Biography
Baker was born in New York City, New York and attended the common schools. He engaged as importer of woolen goods. He moved to Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1850.
Baker was elected as a Republican to the Thirty-seventh Congress (March 4, 1861 – March 3, 1863). Abandoned active business pursuits and lived in retirement until his death, while en route to California for his health, on a train near Ogden, Utah, June 9, 1875. He was interred in the Rural Cemetery, Poughkeepsie, New York.
His son, also named Stephen Baker, was the President and Chairman of the Board of the Bank of the Manhattan Company, the earliest predecessor of Chase Bank, and an associate of John D. Rockefeller Jr..
Read more about this topic: Stephen Baker (New York)
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
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—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)