task of employment with an iron estab- lishment and this employment was an experi- ence which no doubt bore fruit many years later in Cleveland. He was rapidly promoted,

but at the end of two years the company failed and he lost all his savings. With resolute spirit he started again on another western quest, walking all the distance to Bloomfield in Trumbull County, Ohio. Here he cleared a tract of land, and established a primitive mer- cantile business, furnishing the settlers goods in exchange for ashes, wheat and other produce. He also conducted a tavern for the entertainment of the traveling public. Ashes at that time were used in the manufacture of black salts or impure potash, and this was the only strictly cash article in the country. The casks of potash were hauled to the river and sent by flat boats to New Orleans and thence to New York. iMr. Otis, it is said, did much of his own teaming, transporting the goods by wagon to Pittsburgh and returning with mer- chandise for his store at Bloomfield.

The first important revelation of his large mindedness in a business way came about the time the Erie Canal was completed in 1825. The people of Northeastern Ohio were then raising an abundance of grain, which they gladly sold for 25 cents a bushel. It was j\Ir. Otis who determined to make a new outlet and market for Ohio fiour at New York. He is ci-edited with having shipped the fii-st lot of Western Reserve fiour to that market. As there had previously been no demand for flour barrels, there were no coopers at Bloomfleld, and Mr. Otis sent men into the woods to manu- facture at first hand the staves for his rough but serviceable barrels. The fiour was ground in a mill a few miles north of Bloomfield, was packed in the barrels, and hauled to Ashtabula Creek, where it was loaded on a schooner and taken to Buffalo and by way of canal to New York. The quality of the flour was regarded by New York merchants as in no way inferior to that of the Genesee country, which was then thought to produce the finest flour manufac- tured. The eastern merchants at once recog- nized the significance of trade with this new country on the shores of Lake Erie and offered every encouragement for the manufacture and shipment of flour and other commodities that might be produced in that section. Thus Mr. Otis was one of the primary factors in utiliz- ing the Lake Erie waterway for establishing reciprocal relations between the great market centers of the east and the productive regions of the west. He later took up the shipment of wool and nork. and for nearly twentvyears was one of the leading shippers from his sec- tion of the Western Reserve.

He came to recognize the immense advan-

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CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

tages and possibilities of Cleveland as a coming city, and in 1836 he removed his home to the lake port and thenceforward continued his mercantile operations with this city as his headquarters. He was one of the leading deal- ers in pork, flour and potash, and also became actively connected with the iron trade. It was his extensive business interests that caused him to give studious attention to the great problems of that day, as at present, transportation. The waterways were open to the eastern markets, but tremendous obstacles had to be overcome in getting the goods dowa to the docks. First of all he sought good highways, and his was an influence in opening one of the earliest tiirn- pikes of Northeastern Ohio through Bloomfield from Warren to Ashtabula. By the coopera- tion of steamers upon Lake Erie and the Ohio Canal the goods of the inland district were thus made more available. He also favored, protected and cooperated many of these inter- ests and also was an early advocate of railway building. His name is associated with the early history of the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincin- nati, the Cleveland & Pittsburgh, and the Belle- fontaine & Indianapolis railroads. He not only had a commanding position among the powerful business interests of the country, but also moved easily and exerted his tactful in- fluence among the farmers and other indi- vidual producers, whose support was hardly less vital to the welfare and success of early railroads. For many years he served as a director of the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincin- nati and the Cleveland & Pittsburgh.

"William A. Otis was one of the pioneer iron- masters of Cleveland, and it was largely under his influence that Cleveland became one of the most important iron centers of the country.

When the law was enacted which authorized the State Bank of Ohio, he was among the first to perceive its advantages, and in company with others organized under its provisions the Conuiiercial Branch Bank of Cleveland. He M'as its first president and save for a short interval continued at the head of the institu- tion throughout the twenty years of its exist- ence. On the expiration of its charter in 1865 the Commercial National Bank was organized and he was elected its president, an office lie held until the day of his death. He was other- wise closely identified with financial interests in Cleveland, and was one of the corporators and for a number of years president of the Society for Savings. He was a member of the banking firm of Wick, Otis & Brownell.

Finally at the age of seventy-two, wearied with the cares and responsibilities of life, full

of years and honor, he was called upon to lay down the implements of toil and enter into his rest. His death occurred at Cleveland, ]May 11, 1868. Throughout the whole period of his life he had sustained an irreproachable char- acter and had exemplified the most eminent public and social virtues. While so conspic- uous in commercial and economic affairs, one of his chief interests for many years was the promotion of religion and the general public welfare. He was distinguished not alone for his energy, but by a remarkable simplicity of character, and was readily accorded the high- est esteem and confidence of all who knew him or were influenced directly or indirectly by his masterly handling of affairs. For a quarter of a century his name was associated with all of Cleveland's important commercial, financial and religious interests. A Cleveland paper at the time of his death said: "Scrupulously careful in the administration of the public trusts committed to him, shrewd and prudent as well as highly honorable in the management of his private business, his industrj^ and enter- prise have been amply rewarded while his many excellent qualities of head and heart, his kindly and courteous demeanor toward all with whom he associated, has secured for him the iiniversal esteem of the community. ' ' He was thoroughly a Christian and soon after coming to Cleveland united with the First Presbyterian Church, then under the pastoral charge of Reverend Doctor Aiken. He was soon chosen one of its elders and held that office until the Second Presbyterian Church was organized by a colony from the first chiirch in 1841. Of this church he was one of the corporators and was chosen an elder at its first election. This office he continued to hold until his death.

It should also be recalled that he was one of the founders of the original Cleveland Board of Trade, and was one of the commissioners from that body which undertook the negotia- tions for the merging of Ohio City and Cleve- land as one city. The result was largely pro- moted throiigh his quiet influence and diplo- macy. He was a man of great charity and gave liberally of his means to religious bodies and related philanthropies.

_ On December 22, 1825, William A. Otis mar- ried Eliza Proctor, of Manchester, Massachu- setts. To their marriage were born two sons and a daughter : Charles A. Otis, whose career is sketched on other pages; Eliza P., who be- came the wife of Hon. T. D. Crocker of Cleve- land: and William H., who became a well known resident of Indianapolis, Indiana,

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CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

29

Charles A. Otis, Sr. While it was to the industrial and financial history of Cleveland that the late Charles A. Otis made his chief contribution, he is remembered not only as a man exceptionally forceful in the handling of large business responsibilities, but also for his genial personal character and the public spirit which made him a guiding power in the city's advancement and progress.

He was the strong central link in the family chain which has been one of the gi'eatest sources of power to Cleveland during the last fourscore years. He inherited much from his father, William A. Otis, and his sturdy New England ancestors, and while the task of open- ing up markets and laying industrial founda- tions had largelj' been completed when he came upon the stage of activity, there is much of creative and pioneer work which can be credited to his individual achievements.

In the old home of his father at Bloomfield, Ohio, Charles A. Otis, Sr., was bom January 30, 1827. A long life was vouchsafed to him, and it was in the fullness of years and the maturity of achievement that he died at the home of his son, Charles, Jr., at Cleveland, on June 28, 1905. His early instruction came chiefly from country schools, limited in cvirri- culum and facilities. While he would have been among the last to assert a claim to scholar- ship, he was in spite of early disadvantages a man of thorough learning, and of exceeding breadth of knowledge gained from long and intimate contact with men, affairs, and broad- ened by travel and keen and vitalizing intel- lect. When he was nine years of age his parents removed to Cleveland and his early experiences were as a worker in his father's store and the bank. At the age of twenty-one he became purser on one of the old Winslow boats. As stated elsewhere his father was the pioneer ironmaster of Cleveland, and it was in the iron and steel industry Charles A. Otis be- came a dominant figure in Cleveland industrial affairs.

In 1853 he organized the firm of Ford & Otis, and set up the first forge in Cleveland, beginning the manufacture of axles and bar iron. This factory was an innovation in Cleve- land and was the first of its kind west of Syra- cuse, New York. After the Civil war Mr. Otis spent some time abroad, and at Berlin learned a new process of making steel, and on return- ing to America arranged to make use of the process on the royalty basis. About that time he established the Otis Iron & Steel Company, later the Otis Steel Company, and built the

largest open hearth steel plant in the country. His associates in that euteiprise were E. B. Thomas, Thomas Jopling, J. K. Bole and S. T. Wellman. Mr. Otis was the first president of the company and held that office \mtil 1899, when the property was sold to an English syndicate, but he remained chairman of the board of directors for several years longer.

