Somerset County NJ Archives Biographies.....Lewis V. F. RANDOLPH, 1838 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/nj/njfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 November 9, 2008, 12:51 am Author: Mary Depue Ogden, Editor (1917) RANDOLPH, Lewis V. F., Man of Broad Activities. Lewis V. F. Randolph, accountant, director, treasurer and president of railways, banker, manager of estates, mayor, exchange president, traveler, poet, ranchman, horticulturist, publisher and lecturer, has had a widely varied and unique career. He was born May 16, 1838, at Somerville, New Jersey. His parents were Enoch Manning Fitz Randolph and Mary A. Van Syckle. The families of Fitz Randolph and Van Syckle have had their homes in New Jersey for nearly two hundred and fifty years, participating in Colonial and Revolutionary struggles. The former family is a very ancient one, and is traced through more than thirty consecutive generations for a thousand years, from Rolf, the Scandinavian warrior, who married Gisela, the daughter of the King of France. It was Massachusetts Pilgrim stock early in the seventeenth century, and has made Central New Jersey its headquarters for about a quarter of a millennium. Lewis V. F. Randolph came to Plainfield at the age of six, with his parents, and has been a resident of Plainfield during the greater part of his life. Learning to read at the age of four, he continued of studious habit ever afterward. His education was chiefly at Mauriac Academy in Plainfield. At the age of thirteen he was well prepared to enter college, was a well-grounded grammarian, a good scholar in French and had acquired somewhat of Spanish. In Latin he had read Caesar, Virgil and Horace. In Greek he had studied grammar and composition and had read Zenophon. In ancient and modern history he stood well, and had excelled in geography, arithmetic, algebra, geometry and physics—or, as it was then called, natural philosophy. He knew by heart many of the world's more famous poems and orations, and took a leading part in public exhibitions of school elocution. His father died, after a brief illness, at the age of forty-one, when Lewis was but ten. The father was a poet and teacher, and also a manufacturer. He inherited his name from his mother's father, Enoch Manning, a Revolutionary soldier, and brother of the first president of Rhode Island College, afterwards Brown University. Enoch's father's father, Captain Joseph Fitz Randolph, was also a Revolutionary hero. Enoch lived a devoted Christian life, but he left little to his family except his good name. His fortune had been swept away in the tariff troubles of about 1840. Lewis went from the academy to earn a living for his mother and sisters. He was the oldest child and the only son. In his earliest days he was in frail and delicate health. He had no difficulty in his youth, or afterwards, in finding work. During a life of about four score of years, every position he has occupied has come to him without his going after it. Each position he has filled with entire efficiency and success. For three years he was a mercantile clerk. Though as yet a mere boy. he both studied and taught at odd times. He taught a grammar class for some years in the evening—all the pupils being mechanics and clerks older than himself. He helped to organize a literary society whose continued usefulness extended over a period of eighteen years. Before he was sixteen he taught a Bible class in a Sunday school, and continued in charge of it for nineteen years, retiring only when changing his place of residence—the class having then a membership of sixty. He had joined the Baptist church before leaving the Mauriac Academy. In his youth he was active in literary matters. He wrote much for newspapers and magazines, and published a cantata which was acceptably performed. He moved with his mother and sisters from Plainfield to Newark meanwhile, and remained there until after marriage. From mercantile service he went to bank service. In 1854 he took a place in the American Exchange Bank in New York, finding the increased compensation a welcome means of family comfort. Each year found him advancing in responsibility and income. Early in 1863, with his mother's blessing, he enlisted as a private soldier in the Union army. It was at the darkest hour of the country's peril, when the Confederate army was invading Pennsylvania, and a little while before the battle of Gettysburg. He was twice promoted, and, after the emergency campaign of 1863, he was honorably mustered out as a sergeant, being at the time ill of a tedious fever contracted at the end of his government service. In later life he was commander of a Grand Army post. The year 1864 saw him improved in health and back in the employment of the American Exchange Bank, and passing from it, with the cordial recommendation of the president, to the service of the Illinois Central Railroad Company. He had