Boston Public Library - Electric Scotland

286 WILLIAM 0. ALLISON, OF ENGLEWOOD, N. J.
ing and furnishirig accurate, comprehensive, and, therefore,
valuable information concerning all the markets which the
paper reported ; and upon all these markets the proprietor
of the Reporter, so long as he was actually engaged in the
conduct of the paper, was admitted to be the best informed
man in New York. This fact brought Mr. Allison closely
into personal contact with a large clientage, and made his
judgment and opinions much sought after. It also led him
into enterprises outside of the publishing business, and
proved a source of profit to him in many ways. In addition
to these interests, a perhaps inherited tendency to operate in
real estate has led him to acquire from time to time tracts of
land, chiefly on or in the vicinity of the Palisades, until he
has become one of the largest land-owners in that section.
As a publisher, financier, and real estate operator, William
O. Allison has achieved successes which have won for him
the admiration and respect that legitimate successes, born of
industry and good judgment and gained by no sacrifice of
integrity, gain for any man. He had enjoyed the confidence
of merchants and financiers, for the most part many years
his senior, to the extent that is rarely accorded a young man,
long before he attained to that mile-post .in life which the
lexicographers define as the beginning of middle age. And
even before that period had been reached, he had gained a
prominent place as a factor in very extensive
'
commercial
and financial enterprises. But his most attractive qualities
are best known to those who have come into the clos6r social
contact with him, and are not measured by financial successes,
nor influenced by them except as they have afforded
him the opportunities for extending unostentatious and ofttimes
unappreciated benefactions. When a man has made
a good use of every opportunity that has presented itself to
him, and has lived a thoroughly exemplary life amid surroundings
shorn of none of the temptations which beset
every man, it affords me much satisfaction to be permitted
to record the facts to his praise, and I take it that in a
sketch intended for the purpose to which this is to be put,
I may be permitted to indulge this inclination without being
guilty of that ostentation which is as far from my wishes, as
it would be unjust and distasteful to him of whom I write.
He married, Oc'. 22, 1884, Caroline Longstreet Hovey,
daughter of Alfred Howard Hovey and Frances (Noxon)
Hovey, of Syracuse, N. Y. Her parents died when she was
very young. She was adopted by Hon. George F. Comstock
and his wife, and took the name of Comstock. Mr. Com-