Hon. Hiram Sibley, of the city of Rochester, a man of national reputation
as the originator of great enterprises, and as the most extensive farmer
and seedsman in this country, was born at North Adams, Berkshire County,
Mass., February 6, 1807, and is the second son of Benjamin and Zilpha
Davis Sibley. Benjamin was the son of Timothy Sibley, of Sutton, Mass.,
who was the father of fifteen children--twelve sons and three daughters;
eight of these, including Benjamin, lived to the aggregate age of 677
years, an average of about seventy-five years and three months. From the
most unpromising beginnings, without education, Hiram Sibley has risen to
a postion of usefulness and influence. His youth was passed among his
native hills. He was a mechanical genius by nature. Banter with a
neighboring shoemaker led to his attempt to make a shoe on the spot, and
he was at once placed on the shoemaker's bench.
At the age of sixteen he migrated to the Genesee Valley, where he was
employed in a machine shop, and subsequently in wool carding. Before he
was of age he had mastered five different trades. Three of these years
were passed in Livingston County. His first occupation on his own account
was as a shoemaker at North Adams; then he did business successfully as a
machinist and wool carder in Livingston County, N.Y.; after which he
established himself at Mendon, fourteen miles south of Rochester, a
manufacturing village, now known as Sibleyville, where he had a foundry
and machine shop. When in the wool carding business at Sparta and Mount
Morris, in Livingston County, he worked in the same shop, located near
the line of the two towns, where Millard Filmore had been employed and
learned his trade; beginning just after a farewell ball was given to Mr.
Filmore by his fellow workmen.
Increase of reputation and influence brought Mr. Sibley opportunities for
office. He was elected by the Democrats Sheriff of Monroe County in 1843
when he removed to Rochester; but his political career was short, for a
more important matter was occupying his mind. From the moment of the
first success of Professor Morse with his experiments in telegraphy, Mr.
Sibley had been quick to discern the vast promise of the invention; and
in 1840 he went to Washington to assist Professor Morse and Ezra Cornell
in procuring an appropriation of $40,000 from Congress to build a line
from Washington to Baltimore, the first put up in America. Strong
prejudices had to be overcome. On Mr. Sibley's meeting the chairman of
the committee having the matter in charge, and expressing the hope that
the application would be granted, he received for answer: "We had made up
our minds to allow the appropriation, when the Professor came in and
upset everything. Why! he undertook to tell us that he could send ten
words from Washington to Baltimore in two minutes. Good heavens! Twenty
minutes is quick enough, but two minutes is nonsense. The Professor is
too radical and visionary, and I doubt if the committee recommend the sum
to be risked in such a manner." Mr. Sibley's sound arguments and
persuasiveness prevailed, though he took care not to say what he
believed, that the Professor was right as to the two minutes. Their joint
efforts secured the subsidy of $40,000.
This example stimulated other inventors, and in a few years several
patents were in use, and various lines had been constructed by different
companies. The business was so divided as to be always unprofitable. Mr.
Sibley conceived the plan of uniting all the patents and companies in one
organization. After three years of almost unceasing toil, he succeeded in
buying up the stock of the different corporations, some of it at a price
as low as two cents on the dollar, and in consolidating the lines which
then extended over portions of thirteen States. The Western Union
Telegraph Company was then organized, with Mr. Sibley as the first
president. Under his management for sixteen years, the number of
telegraph offices was increased from 132 to over 4,000, and the value of
the property from $220,000 to $48,000,000.
In the project of uniting the Atlantic and Pacific by a line to
California, he stood nearly alone. At a meeting of the prominent
telegraph men of New York, a committee was appointed to report upon his
proposed plan, whose verdict was that it would be next to impossible to
build the line; that, if built, the Indians would destroy it; and that it
would not pay, even if built, and not destroyed. His reply was
characteristic; that it should be built, if he had to build it alone. He
went to Washington, procured the necessary legislation, and was the sole
contractor with the Government. The Western Union Telegraph Company
afterward assumed the contract, and built the line, under Mr. Sibley's
administration as president, ten years in advance of the railroad.
[Illustration: HIRAM SIBLEY.]
Not satisfied with this success at home, he sought to unite the two
hemispheres by way of Alaska and Siberia, under P. McD. Collins'
franchise. On visiting Russia with Mr. Collins in the winter of 1864-5,
he was cordially received and entertained by the Czar, who approved the
plan. A most favorable impression had preceded him. For when the Russian
squadron visited New York in 1863--the year after Russia and Great
Britain had declined the overture of the French government for joint
mediation in the American conflict--Mr. Sibley and other prominent
gentlemen were untiring in efforts to entertain the Russian admiral,
Lusoffski, in a becoming mariner. Mr. Sibley was among the foremost in
the arrangements of the committee of reception. So marked were his
personal kindnesses that when the admiral returned he mentioned Mr.
