country town into a center of industry. Peter’s son William initiated the brothers’ string of successes when he rented an old gristmill in order to start up a small hat manufacturing company, restructured in 1834 because his family and Yonkers’s prominent Paddock clan decided to unite in marriage and in business. Another of Peter’s children, Aurelia Waring, wed Isaac Paddock, and “Paddock and Waring” would expand for the next decade, until, in 1844, the buildings burned to the ground.
Although the reconstruction took several years, by 1857 it was a thriving small business again, and Peter’s son John T. Waring, who had worked with his brother William for the ten years prior to the fire, bought the entire factory and enlarged it until it employed over eight hundred men to make ninety-six hundred hats a day. In 1861, Phoebe’s uncle John was elected president of Yonkers, while the next year, her uncle William cofounded Underhill and Waring molasses house, the town’s first sugar refinery. By 1868, John T. Waring was rich enough to buy the buildings that Robert Getty, one of the wealthiest businessmen in Yonkers, had constructed on the corner of Main Street and Broadway, and within eight more years, John’s capital would grow to almost a million dollars. But during the previous decade, lulled into a false sense of security because of his company’s unprecedented success, Phoebe’s uncle had bought thirty-three acres of land on North Broadway overlooking the Hudson River, where he erected a magnificent mansion known as “Greystone.” When sudden reverses in his business caused him to lose everything the same year that he gained his first million dollars, he went bankrupt and ended up selling Greystone for a tenth of what it had cost to build.
More impressive than John T. Waring’s earlier success, however, was the courageous way in which he handled the severe setback, and the generosity with which the community welcomed him home rather than censuring his failure. Waring moved to Boston, hired convicts to help him build his business anew, and, triumphant, returned to Yonkers in 1884, where he set to work reconstructing his hat industry. Phoebe’s own father, Jarvis Augustus Waring, himself a respected local businessman until he died in 1872, through his can-do work ethic inspired among his descendants, John T. included, the belief that failure was ignoble only if its victims refused to seek success anew. When the history of Westchester County was written in 1896, it would celebrate the Waring family’s prominent identification with the social life of Yonkers, their connection with St. John’s Episcopal Church, and their energy in conducting business affairs—all of which tethered them to the very founding of Yonkers’s history.
Phoebe Waring and John Rockwell appeared well positioned to contribute to the vitality of the city their forebears had helped create, through yet another prominent union of Yonkers’s best families. They had three children, who grew up in Yonkers, where, eleven years after their marriage, John and Phoebe had purchased “a beautiful residence on Locust Hill,” according to local histories. Their firstborn—a daughter, Grace Waring Rockwell—dutifully attended Drew Seminary, a girls’ school in Carmel, New York, where she was graduated in 1882. The middle child, and the paternal grandfather’s namesake, Samuel Darling, born in 1866, was later encouraged to work with his father at the family business—when he deigned to work at all. A charming scoundrel, Samuel would assume an afterlife as the Rockwell family skeleton. And on December 10, 1867, Jarvis Waring Rockwell was born, as serious as his brother was frivolous. The youngest child would seem, temperamentally, the fusion of the stock he had come from, as if his name symbolized the merging of his parents’ pasts as well as their persons. In spite of his aura as an insignificant but ethical businessman and an honorable,
Although the reconstruction took several years, by 1857 it was a thriving small business again, and Peter’s son John T. Waring, who had worked with his brother William for the ten years prior to the fire, bought the entire factory and enlarged it until it employed over eight hundred men to make ninety-six hundred hats a day. In 1861, Phoebe’s uncle John was elected president of Yonkers, while the next year, her uncle William cofounded Underhill and Waring molasses house, the town’s first sugar refinery. By 1868, John T. Waring was rich enough to buy the buildings that Robert Getty, one of the wealthiest businessmen in Yonkers, had constructed on the corner of Main Street and Broadway, and within eight more years, John’s capital would grow to almost a million dollars. But during the previous decade, lulled into a false sense of security because of his company’s unprecedented success, Phoebe’s uncle had bought thirty-three acres of land on North Broadway overlooking the Hudson River, where he erected a magnificent mansion known as “Greystone.” When sudden reverses in his business caused him to lose everything the same year that he gained his first million dollars, he went bankrupt and ended up selling Greystone for a tenth of what it had cost to build.
More impressive than John T. Waring’s earlier success, however, was the courageous way in which he handled the severe setback, and the generosity with which the community welcomed him home rather than censuring his failure. Waring moved to Boston, hired convicts to help him build his business anew, and, triumphant, returned to Yonkers in 1884, where he set to work reconstructing his hat industry. Phoebe’s own father, Jarvis Augustus Waring, himself a respected local businessman until he died in 1872, through his can-do work ethic inspired among his descendants, John T. included, the belief that failure was ignoble only if its victims refused to seek success anew. When the history of Westchester County was written in 1896, it would celebrate the Waring family’s prominent identification with the social life of Yonkers, their connection with St. John’s Episcopal Church, and their energy in conducting business affairs—all of which tethered them to the very founding of Yonkers’s history.
Phoebe Waring and John Rockwell appeared well positioned to contribute to the vitality of the city their forebears had helped create, through yet another prominent union of Yonkers’s best families. They had three children, who grew up in Yonkers, where, eleven years after their marriage, John and Phoebe had purchased “a beautiful residence on Locust Hill,” according to local histories. Their firstborn—a daughter, Grace Waring Rockwell—dutifully attended Drew Seminary, a girls’ school in Carmel, New York, where she was graduated in 1882. The middle child, and the paternal grandfather’s namesake, Samuel Darling, born in 1866, was later encouraged to work with his father at the family business—when he deigned to work at all. A charming scoundrel, Samuel would assume an afterlife as the Rockwell family skeleton. And on December 10, 1867, Jarvis Waring Rockwell was born, as serious as his brother was frivolous. The youngest child would seem, temperamentally, the fusion of the stock he had come from, as if his name symbolized the merging of his parents’ pasts as well as their persons. In spite of his aura as an insignificant but ethical businessman and an honorable,
Similar Books
