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9724Production Note
Cornell University Library produced this
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1994.BUFFALO
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
PUBLICATIONS
VOLUME SEVENTEEN
n
Edited by Frank H. SeveranceThe
Board of Managers
of the
Buffalo Historical
Society
1914ANDREW LANGDON,
PRESIDENT, 1894 TO I909. HONORARY PRESIDENT SINCE I909.HON. HENRY WAYLAND HILL, LL.D.,
PRESIDENT SINCE igiO.
VICHARLES R. WILSON,
VICE-PRESIDENT.
viiFRANK H. SEVERANCE, L. H. D.,
secretary-treasurer; editor of the society's publications.
viiiHOWARD H. BAKER.
IXG. HUNTER BARTLETT, M. D.ALBERT H. BRIGGS, M. D.
xiWILLIS O. CHAPIN.
XUROBERT R. HEFFORD.
xivFRANK M. HOLLISTER.
xvGEORGE R. HOWARD.
xviHENRY R. HOWLAND.
XVIIWILLIAM G. JUSTICE.
XVlllLORAN L. LEWIS, JR.
XIXG. BARRETT RICH, SR.
xxLEE H. SMITH, M. D.
xxiHENRY WARE SPRAGUE.
XXIIGEORGE ALFRED STRINGER.WILLIAM Y. WARREN.
XXIVPUBLICATIONS
OF THE
BUFFALO
Historical Society
VOLUME XVII
EDITED BY
FRANK H. SEVERANCE
SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY
BUFFALO, NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE
BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
1913Union and Oilmen -pres*
BuffaloOFFICERS OF THE
BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
1913
Honorary President................ANDREW LANGDON
President....................... HON. HENRY W. HILL
Vice-President.................. CHARLES R, WILSON
Secretary-Treasurer ........ FRANK H. SEVERANCE
BOARD OF MANAGERS
Term expiring January, 1914.
Hon. Henry W. Hill,,	Henry R. Howland,
George R. Howard,*	Charles R. Wilson,
William G. Justice.
Term expiring January, 1915.
Andrew Langdon,	Loran L. Lewis, Jr.,
Frank H. Severance,	George A. Stringer,
Frank M. Hollister.
V
Term expiring January, 1916.
Albert H. Briggs, M. D.,	Lee H. Smith, M. D.,
Robert R. Hefford,	Willis O. Chapin,
1	William A. Galpin.
Term expiring January, 1917.
Howard H. Baker,t	Dr. G. Hunter Bartlett,
G. Barrett Rich,	Henry W. Sprague,
William Y. Warren.
The Mayor of Buffalo, the Corporation Counsel, the Comptroller,
Superintendent of Education, President of the Board of Park Com-
missioners, and President of the Common Council, are ex-oMcio
members of the Board of Managers of the Buffalo Historical Society.
* Succeeded J. N. Larned, died August is. 1913.
t Succeeded Henry A. Richmond, died May 10,1913.
xxixLIST OF THE
PRESIDENTS OF THE SOCIETY
FROM ITS ORGANIZATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.
*Millard Fillmore,...........................1862 to 1867
*Henry W. Rogers,,....................................1868
*Rev. Albert T. Chester, D. D.,..................... 1869
*Orsamus H. Marshall,............................... . . 1870
*Hon. Nathan K. Hall, .............. . . .............1871
*William H. Greene,.................................. 1872
*Orlando Allen,.......................................1873
*Oliver G. Steele, . . . .............................1874
*Hon. James Sheldon,.........................1875 and 1886
*William C. Bryant,. . .............................. 1876
*Capt. E. P. Dorr,................................... 1877
*Hon. William P. Letch worth, ........................1878
*William H. H. Newman,.......................1879 and 1885
*Hon. Elias S. Hawley, . .............................1880
*Hon. James M. Smith, ................................1881
*William Hodge, ................................. . . 1882
^William Dana Fobes,.........................1883 and 1884
*Emmor Haines,........................................1887
*James Tillinghast, .........................*........1888
*William K. Allen,.................................   1889
*George S. Hazard, ..........................1890 and 1892
^Joseph C. Greene, M. D.,...........................  1891
* Julius H. Dawes,....................................1893
Andrew Langdon,..............................1894 to 1909
Henry W. Hill, ..............................1910 to 1913
* Deceased.
XXXPREFACE
RECENT volumes of this series have been devoted each
to a special topic or group of related topics in our
regional history. The present volume is more varied
in character.
The leading paper is a record of the life and work of
Hon. William Pryof Letchworth, a former president of this
Society. Its author, the late J. N. Larned, had known Mr.
Letchworth for half a century, had prepared an extended
biography of him, since published in book form, and was
perhaps of all men best qualified to add to the records of
this Society an adequate and appreciative review of Mr.
Letchworth’s life-work. It is not merely adequate and
appreciative, but it is just. Written by Mr. Larned, it
could not be otherwise.
Of somewhat similar character, and reflecting a like
intimacy, is Mr. Henry Ware Sprague’s paper on the late
Lars G. Sellstedt. The Historical Society is fortunate in
being able to preserve in its records, this portrait, drawn
with literary skill and warmth of feeling, of an artist greatly
endeared to his own generation, his memory made green
though coming years by his work.
The fiftieth birthday of the Buffalo Historical Society,
and the exercises incident thereto, have made it necessary
in this volume to say a good deal about the Society itself.
Besides the full report of the proceedings at the semi-cen-
XXXIxxxii
PREFACE.
tenary, including the addresses made at the unveiling of
tablets in memory of Millard Fillmore and Grover Cleveland,
this volume also contains the minutes of the fiftieth and
fifty-first annual meetings. Report of the former would
naturally have appeared in last year’s volume; but the
unusual character of that work (“The Picture Book of
Earlier Buffalo”) made it advisable to carry these routine
records over to the present publication.
To many, into whose hands this book will come, its most
attractive feature will be the group of papers giving
reminiscence and anecdote of the earlier Buffalo. The
“Early Recollections” of the late Mrs. Snow (her death
occurring March 16, 1911) ; Mr. Frank M. Hollister’s
enjoyable glimpses of “Some Early Buffalo Characters”;
and Mr. Sylvester J. Mathews’ memories of Buffalo in the
’30’s—the Buffalo of his boyhood—make up a group of
papers which, though written in light vein, have none the
less their place in these Publications, and a definite value to
the student of Buffalo history. So too has the remarkable
statement of Benjamin Rathbun.
Of broader value, are the letters and military orders of
General, afterwards Sir, Roger Hale Sheaffe. Documentary
material of this sort has little attraction to one who reads
merely for entertainment; but its worth will be recognized
and appreciated, by the student of the war period of 1812-
1814 on the Niagara and adjacent Lakes. The Buffalo
Historical Society regards it as an important part of its
publication work, to discover and preserve in these volumes
documents of this character—the crude material from
which trustworthy historical narrative may be written.PREFACE.
XXX111
Acknowledgment is herewith made to the Hon. James
Hilton Manning of Albany, through whose courtesy the
present publication of the Sheaffe papers has been made
possible.
F. H. S.CONTENTS
Officers of the Society.................................xxix
List of Presidents of the Society.......................xxx
Preface................................................. . xxxi
LIFE AND WORK OF WILLIAM PRYOR LETCH-
WORTH .......................J. N. Lamed 3
LARS GUSTAV SELLSTEDT . . . Henry Ware Sprague 39
SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL
SOCIETY:
From the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy.........
Willis O. Chapin 77
From the Society of Natural Sciences . ....