In 1894 ilr. Otis became president of the Commercial National Bank. This bank was the direct outgrowth of the old bank chartered as a branch of the State Bank of Ohio, and of which his honored father had for many years been the active executive head. Charles Otis was president of the Commercial National for ten years, until in 1904 it and the Mercantile National Bank were consolidated as the present National Commercial Bank, at which time Mr. Otis retired. His business interests made him a prominent figure in many sections of the country. He was one of the founders of the American Wire Company, which later became the American Steel and Wire Company, and was connected with The Standard Sewing Ma- chine Company, The American Steel Screw Company, The Cleveland Electric Railway Company, and The Society for Savings. At one time he was associated with Doctor Everett in the old East Cleveland lines.

The greater part of the last fifteen years of his life he spent in New York, and enjoyed a peculiar place of esteem and dignity among the financiers and business men of the metrop- olis. He was a member of the Ohio Society of New York. He also spent much time in travel, and knew all the places of interest both in his home land and in Europe. As a business man he retained many of the chai-ac- teristics of the old-time industrial leader and the loyalty that was given was the direct and personal tribute of the worker to natural born leadership. A signal proof of his power and influence is that there was never a strike in the histoiy of his iron and steel works.

Wliile he always exemplified the spirit of service, he made his life count for most through the industries which he promoted and maintained and which were in the nature of a semi-public institution. Only once did he fill important public office. In 1872 while he was arranging to build the largest open-hearth steel plant in the country he was elected to the officeof mayor of Cleveland. He filled-a very successful term, but at its end declined to ac- cept renomination since his business interests made it imperative that he devote all his time to them. It is said that he was nominated for

30

CLEVELAND AND ITS Em^RONS

the office during his absence and without his knowledge, and was thus practically drafted into public service.

Concerning his business character perhaps the most succinct statement is found in the editorial columns of one of Cleveland's papers after his death. ' ' In the death of Charles A. Otis the city loses one of the builders of Cleve- land. He was a pioneer in the creative indus- trial enterprises which made this city as it is today a possibility. He ran risks and reached the rewards of the path breaker, whose ven- tures into new fields are followed by less daring and able men. In the making of iron and steel, in banking, in varied manufacturing interests, Charles A. Otis was one of the most active forces in the growth of Cleveland. He pro- moted progress in all directions. The whole world of industry, finance and trade felt the stimulating effects of his many sided enter- prises. He was an inspiration and example for a goodly number of younger men who came within the scope of his personal influence. His great popularity bore witness that in this strong man's career success did not blunt humanity. He was loved and trusted by his employees as well as by his business associates. His judgment was as sound as his impulses were kindly. Enterprises which he founded went forward to great success. He was a stranger to defeat. The loss of such a citizen is a blow to Cleveland, which would be more felt if Charles A. Otis had not retired from active business and put his affairs in order some time before his death. Age and leisure had withdrawn him from tlie broad field of the city's productive interests before his long and useful life came to its end. A maker of Cleve- land is missed from the scene of his labors and triumphs. ' '

]\Ir. Otis was twice married. His first wife was iliss Mary Shepard, who died leaving two daughters: Mrs. Judge William B. Sanders and Mrs. Dr. J. Kent Sanders. For his second wife he married Miss Ann Eliza Shepard, sis- ter of his first wife. By this marriage there were three sons : WiUiam A., Charles A. and Harrison G.

Biography inevitably concerns itself largely with the material facts and incidents of life and often leaves the question of personality and of character — that which is above and in- cludes all material achievements — unanswered. For this reason there is special value in the remarks made by Rev. Paul F. Sutphen at the funeral of Mr. Otis. In these remarks he sought to interpret him as the man rather than

as the business leader. He said in part: ' ' Probably those who were most intimate with Mr. Otis as they look back over the years in which they have kno\\Ti him, will think of two stiiking characteristics of his life. One of these undoubtedly was the large and generous sjTnpathy for those who needed the services he could render and especially to those in the humbler walks of life. It has been said of him that of the large ni;mber of men with whom he was in a sense in contact in the years of active work, of the large number of men in the em- ploy of the great industries with which he was associated, he knew almost each man by name. The sympathy of a generous heart toward those in need was one of the characteristics of our friend. There are two ways of displaying or of executing the general impulses of life. One toward the great institutions representing public philanthropy ; the other the individual thought for the individual need. It is not easy to discriminate between these two or to speak of one as being of greater advantage than the other, yet doubtless it is a fact that he who feels the cry of another human soul and responds to its necessity, has reflected back in his own soul the sense of gratification and joy which is not attainable where the largest part of one 's generosity is bestowed upon the public institutions. It is doubtless true that outside of the innermost circle of his associates and perhaps not even there, is it known how large and how constant were the kindly benefits be- stowed upon those to whom they were needful most.. Undoubtedly a characteristic of our friend that will never be f orgotton in the inner- most circle was the personal affectionate devo- tion to those who were near and dear to him. It is not always that as one creeps up in years to the number of those attained by Mr. Otis that a little child still finds congeniality there and the touch of sympathy. It was always found where this friend of ours came in con- tact with a little child.

' ' Seventy years I believe it is since I\Ir. Otis first came to this city ; then hardlj' more than a village. Now it is a great city and it has been by the activity and achievement of such men as he that this is so. I will mention the fact that it was Mr. Otis' father who was one of the founders of the Second Presbyterian church, which for these sixty-six years past has been one of the great religious forces in this community, and during all these years that have gone by there has never been a mo- ment when some inember of this family has not been identified with its interests and a part

CLE\'ELAXD AND ITS ENVIRONS

31

of its life. It is a gi-eat thiug to leave behind one the inheritance of stable worth. Men live in their children and in their children's chil- dren. No man liveth to himself — no man dieth to himself. He who fancies that his life con- cerns none but himself is vastly deceived. We could look back today and think of one un- known doubtless to many of us here — to most of us here — but one who is known by name at least to very many within these walls — the father of our departed friend — and the power and the godliness of that life transmitted by many channels into the life of this city is still living though he long since has passed away. ' '

CH.iRLES A. Otis, Cleveland capitalist, banker, civic worker, club man, sportsman and stock breeder, was born in Cleveland, July 9, 1868. His father was Charles A. Otis, founder of the Otis Iron & Steel Company, and his grandfather was William A. Otis, pioneer in commerce and banking of the Western Reserve, both of whom are mentioned more at length elsewhere.

Mr. Otis was educated in the public schools and at Brooks Military Academy in Cleveland, at Andover Preparatoiy School and at Yale Univei-sity, being graduated from Sheffield School of the last-named institution in 1890 with a scientific degree.

His school days ended, he went to Colorado to live the cow puncher life. With D. D. Case- ment, of Painesville, Ohio, he rode the Una- weep range, the two doing much of their own cattle handling and ranch work. From this experience I\Ir. Otis brought back a keen inter- est in horsemanship and cattle breeding which never has waned.

Back in Cleveland in 1895, he took a hand in the iron and steel industry, as his father and grandfather had done, joining Addison H. Hough & Company under the new title of Otis, Hough & Company and engaging in the commission and agency business. For some years they represented Jones & Laughlin of Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania Tube Company, Painter & Sons and other finishing mills.

The consolidation of the steel companies and establishment of their own agencies imposed upon Mr. Otis the important work of placing the securities of several big steel corporations and resulted in the transfer of his attention from dealing in iron and steel to dealing in investments. To facilitate the new work he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1900 (the first such seat owned in Cleve- land) and the firm was reorganized as Otis &

Hough, bankers and brokers. This firm was largely instrumental in the formation of the Cleveland Stock Exchange, of which both Mr. Otis and Mr. Hough have served as president.

In 1912 the firm was again reorganized as Otis & Company, Mr. Hough retiring and Mr. Otis associating with himself Messrs. William A. Otis, M. C. Harvey, George W. York, Cyrus S. Eaton, Richard Inglis, Edward Bower, F. L. Griffith and RajTiiond Sargeant, several of whom had been connected with the house for some years.

