Gloucester County NJ Archives Biographies.....William Alexander FLANIGEN, 1842 - 1915
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 November 8, 2008, 9:38 pm

Author: Mary Depue Ogden, Editor  (1917)

FLANIGEN, William Alexander,
Merchant, Active in Community Affairs.

  This is a success-worshiping age. The men we delight to honor are those who
have accomplished something real and tangible, the significance of which we can
grasp with our five senses, the men who have built up industries or raised
themselves from positions of obscurity and poverty to places of distinction and
wealth. We demand success and, as though in response, we have progress in all
the departments of material accomplishment such as the Old World has never
before witnessed. Perhaps the most characteristic of all the achievements of the
day is that which has taken place in the business world, in the line of
industrial and commercial development, and it is the leaders of activity in this
direction that are our choicest heroes. The late William Alexander Flanigen, a
distinguished merchant of Woodbury, New Jersey, was one of those who rose by his
own efforts to a place of prominence in the community of which he was a member,
and whose career is as conspicuous for the high principles he maintained during
its course as for the success that attended it. It may be said of him without
exaggeration that he was a progressive, virile American citizen of the self-made
type, thoroughly in harmony with the spirit of this modern age and who, in
compassing his own success, performed a corresponding service for the community.

  William Alexander Flanigen was a native of this country, born at Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, July 3, 1842. He was, however, of Irish descent and inherited the
many virtues and marked talents of the race. He was the son of William Conway
and Jane (Adams) Flanigen, old and highly respected residents of the city of
Philadelphia, where Mr. Flanigen, Sr., conducted a successful dry goods house
for many years. The first half of Mr. Flanigen's life was spent in the city of
his birth, and it was there that his entire business career was carried on,
though he made his home during the latter years of his life in Woodbury, New
Jersey. He received his education at the public schools of Philadelphia, and
would have graduated from the high school had it not been that ill health
compelled him to withdraw from the course just before the close of the year. Ill
health, indeed, dogged him not a little in his youth and his schooling was not
the only thing that was curtailed by it. At the opening of the Civil War, he at
once offered his services to the United States government and enlisted in a
Pennsylvania regiment, but his health was adjudged not sufficiently robust and
he was discharged. His father, with a parent's usual thought, desired that the
lad should follow in his steps and engage in the dry goods business, and with
that end in view apprenticed him to a dry goods merchant in Philadelphia for the
munificent wage of fifty dollars a year. The lad did not, however, take to the
idea at all kindly, it being his desire to take up the grocery business instead,
and being of an exceptionally determined and persistent nature, he finally
overcame his father's objections. These were extremely strong, however, and
although he finally allowed his son to have his own way in the matter, it was
with many prognostications of failure that the old gentleman gave his consent.
However, the young man did not lose heart, but set out with enthusiasm to seek a
position. This was no such difficult matter for the bright, intelligent boy, and
he was soon installed in a retail grocery store in the city, where he made
himself most valuable to his employers. He developed a remarkable talent for
accounts and while still little more than a youth became well known as an
expert. With this ability, he found it no great matter to gain advancement in
the store where he happened to be employed or to find new and better positions
elsewhere. He worked in a number of establishments, among others with the large
wholesale firm of Janney & Andrews with the title of "head bookkeeper and
financier," and it was while in this employ that his accounting became so well
known that he was called upon by outside concerns to straighten their accounts
and do the general work that is now done by expert accountants. His progress was
very rapid from this time on, and in 1874 he left Janney & Andrews to go with
Thomas Roberts & Company, also wholesale grocers. He began his association with
this concern in the same capacity as that in which he had worked for Janney &
Andrews, but before long he was taken into the firm as a partner. This was in
the year 1875 and for five years thereafter he had a share in the profits of
this large and lucrative business. In 1880, however, he severed his connection
with this company, and in partnership with Robert Comly founded the firm of
Comly & Flanigen, and engaged in a wholesale grocery commission business, and
later the firm of Comly, Flanigen & Company was formed. Both these companies
flourished greatly and Mr. Flanigen continued a partner in both until the time
of his death. He was always greatly interested in the welfare of the grocery
business in a general sense and did much work to advance its interests in
connection with his membership in the Grocers and Importers Exchange. He was
also a member of the Philadelphia Bourse, and a prominent figure in the business
world of the city generally.