Henry R. Howland 80
From the Canadian Institute .... David Reid Keys 83
Historical Address . .......Hon. Henry W. Hill 84
“Millard Fillmore" : Address at unveiling of the Fillmore
Memorial Tablet ........Frank M. Hollister 112
“Grover Cleveland": Address at unveiling of the Cleve-
land Memorial Tablet..........John G. Milbum 121
EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF BUFFALO................
Mrs. Julia F. Snow 127
SOME EARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.................
Frank M. Hollister 165
MEMORIES OF EARLY DAYS IN BUFFALO.............
Sylvester J. Mathews 191
THE CASE OF BENJAMIN RATHBUN . . By Himself 227
DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE WAR OF 1812:
THE LETTER-BOOK OF GEN. SIR ROGER
HALE SHEAFFE ............................. 271
Note on the Sheaffe. Papers.................. 273
Sheaffe Documents..........................   275
XXXVxxxvi
CONTENTS.
APPENDIX.
PAGE
PROCEEDINGS, BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY . .	383
Buffalo Meeting, American Historical Association . .	385
Dedication, New York State Education Building ...	391
Fiftieth Annual Meeting..................   393
Fifty-first Annual Meeting ................ 405
MEMORIALS ...................................   415
BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS .	419
BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY MEMBERSHIP . .	431
INDEX....................................... .	437
ERRATA........................................  453
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Portraits of the Board of Managers, Buffalo His-
torical Society.................................Pp.	i-xxii
Portrait, Lars G. Sellstedt, . . painted by himself . . Op. p. 39
Millard Fillmore Memorial Tablet................. “	112
Grover Cleveland Memorial Tablet .........	“	121
Portrait, Julia Dean............................  “	210
Andrew Langdon Tablet............................ “	385
Charlotte Mulligan Memorial Tablet .......	“	412
Portrait, James Sweeney.......................... “	415
“	John J. McWilliams...................... “	416
“	William H. H. Newman.................... “	416
“	Henry A. Richmond . ...................  “	417
“	J. N. Larned...........................  “	418WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH
By J. N. LARNEDTHE LIFE AND WORK OF
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH
READ AT A MEETING OF THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL
SOCIETY ON THURSDAY EVENING,
APRIL l8, 1912
By J. N. LARNED
I knew Mr. Letchworth with considerable intimacy for
somewhat more than fifty years. I thought that I knew
him well, and had admired and esteemed him justly, to the
high measure of his dues. But, last year, it became my
privilege to prepare an account of his life, and in my study
for that purpose, of his whole career and of himself as
revealed in it, I found that I had not more than half under-
stood how rare a man he was in qualities and powers.
What I shall say to you about him tonight will be quoted
for the most part from the biography (soon to be published)
in which I have attempted to portray his life, his work, his
manifested character, the greatness of his service to the
world, in an adequate way.
The life to be reviewed was that of a man who spent a
moderate part of it in pursuits of personal business, until
they had given him the freedom and the means for effective
service to his fellow men, rendered through a long re-
mainder of laborious years, and who exercised in that ser-
vice a rare capacity for what may be described as the states-4
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
manship of philanthropy, which labors for the reformation
of evil conditions in the world. The instructiveness of his
labors and the inspiration of his example seem equally to
have given an importance to his life which death did not end.
In devoting the greater part of his mature life to benevo-
lent work (performed as an unpaid official of the State of
New York, and wholly at his own cost), Mr. Letchworth
was obedient, it is plain, to hereditary promptings, from an
ancestry which had been spiritually cultured for two cen-
turies by the humane Christianity of the Society of Friends.
The family was of ancient English stock,—so ancient that
its origin, if the tracing were possible, would most likely be
found in Saxon times. The name, Letchworth, is that of a
parish and village in the hundred of Broadwater, county of
Hertford, England, two miles from the town of Hitchin
and northwestward from London about thirty-three miles.
It seems obviously a Saxon name, and whether the parish
received it from the family or the family from the parish is
an undetermined question which calls for no discussion
here.
Our present interest in this genealogy goes back to about
the middle of the Seventeenth Century, soon after George
Fox began the preaching in England which inspired the
formation of the Society of Friends. At that time one
Robert Letchworth, living in the village of Chesterton, near
Cambridge, and about twenty-five miles from Letchworth
village, is found to have joined the religious followers of
George Fox, and to have borne his share of the penalties of
imprisonment and fine which the Friends or Quakers of
that generation had to suffer, for refusing to pay tithes to
the established church, or to attend its services, or to make
oath in courts of law,. This Robert Letchworth is believed
to have been the grandfather of another Robert, born lateWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
5
in the Seventeenth Century, from whom the descent of all
who bear the name in America is authentically traced.
The last-named Robert Letchworth, a business man of
London, served also in the ministry of the Friends for
many years, and his third son, Thomas, became a very
notable preacher of the sect. From this Thomas Letch-
worth the families who bear the name in England derive
their descent.
On our western continent the family name was planted
by John Letchworth, the second son of Robert, who emi-
grated to America in 1766. Leaving his wife and four
children in England, he came alone, to test the conditions
of life at Philadelphia before venturing to bring his family
thither. In 1768 he had established himself in business as a
builder so satisfactorily that wife and children were called
to join him in the new home. The reunion was unhappily
brief; for the father, being summoned back to England on
some errand of business, in 1772, fell sick while there and
died. His widow, thus sorely bereft, remained at Phila-
delphia and reared her children, two sons and two daugh-
ters, under circumstances of much hardship, in the troubled
years before and during the Revolutionary War. The
younger son of this transplanted family, William Letch-
worth, married and spent his life in Philadelphia, rearing a
family of eight children, the eldest of whom, named Josiah,
born in 1791, became the father of the subject of this
biography.
Josiah Letchworth, married in 1815 to Miss Ann Hance,
began his wedded life at Burlington, New Jersey, but re-
moved in time to successive homes at Brownville, Moravia,
Sherwood and, finally, Auburn, New York. His residence
in Auburn was no longer than five years; but it sufficed
to make him a citizen of note. He had not come to the city6
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
as a stranger, his life for twenty years at Sherwood having
brought him into much intercourse with the city; but noth-
ing in that intercourse could account for the quickness with
which he became affectionately known and esteemed by the
public at large. He entered actively into social service
work, along many lines; interested himself greatly in the
schools; spoke much and earnestly for temperance and
against slavery, and appears to have caused the fine spirit
of benevolence and justice in true Quakerism to be felt in
the city as a potent force. When he died, in the spring of
1857, there was a profound sense of public loss in Auburn,
which Senator Seward gave voice to some months later, on
returning from Washington to his home. “Josiah Letch-
worth, the founder of our charities, the defender of truth
and justice, is no more,” he exclaimed, in a public address.
“You,” he added, “deplore his loss as I do; for he was not
more my friend than a public benefactor.”
A more significant tribute to the memory of Josiah
Letchworth was paid by children of the schools, who raised
a fund with which to procure the engraving of his portrait
on steel by Mr. Buttre, a noted artist of the day. Prints
from this excellent engraving went into many Auburn
homes.
It goes without saying that the father who won the
hearts of a community was loved and revered in his own
household; and this was equally true of the mother,—a
strong and admirable character, who ruled her children with
a firmness that was ever kind and wise. Between the
brothers and sisters, too, the ties of affection were more
than common in strength and warmth. From an abundance
of family correspondence, confided to the writer of this
memoir, he receives no other impression so clear as that of
the atmosphere of love, of piety in the large sense, of allWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
7
simple rightness of feeling, in which the young were reared,
and the influence of which they carried with them from
the parental home.