Otis & Company retain extensive offices in the Cuyahoga Building, fronting Cleveland's noted public square, have direct wire connec- tion with all important cities in the United States and Canada and deal largely in munic- ipal bonds and other staple securities, enjoy- ing wide repute for conservative and con- structive policies.

Though the principal business of Otis & Company is investment banking, the stock de- partment now maintains branch offices in Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado ; in Casper, Wyoming; and in Columbus, Akron and Youngstown, Ohio. An uptown branch is also operated in the Statler Hotel, Cleveland.

The expansion of his central commercial in- terest has never absorbed Mr. Otis' attention to the exclusion of other pursuits. He was the founder of The Cleveland News, forming it in 1905 by consolidating the News and Herald and the Evening Plain Dealer with the Cleveland World, already under his owner- .ship. Until 1912, when he disposed of it to Dan R. Hanna, Mr. Otis was publisher of The News and through it exerted a palpable in- fluence on the interesting municipal develop- ments of the period.

Though frequently urged to become a candi- date, Mr. Otis has never sought political preferment or held an elective public office. The presidency of the chamber of commerce, called the highest non-political honor in Cleve- land's gift, has twice been his. Long active in the work of the organization, he was elected vice president in 1916, succeeded to the presi- dency on the resignation of the incumbent and was re-elected president in 1917, occupying the post during the busy months of America 's en- trance into the World war.

His efforts in behalf of American arms have been put forth in other capacities as well. Mayor Harry L. Davis appointed him to the municipal war commission early in the con- flict. He bore a conspicuous part in the famous Red Cross fund campaign, in which Cleveland

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CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

achieved special distiuction. He is known for long and efficient support of various civic and philanthropic enterprises, particularly the Babies' Dispensary and Hospital, an institu- tion nationally famed for the efficacy of its work. In 1917 he was appointed an original member of Cleveland's subway commission, receiving the compliment of the five-year tenn.

He was active in the establishment of the Cleveland Athletic Club and served as its president. He was prominent for years in amateur harness racing, long a fashionable sport in Cleveland under the auspices of the Gentlemen's Driving Club. There is scarcely a social club of standing or a civic organiza- tion of repute in the city that has not benefited through his membership.

The Otis summer home is at Tannenbaum Farm, near Willoughby, Ohio, a large estate including several once-separate farms and the scene of Mr. Otis' activities as a stock breeder. His interest as a breeder has long centered in the development of milking shorthorn cattle, a hobby that has won for the Otis Herd no little fame of the sort breeders value. The enterprise, however, is more than a hobby. Long before beef conservation and farm de- velopment became national problems, made the more pressing by war's necessities, ilr. Otis observed the obsolescence of the great cattle ranges of the West and gave serious thought to the result, seemingly of menace to a nation's food.

"To produce a cow that will give large buckets full of milk with heaps of butter in it and then raise a steer that will bring big money at the butcher's," was the problem he set himself. In the milking shorthorn, per- fected under his supervision at Tannenbaum Farm, through years of experiment and co- operation with other breeders, he believes the ideal double-purpose breed, the perfect "farmer's cow," has been closely approxi- mated. Though few farmers could hope to own such costly specimens as the handsome animals of the Otis Herd, it is believed the development and popularizing of the breed will go far toward pro\'iding the world's future supply of milk and beef. ilr. Otis' efforts to- ward this end have been recognized by election to office in the American Shorthorn Breeders' Association and similar organizations.

Mr. Otis married Miss Lucia Ransom Ed- wards, July 11, 1895. Mrs. Otis is the daugh- ter of the late William Edwards, himself a

conspicuous figure in Cleveland history, and Lucia Ransom Edwards. Mr. and Mrs. Otis have two children, William Edwards Otis and Lucia Eliza Otis. The city home of the family is at 3-436 Euclid Avenue.

Ralph Randolph Root exemplified in every detail the character of the old-time merchant. He began in a humble role, pursued his ends with undeviating ambition and industry, was quick of perception, thorough in his execu- tion, and was always guided by a spirit of integrity that ruled his every act and brought him not only material success but the esteem and admiration of his fellow men. It is not too much to say that his work and his char- acter constitute one of the cornerstones of the Root & McBride Company of today, one of the largest and best known of Cleveland's wholesale institutions.

Ralph Randolph Root was born at Coopers- town, New York. February 10, 1823, a son of Elias and Nancy (Sabiii) Root. He was about fifteen years old when his parents came to Cleveland, and he grew up in the city when it was still struggling in competition with many other thriving inland to-\vns. The edu- cation begun in public schools was continued at Oberlin College. As a boy he learned the printer's trade, but did not follow it long as a vocation.

About sixty or seventy years ago one of Cleveland's best known mercantile establish- ments was "the old city mill .store," and it was here that the late Mr. Root acquired his first mercantile training as a clerk. Not long afterwards his abilities had counted so rap- idly in winning favor that the proprietor of the store, Mr. A. M. Perry, admitted him to a partnership in the new firm of A. M. Perry & Company. Still later this Avas succeeded by Morgan & Root, the principals being E. P. ilorgan and R. R. Root. Lee McBride Avas the next partner admitted to the firm, and the name was then changed to Morgan, Root & Company. Mr. Morgan retired in ISSl, and tlie business was continued as Root & ilcBride Brothers, Lee ilcBride's brother John H. having entered the firm as junior pai'tner. From that time forward luitil his death, five years later, Mr. Root was senior partner, and the wisdom with which he di- rected the business eft'ectively contributed to the wide and prosperous connections the firm had as retail merchants all over the Middle West.

CB^x^L-OJ-c

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

33

Mr. Root died in Cleveland in January, 1889. In 1862 he married Miss Anna Y. Tubbs. who is still living in Cleveland. She is a daughter of John M. Tubbs. ^Ir. and Mrs. Root had four children : Frederic Payu Root, vice president of the Root & McBride Company; Mary Loomis Root, wife of Frank Ely Abbott of Cleveland; Walter S., who is connected with the Root & j\IcBride Company ; and Cornelia AV., wife of Frank H. Ginn, of Cleveland.

Frederic Payn Root, vice president of the wholesale dry goods house of the Root & 'Slc- Bride Company, of which his father, Ralph R. Root, elsewhere mentioned, was one of the founders, has had a typically successful busi- ness career and it can be described very brief- ly, since it is a record of a continuous connec- tion from school days with the Root & Mc- Bride Company, with the increasing responsi- bilities that increasing experience and ability merited. , ,

The oldest of his father's children, he was born in Cleveland August 28, 1865. He was educated in private schools and is a gradu- ate of the Brooks Military Academy of Cleve- land. From school he went immediately to the wholesale dry goods establishment of his father, and during the next few years there was not a single department or line of the work which escaped his experience. His close aiid detailed knowledge of dry goods he has since used in many ways to promote the for- tunes of the Root & McBride Company, which is the largest importer and jobber of dry goods in the State of Ohio. When the busi- ness was incorporated a number of j^ears ago, Mr. Root was made vice president, and has sinee retained that post, together with the office of a director. He is also a director of the Union Commerce National Bank of Cleveland, and is a trustee of the Society for Savings.

He is also a member of the Union Club, Country Club, :\Iayfield Country Club. Road- side Club, Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, Civic League, City Club and Cleveland Au- tomobile Club.

Mr. Root married ilary Randall Crawford, who died ilarch 27, 190.5, the mother of two sons. The older is Paul Crawford Root, now assistant general superintendent of the Cleve- land-Akron Bag Company. He married Elea- nor H. Kingsbury, of Montclair, New Jersey, and they have one son, Paul Crawford Root,

Jr. The younger son, Ralph Randall, is now sei-\'ing with the rank of hrst lieutenant in the aviation section of the United States army in France. He married Anna R. Lincoln, of Cleveland, daughter of Dr. W. R. Lincoln.

Charles E. Ai.den. Few lawyers at the Cleveland bar are generally acknowledged to have a more ready and sound judgment in the broad and intricate matters pertaining to corporation, commercial and real estate juris- prudence than Charles E. Alden, senior mem- ber of the firm of Alden, Knapp & Magee. His education and experience have admirably fitted him for practice in these fields, and by the consideration of the important interests with which he has been identified it will be realized how rapid and substantial has been his professional progress.

