No. 7 Bond Street

No. 7 Bond street was first occupied by Samuel Ward I., the Revolutionary colonel, his three sons, John, Richard R., and William G., and their sister Anne, who took the house in 1829. William G. Ward was a brigadier general of the National Guard in the late '60's. Previously the three brothers had been at 40 Broadway. After the Wards left (as related in connection with the Ward Mansion), No. 7 was taken by Charles M. Thurston, a Front street merchant, who remained in possession till the middle '50's.

No. 8 Bond Street

No. 8 was for more than twenty years the home of Julia Ward Howe's favorite uncle, John Ward, whom Tuckerman calls "the most honest of New York's brokers." He was a bachelor, and after the death of Samuel Ward II., in 1839, Uncle John made himself the father of his orphaned nephew and nieces "with a devotion that was constant and beautiful." He was "one of the worthies of Wall Street, and uncle, by courtesy, to half of New York." He was a man of strong personality, and physically was tall and of stalwart build. He wore a brown wig, was an inveterate smoker, and was devotedly fond of an ill-tempered little dog that no one else could experience any fondness for. After a residence of thirty-seven years in Bond street John Ward died at No. 8 in 1866. His brother, Richard R. Ward, retained the house and died there in 1873, having resided in Bond street for forty-four years.

The first occupant of No. 8 was Knowles Taylor, who came there in 1830 from No.20 to which he had moved in 1824 from 20 John street. He was an importer, and was the son-in-law and partner of Jonathan Little, merchant, in business at 216 Pearl street. The firm was J. Little & Company. His brother, Jeremiah H. Taylor, also a merchant, was deeply religious and was an active member of St. George's Church in Beekman Street when Dr. Milnor was rector. Knowles Taylor himself was treasurer of the American Home Missionary Society, an organization founded "to assist congregations that are unable to support the Gospel Ministry." In 1833 the Society disbursed $52,808.39. He was also a director of the Bank of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, a the Union Bank, and the Neptune Insurance Company. When Knowles Taylor moved to Fourteenth street in 1839 No. 8 was taken by William Edgar Howland, a son of the famous Gardiner G. Howland and a partner in the old firm of Howland and Aspinwall, 54 and 55 South street. In 1844 he went to 43 Bond street, in 1845 to No.18 and a few years later to a residence farther uptown.

No. 9 Bond Street

No. 9 Bond street was the residence of Richard I. Tucker, commission merchant, from 1827 to 1846. Prior to 1827 he lived at 39 Pearl street, only a few steps from his store at 29 South street. His two sons, Thomas W. and George L., were prominent in the fashionable life of the city. Tom Tucker, as he was usually called, was a lawyer and was one of the most popular men in New York. Among his intimate friends were Ogden and Charles Hoffman, Willis Hall, Minthorne Tompkins and Edward Curtiss. The father is described as a "stately merchant of the old school." He was a director of the Fulton Insurance Company and the New York Insurance Company. In 1847 the house was taken by Reuben W. Folger, an auctioneer, of 163 Pearl street.

No. 10 Bond Street

No. 10 Bond street was for fifteen years the home of another old merchant, John Hitchcock, who was in the hardware business at 58 Pearl street and 134 Front street. The firm was John Hitchcock and Son, the latter being John C. Hitchcock. In 1825 he was assistant alderman from the fourth ward. Before John Hitchcock came to Bond street, in 1829, he lived at 40 Rose street. After he left the Rose street house it was taken by Lewis Tappen and in 1834 was sacked by the Anti-Abolition mob. Later it was the residence of Mayor Harper.

No. 11 Bond Street

No. 11 Bond street had as its first resident John Griswold, who came from 52 Broadway in 1827. Later he lived at 43 Bond street. Some account of him will be given under that number. The next occupant of No. 11 was Lieutenant Edward N. Cox, of the United States Navy, who moved from 34 Hammond street (now Eleventh street west of Greenwich avenue) in 1829. He died in 1845. In 1835 the house was taken by another of New York's famous old merchants, William P. Furniss, who retained the Bond street establishment as his town house to within a few years of his death in 1871. He is buried in Trinity Cemetery. His country house, built about the time he came to Bond street, was the old white mansion with the pillared veranda that faced Riverside Drive between Ninety-ninth and One Hundredth streets. It was demolished about 1912.