Of a family of four daughters and four sons William
Pryor Letchworth was the fourth child and the second son.
He was born on the 26th of May, 1823, while the family
lived at Brownville. Very little of autobiographical material
is to be found in anything left by Mr. Letchworth, of letters
or other writings; but in bits of reminiscence that he did
now and then commit to paper he was always carried back
to his childhood. One such tells of a project he formed,
apparently in his twelfth or thirteenth year, of running away
from home.
“By reading the lives of some noted men, and various
stories of marvellous adventure [he wrote], I was ini-
pressed with the idea that, to be successful and achieve great
things, it was necessary that one should run away from
home while a boy. This conclusion, and the secret resolu-
tion I had formed to act on it, I confided to an employe of
my father of whom I was very fond. He basely betrayed
me, and my father soon found the opportunity for a private
conversation with me. To my dismay, he said: ‘William,
it is understood that thee intends to leave us. I am sorry
to learn this, as we all think a great deal of thee. Through
thy early childhood and down to the present time thee has
been a great care to mother and myself, to say nothing of
considerable expense, and we had been looking forward to
the time when thee would have the good will and strength
to make us some return for what we have tried to do for
thee. But, since thee has decided to leave us, we will con-
form ourselves to thy wishes. In the carrying-out of thy
plan there is one thing, however, that troubles me, and that
is thy leaving in the night, and without the opportunity of
our bidding thee good-bye. Mother has a pair of new
stockings she has knit for thee, and thy brothers and sisters
would like to make thee some little presents.’ This brought
me to my senses. I felt shame and disgust with myself, and
nothing more was said of the running-away plot.”8
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
Nothing could be told of the father of William Pryor
Letchworth that would illustrate more significantly the
wisdom with which the youth of the latter was trained, and
the fine inheritance of mind and temper on which it was
his good fortune to draw.
Another of the few gleanings of autobiographical ma-
terial from Mr. Letchworth’s papers is a note of the cir-
cumstances of his going from the family home into the
outside world, to begin the career of business which he
followed from his fifteenth to his fiftieth year. Not long
after the frustration of his running-away project, his father,
he relates,
“made application to the head of an importing and manu-
facturing house [at Auburn] for a place for me. He soon
received a reply, asking him to bring me to the city. A
conversation followed between the head of the firm and my
father, at the close of which my father said: ‘Well, William’
(addressing the merchant by his given name), ‘I have en-
deavored thus far to make a man of my son, and will ask
thee to finish the task.’ Before leaving, my father gave me
a dollar, with the remark that I might need a little pocket-
money. This was all that my father ever gave me, and with
this I began life. A few years after I had become of age I
was disposed to envy one of my former chums whose father
gave him five thousand dollars to start business with; but
his experience made me finally thankful that my father
never was able to give me anything beyond the one dollar.
“My salary with the firm [Hayden & Holmes, manu-
facturers and dealers in saddlery hardware] which engaged
me was fixed at forty dollars a year, and living, and out of
this I was to clothe myself and meet all my personal
expenses. I set out with the determination that this sum,
small as it was, should suffice for all my requirements. The
result was that I saved during the year between two and
three dollars, and placed the same on interest. .	.	. The
realization that I could practice sufficient self-denial to live
within my means gave me greater confidence in myself and
strengthened my character. Living within one’s means isWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
9
as necessary to success as it is essential to one's peace of
mind and happiness."
Thus William had his graduation from home and com-
mon schools, in or about his fifteenth year, and was matric-
ulated in the university of practical affairs, to learn the
ways of men and be trained for entrance into the activities
of the world. Ambition had an early growth in him, as he
more than once confessed. Apparently it was an ambition
quite undefined in those early years. Nothing indicates that
his aspirations were directed toward any particular goal,
of political or literary or scientific renown, or of wealth.
What he felt as ambition may have been just an upward-
impelling eager spirit which would have the same potency in
all situations, to make the most of them, get the best out of
them, rise to the highest of their offered possibilities. All
that is told of his youthful clerkship in the service of
Hayden & Holmes goes to show that this spirit was as
manifest in it as in the higher, final work of his life. He
studied the making, buying, and selling of saddlery hard-
ware as carefully, thoroughly, zealously as, forty years
later, he studied the saving of homeless children, the care
of epileptics, and the treatment of the insane. As a boy
he accepted the assignment to him of a field of work in
which his means of living were to be earned, and labored in
it without stint; as a man, when his independence had been
won, he chose for himself a mission of social service, and
gave himself unsparingly to that. The fidelity to his under-
taking was the same in each case.
In the service of Hayden & Holmes, at their establish-
ment in Auburn, the youth grew to young manhood,
remaining six or seven years, living in the family of Mr.
Holmes, as a friend, and becoming more and more invalu-
able to the firm. Their business was an extensive one for10
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
that period, employing a large part of the convicts in the
prison workshops at Auburn, under contract with the State.
Mr. Hayden, the senior partner in the firm, was the head
of several other establishments in the same line of business,
at different points in the country, including one at New
York. That gentleman had kept an eye on young Letch-
worth, noting his intelligence, his fidelity, the complete
understanding he had acquired of every detail of the busi-
ness, and the good judgment with which his duties were
performed, with the result that the Auburn clerk was called
to a post of more importance at New York.
This advance to a higher school of business and to the
opening of a larger experience of life came to Mr. Letch-
worth in the summer or fall of 1845,—the year after his
crossing the threshold into manhood’s estate. Of the three
years of his life and work in New York not much can be
told. He wrote frequently to his parents and sisters, and
his letters were carefully kept, as all similar family records
were preserved; but they contain almost nothing that
touches the work he was doing or the circumstances of his
life outside of his work.
His residence in New York ended in the autumn of
1848, when he entered into new arrangements of business
which carried him to Buffalo, and into a partnership with
the Messrs. Pratt & Co., leading hardware merchants of
that city. They had known him at Auburn and at New
York, through their dealings with Hayden & Holmes, and
evidently they had formed a high opinion of his worth.
Accordingly, having planned to increase the importance of
the saddlery hardware department of their business, they
made overtures to Mr. Letchworth which became definite
in October, 1848, and which resulted quickly in the organi-
zation of a new firm, under the name of Pratt & Letchworth,WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
11
distinct in business from that of Pratt & Co., but in which
Mr. Letchworth was associated with, the three members of
the latter firm, namely, Samuel F. Pratt, Pascal P. Pratt,
and Edward P. Beals. In a “Sketch of the Life of Samuel
F. Pratt/’ written and privately printed by Mr. Letchworth
after his elder partner’s death, he states that the negotiations
which brought him into this connection were conducted by
Mr. Pascal P. Pratt, with his brother’s concurrence, and
he adds: “I think few partnerships ever existed with so
uniformly pleasant relations. In reviewing the long inter-
course between Samuel F. Pratt and myself, I cannot recall,
in all the discussions growing out of the perplexities of
business, one unkind word or even harsh tone.”
