James Family Plot [Section 16 Lot 1]
Family plot to the second richest man in New York, father of Henry James, First professor to teach psychology in the U.S., and muse to novelist Henry James
William James (1771 – 1832)
William James is the patriarch of the Albany’s James family. Born in Bailbeborough, County Cavan, Ireland in 1771 to William James and Susan McCarthy, he immigrated to America in 1789 with a small sum of money. By 1793 he was in Albany working for a dry goods store, John Robison & Co. Williams ventured off on his own and opened a similar shop in 1795 at the corner of State and Green Street. With the success of his store, he opened a chain of them as well as a shipping company, salt company, and tobacco factory. The Albany Chronicles once referred to him as a “public-spirited merchant” and gained the nickname “William of Albany.” becoming a naturalized citizen in 1802.
William became a naturalized citizen in 1802 and diversified his business dealings further as a land speculator. He acquired property around upstate New York, at one point he held the mortgage for Union College and almost the entire City of Syracuse, which he purchased for $30,000. As an advocate for the Erie Canal and helped finance the project as well serving on several boards and organization.
William resided at 70 North Pearl street and had 13 children with three wives. Upon his death in 1832 at the age of 60, he was the second richest man in New York State, the first being John Jacob Astor. Albany’s Middle Lane was renamed to James Street his honor. His body was moved to the James family plot after 1848.
Henry James, Sr. (1811 – 1882)
Henry was born on June 3, 1811, the son of William James and his third wife, Catherine Barber. When he was 13, one of his legs was amputated due to an event with a turpentine-soaked balloon which left him to bedridden for three years. He attended Albany Academy and later Union College. Henry began to study theology, though his father, a staunch Calvinists, disapproved. The death of his father gave him the financial means to attend Princeton Theological Seminary, though he eventually abandoned the idea of becoming a minister.
Influenced by the teachings of Swedish Lutheran theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, known as Swedenborgian, Henry went on to write Substance and Shadow, the Secret of Swedenborg. He also became interested in the transcendentalist movement at George Ripley’s Brook Farm, seeing utopianism as the entrance to spiritual life. Through these groups, he befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Carlyle, and Henry Davis Thoreau, becoming an advocate for divorce and abolishing slavery.
Henry married Mary Robertson Walsh on July 28, 1840, where they lived in New York City, England, and Boston. They had five children together, most notably William James, the philosopher and psychologist; Alice James, who is best known for her published diaries; and Henry James, who is considered to be among one of the greatest novelists of the English language.
Henry died on December 18, 1882, in Boston. A few days before his death his son William learned of his father’s condition and wrote him a letter though he died before he had the chance to read it: "In that mysterious gulf of the past into which the present will soon fall and go back and back, yours is still for me the central figure. All my intellectual life I derive from you, and though we have often seemed at odds in the expression thereof, I'm sure there's a harmony somewhere, & that our strivings will combine. What my debt to you goes beyond all my power of estimating,—so early, so penetrating and so constant has been the influence. . . . Good night my sacred old Father. If I don't see you again—Farewell! a blessed farewell!"
William James (1842 – 1910)
William was born on January 11, 1842, to Henry James, Sr. and Mary Robertson Walsh. The eldest of five children, he was educated in New York City and Europe. William initially wanted to be a painter and studied under William Morris Hunt, the leading painter of the mid-nineteenth century. Eventually getting bored art, he enrolled at the Lawrence Scientific School in 1861 and went on to study at Havard School of Medicine. In 1865 he took a break from his studies and went on an expedition to the Amazon led by biologist and geologist Louis Agassiz. He also spent time in Germany before finishing his degree in 1869.
William did not go into medicine but academics, accepting a teaching position at Harvard University. He taught an undergraduate class in comparative physiology. In 1874 he opened the first laboratory in American Psychology, becoming the first educator in the United States to offer courses on the subject. In 1880 he was appointed Assistant Professorship and began publishing several articles on psychology.
Some of his writings include Remarks on Spencer’s Definition of Mind as Correspondence, The Sentiment of Rationality, and On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology. However, his most famous work came in 1890 when he published The Principles of Psychology. The book took 12 years to write and became influencer to other lead thinkers such as Bertrand Russell and John Dewey. He later published The Varieties of Religious Experience, and Pragmatism which explored his pragmatic beliefs on deeper level. He is known to have coined the term “stream of consciousness.”
William married Alice Howe Gibbons on July 10, 1878, and had five children together. He died on August 26, 1910, of heart failure at his summer home in Chocorua, New Hampshire.
Mary “Minny” Temple (1845 – 1870)
Novelist Henry James described his first cousin Mary "Minnie" Temple" as "absolutely afraid of nothing she might come to by living with enough sincerity and enough wonder" and that she possessed a "wonderful ethereal brightness of presence."
One of eight children, Minnie was born on December 7, 1845, in Albany to Colonel Robert Emmet Temple and Catherine Margaret James. Both her parents died consumption, later known as tuberculosis in 1854. She said to have been a dark-haired beauty with unsettling, direct eyes as well as have an intelligent, energetic personality. Henry James has also mentioned that she was a "restlessness of spirit, the finest reckless impatience." They had met as children, but only became well-acquainted when they met again in Newport, C.T. in 1865.
Minnie died of tuberculosis on March 8, 1870, at the age of 24. She died in New Rochelle and was originally buried there, interred to James family plot on April 26, 1910. Henry is said to have paid for the transportation of her body and the gravestone. She is buried near the western corner of the James family plot, and her epitaph reads, "Right dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Psalm 116:15." Henry James is said to have used her as inspiration for two of his most well known female characters, Isabel Archer in Portrait of a Lady, and the self-titled book, Daisy Miller. Additionally, she was the subject in the last chapter in Notes of a Son and Brother.