Monmouth County NJ Archives Biographies.....Applegate, John Stilwell 1837 - 1916
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  Author: Mary Depue Ogden, Editor  (1917)
  
  APPLEGATE, John Stilwell,
  Lawyer, Legislator.
  
    John Stilwell Applegate, a prominent lawyer of New Jersey, and who served as
  State Senator in 1882, 1883, 1884, was born August 6, 1837, in the township of
  Middletown, Monmouth county. New Jersey. He died November 10, 1916. He was a
  descendant of Thomas Applegate, who lived at Weymouth, Massachusetts, 1635, and
  at Gravesend, Long Island, 1647. Thomas Applegate was one of the patentees of
  Flushing, Long Island, in the patent dated October 19, 1647, issued by Governor
  Kieft, and he is the progenitor of the Applegate family in America. His son,
  Thomas Applegate, Jr., moved from Gravesend, Long Island, to Monmouth county in
  1674, where he settled, taking up land from the Indians and afterward iccciving
  a warrant therefor from the proprietors. He married a daughter of Sergeant
  Richard Gibbons, one of the patentees of the noted Nicolls or Monmouth patent.
  Other ancestors are Rich-aid Hartshorne, James Bowne, William Lawrence, John
  Throckmorton, Nicholas Stilwell and John Bray, all of whom were pioneer settlers
  of Monmouth county and bore a leading part in colonial history.
  
    The father of John Stilwell Applegate was Joseph Stilwell Applegate, five
  generations removed from the original Thomas, of Weymouth, Massachusetts, a
  prominent and successful farmer of Middletown township and a grandson of John
  Stilwell, quartermaster of the First Regiment of the Monmouth militia in the
  Revolutionary War. He (the father) was born in 1789, and in 1857 built a
  residence at Red Bank, which he occupied until his death in 1881, at the age of
  ninety-two years. The mother of John Stilwell Applegate was Ann Bray, a
  descendant of the Rev. John Bray, a Baptist minister from England, who founded
  the Baptist church and donated building and lot therefor at the village now
  called Holmdel, but long known as Bray's Meeting House, and subsequently as
  Baptisttown. She died in 1878, at the age of eighty-two years.
  
    The subject of this sketch was graduated at Colgate University (then Madison
  University), Hamilton, New York, in 1858, and admitted to the New Jersey bar in
  1861. He began and continued the exercise of his profession at Red Bank, New
  Jersey, until his death, practicing in the State and Federal courts. He was
  connected with many reported cases of public interest, and represented as
  counsel some of the most important corporate and private interests in the State.
  In 1875 he formed a copartnership with Henry M. Nevius, later judge of the
  Hudson Circuit Court, which partnership continued until 1880. In 1884 Frederick
  W. Hope became associated with him as partner, which relation continued until
  1901, when he and his son, John Stilwell Applegate, Jr., formed a partnership in
  the name of John S. Applegate & Son.
  
    Mr. Applegate during the Civil War was commissioned as special deputy of the
  Union League of America, and organized a number of chapters of that patriotic
  organization. In 1862 he was nominated and elected by the Republican party as
  school superintendent of Shrewsbury township, and was three times reelected to
  the same office. He served as a member of the State Republican committee in the
  successful gubernatorial campaign of Marcus L. Ward in 1865. He was president of
  the first building and loan association of the shore section of Monmouth county
  for several years, and in 1875, additional banking facilities being a plain
  necessity of Red Bank, he initiated a movement which resulted in the
  organization of the Second National Bank of Red Bank, and was selected as the
  first president of the new institution, holding the position until his
  resignation in 1887. He was a strong factor in the events which led to the
  incorporation of his town in 1871, and was elected as one of the members of its
  first governing body, and chosen as its chief the following years. In 1881 he
  was elected State Senator, being the first Republican to represent Monmouth
  county in that position, and receiving a majority of nearly one thousand votes
  in a county at that time regarded as the Gibraltar of New Jersey Democracy. Upon
  the organization in 1882 of the New York & Atlantic Highlands Railroad Company,
  he was elected as its president, serving in that capacity until its
  consolidation with the Central Railroad system.
  
    In the New Jersey Senate he introduced and passed under the pressure of his
  influence many important measures; among others a bill requiring the public
  printing of the State to be put out by contract to the lowest bidder, instead of
  farming it out to favorites as a reward to partisan service, a system which had
  then been in vogue for many years. This bill incurred the bitter hostility of
  many newspapers in the State, but, notwithstanding, its inherent justice
  commanded the unanimous support of both houses, and it became a law, effecting a
  public saving of $50,000 annually. He also drafted an introduced a bill of great
  public convenience and utility, authorizing the smaller towns and villages of
  this State to construct and maintain water works. This bill became a law,
  whereby many of these municipalities have organied and now operate efficient
  systems of public water supply Under this act he was appointed in 1884 a member
  of the first board of water commissioners of Red Bank, which office he held
  continuously until the year 1900.
  
    Among other positions of honor and trust which Mr. Applegate held were those
  of director of the Second National Bank of Red Bank; director and treasurer of
  the Red Bank Gas Light Company; president of the board of trustees of the First
  Baptist Church of Shrewsbury, at Red Hank; and trustee of the Monmouth Battle
  Monument Association. He was a member of the American Bar Association; one of
  the board of managers of the New Jersey Society of the Sons of the American
  Revolution; a charter member and trustee and at the time of his decease
  president of the Monmouth County Historical Association; and of the Monmouth
  County Bar Association. He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, a life
  member of the Delta Genealogical and Biographical Society; an honorary member of
  the Regimental Association of the One Hundred and Fifty-seventh New York State
  Volunteers and a member of the New Jersey State Board of Commerce. In 1880 he
  delivered the annual alumni address at Colgate University. He published in 1893
  a memorial volume of George Arrowsmith, lieutenant-colonel of the One Hundred
  and Fifty-seventh New York State Volunteers, killed at the battle of Gettysburg;
  and in 1910. "Early Courts and Lawyers of Monmouth County."
  
    He married, in 1865, Deborah Catharine Allen, daughter of Charles Gordon
  Allen, a prominent citizen of Monmouth county and a resident of Red Bank. His
  surviving children are: Annie, a graduate of Vassar College in 1891. and the
  wife of Professor Charles H. A. Wager, member of the faculty of Oberlin College;
  John Stilwell Applegate, Jr., a graduate of Colgate University (formerly Madison
  University), and Harvard Law School; and Katharine Trafford Applegate, a
  graduate of Vassar College, class of 1897.
  
  
  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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