Civil War Widow Pension File 10588 for son William P. Haskell
Testimony of Nehemiah Adams and Clara Adams
Nathaniel Haskell was a sailor, and sailed from Boston for New Orleans about 14 years ago (1849), and from New Orleans shipped for some foreign port, which is the last we that he has been heard from.
U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles
Name: Nathaniel H Haskell
Residence: Gloucester, Massachusetts
Occupation: Farmer
Age at enlistment: 20
Enlistment Date: 15 Apr 1861
Rank at enlistment: Private
Enlistment Place: Gloucester, MA
State Served:Massachusetts
Survived the War?:Yes
Service Record: Enlisted in on 30 Apr 1861.
Mustered out on 01 Aug 1861 at Boston, MA.
Enlisted in on 28 Sep 1861.
Mustered out on 13 Oct 1864.
Enlisted in on 09 Dec 1864.
Promoted to Full 1st Sergeant on 25 May 1865.
Mustered out on 29 Jun 1865.
Birth Date: abt 1841
Death Date: 25 Feb 1906
Civil War Widow Pension File 10588
William P. Haskell died Fort Albany, VA. Jan 6, 1863
never married
enrolled Aug 4, 1862, age 18, bn Gloucester, Mass.
Pvt., Co. L., 14th Mass Art.
Sewell B. Haskell was a railroad paymaster.
New York Times
HASKELL - In New York city, on Wednesday, April 18, 1908, Charles C. Haskell. in his 73d year.
13433. Llewellyn Solomon Haskell
Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century.
page 459"HASKELL, LLEWELLYN SOLOMON, merchant, was born Jan. 4, 1815, in Gloucester, Maine (sic Massachusetts). In 1857 he began to lay out Llewellyn park, and about 1859 retired from business to give his whole time to its improvement. He died May 31, 1872, in Santa Barbara, Cal. "
Glenmont, Thomas Edison's home, is located in Llewellyn Park, the first romantically designed, planned residential community in the United States. The park was developed in the 1850s by Llewellyn Haskell, who acquired 350 acres in West Orange, New Jersey, about fifteen miles from New York City. The architect Alexander Jackson Davis landscaped the park, which grew to 700 acres by the 1870s.
A Clerk's Estate
Glenmont was designed by the New York architect Henry Hudson Holly for Henry C. Pedder, a confidential clerk for the dry goods store, Arnold, Constable and Company, and his wife, Louisa. They purchased 10.5 acres in Llewellyn Park in December 1879, and their house -- decorated by the noted New York firm of Pottier & Stymus -- was largely completed by 1882.Only two years later, Pedder and two colleagues were accused of embezzling funds from Arnold, Constable. The company quickly took over his property, buying the house for one dollar. Pedder apparently fled soon after to the West Indies, his birthplace.
Thomas Edison at Glenmont
Thomas Edison purchased the Glenmont estate -- 13.5 acres including house, barn, greenhouse, and furnishings -- in January of 1886 for $125,000, or half its estimated value. A thirty-nine year old widower, Edison presented the estate as a wedding gift to his new bride, twenty year old Mina Miller , whom he married on February 24, 1886, at Oak Place, her family home in Akron, Ohio.According to family tradition, Edison gave Mina a choice between a town house in New York City or the former Pedder estate in Llewellyn Park. She selected the latter. Edison remarked on his good fortune:
To think that it was possible to buy a place like this,...the idea fairly turned my head and I snapped it up. It is a great deal too nice for me, but it isn't half nice enough for my little wife here.
To prevent creditors from ever seizing the home, Edison sold it to his private secretary in 1891 for one dollar. A week later the secretary sold it to Mina Edison for the same amount.Glenmont was only about a mile away from Edison's newly built laboratories, but he worked long hours and spent little time at home. When Edison was at the house, work was not far from his mind. His son, Charles, recalled in 1953:
Father worked in his laboratory all day long. He used to come home and perhaps after a brief nap of fifteen or twenty minutes he would come down to dinner. Then he would go upstairs and read or think out things, and he'd make a list of things he was going to do the next day.... So, really, the home was his thought bench, you might say, as the other was his work bench.