become an expert accountant, and as such he took up a difficult problem for the railroad. Having solved it, he was invited to take a responsible place in the money department of the company in Chicago. It was a period when a great volume of State bank currency was in circulation, and Mr. Randolph was an expert in currency and counterfeits. On returning to the East for a brief vacation, he was unexpectedly impressed into the service of the New York office of his company, in connection with another emergency, and was made private secretary to the president, then W. H. Osborn. Later his responsibilities were increased and he was appointed assistant treasurer. The treasurer was in failing health, and Mr. Randolph discharged the duties of the treasurership for many years. In 1875 he was elected treasurer by the board. He was the youngest treasurer the company ever had. In the meantime he had been elected to the directorship, in 1873, and for a long period he took an active part in directing the policy of the railroad. Those were the conservative and prosperous years of the Illinois Central railroad, when the concern earned from eight to ten per cent. for its shareholders, charged construction expenses to operation, and paid off indebtedness. They were years of onerous duty and responsibility for Mr. Randolph, who held the sole signing power on bank drafts, and who had the personal care of several millions of dollars of other property. To the service of the Illinois Central railroad he gave twenty-one years of his life; that is, from 1864 to 1885. Whilst devoted to these fiduciary duties Mr. Randolph was also active and useful as a citizen. He was induced to take the nomination for the mayoralty of Plain-field, where he had again come to reside, and was in 1880 elected to that office. His expert accounting again came into use in unravelling unsatisfactory accounts of officials; and by untiring energy he achieved beneficial reforms and municipal progress in various directions. About this time he was urged to accept a Congressional nomination, but refused. Despite his refusal he received many votes at the Congressional convention. He was too independent for politics, and he was otherwise too much occupied. He, however, served for a period as chairman of the Union County Republican Committee. He had little recreation in these busy years, though at long intervals he sought the refreshment of the Adirondack woods, or crossed the continent on a mingled mission of business and recuperation. Early in 1885 his overtaxed physical constitution broke down. He was six feet tall, and, at that time, only weighed one hundred and thirty-seven pounds, and was threatened with chronic pulmonary weakness. He resigned his duties in the Illinois Central Railroad Company, except as to certain trusteeships. These he has continued to hold. He went to the Rocky mountains for a period of entire rest, and also visited Texas and New Mexico. He became interested in ranching and purchased land and cattle in the West. His ranching operations afterwards developed into a practical ownership by him of about four thousand grade Hereford and short-horned cattle in New Mexico. In the meantime, by an open-air life, his health improved, and he regained more than twenty pounds in weight. In the autumn of 1886 he was invited by the executors of Hon. Samuel J. Tilden's will to become their secretary and to assist in the management of the estate, which was then in litigation. It was a very large estate, with many diverse interests, and his time was fully occupied in its affairs for several years. Here again his familiarity with the science of accounting, as well as his wide knowledge of investments and business affairs, became conspicuously useful. He was appointed secretary of the Tilden Trust, the New York Library Corporation provided for in Mr. Tilden's will. The estate was managed with economy and entire success throughout the litigation, and the distribution, according to law, of most of the assets was made in 1892. Under the will, about a million dollars remained in special trusts, and the residue of other money devoted to particular purposes remained also in the care of the executors and trustees. Accountings were in the meanwhile given with entire satisfaction of the court and of the heirs. Whilst these trusts were still in course of administration, in 1903, one of the trustees, Hon. Andrew H. Green, was suddenly taken away, and Mr. Randolph was appointed to the vacancy as executor and trustee. Closely associated with Mr. Randolph in the care of the Tilden estate for many years was Hon. John Bigelow, statesman and scholar, and between them came to exist enduring confidence and friendship, which continued until Mr. Bigelow's death in 1911. Mr. Randolph was a pallbearer at Mr. Bigelow's funeral. Meantime, following the settlement of the Tilden litigation, Mr. Randolph was elected president of the Atlantic Trust