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Bigelow Ezra [Male] b. 10 APR 1736 Colchester, CT - d. ABT. 1808
He was surveyor of highways in 1787.
About 1803 Ezra exchanged land in what is now Livingston county, NY belonging to Gen. Wadsworth, with his own lands, and removed thither with sons Ira, Enos, and Joseph.{It was called Ontario county.}
David was a farmer and sugared maple trees
(Robert, b Brookfield, VT; enlisted Sept 1862 in the 15th VT Co. of Volunteers. He was in the Army of the Patomac, taking part in the battle of Gettysburg and also had the experience of a few weeks in Libby prison; moved 1882 to farm 6 mi SW of Ulysses, NE; member of Christian church)*
They went into IA for several years, then into IL via CT. In 1884, he joined a lumber firm with brother Anson (16312.235) in Chicago, IL.
They moved into Chicago where he was engaged in the lumber business with his brother William - 16312.233. Anson died at Chicago 13 October 1895 and his widow on 19 November 1911 at Mt. Kisco, NY. At least, Anson, is buried at Graceland cemetery, Chicago.
Charles was President of St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co, St Paul, MN and other business projects.
He was a former major league baseball player. His career began in 1919 and carried him from the Florida state league to the big leagues. He died at "the Tampa Hospital" sic. He was survived by his mother, Mrs. Margaret Bigelow Hill, a brother, John Bigelow, and a sister, Mrs. Helen Malcolm, all of Tarpon Springs, FL. His Obituary states: "The funeral (held at the Vinson funeral home, Tarpon Springs, was one of the largest ever held here. conducting services were Rev. Guy R. Nelson and the Rev. J. R. Derr, St. Petersburg, former ministers of Trinity Methodist Episcopal church here [Tarpon Springs] and Vernon A. Loescher."
The Founding Family
The F.R Bigelow Foundation was formed in 1946 as a way for the philanthropy of Frederic Russell Bigelow and his family to continue. Bigelow was the fourth president of St. Paul Fire and Marine Company, an insurance company now known as The St. Paul Companies, Inc. Bigelow was very compassionate, strong-minded and personal in his approach to business and life, which gave him a great understanding and love for his community.
Bigelow’s parents arrived in St. Paul by stagecoach in 1864, furthering the family’s westward movement that began in 1638, when John Bigelow emigrated from England. In 1911, Frederic Bigelow succeeded his father as president of St. Paul Fire and Marine Company and grew the business into a multi-faceted international organization.
A Tradition of Philanthropy
Bigelow shared his time and money with the community in both good times in bad. In 1920, he was one of the organizers of the St. Paul Community Chest, now the United Way. During the Great Depression, he served on the board of the National Citizen’s Committee for Welfare and Relief Mobilization. He served on boards and committees of many other charitable organizations until his death in 1946.
The Bigelow Foundation, a precursor to the current F.R. Bigelow Foundation, was incorporated in 1938, the year Frederic stepped down as Fire and Marine’s president. The Foundation was formed to “promote the well-being of mankind” and was chaired by C.F. Codere, Bigelow’s friend and successor at Fire and Marine.
As Bigelow intended, the Foundation was created to improve the local community through such organizations such as the Community Chest, Macalester College, the YMCA and YWCA and St. Paul Academy. But his will also directed the Foundation to provide financial support for family members. As it turned out, these different purposes forbid the Foundation’s qualification as a tax-exempt organization, so a new corporation, the F.R. Bigelow Foundation, was spun off in 1946 to support charitable causes.
The 1938 Bigelow Foundation still exists to provide for some remaining family members, but when there are no more beneficiaries the money will transfer to the F.R. Bigelow Foundation.
The F.R. Bigelow Foundation began making grants in 1947 when its cash balance was only $29,641.51; its principal asset was 55,000 shares of Fire and Marine stock.The first recorded grant was to the YMCA. Giving was not limited to Minnesota, but through the 1960s, trustees of the Foundation were always careful to focus on projects and organizations that Frederic Bigelow either had an interest in or might have appealed to him.
The Foundation’s assets grew quickly. By April 1962, $143,200 was distributed through 63 grants.
Changing Times
In the late 1960s, the tax laws regarding charitable institutions changed, as did the social, political and financial landscape of the country. All of these changes combined to usher in a new era of administration and financial diversification for the Foundation. To help the Foundation through the tax reform, outside administrators were brought in, and the Foundation eventually became a client of Minnesota Foundation. (Minnesota Foundation eventually became affiliated with The Saint Paul Foundation. Today, F. R. Bigelow Foundation is a client of The Saint Paul Foundation.) During the early 1970s, Foundation board members also decided to spread investments beyond the stock of The St. Paul Companies, Inc., to secure the Foundation's future.