Here, then, William Pryor Letchworth, at the age of
twenty-five, had come to the opening of a quite perfect op-
portunity for making, to his own advantage as well as to
the advantage of others, a full use of the business knowl-
edge and experience he had been storing carefully for ten
years. For some 3^ears after he assumed the responsibilities
that attended the establishing and upbuilding of such a busi-
ness as that of Pratt & Letchworth became, the burden on
him must have been heavy to bear. Even more than in his
’prentice years with Hayden & Holmes, his life appears to
have been immersed in the affairs of the factory and the
counting-room. Outside of what relates to these there is
little record of what he thought or felt or said or did, for
four or five years. Probably it was still the fact, as he
wrote in March, 1849, that he had made few acquaintances
in Buffalo “save in the way of business.” For social
relaxations he cannot have had much time. In a letter to
his brother George, written on Christmas Day, 1852, there
is a cry that seems wrung from him by the consciousness
that he is overtasking his strength. He can never have12
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
been robust in physique, and, though no illness or disability
is spoken of, he had been brought somewhat sharply, per-
haps, to a realization that his health was insecure. “Oh,
that I had an iron constitution, as some have,” he ex-
claimed. “Of all things earthly that God could bestow upon
me I could pray for nothing more fervently than for strong,
rugged, robust health.” Evidently, in the following year,
he so shaped matters in his business as to relax its demands
on him; for he spent some months of the winter and spring
of 1854 in Florida, with apparent good effects, and came
back then to about two years more of unbroken business
cares. In 1856, having been joined in the business by his
brother Josiah (his brother Edward having entered it pre-
viously) he indulged himself in a year of travel abroad,
from which vacation he came back to resume the headship
of the firm of Pratt & Letchworth, but under circumstances
which undoubtedly eased his labors and cares. In his
brothers he now had a staff of the greatest possible help-
fulness to him, and throughout the establishment there was
an organized efficiency of work. Somewhat later, when the
firm bought property at Black Rock for the location of their
manufacturing plant, a great development of that side of
their business was begun. The manufacture of malleable
iron was undertaken soon after, and that became one of
the leading industrial enterprises of the city.
Notwithstanding this enlargement of his undertakings
there are signs that Mr. Letchworth, after returning from
his sojourn abroad, had more leisure to give to interests
outside of the making and marketing of goods, and was
enjoying a widened intercourse with people in Buffalo on
other than business lines. Many of the important friend-
ships of his after life seem traceable to this period, and
there is really no doubt that the trend of his life underwentWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
13
a notable turn within a few years that followed the vacation
of 1857.
It was soon after his return that he began to entertain
the thought of acquiring a pleasant country place, for sum-
mer rest and for the entertainment of friends. On a journey
from New York to Buffalo over the Erie Railway he was
induced by a chance suggestion to halt for a few hours at
Portage station, where that road crosses the Genesee. One
look then taken from the high railway bridge into the beau-
tiful glen of the Upper and Middle Falls of the Genesee,
sealed his mind against a willing acceptance of any other
spot for the country home he desired. He did not easily or
quickly win possession of the coveted ground, but it was
yielded to him at last, by conveyances in February, 1859,
and received not much later the long familiar name of
“Glen Iris,” now merged in the larger appellation of
Letchworth Park.
At some time in 1859, Mr. Letchworth was invited to
membership in a club, called “The Nameless,” which a few
young men of congenial tastes had formed in Buffalo within
the previous year. In most circumstances this would not
have been an occurrence that called for biographical men-
tion ; but it proved to be of no small influence on the life
recorded here, because of the important friendships to which
it led. The club had grown out of evening gatherings in
the pleasant library of the Young Men’s Christian Union
(as the Y. M. C. A. was first named) attracted to it by the
charm of the personality of its then librarian, David Gray.
Its members were among the earliest to enjoy the delightful
hospitalities which their new companion was now making
ready to offer to his friends. For several years, beginning
in i860, they were summoned to celebrate the Fourth of
July at the Glen; and out of those congenial gatherings14
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
came some of the earliest and most perfect of the many
poems which Glen Iris, first and last, has inspired. Possibly
it would be an extravagance of eulogy to say that no other
spot in America has been celebrated equally to it in the
fervor and the quality of the verse it has called out; yet
.searching criticism might uphold that suggestion, on the
evidence of a collected volume of Glen Iris verse which
was printed under the title of “Voices of the Glen,” in
1876, and of which a new edition, with added poems, has
been issued since Mr. Letchworth’s death by the adminis-
trator of his estate, but under the auspices of the American
Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. The preparation
of this new edition was one of Mr. Letchworth’s last tasks.
The valley of the Genesee, especially in the middle
region which embraces Glen Iris, has a remarkably inter-
esting early history, from the time of the white man’s first
acquaintance with it until he took it from the red man and
made it his own. It was the seat of the Seneca Nation,
the westernmost of the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy;
and the Senecas were active allies of the British and the
Tories in the Revolutionary War. Events connected with
that war, especially with Sullivan’s expedition against the
Senecas, in 1779, and subsequently with the buying of the
Seneca lands and the removal of the tribe from the region,
put the stamp of historic interest on many places in the
neighborhood of Mr. Letchworth’s home. He was troubled
on finding that relics and mementos of the aboriginal pos-
sessors of the valley, still existing, were treated with neglect
and were fast disappearing. As soon as he became free, in
some degree, from immediately pressing demands on him,
he made it part of his public duty to repair this neglect, to
the extent that he could do so, by action of his own and by
cooperation with others of like mind. In these undertakingsWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
15
he had much encouragement and stimulation from some of
his closer friends, especially William C. Bryant, Henry R.
Howland and O. H. Marshall, who shared his interest in
Indian history.
The most interesting historical relic in the Genesee
Valley was the ancient Council House of the Seneca Nation,
which stood about eighteen miles from Glen Iris, in the
village of Caneadea. For many years after the Senecas left
the Genesee Country this building, of hewn logs, which had
been their parliament house,—their capitol,—supplied a
habitation to the white farmer who tilled the surrounding
land. It had long been out of use, however, and was falling
into decay, when Mr. Letchworth, in the fall of 1871,
acquired title to it and had it removed, for preservation, to
his own grounds.
Having restored to its historic dignity this primitive
parliament-house of an extinct nation, Mr. Letchworth was
fortunately able to attach a new distinction to it and a final
memory, by bringing about, on the 1st of October, 1872, a
remarkable assembly of representative Senecas and Mo-
hawks, descendants from famous chiefs and notable per-
sonages in Indian history, to light once more the council
fire in the ancient hall, and sit round it in grave exchange of
speech, as in the ancient days.
The removal of the ancient Seneca Council House to a
prominent site in Glen Iris, was but the beginning of pro-
ceedings by Mr. Letchworth to save and to bring together,
in that same place, what could be saved of the fast disap-
pearing relics of the Senecas, in the time of their lordship
on and around the Genesee. Presently, a log house or cabin
that had been built by Mary Jemison (the captive “White
Woman” who is a notable figure in Seneca history) while
she lived on the Gardeau Tract, for one of her married16
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
daughters, was brought over and placed near the Council
House, at the entrance of an enclosure which holds both.
Then, on the 7th of March, 1874, the remains of Mary
Jemison were disinterred from the Indian Mission burial
ground at Buffalo and deposited in a new grave, between
the two buildings just named.
Mr. Letchworth became so deeply interested in the story
of the strange experiences of Mary Jemison, whose parents,
two brothers and a sister were slain, and herself, when a
child, carried into captivity, at the outbreak of the French
and Indian War, in 1755, that he published three editions
of her life, as narrated from her own account of it by
James E. Seaver, of Batavia, N. Y., and given to print,
first, in 1824. Moreover, in the last year of his life, on the
19th of September, 1910, he accomplished a long intended
tribute to her memory by erecting, near her final grave, at
Glen Iris, a statue in bronze, which represents her as a
young woman, in the Indian garb, carrying on her back an
infant child. She had borne children to two Indian hus-
bands, and has left numerous descendants in Western New
York.
