Page:Autobiographies and portraits of the President, cabinet, Supreme court, and Fifty-fifth Congress (IA autobiographiesp02neal).pdf/35

 CORNELIUS N. BLISS

, of New York, Secretary of the Interior, was born in Fall River. Mass., January 26, 1833; was educated in public schools and academy at Fall River and the high school at New Orleans; after leaving the latter was for a year in his stepfather's counting room in New Orleans, and then removed to Boston and entered as a young clerk the house of I. M. Beebe, Morgan & Co.; in 1866 became a member of the firm of J. S. and E. Wright & Co., a commission house of Boston, and removed to New York to take charge of the business of the firm in that city; the firm name became Bliss, Fabyan & Co. in 1881; is in the directories of many financial institutions; was a member of the Pan-American Conference; was president of the Protective Tariff League; was chairman of the Republican State committees, New York, of 1877 and 1888; was treasurer of the national Republican committees in 1892 and 1896; declined to be a candidate for the nomination for governor of his State in 1885, and refused to have his name presented to the convention for that position in 1891; was appointed Secretary of the Interior March 5, 1897, and was confirmed by the Senate March 5, 1897.