s.

RUSSELL SAGE, financier, railroad president, stockbroker, public leader, and
man of affairs, is one of the most unique personages in Wall street. The circum¬
stances even of his birth were unusual, and, while these pages speak of many other
entertaining and remarkable careers, it will be hard to find a life story in which the
interest is more sustained from the beginning.

The War of 1812 having ended and tranquillity having returned to the country,
there occurred about 1816 an exodus of population from the East to the new regions of
the West. During that year, a company of Connecticut farmers might have been seen
making their way by ox team through Mohawk valley in New York State, bound for
distant Michigan. Elisha Sage and Prudence Risley, his wife, were of this company.
During a halt at the hamlet of Schenandoah in the township of Verona, Oneida county,
N. Y., Aug. 4, 1816, there was born to Elisha and Prudence Risley Sage, in one of the
houses of the hamlet, the subject of this biography. Before his wife could recover
strength to resume the journey, Elisha Sage discovered that he had already reached a
goodly land and he settled in the town of Verona. Two years later, he removed to a
farm near Durhamville, where, after an honorable and useful life, he died at the old
homestead, April 23, 1854.

Russell Sage spent his early boyhood, a bright, careless, hearty lad, upon his
father's farm, attending school in the winter time and occupied at home in summer
with the work and sports of the farm. While gaining inexhaustible physical vitality in
the healthful existence of the farm, the boy already displayed a talent for trading,which
marked him as a born business man.

At the age of twelve, he began life without means as a hard working errand
boy in the grocery of his brother, Henry Risley Sage, in Troy, N. Y. The hours of
duty were long and full of humdrum occupation, but the boy had his evenings and im¬
proved them by studying useful books. When he had gained in knowledge and experi¬
ence, his brother made him a clerk and salesman. Mr. Sage made many trades of his
owm during this period, and, both from enforced economy, resulting from a small sal¬
ary, and his ingenuity in bargaining, gained a little capital of his own, so that at the
age of twenty-one, when he became the partner of another brother, Elisha Montague
Sage, in a retail grocery, he was already in the possession of a small surplus. Shrewd,
active, saving and courageous, he soon bought his brother's interest, became sole pro¬
prietor, expanded his sales and finally sold the business to excellent advantage. In
1839, with a partner, he established a wholesale grocery store of his own at No. 139
River street, in Troy. His partner, John W. Bates, was a good merchant. In a short
time, the firm became commission merchants of produce, which they shipped to New
York, employed several sailing vessels of their own on the Hudson river, and by their
enterprise came to control the markets of Troy and Albany for Canadian and Vermont
horses. Mr. Sage never spared himself any labor necessary to bring to a successful
issue any transaction in which he was engaged. In 1844, he bought his partner's inter¬
est and carried on a large wholesale grocery trade on his individual account. One fea¬
ture of his enterprise consisted of   extensive operations in beef, pork, flour and grain