The old Seneca Council House and the Mary Jemison
grave were substantially the beginnings of an extensive
collection of objects connected with Indian history and
archaeology. With effective assistance from Mr. Henry R.
Howland, Mrs. Asher Wright, and other friends, Mr.
Letchworth acquired, during the next thirty or more years,
a very large and scientifically valuable store of archaeological
relics, illustrating the primitive arts of the North American
Indians, together with objects interesting as memorials of
the aboriginal history of the Genesee Valley and Western
New York. For the housing of most of these a practically
fire-proof building, sheathed with iron and roofed withWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
17
slate, was erected in 1898, within the Council House
grounds. In this they were scientifically arranged, with
much care, by Mr. Howland, and the collection received the
appropriate name of the Genesee Valley Museum. A
“Guide” to the Museum, prepared by Mr. Howland and
printed in 1907, states that it “contains about five thousand
exhibits of stone implements, weapons, articles of dress,
ornaments, ancient articles of copper, brass and iron, found
upon the sites of old Indian villages, and other interesting
specimens related to Indian life and customs, many of which
have been deposited here for safe-keeping.”
As one of the founders and supporters of the Buffalo
Historical Society, organized in 1862, Mr. Letchworth was
always identified actively and earnestly with the society's
work. He was its president in 1878-79, and his address on
retiring from the office was devoted in the main to a report
of what had been and was being done by William C. Bryant,
O. H. Marshall, himself, and others, to bring about a re-
moval of the remains of Red Jacket, and other chiefs of the
Senecas, to the Forest Lawn Cemetery of Buffalo, from
the burial ground of the Cattaraugus Reservation, where
the identification of them seemed likely to be lost. The
councillors of the nation had assented to this removal, and
it was accomplished not long afterward, under the auspices
of the Historical Society. Ultimately a fine statue of Red
Jacket was erected on the plot of ground which holds these
remains.
Early in 1873 Mr. Letchworth withdrew from all con-
nection with the firm of Pratt & Letchworth, having delib-
erately resolved to devote his remaining years to philan-
thropic work. He was in his prime, at fifty years of age;
the business which he dropped was highly prosperous and
profitable; he had accumulated no great fortune in it, but18	WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
there were safe promises of large wealth in what he gave
up. To secure needed rest, or a pleasure-seeking freedom
of life, many men in like circumstances may do as he did;
but to quit the labors of the counting-room in mid-life, and
at the crest of prosperity, renouncing their substantial
rewards in order to take up an increased burden of labor,
for no other reward than the satisfaction of doing good to
one’s fellow men, is surely a rare act.
It does not appear that any definite place or plan of labor
in the field he wished to enter was in Mr. Letch worth’s
mind when he retired from the business that had occupied
him for twenty-five years; but the place which seemed made
for him was awaiting his acceptance of it, and he was called
to it almost at once. In April, 1873, on the suggestion of
his name by the Honorable James O. Putnam to Governor
Dix, he was asked to become one of the commissioners of
the New York State Board of Charities, filling a vacancy
in the representation of the Eighth Judicial District (western
New York), and he readily accepted the post. At about
the same time he was offered the Republican nomination
for Congress in the district of his country residence, where
the nomination ensured election; but that proffer he de-
clined. Neither tastes nor ambitions drew him toward
public service in the political field.
The Board of State Commissioners of Public Charities
—commonly referred to as the State Board of Charities—
was in its seventh year of existence when Mr. Letchworth
became a member. The rearing of children in county poor-
houses and city almshouses was the most serious of the evil
conditions that had been engaging the attention of the
Board since its work began. Public interest in the matter
had been undergoing a slow awakening for several years,
and a gradual movement of reformation was in progress;WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
19
but it needed a push of individual energy, with a resolute
will behind it, to break the impediments down. Mr. Letch-
worth supplied that need. He seems to have resolved at
once to make this, in a special way, his first field of work,
and it was so assigned to him by the Board. He began his
undertakings in Erie County, with such energy and local
support that the last of the children in the poor-house of
that county, except infants and the imbecile or otherwise
defective, were removed in February, 1874, to orphanages
or family homes.
Seemingly Erie County was the first in the state to purge
its poorhouse of the pauperizing and corrupting mixture of
children with adults. Elsewhere the reformation movement
was slow in response to the strenuous pressure upon it which
the new State Commissioner of Charities was bringing to
bear. Eight months after the Erie County deliverance he
wrote to Secretary Hoyt, of the State Board, that he had
received reports of action on the removal of children by
boards of supervisors in only three other counties, namely,
Jefferson, Madison, and Yates. Throughout that year he
had been laboring as no other official in the state is likely to
have been laboring at the time. His correspondence dis-
closes the intensity and ardor of feeling that went into his
work; his special report to the Board, at the end of the
year, shows how big a task of inquiry and investigation he
had performed, and what a mass of information he had
gathered up. He was executing a mission that engaged
his whole heart. He strove to torment all consciences with
his own burning sense of the deadly wrong done to home-
less children by housing and classing them with pauperized
adults. He could not bear the thought of allowing a single
child to be so ruined when it might be saved.
The,special report submitted by Commissioner Letch-20	WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
worth at the close of the year 1874 showed the number of
children remaining in the poorhouses of the state at the
several dates of inquiry, in that year, to be 615, of whom
362 were boys and 253 were girls. The infants under two
years of age numbered 143. Of the remainder, 348 were
between two and ten years of age; 124 were from ten to
fifteen in years. The fathers of 329 and the mothers of
115 were known to be intemperate; 32 were known to be
descendants of pauper grandfathers; 47 of pauper grand-
mother§; 105 of pauper fathers; 441 of pauper mothers;
249 had brothers and 223 had sisters who were or had been
paupers; 204 were of illegitimate birth; 190 were born in
the poorhouse. Thoughtfully discussing the exhibit of
dreadful facts, Mr. Letchworth laid an impressive stress
on the deadliness of the effect on character in childhood
which must be produced by such pauperizing examples and
influences as a poorhouse surrounds them with.
Thus far in the undertaking to bring about a removal of
dependent children from association with adult paupers
there had been nothing but persuasion and some pressure
of public opinion to bring to bear on the local authorities
concerned. Now Commissioner Letchworth invoked the
aid of mandatory law, and secured, on the recommendation
of his Board, the passage of an Act which declared that
after January 1, 1876, no child over three and under sixteen
years of age, of proper intelligence and suited for family
care should be committed or sent to any county poorhouse
of the state, and that all children of this class then in the
county poorhouses should, within the time named, be re-
moved from such poorhouses and provided for in families,
asylums, or other appropriate institutions.
With this backing of positive law and the hearty coopera-
tion of his colleagues in the State Board of Charities, Com-WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
21
missioner Letchworth, in his special mission of child-saving
from pauperism, had only to contend thereafter with diffi-
culties in some counties that arose from a present deficiency
of institutions to which the pauper children could be re-
moved. He had satisfied himself that, generally throughout
the state, the required transfers could be made without
overtaxing the capacity of existing asylums, etc., provided
that proper exertions were made systematically at the
asylums to place their children in families—which ought to
be the constant aim. This now gave him a new special duty
—to inspire earnestness and energy in the work of securing
good family homes for the homeless children of the state,
to the end that no public asylum for such children, of good
promise in body and mind, should be conducted otherwise
than as an agency for their early introduction to family life
in reputable private homes.