Sibley by name to the Emperor Alexander, and thus unexpectedly prepared
the way for the friendship of that generous monarch. During Mr. Sibley's
stay in St. Petersburg, he was honored in a manner only accorded to those
who enjoy the special favor of royalty. Just before his arrival the Czar
had returned from the burial of his son at Nice; and, in accordance with
a long honored custom when the head of the empire goes abroad and
returns, he held the ceremony of "counting the emperor's jewels;" which
means an invitation to those whom his majesty desires to compliment as
his friends, without regard to court etiquette or the formalities of
official rank. At this grand reception in the palace at Tsarskozela,
seventeen miles from St. Petersburg, Mr. Sibley was the second on the
list, the French ambassador being the first, and Prince Gortchakoff, the
Prime Minister, the third. This order was observed also in the procession
of 250 court carriages with outriders, Mr. Sibley's carriage being the
second in the line. On this occasion Prince Gortchakoff turning to Mr.
Sibley, said: "Sir, if I remember rightly, in the course of a very
pleasant conversation had with you a few days since, at the State
department, you expressed your surprise at the pomp and circumstance
attending upon all court ceremony. Now, sir, when you take precedence of
the Prime Minister, I trust you are more reconciled to the usage
attendant upon royalty, which was so repugnant to your democratic ideas."
Such an honor was greatly appreciated by Mr. Sibley; for it meant the
most sincere respect of the "Autocrat of all the Russias" for the people
of the United States, and a recognition of the courtesies conferred upon
his fleet when in American waters.
Mr. Sibley was duly complimented by the members of the royal family and
others present, including the ambassadors of the great powers. Mr.
Collins, his colleague in the telegraph enterprise, shared in these
attentions. Mr. Sibley was recorded in the official blue book of the
State department of St. Petersburg as "the distinguished American," by
which title he was generally known. Of this book he has a copy as a
souvenir of his Russian experience. His intercourse with the Russian
authorities was also facilitated by a very complimentary letter from
Secretary Seward to Prince Gortchakoff. The Russian government agreed to
build the line from Irkootsk to the mouth of the Amoor River. After 1,500
miles of wire had been put up, the final success of the Atlantic cable
caused the abandonment of the line, at a loss of $3,000,000. This was a
loss in the midst of success, for Mr. Sibley had demonstrated the
feasibility of putting a telegraphic girdle round the earth. In railway
enterprises the accomplishments of his energy and management have been no
less signal than in the establishment of the telegraph. One of these was
the important line of the Southern Michigan and Northern Indiana Railway.
His principal efforts in this direction have been in the Southern States.
After the war, prompted more by the desire of restoring amicable
relations than by the prospect of gain, he made large and varied
investments at the South, and did much to promote renewed business
activity. At Saginaw. Mich., he became a large lumber and salt
manufacturer. He bought much property in Michigan, and at one time owned
vast tracts in the Lake Superior region, where the most valuable mines
have since been worked. While he has been interested in bank and
manufacturing stocks, his larger investments have been in land. Much of
his pleasure has been in reclaiming waste territory and unproductive
investments, which have been abandoned by others as hopeless. The
satisfying aim of his ambition incites him to difficult undertakings,
that add to the wealth and happiness of the community, from which others
have shrunk, or in which others have made shipwreck. Besides his
stupendous achievements in telegraph and railway extension, he is
unrivaled as a farmer and seed grower, and he has placed the stamp of his
genius on these occupations, in which many have been content to work in
the well-worn ruts of their predecessors.
The seed business was commenced in Rochester thirty years ago. Later, Mr.
Sibley undertook to supply seeds of his own importation and raising and
others' growth, under a personal knowledge of their vitality and
comparative value. He instituted many experiments for the improvements of
plants, with reference to their seed-bearing qualities, and has built up
a business as unique in its character as it is unprecedented in amount.
He cultivates the largest farm in the State, occupying Howland Island, of
3,500 acres, in Cayuga County, near the Erie Canal and the New York
Central Railroad, which is largely devoted to seed culture; a portion is
used for cereals, and 500 head of cattle are kept. On the Fox Ridge farm,
through which the New York Central Railroad passes, where many seeds and
bulbs are grown, he has reclaimed a swamp of six hundred acres, making of
great value what was worthless in other hands, a kind of operation which
affords him much delight. His ownership embraces fourteen other farms in
this State, and also large estates in Michigan and Illinois.
