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| Bostwick, Jabez Abel | Early Oil Pioneer, Oil Magnate, Joined John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil. |
| Brinsmead, John | Piano Maker |
| Chapman, John "Johnny Appleseed" | Planted Apple Trees! |
| Voronoff, (Bostwick) Evelyn | Nurse in Boer War and WW I, early medical science pioneer with husband, noted Russian doctor / scientist Serge Voronoff |
When he was a boy of ten years of age, his parents removed to Ohio where he passed his early years. His education, which was essentially of a business character, began when he was a clerk in a bank in Covington, Kentucky. Later he engaged in business as a cotton broker, and in 1864 located in New York City. He owned large cotton docks on Staten Island, where also he resided on a beautiful estate until 1877, when he purchased the property at Mamaroneck.
When the oil regions of western Pennsylvania began to be developed as a new source of wealth, Mr. Bostwick became interested in several wells near Franklin, Pennsylvania, and organized the firm of J. A. Bostwick and Company, oil refiners and shippers. In 1872, when John D. Rockefeller formed the Standard Oil Company, Mr. Bostwick aided in its organization and became its first Treasurer, and shortly afterward dissolved his connection with his partner, W. H. Tilford, who also became affiliated with the Standard Oil Company.
Thereafter, for many years Mr. Bostwick was the company's chief oil buyer, but in 1885 he retired from the oil business, and in 1886 was elected President of the New York and New England Railroad Company. He held this office until January, 1892. Only two weeks before his death he purchased a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
In all his affairs Mr. Bostwick showed his great ability as a far-seeing organizer. He was of even temperament, striking personality, and great charm, a sound judge of character, so that he became a model for the younger generation of Standard Oil men. He was the friend and adviser of Presidents Grant, Hays and Arthur, and supported Secretary William C. Whitney, in his plans for an enlarged American Navy.
He had as well an inventive genius and patented several safety devices such as the Bostwick gate. Mr. Bostwick, whose fortune at the time of his death was estimated at $12,000,000, was always liberal with his wealth, although his gifts were made without ostentation, and many of his benefactions will never be known. He aided generously the charities of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, New York, of which he was a member, and built and endowed Emanuel Baptist Church, Suffolk Street, New York. While in Mamaroneck, he aided the Roman Catholic parish and other religious bodies, without regard to denomination. He also materially increased the endowments of Forrest College, North Carolina. Mr. Bostwick believed that education should make one self-reliant by the development of natural talents, that girls should have the same practical training as boys, and that the daughters of the well-to-do should be equipped to earn their own livelihood if necessary. For this reason his elder daughter, Nellie, took a thorough course in dressmaking, and Evelyn, the second child, chose the profession of surgery."
American Biographical Library, The Biographical Cyclopædia
of American Women, Volume I, Daughters of America; or Women of the Century,
Bostwick, Helen Celia Ford, Educational Work, page 351.
Line from Thomas Carter, my common
ancestor:
A biography of a fellow member of the Standad Oil "oil cartel", Joseph Seep, mentioning Jabez, is here.
The Carter line to Johnny Appleseed is:
Johnny Appleseed Links:
The Johnny Appleseed Trail Page - including biography
Johnny is also related to us via our Richardson ancestry. See his Richardson lineage.
She was educated to speak French as well as English, and in 1888 completed the course at Miss Dana's School, Morristown, New Jersey, with honors in literature and arts. As she had always been interested in surgery, on account of her father's belief in a practical training for girls, and his requirement that his daughters should choose a trade or profession, she followed the course at the old Orthopaedic Hospital, New York, where she laid the foundation for the brilliant work which she has since accomplished as a scientist.
Throughout her life she has had her father as an ideal. He trained her mind to be systematic and methodical, and her aim was to be worthy of his name. In 1892 her first marriage took her to England, where she lived until 1912. There she frequently engaged in parish and charitable nursing, and continued her studies at the clinics at King's College, London, to which she was invited by the leading surgeons of the faculty, and also at the Sorbonne, Paris, where she specialized in the arts and at the same time studied singing under Mme. Marchesi.
