My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM FRIES ENDRESS, the originator and president of the Endress Fuel and Building Supply Company, of Jamestown, New York, was born at Dansville, Livingston county, New York, August 2, 1855, and is the only child of Judge Isaac Lewis and Helen Elizabeth (Edwards) Endress. William Fries Endress is descended from the German family of Endress Im Hof, which was the name given in the latter part of the fifteenth century to a branch of the Franconian family of Im Hof, a noble family of Swabia, now Bavaria. His great-grandfather, John Zacharia Endress, was educated at the university of Tubingen (now Wurtemberg), and at Geneva under Voltaire. He came to America in 1766, settled in Philadelphia and was an officer in the Continental army during the war for Independence, in the course of which much of his property was burned by the British. His son, Christian Frederi Lewis Endress, was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, and became a Lutheran minister. He had charge, for many years, of the Lutheran Church at Lancaster, Pa., then one of the largest and wealthiest parishes in the country. His son, the late Judge Isaac Lewis Endress, the father of the subject of the present sketch, was born in 1810, educated at Dickinson college, Carlisle, Pa., and practiced law, first at Rochester and after 1832 at Dansville, New York. He was appointed judge of Livingston county by Gov. William H. Seward in 1840; was a prominent member of the State Constitutional Convention of 1868; was several times a presidential elector, and delegate to the national nominating conventions, and at the time of his death in 1869 was a member of the Republican State committee. He was married in 1849 to Helen Elizabeth Edwards, whose father was a direct descendant of Pierpont Edwards, a brother of Jonathan Edwards, the distinguished Puritan divine, and whose mother was a Fitzhugh, of the well-known family of Virginia. The only son of this marriage was the subject of this sketch.

William Fries Endress received his early education at the Dansville seminary, and in 1872 entered the Pennsylvania military academy at Chester, Pa., in preparation for the United States naval service. The following year he secured his commission as cadet midshipman and entered the United States naval academy at Annapolis, Md., where he remained until December, 1876, when continued ill health obliged him to resign. For the next year he gave his attention almost entirely to the recovery of his health, merely occupying a part of his time as instructor and commandant of the military battalion at Dansville Seminary. In the fall of 1877 he entered the sophomore class of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, and was graduated in June, 1879, with the degree of civil engineer, being the fourth in the direct line of his family ancestry who have been college-bred men. Soon after graduating he became a resident of Jamestown and entered the coal business, which he rapidly developed into a wholesale business of some magnitude and of which, under the name of the Endress Fuel and Building Supply Company, he is still at the head at the date of this writing, 1891. During 1883 he owned and managed a bituminous coal mine at Hilliards, Butler county, Pa., and shipped coal to Jamestown, Buffalo and the east. As chairman of the railway committee in 1886, he was instrumental in bringing the Chautauqua Lake railroad to Jamestown. In 1887 he organized the Jamestown Electric Light and Power Company, installed its plant and managed its affairs for the first year of its operations. During 1889 and 1890 he was located at Havana, Cuba, and was engaged in organizing companies and putting into operation electric light plants in the principal cities of the “Queen of the Antilles.” Returning to Jamestown on January 1, 1891, he again took the active management of his present extensive and important coal and building interests.

On August 27, 1879, Mr. Endress united in marriage with Dora Elizabeth Willey, of German and Puritan descent, and a resident of Dansville, N. Y., and on July 7, 1880, was blessed with a son, named after his father and great-grand mother, William FitzHugh Endress. By priority of birth this boy became the child of the “Class of 1879” of” the R. P. I. In recognition of this fact he was presented with the class cup, a beautifully chased silver cup, lined with gold and emblazoned with devices emblematical of the various branches of engineering science.