My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM T. COLEMAN is the president of the Lake Shore National bank of Dunkirk, having succeeded his father, the founder of the bank, who died in 1884. He is a son of Freeman R. and Sophia (Beecher) Coleman, and was born in Ellicottsville, Cattaraugus county, New York, February 18, 1845. The Coleman family is of English extraction, but grandfather, Asa Coleman, was a native of Connecticut where he followed farming. He died in 1860, aged seventy-eight years. Freeman R. Coleman was born in Connecticut but came to Madison county, this State, when a mere child. He remained there only a few years, until about fifteen years of age, and then went to Utica, New York, where he engaged as a clerk in a general merchandise store, owned by Ferrin & Backus. He remained with them three years and was then entrusted with a stock of goods and sent into the new country of Cattaraugus county, settling at Ellicottsville. Realizing that this business was more profitable than working for a salary he bought the outfit and ran it on his own account up to 1854. Ten years prior to the date mentioned he engaged in the law business. He opened a land office and ran it in connection with his store. At the date mentioned he came to Dunkirk and opened a bank which later was known as the Lake Shore Banking Co., and was nationalized in 1882, when it assumed the name of the Lake Shore National bank of Dunkirk, with a capital stock of one hundred thousand dollars. Mr. Coleman was president of this bank until he died in August, 1884, being at that time, seventy-ive years old. He was a member of the Episcopal church and a warden at the time of his death. In early life he was an anti-slavery man, then a whig and finally a Horace Greeley republican. He was a pushing energetic man, and always ready to help a deserving cause. He started in life worth ten shillings and left at his death quite a large estate. He married Sophia Beecher and had a number of children. She was a native of New Haven, Connecticut, born in 1812 and died in 1867, aged fifty-five years. Mrs. Coleman, too, was a member of the Episcopal church.

William T. Coleman was reared in Dunkirk until eleven years of age, when he was sent to Trenton, New Jersey, to be educated, where he remained until eighteen years old. Upon reaching the latter mentioned age he returned to Dunkirk and began work as a clerk in his father’s bank. One year later he was promoted and made cashier, which position he filled for twenty-one years. When the elder Mr. Coleman died in the fall of 1884, W. T. Coleman was elected to the presidency of the bank.

In 1870, he married Grace, daughter of Charles Kennedy, of Dunkirk, and they have two sons and two daughters: Agnes, Essie, Royal C. and Shirley T. Mrs. Coleman died in February, 1885, aged thirty-nine years.

W. T. Coleman is a republican, liberal in his views and of original ideas. He has served as president of the council and is now a member of the board of water works. Mr. Coleman’s bank is a sound financial institution. The last statement shows the surplus fifty-eight thousand dollars. Deposits over five hundred thousand dollars, and the total balance for the day nearly three-quarters of a million dollars.