Edison's reputation obliged him to entertain. He did not enjoy these events, however, and often feigned illness to avoid his own dinner parties. His daughter Madeleine recalled that "he had this awful indigestion, usually before a party, not afterwards...." He would then retire to the bedroom, or perhaps to the living room and his books and desk . His presence seems most evident in those rooms, as well as in the den, where the mementos given to him by admirers were displayed.Mina Miller Edison at Glenmont
While Edison remained preoccupied with his business and scientific endeavors, his new wife Mina Miller Edison assumed the administration of Glenmont, as well as that of their winter home, Seminole Lodge, in Fort Myers, Florida.At Glenmont, her responsibilities included planning meals, supervising household staff, ordering supplies, requesting repairs and improvements, reviewing house accounts, and signing checks. Mina's extensive education prepared her for her social role. She studied not only at home in Ohio, but also at a Boston finishing school, where she studied music and the classics, and the Chautauqua Assembly, where she studied in the School of Domestic Science . In a 1930 interview with The American Magazine , Mina noted that:
The term housewife is the worst misnomer we have in our language. A married woman should be known as the home executive. A girl goes out into the world of business and gains a definite title of some sort -- secretary, stenographer, cashier, or bookkeeper. Think how insignificant and remote are her possibilities for constructive effort as compared to those within the reach of the woman who manages the home!
In an interview published in The Christian Science Monitor ten years later, she reinforced her belief that "the first obligation of parents is to educate their daughters.":
All higher education for women, Mrs. Edison feels, should be a powerful contribution to home life. And everything should be done to dignify the homemaker's task. Mrs. Edison would have a cook make of her job a practical art, based on scientific knowledge of food elements, and would name her "kitchen chemist."
But Mrs. Edison's views on the education of women, however, went beyond household management. Ultimately, . . . a home woman, to make a thorough going job of her home duties, Mrs. Edison believes, cannot be too well informed beforehand. Women, she said, should be educated in history, music, and art, not necessarily to perform, but to understand -- for they must mingle with their husband's friends and with their own children.
After her husband's death, Mina Edison continued to move between Glenmont and Seminole Lodge when she was not traveling. She was joined by her second husband, widower and long-time friend Edward Everett Hughes . During the four years of their marriage, from October 30, 1935, until his death in January 1940, Mina used the name Mina Edison Hughes . After Hughes's death, however, she resumed the name Mina Miller Edison.
A suitable partner for a world-famous inventor and businessman, Mina Miller Edison was a leader in civic and charitable organizations throughout her life , and was a keeper of the Edison flame after the inventor's death . In 1946 she sold the estate to Thomas A. Edison, Inc. , in order that "Glenmont and its contents...be preserved as a memorial to my dear husband and his work." Mina Edison past away the following year.
Daisy Haskell was married to an ... ... on 14 January 1891 at Golborne Park, Lancanshire, England.
Dictionary of American Biography, Vol VI
Larned-Millington, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY 1933, p. 444.
Abiel Abbot Low (Feb. 7, 1811-Jan. 7, 1893), merchant in the China trade, was born in Salem, Mass., one of a family of twelve children of Seth and Mary (Porter) LOW. His ancestors had been natives of Massachusetts, the founder of the American line, Thomas LOW, having settled in Massachusetts Bay in the first half of the seventeenth century. LOW was educated in the public schools and at an early age became a clerk in the house of Joseph Howard & Company, engaged in the South American trade. In 1829 his father removed from Salem to Brooklyn, N.Y., and established himself as an importer of drugs and India wares, and the son worked in his employ for several years. In 1833, at the invitation of a relative, LOW sailed to Canton, China, and became a clerk in the mercantile house of Russell & Company, the largest American firm in China. He soon acquired a thorough knowledge of the intricacies of foreign trade and in 1837 was admitted to the firm. Three years later, desirous of returning home, he engaged in a joint enterprise with a Chinese merchant which remitted both parties a handsome profit and enabled LOW to enter into business in New York on his own account, thus laying the foundations of A. A. Low & Brothers. LOW'S firm very soon gained a prominent position in the trade in China tea and Japanese silk. Celebrated among their fleet of clipper ships were The Houqua, launched in 1844 and named after the Chinese mandarin who had engaged with LOW in the joint enterprise, the speedy Samuel Russell, which gained a reputation for outstripping its rivals with ease, and The Contest and Jacob Bell, both destroyed by Confederate privateers, recovery for which was effected before the Joint High Commission at Geneva. LOW'S economic interests extended beyond the flourishing import business which his firm conducted. He actively participated in financing the first Atlantic cable and together with Collis P. Huntington and others, was associated with the building of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad through West Virginia to the Ohio River and in the founding of Newport News, Va., and Huntington, W. Va.
