Citizen Foley

 As I started writing yesterday’s story concerning my recent John Foley finds, I noticed that my 2017 article on the subject just introduced a happy, horsey pencil without presenting any of the history of John Foley’s gold pens. Usually that’s something I’ll include, but at the time I was finalizing details in preparation for publishing Volume 5 - I had time and space enough to introduce the pencil, but not enough time or space to introduce the man behind it.

I planned to rectify that omission in yesterday’s piece, but as soon as I started looking into John Foley’s story I knew it was just too much for one article. I hope you are well rested after reading yesterday’s introduction . . . this one is a doozy.  

According to John Foley’s obituary, he was born in 1831 in Ireland.  April, over at her Ink Flexibilities blog, did a nice job researching Foley’s early life: Foley began working at the age of 14 (1845 or so) as an apprentice for the pioneering New York gold penmaker Levi Brown. April say that John Foley started his own shop in 1848.

Editions of the New York City Directory from 1844 through 1852 list neither Levi Brown nor John Foley, and it is not until the 1853-1854 edition that John Foley turns up, in the gold pen business at 167 Broadway and his residence at 244 Third Avenue:

The earliest trade announcements I could find for Foley’s new gold pen business appeared at the end of 1853: this one was published in the New York Daily Herald on December 29, 1853. 

Foley’s obituary provides that his gold pen business “in the course of time, made him comparatively wealthy,” and that assertion is borne out through a lavishly illustrated “History of Foley’s Gold Pens” published in 1875 and widely available in digital form on the internet. It has also been republished in print form (David Nishimura advertises copies on his website, vintagepens.com).

The copy available online, which is a digitized copy of the copy now in the Library of Congress, even includes the author’s handwritten and signed presentation:

This 1875 piece includes images of John Foley products, pictures of various stages of the nibmaking process, and it claims that it was established in 1848 and was “the oldest gold pen house in America.”  Although the title is “History of Foley’s Gold Pens,” that history is a very rudimentary and general history of the penmaking trade, without specifically discussing the John Foley house. One page includes Levi Brown and John Foley on a list of gold pen manufacturers in 1849 New York, even though I was unable to corroborate either’s operations from city directories.

The only page that directly addresses John Foley and his influence is this one, and it doesn’t talk about his contributions to the gold pen industry:

A few years before Foley’s book was published, in 1869 he was elected to the New York County’s Board of Supervisors at the height of “Boss” William Tweed’s corrupt government, remembered today as Tammany Hall. Foley worked diligently to dismantle Tweed’s government, and in 1870 he ran for the position of Supervisor, placing third in the election results with 11,309 votes behind Walter Roche (63,690 votes) and New York Police Commissioner Henry Smith (34,593).

After it was revealed that Tweed’s associates had stuffed the ballot box, Roche’s election was overturned. Henry Smith’s votes were a different matter; while the evidence did not support a finding that his votes were also manipulated, Smith was clearly Tweed’s second choice as well. However, a recent New York state law had made it illegal for a person serving as police commissioner to also serve a city supervisor; therefore, any votes for a Police Commissioner Smith were void.

Foley, who had garnered only ten percent of the total vote, demanded appointment by Tweed as the winner; Tweed refused, and Foley sued. Details of the hearing were published in the New York Tribune on April 4, 1870.

The Tweed organization sprang into action and attempted to rush a bill through the New York legislature legalizing Smith’s election, but his operatives were unable to get the bill pushed through before Judge Ingraham made his decision – such as it was. Foley was entitled to appointment, the judge ruled, but”under the circumstances,” he refused to grant Foley an order compelling his appointment. The New York Times published a summary of the decision on May 11, 1870:

Foley was wronged, but he was also a sore loser. Tweed’s organization had suggested he should run for the position of City Alderman – likely a “keep your friends close but be sure they will always be outvoted” maneuver – but Foley very publicly refused, saying he had no confidence that Tweed’s cronies wouldn’t stuff the ballot box again. See the New York Sun on May 14, 1870.

Foley’s fortunes were soon reversed, and on May 27, 1870, he was sworn into office as Supervisor according to the New York Herald.   

That was only Foley’s first skirmish with Tammany Hall. In 1871, Foley learned about a Tweed scheme to profit from the sale of public transit bonds. He revealed the details of this massive theft of some fifty million dollars in a letter published in several New York newspapers, including the Brooklyn Union, on August 21, 1871.

Foley took a dramatic step to put an end to the fraud by filing a lawsuit to enjoin the collection of taxes and the sale of bonds. The move was reported throughout the state: in Buffalo, New York, the Buffalo Daily Republic reported on the injunction proceedings on September 8, 1871:

The injunction was granted, and Tweed’s racket quickly began to unravel. The Mayor resigned and was soon followed by many other of his co-conspirators, including Tweed himself. Those of the “Tammany Ring” who remained were swept out of office in the 1871 election, and Tweed himself was arrested and convicted of fraud in 1872.

Citizen Foley was the perfect combination of man and moment, a relentless gadfly who stood up alone against a corrupt machine and triumphed. While his self-published 1875 history is self-laudatory, Foley’s fame was well-earned, and once the dust settled he was hailed as the Cincinnatus who had beaten his swords back into gold pens. On Christmas Day in 1875, The New York Times reveled in John Foley’s dual fame as both gold pen maker and “the citizen who obtained that celebrated injunction . . . to be gazed upon admiringly by an astounded public.” 

It wouldn’t last. All of Foley’s personality traits that had made his efforts against Tammany Hall a success would resurface later in his life, with catastrophic consequences.