OBITUARY NOTICES. Hi 



partner in a mercantile firm. He was for seven years the Secretary 

 of the American Fire Insurance Company. He was for twenty- 

 three years the President of the Schuylkill Navigation Company, 

 which during that period operated its canals as successfully as could 

 be in the face of active and increasing railroad competition. He 

 was, during the years of preparation, the brief six months of exhi- 

 bition, and the subsequent years of liquidation, the Treasurer of the 

 Centennial Board of Finance, and as such he was the custodian 

 and disburser of the many millions of dollars which were received 

 and expended in the successful conduct of the great Exhibition of 

 1876. For the last twenty-three years of his life he was the Presi- 

 dent of the Western Saving Fund Society, and during the years of 

 his wise administration the deposits of that Society grew from less 

 than three millions of dollars to almost sixteen millions of dollars 

 and its assets increased in a larger proportion. 



Mr. Fraley possessed in a high degree the qualifications that are 

 desirable in the official head of a corporation that has charged 

 itself with the duty of keeping safely the moneys of its depositors, 

 and which does not have shareholders for whom dividends are to 

 be made. He had an ever-present conscientious sense of duty to 

 those to whom the corporation stands in a fiduciary relation. He 

 had that conservative temperament which indisposed him to risk 

 anything in a doubtful investment, however tempting its promises 

 of profits. While during his later years he may sometimes have 

 seemed to be too cautious, it was, if an error, certainly an error 

 upon the right side. He knew thoroughly the history and the 

 principles of the science of finance. He could weigh with dis- 

 criminating judgment the reasons for or against any particular course 

 of action. He could say "No," pleasantly but firmly. Down to 

 the last day of his active business life, and that was as recently as 

 the tenth day of the May preceding his death, he could not only, 

 as is usual with very old people, remember the events of long ago, 

 but he could report accurately and in detail discussions and con- 

 clusions of recent days. He was especially remarkable in a diffi- 

 cult exercise of memory, in that he was accustomed to calculate by 

 mental arithmetic the annual yield of an investment bought at a 

 premium and with a postponed maturity. For the accomplishment 

 of that result men of a less mathematical turn of mind, and with a 

 weaker memory, habitually use printed tables prepared for that pur- 

 pose. Mr. Fraley had early in life formed the habit of precise and 



