Elizabeth Lawrence Gilman (1905-2006) was the daughter of Arthur Lawrence Gilman (1878-1939) and Elizabeth Wright Walter (1875-1964). She was teh third cousin twice removed of my wife. Betty was born in 1905, graduated from Smith College in 1927, and married Malcolm Evelyn Anderson (1900-1950), a writer for the New Yorker, in 1936. They divorced in 1940. She was active in many organizations including: National Audubon Society, the Adirondack Mountain Club, the Society for the Preservation of the Adirondacks, the Saranac Lake Free Library, the Saranac Lake Village Improvement Society, and was a member of the Bohemians (a New York musicians’ club). She worked in New York in publishing and at FAO Schwartz. She died at the age of 101 in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

James H. Rutter (1836-1885) was my wife’s great great grandfather. He was born February 3, 1836 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He studied at the Scholfield business school

At the age of 18, in 1854, he started his career as a clerk in the freight office of the Erie Railroad. The next year he became chief clerk in the freight office of the Williamsport and Elmira Railroad. In 1857, at the age of twenty-one, he became chief clerk in the Chicago freight office of the Michigan Central and Northern Indian Railroad. In 1858 he became freight agent of the Chicago and Milwaukee Railroad. In 1860 he was back in Elmira as the stationmaster of the Erie Railroad. In 1864 he became freight agent in Buffalo of the Erie Railroad, and in 1866 the assistant general freight agent.

While testifying about railroad rates, he impressed William H. Vanderbilt, who hired him in 1870 as the General Freight Agent of the New York Central with the salary of $15,000 a year ($250,000 in 2015 dollars).  In 1877 he became a director of the New York Central, in 1880 Third Vice-President, and in 1883, at the age of forty-seven, President of the New York Central.

William Vanderbilt had been in poor health, (high blood pressure, mild stroke); he had sons, but knew that Rutter was more intelligent and competent than his heirs. Vanderbilt put Rutter in charge of 100,000 employees and $200,000,000 in capital (about $6 billion in 2023).

Mark Twain was scheduled to meet Rutter in 1885 to interest him in investing in the printing telegraph and the typesetter that Twain hoped would make his fortune, but Rutter was ill with diabetes at his house in Irvington and died on June 27, 1885.

At the same time, unbeknownst to each other, his wife Sarah Pollack Rutter was dying of brain inflammation. She died the next day, June 28, 1885.

They were buried from St. Thomas Church in New York at the same service. They left several children. They named one Nathaniel, after his uncle who had died at Chancellorsville, and ever afterwards there have been Nathaniels in the family.  Their son, Nathaniel Enzie Rutter, was my wife’s great grandfather.

Thomas Augustus Jaggar (June 2, 1839 – December 13, 1912) was an American prelate who was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio from 1875 to 1904.

On April 22, 1862, he married Ann Louise Lawrence (1834-1908), my wife’s second cousin four times removed. She was the daughter of John W. Lawrence and Mary King Bowne, daughter of Walter Bowne. Their son, Thomas Augustus Jaggar, Jr., became a volcanologist.

Jaggar was born on June 2, 1839, in New York City, the son of Walter Jaggar and Julia Ann Niles. He was educated in New York City by private tuition, before commencing preparation for the ministry while engaging in business. He studied at the General Theological Seminary and graduated in 1860. In 1874, he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity from the University of Pennsylvania.[1]

Jagger was ordained deacon on November 10, 1860, and became assistant at St George’s Church in Flushing, Queens. In May 1862, he was appointed to, and given charge of, Trinity Church in Bergen Point. He was ordained priest on June 3, 1863, by the Bishop of New York Horatio Potter. In 1864, he became rector of Anthon Memorial Church in New York City (present-day All Souls Church), while in 1868, he succeeded as rector of St John’s Church in Yonkers, New York. Between 1870 and 1875, he served as rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia.[2]

He was consecrated bishop on April 28, 1875, by Presiding Bishop Benjamin B. Smith. Following the election of Boyd Vincent as coadjutor in 1889, he was given oversight of American churches in Europe. He resigned in October 1904, and was named the tenth rector of The Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Boston, Massachusetts in 1906. He was bishop of tehAerican Protestant Episcopal Church in Europe from 1908 until He died in Cannes, France in 1912.

