KARL WILHELM GENTHE PROFESSOR GENTHE was born at Leipzig, Germany, in 1871. His father was an officer of the University and the boy enjoyed the excellent advantages of the German school system. He early showed a bent towards natural science, to the developing of which the influence of his mother contributed. Upon graduation from St. Thomas's "Gymnasium," he made zoology his special study in the University and received the degree of Ph.D., "summa cum laude," in 1897. The following year he came to Boston, Massachusetts, where he acted as private tutor for a year, and then went to the University of Michigan as instructor in zoology. There he remained for two years and then came to Trinity College in 1901 as instructor. In 1903 he was made assistant professor of natural history, a position which he still holds. He has contributed to German and American scientific periodicals, is a fellow of the "American Association for the Advancement of Science" and the "American Society of Zoologists."
Professor Genthe is recognized as an authority in his specialty and an accomplished microscope user.. At the same time he is a man of multifarious acquirements, a type of the German "Gelehrte." He is widely read in general literature and in philosophy, and an unusually retentive memory enables him to acquire the substance of a book from a single reading. He is hardly less a master of modern psychology than of his own specialty. It can hardly be doubted that in ten years he will rank among the best informed zoologists of the country and he deserves to do so even now. His philosophical training enables him to correlate his knowledge of the science of physical life with the doctrines of the wider field of psychology and ontology, and prevents him from narrowing his mind to the bare classification of facts without regard to their bearing in the great questions of life. Although a learned man in the fullest sense he is a patient and successful teacher of beginners, capable at once of starting his pupils in the right path and of accompanying them no matter how far they wish to go.
Early in 1901 Professor Genthe married Martha Krug, herself one of the few German women who have earned the title of Ph.D. at Heidelberg. Men of Mark Index
GILLETT, ARTHUR LINCOLN, A.M., D.D., clergyman, and professor of apologetics at the Hartford Theological Seminary, was born in Westfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts, January 5th, 1859. He is descended from Jonathan Gillett, who came from England to Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630, and afterwards removed to Windsor, Connecticut, and from William Fowler, who came from England to Boston in 1637 and the following year settled in New Haven. Doctor Gillett's parents were Edward Bates and Lucy Douglas (Fowler) Gillett. His father was a lawyer, a most brilliant speaker, and a writer gifted with a rare literary style and he was also a man of prominence in public life, having been State representative and senator and district attorney for fourteen years.
In boyhood Arthur Gillett was healthy and strong and his early days were spent in the country in the usual "New England way." He prepared for college at the Westfield High School and at Williston Seminary, Easthampton, Massachusetts, and then entered Amherst College. He was graduated from Amherst in 1880 with the A.B. degree. He then studied for three years at the Hartford Theological Seminary, where he was graduated in 1883. He returned to Hartford for a year of post-graduate study, and the same year, 1884, received the degree of A.M. from Amherst College. The summer following he entered upon his ministry at Plymouth (Congregational) Church, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he acted as pastor's assistant. After a year's service in this church he left to become pastor of Plymouth Church, Grand Forks, North Dakota, where he remained three years, at the end of which, in 1888, he returned East and was engaged as an instructor at the Hartford Theological Seminary, with which institution he has been connected ever since that time. From 1889 to 1891 he studied in Germany as fellow of the Hartford Seminary. In 1890 he became associate professor of his subject, apologetics, and since 1895 he has been professor. Since 1891 he has been editor in chief of the Hartford Seminary Record.
In 1901 Amherst College conferred upon Professor Gillett the honorary degree of D.D. Since 1900 he has been a trustee of Smith College and since 1903 he has been a member of the prudential committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He is a member of the American Oriental Society, belonging to the section for comparative religion, and also of the American Philosophical Association. In politics he is a Republican. On June 23rd, 1887, Doctor Gillett married Mary Bradford Swift of Hartford, who died January 15th, 1901. Two of her three sons survive her. Men of Mark Index
GOODRICH, GENERAL ARTHUR LOUIS, treasurer of the Hartford Courant, is a lineal descendant of John Goodrich who was born near Bury St. Edmunds, County Suffolk, England, and, coming to this country November 10th, 1643, was one of the early settlers of the historic old town of Wethersfield, Connecticut. His grandfather, Ichabod Goodrich, a leading farmer and citizen of Rocky Hill, Connecticut, served in the Revolutionary War and was in the Continental Army under Washington at the siege of Yorktown. His father was James Goodrich of Hartford, a carpenter by trade, and his mother was Jennette Goodrich, whose wise and gentle precepts had deep influence on her sons.
