Elias Smith Higgins (1815-1889)

He was born at Gray near Portland, Maine. After a common school education he went to New York City at the age of eighteen. His brother Alvin had learned how to weave rag carpet on a hand loom and after saving $200 persuaded Elias to borrow the same amount and join him in the manufacturing of carpet. In 1837, with one hand loom, they opened a retail store on Pearl Street. Gradually they grew until they were manufacturing ingrain carpet and built a large factory on 43rd Street, continually expanding until 1890 by which time they made every kind of carpet from ingrain, body and tapestry Brussels to Wilton and velvet rugs. During the Civil War, they secured a contract to supply army blankets for the government, at a great profit to themselves.

By the time the company was incorporated as E.S. Higgins & Co. it had a capital stock of $2-million. From a small and struggling two-man operation, it now owned factory buildings covering 72-city lots employing 2,000-operatives on an annual payroll of $750,000 with an annual output of 3.5-million yards of carpet. By then, Elias was a director of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. He was also a director and the largest stockholder in the Consolidated Gas Company and a director of the Central National Bank which became known as "the carpet men's bank". He was a trustee of the New York Life Insurance Company and a member of the Union Club and the New York Chamber of Commerce. He also invested in real estate including grand hotels and "held property of great value in various parts of the city".

He married Emma Louise, sister of Rear-Admiral Charles H. Baldwin U.S.N., and they had five children of whom three (listed) lived to adulthood. He lived between 137 Fifth Avenue in New York and their country home at Morristown, New Jersey, and at his death his estate was estimated to be worth between $30-$40-million, leaving $12-million to be divided between his widow and their two surviving children, Eugene and Mrs H. Mortimer Brooks. His second daughter, Lulu, had been engaged to marry Col. William F. Moller (son of the sugar refiner William Moller) but died within a year of the announcement.