BIOGRAPHIES
Wayne County Michigan
HENRY BROCKHOLST LEDYARD
Mayor of Detroit (1855-56)
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HENRY BROCKHOLST LEDYARD one of the early Mayors of Detroit, was born in the City of New York on
the 5th of March, 1812. Among his ancestors were men who had occupied important positions of public trust, and who had achieved distinction in the service of the country. His grandfather. Benjamin Ledyard, was Major of a New York regiment of infantry
in the Revolutionary war. and was one of the original members and founders of the New York State Society of the Cincinnati in 1783. He was a cousin
of John Ledyard, the traveler, and of Colonel William Led yard, who, while in command of Fort Griswold at Groton, Connecticut, was treacherously
killed by a British officer at the time of the memorable massacre of the garrison in 1781. His father, Benjamin Ledyard, was a well-known
lawyer of New York City. His mother was Susan French Livingston, a daughter of Brockholst Livingston, who graduated at Princeton in 1774, served
as aide-de-camp to General Schuyler and General St. Clair, and became a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1778. After the close of the Revolutionary war Brockholst
Livingston practised law in New York City until 1802, when he became one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of New York, an office which he held until his appointment as one of the Associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1807. He held this office until his death in 1823.
Henry Ledyard's great-grandfather was William Livingston, the third son of Philip Livingston, who was the second lord of the manor of Livingston, and whose eldest son was the third and last lord of
the manor, and whose second son, Philip, was one of the signers of the Declaration of independence. William Livingston graduated at Yale College in 1741. became a member of the Middle Temple,
London, in 1742. a member of the Colonial Assembly of New York in 1759, from his brother's manor of Livingston (which at that time had the privilege
of representation under its patent), removed to New Jersey in 1772, was a member of the Colonial Congress from New Jersey in 1774-75, and was recalled
from Congress, June 5, 1775, to take command of the New Jersey forces as Brigadier-General. He became Governor of New Jersey in 1776, and held that position continuously until his death in 1790.
After graduating from Columbia College in 1830, Henry Ledyard entered upon the practice of the law in the City of New York, When General Lewis Cass was appointed Minister to France, Mr. Ledyard was attached to the
Legation. A gentleman of elegant manners and high culture, he was eminently qualified for a diplomatic position. In 1839 he became Secretary of
Legation, and in 1842 Charge of Affairs, a position which he filled for about two years with credit to himself and to the satisfaction of his country. On the 19th of September. 1839. He married Matilda Frances, daughter of General Cass.
On his return to this country in 1844, Mr. Ledyard took up his residence at Detroit, where (or nearly twenty years he took an active and prominent part in all that concerned the welfare of that
dry. In 1845 he was one of the founders of the State Bank; in 1846, one of the original promoters and trustees of Elmwood Cemetery, serving for many years as its Secretary. In 1846-47 he was a
member of the Board of Education, and was largely instrumental in introducing and establishing the system of Union Schools which has ever since been in operation.
The year 1847 was a memorable one on account of the dreadful destitution which prevailed in Ireland. Contributions for its relief were called for all
over the country, and Mr. Ledyard, in conjunction with Mr. C. C. Trowbridge, was especially active and successful in gathering funds and supplies to be forwarded from Detroit and other parts of Michigan. He was one of the first to realize the great advantages to be gained by the city through improved
means of communication with the interior of the State. In 1848 he became one of the promoters and corporators of the first Plank Road Company organized in Michigan, and for many years he was
a director in the various enterprises of this character. In 1849-50 he was a member of the Board of Aldermen, and when the Board of Water Commissioners was organized he was one of the original
Commissioners named in the act creating the Board, of which he continued to be a member from 1853 to 1859. In 1855 he was elected Mayor of Detroit, and in 1857 State Senator.
When General Cass became Secretary of State under Mr. Buchanans administration, Mr. Ledyard accompanied him to Washington, where he remained until 1861. He then removed to Newport,
Rhode Island, and continued to reside there until his death in 1880. Mr. Ledyard was distinguished by a deep sense of public duty and a broad and well-considered
charity, and during his residence in Newport he found employment for his active and energetic temperament in untiring efforts to promote the public
good. He became a member of the Commission appointed by the Mayor to prepare a new charter for the city. Chiefly through his efforts, a large
fund was raised for the establishment and maintenance of the Newport Hospital, and he became its first President. He also took a prominent part
in the organization and maintenance of various societies for the relief of the poor and unfortunate. Although a great sufferer during the later years of his life, his zeal for the welfare of others showed
no abatement. No considerations of personal discomfort or inconvenience deterred him from his active efforts of benevolence. He was a daily visitor at the hospital which he had established, and
many a sufferer within its walls gained renewed hope and life from his tender sympathy and cheerful words of encouragement. It was said of him
that his presence in the hospital was felt as a benediction. A great lover of books and possessed of a fine and critical literary taste, lie was an earnest advocate of the usefulness of public libraries as a means
of education for the people, and for many years he took an active interest in the management of that venerable institution in Newport, the Redwood Library, and was at one time its President. In
works such as these the last twenty years of his life were passed. His death occurred on the 7th of June, 1880, at London, during a brief visit to Europe.