A new grantmaking strategy was also adopted in the mid-1970s. Grants would be restricted to Minnesota, primarily to the greater St. Paul area. Special projects were developed to deal with large needs such as housing and economic development.
Projects and Partners
In the late 1970s, the Foundation’s trustees decided that special projects could be much more beneficial if more experts, foundations and other partners were involved. One of the first and lasting projects tackled in the spirit of cooperation was adult literacy. In 1980, the Literacy 85 project began, which established the Foundation as a visionary in the development of literacy skills. In 1985, The Technology for Literacy Center, the first program to use computers as literacy education tools, was created by the Foundation and its many partners, including The Saint Paul Foundation.
The needs of the Saint Paul community were growing in the mid-1980s when the Foundation’s trustees decided even greater focus was necessary to do the most good. The Foundation decided to concentrate on low-income and minority populations, as well as job opportunities. The Foundation would develop programs for human services and education.
The Present and Future
The Foundation continues to organize partners, fundraising, and the implementation of projects for the betterment of the Saint Paul area. It believes its role is as an equal partner in these projects, a facilitator rather than a controller.
With further decreases in federal funding looming ahead, the challenging work of the F.R. Bigelow Foundation will require all the resources and vision that the Foundation has developed for more than 50 years.
SAINT PAUL, Minn., Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The Board of Directors of the F.R. Bigelow Foundation approved 25 grants totaling $834,240 at its November 9, 1999, board meeting, including grants that will help the developmentally disabled and area youth.
History
The F. R. Bigelow Foundation was founded in 1946 through a trust established by Frederic R. Bigelow "to promote the well-being of mankind." The private foundation, with assets now valued at $127 million, continues its commitment to the greater Saint Paul metropolitan area with its most current grants
He was a minister of the Baptist sect. He preached in New York and Ohio, dying 11 October 1822 at Delaware, OH. Ann died 14 May 1842 at Mecklenburg, NY.
Baptist Clergyman
Following his education, he entered into the family business, but specialized in the quarrying of "blue stone", with which much of New York was paved at the time.
Edward's House, is located at 13 Bigelow Road and not visible from the road. There is a long driveway, west of the driveway for the Bigelow Homestead, that leads to this house. It is also called the Staple's House. It was built in 1870, perhaps earlier, and is a 2 1/2 story frame building. It is Italianate in style and has an elevated location overlooking the Hudson River. (see above). The front of the house faces west, and contains a door at the southeast corner of this facade with a transom. There is a nice detailed screened Italianate porch along the first floor of this facade. The present owner added a new balcony above this porch in 2000.
The house has a gabled roof with the flared cornice at the ends which characterizes many local houses of this Italianate style. The windows have simple rectangular moldings. There is at least one set of shutters on the house. There is a brick chimney in the back of the house. The rear of the house has a one-story extension, also with flared eaves, and a cast iron chimney above the gable. There is an enclosed entry with aq shed roof between the main house and this extension. The doors on the main house appear to be original. There are various types of windows on the house and its extensions.
The site includes a remarkable assemblage of outbuildings, which step down the hill leading from the house on a high promontory to Bigelow Road. These barns are attached, but may have been free standing in the past.
He is known as "The Forgotten Citizen" as he had an outstanding career as a lawyer, editor, appointed by President Lincoln to be Consul at Paris (1861); in 1864 from Charge d'Affaires to Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Napoleon III.
In 1865, he was Minister to France and was effective in blocking Confederate State's efforts to build ships in Europe. In 1868, he published the "Autogiography of Benjamin Franklin" and in 1874 a 3 volume set: "The Life of Benjamin Franklin Written by Himself". He was instrumental in exposing the graft of the "Tweed Ring" in NY. He spent three years living in Germany giving his 6 children some European education.
Returning to New York, he was elected to the office of Secretary of State for New York (04 November 1875). At the age of 70 his major and most fitting occupation was the development of the New York Public Library. He was a staunch supporter of the Panama Canal idea and did much to settle the American dispute between the two Canal routes. He was a great friend of the young Bunau-Varilia who later brought the proclamation of Independence to John's home and the flag of Panama was made in John's home for the newly proclamed state - Panama.