Company. This banking institution had important clients and depositors, but had suffered losses under a previous administration. Mr. Randolph obtained additional capital, reformed methods and built up business; in fact, under his administration, it became a strong and prosperous concern, whose stock was sought for by prudent investors at the price of three hundred per cent, and upwards. In this service he spent some eight or nine years —the best and most efficient years of his life—and at the end of this period, in 1902, he joined in a merger of his banking institution with the Metropolitan Trust Company, whose leading stockholders had bought largely of the shares of the concern he had managed. When he retired from this trust, it was a matter of private and public comment that, in the course of about half a century of successful work, with widely varied fiduciary relations, in which he had handled hundreds of millions of dollars of other people's money, not a dollar had been lost or misappropriated. But he was not yet to be suffered to retire to private life. He visited the West Indies in 1903, and on his return he received an urgent and unanimous invitation to take the presidency of the Consolidated Stock and Petroleum Exchange of New York. He accepted it and again showed his capacity for administration in the reforms he instituted and in the progress he initiated. He was twice reelected to the presidency without opposition, and was urged to continue in this position; but in 1906 he acted on a resolution long cherished, the suitable opportunity for which had now finally been reached, and he definitely retired from active business. At least he withdrew as much as possible and in a way enabling him to carry out plans for extensive travel. The above is the barest outline of sixty-eight years of Mr. Randolph's life, from 1838 to 1906, but it had many episodes. He helped to organize the New York Zoological Society and was its first treasurer, continuing in that capacity for about six years. He organized the Atlantic Safe Deposit Company and was its first president, managing its affairs successfully up to the time when it began to declare dividends. He took the presidency of the Kanona & Prattsburg railroad, which had never paid any return on its securities, and it soon became a paying concern. He lifted the Carolina & Cumberland Gap railway (as reorganized) out of bankruptcy; and as president of it sold it as a going concern in course of paying its bonded interest. For a while he managed successfully as president a line of steamboats operating about New York harbor and the Hudson river. For some years he was half-owner and publisher of a newspaper at Plainfield. Some particularly hard problems, resulting from maladministration or other misfortune, came to him for solution, and he solved them to the satisfaction of the parties interested. One of these concerned a congeries of coal-mining properties in Illinois and Iowa, whose bonds were in default and the validity of whose mortgages was in question. He established the liens of the mortgages in court, foreclosed them, bought in the several properties on behalf of the bondholders at the foreclosure sales, sold some of them, and organized a new company to manage the others; paid dividends on the company's shares out of earnings, conducted a successful litigation against the former management, and liquidated, with abundant satisfaction to the parties concerned, the entire original investment. As receiver of the New York Iron Mine, he wound up its affairs and apportioned the cash resulting therefrom. He managed for some years an iron mine in Dutchess county, New York, paid off its indebtedness and paid its first dividend; and, when a good pile of ore was on the dump and a comfortable cash balance was in bank, he negotiated a sale of the property at a good price. He took in hand several series of western mortgage bonds and liquidated them to the advantage of investors. Mr. Randolph took an active part in the management of other considerable estates beside the Tilden estate. He was for many years a trustee of the Jonathan Sturges estate, and, for about a dozen of years, he and Alexander Gilbert, president of the Market & Fulton Bank, were co-executors and trustees under the will of their friend, William R. Clarkson, liquidating and investing the property and paying the income chiefly to the wife and sister of Mr. Clarkson. In 1910, on the death of the last income-beneficiary, the conveyance of the property was completed to the Jennie Clarkson Home for Children, agreeably to Mr. Clarkson's will; and this institution now cares for about fifty children with what was substantially Mr. Clarkson's fortune of about $400,000. In its board Mr. Randolph has continued to serve as trustee. Upon his several retirements, or completions of duties, from time to time, suitable resolutions of recognition and praise of his achievements were