The remarkable effectiveness of Mr. Letchworth’s work
as a commissioner of the State Board of Charities was now
recognized by all who gave attention to the governmental
dealing with want and misdoing. They saw that a new
force had come into that field of official service, and they
welcomed it with acclaim. For example, the very eminent
sociologist, Dr. Elisha Harris, then Corresponding Secre-
tary of the Prison Association of New York, afterward
Secretary of the State Board of Health, wrote to Mr.
Letchworth in March, 1875: "Your study of the rights of
children and of our duty to them and the state is worth a
lifetime of toil. You have thrown such a true light on the
almshouse children that the doors of good homes and the
hearts of thoughtful citizens and good women will open
and bless them.” Six months later we find Dr. Harris
writing again: "It is by such persistent efforts as yours for
the friendless children that causes of crime and vice are to22
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
be repressed. It is not in the power of language to convey
my thanks for your service in this matter.”
Political influences in New York City offered deter-
mined resistance to the law requiring children to be removed
from almshouses, and strove with might and main to obtain
from the legislature an act exempting the institutions on
Randall’s Island from its operation; but Mr. Letchworth
had conducted investigations there which showed that the
conditions in those institutions were the worst in the state.
Armed with damning facts he gave battle to the politicians
of the metropolis, and succeeded, as he succeeded almost
* always, in defeating opposition from ignorant sources or
sinister motives to measures and undertakings which he
believed, on well-studied grounds, to be for the public
good.
This was the second demonstration that Commissioner
Letchworth, in his official service, had given of the very
potent and peculiar executive force he possessed. One of
the mildest, most gently mannered of men,—Quaker-bred,
and realizing in his whole character the ideals of that cul-
ture of the quiet spirit,—he was capable, nevertheless, at
need, of an iron determination in what he undertook to do,
and a persistence which never tired, never yielded to dis-
couragement, and rarely suffered defeat. His first exhibit
of those qualities was called out soon after he took his seat
in the State Board of Charities. The Board was then
becoming an object of attacks, inspired evidently by the
manipulators of party politics, who had discovered that it
might be made a useful instrument in their hands. The
enlarged powers conferred on it in 1873 appear to have
equipped it to their liking, as a piece of machinery for
political work, and they lost no time in starting measures
for bringing it under their control. An account of whatWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
23
occurred was written subsequently by Mr. Letchworth, as
follows:
“As I was coming down Main street, in Buffalo, one
morning in the early part of 1874, I met Mr. Joseph
Warren, editor of the Buffalo Courier, who had just left the
train after a night's ride from Albany. He informed me
that action had been taken in the Senate the day before to
abolish the State Board of Charities. I asked him upon
what grounds. He could not tell me, but supposed it was
in consequence of some irregularities. I told him that this
was not possible, in view of the personnel of the Board and
lack of opportunity on the part of the commissioners for
deriving any personal advantage from their office. He had
given little attention to the matter, but, as he then recalled
what he had heard, there was some whispered scandal con-
nected with the movement.
“I went immediately to Albany and, seeking the president
of the Board [Mr. John V. L. Pruyn], asked him the mean-
ing of the attack. He could only divine that it was a politi-
cal movement to bring the Board eventually under partisan
control, as were the state prisons, over which there was but
one superintendent. The movement had such backing that
Mr. Pruyn thought nothing could be done. He had heard
from several members of the Board, who expressed them-
selves as excessively chagrined and mortified, and declared
their intention to resign. I told the president that I had not
sought this office; that I had endeavored to discharge my
duties faithfully during the short time I had held1 it; that I
regarded this action as a reflection on my integrity, and that
I should not rest quietly under it, but should demand an
official investigation. He sympathized with the members
of the Board in their chagrin, but did not feel like entering
into an angry controversy over the action taken. He said,
however, that he would sanction every effort I might make
to protect the Board. With this assurance from the presi-
dent I entered upon the campaign.
“Senator Ganson, of Buffalo, a man of high character
and a leader of one of the political parties, and Senator
King, leader of the opposite political party and chairman of
the Senate finance committee,—a man of benevolent im-
pulses,—espoused the cause of the Board on the floor of the/
24	WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
Senate and were supported by others. The Board was
finally vindicated and the charges were withdrawn, leaving
it stronger than when the attack was made.
“This issue having been set aside, I asked the chairman
of the finance committee to insert in the appropriation bill
an item of $3000 for the use of the Board in making an
inquiry into the causes of pauperism and crime,—something
it had been authorized to do by the previous legislature, but
for which no appropriation had been made, and nothing had
been done. The chairman of the committee, who was a
friend of the Board, advised me not to ask for this grant,
in view of the recent attack on the Board, and, though con-
senting to do this if I insisted, wished me to understand
that he would not be responsible for the consequences. The
appropriation was inserted, however, at my request, in the
supply bill, and was approved by the committee.”
Thus the Quaker member of the Board, no more than
fairly seated in it, was the one to spring to its defence and
find cudgels for beating off the attack. Not only that, but
the encounter roused him to push forward and snatch a
positive trophy of victory from the discomfited assailants
of the Board, in the form of an increased appropriation for
its work. It was a striking revelation that he gave then
of the reinforcement of energy, courage, earnestness, and
sound practical judgment which his appointment had
brought into the important body that supervises the public
charities of the state. Without self-assertion or assumption
on his part, there was a natural and necessary leadership in
what he did, which had recognition very soon in his election
(June, 1874) to the vice-presidency of the Board, and to
the presidency in 1877.
Substantially, so far as concerned his own state, the
child-saving labors of Mr. Letchworth in this particular
field were finished by the year 1876. The finest tribute paid
to the great importance and effectiveness of the social
service rendered in those labors came many years afterwardsWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
25
from an intelligent head of the finance department of the
City of New York, where they had been most obstinately
and violently opposed. Comptroller Edward M. Grout, in
an official report on “Private Charitable Institutions in the
City of New York,” made in 1904, referred to this part of
Mr. Letchworth’s work as follows:
“In the early seventies charity workers, impressed with
the iniquity of the almshouse system, determined to effect a
change. A crusade against almshouses—for it may prop-
erly be called that—found its leader in the Honorable
William P. Letchworth, of Portage, New York, one of the
indefatigable workers in the State Board of Charities. It
is fair to call him the father of the movement to take chil-
dren out of the degrading conventions in poorhouses and
almshouses.”
After extended quotations from Mr. Letchworth’s
reports the comptroller goes on to say:
“The result of Mr. Letchworth’s work was tremendous
and overwhelming. The legislature asked,—What can be
done with these children, and where can they be placed ?’
Fresh from his examination of every institution in the
State, Mr. Letchworth replied that the private institutions
were the natural and logical way out. .	.	. There ap-
peared to be no other satisfactory solution to the problem.
The city determined, definitely, either to turn all its depend-
ent children over to the charitable institutions or return
them to their parents and guardians. .	.	. The last of
the children were transferred from Randall’s Island De-
cember 31, 1875; and in the report of the Commissioners
for that year, presented to the mayor early in 1876, the
whole matter was summed up in these words: “The Nur-
sery on Randall’s Island, by act of the legislature, was
abolished with the close of the year, and it is prohibited by
law to receive children over three years of age.”
This emphatic official testimony from the metropolitan
city affords conclusive evidence that the fight to rescue chil-
dren from pauper-keeping establishments in the State ofWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
New York was fought and won by Commissioner Letch-
worth, as the general commanding the reformatory forces
in the state; and that it was won practically within the first
three years of his service in the field.