Thirteen times, after his 70th birthday, he made trips to different parts of Europe, traveled throughout America, Mexico and to Yucatan. John had always believed that the inherent capacity of negroes and whites was the same. He believed that democracy could not flourish, if any group was suppressed. He agreed to serve as President of the Board of Trustees of the Calhoun Colored School, in Alabama.
Then, after years of dedicated effort and with John in the forefront, the cornerstone was laid for the New York Public Library - he was 85 at the time. At the age of 93, he walked beside President William Howard Taft and with 600 guests he attended the completion ceremonies of the Library.
Over 88 published works and many manuscripts of his are on file. Living abroad for many years in his career, it is not strange that a list of his friends should be a roll call of the leaders of his time, American, British, European.
According to the Grolier Encyclopedia and other sources:} John Bigelow, b. Malden, N.Y., Nov. 25, 1817, d. Dec. 19, 1911, was an American diplomat and writer. After a brief career as a lawyer, he became (1848) part owner and editor, with William Cullen Bryant, of the New York Evening Post; for a dozen years thereafter, he wrote editorials vigorously supporting free trade and denouncing slavery. In 1861 he went to Paris as consul general under the Lincoln Administration and in 1865-66 served as the U.S. minister to France. While in France, Bigelow was instrumental in generating support for the Union cause and in discouraging Napoleon III from undertaking an imperial expedition to Mexico. In the latter half of his life, Bigelow produced a valuable analysis of French relations with the Confederate navy (1888), biographies of Edouard Laboulaye (1889) and Samuel TILDEN (1895), and two books reflecting his devotion to the philosophy of the Swedish theologian Emanuel SWEDENBORG. He also edited the works of Benjamin Franklin in ten volumes (1887-88); his Life of Benjamin Franklin (1874) is a version of the famous Autobiography that Bigelow had edited from a manuscript discovered in 1868. His own autobiography Retrospections of an Active Life, was published in five volumes between 1909 and 1913.
After spending the greater part of his childhood there, he entered the U.S. Military Academy through the influence of his uncle: John -(16312.74) - "the diplomat". In the Civil war, he was a Lt. with the 1st U.S. Calvary and seriously wounded at Antietam. After this he was sent to MO. At the end of the war, he entered the steel business and was a sales agent for American Steel Foundries Company. His marriage was in 1872 to Mary Frances Ashley, the daughter of Ossian Doolittle and Harriet (Nash) Ashley. She was born 30 April 1847 Boston, MA. They lived in New York and Edward died there on 20 July 1925. His widow also died there on 30 July 1930. Both are buried at Pompton, NJ.
Julian Bigelow, 89, Computer Pioneer, Is Dead
By JOHN MARKOFF
Julian Bigelow, a mathematician and electrical engineer who was a pioneer in the fields of cybernetics and computing, died on Monday in
Princeton, N.J., where he lived. He was 89.
In 1946, when John von Neumann set out to design and build a stored-program computer at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he
contacted the mathematician Norbert Weiner for a recommendation for a chief engineer. Dr. Weiner suggested Mr. Bigelow, with whom he had
collaborated during World War II on the creation of fire-control systems for weapons.
The resulting computer, which was known as the IAS and which was assembled beginning in June 1946, was one of a handful of computers
like ENIAC, EDVAC, Whirlwind, EDSAC and Univac 1 whose construction brought the dawn of the information age.
It was the IAS machine, however, whose basic design became the template for the modern computers that are now ubiquitous worldwide.
Fifteen clones of the original IAS machine were built. The copies had names like Johniac and Maniac and they appeared all over the world,
including Russia and Israel.
"A tidal wave of computation power was about to break and inundate everything in science and much elsewhere, and things would never be
the same afterwards," Mr. Bigelow wrote in a short history of the project published in 1980.
Before beginning his career as one of the world's first computer architects, Mr. Bigelow was the co-author of a seminal paper with Dr.
Weiner and Arturo Rosenblueth, titled "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology," which advanced a set of unifying principles about behavior
that would come to serve as the foundation for the field of cybernetics, which studies the way mechanical, biological and electronic systems communicate and interact.
Mr. Bigelow had the practical engineering insight that throughout his career played a crucial role in linking the work of leading theoreticians like Dr. Weiner and Dr. von Neumann to the real world.
"In a way, Julian was the missing link," said George Dyson, a researcher who is now a visiting scholar at the Institute of Advance Study.
The article made a strong impression on a small group of intellectuals and scientists, and it led to the formation of a small group called
the Teleological Society. That group in turn led to a group of scientific meetings called the Macy Conferences, in which Mr. Bigelow
participated.
