Part four
Benjamin T. Gilbert, the top shareholder in both companies—the Fulton Chain and Raquette Lake Transportation Company, and the Fulton Chain and Raquette Lake Steamboat Company, both formed in 1896—was the son of Benjamin D. Gilbert.
Benjamin T. left Yale in 1894 to hunt in Colorado, then started for Italy and ended up hunting boar in Morocco, then studied literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and returned to get a B.A. at Columbia.
He did cow-punching in Montana and Wyoming, and then explored Native American ruins in Mexico and Arizona.
He returned east in 1901 to embark on a career in architecture and then became general manager of the Continental Car & Equipment Company.
He became a banker and later started the Gilbert & Company investment firm in Utica.
He developed the Pippin Hill area in New Hartford and owned the Genesee and Lafayette streets “busy corner.”
He performed in and wrote stage productions for the Utica Players and after retirement in the 1930s took up sculpturing.
His successes included the statue of George Washington erected in 1956 on the Utica Public Library Grounds.
He finished second in a competition for a St. Isaac Jogues memorial to the sculptor of World War I Chaplain Father Duffy at Duffy Square, the northern corner in Times Square. A true renaissance man.
His dad was Benjamin D. Gilbert of Clayville, editor of the Utica Morning Herald and, at the time of these companies, was secretary of the state’s Dairymen’s Association.
He was a noted writer of botany and agriculture.
After his death in 1905, his wife presented Benjamin’s botanical library to the Utica Public Library.
The late James Constable’s fern collection cared for by Mr. Gilbert was donated at the same time by Constable’s widow.
To be continued
