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Wilbur F. Sadler, Jr. 
 

H 
 
 '* I I OW, THEN, SHALL WE MEASURE 
 
 THE LIFE OF A MAN? 
 
 IN DEEDS NOT IN YEARS. 
 
 IN HEART THROBS NOT IN CLOCK TICKS. 
 
 BY THE MEMORY HE LEAVES. AFTER PASS- 
 ING ON. OF NOBLE ACHIEVEMENT FOR THE 
 BENEFIT OF HIS FELLOWMEN. 
 
 BY SUCH PROCESS WE FIND THE LIFE OF 
 
 WILBUR F. SADLER, Jr. 
 
 TO HAVE BEEN THAT OF THE FULLEST MEAS- 
 URE OF A MAN. 
 
 HIS UNSELFISH PUBLIC-SPIRITED ACCOM- 
 PLISHMENTS ARE HIS BEST MONUMENT, MORE 
 LASTING AND MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN GENIUS 
 COULD FASHION FROM PUREST MARBLE." 
 
<D^m0rial anft ft^anluttnttfi 
 
community strides to its 
 destiny, \Yith movement 
 slow or fast, according as 
 it is led by its big men. 
 These latter blaze the way 
 — clear obstacles from the 
 path — press into dim un- 
 charted regions with venture- 
 some spirit and unshaken faith 
 in order that to the community 
 which they serve may be 
 show^n a clearly illumined road 
 over w^hich to pass to progress 
 and to success. The quicken- 
 ing of Trenton's civic spirit 
 within the last decade, and the 
 conservation of her priceless histori- 
 cal heritages, are due in a very appre- 
 ciable degree to the efforts of such a 
 man, — a man of ideals and of pro- 
 phetic vision, a man to vs^hom it w^as 
 given to construct w^ith the upbuilding 
 hand of the statesman, a man of heart 
 and brain devoted to the community 
 
weal, — General Wilbur Fisk Sadler, 
 Junior. 
 
 I do but speak the truth when I say 
 that the citizens of Trenton could not 
 have lost a more unselfish advocate 
 and benefactor than he. To attest in 
 my feeble w^ay to that w^hich he has 
 achieved for the city of his adoption, 
 and to cite his w^orks that will endure 
 through the years as evidences of his 
 beneficent heart and of his exalted 
 public spirit, is the object of this mem- 
 orial tribute. I feel impelled by a 
 sense of public duty to emphasize 
 w^hat have been his accomplishments 
 in bettering the lot of his fellow^-tow^ns- 
 men, and I w^ould be much the ingrate 
 vs^ere I not to add here my appreciation 
 of his personal friendship, of his help- 
 fulness and loyalty to me during the 
 six years of my mayoralty. 1 cheer- 
 fully give w^itness that it w^as he w^hose 
 advice and exhortation led me from 
 quiet mercantile pursuits into the tur- 
 moil of city politics to w^ork for the 
 establishment of the Commission 
 
Form of Government in this city; that 
 it was his encouragement and aid that 
 has sustained me in my efforts in be- 
 h a 1 f of Trenton's waterways and 
 w^aterfront development and many 
 other civic enterprises; and that it 
 was due to him more than to anyone 
 else among the city's private citizen- 
 ship that Trenton has attained a new 
 birth and life, and has left its old con- 
 servative moorings and prejudices to 
 become a real city w^ith modernity and 
 advanced ideals stamped upon it. 
 
 That to me seems to be the most ap- 
 propriate theme in discussing General 
 Sadler's activities, namely, the effect 
 of his thought upon the almost provin- 
 cial Trenton w^hich he encountered 
 w^hen he came here in 1 898. 
 
 But let us first trace the beginnings of 
 this interesting personality. 
 
 Son of an eminent jurist, college-bred, 
 his family holding first rank in their 
 home tow^n of Carlisle, Pa., young 
 Sadler, after his education at Dickin- 
 son College, w^ent to w^ork in a 
 
machine shop for a year. That was 
 the characteristic Sadler we afterw^ard 
 knew^, plain — democratic — no frills — 
 dow^nright business. In 1 893, he built 
 33 miles of street railw^ays in Schuyl- 
 kill County, Pa., w^hich betoken 
 brains, skill and nerve in a chap just 
 turned tw^enty-tw^o. Thereafter, until 
 the year he came to Trenton, Sadler 
 proved an adept in railroad construc- 
 tion and laid dow^n a number of big 
 lines in Pennsylvania. 
 
 He came to Trenton with, as he said 
 oftimes, **$75 and a load of sand." 
 It must have been character sand, the 
 **sand" of a game man, and it lasted 
 him a lifetime. 
 
 Trenton w^as still in the one-horse 
 stage — cut off from car-line communi- 
 cation w^ith the contiguous farming 
 territory — when Sadler settled here to 
 construct suburban raiWays. Forth- 
 w^ith he changed the tow^n's business, 
 the tow^n's aspect and the tow^n's habits 
 of thought. With his construction of 
 the Trenton, Princeton and Law^rence- 
 
ville line, he connected the richest 
 farming section and the most populous 
 borough town of Mercer County with 
 the city of Trenton — a stroke of good 
 fortune for Trenton and its merchants. 
 
 He built the Yardley, Morrisville and 
 Trenton RaiWay w^hich tapped Bucks 
 County and poured her trade and her 
 commodities into the lap of Trenton. 
 
 He built the Philadelphia, Bristol and 
 Trenton Railw^ay w^hich gave access 
 to the section bordering on the low^er 
 Delaware, as w^ell as uniting Trenton 
 and Philadelphia by trolley. In short, 
 Mr. Sadler as an individual promoter 
 and constructer, led a netw^ork of trol- 
 ley lines into Trenton, converted the 
 conservative old city into a hub and 
 mart of the territory w^ithin a 20-mile 
 radius, forced Trenton out of its shell, 
 and quickened business here to an ex- 
 tent chargeable to no other man, alive 
 or dead. Creating Bigger Trenton: 
 that was the feat of Wilbur F. Sadler, 
 Junior, and if he had accomplished 
 nothing else for this community, it 
 
 10 
 
would entitle him to the undying grat- 
 itude of every citizen. 
 
 But he ^vas soon to attain fresh laurels. 
 In I 906 he was elected a director of 
 the Broad Street National Bank, to 
 which institution he brought a breadth 
 of view^ and a capacity of initiative 
 and enterprise that v^as destined to 
 flow^er in countless w^ays, and w^hich 
 eventually placed the Broad Street 
 National Bank in the forefront of the 
 banking institutions of the state. 
 Elected to its presidency, he suggested 
 and supervised the construction of the 
 handsome addition to the bank wrhich 
 is distinctively an esthetic asset of the 
 city. 
 
 In I 908 Mr. Sadler vv^as appointed a 
 member of Governor Fort's staff, and 
 in 1 909 he w^as made Adjutant Gen- 
 eral of the State of New^ Jersey. In 
 characteristic fashion he mastered the 
 problems that beset the National 
 Guard, and w^as responsible for the 
 reorganization of the state's citizen 
 soldiery, placing it in the van of mili- 
 
 11 
 
tary usefulness and efficiency. And it 
 was his herculean labors in behalf of 
 the mobilization of the New Jersey 
 troops for Mexican service that gave 
 him his death blow. He fell — a mar- 
 tyr to duty — in service as glorious as if 
 his end had come upon the battle- 
 field. 
 
 General Sadler saw Trenton's needs 
 and its possibilities with a clearer eye 
 than most of his contemporaries. He 
 lent his force and influence to the 
 movement to establish Commission 
 Government here, because he felt that 
 under the Commission plan Trenton 
 could better realize the promise of an 
 effulgent civic destiny, in w^hich busi- 
 ness and labor w^ould derive in just 
 proportions their share of the common 
 prosperity and advancement. He, 
 more than any one else in this city, 
 contributed to the rehabilitation of the 
 Chamber of Commerce, for he visual- 
 ized that organization as an arm, not 
 only of business, but also of a civic 
 spirit keen for community w^ell-being, 
 and for municipal betterments in all 
 phases. 
 