But, while this finished his exertions on that particular
child-saving line in New York, it carried him on the same
line into other fields of struggle, to the same end. He was
called to become a missionary in other states of the appeal
against child-pauperism, and performed heavy labors in
that mission for a number of years.
At the same time Commissioner Letchworth was now
turning his special attention to that other important field of
child-saving work, wherein the subjects are children already
approaching or beginning vicious or criminal lives,—the
wayward, the errant, the delinquent of many classes and
many degrees, for whom there is hope of rescue and reform
if wise and timely treatment is applied. With the appeal to
his sympathy and interest from these unfortunates came
another, which moved him simultaneously to ardent efforts
for bringing more intelligence and humanity into the care
of the insane. In these matters he found more of problem
than in the subjects of his previous work, and he sought
light from all that experience, practice or theory, abroad as
well as at home, could afford. Hence, from July, 1880,
until the following January, he was in Europe, not for rest
or. for pleasure, but on a mission of inquiry and observa-
tion, the most strenuous that his enlistment in social service
had yet moved him to undertake. His special purpose was
to see how other countries dealt with delinquent children
and how they treated their insane, and thus to learn what
they might have to teach with helpfulness to the solving of
the two problems in public benevolence which now claimed
the most of his thought.WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.	27
From his observations abroad it is certain that Mr.
Letchworth brought much that cleared his understanding,
instructed his judgment, broadened and deepened his
thought concerning the grave and difficult matter of so deal-
ing with errant youth as to train it into better courses; but
the cardinal convictions of his mind on this subject were
those which the Rauhe Haus of Immanuel Wichern, at
Hamburg, Germany, and its varied copies elsewhere, had
impressed upon him. For a time it became his chief
mission to plead for the transformation of juvenile “houses
of refuge” and similar so-called reformatories from grim
prisons into systematized industrial schools; for the tearing
away of their stone walls; for the transplanting of them into
open country surroundings; for the grouping and cottage-
housing of their pupil inmates, under some semblance of
the associations of a common family life; and (before all
else) for a careful classification of juvenile delinquents, to
part the uncorrupted from the corrupt. In this mission he
was urging no propositions from his own mind. It was
never his way to rest a recommendation that he offered to
the public on a merely theoretical idea. All the problems in
public philanthropy that he dealt with were studied in the
light of such experiments and experiences as applied a sure
test to the theory from which they sprang.
His investigations to that end were the most remarkable
part of his work. No time, no labor, no travel, no sacrifice
of his personal comfort was too much for him to give to
the searching out and inspecting of institutions and of laws
which had object lessons of method to offer, with conclusive
provings of result. He was unmatched among social work-
ers in that effectual study, and therefore unmatched as a
public teacher on the vital subjects which he prepared him-
self to speak upon with high authority. The authority of28
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
his opinion on these matters was recognized, because the
carefulness of the quest which went before the opinion was
always plain. Hence, it can safely be said that the influence
of Mr. Letchworth, beyond any other personal influence in
the last generation, has entered into the producing of a
wholly different public opinion at the present day, touching
the public treatment of dependent and delinquent children,
compared with that of the time when he began his work as
a commissioner in the Board of Charities of the State of
New York.
Similarly, in relation to the care and treatment of the
insane, the important effect of his well-directed great labor
came from its collection and dissemination of knowledge,
as to the best that had been done anywhere in the perform-
ance of that humane duty; the successes of experiment,
and the failures; the proved possibilities of unrestraint, of
social freedom and enjoyment, of soothing and curative
influences brought to bear on disordered minds, and the in-
stitutional construction and organization that had been
found to contribute most to the realizing of those possi-
bilities. Principally and most effectively this was done by
Mr. Letchworth in his elaborate and important report of
the studies he had made in Europe, beautifully published in
1889, in a royal octavo volume of 374 pages, under the title
of “The Insane in Foreign Countries.,, The admirable
quality of this treatise, the supreme importance of the mat-
ters with which it dealt and the high value of the enlighten-
ment it threw upon them, were recognized at once by those
qualified for the recognition. Leading alienists at home and
abroad gave it a specially cordial reception.
More immediate and notable effects of reform in the
care and treatment of the insane were produced by the per-
sonal exertions of Mr Letchworth, before his book on theWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
29
subject appeared. At once, on his return from Europe, he
obtained from the State Board of Charities the appoint-
ment of himself and another Commissioner as a committee
to visit and report on the condition of the insane department
of poorhouses in counties exempted, under the Act of 1871,
from a previous statute requiring all chronic insane to be
transferred to the Willard Asylum, at Ovid. The report of
this committee, when published, started an agitation which
grew and gathered force until it had compelled the State,
by the “State Care Act” of 1890, to take on itself, wholly
and exclusively, the care of the insane within its borders,
and to equip itself adequately with institutions to that
end.
In 1888 Mr. Letchworth resigned the presidency of the
State Board of Charities, in which he had been kept by
repeated elections for eleven years. In January, 1893, he
received his fourth consecutive appointment to membership
in the Board. A little later, that year, on the 9th of Feb-
ruary, a mark of distinction so high that few have ever
received it came to him from the University of the State of
New York, by vote of the Regents of the University, con-
ferring on him the degree of LL. D., “in recognition of his
distinguished services to the State of New York, as a mem-
ber and president of the State Board of Charities and as an
author of most valuable literature pertaining to the depend-
ent classes.” In the one hundred and ten years of its exist-
ence at that date the Board of Regents had conferred this
honorary degree only twenty times.
On the 14th of November, 1896, by resignation to the
Governor, the long service of Mr. Letchworth to the State
of New York as a Commissioner of Charities was brought
to an end. His enlistment in the service of suffering
humanity was not ended, however, until his death.30
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCH WORTH.
After Mr. Letchworth’s withdrawal from the service of
the state there were years of work in his life, performed in
the same field. He had surrendered official authority, but
needed none to maintain the power of influence with which
he could still labor for the unfortunates of mankind who
need public care. He was released from tasks of supervi-
sion and inspection which had occupied great parts of his
time, and could devote himself more to studies and discus-
sions of the large problems of .public philanthropy. The
most important of these were now directed to the benefit
of the victims of epilepsy,—a large class of pitiful sufferers
who had experienced, in our country especially, more and
longer neglect than any other whose affliction appealed as
painfully to the sympathies of their fellow men. He had
become deeply interested in these unfortunates some years
before, and had taken a leading part in the movement,
initiated by the writings of Dr. Frederick Peterson of New
York, which had already produced the notable Craig Colony
for Epileptics at Sonyea, near Mount Morris, in the Genesee
Valley. A documentary history of the whole course of
proceedings connected with the founding of this first colony
for epileptics in the State of New York was compiled by
Mr. Letchworth in his last years. The record shows him
quite distinctly to have been the persistent spirit in the
movement, throughout; pricking it to action when it lagged,
and rousing it to fresh aggressiveness when it had been
stricken with discouragement by a Governor's veto in
1892.
His sense of duty to the victims of epilepsy was far
from satisfied by this achievement. Pursuing inquiries in all
parts of the country, he found practically nothing done for
epileptics in a large majority of the states, or nothing that
was fitting to their case. He recognized, therefore, anWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.	31
extremely urgent need of information to the public of the
nation, as to the dreadful extent of this neglect, and what
it meant of suffering to thousands of individuals and of
grave consequences to society at large. The situation was
one of which few people, even in the medical profession,
appear to have had clear knowledge. The facts of it had
never been gathered up and put forth collectively, in a form
to be impressive in effect. He determined now to take
on himself the task of assembling this needed information
from its many sources, printed and unprinted, and making
it available for use in stirring public feeling on the subject.
