city, pocketing $1.9 million and turning completely to banking. Even so, it identified as a water company as late as 1899. The company maintained a Water Committee which yearly assured, quite truthfully, that no requests for water service had been denied, and moreover conducted its meetings with a pitcher of the water at hand to ensure quality. In 1825, John Gerard Coster was appointed president of the company. He was succeeded by Maltby Gelston in 1829. Gelston, a former member of the New York State Assembly, was the son of Collector David Gelston and the father of Mary Gelston, who married Henry Rogers Winthrop (father of Buchanan Winthrop). In 1847, Caleb O. Halstead, a cloth merchant from Elizabeth, New Jersey, was made president of the bank. Halstead succeeded Jonathan Thompson, who had been made president in 1840. Before he was president, Thompson had served nine years as the Collector of the Port of New York having been appointed by President James Monroe and also serving under John Quincy Adams. In 1853, the Manhattan Company became one of the original 52 members of the New York Clearing House Association. In 1860, the board of directors promoted James M. Morrison as president of the bank to succeed Halstead. Morrison, who had begun working for the bank as the "first teller" in 1840, served as president until ill health forced him to resign in the latter part of 1879. Morrison was succeeded by John S. Harberger, who had begun working for the bank in 1857 as assistant cashier. Harberger died of malarial fever a year later in October 1880. In October 1880, William Henry Smith of the dry goods house of William H. Smith & Co. was elected to succeed Harberger as president of the Bank of the Manhattan Company. By 1885, Smith was retired from the company but remained interested in the affairs of the LaFarge Decorative Arts Company. Baker family leadership In 1891, the board of directors of the Bank of Manhattan Trust Company elected Stephen Baker vice president. Baker, a son of former U.S. Representative Stephen Baker and protégé of financier John Stewart Kennedy, was the grandson of Stephen Baker, a prominent New York merchant who was one of the original stockholders of the Manhattan Company. Two years later in 1893, Baker was elected president at the age of only 34, succeeding John Stewart Kennedy who served as president pro