BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOK. 



BY CHARLES J. FOSTER. 



" He was a man ! take him for all in all, 

 I shall not look upon his like again ! " 



OUR dear, esteemed friend, Hiram Woodruff, died on tlie morn- 

 ing of Friday, March 15, 18G7, and was buried on the following 

 Sunday, in the Cypress-hills Cemetery, between East New York 

 and the house he kept so long. It has become our mournful duty to 

 sketch, as nearly as we may, some incidents of his life, and to show 

 what manner of man he was. Hiram Washington Woodruff was 

 born on the 22d of February, 1817 ; and consequently, at the time 

 of his death, he was fifty years and twenty-one days old. His 

 father, John Woodruff, afterwards called by his friends and familiar 

 acquaintances " Colonel Ogden," lived at Birmingham, a small 

 place near Flemington, in Huntington County, New Jersey, where 

 his wife bore him his second son, Hiram. The eldest son was 

 Isaac, and the youngest William. These brothers, witli their sister 

 Margaret (Mrs. Nelson), still survive. The Woodruffs were a 

 family of horsemen. The old colonel was noted as a trainer. His 

 brother, George Woodruff, was still more famous in that capacity, 

 and was without an equal perhaps, except Peter Whelan, as a 

 rider of trotting-horses, until his nephew appeared, and surpassed 

 them both. It was at one time intended that Hiram should learn 

 a trade, and that of a hatter was thought suitable. But in him, 

 boy as he was, the call " to horse " was already like that of the 



xxiii 