John Watson Lawrence (1869-1895) was the son of  Walter Bowne Lawrence (1839-1912) and Annie Townsend (1841-1902), and was named after his grandfather, John Watson Lawrence (1800-1888). The chief newsworthy episode in his life was the unusual manner in which it ended.

He was Harvard ’91 and gone to work for the family brokerage firm W. B. Lawrence and Son. During he winter of 1894-1895 he suffered from teh grip, returned to work too early, and was prostrated. His physician recommended a sea voyage and aa change of scene. He and his brother Townsend left for a bicycle tour of England and the continent. While bicycling around Southampton, he fell unconscious from his bike. The two brothers went to Paris to consult a learned physician, who recommended complete rest.

They abandoned the tour  and went to Le Havre, where they booked a last minute passage on La Bourgogne. Very early the second day out, John rose and went for a stroll on the promenade deck. The only others up were two steerage passengers. A half hour later his brother Townsend came looking for him.

The two steerage passengers reported, in somewhat broken English,  that twenty minutes previously a young man had been chasing his straw hat and fell overboard. It had not occurred to them this was an important enough incident to report. Townsend sounded the alarm, the ship swung around, but there was no trace of John.

Four days later a seaman was was stretching an awning which suddenly parted also went overboard and was lost. His hat was recovered.

La Bourgogne was cursed. On July 4, 1898 in dense fog the Brutish ship Cromartyshire, traveling at full speed, rammed La Bourgogne.

“La Bourgogne began to list immediately to starboard. Many of the lifeboats on that side were wrecked in the collision and the boats on the port side proved impossible to launch due to the list. As the ship started to list and the stern went under, the crew began to panic. Showing little concern for the passengers, the crew began piling up on whatever lifeboats were available and launched them to sea. Some used fists and oars to beat up any passengers who attempted to come near the boats. Some passengers were stabbed. Half an hour later La Bourgogne completely disappeared beneath the waves, taking with her almost every woman and every single child.”

Of teh 220 crew, half survived. Of the 506 passengers, only about 70 survived. All the children died.

Americans demanded that the crew be tried and punished. The French whitewashed everything, and nothing was done. Instead they put out this propganda poster.

Podocarpus lawrencei

Robert William Lawrence (1807–1833), first-born son of William Effingham Lawrence, was born and educated in England. In 1825 he arrived in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) (per the Elizabeth). He became acquainted with Sir William Jackson Hooker, the Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Glasgow and later director of the Botanical Gardens at Kew in London, from whose friendship he developed a passion as an amateur botanist, sending many specimens from the Colony to Kew, resulting in Hooker’s “Flora Tasmaniae” in 1860. Lawrence was Tasmania’s first botanist, and introduced Ronald Campbell Gunn to Hooker. The native fuchsia mountain correa was named by Hooker Correa lawrenciana in honour of his young protégé.

Lawrence lived in a house “Vermont” which was built for him by his father near Launceston, later moving to his father’s estate “Formosa” as overseer. In 1832 he married Anne Wedge (1808-1833) but she died the following year giving birth to their daughter Annie Emily Lawrence. Lawrence died weeks later. Gunn wrote to Hooker: “It is with feelings of the deepest regret I have to communicate to you the death of our mutual friend Mr W. R. Lawrence. This melancholy event took place at Formosa on the night of 18 October last, the day on which he attained his 26th year, and the first anniversary day of his marriage. Twelve months ago poor Lawrence married a young and most amiable Lady, with whom he lived in the most happy state it is possible for mortals to enjoy in this world, and on 2 September last I left them, after a short visit both in the enjoyment of excellent health; next day Mrs Lawrence was safely delivered of a daughter, but from delicacy of constitution, or too sudden an exposure after her confinement, she was in a few days seized with a fever which terminated fatally within a month, – fatally to Lawrence’s happiness and peace”.

Lawrence died of an apoplectic fit a few weeks later, the coronial jury delivered a verdict of ‘died by a visitation of God’. The infant daughter, Annie Emily Lawrence, was raised by her maternal grandparents in Van Diemens Land and later Port Phillip, where she married Monckton Synnot.

References

Born in England on 18 October 1807, died at ‘Formosa’, Tasmania, on 18 October 1833, possibly due to an epileptic fit.

The first son of a wealthy English merchant, William Effingham Lawrence (1781-1841). The father with his wife and two of Robert’s siblings migrated to Van Diemen’s Land in 1822-23. He purchased a cutter, the Lord Liverpool, to make the journey. William became an influential landowner near Launceston on granted land.

