Person:Charles Westbrook (1)

He was one of the last private owners of the Senate House in Kingston, New York, in which his parents lived after their retirement. In 1858, he moved his family to Ogdensburg when he was sent there as attorney for the estate of George Parrish. This estate consisted of lands in St. Lawrence County, buildings and enterprises at Ogdensburg, and iron ore mines at Rossie, New York. He managed the Power Iron Works for 20 years. I believe it likely that about 1890, he returned to the Peekskill or the New York area, where he managed the Sterlington Iron Works and practiced law, principally with the Customs Department. His grandson, James S. Westbrook, remembers him as "deaf as a post and perpetually absent on the affairs of his clients," suggesting he was living in Ogdensburg in the 1890's. Further, both he and my grandfather wrote that their Westbrook grandparents played an important role in their early lives. However, neither show up in Ogdensburg city directories of the time.

There are surely some important pieces missing from this account of his career. I find it surprising that the son of a prominent Reformed pastor would not have a baptismal record in his father's church, and that a competent, if not prominent lawyer, would have such an ambiguous occupation and residence in his last years.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 I have found no official record of either of these dates so I must allow for the possibility that he was not born or baptized in Fishkill. This is the date given as his birth in a deposition of his brother, TR Westbrook in 1876.
2. ↑ Per the Kingston Weekly Leader, he died on the Friday before 11 Aug 1900 and was born at Fishkill in 1827.
3.   His will is filed at Ogdensburg at 45-32-557.