Source: History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan By Silas Farmer 1890
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Henry B. Ledyard, railroad executive and philanthropist, was born in the American
Embassy, Paris, France, February 20, 1814, son of
Henry and Matilda (Cass) Ledyard; brother of Lewis Cass Ledyard, lawyer and capitalist of New York;
grandson of General Lewis Cass, the most prominent
figure in the history of Michigan; great-grandson of
William Livingston, member of the continental congress and governor of New Jersey, and great-great-grandson of Philip Livingston, second lord of the
Manor of Livingston. At the time of the birth of the
subject. General Cass was United States minister to
France, while Henry Ledyard, father of the subject,
was secretary of legation in Paris. Henry Ledyard
was an alderman in Detroit during 1849-50, was a
member for six years of the first board of water commissioners, and was mayor of Detroit in 1855.
Henry Brockholst Ledyard received his preliminary
education at Washington A. Bacon's Select School
for Boys in Detroit. He was appointed a cadet at
large to the United States Military Academy at West
Point by President Buchanan, while General Cass was
secretary of state in the Buchanan cabinet. He was
graduated at West Point in 1863 and on the day of
his graduation was presented with two commissions,
first and second lieutenant. He was assigned to the
Nineteenth Infantry and he served successively as
quartermaster of his regiment, brigade quartermaster
and chief of the commissary officers of the department of Arkansas. Later he was transferred to the
Thirty-seventh Infantry as quartermaster and then to
the Fourth Artillery, with which be was detailed
chief of subsistence on the staff of General Hanrock,
department of Missouri. He was in the field against
the Indians in 1867 and for a year he was assistant
professor of French at West Point. When the army
was reorganized in 1870 and materially reduced, he
acted on the advice of General Sherman and obtained
a leave of six months to try his hand at railroading.
He entered the engineering department of the Northern Pacific Railroad, then under construction, but in
the same year he transferred his affiliation to the
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company as a clerk in the operating department. A month later
he realigned his army commission. His advance was
rapid. Two years later he was assistant superintendent
of the road and the next year was advanced to superintendent of the eastern division. In 1874 he was
made assistant to William B. Strong, who had been
shifted by James V. Joy from the Burlington to the
Michigan Central Railroad Company as general superintendent. The following year Mr. Ledyard took over
the duties of chief engineer in addition to those of
assistant general superintendent. Two years thereafter he was made general superintendent of the road,
succeeding Strong, who was returned to the Burlington. The following year he was promoted to general
manager. The Michigan Central at this time was
credited with being little better than a third-class road.
A floating debt of a million and a half dollars stood
on its books. Its roadbed, train equipment and buildings were in poor shape. A few year* later the Vanderbilt interests acquired control of the road and
Joy retired as president in favor of William H. Vanderbilt. It was Led yard's idea to keep away from the
issuance of bonds and stockjobbing. This pleased
the new owners and he was given full rein. In 1883
Vanderbilt turned over the presidency to him. lie was
one of the first of the younger railroad executives
to fall in with the Newman theory of doubting the
capacity of cars and having longer trains pulled by
more powerful locomotives, thus reducing the cost
of freight transportation. With this idea in mind,
he proceeded to tear out and junk practically every
steel railroad bridge in the eastern division; rebuilt
scores of miles of trackage and roadbed, and eliminated as nearly as possible the curves and steep grades.
When reconstruction work was completed the road
was operating freight trains of eighty cars as against
the former maximum of thirty, and the capacity of
these cars had been doubled. The entire cost of this
work was paid from the earnings. Then he started
a campaign to create new business for the road. At
this time he said to a friend: "1 came to the conclusion that to get new business we must provide
facilities for men to make new business profitable.
To encourage manufacturers to build on our line* by
giving them shipping facilities as good as they could
get in any other center." He had six miles of terminals built at River Rouge before a single Industrial
plant was located in that district. His whole idea
of the proper manner to conduct a great railroad was
"service to all." As a railroad chief his West Point
training stood him in good stead. Obedience was a
cardinal principle upon which he insisted. Carelessness was not countenanced and incompetency meant
summary dismissal. He never was familiar with subordinates but always treated them candidly and with
respect. He continued to build and to acquire terminals in Detroit until his road was able to show more
manufacturing plants on its terminals than all other
Detroit roads combined. In 1916 he acquired for the
Michigan Central the Detroit Belt Line Railroad, on
which are scores of largo factories, among them the
works of the Ford Motor Company. Problems which
would have caused much worry among many railroad
men were brushed aside by him with little ado. Within
two hours after the destruction by fire of the old
passenger station in Detroit, ho was running trains
out of tho new station then in the hands of contractors
but within two months of being finished. In only
one instance did he go out of his own organization
to fill a vacancy, and during his regime many
Michigan Central office boys became executives, he
continued as president of the road until 1903 and
thereafter was chairman of the board. He was an
active and loyal supporter of Christ Protestant Episcopal church throughout his life, was a member of
its vestry and at the time of his death had been for
many years its senior warden. He was formerly
president and afterward chairman of the board of the
Union Trust Company and he was a director in the
People's State Bank of Detroit. He was a member of
the Society of the Cincinnati, by right of his great-grandfather. Major Benjamin Ledyard, Sons of the
American Revolution and Knickerbocker Club at New
York and of the Detroit, Yondotoga and Country
Clubs at Detroit. His home was at Grosse Point
Farms, Detroit. He found his chief recreation in golf,
also in gathering together an extraordinary collection
of rare volumes.