adopted by boards of directors and trustees with whom he had served. This was notably the case with the Illinois Central Railroad Company, the Atlantic Trust Company, the New York Zoological Society, the Consolidated Stock and Petroleum Exchange of New York, the Illinois & Iowa Fuel Company, and the Jennie Clarkson Home for Children. Perhaps the mementoes most prized by him have been the testimonials of young men associated with him or working under his direction. For example, in 1864, on his retirement from the bank, his companions, to the number of fifty, gave him a dinner, and a complete set of Irving's life and works—twenty-six volumes; and in 1902 the clerks of the Atlantic Trust Company, in parting with their president, presented him with an elegant copy of Shakespeare, in twelve volumes, suitably and affectionately inscribed. Before the year 1906 Mr. Randolph had in the course of business or recreation traveled somewhat in foreign countries with his family; but in that year, accompanied by his wife, he began a series of foreign tours which covered many hundreds of thousands of miles and which continued well into his old age. They made, in four months of 1906, the tour of Great Britain and Ireland. In the following year, with his youngest daughter, he made a longer journey, visiting Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Holland, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey and Greece. His wife and one daughter accompanied him the next year to North Africa and again to Italy and France. In years since then, he has twice visited South America, the West Indies, Hawaii and Mexico, and has spent much time in Portugal and Spain. In 1914 he visited India, incidentally revisiting Egypt, Palestine, Greece and other countries. He studied as he travelled. He saw much and read much. On board ship he was known as "the man with a book." Each time on his return from a voyage he delivered lectures (in the West and South, as well as at home) on his observations abroad. On the voyages themselves, also, he was frequently invited to give lectures on his travels for the benefit and pleasure of his fellow-voyagers. He has seen much abroad and is familiar with conditions and scenery in every State and territory of his native country. Some of the themes of his lectures have been: "Indian Architecture and Religion," "Egypt," "Joppa, Jerusalem and Jericho;" "Ancient Carthage and Modern Tunis;" "Athens and the Eleusinian Mysteries;" "The Making of Italy;" "Brazil;" "Argentina and Chili;" "The British West Indies," and "The Panama Canal." Mr. Randolph gathered works of art and curios from all parts of the world in the course of travel, and with these his home in Plainfield has been interestingly furnished. It has been a happy home. For more than half of his long life he has been domiciled in one house at the corner of Front street and Farragut road. To this home property he has by purchase added many adjoining tracts and has improved and adorned them. In 1867 he had the good fortune to marry Emily Caroline Price, daughter of Matthias and Emily Catherine Price, of Newark, New Jersey. Their united life has been an unbroken harmony for half a century. Their five daughters have grown to womanhood under loving parental care. They have all had abundant opportunities for study and for foreign travel and residence, and have excelled in musical and other accomplishments. The first, third, fourth and fifth have married happily, and are now Mrs. Lee Ashley Grace, of New York City; Mrs. Charles Daniel Parfitt, of Ontario, Canada; Mrs. Robert Spurr Weston, of Brookline, Massachusetts, and Mrs. Harry Keith White, of Plainfield, New Jersey. The second daughter, Marion, a Wellesley graduate, has been the invaluable secretary and housekeeper at home. Mr. and Mrs. Randolph now have eleven grandchildren, and the Thanksgiving home-comings and other anniversary occasions are numerously and joyously attended. Mr. Randolph's literary and religious interests and activities have continued from youth to old age. In 1900 he published a volume of poems, entitled "Survivals," which received from the press much praise and no adverse criticism. Equally successful was his book entitled "Fitz Randolph Traditions," which was published in 1907, and which has been in such demand as to exhaust a large edition. He has continued in membership of the First Baptist Church of Plainfield (of which his father's mother, Mary Manning Fitz Randolph was, in the year 1818, a constituent member), and has long been the president of its board of trustees. As mayor of Plainfield, he appointed the first board of trustees of the Plain-field Public Library. He has been a member of this board for many years, and also its vice-president, and has had much to do with the library's enlargement and prosperity. He was one of the organizers and original trustees of the Muhlenburg Hospital, and has ever kept his heart and purse