Sponsored by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, the conferences brought together an influential group of scientists and thinkers, including
Dr. Wiener, Warren McCulloch, Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead and Dr. von Neumann. The conferences were later known as the cybernetics
conferences and ultimately laid the groundwork for much of the future research in a diverse range of sciences from biological physics to
computer science.
When Mr. Bigelow arrived at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1946, the idea of Dr. von Neumann's computer was meeting stiff resistance
from the institute's pure theoreticians.
"The folks at the institute, especially some of the mathematicians, were outraged that people who got their hands dirty doing things like
computing would invade their sanctuary," recalled Willis Ware, an electrical engineer who was hired to work with Mr. Bigelow on the
construction of the IAS computer.
Tensions eased later, after the theoreticians discovered that the new computer crowd had useful skills.
"They found out we knew how to build and repair hi-fi equipment, and we became more popular," he said.
In a world that was known for brilliant intellects and large egos, Mr. Bigelow was remembered as someone who was remarkably unassuming and
yet was tremendously creative and resourceful.
"He was thrilled by the engineering challenges that we faced," said Hewitt Crane, a computer designer who was hired away from I.B.M. to
work on the IAS computer in the early 1950's. "He was always like a little kid with a smile on his face."
He recalled a parade down one of the main streets of Princeton that accompanied Mr. Bigelow's house when he moved it from one side of town
to another. It was a struggle to persuade the city government to permit him to move it, but he cut it into several pieces and measured the house precisely to ensure that it would fit on the streets.
Mr. Bigelow studied electrical engineering and mathematics at M.I.T. and received a master's degree.
He was an avid airplane pilot and flew regularly into his 80's, when he renovated a plane as a hobby.
He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; two sons, Nicholas, of Rochester, and Marc, of Wolcott, Vt.; and a daughter, Alice, of London.
They were Protestants and William went to Syracuse University. He was a grain merchant and later, Florida property investor. He served in the Spanish American War and was an Army G.I., having attended West Point Military Academy.
Paul went to Columbia University in NYC and was a Geologist. He was a Consultant. He served in the Armed Forces and was a Lieutenant in the Army during World War I
Nealy received his BS from U.S.N.A. 1921-A, and MS from Lehigh University. He was an Associate professor in College of Engineering and a Rear Admiral in the U. S. Navy 1917-1948. Frances attended Long Beach Junior College and Columbia University Teacher's College. Summer sessions, taught dancing in NYC and NJ 1919-1926.
Died from a fall off a ladder in family library, at age 2.
As a child he lived in Paris for five years and in Germany from ages sixteen to nineteen. At seventeen, he enrolled at the University of Berlin, and a year later transferred to the School of Mines in Freiburg, Saxony. The following year he accepted an appointment to West Point. He married on 28 April 1883 Mary Braxton Dallam, who was born 24 July 1858 the daughter of Judge Henry Clay Dallam of Baltimore, MD. John was a career officer in the U. S. Army graduating from West Point in 1877, served in the 10th U. S. Cavalry, and in the Adjutant General's Office at Washington, D.C. (1889, according to Howe writting in 1889-1890). He died 29 February 1936 age 81, at Washington, DC. Mary died later at unknown date.
In 1877, John Bigelow Jr. and seventy-five other cadets graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, after which he chronicled his experiences, observations, opinions, and musings as a young Cavalry lieutenant in Texas. Sixty of the new lieutenants, including Bigelow and seventeen others who were assigned to black regiments called Buffalo Soldiers, soon departed for the frontier where they were scattered over numerous small and often ramshackle posts and camps. Their work of training soldiers, exploring and patrolling wilderness areas, protecting the mail, travelers, and settlers, chasing and sporadically clashing with unpacified Indians, and enforcing federal laws and policies was usually arduous,
occasionally dangerous and seldom glorious. Yet the value of their accomplishments was immense.
Upon reporting to Fort Duncan, a small post on the Rio Grande, Bigelow became the commanding officer of Company B, 10th Cavalry. Several weeks later a rash of Indian raids in the trans-Pecos region led to his company's transfer to Fort Stockton, where his principal duty was scouting for elusive marauders. He also became increasingly immersed in courtsmartial as a prosecutor and court member, as well as a witness in two officer cases, one of which rocked the entire Army, that were tried in San Antonio.
was a lawyer and member of the bar of the Supreme Court of New York. He left that profession for journalism in 1822 and became an editorial writer, of newspapers and owner of the Outing magazine. His wife was also a writer.
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