The Alden family descends from .sturdy New England stock, the first of the family in this country having immigrated to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the year 1620. Enoch Al- den, grandfather of Charles E. Alden, came from Williamstown, Massachusetts, and was one of the earliest settlers of Middlefield, Geauga County, Ohio. Charles E. Alden was born at Middlefield, December 18, 1875, and is a son of Edward H. and Hercey M. (Dun- ham) Alden.

Edward H. Alden, who for many years was an agriculturist in Geauga County, served as both a volunteer and a drafted man during the Civil war, the greater part of his service of nearly three years being with Company B, Eighty-Seventh Regiment, and Company A, One Hundred and Seventy-seventh Regi- ment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. In 1892 he moved to Hiram, Ohio, where he died October 25, 1916, his widow now being a resident of that place. They were members of the iletho- dist Church. Of their nine children, four sons and four daughters grew to maturity, their names being: Dr. A. H., a graduate of Hiram College, and now engaged in the pi-ae- tiee of medicine at North Lima, Ohio ; Dr. E. H., who is practicing dentistry at Alliance; Charles E. ; John, who died at the age of four years ; Diantha, who died when thirty- three years of age; Emily, who resides with her mother at Hiram ; Mabel, who is the wife of Perry L. Green, of Hiram, secretary and manager of the Greendale Dairy Farm; David Russell, a graduate of Hiram College, and now a resident of Kent, Ohio ; and Her- cey May, a professional nurse of Cleveland,

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CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

who was formerly for several years night superintendent of the East Fifty-fifth Street Hospital.

Charles E. Alden obtained his early train- ing under greatest difficulties. He worked on his father's farm and attended district school at iliddlefield until the age of seventeen. He was then compelled to rely upon his own re- sources. In spite of disappointments and obstacles that would have disheartened any but a dauntless spirit, he persisted steadfastly in attaining his cherished ambition to secure a college education. His course in college and afterwards in law school were made possible only by untiring energy and devotion and by the most rigid economy and self-denial.

After leaving the fann he taught country schools for about three years in Middlefield and in Livingston County, Illinois. He then attended Hiram College, from which he was graduated with the degi-ee of Bachelor of Arts in 1901. After pursuing special studies during the fall and winter of 1901 and 1902 he entered the office of Edwin Vorhis at Ak- ron, Ohio, where he studied law for six months. Going to Cleveland in the fall of 1902, he secured employment in the office of Bardons & Oliver, and later in the office of the American Steel & "Wire Company, per- forming stenographic and clerical work dur- ing the day and attending law school at night. He spent two years in the Cleveland Law School, and then, dropping his office work, he completed his studies in the law department of Western Reserve University in the spring of 1905, at that time being admitted to the bar. He commenced the practice of law in January, 1906, in partnership with Eldon J. Hopple, who for the past two terms has been speaker of the House of Representatives at Columbus, and the firm of Alden & Hopple continued in existence until January, 1909, when W. C. MeCullough became a partner, the style of the combination then being Me- Cullough, Alden & Hopple. In 1910 Mr. Alden withdrew and formed a partnership with H. H. Knapp and C. F. Magee, and the firm of Alden, Knapp and Magee is generally accounted at this time as one of the most formidable organizations in the city. Offices are maintained in the Engineers Building, and a general practice is carried on, although the firm has perhaps obtained its strongest standing in the specialty of corporation, com- mercial and real estate law.

Mr. Alden is a democrat and a member of

the Twenty-second Ward Democratic Club, and of the Tom L. Johnson Club. He is also a member of the Christian Church, the Civic League, the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, the City Club, the local and the Ohio State Bar Associations and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

Those who know him need not be told that he is a broad-minded citizen of sterling worth, steadfastly interested in all public measures which promise to be of practical good, and those who are not acquainted with him may have the full assurance of his legion of friends to that effect. He is a close student, and is not only interested in the literature of his profession, but also in worth-while works of history and fiction.

Mr. Alden was married at Brunswick, Medina County, Ohio, in 1902, to IMiss Ina May Gibbs, a daughter of Alexander and Paulina (Green) Gibbs, the latter still living, and the former of whom died at Brunswick, December 26, 1915, aged seventy-three years. Mr. Gibbs was a Civil war veteran with a brilliant military record, and was with Gen- eral Custer as a cavalryman at the battle of Five Forks and others. During the Civil war he took part in seventeen pitched battles and was with Sheridan at the time of his historic ride to Winchester, and rose to cor- poral and to a staff officership. INIrs. Alden was born at Brunswick, where she received her early education, subsequently attending Ohio Northern College at Ada, and then go- ing to Hiram College, where she received the degree of Bachelor of Literature in the same class as that in which Mr. Alden graduated. Prior to that time she had taught school for several years, and later was a teacher in Me- dina County, Ohio, until her marriage. "Mr. and Mrs. Alden are the parents of two chil- dren, both born at Cleveland: Marcella Eugenia and John Butler.

Albert Lewis Talcott has been a Cleve- land lawyer since 1890, for many years con- nected with the Erie Railroad Company, and now has an extensive law and real estate busi- ness, with offices in The Arcade.

He was born in the beautiful Village of Jeflferson in Ashtabula County, Ohio, Feb- ruary 8, 1859. Mr. Talcott has an interest- ing lineage from old New England, involving many personages of note in the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS 1193369

35

The line of descent is traced from John Talcott and Dorothy Mort, his wife, who came over from Braiutree, Essex County, England, to Boston, on the ship Lion, in 1632, two years after the arrival of the colony of Puri- tans that settled Massachusetts Bay. The fa- ther and the paternal grandfather of John Talcott were both named John and lived in Colchester, England. In Vol. 1137, page 148, of the Harlean Manuscript, preserved in the British Museum, containing the Herald's visi- tation of Essex County in 1558, are found the arms and pedigree of the Talcott family, originally from Warwickshire, England.

Samuel Talcott, born in 1635, was the first person of that family name to be born in America. He was gi-aduated from Harvard College in 1658 and resided in "Wethersfield, Connecticut, upon land devised to him in 1659 by his father, who had moved to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1636, with other members of Rev. Mr. Hooker's company. The Hooker company had become dissatisfied with their first location at Newton (now Cambridge) near Boston and had gone to Connecticut to secure more perfect liberty of worship. In anticipation of this removal, John Talcott erected a house in 1635 which stood on the ground afterwards long occupied by the old "North Church." This was the fii*st house built in Hartford. John Talcott was one of the leading citizens of Hartford and for many years a member of the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut and also of the com- mittee appointed in 1637 to consider the pro- priety of the war with the Pequot Indians, with whom hostilities broke out during that year.

His son, Lieut.-Col. John Talcott, was one of the patentees named in the charter granted by King Charles II to the Colony of Connecti- cut in i662. He was appointed in 1676, when the war with King Philip broke out, to com- mand the "standing army" of the colony. In the various battles with the Indians in which he was engaged he was always victo- rious and gained great renown as an Indian fighter. Lieut.-Col. John Talcott was treas- urer of the colony from 1660 to 1676. His daughter, Elizabeth, married Capt. Joseph Wadsworth, one of the most familiar heroes of early colonial history. It was this Captain Wadsworth who on the night of October 31, 1687, aided by Lieut.-CoL John Talcott, seized the charter of the colony and hid it in an oak tree. Sir Edmund Andros, it will be remem- bered, was named as governor of New Eng-

land by King James II and had been directed to take possession of the charters of several colonies. After securing the charters of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, he attempted to take that of Connecticut and was only pre- vented by this forehanded action of Captain Wadsworth. This tree became known as the "Charter Oak", and the story of the event is familial* to every American school child.

Mr. A. L. TaJcott's great-grandfather, Elizur Talcott, was a Revolutionary soldier. His son. Nelson Talcott, the grandfather, came to Mesopotamia, Ohio, from Norwich, Massa- chusetts, in or about the year 1826. Elizur Talcott accompanied him. Nelson Talcott finally settled in Nelson Townsliip of Portage County, where in 1828 he established a chair factory. This factory was subsequently relo- cated in the Village of Garrettsville, where he conducted the largest business of the kind in the state for many years.

