Person:George Williams (52)

America's Successful Men of Affairs: An Encyclopedia of Contemporaneous Biography Volume I W George Gilbert Williams page 729 GEORGE GILBERT WILLIAMS, banker, one of the soundest, most conservative and best known financiers in New York, is the worthy president of the famous old Chemical Bank. This great institution was founded in 1824 as The Chemical Manufacturing Co., with banking privileges, by a number of leading members of the drug trade in this city. In 1844, its original charter expired and it was then at once reorganized as The Chemical Bank. During the war, the institution became a national bank. Of the original company, John Mason was one of the most prominent presidents. John Quentin Jones was made first president of the bank in 1844, and Mr. Williams succeeded him in 1878, and during his long, wise and successful management, the institution has become the soundest, as it is the most famous, in the city. Mr. Williams was born in the town of East Haddam, Conn., in 1826. He descends from Welsh ancestry. His family is the one which gave birth to Roger Williams of colonial fame. His own ancestor was Robert Williams, who came to America about the time of the Pilgrims. The family has always been distinguished by its high social position and the public spirit of its members. More than thirty of its men held commissions in the armies of the American Revolution. The father of Mr. Williams was Dr. Datus Williams, a practicing physician of East Haddam for more than forty years. George first aspired to the career of a lawyer, and during his early years of careful education at home, in the district school, and the village academy, he kept this object in view. But a different career was opened to him by circumstances. Among the patients of his father was a brother of the cashier in The Chemical Bank in New York city. The lad attracted the attention of Mr. Jones, who offered to secure for him a position in the bank. The arrangement was made, and young Mr. Williams came to New York in December, 1841, and entered the employment of The Chemical Manufacturing Co., then established on the site of the present National Park Bank. He began as assistant to the paying teller. Honest, ambitious, and clear headed, he applied himself to his work with so much intelligence and success, that, at the age of twenty, he was made paying teller, and was the youngest man in the city occupying such a responsible position. Among the directors and depositors of The Chemical Bank were many of the foremost men in New York, including A. T. Stewart, Robert and Peter Goelet, John D. Wolfe, Cornelius S. V. Roosevelt, Robert McCoskrey and Japhet Bishop, a fact which renders apparent the nature of the compliment, when, in 1855, Mr. Williams was elected cashier of the bank, and when on Jan. 1, 1878, after the death of John Quentin Jones, he was elected to the presidency of the institution. Mr. Williams has always made finance the subject of diligent study and has proved a capable and valuable manager of his great institution. Its deposits have now reached the sum of $30,000,000. His judgment and conservatism have won the implicit confidence of leading merchants and capitalists and he has been called to many positions of trust outside of his bank. He is now director in The Union Trust Co., The Fidelity & Casualty Co., The United States Life Insurance Co., The Eagle Fire Insurance Co., The Title Guarantee & Trust Co., The Institution for Savings of Merchants' Clerks, and The Pennsylvania Coal Co. Modest, reserved and quiet in demeanor, Mr. Williams is a cultivated gentleman and an agreeable companion in social life. He has little taste for club life, but has joined the Metropolitan and Riding clubs for certain advantages they afford, and is an enthusiastic member of The New England Society. His public spirit has been shown [p.730] by his support of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The American Museum of Natural History, and in many other ways. Mr. Williams is a prominent member of St. Bartholomew's P. E. church on Madison avenue and one of the governors of The Lying-In Hospital.