24 THE DELAMATER IRON WORKS— 



The pall-bearers were Chas. L. Southmayd, Wm. H. Fletcher, Chas. H. Mal- 

 lory, Elihu Spicer, Samuel H. Seaman, Frederick Weed, John Dewsnap, Wm. Hogg 

 and Myers Coryell. The chancel was filled with flowers sent by his many friends 

 and organizations to which he belonged, including the Union League Club and the 

 Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, to both of which he had been a devoted ad- 

 herent. On the casket rested a cluster of delicate roses, a tribute from Captain Erics- 

 son. He was laid to rest in Woodlawn Cemetery, a special train carrying over five 

 hundred of the men who wished to accompany the body to the grave. 



Cornelius Henry DeLamater was born in Rhinebeck Heights, Duchess County, 

 N. Y., on August 30, 1821. His parents, William and Eliza Douglass DeLamater, 

 moved to New York City when he was 3 years old. They had very little means and 

 after a common school education the boy started out to earn his own living as 

 chore boy in the hardware store of Swords & Company at the age of fourteen. At 

 twenty he left to join his father in the newly established Phoenix Foundry, which he 

 soon bought, and his subsequent career has been told in these pages. 



I quote a few excerpts from the address of Rev. J. M. Pullman at Mr. DeLa- 

 mater's funeral which I have edited so as to make them read with some continuity 

 of sequence. 



"Let me carry your minds back to the time when Mr. DeLamater had been in 

 business in this city for about twenty years. Some of you can remember the finan- 

 cial depression which occurred at the time I refer to. I need not specify particu- 

 lars regarding his own condition, but he found his promising business career em- 

 barrassed, and it looked as though the business structure that for so many years he 

 had been building up was in danger of falling — must fall. But there was another 

 structure, his reputation, that he had been building up among his fellow business 

 men during all those years that was to be tested. What did he do ? He went around 

 to the men to whom he owed money, his creditors; he showed them the condition 

 of his affairs ; he practically placed himself in their hands. He said, 'This is what 

 I have ; that is what I owe ; these are the conditions of my business. You know my 

 character. I believe that I can bring the business through the crisis with your help 

 so that none of you shall lose anything.' Now, he had been building up a business 

 that was represented visibly to the eye, but he had been building up a character that 

 was, in the estimation of those men, just as substantial, and that turned the scale of 

 his fortune, and they consented to any arrangement that he thought fit to make. 

 He made the arrangement and in a short time he restored his business to a paying 

 basis. He continued meanwhile to shelter his family in a rented house, and before 

 he bought himself the house at 424 West 20th Street, in which he spent the last years 

 of his life, he gave a dinner to his creditors, and when they sat down at the table 

 every man found under his plate a check covering not only the principal but the in- 

 terest on what was owed him. That incident tells its own story. Not an extraor- 

 dinary story, you may say. No, thank God, no. It is not at all without its parallel. 

 But that shows the kind of man Mr. DeLamater was. 



