in its day. Thomas Van Loan was for thirty
years a partner in the firm of W.J. Stitt & Co. (William J. Stitt was in
business at 173 Washington Street in the fifties). Joseph Maguire was a
practical spice grinder. Hugh Gaffney was with Brown & Scott until the
firm retired in 1879, and for ten years thereafter he traveled for B.
Fischer & Co. Then he became a member of the firm of Benedict &
Gaffney. Ill health caused his temporary retirement; but he returned to
the business in 1897 when he organized the firm of Van Loan, