Mansfield Joshua French, Jr.

Cause of Death: Bright's Disease

REFN: 12144

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Mansfield Joshua French began his education at Chesterville Ohio and continued in the local schools in Deleware and Zenia. In 1857 he entered Ohio Wesleyan Academy in Deleware and from 1858 to 1860 studied at the Cleveland Institute, Cleveland, Ohio. From October, 1860 to June 1862 he attended Fort Edward Institute, Fort Edward, N.Y. His father, Rev. Mansfield French, went to Beaufort, South Carolina in March 1862 as Agent of the Freedmen's Relief Bureau, in charge of relief and educational work for the Negroes, abandoned on the plantations in that area, his wife accompanying him. They established a home in Beaufort in the abandoned residence of a planter who had fled with his family when the Union army captured that area in 1861. On July 10, 1862, the father was appointed Chaplain of the United States Hospital in Beaufort and late in July the son went to Beaufort to visit his parents. He found that a civilian clerk was needed in the Commissary Department of the Freedmen's Relief Bureau and his father secured the place for him. In a short time his salary was advanced to $100 per month and he was given charge of distributing rations. He stated that he distributed 18,000 rations in a single day. He continued in this work thoughout the war. When the troops were withdrawn from the Beaufort area to assist in the attack on Charleston Mansfield Joshua was mustered into service in a company of mounted men raised among the civilian employees of the Government to do patrol and guard duty for twenty days in command of Capt. J.E. Thorndyke, under orders of Gen. Rufus Saxton, commander of the Beaufort area. His military service has not been recognized by the Government as Gen. Sazton reported many years after the war, that the muster roll had been lost. In 1866-8 he executed contracts with the War Department in the removal of the bodies of Union soldiers from the battlefields to the National Cemeteries in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1868 he purchased a quarter section farm near Atcheson, Kansas, and spent a short time there, in 1869 returning

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to New York City. From May 1869 to April 1873 he was Chief Deputy Collector in the 2nd District of the United States Internal Revenue Department in New York City.

While in the South he spent vacation periods in visiting his sister, Eliza, wife of Rev. George Lansing Taylor, then a Methodist minister stationed in Seymour, Conn., and vicinity. There he met Elizabeth Hull Smith, at the home of her grand-parents, Jared and Sarah Brewster (Johnson) Bassett. Mansfield and Elizabeth were married Nov. 3, 1869 by Dr. Taylor in the Methodist Church in Seymour. They lived at 223 West 48th St. when their son, Edmund Leavenworth, was born; removing to 2 West 123rd St. in 1871, having bought a home in the residence section of Harlem, then separated from the residential district of New York by open fields and rocky ledges. Here were born Mansfield Joseph, in 1872, and Eliza Minerva, in 1874. In 1875 Mansfield and Elizabeth bought a home in Tenafly, N.J., and enjoyed two years of suburban life. The forth child, Alexander Winchell, was born in Tenefly. In 1877 the family returned to New York, living at 944 Eighth Ave., near 56th St. From 874 to 1878 a severe illness interrupted Mansfield's work and his physicians did not satisfactorily help in recovery. In the summer of 1878 he took matters in his own hands, removing with his family to Loch Sheldrake in Sullivan Co., N.Y., the home of Mrs. French's relatives, the Bassett and Page families. There he established an agency of Smith Bros. Granite Co. of Westerly, R.I., and later purchased the Central City Pipe Works, building up a large and profitable business in the manufacture of sewer pipe and cement products, and dealing in building materials. He also organized French & Co., dealing in mantels and fire-place goods, doing contract work in interior marble and slate work and also financing sewer co

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Burial::

Oakwood Cemetery

Syracuse

Onondaga County

New York, USA

Plot: Sec 35, Lot 54

Source:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=FRENCH&GSfn=m...