Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 09.djvu/313

 SELIGMAN

SELLERS

SELIGMAN, Edwin Robert Anderson, educa- tor, was born in New York city, April 2.j, 16G1 ; son of Joseph and Babette Seligman. He was prepared for college at Columbia grammar school; was graduated from Columbia, A.B., 1879, A.M., 1882, LL.B., 1884, Ph.D., 1885, and studied at the Berlin. Heidelberg, Geneva and Paris uni- versities, 1878-82. He was married, April 4, 1881, to Caroline, daugliter of Julius and Sophia (Walker) Beer of New York. He was prize lecturer at Columbia, 1885 ; adjunct professor of political economy, 1888-91, and in 1891 was elected professor of political economy and finance. He was president of the American Economic as- sociation ; corresponding member, Russian Im- perial Academy of Sciences ; president. Tene- ment House Building Co., New York city ; sec- retary of the committee of fifteen; co-editor of the Political Science Quarterly. 1886, and editor of the Series in Historv, Economics and Public Law of Columbia, 1890. He is the author of : Raihvay Tariffs (1887) ; Mediceval Guilds of England (1887); Finance Statistics of American {Joinmonivealth (1889) ; Tlie Shifting and Inci- dence of Taxation (3d ed., 1899) ; Progressive Taxation in Theory and Practice (1894) ; Essays in Taxation (3 ed., 1900) ; The Economic Inter- pretation of Hintory (1902). He founded a school of young financiers with the object of reviving neglected scientific subjects.

SELIGMAN, Jesse, banker. Avas born in Baiersd )rf, Bavaria, in 1821. In 1841 he came to the United States, where he was a pedler in the suburbs of New York, afterward joining his brother Joseph, who had already established a small general store at Selma, Ala. In 1848 he removed to Watertown, N.Y., and soon after to New York city, where he opened a wholesale clothing house. Influenced by the discovery of gold in California, he invested his capital in merchandize and became proprietor of a store in Commerical street, San Francisco, 1850, soon becoming prosperous. While there he was act- ively connected with civil administration and was a member of the first vigilance committee, organized in the early fifties to maintain order. In 1854 he was married to Henrietta Hellman, at Munich, Bavaria. In 1857 he again joined his brothers in New York, engaging with them in the wholesale and importing clothing business. In 1865 the brothers organized the banking-house of J. & W. Seligman & Co.. and he was the mem- ber upon whom devolved the business of placing the U.S. bonds in Europe, a policy which se- cured for government bonds a ready market and ultimately made the Seligmans one of the great- est banking families in the world. Upon the death of Joseph Seligman, Jesse took his place at the head of the New York house. He was

vice-president of the Union League club, founder and president of the Hebrew orphan asylum, director in the New York Associa- tion for Improving the Condition of the Poor, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and of the American Museum of Natural History, and patron of several philanthropic institutions. His fortune was rated at $20,000,000 to $30,000,000. He died in Coronado Beach, Cal., April 23, 1894.

SELLERS, Coleman, consulting engineer, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., Jan. 28, 1827; son of Coleman and Sophonisba (Peale) Sellers ; grand- son of Nathan and Elizabeth (Coleman) Sellers, and of Charles Willson and Rachel (Brewer) Peale, and a descendant of Samuel Sellers, who settled in Upper Darby township, in 1682. He attended the academy of Anthony Bolmar, at Westchester, Pa., 1841-46 ; he filled the posi- tions of draughtsman and superintendent with the Globe Rolling-mill company, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1846-49 ; was engaged with his brother in locomotive building, 1849-51, and employed as foreman for Niles and Co., Cincinnati, 1851-56. He was married, Oct. 8, 1851, to Cornelia, daugli- ter of Horace and Sarah Hewes (Whipple) Wells of Cincinnati, and was chief engineer and sub- sequently a member of the firm of William Sellers and Co., Philadelphia, 1856-87. He was president of Franklin Institute, 1870-75, and subsequently professor of mechanics and member of the board of managers ; professor of engineer- ing practice in the Stevens Institute of Technol- ogy, Hoboken, N.J., from 1886; served as a member of the Niagara international commission, 1890-91, and consulting engineer from 1890 of the Cataract Construction Co. In 1903 he was chief engineer of the Niagara Falls Power company. His inventions include many important improve- ments in machine tools, hydraulic machinery, shafting for transmitting power, mechanical construction of large dynamos for Niagara Falls, etc., etc. He was president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1884 ; of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art ; of the Pennsylvania Society for the Pre- vention of Cruelty to Animals ; of the Photo- graphic society of Philadelphia ; vice-presi- dent of the American Philosophical society, and a member of other learned societies in America and Europe. He was American corre- spondent of the British Journal of Photography, 1861-63 ; and one of the Seybert committee ap- pointed by the University of Pennsylvania to ex- amine the claims of spiritualism in 1884. He re- ceived the order of St. Olaf from the King of Sweden in 1877, the degree of D.E. from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1888, and the degree of D.Sc. from the University of Pennsyl- vania in 1899.