Robert had stayed in England and followed his family to Tasmania in April 1825. His father built a house, Vermont, for him near the North Esk River where he resided until around June 1832 when he moved to the family estate of Formosa near Cressy to act as overseer of his father’s estate.

Recruited by W.Hooker in 1830 as a collector’ he forwarded specimens to Kew until 1832. He made the first collections, including the type of Podocarpos lawrencii, from the mountains south west of Launceston, the Western Tiers, which rise close behind his family property ‘Formosa’. He was instrumental in recruiting Gunn as a collector for Kew. After his untimely death in 1833 his collections were included in Gunn’s herbarium; these bear the initials RWL and usually a Lawrence number. His main collection is in K, with some duplicates in G, MANCH, NSW and OXF.

A much longer biography is in Dick Burns’ book, Pathfinders in Tasmanian Botany, published by the Tasmanian Arboretum in 2012.

In one of his early letters to Hooker in 1830 he wrote:

“. . . I have a taste for the science of Botany.
– My knowledge of this science is certainly very slight indeed,
I am a mere learner and without a preceptor but I hope that in time,
by application I shall become as much of a Botanist as to enable me
to be useful to you now if you will accept my services such as they may be.”

Plants named in his honour include:

Correa lawrenciana (1834)
The genus Lawrencella (1839) with two arid Australian paper-daisy species
The genus Lawrencia (1840) with 16 Australian species in the Malvaceae
Podocarpos lawrencei (1845)
Spyridium lawrencei (1863)
Deyeuxia lawrencei (1940) a grass now presumed extinct.

husband of 3rd great-grandaunt of wife

William Effingham Lawrence (1781–1841) was an English colonist to Australia, the son of Captain Effingham Lawrence, a merchant with houses in London, Liverpool and New York City. Previous generations of Lawrences had settled in the American colonies but returned to England after the War of Independence. Lawrence was an educated and refined man, an intimate of Jeremy Bentham, who was obliged to migrate to the colony of Van Diemen’s Land due to poor health. On his leaving England Bentham wrote to a friend in Rio de Janeiro: ‘Our excellent friend on his way to Australia is not without thoughts of touching at Rio de Janeiro: a worthier man, a more benevolent cosmopolite, never left any country; and very few better informed or more intelligent’.

He purchased a small cutter, the Lord Liverpool and sailed via South America in 1822. On the way he sailed into Rio de Janeiro for provisions and water. Brazil, a Portuguese colony since the 16th century, was in the midst of a struggle for independence, and Lawrence became personally involved through his friendship with José Bonifácio, the liberal revolutionary and first minister under the new government of Dom Pedro, who had defied his father in Lisbon and declared Brazil independent in 1822. Lawrence was captivated by events and remained for months in the country, becoming a confidant of José Bonifácio, the architect of Brazilian independence. Bonifácio wanted Lawrence to remain in the country permanently, but Lawrence declined, and after several exciting months, sailed on for Van Diemen’s Land.

Lawrence arrived in 1823 and, by order of the Colonial Office was ordered a grant of 4,000 acres (16 km²) with his brother, with a reserve after 5 years of a further 4,000 acres (16 km²). These 8,000 acres (32 km²) of land became the subject of controversy, because the grant was to be exclusive of waste land. In the end, due to the mismanagement of the surveyor general, the grant ended up being some 12,000 acres (49 km²). The colony was small and gossip, jealousy and petty rivalry was rife. When Colonel George Arthur arrived he was informed of the size of the grant, and ordered an inquiry, sending John Helder Wedge to survey the grant.

Wedge and Lawrence became friends and Wedge’s niece Anne Wedge married Lawrence’s son Robert William Lawrence in 1832.

Lawrence’s pastoral interests continued throughout the next 20 years and he eventually became one of the largest landowners in the colony. Lawrence was also prominent in the field of education, helping establish a school in the Norfolk Plains, which was not a success. He then formed a committee with Henty and Mulgrave for the formation of a Church of England school in Launceston, but died before the foundation of Launceston Church of England Grammar School.

Under Governor Sir John Franklin Lawrence was appointed to the Legislative Council and retained his seat until his death in 1841. Of his sons Robert William Lawrence died young in 1833, and the others remained in the colonies, except for Edward Effingham Lawrence, who returned to England to be educated and became a Cornet in the 7th Dragoon Guards in 1856 and taking part in the Austro-Sardinian War (1860–61).