General Rufus Ingalls, quartermaster of the Army
of the Potomac, said he considered Mr. Ledyard one
of the ablest masters of transportation of his time.
"In an emergency," he said, "be could run a dozen
railroads and provision five armies at a time.....
He inherited this ability from his grandfather, Lewis
Cass was the best army supplier we had in the War of
1812, and when appointed territorial governor of
Michigan he was to facto quartermaster of the whole
northwestern country." Politically he was a democrat
up to the time of the free silver heresy, since when
he voted for the republican party. But politics did
not concern much this genius of the rail. To office
holding ho preferred to stand as the synonym for railroad operation of tho highest class. Ho made his road
one of the two best in the middle west. He might
be said to have built the Michigan Central. Many
regard it as a great and enduring and honorable monument to his work. Few men leave behind them such
concrete proofs of their service to mankind. What
he did toward making Detroit so progressive that it
hurdled in population several sister cities; what ho did
toward making Michigan rich and solidly prosperous,
is beyond calculation, but unquestionably he was one
of the great constructive pioneers of the commonwealth. The greatest engineering enterprise in con-
section with railroad transportation which has been
accomplished in Michigan since the beginning of that
industry, was initiated and carried out by him—the
submarine crossing of the Detroit river. The seductiveness of the high-financing's, manipulative side of
railroad chieftaincy never possessed his spirit. His
conception of transportation was to fetch and carry
people and things with expedition and the fullest
degree of security, to make his system scientifically
abreast of the age. Capable of great concentration and
self-discipline, be was a silent and detached man whose
soul was in his work. He survived many changes in
personnel and lived to see many of his dreams come
true. He was one of the most reticent yet one of
the most over-towering figures in the life of Detroit,
and in his own circle one of the moat beloved. For
two minutes during his funeral obsequies, for the
first time in the history of the Michigan Central, all
the rolling stock stopped simultaneously by order, in
his honor. The crudity which tradition attaches to
our strong business men was no part of Henry B.
Ledyard'a character. He was a gentleman, in a senate
of the word rarely employed today in the United
States. He belonged to that valid aristocracy which
has almost been swept away by industrialism and all
but supplanted by a ruling class whose solo qualification is capital. His will left bequests to the Children's Free Hospital Association, to Christ Protestant
Episcopal church and to the Railroad Young Men's
Christian Association of Detroit.
Mr. Ledyard wan married October IS, 1887, to Mary,
daughter of Stephen L Tlouimedieu of Cincinnati, projector and for twenty-five years president of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad. Mrs. Ledyard
died March 30, 1895, four children surviving her:
Matilda Cass Ledyard, who was married in 1897 to
llaron von Ketteler of Berlin, Germany, at that time
the German minister to Mexico and afterwards minister to China, where he was murdered in the Boxer
uprising in Pekin in 1900; Henry, an attorney of
Detroit, member of the firm of Campbell, Bulkier &
Ledyard; Augustus Canfield, who was killed in action
in the Philippines as first lieutenant of the Sixth
United States Infantry on the 6th of December, 1899;
and Hugh, secretary and treasurer of the Art Stove
Company of Detroit. Henry B. Ledyard died at
Grosse Pointe Farms on May 25, 1921.
The city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922;
By Clarence Monroe Burton, William Stocking, Gordon K. Miller
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HENRY LEDYARD
Son of Henry Brockholst and Mary (L/Hommedius)
Lawyer; born, Detroit, Aug. 7, 1875; son of Henry B. and Mary (L’Hommedieu) Ledyard; educated St. Paul’s School, Concord, N.H.; graduate Yale Univ., A.B., 1897; Harvard University, 1900; married at Hamilton, Can., Sept. 5, 1900, Maude Hedric. Has practiced in Detroit since 1900; member law firm of Russel, Campbell & Ledyard; director Great Lakes Engineering Works. Member Detroit Bar Association. Clubs: University, Yondotega, Country. Office: 604 Union Trust Bldg. Residence: 579 Jefferson Av.
Source: The Book of Detroiters by Albert Nelson Marquis 1908
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