Henry Talcott, father of the Cleveland law- yer, was long a prominent business man and citizen of Jefferson in Ashtabula County. He was born in Nelson Township of Portage County December 28, 1832, and moved to Jef- ferson in Ashtabula County in 1852. There he engaged in the hardware business, and was a hardware merchant forty years. His inter- ests also extended to manufacturing, banking and farming, and during the last twenty years of his life those interests became very exten- sive. His death occurred July 12, 1894. He was a man of prominence and influence politi- cally as a republican, and as a young man had opposed the extension of slavei-y. In later years his influence was exerted for the adoption of the Interstate Commerce Act by Congress and the Pure Food Laws of Ohio. Governor Foraker appointed him assistant dairy and food commissioner of Ohio when the original pure food law was adopted.

December 23, 1855, Henry Talcott married Cordelia J. Pritchard. She was also a native of Nelson Township, Portage Coimty, and was educated in Nelson Academy and at Hi- ram College. She was a cousin of Gen. B. D. Pritchard, who until his decease a few years ago, was a prominent banker at Allegan, Mich- igan, and commanded the troop of the Fourth Michigan Cavalry which captured Jefferson Davis while he was fleeing from Richmond at the close of the Civil war. Henry and Cor- delia J. Talcott had five sons, all of whom reached manhood and were given college ad- vantages. Three of them, John C, Albert L., and William E., became lawyers. Ralph

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CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

H. graduated from the Boston Conservatory of Music and is now a teacher of music in Cleveland. The youngest son, George Nelson, has always followed a mercantile career and is also a resident of Cleveland.

Albert Lewis Talcott was graduated from the Eastman National Business College at Poughkeepsie in 1874 M'ith tli« degree Master of Accounts. In 1877 he received the degree Bachelor of Philosophy from Mount Union College, Alliance, Ohio, and then entered Yale Univereity Law School, where he completed his coui-se, ranking fourth in his class and receiving the degree LL. B. in 1880.

Admitted to the bar at Columbus in De- cember, 1880, Mr. Talcott began practice at Jefferson, Ohio, in partner.ship with his older brother, the late John C. Talcott, under the firm name of Talcott Brothers. That partner- ship continued for ten years, until A. L. Tal- cott removed to Cleveland in October, 1890. Here he entered the service of the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad Company, now the Erie Railroad Company, as assistant land, tax and claim agent. To those duties he gave his time and attention for about lSi/> years, finally resigning in 1909 to resume the private practice of law and the real estate business.

For many years Mr. Talcott has been a recognized leader in the prohibition party of the state and nation. He was affiliated with the republican organization and took an ac- tive part in local affairs with that party len- til 1885. At that date he concluded that pro- hibition was the most important political ques- tion and has since continually supported its nominees, except in 1915. when the prohibi- tion nominees of Ohio withdrew in favor of those of the progressive party after the State Progressive Convention had endorsed prohi- bition. Mr. Talcott was a delegate to the Prohibition National Convention in 1892 and 1908. He has been nominated by the Ohio State Convention of the party as candidate for judge of the Supreme Court three differ- ent times. In 1916 he received 106.273 votes for that office, that being by far the largest vote ever given a prohibition candidate in Ohio.

About forty-five years ago Mr. Talcott joined the Independent Order of Good Tem- plars and retained his active membei-ship therein for over thirty years. At ilount Union College he was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. In 1885 he united with the Jefferson Baptist Church and after removing

to Cleveland took a letter from that church to the First Baptist Church of Cleveland in 1891 and has been very active in that denom- ination ever since. He served as president of the Cleveland Baptist City Mission Society for two years and secretary' seven years. He has lieen secretary of the Baptist Home of North- ern Ohio for Old People since it was organized in 1907.

On AugiLst 4, 1881, at Jefferson, Ohio, Mr. Talcott man-ied Elizabeth J. Bailey, daughter of William and Maiy A. Bailey, of Jefferson. Her parents were of English descent. Mrs. Talcott was bom at Jefferson, February 17, 1860, was educated in the village schools and was a teacher until her marriage. 'Sir. and Jlrs. Talcott have three children : Cora ]\Iabel, liorn October 5, 1882, was maiTied October 4, 1902, to Bruce W. Huling. They now reside at Akron. John Albert, the only son, was born March 8, 1886. January 29, 1910, he married Harriet I. Finney, of Toronto, Can- ada. Both are successful teachers and are now connected with Bishop College at Marshall, Texas. Winifred Bailey, the youngest, was born August 8, 1892, and resides with her parents at 1457 East 116th Street, Cleveland.

John Carlos Talcott. The Cleveland bar had one of its ablest thinkers and most successful practitioners in the person of the late John Carlos Talcott, who died at his home in that city December 17, 1904. He had prac- ticed law for over a quarter of a century- and the last ten years of his life were spent in Cleveland.

He was the oldest brother of Albert Lewis Talcott and William Ellsworth Talcott, else- where referred to, and a son of Henry and Cordelia J. Talcott, a prominent family of Jefferson, Ashtabula County, where John C. wa.s born March 8, 1857.

John C. Talcott acquired a liberal educa- tion. In 1874 he gi-aduated from the Spen- cerian Business College of Cleveland, and then took the classical course in Mount Union Col- lege at Alliance, where he received his A. B. degree in 1876. He studied law at Yale Uni- versity, graduating LL. B. in 1878 and Master of Laws in 1881, and always took high rank in his literary and professional studies and was fourth in rank in his class at Yale. He was admitted to the bar of Ohio in the fall of 1879. and was actively engaged in practice nt Jefferson until his removal to Cleveland in 1894. Soon after his admission to the bar he was elected justice of the peace for Jefferson

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

37

Township in 1879, and besides his work as a lawyer served from 1878 to 1891 as cashier of Taleott's Deposit Bank of Jefferson.

From 1880 to 1890 he and his younger brother, Albert, were in law partnership un- der the firm name of Talcott Brothers, attor- nej's at law. From the date of his removal to Cleveland until his death, John C. Talcott had a large general practice. As a lawyer he was characterized by unusual learning and was a clear and logical thinker and speaker. A judge of the Common Pleas Court, before whom he had just argued an important case only a short time before his death, pronounced his argument the best he had ever heard in his court.

In polities he was a republican, and was chairman of the Republican County Central Committee of Ashtabula County during his earlier career. He served as a member of the board of education of Glenville as long as his health would permit. He was a member of the Delta Tan Delta fraternity at Mount Union, and was active in the Tippecanoe Club and the Cleveland Whist Club. He never married and for years had his home with his mother, Mrs. Cordelia J. Talcott. His re- mains were interred at the old family home at Jefferson.

William Ellsworth Talcott, one of the three brothers whose names have long adorned the legal profession in Cleveland, was an ac- tive member of the bar of this city for nearly twenty years, but is now a resident of New York City.

He was bom at Jefferson, Ohio, October 25, 1862, being the fourth son of Henr>' and Cordelia J. Talcott. The record of the fam- ily is given elsewhere.

Mr. Talcott gi'aduated from Eastman's Bnsines.s College at Poughkeepsie in 1878, from the Jefferson High School in 1879, and is an alumnus of Jlount Union College at Al- liance, from which he received the A. B. de- gree in 1882 and the degree Ma.ster of Arts in 1887. Mr. Talcott graduated from the law department of Yale University in 1884 and was given the degree Master of Laws in 1885.

He began the practice of law at Akron in 1885, but on November 1, 1886. removed to Cleveland, where he was appointed special claim agent for the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad Company. In 1897 he was promoted to land, tax and claim agent for the Erie Railroad west of Salamanca. He has made his chief work and has gained his chief

fame as a lawyer in this line of activity. On October 1, 1904, he was promoted to general real estate agent for the Erie Railroad system, with headquarters at New York City. He re- signed May 1, 1907. to accept his present of- fice as assistant general land and tax agent for the New York Central Railway Company, also with headquarters in New York City.