open to good causes. Whilst in the official service of the Illinois Central railroad, Mr. Randolph studied law assiduously. He never applied for admission to the bar, but made his studies practical, especially in the preparation of documents and briefs. In these studies and exercises he continued from time to time through much of his business life. For one brief, which he prepared on a somewhat novel (and ultimately successful) theory, in an important case (Peoria & Oquawka railroad case), and for attendance and effort at the hearing thereof, the Illinois Central board, as a party in interest, voted him a special compensation of $2,500. Another important and also successful brief was in connection with the railroad company's alleged obligation to pay a certain tax on income, as claimed by the government (the claim, in Mr. Randolph's opinion, being offset by the fact that a part of the income was derived from sales of lands); and still another important document was the foreclosure bill which he prepared as to the old mortgages on the railroad lines south of Cairo, and which the bondholders' counsel, Judge W. S. Campbell, filed without emendation, and upon which was afterwards obtained a decree of foreclosure. At the period of his ranchman experience, about 1886, a certain villainous combination in the southwest obtained from him an advance payment in money on cattle purchased and then attempted to cheat him, but failed. He arrested the ringleader, attacked the coalition, and, mainly acting as his own lawyer, forced them to disgorge. In the course of this experience, he came to own some thousands of acres of Texas farm lands, most of which he afterwards sold. Meantime, he carried forward his ranch enterprise vigorously and successfully, engaging in some interesting and profitable experiments in irrigation engineering, and, in the course of time, arrived at satisfactory results. At his home in Plainfield he has built up a notable park or garden, with hundreds of varieties of rare and beautiful growths, domestic and foreign. It is thought by many to be the most interesting garden in the State of New Jersey. His wife and daughters have shared his enthusiasm for this enterprise, and many visitors have participated in the enjoyment of the garden and in admiration for it. In the course of his wide experience, Mr. Randolph has come to know many distinguished persons of his own country and of other countries and has numbered among his friends not a few of those whom the world has counted worthy. In 1915 Mr. Randolph delivered courses of lectures on India and on Italy before Carson-Newman College of Tennessee, which were much appreciated, and the college conferred upon him the degree of Litterarum Doctor. Mr. Randolph has been generally too busy in conscientiously caring for other people's affairs to grow rich himself. He scorned opportunities for making money, availed of by others, such as were afforded by his official and private knowledge of railway and other corporation matters. He religiously kept free of debt and gradually laid up out of his earnings a competence which in his old age he has enjoyed with his family. Emily Caroline Price, wife of Lewis V. F. Randolph, was born in Newark, on the corner of Broad and Walnut streets, in the house that is now Grace Church rectory. She is the daughter of Matthias Price and his wife, Emily Catherine Judd. Her parents were married July 3, 1838, and had the unusually long married life of sixty-three years and six months, being seldom separated in all that time. The sixtieth anniversary of their wedding was celebrated by friends and neighbors of "auld lang syne," under the trees at the Randolph home. The father of Mrs. Randolph, Matthias Price, was born at Waverly, New Jersey, on March 12, 1814, on a farm that had been in possession of his ancestors from 1664, when it was purchased from the Indians at the time that Elizabeth was founded. The first ancestor of Matthias Price that came to New Jersey was Benjamin Price, who was one of the eighty associates who settled Elizabeth in 1664. He is thought to have come from England in 1638. His name, Ben Price, appears as a witness to the deed bestowing Gardiner's Island on Lion Gardiner, and it is believed that he came to America with Lion Gardiner. After living for years in East Hampton, Long Island, where he acquired property and built a house, Ben Price removed, as one of the eighty associates, to New Jersey, and was one of the founders of Elizabeth. His oldest son— he had three sons and two daughters— was Ben Price, Jr., and he was old enough to be an associate with his father, and one of the eighty in 1664. There is still a landmark of a part of the Price property in Elizabeth, at the corner of Elizabeth avenue and Florida street, consisting of a large cut stone, marked on top "1694," and on one side "B. P.," and on another "R. T." It has been guarded by an iron railing, put there by the Sons of the Revolution, and a sign placed near, reading: "This stone marks the intersection of the Carteret land owned by Richard Townley, the land of Benjamin Price, and the King's Highway, now Elizabeth avenue— probably the oldest road in New Jersey, opened by the Dutch before the settlement of Elizabethtown; the post and stage route to Philadelphia."