Columbia Library columns (v.44(1995))

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  v.44,no.1(1995:Winter): Page 12  



FrancisJ. Sypher,Jr,
 

solidly, stolidly, anonymously in the middle ranks
of society: law)'ers, merchants, bankers, stockbro¬
kers, who for the most part took pride in being out
of the spotlight. Wliat they wanted, rather than
fame or adventure or great wealth, was a peaceful
and fruitful family and professional life. They
chose to stay in their comfortable Manhattan (or
Brooklyn) town houses, rather than to brave the
dangers of the West—although one of them "pio¬
neered" by moving from his house on Fifth
Avenue near 66th Street to the West Side, where
he was an early resident of the apartment building
known as the Dakota, at 72nd Street and Central
Park West.

My family preferred the bulls and bears of Wall
Street to the ranches of Texas or the wilderness of
California. To be sure, their fortunes fluctuated;
yet after financial and familial disasters, they
always made a comeback. But even when they did
well, their fortunes generally amounted to no
more than perhaps a million dollars or so at most.
That was a more substantial level of wealth in, say,
1880 than it is now; but it is a mere fraction com¬
pared to the hundreds of millions accumulated by
Rockefeller, or Carnegie, and others, at the same
time. And yet, I would suggest, these middle-class
people are more influential than the stereotj'pes
seem to indicate. In their family life and through
their business and professional activities, they
have helped to sustain the day-to-day framework
of society.

The City of New York has, from its founding as
New Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century,
been a center for shipping and for related activi¬
ties, such as insurance, banking, and the law. And
the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made New
 

York a national center for trade and finance. It is,
therefore, not surprising that Columbia was offer¬
ing courses in law as early as the late eighteenth
century. Nor is it surprising that in my New York
family, many have attended Columbia College and
Columbia Law School. In this essay, I sketch four
generations of family association with Columbia,
from a great-imcle of mine, Frank Jay Dupignac
(LL.B., 1869), to myself (A.B., 1963; A.M., 1964;
Ph.D., 1968).

Frank J. Dupignac was bom in New York on
January 10, 1848. the eldest of three children of
great-great-grandparents of mine, Eliza Boyle
(1828-1870) and James Betts Dupignac
(1818-1890), who were married in New York on
May 15, 1845. At the time of James B. Dtipignac's
birth, his parents were living on East Broadway,
then known for the fine federal and Greek Revival
houses built there by sea captains and shipping
merchants. But his father had been bom in New
London, Connecticut, where, in the 1790s, the
family had arrived in the aftermath of the French
Revolution, apparently from the French West
Indies. They were of Huguenot origin; in New
York they were members of the Episcopal Church.

The Columbia Law Library possesses a manu¬
script book of names and addresses of students
enrolled in the Columbia Law School in the
1860s, and in the book appears the signature Frank
John Dupignac, 665 Broadway—near Bond Street—
with the date October 4, 1865, when he enrolled
for his first year of study. The location was the
Tremont House (the hotel was owned by his father
from 1860 to 1870—the year of his wife's death at
the age of forty-one, when he permanently retired
from   business;   next   door   was   the   National
 

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  v.44,no.1(1995:Winter): Page 12