He is a member of several New York social clubs, including the New York, Pleiades, Whist and Knickerbocker Whist clubs. He has no record as a political worker or candi- date, but has supported the republican ticket in national and state affairs and is independ- ent in local elections. In college he became a member of a Delta Tau Delta fraternity and has had membership in the Royal Ar- canum and the American Insurance Union. His wife and two daughters are active mem- bers of the Disciples Church.

November 30, 1882, at Canton, Ohio, Mr. Talcott married Eva Mav Holl, daughter of Dan R. and Nancy (Mishler) Holl. Mrs. Tal- cott is of Pennsylvania Dutch stock, her par- ents having come from the vicinity of Lan- caster, Pennsylvania, to Stark Covuity, Ohio, where they were farmers. Mr. and Mrs. Tal- cott had four children: Homer Leroy, who in 1908 married Bertha Ehser and has one daughter; William Ellsworth. Jr., who died in 1909: Grace Helen and Maude Eleanor, still single.

George Bennett Siddall is one of Cleve- land's foremost lawyers and most helpful and sterling citizens. His abilities have been espe- cially recognized in the field of banking and corporation law, where he is probably not excelled bv any other member of the Cleveland bar. Mr. Siddall has been in practice at Cleve- land for twenty years, and is a member of one of the city 's best known law firms, Hender- son, Quail, Siddall & Morgan.

The Siddall family have been identified with Ohio since pioneer times. Some of his an- cestors were soldiers in the War of the Revolu- tion and the War of 1812. George Bennett Siddall was born at Oberlin. Ohio, December 13. 1866, a son of Dr. James F. and Orinda (Candee) Siddall. His father was of Virginia ancestry, and his mother of New England stock. His mother was of Scotch and English origin and her lineage was closely entwined with that of the ilcAlpine family. Dr. James F. Siddall was born in Ohio, and became a prominent dentist at Oberlin. where he located in 1854. He died at Oberiin October 12, 1909,

\

38

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

at the age of seventy-seven. His wife, who was born in Michigan, is still living. Five of their six children survive, and one of them is Dr. W. A. Siddall, a dentist at Cleveland.

Fourth in age among his brothers and sisters, George Bennett Siddall grew up in Oberlin, attended the public schools and Ober- lin College, and received the A. B. degree from that splendid institution in 1891. He possesses scholarly attainments that would have enabled him to adorn any profession, and for two years after his graduation he con- tinued with Oberlin College as a teacher of mathematics. Choosing the law, he entered the "Western Reserve Law School, where he pursued his studies two years, and on March 12, 1896, was admitted to the bar at Columbus. Beginning practice at Cleveland, he steadily fought his way to success where competition was keenest, and has won a number of notable triumphs in corporation practice. It was Mr. Siddall who organized and furnished both the legal and commercial wisdom for the develop- ment of The Peerless Motor Car Company, of which he is a director and secretary. He has various other financial and commercial connections. On January 1, 1904, he became associated with the old firm of Henderson & Quail and Mr. Morgan subsequently became a member of the partnership.

Mr. Siddall is a member of the Cleveland and Ohio State Bar associations, is a democrat on issues of national politics, but has been looked upon as somewhat of a leader in inde- pendent movements when municipal questions are at stake. Outside of the law he has given much of his time to the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce. For one year he was a director and for three years served as chairman of its committee on education. In the latter capacity he was instrumental in formulating the present school code of the state. In the Chamber of Commerce he has also been chair- man of the committee on legislation. Among the various other organizations in which he has membership are the Union University, and Mayfield clubs of Cleveland, the Co- lumbus Club of Columbus, and the Uni- versity Club of Chicago. His principal recreation is golf. He is a member of the Pilgrim Congregational Church of Cleveland.

Mr. Siddall was married August 17, 1892, at Calumet, Michigan, to Miss Nettie M. Dan- ielson, daughter of John A. Danielson. Her father was in the continuous employ of the Calumet and Hecla copper mines for nearly sixty years, and during the later years of his

life was its superintendent. Mrs. Siddall is a woman of thorough culture and especially well known in musical circles in Cleveland. She is a graduate of the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin with the class of 1891. Mr. and Mrs. Siddall have a beautiful home, and they have the social position which jieople of culture most desire.

Zerah Coston Monks, who died at his home in Cleveland May 25, 1909, at the age of sixty-eight, was for nearly forty years an active resident of this city and for the last ten years of his life had served as inspector of buildings for the board of education and library board,' a position which he held until his last illness.

He was born at Curlsville, Clarion County, Pennsylvania, in 1841. He came of old American stock. His grandfather, William Monks, came to this country from tlie north of Ireland in time to participate as a soldier in the Revolutionary war. William Monks married a Scotch woman.

The parents of Zerah C. Monks were Rev. William and Harriet (Burns) Monks. Rev. AVilliam Monks was born in 1806 and died in 1860, while his wife was bom in 1807 and died in 1845. They were married at Curlsville, Cla- rion County, Pennsylvania. R-ev. William Monks was a circuit rider of the ilethodist Episcopal Church, and carried on his mis- sionary and pastoral enterprise for years in the vicinity of Akron, Ohio.

At the age of twenty-one Zerah C. Monks enlisted as a soldier in the Lrnion army, and was first in Company C of the Fifty-second Regiment and then in the Fifty-fifth Penn- sylvania Volunteer Infantry. He held the rank of first sergeant, and was in the great Army of the Potomac. On the second day of the battle of Gettysburg he was captured and spent a number of months in the rebel prison at Belle Isle in the James River.

He removed to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1871 and for many years was a leading carpenter con- tractor on the south side, until he accepted the position of building inspector with the board of education and the library board. His funeral was held at tlie Jennings Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he was long a member.

His wife, Mrs. Hannah T. Monks, who died at her home in Cleveland Januarj^ 31, 1912, was bom in Venango County, Pennsylvania, in 1842. She had lived on the south side in Cleveland over forty years. She was survived

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

39

by her sister, Mi-s. E. Holmden, in Cleveland, and also by a sister iu Oklahoma and a sister and brother iu Vineland, New Jersey.

Zerah C. Monks and wife had four chil- dren: William J., now assistant principal of the Lincoln High School at Cleveland; Thomas E., president of the Cleveland Na- tional Bank; Dr. Margaret B., whose offices as a physician are in the Lenox Building; and Hattie E., wife of Claude E. Betts. Mrs. Betts is a teacher in the West Boys School and is actively interested in the Juvenile Court work of Cleveland.

Thomas Elbkidge MoiNKS, president of the Cleveland National Bank, even when a school- boy was a storehouse of energy and started his career witli more business push than many men acquire in a lifetime of experience. It is said that while he was attending high school he carried one of the largest paper routes on the south side of the city, and the spirit of service that actuated the newsboy was a qual- ity that attracted to him even then many warm friends. He sold his paper route at the .same time he left school and in the past thirty years has been carving out a career for himself of no inconsiderable magnitude.

Mr. Monks was bom in Greenwich, Con- necticut, August 9, 1869, but has spent prac- tically all his life in Cleveland since he came here in 1871 with his parents, the late Zerah C. and Hannah T. Monks. A sketch of his honored father appears on other pages. Thomas E. Monks was educated in the Cleve- land public schools, attending the West High School. From high school he entered upon his first regular position with the Lockwood-Tay- lor Hardware Company, now a part of the Lockwood-Luetkemeyer-Henry Company. Two years later he left this firm to take a job in the freight department of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company under G. W. Andrews, the local freight agent. After one year there he transferred his abilities to the Erie Railway in the freight department under J. M. Booth, freight agent. During his long service with this company the dynamic energy of his nature was given a thorough dis- cipline and Mr. Monks credits the training he received in the freight department of that rail- road with much of his later success. He re- mained with the freight department ten years, being appointed chief clerk of the forwarding department.

From the railroad he entered the employ of the city as deputy city treasurer, having

been appointed by George P. Kurtz in 1899. He remained in the city treasurer's office for seven years, three years under Mr. Kurtz and four years under Mr. H. D. Coffiuberry.

All of this was a very fine training for the banker. On January 3, 1906, Mr. ilonks be- came loan clerk in The Guardian Savings and Trust Company, and after one year was elected assistant secretary of the institution and remained a useful and appreciative fac- tor in that great banking house until he was chosen president of the Cleveland National Bank on August 4, 1916. He has been presi- dent of this bank since September 1, 1916.

