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George Bliss

Banker

Centurion, 1888–1896

Born 21 April 1816 in Northampton, Massachusetts

Died 2 February 1896 in New York (Manhattan), New York

Buried Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York

Proposed by Levi Parsons Morton, Augustine Smith, and Hooper C. Van Vorst

Elected 6 October 1888 at age seventy-two

Century Memorial

George Bliss was for over thirty years a prominent figure in the business circles of the City and State of New York. As the head of one of the largest banking houses of the city, his influence and service upon all financial questions was potent and commanding, while his integrity and business ability added weight to his influence, and won for him the esteem and confidence of the community to an unusual degree, as was evidenced by the many positions of trust he was called upon to fill. He was the vice-president of the United States Trust Company, a director of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company for over thirty years, a director of the Western Union Telegraph Company, of the Greenwich Savings Bank, the Seamen’s Bank for Savings, the Manhattan Elevated Railway Company, the Woman’s Hospital, the Society for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled, the Atlantic Mutual Marine Insurance Company, treasurer of the Board of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church, director of the American Exchange Bank, and a vestryman of Grace Church for many years. The extent of his unostentatious benevolence will never be known, but there are many monuments to his liberality, which will long cause his memory to be held in grateful remembrance and his character in profound admiration. He was one of the most modest, as he was one of the most useful members of society, and has left an enviable record as a high minded, public-spirited citizen and an honest man.

Henry E. Howland
1897 Century Association Yearbook