Hoe and Mr. S. D. Tucker, one of his partners. Although many years ago the mammoth business which he had inherited from his father had made him a wealthy man, abundantly able, had he seen fit, to retire from its active management. Colonel Hoe to the day of his death was the actual head and manager of the great manufacturing house, giving his time and

MORRISANIA.

inventive brain abundantly to the development of the business.

Robert Hoe, his father, and founder of the house of R. Hoe & Co., was a native of Lancashire, England, and was born at Hose, in 1784. At an early age he was apprenticed to learn the trade of a carpenter, but being of an ambitious disposition, he " bought his time " and came to New York at the age of nineteen. Arriving in the New World solitary and friendless, he accidentally met with the famous Grant Thorburn, who entertained him with hospitality and nursed him with care when prostrated with yellow fever. Some years after he married Rachel, daughter of Matthew Smith, of North Salem, Westchester County.

His brother-in-law, Peter Smith, invented an improved printing-press, and he was engaged with him in the manufacture. When the news came of the introduction of the flat-bed cylinder press in England, Mr. Hoe sent a skilled workman to examine the new invention, and upon his return he extended his manufacturing operations. Robert Hoe died in 1833, at the age of forty-nine, leaving the business to his son, Richard jM. Hoe, whose name is now known worldwide as an inventor. He took his cousin, Matthew Smith, with Sereno Newton, as partners, and the firmname was made R. Hoe & Co., which is still retained.