No. 12 Bond Street

The first occupant of No. 12 Bond street was the celebrated banker, James Gore King, who went there from 19 North Moore street in 1827 and remained till 1833, when he moved to Weehawken. In 1825 he entered the firm of Prime, Ward and Sands and the firm name then became Prime, Ward, Sands, King and Company. A year or two later Joseph Sands dropped out and the firm became Prime, Ward, King and Company, then Prime, Ward and King. The other partners at that time were Nathaniel Prime, who lived in the Kennedy house at No.1 Broadway and whose country house, built in 1800, is still standing in the grounds of St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum, in Ninetieth street between First avenue and Avenue A, and Samuel Ward, who lived at the corner of Broadway and Bond street. It was James G. King who in the panic of 1837 was sent by Prime, Ward and King to London to confer with the Bank of England. He brought back with him a loan of L1,000,000 from that institution. A million pounds seems a trifling amount in these days when governments are borrowing thousands of times as much, but eighty years ago it was a huge sum, and demonstrated as nothing else could the confidence of the Bank of England in the house of Prime, Ward, and King. James G. King was a son of the famous Rufus King. His brother Charles was president of Columbia College and another brother, John A., was a noted lawyer of Cincinnati, a member of the Ohio legislature, and one of the founders of the Cincinnati Law School in 1833. James G. King himself was a member of Congress. In the '40's he was president of the Chamber of Commerce, and as such was ex-officio a member of the Board of Pilot Commissioners of the Port of New York.

When James G. King left Bond street No. 12 was taken by Joseph Walker, merchant, who in 1832 lived at 250 Pearl street. He was a director of the New York Gas Light Company. In 1837 he moved to 31 Pine street and Jonathan I. Coddington took the Bond street house, coming from 56 White street. Jonathan I. Coddington was an active politician and an ardent supporter of Martin Van Buren. He was appointed post master of New York by President Van Buren in 1837 and continued in that office four years. He had previously been an alderman, and in 1844 was the Democratic candidate for mayor against James Harper, the Native American" candidate, who was elected. Jonathan I. Coddington was living at No. 12 as late as 1850. At that time he was governor of the Alms House Department of the City.

No. 13 Bond Street

The first resident of No. 13 Bond street was one of old New York's eminent merchants, William H. Jephson, who came to Bond Street in 1829 from 707 Broadway. The latter house is still standing and now bears the number of 705. It is a two-story brick with dormer windows, and adjoining it on the south is a similar house which was the residence of Nicholas William Stuyvesant, Jr., at the time William H. Jephson lived in the other. In 1832, when William H. Jephson had moved to 9 Leroy place, No. 13 became the residence of Charles, Frederick, and George Belden, brokers, of 50 Wall street, who in 1831 lived at 84 Greenwich street. In 1845 the Beldens moved to 15 Gramercy park, the easternmost of the two houses that were subsequently united and remodeled by Samuel J. Tilden. After the Beldens went to Gramercy park the Bond street house was taken by Dr. J. Smith Dodge, a dentist who had been at 47 Bond street for the six or seven years immediately preceding. Dr. Dodge stayed in Bond street about fifteen years and then moved to Fourth street near Second avenue.

No. 14 Bond Street

No. 14 was one of the first dwellings built in Bond street. It housed one of New York's most distinguished citizens, John Jordan Morgan, who went to No. 14 in 1823. In 1822 he lived at the corner of Greenwich and Harrison streets__which of the four corners it was is not known. John J. Morgan is described by his grandson the late Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix, as "a gentleman of the old school" and "an ardent disciple of Isaac Walton." He was a member of the State Assembly, and in 1820 was elected one of the two members of Congress from New York City, the other being the celebrated Churchill C. Cambreleng. Later he was Collector of the Port of New York. He owned extensive tracts of land in Herkimer and Chenango Counties and for more than fifty years spent his summers on his farm near Utica. No man of his time was regarded with greater respect and esteem by his fellow citizens than was John J. Morgan.

While John J. Morgan lived in Bond street his house was also the home of his distinguished son-in-law, John A. Dix, who married Catherine Morgan. She was the niece of John J. Morgan's first wife (herself a niece of Col. Marinus Willett) and was adopted by John J. Morgan upon the death of her parents. John A. Dix, then Major Dix on the staff of Gen. Jacob Brown, met her first in 1822 when she was fourteen years old and a pupil at Mme. Desabaye's school, 107 (now 131) Hudson street. Four years later they were married in St. John's Chapel, Varick street, by the Rev. Benjamin T. Onderdonk, then one of the assistant ministers of Trinity Church.

John A. Dix is best known as a soldier and a statesman, for he was Secretary of State of New York, United States Senator from New York, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Major General of Volunteers in the Civil War, and Governor of the State of New York. While Secretary of the Treasury in 1861 he wrote the famous order containing the words: "If any man attempts to haul down the American Flag, shoot him on the spot." Among his contemporaries Gen. Dix was noted as a classical scholar of profound learning and discriminating taste. Today he is best known in that field for his translation of the great Latin poem "Dies Irae." It is said that no other poem in any language has been so often translated. In English, Gen. Dix's version is by far the best. In truth it is more than a translation, it is rather a recreation of the poem, and is deservedly ranked as the equal of the majestic original. It was written in 1863, while he was in command of the 7th Army Corps, stationed at Fortress Monroe. In 1875 he revised it but the first version was too well established to be displaced in the affections of those that knew it. General Dix's last home in New York was at 3 East Twenty-first street, where he died April 21, 1879.