DEPEW, CHAUNCEY MITCHELL, an American lawyer; born in Peekskill, N. Y., April 23, 1834, of Huguenot and Puritan ancestry; was graduated at Yale College in 1856, and was admitted to the bar in 1858. In 1860 he worked for the election of Lincoln; 1861-1862, was a member of the New York Assembly, and served some time as chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and as acting speaker; 1863, elected Secretary of State of New York; 1865, declined a re nomination, and 1866 was commissioned collector of the port of New York by President Johnson, who afterward tore up the commission in a quarrel. He was appointed United States Minister to Japan, and after holding the commission a month declined, and began his career as a railroad official as attorney for the New York and Harlem Railroad. He was made attorney and director of the consoli dated Hudson River and New York Cen tral Railroads in 1869; general counsel of the whole Vanderbilt system in 1875; second vice-president of the reorganized New York Central Railroad in 1882, and president in 1885. His political career
since 1866 embraces his unsuccessful can didacy as lieutenant-governor on the Lib eral Republican ticket in 1872; his elec tion by the Legislature as a regent of the State University in 1874; his candidacy for United States Senator to succeed Thomas C. Platt, in which he withdrew his name after 82 days of balloting in 1881; his declination of the United States senatorship tendered by the Republicans of the Legislature in 1884; his candidacy for the presidential nomination in the na tional convention in 1888; and his elec tion to the United States Senate 1899 1911.
In 1905 he was involved in the investi gation of the New York life insurance companies and repaid a loan obtained from the Equitable, for a concern in which he was interested. At the same time he resigned his directorship in the Equitable. Two volumes of his orations and after-dinner speeches have been pub lished.