Though an unusually powerful and eloquent speaker, and well equipped for public life, Low seems to have felt no desire to enter politics, in which field his father, in a modest way, and his son, Seth Low [see footnote], more spectacularly engaged. He by no means, however, held himself aloof from civic affairs. During the Civil War he was president of the Union Defense Committee of New York and of other war financing bodies. As president of the New York Chamber of Commerce from 1863 until his resignation in 1866, he voiced the hostility of New York business men to Great Britain's role in relation to the Confederate commerce destroyers (J. B. Bishop, A Chronicle of One Hundred & Fifty Years) The Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, 1768-1918, 1918, p. 82). On his return to New York in 1867 from a voyage around the world he urged a policy of government subsidies for the American merchant marine (Entertainment Given to Mr. A. A. Low by members of the Chamber of Commerce. Oct. 8,1867, 1867, p. 26). Despite the conciliatory attitude which his son Seth demonstrated throughout his life in dealing with the labor problem. he himself was hostile to labor combinations (Address by A. A. Low...May 3, 1866, 1866, p.9). After the Civil War he gave vigorous expression to the demands of the New York merchants for a resumption of special payments (Centennial Celebration of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, Apr. 6th, 1868, 1868, pp. 21-30). One of his last important public services was in rendering a report as commissioner of charities of Kings County on the bearing of the growth of urban population and unsanitary conditions on the increase of pauperism: Low was married on Mar. 16, 1841, to Ellen Almira, daughter of Josiah Dow of Brooklyn. Following her death, he married, on Feb. 25, 1851, his brother William Henry's widow, Anne, daughter of Mott Bedell. He was a Unitarian in religion and an exceptionally liberal patron of education and welfare work. He died in Brooklyn.
[See Benjamin R. C. Low, Seth Low (1925); W. G. Low, Some Recollections for His Children and Grandchildren (1909); A. L. Moffat, "Low General.: The Descendants Of Seth Low and Mary Porter" (1932), a Copy of which is in the Lib. of Cong.; Tribute of the Chamber Of Commerce of the State of NY to the Memory of Abiel Abbott Low (1893); Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 7, 1893]
Burke's American Families With British Ancestry
Genealogical Pub Co, Baltimore, 1983, p. 2796.
Harriette Low (b. 10-24-1842; died unmarried 1884)
Burke's American Families With British Ancestry
Genealogical Pub Co, Baltimore, 1983, p. 2796.
Seth Low (twice mayor of Brooklyn 1881, 1885; b. 1-18-1850; married 12-9-1880 to Annie Wroe Scollay, dau. of the Hon. Benjamin Robbins Curtis; and died 9-17-1916Dictionary of American Biography Vol VI,
Larned-Millington, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY 1933, p. 449-450.~
Seth Low (Jan.18, 1850 - Sept. 17, 1916), merchant, college president, youngest child of Abiel Abbot Low by his first wife, Ellen Almira (Dow) Low, was named after his paternal grandfather, who had left Massachusetts, where the Lows had dwelt from the seventeenth century, and moved to Brooklyn in 1829, setting himself up as a merchant. In his youth Low enjoyed the advantages of extensive travel, was educated in a private school, and completed his secondary studies at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He entered Columbia College with the class of 1870, earning the encomium of President Barnard, as "the first scholar in college and the most manly young fellow we have had here in many a year" (B. R. C. Low, Seth Low, p. 41). Reared in a home on Brooklyn Heights overlooking the New York harbor, he early acquired an enthusiasm for maritime trade evoked by the sight of his father's famous clipper ships. At the end of his senior year at Columbia, yielding to his father's wishes, he terminated a year's study of law and entered the establishment of A. A. Low & Brothers. He was employed in his father's warehouse from 1870 to 1875 and became a member of the firm a year later, supervising importations of raw silk from China, Japan, and France. On the retirement of the senior members four years later he succeeded with other junior partners to the business which was finally liquidated in 1887. On Dec. 9, 1880, he married Anne Wroe Scollay Curtis of Boston, the daughter of Justice Benjamin R. Curtis of the United States Supreme Court.
Low's efforts in behalf of civic reform were first enlisted in charitable work. In 1878 he organized and became the first president of the Bureau of Charities of Brooklyn. He first attained political prominence as president of a Republican Campaign Club organized in Brooklyn in 1880 to promote the election of Garfield and Arthur. The club, reorganized under the title of "The Young Republican Club," addressed itself to municipal reform and advocated the complete separation of local and national politics. The mayoralty contest of 1881, the first under Brooklyn's new charter, was warmly contested. The Republican party was divided in allegiance between two contestants, Gen. Benjamin F. Tracy and Ripley Ropes. The former, in the interest of party unity, suggested that both candidates withdraw in favor of Low, who was then nominated and elected mayor of Brooklyn by a fair majority. He was renominated in the autumn of 1883 and reelected by a close margin of votes in a hotly contested campaign against the Democratic nominee, Joseph C. Hendrix. A feature of his administration was the introduction of the merit system in the municipal service of Brooklyn, a reduction of the city debt, and a complete reform of the public-school system (Fourth Annual Message of Hon. Seth Low, Mayor of Brooklyn, 1885; World, New York, Sept 2, 1897). Low, ever a stanch friend of civil service, stood for the separation of local and national politics and refused to use the patronage of the city for any party in the presidential campaign or in any other election. In refusing to support the candidacy of James G. Blaine in 1884, he maintained: "I am not a Republican mayor, as vou say I am. I am Mayor of the whole people of Brooklyn" (Seth Low, p. 53). Casting his vote for Cleveland, Low never again received the whole-hearted support of the Republican organization.
