CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW
DEPEW, CHAUNCEY MITCHELL, United States senator, railway president, capitalist and popular orator, is one of the best known citizens of the United States. His excellent business judgment, his power of application, his adaptability, his geniality and goodness of heart, which make him quick to see "the other man's point of view," and his poise of character, have given him a place peculiarly his own in the heart of the American people. Elements of strength mingled in his ancestry. On his mother's side he is of the best New England stock, Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was a granduncle of his mother, Mrs. Martha Mitchell Depew, daughter of Chauncey R. Mitchell. The family of his father was of French extraction and was among those Huguenots who fled to America on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685. The Depews settled first in New Rochelle, Westchester county. New York, to which they gave its name. Later, they removed to Peekskill on the Hudson. Here they acquired property, and here was built the homestead, now over two hundred years old, in which Chauncey Depew was born, April 23, 1834. By his efforts in after years, he secured as his own this early home, which is set in a landscape of remarkable beauty.
His home-life was of a kind not rare in America, in which lofty ideals are worked out in daily practice and in which the children of the family acquire habits of industry and economy, firm principles, and self-respect. The social and religious atmosphere of his early life fostered his natural characteristics and have been a force in enabling him to make his way in the world. As a boy, he is said by those who knew him to have been exceptionally sedate, courteous and fond of books, yet fond of sports, too, athletic and vigorous. In 1856 he was graduated from Yale college with distinguished honors, and entered at once on the study of law with Honorable William Nelson, in his native place. He was admitted to the bar in 1858, already giving promise of a fine legal mind.