During the Boer War (1901-1903) she served as a nurse with the British Army, and was decorated with the Military Cross for bravery. After her return to England there ensued a period of social and political activity. She was appointed by the London County Council Inspector of Schools and Hospitals for the Hoxton Division, London, and there organized the Women's Conservative Union. In 1910 she campaigned mid-Derbyshire and in 1911 the Hoxton Division, London, in the interest of Arthur Balfour and contributed articles to London journals and magazines. At this period the militant woman suffrage agitation was at its height, but as a scientist, philosopher and practical politician, she declared her opposition to the suffrage movement, and especially to the militant methods. She stressed the physical and nervous difference between man and woman, that man proceeds by logic, woman by intuition; and held that man, because of his greater mental balance, is the one to govern, while woman has her important sphere in education, economics, and the carrying out of good laws.
While in England, she also became identified with the Girl Guides movement, and was herself an active sportswoman. She sailed her yawl Bona in yacht races in the Mediterranean, winning the King Edward VII Cup at Cannes in 1911, 1912, and 1913, the Prince of Monaco's Cup the same years, and the Nice Yacht Club's Cup once.
Upon the outbreak of the World War in August, 1914, she offered her
services as a nurse to the French government. For a month she was stationed
as infirmière supéricure at Valde-Grâce Military Hospital,
Paris, where she performed many minor operations, and after that was on
the front in the Vosges, in Champagne, and on the Somme. In 1916 she was
appointed head of the nursing staff of the military hospital at the Hotel
Majestic, Nice, but broke down from
overwork and was blind for four months. Upon her recovery, on February
13, 1917, she was honored by being appointed the only woman on the staff
of the Collège de France, with the title of Assistante de Laboratoire.
Here she collaborated in the experiments and discoveries of Doctor Serge
Voronoff, with whom she was associated for many years in scientific research,
and to whom she was married in Paris, July 1, 1919.
Serge Voronoff was born in Voronej, Russia, July 10, 1868, and came
to Paris at the age of seventeen. He studied at the Sorbonne, the École
de Médecine, and the École des Hautes Études. He was
then appointed surgeon to Khedive Abbas-Hilmi of Egypt. In Cairo he was
President of the Faculty of Medicine, President of the Académie
de Médecine, and Editor of the Presse Médicale of Egypt.
He also created at his own expense the hospital at Choubrah. For his many
services Abbas-Hilmi conferred upon him the cordon of the Legion of Honor
affiliated with the Grand Croix of the Medijeh.
In 1910 he returned to France to engage in research work at the Collège de France. In 1914 he became the head of the Russian Hospital at Bordeaux, and, in 1916, was placed in charge of Military Hospital Number 187, devoted to bone and skin grafting. His health unfortunately failing, he retired for a year, and in 1917 returned to experimental work at the Collège de France, where he is Director of the Laboratory of Experimental Surgery.
There he and Mme. Voronoff perfected the discovery of grafting living tissue in open antiseptic wounds, which usually heal in from twelve days to a month. This method was communicated to the Académie des Sciences, September 1, 1918, in the monograph, tudes sur les bourgeonnements des palies de guerre. The most important experiments in which Doctor and Mme. Voronoff collaborated had to do with the transplanting of the interstitial gland. These experiments were begun in 1917 and were communicated to the Académie des Sciences on October 8, 1919. They demonstrate that the life of animals so treated is extended, physical and mental vigor reëstablished and maintained, arterio-sclerosis and senile decay prevented, and that the offspring mature rapidly. The book describing these experiments and discoveries is entitled Vivre and was translated into English, with the title, Life, by Mme. Voronoff, in 1920. The scientific circles in Paris at once recognized the value of these discoveries and in 1920 Doctor and Mme. Voronoff gave demonstrations of their method at the American Hospital, Chicago, Illinois, and at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Mr. Sinai Hospital, New York.
Mme. Voronoff was the mother of three children: Marian Barbara Carstairs, the wife of Captain J. de Pret of the British Army, Evelyn Francis, and Francis Francis, Jr. She died in Paris, France, March 3, 1921.
American Biographical Library, The Biographical Cyclopeadia of American Women, Volume I, Daughters of America; or Women of the Century, Voronoff, Evelyn, Bostwick, Educational Work, page 351
Note that not all of Serge's work was successful. The
ESTROGEN, PROGESTERONE AND HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPIES web page reports
(and I'm not making this up! <g>)
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