12-03-04

Dear Rory,

It's nice to hear from you so soon again. I didn't find records of the Coffey family at Lee, Mass. I must have been looking at a different source. C. C. Alger made his money in the iron business. He first owned his own plant, the Stockbridge Iron Company, somewhere outside the village limits of Stockbridge. As he was married in Dec. of 1831 and his first child (Grace Alger) was born there in in 1833 or 1834 and his son Charles Alger on 2-22-1836, I would say he was resided there for a reasonable amount of time. He eventually took in Jacob Hoysradt as an assistant. In 1849, C. C. Alger went to Hudson, New York and got a group of investors together and they had the Hudson Iron Company built according to his plan.(I think someone ran the company in Stockbridge but that it was eventually sold.) The Hudson Iron Works was completed in 1851 and became the third most profitable iron company in the U. S. for a period of time bringing in an annual return of 40%. C. C. Alger was the general manager and Jacob Hoysradt was his assistant. Sarah Palmer Alger and then Charles Alger joined Christ Episcopal Church and had Grace and Charles confirmed there. Charles Alger was on the building committee for a new church. They had a house by the river in Hudson that I am told is still standing but in a state of disrepair. In 1852, C. C. Alger seized on an opportunity to purchase the home and grounds of A. J. Downing in Newburgh, New York not that far from Monroe, New York where he apparently was born. A. J. Downing drowned in a steamboat mishap on the Hudson River off of Yonkers when the ship caught fire. C. C. Alger hired the architect A. J. Davis who completely changed the outside look of the Newburgh house. C. C. also relocated his family to Newburgh even though he was considered the general manager of the plant at Hudson until 1864 when he retired and left the job to Jacob Hoysradt, who eventually became president of the company, mayor of Hudson, and financial advisor to one of the governors of New York. When C. C. Alger left Hudson for Newburgh, he turned his Hudson house over to Jacob Hoysradt who probably ended up purchasing it.

Things started to fall apart in 1861 with the marriage of C. C. Alger and Sarah Palmer. They became estranged for 7 years before C. C. Alger got a divorce in New Haven, Conn. in March of 1868 which was confirmed by a Manhattan court in May of 1868. Apparently C. C. Alger turned the house over to his daughter Grace Alger, but then may have taken it back after the divorce. Soon he was married to a woman 40 years younger and living at Norwich, Conn. and also having a (summer?) house at New London, Ct. They had the daughter Lucile but it says on her birth certificate that she was the second child of an unnamed mother. Don't know anything about a first child of Marie Louise Molt. Don't even know where they were married although she was born in Vermont, possibly Stowe. Maybe they were married in Paris as there is a notice in the historical New York Times that the couple was at Paris and had established an account at a bank there. Think that that was some time during 1869.

Also C. C. Alger was president of an iron company at Cold Spring, Putnam County, New York. The details are murky. Apparently he got some other people to put up all the money and he supplied the expertise. Don't think that lasted too long.

In addition, C. C. Alger was responsible (as part of a small group) for getting some sections of railroad built in Berkshire County, Mass. so that iron ore could be shipped to Hudson from the West Stockbridge, Mass. area.

C. C. died of a stroke at his summer home at New London, Ct. on July 13, 1874 and the funeral was conducted from his main home in Norwich on July 16, 1874. He was buried at the Yantic Cemetery where Marie Louise Molt Alger would join him somewhere about 1886. Jacob Hoysradt was in charge of his estate along with Marie Louise until Jacob died about 1890. At that time Jacob's wife and lawyer son Albert took over the management of the assets of C. C. Alger's estate.

Lucile Alger left Connecticut about 1901 and relocated to Great Neck, Long Island. She was very well off as C. C. Alger had left almost all of his assets to his second wife and their child. In his will, he left some other bequests. Interesting ones were to James Madison Youngs who I found out much later was his step-brother by his mother's second marriage and some money to Sarah E. Pitcher. It turns out that she was the daughter of his deceased sister Emily F. Alger Pratt. Sarah had two husbands and was married to a Hyrum Pitcher who died before the census of 1880 when she had a second husband whose name I can't think of offhand. He also left money to his friend Samuel Washington Harris (also in the iron business). It turns out that son Charles Alger's brother-in-law John Augustus Freeland, Jr. (only sibling of Helena Willett Freeland) married Samuel's daughter Helen (Ella) Harris about the time of C. C. Alger's death. C. C. Alger also left money as follows: $1,000 to his cousin Mrs. Lucretia Crandell of Stow, Vermont; $1,000 to his niece Mrs. Pitcher (identified as Sarah E. Pitcher in the payout section), $1,000 to his cousin Mrs. Z. L. Severance of Williamstown, Mass., and $500 to her daughter Marion Severance. He left $5,000 to his granddaughter Grace Coffey Alger (who is turns out was named after his mother). These are only some of the bequests but they help identify his relatives some of whom are a complete mystery to me. I don't know how Crandell or the two Severances are related. I have to assume they are through Levi Alger or Grace Coffey.

Cordially,

Mrs. Barbara Alger Farrand Doxey