He was educated at Canandaigua Academy, and graduated from Williams College in 1892, as a member of Kappa Alpha Society.

After graduation, he became a clerk at the First National Bank in New York City, then at the New York Guarantee and Indemnity Company, and later at the United States Mortgage and Trust Company of which he became vice president.

On April 29, 1897, he married Anna Murphy Plater in Nashville, Tennessee, a portrait of whom by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury is in the Williams College Faculty Club/Alumni Center, Williamstown.

[2] In November 1909, he was appointed New York State Comptroller to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Charles H. Gaus, and remained in office until the end of 1910.

[4] He served as a Red Cross representative with the First American Infantry Division in World War I.