—Elizabethtown Chapter, No. 1, Sons of the American Revolution, 1908. Benjamin Price, Sr., was born in 1621, and died in 1712, having shown in his long life of ninety-one years, marked strength and vigor, both physical and mental. He was respected and honored by his associates and was often chosen by them to represent them where judgment and skill were needed. One of the sons of Benjamin Price, Jr., was Joseph, who married Elizabeth Miller, about 1738. One of their sons was Daniel Price (1st), who married Phebe Whitehead, in 1766. This Daniel was choir leader in the old First Church at Elizabethtown. All the Prices were musical and possessed of fine voices, the heritage of their Welsh ancestry, for the name Price is a corruption of ap-Rhys, a very ancient Welsh name. Daniel (1st) Price was a volunteer who aided in capturing the British transport "Blue Mountain Valley," loaded with arms and provisions for the British army, and mounting twelve carriage guns. This ship was captured without loss of a man on the American side, but after the endurance of great hardship, for the weather was severe, it being late in January, or early in February, 1776. Daniel died in less than a year afterward in consequence. Daniel Price (2nd), son of Daniel (1st), was born March 5, 1767, died April 7, 1824, at Waverly. He was married, in 1790, to Phebe Thompson, born August 9, 1772, died March 1, 1857. One of the sons of Daniel (2nd) (Daniel had eight sons and one daughter) was Matthias, youngest of all the nine children, and father of Mrs. Randolph. Mrs. Randolph's mother, Emily Catherine Judd, was born February 20, 1817, and died September 30, 1908. Her parents were George Baldwin Judd, born 1796, at Farmington, Connecticut, and died June 1, 1872, in Minnesota. He married Abigail Soverel, May, 1816. Miss Soverel was born September 1, 1796, in Orange, died November 5, 1880. The father of George Baldwin Judd was Elizur Judd, of Farmington, a Revolutionary soldier, born January 10, 1767, died in 1845, m Illinois. He married Temperance Scott. Elizur Judd was son of Heman Judd, born in Farmington, Connecticut, April 27, 1744, died 1787. He married Anna Goodrich, daughter of Zeb-ulon Goodrich, of Wethersfield, in 1764. The father of Heman Judd was Matthew Judd, of Farmington, born August 31, 1706, died 1755, married, June 28, 1733, Abigail Phelps, who died about 1754. The father of Matthew was Daniel Judd, born 1675, married, December 4, 1705, Mercy Mitchell, of Woodbury, died April 29, 1748. He was one of the most wealthy men of those days. His brother's daughter was the mother of Samuel Hopkins, D. D., "the Hopkinsian." Daniel's father was William Judd, born 1635, married, March 30, 1658, to Mary Steele, of Farmington, died 1690, at Farmington, a very rich man. He was usually called Sergeant William Judd. His wife Mary was daughter of John Steele. William was the eldest of six sons and three daughters. The father of this family was Thomas Judd, who came from England in 1633 and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was married about 1632. He moved to Hartford in 1636 and to Farmington in 1644. He was a substantial citizen and many times—at least sixteen times—a deputy to the General Court. His wife died in 1678, and the next year he married Clemence Mason and removed to Northampton, the home of Miss Mason, where he died on November 12, 1688. His name is on the Hartford monument, being one of the original settlers of Hartford, and also of Farmington. Mrs. Randolph is of the pioneer stock of America. Her paternal ancestry have been in New Jersey more than two hundred and fifty years, and the Soverels, the family of the grandmother who married into the Judd family, came to New Jersey from England in 1739, thus having been Jerseyites for one hundred and seventy-seven years. This first Soverel in New Jersey was named Abram and he was born July 15, 1716. He settled in Orange and married Jane Williams, December 10, 1741, and died in Pennsylvania (where he was called by business engagements) in 1745. Thus by birth and breeding Mrs. Randolph is truly a daughter of New Jersey, and though she has traveled in many foreign lands, her thoughts and her love have ever turned fondly to her home in New Jersey. 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 Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/nj/somerset/bios/randolph-lvf.jpg This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/njfiles/ File size: 29.8 Kb This file is located at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/nj/somerset/bios/randolph-lvf.txt