Born in Morristown, he graduated from Princeton College in 1867 and from Columbia Law School in 1869.

from Princeton in 1970, and the same year he was admitted to the bar of New Jersey and commenced practice in Newark.

[3] He was a member of the New Jersey General Assembly in 1885 and 1886 and was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Fifty-third Congress.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1910 to the Sixty-fifth Congress and resumed the practice of law in Newark.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1918 to the Sixty-sixth Congress and was a delegate to the 1916 Republican National Convention.