  But it was not only in the business world that Mr. Flanigen was a conspicuous
figure. He was a man of far too wide an outlook on life, of too broad sympathies
to permit him to rest content with a career devoted wholly to business. He was,
on the contrary, deeply interested in many aspects of life, and concerned
himself for the general good of the community. He was active in the matter of
preserving the forests of the country and the American Forestry Association. Art
and science both offered him delightful subjects for study and recreation and he
belonged to a number of associations which existed for their cultivation Among
these should be named the Fairmount Park Art Association, the Franklin Institute
of the State of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Zoological Society and the
American Civic Association.

  The Flanigen family, of which Mr. Flanigen was so distinguished a member, had
its origin in the North of Ireland, and was of that extremely enterprising Irish
Protestant class that have made so great an industrial region of the upper
portion of the island. On his mother's side he was of Scotch descent, his
maternal grandmother, Mary Robertson, having been adopted and brought as a child
to America by her aunt, the widow of Colonel Bryce, one of General Washington's
aides in the Revolution. Mary Robertson married Robert Adams, a carpenter and
builder of Philadelphia. Mr. Flanigen was a Presbyterian in his religious
convictions, and during his residence in Philadelphia attended the Calvary
Church. After coming to Woodbury to live he joined the Presbyterian church there
and until his death was active in its interests. For eighteen years, from 1879
to 1S97, he was the choirmaster there and greatly enjoyed the work which brought
him into constant contact with an art greatly beloved by him. He was a stanch
Republican in his political views all his life.

  Mr. Flanigen was married, on May 14, 1884, to Julia Pierce Herbert, a daughter
of Henry and Cornelia (McMaster) Herbert. Mr. Herbert was a New Englander of
French Huguenot stock who in the latter years of his life moved to Pennsylvania
and resided upon a farm in the vicinity of Frankford, Pennsylvania. He was a man
of considerable means and greatly interested in municipal and educational
matters. He died in 1856, and in 1873 his family moved to Woodbury, New Jersey,
where Mr. Flanigen met his future wife, and it was after their marriage that the
former came to Woodbury to reside. To Mr. and Mrs. Flanigen were born four
children: Jessy, William Herbert, Ruth and Donald.

  The death of Mr. Flanigen occurred on April 9, 1915, and was felt as a very
real loss by the entire community. It is always difficult, if not impossible, to
estimate the effect upon their environment of such characters as that of Mr.
Flanigen, characters the influence of which depends not so much on actual deeds
they do, as upon the subtle force which communicates itself unseen to all about
from a strong and gracious personality. But although any actual gauge is
difficult we are surely justified in valuing such influence very highly. In Mr.
Flanigen's case his tastes and instincts were blended in so fortunate an
admixture as to seem predestined for the gain and redistribution of knowledge.
It would, perhaps, be difficult to say whether art with its more direct
emotional appeal, or science, whose voice is for the intellect, ranked higher in
his tastes, but certain it is that he loved both and was able to gratify his
craving for both extensively. Yet love them as he did, he never allowed them to
interfere with the practical duties of life nor with the normal degree of
intercourse with his fellows so essential to healthy, wholesome human life.
Indeed he never enjoyed himself more thoroughly than when the dispenser and
recipient of those amenities that a man knows only in his own home and in the
bosom of his own family. It thus came about that the knowledge and the
enlightenment that he gained in his excursions into the realms of experience and
of books was again given out to those fortunate enough to meet him in an
intimate relationship, and thus directly and indirectly influenced the community
in the direction of refinement of taste and general culture. His taste in
reading led him naturally to many subjects, literary and historic, and in all of
these he was well versed. How pure and well-judged, how discriminating were
these tastes is well exemplified in his home, which reflects these qualities in
every detail. His spirit was essentially youthful and, to the end of his life,
he found in the young most congenial companions. If it is difficult to estimate
accurately the influence for good of such a man, it is at least easy to set it
very high.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

MEMORIAL CYCLOPEDIA OF NEW JERSEY

UNDER THE EDITORIAL SUPERVISION OF MARY DEPUE OGDEN

VOLUME III
MEMORIAL HISTORY COMPANY NEWARK,  NEW JERSEY
1917


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