 12 
 
We come now to that achievement of 
 his which stands forth as a monu- 
 mental piece of civic patriotism: his 
 successful endeavors to reclcdm the 
 w^aste lands in the rear of the State 
 Capitol, resulting in the creation of 
 Mahlon Stacy Park. I need not cite 
 here the long w^eary hours he gave to 
 bring his plan into being, nor the days 
 of checks and discouragements w^hich 
 the light of success finally broke upon. 
 
 He gave to Trenton in that beautiful 
 park a pledge and a token of his affec- 
 tion for the city of his adoption. In 
 bringing Mahlon Stacy Park to actual- 
 ity, he made this generation of Tren- 
 tonians and the generations to come 
 his debtors in gratitude. TTie restora- 
 tions of the Masonic Temple and the 
 Old Barracks, concomitant projects 
 with the Stacy Park scheme, were his 
 brain-children, conceived in the high- 
 est patriotism and born in the glow^ of 
 his constructive genius. In the Ma- 
 sonic Temple, the Old Barracks cind 
 the Douglass House projects. General 
 
 13 
 
Sadler has performed invaluable labor 
 in preserving the priceless relics of 
 Trenton's historic past, and posterity, 
 more than the living, vv^ill appreciate 
 how^ great the service, howr farsighted, 
 hovsr admirable the man! 
 
 And I devoutly pray that the day be 
 not far distant w^hen the city of Tren- 
 ton w^ill express in substantial form 
 the debt vv^hich it ovv^es its distinguish- 
 ed departed son. General Wilbur Fisk 
 Sadler, Junior. 
 
 14 
 
Introduced by Mayor Frederick W. Donnelly 
 and adopted by 
 The Board of Commissioners of Trenton, N. J. 
 
 WHEREAS, in the death of General Wilbur F. 
 Sadler, Jr., there has been removed from Trenton's 
 most valued citizenship a personage whose achieve- 
 ments in behalf of his fellowmen in this state and 
 this city have proclaimed him a most able leader in 
 laudable public movements, and the possessor of 
 statesmanlike judgment and vision in the disposi- 
 tion of the diversified problems of his official life; 
 and 
 
 WHEREAS, the Board of Commissioners of the 
 city of Trenton have long marked and applauded in 
 particular those activities of General Sadler which 
 have directly benefited the city of Trenton and its 
 inhabitants in bringing to successful fruition his 
 project to give to them a river front redeemed to 
 purposes of utility, recreation and enjoyment, by 
 which project an unsightly waste tract was con- 
 verted into the now beautiful Mahlon Stacy Park; 
 and 
 
 WHEREAS, the Board of Commissioners of the 
 city of Trenton recognize that through the patient, 
 untiring efforts of General Sadler much of Trenton's 
 historical prestige, that had dwindled and suffered 
 diminution, was revived and revitalized by General 
 Sadler's work of restoring and rededicating the 
 hallowed shrines of Trenton's historic fame; and 
 
 WHEREAS, the Board of Commissioners of the 
 city of Trenton fully recognize the loss that Tren- 
 ton, in its commercial and its civic spheres, has suf- 
 
 16 
 
fered by the death of General Sadler, and do there- 
 fore desire to give perpetuity in proper form to 
 the Board's assessment of his value as a citizen, and 
 of his unselfish labors in the interests of the city of 
 Trenton; therefore be it 
 
 RESOLVED, That these resolutions be spread 
 upon the minutes of the Board of Commissioners, 
 and that a copy be sent to the family of the 
 deceased. 
 
 FRED'K W. DONNELLY, 
 
 EDWARD W. LEE, 
 
 WM. F. BURK, 
 
 J. R. FELL, 
 
 G. B. LaBARRE. 
 
 Adopted by the following vote: Messrs. Burk, Donnelly, 
 President, Fell LaBarre, Lee — 5. 
 
 Adopted December 1st, 1916. 
 
 LEON D. HIRSCH. 
 
 City Clerk. 
 
 16 
 
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