He had done something in that direction already, in two
papers prepared for the National Conference of Charities
and Correction. He now undertook a work of thorough-
ness on the lines that were sketched in those essays. The
book, entitled “Care and Treatment of Epileptics,” was
published in the same admirable style as that of “The In-
sane in Foreign Countries/’ with appropriate and interest-
ing illustrations, by the Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New
York and London, early in 1900. Reviews of it in the
medical journals at home and abroad were universally com-
mendatory. Two years prior to the publication of the
book, a “National Association for the Study of Epilepsy and
the Care and Treatment of Epileptics” had been organized,
with Mr. Letchworth as its first President, and the first
volume of its “Transactions” was edited by him and pub-
lished at his expense.
When, in 1909, the State of New York framed final
legislation for the establishing, near the Hudson, of a second
Colony for Epileptics, on a scale even larger than that of
Craig Colony, its legislature enacted that this great institu-
tion should bear “the name and title of ‘Letchworth Village/
in honor of William Pryor Letchworth of Portage, New32	WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
York, whose efficient public services in behalf of the feeble-
minded, epileptic, and other dependent unfortunates the
state desires to commemorate.”
Early in 1898 a project of sordid menace to Glen Iris
came to light, and the peace of the Glen’s good master and
devoted lover was tormented by it thenceforward until his
death. Avaricious capital had planned to exploit the falls
of the Genesee for electric power, and the Legislature, in
the spring of 1898, had before it a bill which granted the
needed authority. Details of the long defensive struggle
which has thus far saved the choicest beauty-spot of the
state from destruction cannot be given here. It was made
decisive in the first month of 1907, by a gift to the State
of New York of the entire Glen Iris estate, covering about
one thousand acres of land, on both sides of the Genesee,
and embracing the Lower as well as the Middle and Upper
Falls of the river. Before deciding to make the tender of
this splendid domain to the State, Mr. Letchworth had
studied how best to secure for it a faithful caretaking in
future years. In doing this he became attentive to the
mission and work of the American Scenic and Historic
Preservation Society, founded by Andrew H. Green, the
father of New York City’s Central Park, and incorporated
in 1895. The result, after conferences with the trustees of
the Society, was a proposal of the gift to the state, for the
purposes of a public park or reservation, subject to the
proviso that Mr. Letchworth should retain a life use and
tenancy, with the right further to improve the property, and
that upon his death the American Scenic and Historic
Preservation Society should have the management and
control. The proposal, recommended strongly by Governor
Hughes, was accepted by Act of the Legislature, following
which, by concurrent resolution of the Senate, February 4,WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTLI.
33
1907, and of the Assembly, February 5, it was declared that
the lands conveyed to the state by Mr. Letchworth should
hereafter be known as “Letchworth Park,” “to commemo-
rate the humane and noble work in private and public
charities to which his life has been devoted, and in
recognition of his eminent services to the people of this
state.”
Almost, if not quite, from the beginning of Mr. Letch-
worth’s ownership of Glen Iris it had been his intention that
it should go to a public use when he died. As early as
1870 he had procured legislation which “constituted and
appointed a body corporate for the purpose of establishing
and maintaining in the County of Wyoming an institution
for the support and education of indigent young persons,”
and named it the Wyoming Benevolent Institute. This,
without doubt, was an instrument of organization made
ready, with wise precaution, in advance, for employment
in due time. Its legal vitality was preserved with care;
certain land and buildings were conveyed to it; it enter-
tained orphaned children from Buffalo and Rochester in
summer outings at times; and, though nothing that at-
tempted the fulfilment of its declared purpose ever came
from it, the purpose itself, “of establishing and maintaining
in the County of Wyoming an institution for the support
and education of indigent young persons,” does not appear
to have undergone any change. It seems, therefore, to be
manifest that when Mr. Letchworth, to save Glen Iris from
becoming the seat of an electric power plant, gave it into
the keeping of the state, for the purposes of a public park
or reservation, he simply changed its destination from one
long-intended public use to another.
The life-tenancy which his deed of gift reserved to him
had a longer term for Mr. Letchworth than might have
/34
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
been expected; for he had been a maimed and weakened
man since the 14th of February, 1903, when he was smitten
with a partial paralysis of body, which had little effect on
his mind. Gradually regaining some measure of strength
and a feeble use of his limbs, he became busied again, not
with any new undertakings in the former lines of his public
work, but in some endeavors to enlarge the fruitfulness of
what he had done, as well as in renewed attention to his
private affairs, and in attempts to reduce his enormous
accumulation of letters and papers to an orderly state.
This and the planning and executing at his own expense of
continued works of landscape improverhent on the Glen
Iris grounds, even after they had became the grounds of a
public park, occupied him until the actually last day of his
life. That day was the 1st of December, 1910. When its
evening came he partook of his usual light supper, and said,
presently, that he would take a rest. His nurse assisted
him to his bed in an adjoining room, and had left him but a
few moments when she heard some sound which caused her
to return. She found that in those moments his life had
come to its end. He had left it as quietly as if passing into
sleep. Five days later his body had burial in the Forest
Lawn Cemetery at Buffalo.
In appearance and demeanor Mr. Letchworth realized
always the ideal of a true representative of the Society of
Friends, moulded outwardly by the inward moulding of
Christian teaching as construed by George Fox. And this
could raise no expectation of the resolution, the will, the
energy which went with his benevolent quietude of spirit
into all that he undertook to do.
Nothing that he undertook had been taken hastily in
hand. He set his foot in no path until he knew fully the
ground to be traversed in it, as well as the end to which itWILLIAM PRYOR LETCHWORTH.
35
led, and saw clearly the right and the need or the good
reason for going forward therein. Pending these determi-
nations of his mind he showed often much hesitancy and
seeming indecisiveness of will; but when the light he sought
had been obtained, and the practicable way to a desirable
and right object of endeavor could be seen distinctly, he
became, in his quiet way, one of the most inflexibly deter-
mined of men,—undiscouraged by obstacles, undaunted by
opposition.
Only those who came into both working and social
intimacy with Mr. Letchworth could learn how distinctly
his nature united two temperaments which are seldom bal-
anced so evenly in the same individual. To know him in
the relations that exhibited but one of these was to think of
him, most probably, as a sentimentalist,—a man of too
much emotionality for successful dealing with the hardness
and aggressiveness of the ruder conditions of life. This,
it could easily be thought, would not only explain his philan-
thropy, but throw doubt on the judgment and efficiency
with which its promptings would be directed. And he did
have an emotional susceptibility and a delicacy of mind
which in most makings of character would warrant that
conclusion. His enjoyments were of the sweeter and
gentler sort. The lovelier sides of nature, the finer things
of art, the generous exhibitions of humanity, appealed to
him most. He was exceptionally fond of poetry, and with
a catholic taste; delighted in reading it and having it read
to him, and carried in memory a large store of it, which he
had begun to accumulate in his youth.
To know him in this character, and to have acquaintance,
at the same time, with the strenuous business man that he
was for thirty years and the strong state official that he was
for twenty-three . more,—vigilant, decisive, resolute, prac-36
WILLIAM PRYOR LETCH WORTH.
tically sagacious, successful beyond the common, in both
exhibitions,—was to have a revelation of character that is
exceedingly rare in its combination of qualities, and ex-
ceedingly fine.WILLIAM A. GALPIN.
xm