Francis Baretto Spinola

         GEN. F. B. SPINOLA DEAD.
         END OF THE TAMMANY CON-
            GRESSMAN'S CAREER.
       AFTER SEVERAL DAYS OF IMPROVE-
           MENT DEATH CAME AT 1:25
           O'CLOCK THIS MORNING--A LONG
           CAREER IN POLITICS.
   WASHINGTON, April 14.-- Gen. F.B. Spinola
died at 1:25 o'clock this morning after an illness
which lasted several weeks. His condition
had so improved during the last few days that
his friends had begun to entertain some hope of
his recovery.
 Gen. Spinola was born in Stony Brook, Suffolk
County, L.I., March 19, 1821. On his father's
side he was of Italian descent. His mother and
maternal grandmother were born on Long
Island, and his maternal grandfather was an
Irishman, who did service throughout the Revo-
lutionary war as an officer on the American side
and made a good record. He received his school
education in the public schools and at the
Quaker Hill Boarding School, near Poughkeep-
sie. His experience with schools was not, how-
ever, extensive.
 When about sixteen years old young Spinola
was apprenticed to a jeweler in Poplar Street,
Brooklyn. He served his time as an apprentice,
but, when twenty-one, abandoned the trade he
had learned, took up blacksmithing, then be-
came a grocer, and next a carpenter. After
this he was appointed assistant to the Clerk of
the Brooklyn Common Council, and, leaving
this berth at the end of a year, he became a
clerk in a private office. At the end of another
year he was appointed Assistant Clerk of the
Common Council, and remained such until 1846,
when he was elected Alderman from the Second
Ward.
 Gen. Spinola began his political career as a
Whig, although the Brooklyn Second Ward, his
political birthplace, was a Democratic strong-
hold. His personal popularity pulled him
through at the first election, but the following
year he was defeated by one vote. The next
year he was elected Alderman again, however,
and after that re-elected for four consecutive
terms. He was then Supervisor for three suc-
cessive years, and in 1855 was elected to the As-
sembly. At the expiration of his term as As-
semblyman he was elected to the State Senate
from the Third District, and served as Senator
in 1858, 1859, 1860, and 1861. In this early
stage of his political career Gen. Spinola was a
lawyer, having been admitted to the bar in 1844.
 In October, 1862, Spinola was made a Briga-
dier General of Volunteers, having recruited and
organized a brigade of four regiments, known as
Spinola's Empire Brigade. Before getting into
actual service with this brigade, he had consider-
able trouble. The brigade was quartered in East
New-York, and the men, getting into a great
state of excitement over the non-payment of
bounties, broke away from their barracks,
wrecked a hotel opposite, and scattered. There
were about 1,200 of them. Gen. Spinola reached
the scene after the stampede, word of it reach-
ing him while he was at a public meeting at the
City Hall. He at once set about corralling his
forces again. Two hundred only had remained 
loyal.
 For his action while recruiting this brigade
Gen. Spinola was called before a court-martial
in 1864 by order of Gen. Dix. The charges
against him were of conduct unbecoming an
officer and gentleman and of neglect of duty.
Under the first there were nine counts, includ-
ing the charge that he had let certain persons
unlawfully receive money from recruits; that
his volunteers had been deprived of part of
their bounty; that he had let them be mustered
in while they were intoxicated; that he failed to
pay attention to charges made against bounty
brokers, and that he had let his Surgeon sign
blank certificates to be filled in afterward.
Under the second charge he was accused of fail-
ing to protect the interests and rights of his
recruits. Several private sessions of the court-
martial were held in this city, and finally the
Advocate General, Col. Hall, withdrew the
charges, as was said at the time, to make them
more definite.
 Gen. Spinola was twice wounded in battle.
He was honorably discharged in August, 1865.
After the war, he drifted to this city and natu-
rally into Tammany Hall. He established such a
reputation that when, in 1876, he was put up as
the Tammany Hall candidate for the Assembly
from the Sixteenth District, there was a howl of
indignation, and Francis Kearney, a business
man, was nominated in opposition. Spinola was
successful.
 The proceedings of the Assembly for 1877
were rendered remarkably lively by Gen.
Spinola, who made uncalled for attacks on a
fellow-member whenever an opportunity offered. 
In this connection THE TIMES said of him:
"Spinola is the rough-and-ready jester of the
House; his mission is 'to have fun with the
boys,' and he certainly fulfills it. The time he
wastes and the interruption to business he
causes are peefectly intolerable; but he is not
without a sort of rude wit; does not appear to
be vindictive and has an impudence which noth-
ing can abash. It is lucky the House has only
one Spinola in it, or perhaps it would be better
if it had another, for they might act as counter-
irritants."
 A little while after this, Spinola carried his
methods so far that he came near being put un-
der arrest for comtempt of the House. Three
members had read speeches on the subject be-
fore the House. Gen. Spinola made one of his
characteristic speeches, in which he said: "I
am not surprised when I look over the field and
learn the fact that three gentlemen came here
to-day, selected from the majority upon the floor
of this House, loaded to the very muzzle with
three set speeches, prepared for them outside of
the railings of this House, placed in their hands
by a committee of a caucus, prepared with great
care, and those gentlemen selected to read them
for the information of this House." This was
March 14, 1877, and an adjournment was taken
before the close of the discussion, on a motion
that Spinola be forced to retract or be punished
for contempt. The next day Spinola made a sort
of retraction. A fuller one was demanded, and
he finally made that too.
 The next year Gen. Spinola came into public
notice again in connection with a job to get
from the Board of Aldermen permission to lay
mains and pipes under the streets of this city
for the purpose of carrying steam for cooking
and heating. He was successful, and after-
ward, by a series of transactions, his rights be-
came the property of the present steam heating
company.
 Again, in 1881, Gen. Spinola was returned to
the Assembly, and he at once took up his old
methods. When a bill to incorporate the Mexi-
can Southern Railway Company was under dis-
cussion, he took occasion to speak of Gen.
Grant, whose name was on the list of incor-
porators, as "first at the free-lunch counter and
deepest in the pockets of his countrymen." He
wascompelled to make a retraction in the face
of a resolution to compel him to do so.
 After leaving the Assembly at the close of this
term Gen. Spinola caused amusement by posing
as an anti-monopolist. He was elected to the 
Fiftieth Congress from the Tenth District, in
this city, was re-elected to the Fifty-first, and
was again successful at the election in 1890. In
1888 he again revived his old Assembly man-
nerssufficiently to say that words uttered by
Kilgore of Texas ought to be crowded down his
dirty throat, and Mr. Kilgore intimated that
were Gen. Spinola a younger man he would
have been forced to pay dearly for the remark.
 When a young man Gen. Spinola was for years
a member of a fire company. The red shirts
with high collars were then worn by fireman,
and it is said that in this service he became at-
tached to the wearing of high collars, supplant-
ing the high red one when he left the company
with the still more striking white one, the wear-
ing of which has caused him to be as often
called "Shirt-collar" Spinola as "Gen." Spinola.