The general was born in Hartford, May 16th, 1849, and has always lived in the Capitol City. From his youth he has been strong, robust, cheerful, with a keen appreciation of the good things of life, yet faithful to the uttermost detail in business. Asked as to the special lines of reading which he found most helpful in fitting him for his work in life, he replied with characteristic humor: *Necessity” was the most helpful adjunct to several Sunday school libraries to which I had access."
He studied in the common schools of Hartford and at the Hartford Public High School. His choice was a business career, so he accepted an opening in the store of Lee, Sisson & Company, wholesale druggists of Hartford, predecessors of the present firm of T. Sisson & Company. Soon he had an opportunity to go with the Hartford Courant Company, in the capacity of clerk in the business department. That was March 13th, 1871. Here he applied so faithfully what he believed should be the first principle of a young man ambitious to succeed—to do what he is given to do—that he won advancement, and when in 1892 the position of treasurer became vacant, he was chosen to fill it. That was fourteen years ago and the great success during this period, financially as well as otherwise, of this the oldest newspaper by continuous publication in America, is due in no small measure to his zeal and fidelity and to his skill in business management. He, Charles Hopkins Clark, and Frank S. Carey comprise the officers of the company since the deaths of his brother, William H. Goodrich, Charles Dudley Warner, and Senator Joseph R. Hawley. In addition, the general is auditor of the Dime Savings Bank of Hartford.
He began his career in the Connecticut National Guard as a private in Battery D, Light Artillery, First Infantry, in 1866, the year after the reorganization of the enrolled militia. In 1875 he was appointed sergeant major of the First Infantry, and captain and adjutant November 21st, 1876. He was chosen major June 26th, 1878, after having been out of the service only three weeks. This position he held until December 2nd, 1882, when he resigned, but only to be called back again on December 13th. Two years later, on November 20th, 1884, he was appointed lieutenant colonel. His zeal and enthusiasm did much for the regiment. When Henry B. Harrison was chosen governor in 1885, he appointed Lieutenant Colonel Goodrich quartermaster general on his staff. At the end of the governor's term, in 1887, the general went on the retired list. Since then his advice has often been sought in matters of military legislation and in regimental and brigade affairs. For four years he was a member of the State Arsenal and Armory Commission.
He holds membership in the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, in the Connecticut Historical Society, in the Lounsbury Staff Association, and in the Governor's Staff Association of Connecticut and is historian of the last named organization. He is a staunch Republican in politics, but never has aspired to elective office. A Congregationalist by creed, he is a member of the First Church of Christ in Hartford—the "Center" Church—and also is a member of the Congregational Club of Connecticut.
He married Miss Emma C. Root of Westfield, Massachusetts, on September 11th, 1871. They have a most charming and hospitable home at No. 75 Farmington Avenue, Men of Mark Index
GREENE, JACOB LYMAN, was born on the ninth day of August, A.D., 1837, in the town of Waterford and the State of Maine. His parents, Captain Jacob Holt Greene and Sirah Walker Frye, were both of noble lineage, for in their veins pulsed the blood of the Greenes, the Fryes, the Holts, the Abbots, the Poors, the Trumbulls, the Kilburns, and the Gordons, some of whom are more or less distinguished for various virtues and gallant services in the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars.
The boyhood and youth of this sturdy, earnest lad, fond of his books as well as of manly sports, was passed, until twenty years of age, on his father's farm amid the granite hills and pastoral slopes of his native state. The influence of both parents was strong on his intellectual and his spiritual life. In later years he spoke of his father as "one of the unheralded heroes, possessing great intelligence, high-mindedness, and dauntless courage."
Young Greene took advantage of every opportunity for the cultivation of his mind. He was a great reader, history and biography being his favorite studies. Speaking of his early education, he said: "I had to work it out." Later he enjoyed the advantages of special courses of study at the University of Michigan, and he engaged in the practice of law in that state just before the Civil War broke out. In August, 1861. he entered the service of his country as a volunteer in the Seventh Michigan Infantry, rising rapidly from a private to captain, major, and brevet lieutenant-colonel.
