Register 78 (1924): 434

Memoirs [of deceased members of The New England Historic Genealogical Society]

Stuyvesant Fish, A.M., of New York City, a Pilgrim Tercentenary member since 1920, was born in New York City 24 June 1851, the son of Hon. Hamilton and Julia (Kean) Fish, and died there, suddenly, 10 April 1923.
His immigrant ancestor, Jonathan Fish, baptized in England 16 February 1615/16, was at Lynn, Mass., in 1637, soon afterwards went to Sandwich in the Plymouth Colony, moved thence, through Rhode Island, to Oyster Bay, Long Island, and as early as 1659 settled at Newtown, Long Island, then under the Dutch Government, where he died about 1663. His wife's name was Mary. His third son, Nathan Fish, born on Cape Cod 18 December 1650, married Judith ___, and died at Newtown, where he spent his life as a farmer, 1 August 1734. Jonathan Fish of Newtown, eldest son of Nathan and Judith [___], who was born at Newtown 11 October 1680 and died there in November 1723, married Mary ___, and in 1714 gave his homestead as a site for the Presyterian church in Newtown. His only surviving son, Capt. Samuel Fish, who was born at Newtown 24 November 1704 and died there 27 August 1767, married first Agnes Berrien; their eldest son, Jonathan Fish, who was born at Newtown 11 May 1728 and died 26 December 1779, married Elizabeth Sackett; and Col. Nicholas Fish, only son of Jonathan and Elizabeth (Sackett), who was born in New York City 28 August 1758 and died there 20 June 1833, served as an officer in the Revolution from June 1776 to the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, and was appointed by President Washington in 1794 as suupervisor of the revenue, one of the highest posts in the Treasury Department. He became president of the New York Society of the Cincinnati in 1797. He married Elizabeth Stuyvesant, a great-great-granddaughter of the famous Dutch Governor of New Netherlands; and their eldest son was the well-known statesman, Hon. Hamilton Fish, who was born in New York City 3 August 1808 and died at "Glenclyffe," near Garrison, N.Y., 7 September 1893. A graduate of Columbia (A.B., 1827, A.M., 1830) and a lawyer of distinction, Hon. Hamilton Fish was a member of the United States House of Representatives (as a Whig) in the Twenty-eighth Congress (1843–1845), Lieutenant Governor of New York, 1847–1848, Governor, 1849–1850, United States Senator, 1851–1857, joining the newly-formed Republican Party before the expiration of his senatorial term, and Secretary of State under President Grant, 1869–1877. He held also other offices of importance, and was a trustee of Columbia College, 1840–1849 and 1851–1893, president of the New York Historical Society, 1867–1869, and president general of the Society of the Cincinnati, 1854–1893. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Columbia in 1850, from Union College in 1869, and from Harvard in 1871. He married in New York City, 15 December 1836, Julia Kean, born at Ursino, near Elizabeth, N.J., 19 December 1816, died in New York City 30 June 1887, daughter of Peter and Sarah Sabina (Morris) Kean of Ursino. Their eldest son, Nicholas Fish (1846–1902), diplomatist and banker, A.B. (Columbia, 1867), LL.B. (Harvard, 1869), A.M. (Columbia, 1871), was attached to the United States Legation at Berlin as assistant secretary and secretary, 1871–1877, and was United States chargι d'affaires in Switzerland, 1877–1881, and United States minister in Belgium, 1882–1886; his son, Hamilton Fish, a soldier in the war with Spain, was killed in action in Cuba, 26 June 1898, while serving as second sergeant of Troop K, First Volunteer Cavalry (the so-called "Rough Riders"). Their second son, Hon. Hamilton Fish, A.B. (Columbia, 1869), A.M. (ib., 1872), LL.B. (ib., 1873), born at Albany, N.Y., 17 April 1849, was private secretary to his father while the latter was Secretary of State, a member of the New York Assembly for eleven years, serving as speaker of the House in 1895 and 1896, and Assistant Treasurer of the United States at New York City, 1903–1908, was elected as a Republican Representative from New York in the Sixty-first Congress (1909–1911), and is a member also of the House of Representatives of the present (the Sixty-eighth) Congress (1923–1925).