In 1889, shortly after his retirement from active business, Low received a call to the presidency of Columbia College. He was not quite forty years of age when he accepted the office. His selection was symbolic of a new day, when the university administrator would not be a clergy man nor a professional scholar, but a broad-visioned executive. It was in the latter capacity that he was to render notable service to Columbia. At the beginning of his administration, which covered the years 1890-1901, he centralized graduate organization and established the University Council. Graduate and professional instruction was reorganized and widened considerably in scope. Teachers' College, Barnard, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, among other institutions, were brought into association with the university. The most forward-looking step taken through his initiative was the purchase of the new site on Morningside Heights in 1892. Low made himself responsible for a library building on the new site which he contributed as a memorial to his father. In addition he established a number of trust funds for the encouragement of study and research (A History of Columbia University, 1754 - 1904, 1904, pp. 154 -71).
Low's activities as president of Columbia did ir not preclude his participation in public affairs during this decade. He served on the board of the Rapid Transit Commission and assisted in it drafting the charter for Greater New York. He a was frequently selected to act as arbiter in labor disputes and aided generously in relief work, especially during the cholera epidemic of 1893. In 1899 he went as a delegate to the first Hague Conference. In 1897 he was nominated by the Citizens' Union for the first mayor of Greater New York. As in his vigorous Brooklyn campaigns, his keynote was the complete separation of municipal and national politics (Seth Louis Great Speech at Cooper Union, Oct. 6, 1897, 1897, pp. 3, 8). The failure of the Republican party to support him, coupled with the death of Henry George toward the end of the campaign, brought about his defeat by Robert Van Wyck of Tammany Hall. Low ran second, 50,000 votes ahead of Benjamin F. Tracy, Republican. In 1901, however, he was elected to the mayoralty of New York by a large majority on a reaction of public sentiment against the Tammany regime. His administration was distinguished as a brief era of civic reform. Patronage was checked and the civil service was developed. Through his efforts the first subway to Brooklyn and the Pennsylvania tunnel to Long Island were planned and the electrification of the New York Central within the city limits was effected. Notwithstanding this excellent record, he failed of reelection in 1903.
From leadership in civic affairs Low turned to the farmer's cooperative movement, laying out a home and farm at Bedford Hills in Westchester county, N. Y., and organizing the Bedford Farmers' Cooperative Association. He firmly believed that the two major problems which America must solve were the negro and labor. In 1905 he became a member of the board of trustees of the Tuskegee Institute and two years later was elected chairman of the board, a position which he held until his death. During this period he actively cooperated with Booker T. Washington. In the last decade of his life, he devoted much of his time to securing more harmonious relations between capital and labor. In 1907 he became president of the National Civic Federation, and in the autumn of 1914 he was appointed by President Wilson a member of the Colorado Coal Commission for the investigation of labor difficulties in that state. In 1914, after a long membership in the New York Chamber of Commerce, he was elected president of that body. His service to the organization was as notable as that of his father as its president during the Civil War. His administration is associated with the organization of a committee on problems of shipments, the organization at Washington of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, and with the movement for the rehabilitation of American shipping. His last important public service was rendered as chairman of the committee on cities of the New York constitutional convention of 1915, a position to which he was justly entitled. He had gained international recognition as an advocate of municipal self government and executive responsibility, ideas which he elaborated upon at Lord Bryce's invitation in a chapter which he wrote for the first edition of The American Commonwealth, and in his Addresses and Papers on Municipal Government (1891).
In later years Low was portly in physical appearance; in manner, kindly and benevolent, but in public somewhat shy and reserved. He possessed a talent for merging himself in a cause and an unfailing acumen in the selection of experts. He was universally respected as the pattern of the scholar in politics. In religion he was an active Episcopalian. His death occurred at his home in Bedford Hills after a lingering illness.
[Benjamin R. C. Low, Seth Low (1925); Columbia Alumni News, Oct. 20, 1916; Board of Estimate and Apportionment and Board of Aldermen: Joint Session in Memory of Honorable Seth Low. Sept. 25, 1916 (1916); A. L. Moffat, "Low Geneal.: The Descendants of Seth Low and Mary Porter" (1932), a copy of vhich is in the Lib. of Cong.; and the New York press of Sept. 18, 1916.]