The seed business is conducted under the firm name of Hiram Sibley & Co.,
at Rochester and Chicago, where huge structures afford accommodations for
the storage and handling of seeds on the most extensive scale. An
efficient means for the improvement of the seeds is their cultivation in
different climates. In addition to widely separated seed farms in this
country, the firm has growing under its directions several thousands of
acres in Canada, England, France, Germany, Holland, and Italy.
Experimental grounds and greenhouses are attached to the Rochester and
Chicago establishments, where a sample of every parcel of seed is tested,
and experiments conducted with new varieties. One department of the
business is for the sale of horticultural and agricultural implements of
all kinds. A new department supplies ornamental grasses, immortelles, and
similar plants used by florists for decorating and for funeral emblems.
Plants for these purposes are imported from Germany, France, the Cape of
Good Hope, and other countries, and dyed and colored by the best artists
here. As an illustration of their methods of business, it may be
mentioned that the firm has distributed gratuitously, the past year,
$5,000 in seeds and prizes for essays on gardening in the Southern
States, designed to foster the interests of horticulture in that section.
The largest farm owned by Mr. Sibley, and the largest cultivated farm in
the world, deserves a special description. This is the "Sullivant Farm,"
as formerly designated, but now known as the "Burr Oaks Farm," originally
40,000 acres, situated about 100 miles south of Chicago, on both sides of
the Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railroad. The property passed into the
hands of an assignee, and, on Mr. Sullivant's death in 1879, came into
the possession of Mr. Sibley. His first step was to change the whole plan
of cultivation. Convinced that so large a territory could not be worked
profitably by hired labor, he divided it into small tracts, until there
are now many hundreds of such farms; 146 of these are occupied by tenants
working on shares, consisting of about equal proportions of Americans,
Germans, Swedes, and Frenchmen. A house and a barn have been erected on
each tract, and implements and agricultural machines provided. At the
center, on the railway, is a four-story warehouse, having a storage
capacity of 20,000 bushels, used as a depot for the seeds grown on the
farm, from which they are shipped as wanted to the establishments in
Chicago and Rochester. The largest elevator on the line of the railway
has been built, at a cost of over $20,000; its capacity is 50,000
bushels, and it has a mill capable of shelling and loading twenty-five
cars of corn a day. Near by is a flax mill, also run by steam, for
converting flax straw into stock for bagging and upholstery. Another
engine is used for grinding feed. Within four years there has sprung up
on the property a village containing one hundred buildings, called Sibley
by the people, which is supplied with schools, churches, a newspaper,
telegraph office, and the largest hotel on the route between Chicago and
St. Louis. A fine station house is to be erected by the railway company.
Mr. Sibley is the president and largest stockholder of the Bank of
Monroe, at Rochester, and is connected with various institutions. He has
not acquired wealth simply to hoard it. The Sibley College of Mechanic
Arts of Cornell University, at Ithaca, which he founded, and endowed at a
cost of $100,000, has afforded a practical education to many hundreds of
students. Sibley Hall, costing more than $100,000, is his contribution
for a public library, and for the use of the University of Rochester for
its library and cabinets; it is a magnificent fire-proof structure of
brownstone trimmed with white, and enriched with appropriate statuary.
Mrs. Sibley has also made large donations to the hospitals and other
charitable institutions in Rochester and elsewhere. She erected, at a
cost of $25,000, St. John's Episcopal Church, in North Adams, Mass., her
native village. Mr. Sibley has one son and one daughter living--Hiram W.
Sibley, who married the only child of Fletcher Harper, Jr., and resides
in New York, and Emily Sibley Averell, who resides in Rochester. He has
lost two children--Louise Sibley Atkinson and Giles B. Sibley.
A quotation from Mr. Sibley's address to the students of Sibley College,
during a recent visit to Ithaca, is illustrative of his practical thought
and expression, and a fitting close to this brief sketch of his practical
life: "There are two most valuable possessions which no search warrant
can get at, which no execution can take away, and which no reverse of
fortune can destroy; they are what a man puts into his head--_knowledge_;
and in to his hands--_skill_."--_Encyclopædia of Contemporary Biography_.
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HYDRASTIS IN DYSPEPSIA.--Several correspondents in _The Lancet_ have
lauded hydrastis as a most useful drug in dyspepsia.
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