His grandfather, John Olliffe, one of the Irish patriots of 1798, came hither with Thoniiis Addis Emmett and others, to escape British persecution, before the beginning of the century. About the same time a nephew of the same ancestor went to India and became, in turn, Catholic Bishop and Archbishop of Calcutta. His father. Dr. William J. Olliffe, was a physician of distinction in a family of physicians, one of whom was long body physician to Louis XVI. and another. Sir Joseph, was physician to the British embassy at Paris and to Emperor Louis Napoleon. He came, too, of a notable family on the side of his mother, the daughter of Cornelius T. Williams, whose lands on Manhattan Island included what is now Union Square and extended northward along Broadway to the present Madison Scpiare.

Mr. Olliffe received his general and classical schooling from the celebrated Dr. Anthon. Later he attended and graduated from the College of Pharmacy, of which be was long a trustee and patron.

As became a gentleman of cultivation and of means, he traveled through most of the States of the Union, visited the Mexican republic and made an extended tour in Europe. On his return from the Continent he married the only daughter of Jordan L. Mott, the ironmaster of Mott Haven. In his early manhood and on the death of his father he succeeded to Dr. Olliffe's business as a pharmacist, which he continued as proprietor in such a way as to leave him large leisure for social and other engagements. Although he