William Frederick Havemeyer was an American businessman and politician. He was president of the Bank of North America and a large stockholder in coal, railroad and insurance companies.
Background
William Havemeyer was born on February 12, 1804, in New York City, New York, United States, five years after his father, William Havemeyer, had emigrated from England, where he had learned the trade of sugar refining. The elder Havemeyer followed that calling in America and early in the century founded a business of his own. His refinery was in Vandam Street and in that neighborhood the boy grew up. He was descended from a family which had figured in the bakers' guild of Biickeburg, capital of the German principality of Schaumburg-Lippe, since the middle of the seventeenth century.
Education
William attended private schools and Columbia College, from which he was graduated in 1823, a student of fair ability, showing some aptitude for mathematics. After graduation he studied law for a short time but soon left it for a clerkship in his father’s sugar business.
Career
In 1828 William Havemeyer formed a partnership with his cousin, Frederick Christian Havemeyer, in owning and operating a refinery, which was successful, but for reasons not disclosed he disposed of his interest to his brother Albert and retired from the business in 1842, at the early age of thirty-eight. He was already well-to-do.
In 1845 Havemeyer was nominated and elected mayor over James Harper. On the whole he satisfied factions during his incumbency, but he declined reelection in 1846. In 1848 he was again elected, but after serving his term, he withdrew as before.
In the decade of the fifties he turned his attention to banking activities, becoming President of the Bank of North America and of the New York Savings Bank. He resigned both offices in 1861. In the meantime he had acquired interests in the Pennsylvania Coal Company and the Long Island Railroad. With the exception of interference in a contest between state and city authorities for the control of the local police in 1857 and an unsuccessful candidacy for mayor in 1859, he was out of the political limelight during that period.
At the outbreak of the Civil War Havemeyer presided at one of the great meetings in Union Square to uphold the cause of the Union. For another ten years New York’s citizens lost sight of Havemeyer. Then came the “Tweed ring” disclosures and the demand of an outraged city for the punishment of the bandits. At this juncture Havemeyer came forward, after almost a quarter of a century in retirement, and in company with Samuel J. Tilden set up a standard to which all decent citizens might rally. Heading the New York city council of reform, he won support, on the single issue of clean government, from men of all parties. On April 6, 1871, and again on September 4 he presided over mass-meetings in Cooper Union from which emerged the Committee of Seventy, pledged to hunt down the thieves and banish them from office. With Tilden he obtained from the Broadway Bank, in which the “Tweed ring” kept its accounts, legal proof of the stealings from the city and enabled suits to be brought for the recovery of the loot.
When the mayoralty election of 1872 drew near, Tammany put up a highly respectable candidate to reassure the honest voter. The Republican organization, seeing a chance of victory, named Havemeyer, who was elected. Within six months after assuming his duties in the City Hall for the third time, Havemeyer had apparently forfeited the good opinion of all who had counted on the success of his administration. Not a newspaper in the city continued its support. Not one influential leader of public opinion commended his acts or policies.
His seventieth birthday found him as nearly friendless as a man in public life can be. His reappointment of two police commissioners (one of whom was an intimate personal friend), after their conviction for offenses involving the violation of their oaths of office, astounded the city. The greater part of the two-year term for which he was inaugurated was taken up with wranglings over appointments with the Board of Aldermen. At length a petition was sent to Gov. John A. Dix for the mayor’s removal. The Governor’s comment on the charges - a stern arraignment of Havemeyer’s official conduct - did not go so far as to order removal because there was no imputation of corrupt motives and no assertion that the mayor had been unfaithful to his constituents.
On November 30, 1874, after his successor had been chosen, and while a suit for libel brought against him by John Kelly, former sheriff, was being tried, Havemeyer died suddenly of apoplexy in his office. With the shock that followed this tragic end of a career recently marked by startling vicissitudes there was a demonstration of popular grief, for it was remembered that no charge of dishonesty or cowardice had been brought against the man in the thirty years since his first election, and of few New York politicians in those days could as much be said.
Achievements
William Havemeyer was known as Mayor of New York City, which position he held three times during the 19th century. During his administration, the NYPD was organized on May 13, 1845. He also created the Board of Emigration Commissioners.
Politics
For a time Havemeyer took an interest in local Politics. In 1844 he was a delegate to the Democratic General Committee of the city (then controlled by Tammany Hall) and was one of the Polk presidential electors that year. As a War Democrat he supported the Lincoln administration.