James Henry Caldwell (1865-1931) was the son of Edward Holland Caldwell (1844-1872) and Caroline Amelia Shields (1846-1934) and the grandson of the thespian James Henry Caldwell (1793-1863). As James Henry’s mother remarried after his father died, he had half-siblings with the name of Rubira. James Henry was the great granduncle of my wife.

James Henry was born in Mobile, Alabama, and attended private schools in Maryland and New York before entering Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, from which he graduated with a B.S. om 1886. There he was Delta Phi. He returned to work as a civil engineer for the family business, the Mobile Gas Works, and installed electricity in that city,  fifty four years after his grandfather had installed gas.. In 1888 James Henry associated with the Ludlow Valve Manufacturing. In 1892 he became vice president, in 1893 general manager, and in 1909 president. He organized teh Troy Trust Company and became its first president, and became directors of numerous banks and companies. He was an Episcopalian and warden of St. Paul’s church.

James H. Caldwell married, in Troy, May 3. 1887, Margery Josephine Christie, daughter of John T. Christie, of Troy, and granddaughter of John and Margaret (Roberts) Christie, who came to the United States from Scotland in 1832, and settled first in Troy, later moving to New Jersey. Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell are the parents of three children: 1. Margery, married, June 16, 1916, Livingstone W. Houston, of Troy, and has two children: Margery C. and Nancy. 2. John Christie, born June 10, 1893, educated in St. Mark’s School, of Southboro, Massachusetts, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, now associated with the Ludlow Valve Manufacturing Company; married Helen Greatsinger Farrell. 3. Carolyn, educated in the Emma Willard School of Troy, Miss Masters’ School of Dobbs Ferry, New York, and Miss Wickham’s School of New York City; she married, May 28, 1921, Cebra Quackenbush Graves, of Bennington, Vermont, and New York City.

The Ludlow Valve Manufacturing Company was founded by Henry Ludlow in 1861. Ludlow, a native of Nassau, NY, had graduated with an engineering degree from Union College in 1843. He started the company in Waterford, NY but it quickly grew and Ludlow moved it first to Lansingburgh, NY, in 1872, and then to Troy, NY in 1897. When the company moved to Troy it took over the facilities of the Rensselaer Iron Company (Rensselaer Iron and Steel Company) located on the Poestenkill River in South Troy. Ludlow Valve Manufacturing Company was locally managed by four presidents until the 1930s. The first president was Henry Ludlow and he remained in the position until the early 1890s when he was succeeded by John Christie. At this time, Ludlow sold his interests in the company to a group of investors from New York City. The company was one of the largest valve manufacturers in the country and had continued success under Christie and his nephew James H. Caldwell. James H. Caldwell graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1886 and joined the Ludlow Valve Manufacturing Company in 1888. In 1892 he was elected vice president, in 1893 he became general manager and in 1909 he took over the role of president for the company. During his presidency, Ludlow Valve Manufacturing Company was the largest valve and fire hydrant manufacturer in the country and perhaps the largest in the world. Interestingly enough, Caldwell was also Vice President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his daughter was married to Livingston W. Houston, future president of both the Ludlow Valve Manufacturing Company and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Caldwell retired as president from Ludlow in the late 1920’s and evidence exists that a man named William H. Lolley succeeded him. Lolley was president of Ludlow during crucial years in the early 1930’s when serious investigation was taking place regarding the current and future of the company. When Lolley left (mid 1930’s), Livingston Houston took over as president of Ludlow. Houston, using Lolly’s recommendations, introduced a series of changes designed to make Ludlow as prominent as it had once been. Houston did not remain president for long, leaving the company in 1935 for a position at RPI. However, he did remain involved in the company as a board member for many more years. Despite efforts by the Board of Directors, a series of ineffective presidents plagued the business for many years. A merger with Rensselaer Valve Company was one more effort to revive Ludlow Valve Manufacturing Company in 1954. It was hoped that Ludlow could reduce employees, gain strong management and consolidate assets through this merger. However, physical dismantling of Rensselaer Valve Company was lengthy and expensive. In the early 1960s, all the problems faced by Ludlow-Rensselaer Valve Company came to a head. Foreclosure proceedings were brought against the company by James Talcott and Company, a primary lender. Future attempts at reorganization were for naught, and in 1969 final dismantling was initiated. Ludlow valves are still manufactured today under the Patterson Pump Company name in Georgia.