The Cleveland National Bank, which was organized in 1883, has enjoyed a phenomenal increase of business during the years since Mr. Monks became president. The bank is now almost a $10,000,000 institution in point of resources, an itemized report of June, 1917, crediting it with resources of over $9,000,000. From June, 1916, to June, 1917, its deposits increased 116 per cent, the total increase be- ing nearly $3,500,000. Mr. Monks is also on the advisory board of The Guardian Savings & Trust Company, and several of the active officers are connected with both institutions. The chainnan of the board of the Cleveland National is Mr. H. P. Mcintosh, president of The Guardian Savings & Trust Company. The other executive officere are F. W. Wardwell and T. W. Hill, vice presidents, and R. P. Sears, cashier.

Mr. Monks has been more or less active in local Cleveland politics, and at the present writing he would classify himself as a mug- wump. In national affairs generally he is a republican. Some years ago he was a candi- date for city auditor and also county clerk of Cuyahoga County, but he says there were too many democrats around who did not want him in those positions.

Mr. Monks is a member of the Union Club, Bankers Club, Cleveland Athletic Club, Clif- ton Club, Hermit Club, American Institute of Bankers, Cleveland Automobile Club, West- wood Country Club, of which he is secretary, Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, and for two years was a director and is still a member of the West Side Chamber of Industry. His recreations are golf and motoring and, chief of all, banking. .-,,,•

June 22, 1893, Mr. Monks married Miss Mabel B. Allen, daughter of Rev. J. B. and Sarah (Bamum) Allen. Her father was a Presbyterian minister and died at Cleveland as the"" clock struck midnight on Thanksgiving,

40

CLEVELAND AND ITS EN^^RONS

November 30, 1893. ]\Irs. Monks' mother was a member of the Barnum family of Olmsted Falls, and died in Cleveland January 20, 1905. Mrs. Monks was born at what is now known as Rocky River near Cleveland, and received her education in old Calvin College on West Twenty-fifth Street in the Village of Brook- lyn. This college was under the management of a board of trustees appointed by the Evan- gelical Lutheran Church. Mr. and Mrs. Monks have one daughter, Catherine E., who gi-ad- uated from the Lakewood High School in 1911 and for three years was a student in the Woman's College of Western Reserve Uni- versity, ill health preventing her completing the course. The ilonks family live at 1071 Maplecliff in Lakewood.

Rev. John B. Allen. The memory of Rev. John B. Allen is chiefly preserved in the Vil- lage of Brooklyn, now part of the City of Cleveland, where for many years he labored with enthusiasm and a singularl.y high devo- tion in the cause of the ministiy of the Pres- byterian Church.

He was of old New England ancestry, bom at Sturbridge, Ma.ssachusetts, October 12, 1813. Largely by his own efforts he ac- quired a liberal education, graduating from Union College in the class of 1840, and was honor man in a class of more than 100 stu- dents. After leaving college he .spent one year in the LTnion Theological Seminary, and then went to the seminaiy at East Windsor, Connecticut, where he completed his theo- logical course two years later. He was or- dained to the ministry and entered upon his life work as pastor of a small Presbyterian Church at Covington, Penn.sylvania. Rev. Mr. Allen was called to the Brooklyn Church near Cleveland in 1856 and sem^ed there cc.n- tinnously for eleven years. Though he had other pastorates it is in connection with his work at Brooklyn Village that he will be long- est remembered. He was a man of strong character and was remarkablv modest of his attainments, and others placed a much higher estimation upon his abilities and services than he did himself. Altogether he lived a bu.sy and unselfish life and the community su.s- tained a severe loss when he was taken away, though he died in the fullness of years. His death occurred at his home at No. 12 IMills Street in Brooklyn Village as the clock struck twelve, midniffht, on Thanksgiving night No- vember 30, 1893, when a little past eighty

years of age. He was laid to rest in River- side Cemetery'.

Rev. Mr. Allen was active in the ministry until about 1887. For about twenty years he had pastorates in churches at Brooklyn and Rockport, and at one time was also pas- tor of the Arehwood Avenue Congregational Church.

His last marriage occurred at Roekport, Ohio, October 31, 1867. Sarah Barnum, daughter of John and Eunice Barnum, of the old Barnum family of Olmstead, Ohio, became his wife. She was born Septemlier 13, 1831, and died at the home of her only child and daughter, Mrs. Thomas E. Monks, Jan- uary 20, 1905, at the age of .seventy-three. Mrs. ilonks, whose maiden name was Mabel Boyd Allen, was bom in what is now Rocky River.

WiLLL\M H. Boyd. That the Cleveland bar contains some of the ablest and brightest minds of the legal profession in America is a state- ment requiring no special proof. Among so many who have .iustly earned the laurels of the profession, individual distinctions are mainly based upon special lines of service within the profession. During the twenty- five years he has practiced at Cleveland Wil- liam H. Boyd has come to rank among the leaders of the bar and in the opinion of men well qualified to judge he ranks with hardly a superior as a trial lawyer between New York and Chicago.

It was the possession of thorough natural talent and hard working industr^^ that brought Mr. Boyd to his present place rather than influential connections and bestowed advan- tages durinor his youth. He is a native of Southern Ohio, having been born at Fairview in Guernsey County, August 11, 1864. He is a son of George W. and Mary A. Boyd. He arew up in a rural community, attended dis- trict schools and also the public schools of Fairview. Like many professional men he did his time as a teacher. He taught school four years. In 1888 he began the studv of law under private instruction at Claii-sville. Ohio. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1890 and the same vear located at Cleveland. I\Ir. Boyd is a member of the well known law firm of Westenhaver. Bovd & Brooks, with offices in the Garfield Building.

Though he came to Cleveland a comparative stranger. Mr. Bovd soon found himself and after a few preliminary experiences became recognized as one of the most resourceful ad-

7/::^m^db

CLEVELAND AXD ITS ENVIRONS

41

voeates before a jury among the younger gen- eration. He possesses exceptional powers as an orator both in court and in the public forum, and these qualities, combined with a broad knowledge of the law, has given him his numerous important relations with the legal profession of Northern Ohio. By dint of long practice he has acquired the power of swiftly formulating his arguments and is at the same time one of the most concise and powerful pleaders before a court or jury.

AVith" him his professional work has always been supreme, and lacking the time to give to outside interests he has always declined to become a director or officer in any corpora- tion and his public record has also been brief. While living in Southern Ohio he was clerk of the Village and Township of Flushing dur- ing 1888-89. In 1897-98 he sei^^'ed as assistant director of law of Cleveland. In July and August, 1891, he was acting police prosecutor in Cleveland during the absence of Jlr. Fielder, the regular prosecutor. In politics he is a republican and has given invaluable service to his party as an exemplar of fairness and honesty. In 1905 he was republican candidate for mayor of Cleveland against the late Tom L. Johnson. .

On September 7, 1892, he married Miss Anna Maud Judkins, of Flushing, Ohio. Mrs. Boyd died at Cleveland September 23, 1908. Their daughter Mildred A. died January 22, 1911. There is one surviving daughter, Maiy G. Boyd. Mr. Boyd i.s a member of tie Euclid Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church and be- longs to the Cleveland Athletic Club, the Tippecanoe Club, the Western Reserve Club, and is a Mason and Knight of Pythias.

H George Humphrey Burrows. The aebieve- ^ ment of success is usually a matter of per- forming the duties that lie nearest, persis- tently and faithfully, through a considerable period of years. The individual capacity ex- pands with increasing responsibilities and op- portunities, and the chief actor is very often unconscious of being more than ordinarily successful.

This has been true in the case of Mr. George H. Burrows, a Cleveland lawyer and business man, whose position, judged by his contempo- raries, is securely anchored in success. Mr. Burrows was born at Wakeman, Huron County, Ohio, May 18, 1863. He is a son of Asa William Burrows, of old Connecticut stock, who moved to Melrose, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, during the eighteenth

century, and for several generations the family were well-to-do operators of woolen mills. Mr. Burrows' father was bom in Sus- quehanna County, graduated from Jefferson iledical College of Philadelphia in 1848, and afterwards practiced medicine in Ohio, part of the time in Cleveland, until his death in 1877. Doctor Burrows married Nancy Ann Humplirey. She was born in Cleveland Iilarch 30, 1837. Her birthplace was a log house standing back of the site now occupied by the Cleveland Trust Bank Building on East Ninth Street. Her grandfather served as postmaster of New York about 1790. Her father married Janette Ball, and for a time lived on Grand Island in Niagara River, where Indians were frequently guests in their log hoiise.

