Monthly Archives: January 2013

Death of a Prominent Newark Builder

Joseph J. Meeker, the well-known builder of Newark, died from heart failure at his temporary home in the Westminster apartment-house, at Sixteenth street and Irving Place, yesterday. He was born and always lived in Newark, and was identified with many enterprises that have contributed to the rapid growth of that city. He was a builder all his life, having started in that business, when a young man, and was associated with Mr. Hedden, under the firm name Meeker & Hedden, for thirty-two years. They built the woodwork of the Produce Exchange, a number of the elevated railroad stations, and did a great deal of work for the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

They also rebuilt the Thirty-fourth-st. horse-car stables after they were burned a few years ago. Mr. Meeker was a director of the North Ward Bank of Newark. His father, Elly Meeker, is still living at the age of eighty-nine. He leaves a wife and two daughters. The funeral will be held in Newark on Tuesday.

Source: Unidentified newspaper clipping, located in the “Family Record, 1848” and transcribed by J. Pierson James. Typescript in the James Family Papers, privately held by Kristen James Eberlein.

Biography, Edward Wood Walker

Dr. Edward Wood Walker, son of Timothy Walker, was born September 3, 1853, at Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended the public schools of his native city and entered Harvard College, from which he was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the class of 1874. He began to study his profession in the Cincinnati Medical College and was graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1877. He then spent two years abroad, attending lectures at Heidelberg University and at Berlin and Vienna. Upon his return home he began to practice his profession in Cincinnati, making a specialty of surgery in which he attained great skill and prominence. In 1886 he was demonstrator of pathology at the Medical College of Ohio, and in the same year was elected to the chair of surgery and pathology in Miami Medical College. He is also a professor on the staff of the Cincinnati City Hospital and in the Episcopal Hospital and on the staff of the German Deaconess’ Hospital and the Betts Street Hospital. He is a member of the Ohio State Academy of Medicine and of the American Medical Association. Since 1910 he has been a member of the Cincinnati Board of Health. He was formerly examiner of the pension department of the United States. He has taken all the thirty-two degrees in Scottish Rite Masonry and is a member of Harmony Lodge, No. 5, the chapter, council, commandery and other Masonic bodies; also member of the Blain Club, the Press Club of Cincinnati and the Queen City Club. He is a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal church. In politics he is a Republican. He married, June 7, 1893, Inez Hatfield, born in 1872, daughter of John Hatfield, of Lebanon, Ohio. They have no children.

Source: William Richard Cutter, New England Families: Genealogical and Memorial (New York:  Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1914), Volume III, page 1107.

Portrait, Timothy Brewster Walker

Portraits of Timothy Walker Brewster

Portraits of Timothy Walker Brewster, 1871 (graduation from Harvard) and 1896

Source: Portraits of the Class of 1871, Taken at Graduation and in Later Life, Boston, Heliotrope Printing Company, 1896. Photograph of original taken by Ancestors of Cornelius Dunham and posted on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/spcmiller/5477115809/

Biography, Timothy Walker Brewster

 

Timothy Walker Brewster died on March 8, 1920 at Clinton, New York. He was born at Walnut Hills, Ohio, May 22, 1850, and was fitted for College at E. F. Bliss’s Classical School, Cincinnati.

Soon after graduation he was engaged in the business of manufacture of pig iron in Kentucky, and in 1877 helped to organize the Mount Savage Furnace Co. in Carter County, Ky. His ability in handling men, and his increasing knowledge of the business, gave him steady promotion. From Mount Savage Furnace he was called to the Ashland Iron & Milling Co., and then to take charge of a furnace at Birmingham, Ala., where he was picked out as a young man of promise by Andrew Carnegie, whose success was based on the use of the best men and the best appliances in making iron, and it was not long after Walker went to the Carnegie furnaces at McKeesport that he confirmed Mr. Carnegie’s wisdom in the selection of the men who did his work for him.

When Walker was still a young man, he began to suffer for rheumatism, and while he was enjoying his greatest successes acute and persistent inflammatory rheumatism gradually so crippled and disabled him that he was obligated finally to retire from active business, and he never regained his health.

He was married, on June 19, 1895, to Miss Nelle Augusta Brown of Aurora, Ill., who survives him with his brother, Dr. Edward W. Walker, of Cincinnati, Ohio, and his two sisters, Miss Annie Walker and Mrs. Nicholas Longworth.

Source: Harvard Graduates’ Magazine (Boston, Massachusetts), volume 28, 1991-1920: pages 668-669.

Rose Ramsay James, church bookseller

Rose Ramsay James, church bookseller

Services for Mrs. Rose Ramsay James, 84, founder and former director of the Book Table at Christ Church Cranbrook, will be Tuesday at 2 p.m. at the church, 470 Church Road, Bloomfield Hills.

Mrs. James, a resident of Bloomfield Hills, died Saturday at the Georgian Bloomfield Home.

In 1955, Mrs. James founded the Book Table, a volunteer-run organization in the basement of Christ Church whose profits go to the Episcopal Diocese. She directed the organization for 15 years.

She was also a member of Birmingham’s Junior League, the American Red Cross, and the Bloomfield Hills Country Club.

She is survived by a son, William R. James, general manager of radio station WJR in Detroit; a daughter, Patricia James Eberlein of Buffalo; nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Burial will be at White Chapel Cemetery in Troy. Funeral arrangements are being handled by the Wm. R. Hamilton Co., 820 E. Maple, Birmingham. Tributes can be sent to Christ Church.

Source: Unidentified newspaper clipping, James Family Papers