Historic Pelham Blog Archive
April 3, 2009

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The population of Pelham grew quickly after the Civil War. With development came problems, particularly as so-called “tramps” found the area enticing and hitched rides to Pelham on trains running on the New Haven Main Line and the Branch Line.

Before the Village of Pelham Manor was incorporated in 1891, local residents founded the Pelham Manor Protective Club as a means of working together for the good of their community. Nearly the entire adult male population of the area – 52 local residents – subscribed as members. The purpose of the club was “to assist the public authorities in maintaining law and order within a radius of one mile from Pelham Manor Depot....”

The Pelham Manor Protective Club raised money to fund its work, which included guarding against tramps, petty thieves, stray livestock and other local problems. The records of the club, which was disbanded once the village of Pelham Manor was incorporated, provide documentation of the origins of a tiny municipal governing structure in lower Westchester County in the 1880s.

In the last three years of the Club, one of its most active members was Henry Beidleman Bascom Stapler (Henry B.B. Stapler). Below is his biography and a photograph of him as a young man.

"Henry Beidleman Bascom Stapler

Died 1906

Born February 24, 1853, in Mobile, Ala., the son of James and Maria (Beidleman) Stapler.

He prepared for college at Reynold's Classical Institute, Wilmington, Del.

He was married November 10, 1880, to Miss Helen Louisa Gause, daughter of John Taylor and Martha J. Gause, of Wilmington, Del. They had four children:

Martha Gause, Born May 30, 1882.

John Taylor Gause, a lieutenant in the Navy, born November 22, 1883.

Henry [Beidleman] Bascom, Jr., Yale '08, born October 16, 1885.

James Beverly, Christ College, Cambridge '11, born April 16, 1890. [Page 196 / Page 197]

The year after graduation [from Yale] Stapler was classical instructor in the Hartford (Conn.) Public High School, and at the same time began his course in the Yale Law School, which he completed in 1876. During his college course he won several prizes in English composition, and at the end of the second year in the law the Jewell prize for the highest marks in examination. During the second year of his law course he was also instructor in history in the Hopkins Grammar School.

After a clerkship with Fowler & Taylor in New York City, he was admitted to practice in May, 1878, and the following September formed a partnership with his classmate, John L. Wood, which continued ten years, after which he practiced alone. From 1891 to 1893 he was assistant district attorney of the city and county of New York, and was then with George P. Breckenridge, in the law firm of Stapler & Breckenridge.

He died of pneumonia at his home in Pelham Manor, Westchester County, N.Y., December 1, 1906, in his fifty-fourth year."

Source: Biographical Record of the Class of 1874 in Yale College - Part Fourth 1874-1909, pp. 196-97 (New Haven, CT: The Tuttle Morehouse & Taylor Co. 1912).

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