Geoi-ge H. Bnrrows was fourteen .years old when his father died. In the meantime he had made the best of the advantages of the Cleve- land public schools, but after his father's death he had to work for a living, and during four successive summer seasons he served as a common seaman on a schooner on the Great Lakes. The winters were spent in school and he entered Riverside Academy at Wellsville, New York. Though he finished the regular course, his money failed and he had to go to work before graduating.

After leaving school his first regular occu- pation was in the office of the A. S. Herenden Furniture Company. He began there in 1885 on a salary of $10 a w^eek. He was getting that modest stipend when he married. In 1887 a better opening came to him as secretary of the Cleveland Coal Exchange, at $50 a month, a position he held for two years. At the same time he became secretary (if the Mer- chants and Manufacturers Exchange Com- pany, an association including nearly all of Cleveland's wholesale houses. He began there at $50 a month, and finally was promoted until lie had a salary of $3,000 a year and remained with the Exchange for ten years.

While a substantial living was thus assured liim and his family, he turned his attention to the study of law under P. H. Kaiser of Cleveland. He was admitted to practice Octo- ber 5,' 1893. but continued his work as secre- tary of the Merchants and JManufacturers Ex- change Company until he entered general practice in 1898.

As a lawj'er Mr. Burrows has given a large share of liis time and attention to business affairs. He is properly classed as a corpora- tion lawyer, and has organized and promoted a number of large enterprises, with which he

42

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

has been officially identified. He is a stock- holder in the Vero Beach Development Com- pany, an Ohio corporation owning lai-ge prop- erty interests on the east coast of Florida and is organizing the Casa-Grande Hotel Com- pany. This company now has under construc- tion a $1,500,000 hostelry, known as the Casa- Grande Hotel at Miami Beach, Dade County, Florida. "When completed the Casa-Grande Hotel will be one of the greatest hotel prop- erties in Florida and the company will be incorporated at $1,500,000. It will without douljt be one of the finest properties both as an investment and resort in that section of Florida, and Mr. Burrows has given much of his valuable time to the promotion of this enterprise. He was active in the organization and building and is attorney for, director and stockholder of the Ideal Tire and Rubber Com- pany, manufacturers of automobile tires and tubes. This is a $2,000,000 corporation. He has been similarly identified with the Mason Tire and Rubber Companj', a $3,000,000 or- ganization, and is a director and stockholder in the Portage Packing Company, whose plant is at Akron, a stockholder of the Cleveland Development Company, the Chagrin River Land and Investment Company, and at dif- ferent times has been identified with a num- ber of other smaller concerns.

A number of years ago Mr. Burrows was a member of the Pennsylvania National Guards. In politics strict party allegiance has never been deemed a virtue by Mr. Burrows, and he has voted for the man and the principles rather than the party, though his leanings are toward the republican organization. Likewise he has never indulged any individual political aspirations. He is a member of the United Commercial Travelers, the Old Colony Club, the Cleveland Commercial Travelers and Ac- cident Association, the Cleveland Automobile Club, and is a member of the Methodist Epis- copal Church.

April 8, 1885, at Cleveland he married Miss Ida Bell Folliett, a daughter of Henry C. and Mary Folliett. Her family is of Connecticut stock. They have two children. Ethel Ida Gamble, whose husband is fighting in France. G. Howard Burrows is now a .senior in the School of Architecture at Ann Arbor, Michi- gan.

Judge Thomas K. Dissette has been one of the most distinguished citizens and lawyers of Cleveland for over half a century. Only

recently he retired from the burdens of active practice and as much as any other Cleveland citizen has deserved the distinction described in the classic phrase "otium cum dignitate." He has a varied and interesting career, and for a number of years was a judge of the Common Pleas Court. To that office he brought an experience and wisdom which made his findings aud decisions noted for im- partiality and accuracy.

Judge Dissette was bom at Bradford, Sim- coe Countj^, Ontario, Canada, September 22, 1838. He has now attained those years which when associated with so much that is good and worthy in life fui'nish ample reason for calling him, as many of his younger associates do, the "grand old man of the Cleveland bar." Judge Dissette had a liberal educa- tion. He attended the public and classical schools in Canada, and in 1863 came to the L'nited States and in the following year en- tered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the North Ohio Conference. Dur- ing 186-4 he served in the Christian Commis- sion before Petersburg and Richmond in the Ninth Corps Army of the Potomac. He was active in the ministry until 1875, filling pul- pits at Bolivar, Millersburg, Ontario, Ash- land, Berea and the Lorain Street Church in Cleveland.

In 1874 he entered the Cleveland Law School and was graduated and admitted to the Ohio bar by the Supreme Court in 1875. For the following year he was in partnership with the late Judge W. E. Sherwood under the name Sherwood & Dissette. From June, 1878, to July, 1879, he was a member of the firm of Dissette & Mitchell, his partner be- ing the late William ]\Iitchell. From 1880 to July, 1885, he was associated with M. "W. Cope under the title Dissette & Cope. Mr. Dissette in the earlier period of his prac- tice had much to do with the communities of Glenville and Collinwood. For a number of years he was legal adviser to the editor of the Ohio Farmer, and he was author of a legal work known as the Ohio Farmer's Law Book. He also for a time was president of a brick and tile manufacturing company at Collin- wood.

During 1879-80 he served as captain of Company B in the Fifteenth Ohio National Guard. Judge Dissette was made assistant prosecuting attorney of Cuyahoga County on January 1, 1885, and had charge of the solici- tor's department. He held that office for nine

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

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years. He resigned this position to go on the Common Pleas bench. Judge Dissette was judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Cuyahoga County from December, 1894, un- til December, 1904. He served two successive terms, ten years in all. After leaving the bench he resumed private practice with his son Edward "W. under the name Dissette & Dissette. but in 1915 he retired from all pro- fessional work.

Judge Di-ssette still retains membership in the Cleveland Bar and the Ohio State Bar as- sociations, is a republican in politics, and still retains membership in the Ashland Lodge of ilasons. He belongs to the Phi Kappa Phi college fraternity. No citizen of Cleveland has more warm personal friends than Judge Dissette. His friends are a unit in asserting that he never knowingly injured anyone in the world. He and his wife are active members or the Glenville Methodist Episcopal Church of Cleveland. He is owner of considerable real estate, and his home at the comer of East One Hundred and Twelfth Street* and St. Clair Avenue, Northeast, is one of the beauty spots of Cleveland, liis home being sur- rounded by ample gi'ounds and shaded by some magnificent trees. At one time Judge Dissette owned twenty-four acres in this lo- cation, but much of it has since been sold for residence and busine.ss purposes. Some j-eai-s ago he and others along the route gave to the city a strip of land in and bordering a gully to provide a course for a boulevard con- necting with. Euclid Avenue, but this city highway has not yet been completed.

It is fitting that a career so prolonged and so filled with worthy achievement should have been .shared in throughout by a wife, com- panion and counselor. On January 14, 1864, at Bradford, Canada, Judge Dissette man-ied Miss Sarah Jane Fisher. They have traveled through the valleys and over the hills of life now for fifty-three years. When they reached the fiftieth milestone, on January 14, 1914, the .occasion was made memorable by the quiet celebration of their fiftieth or golden wedding anniversary. Twenty guests and members of the family gathered to congratulate them, and the tone of decoration was all golden, the din- ner table having gold baskets filled with yel- low daffodils.

Until re<:-ently there has been no Cleveland woman more active in the social life and in that part of the civic and philanthropic pro- gram which is the especial domain of woman than Mrs. Dissette. She was secretary of the

Dorcas Society and was one of the organizers and the first president of the Woman's Club of Cleveland, and continued active in its work up to 1916. She was one of the execu- tive committee of the woman's department having in charge the arrangements and cere- monies connected with the Centennial Com- mission of Cleveland. She was one of those chiefly responsible for