Stuyvesant Fish, third son of Hon. Hamilton Fish, was a pupil at Mr. Haccius's school at Laney, near Geneva, Switzerland, in 1858, and his education was continued under tutors in 1859 while his parents were travelling in Europe. In 1859 he attended Mr. Elie Charlier's school in New York City, where he remained until 1861, when he entered Mr. Marlborough Churchill's school at Sing Sing, N.Y. In 1867 he was admitted to Columbia University, and received there the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1871 and that of Master of Arts in 1874.
Embarking on a business career, Mr. Fish in a few years gained an inportant place as a railway official and financier. In the fall of 1871 he entered the railway service as a clerk in the New York offices of the Illinois Central Railroad Company; in the following year he was appointed secretary to the president of the road; but in November 1872 he became a clerk in the banking firm of Morton, Bliss & Company of New York and later in the affiliated house of Morton, Rose & Company of London, and then from January 1875 to March 1877 he was managing clerk for Morton, Bliss & Company, with power of attorney. In 1876 he became a member of the New York Stock Exchange, retaining this membership until 1879, and he was also elected a director of the Illinois Central Railroad Company and appointed treasurer and agent for the purchasing committee of the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad Company. In the fall of 1877 he was made secretary of the Chicago, St. Louis & New Orleans Railroad Company, and in March 1882 was elected its vice president. In 1883 he was elected second vice president of the Illinois Central system, in 1884 was its first vice president, and in 1887 was advanced to the presidency of the company, which he held until November 1906. He was president of the Association of Railway Executives from April 1904 to April 1906, chairman of the Seventh Session of the International Railway Congress at Washington, D.C., in May 1905, and a member of the Monetary Commission established by the Indianapolis Monetary Conference of 1897. He was trustee of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, 1883–1906, and the New York Life Insurance & Trust Company, and a director of the National Park Bank and a number of other financial corporations.
In the year preceding his death Mr. Fish was a determined opponent of the method of enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States prescribed by the so-called "Volstead Act," and attacked vigorously the activities of the Anti-Saloon Leaugue.
He was a member of many clubs and societies, among which may be mentioned the Union, St. Anthony, Metropolitan, Racquet and Tennis, Church, Sleepy Hollow, and Down Town Clubs, the Automobile Club of America, the St. Nicholas Society, the New York Historical Society, of which he was recording secretary, and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, of which he was a life member and vice president. In common with many other Pilgrim Tercentenary members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society he accepted an invitation to place on the walls of the stair hall of the Society's building a tablet in memory of an American forbear, and this tablet, commemorating Jonathan Fish, his immigrant ancestor, was erected in 1921.
Mr. Fish married in New York City, 1 June 1876, Marian Graves Anthon, who was born on Staten Island, N.Y., 8 June 1853 and died 25 May 1915, daughter of William Henry Anthon, an eminent lawyer of New York City, and his wife Sarah Atwood (Meert) Anthon. Mrs. Fish was for many years a leader in New York and Newport society. Their first child, Livingston Fish, died in infancy; but their other children, who survive them, are Marian Anthon Fish, wife of Albert Zabriskie Gray, A.B. (Harvard, 1903), Stuyvesant Fish, Jr., A.B. (Yale, 1905), who married Isabell Mildred Dick and has succeeded his father in his Pilgrim Tercentenary membership in the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and Sidney Webster Fish, A.B. (Harvard, 1910, as of 1908), LL.B. (columbia, 1911), who married Olga Wiborg. Mr. Fish's city residence was at No. 25 East 78th Street, New York, and his country seat was at "Glenclyffe," near Garrison on the Hudson.
Funeral services for Mr. Fish were held at Trinity Church in New York City on 12 April 1923, and he was buried in St. Philip's Churchyard, Garrison, where his wife, his parents, and many of his kindred are interred.

Cf. memoir of Stuyvesant Fish, with portrait, in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 54, pp. 329–331 (October 1923).