Lawrence Roscoe Jerome

Obituary, New York Times, August 13, 1888 Sharon, Conn., Aug. 12 - Mr. Lawrence Jerome passed peacefully away about noon today. He had not been conscious since Friday night and had suffered no pain. His wife and son, Travers Jerome, besides other members of the family, were at his bedside. The funeral will take place in New York on Tuesday or Wednesday. There is scarcely an amateur man-about-town who has not met Mr. Jerome, and to these, as well as the habitues of the clubs he frequented, his pleasant greeting, his passing jokes, some of them as impossible to recall an hour afterward as the repartees at a bachelor dinner, made his advent memorable. After he had given up the active pursuit of commercial interests his business became the search for pleasure, not alone in this city, but in London and Paris, where at the Travelers' and at the Jockey Club, he was almost as well known as at the Union. Among the best class of sporting men, Mr. Jerome's name was almost as well liked as that of his brother Leonard. Among men of leisure, bon vivants, epicures of long standing, Mr. Jerome occupied a position of distinction. Yet with all this, his ancestry was not such as would by force of heredity incline him to such a life. His father and mother came of plain farmer folk, who worked hard and had little pleasure, leaving little to their children save superb constitutions and consequent long lives. Mr. Jerome was born at Pompey Hill, Onondaga County, this State, in February, 1820. He had the hard time getting a schooling that most farmer lads had half a century ago, but what rudiments he obtained from his limited stock of textbooks were supplemented by the teachings of his mother, who had been Miss Augusta [Aurora] Murray, and who spared time from her hard life as a farmer's wife to read all sorts of instruction books so that she could better guide the instruction of her children. She came of good, sturdy Scotch ancestry and from them she drew the sterling traits that made noted men of her sons. She allowed no shirking on the part of her boys of any of their farm duties, and to the day of his death Mr. Jerome frequently remarked that to her he owed everything save his ill health. When she found that her boys had become 11 in number, with an added daughter, and Lawrence Jerome had got to be about 14 years old, she thought it advisable to make a move, and so her husband rented a farm from Amos Hall at Marion, Wayne County, and for three or four years Lawrence assisted his father. It was the habit in that family not to keep the birds in the nest after they had got the use of their wings, and so about four years after the change to Marion, lawrence went to Rochester, where he began to study law in the office of his uncle, Hiram K. Jerome. He did not remain there long. Somehow, Blackstone did not agree with Lawrence Jerome. With his parents' permission, he abandoned all ideas of becoming either a farmer or a lawyer, and, coming to this city, obtained employment as a clerk in Stewart & Co.'s dry good store....he started back to Rochester, where he met his elder brother, Leonard W. The brothers married sisters and then settled down to hard work. Lawrence formed a partnership with Leonard, both of their wives having property, being the daughters of Amos Hall, and they started the Rochester "American."....When President Fillmore was elected, Lawrence was made Collector of the Port of Rochester and his brother was sent to Trieste as United States Consul. The newspaper prospered until the Democrats came into power again, and then the brothers sold out and came to this city. Meanwhile, Addison Jerome, a still older brother, had come to New York and, establishing himself in business, bought a house in West Nineteenth Street, where he received his brothers when they came to the metropolis....A partnership was formed between Mr. Travers, Leonard and Addison Jerome and prospered....Lawrence succeeded in accumulating a small fortune despite his extravagant mode of life, and he retired.... ...he became more and more of a man-about-town. He knew every one and every one knew him....When his niece, Lady Randolph Churchill, became prominent in London society Mr. Jerome frequently went to London, where he became known as one of the "Prince of Wales's set." Mr. Jerome had four sons. The eldest was Roswell Hart Jerome, who acted as Assistant District Attorney under Samuel B. Garvin, and who died when 23 years old. The surviving sons are Lovell Hale Jerome, who is a graduate of West Point, but who is now a civilian, having retired with the rank of Captain, and is a special Treasury agent at Galveston; Lawrence Roscoe Jerome, who is now in charge of a big cattle ranch in the West, and William Travers Jerome, now Deputy Assistant District Attorney under the direction of Col. Fellows.