Colonel Greene's brevet was given for "distinguished gallantry at the battle of Trevellyan Station, and for meritorious and faithful services during the war." He was a prisoner of war at Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia; in Macon, Georgia; in Charleston, South Carolina, and in Columbia, South Carolina. During the last part of his military career he was intimately associated with General Custer, acting as his adjutant-general and chief-of-staff. He was mustered out of service and honorably discharged in March, 1866. Colonel Greene's brilliant army record has become a part of the history of the United States.
His experience in life insurance began in 1866 at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in connection with the Berkshire Life Insurance Company. In 1370 he became associated with the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, and took up his residence in Hartford. In 1871 he was appointed secretary, and in 1878 was elected president. Under the wise counsel and masterly administration of Colonel Greene the company reached the highest state of beneficent efficiency and unquestioned strength, and it stands to-day "sui generis" among insurance companies of the country. President Greene's last word in his message to the policy holders in January, 1905, was: "How truly and steadfastly the Connecticut Mutual has held to its ideals, and in what unequaled measure it has realized for its members and for their beneficiaries their best result, is told, through its history, and each recurring year witnesses it anew." By a few strokes of the pen President Greene makes the whole history of the company strikingly luminous.
As a public speaker, and as a writer, he ranked high. He was one of the orators of the day at the Grant Memorial exercises in Hartford, and delivered a most eloquent address. His writings bore the stamp of an original mind, permeated by sound principles and lofty ideals. What he said carried with it weight, and never failed to make serious impression upon thoughtful readers. Of him it could be said that he could "lend ardor to virtue, and confidence to truth."
In 1900 he issued an able work on "Gen. Wm. B. Franklin and the battle of Fredericksburg," and in 1903 an "In Memoriam of General Franklin." He also published several pamphlets, business and professional, notably: "Bimetallism or the Double Standard," "Our Currency Problems," "What is Sound Currency," and "The Silver Question." When the latter pamphlet came from the press it aroused the bitterest ire of the so-called Silverites. One of them, a. policy holder in the Connecticut Mutual, violently attacked Colonel Greene for daring to condemn what some of his policy holders believed in and profited by, whereupon the fiery valor of the Colonel’s heart flamed out, and he replied thus: "If telling the truth to. our policy holders about their own business alienates my friends, I must bear the grief; if men must wear muzzles because they have been charged with large financial or other responsibilities, then, this is not the country my fathers fought to found, and which I fought to keep whole, and for which I will again fight to make free from mob rule and to cleanse of cowards." In these brave words we discover an echo of Lexington and Concord, Valley Forge and Gettysburg. We witness again the brilliant cavalryman in the saddle, see the charging of squadrons and hear the rattle of musketry.
Colonel Greene's personality was of singular power. No person who came in contact with it failed to feel its peculiar force. His character called forth character in the lives of others. Those who came to him as carping critics, invariably departed admiring friends. To know him was to love him, and those who knew him best, loved him most. His purse was ever open to almsgiving and his heart tender to those who needed relief.
In 1897 Yale University bestowed on him the degree of A.M., and in 1904 Trinity College followed with an LL.D. He was a member of the D. K. E. Fraternity and also of the Century, Hartford, Country, and the Hartford Golf clubs. He was the leading layman in Trinity Episcopal Church, and served as vestryman and warden for many years. Colonel Greene took up his daily tasks with unwearied diligence, and carried them with undisturbed resolution, without stumbling and without stain, to the last day of his life.
Of his religion, it may be briefly said, that it was the main object of his life. It brooded over him like the canopy of heaven; without it his life seemed to possess nothing, but with it the potentiality of becoming an heir of the kingdom of heaven. For years he carried in his vest pocket a well worn copy of the Psalter, and from that source, according to his own statement, he drew daily refreshment and strength.
Colonel Greene died at his home in Hartford on the twenty-ninth day of March, nineteen hundred and five. His last moments were like those of another great and good man, of whom it is written: “After a short conflict betwixt nature and death, a quiet sigh put a period to his last breath, and so he fell asleep."
In the company of the noble dead he now securely stands, fit type of the brilliant soldier, masterful underwriter, ripe scholar, faithful friend, loyal citizen, and, more than all, man of God.
Colonel Greene left a widow, Caroline S. Greene; one daughter, Mrs. H. S. Richards of Buffalo, New York, and one son, Jacob Humphrey Greene, who is an assistant secretary of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company.
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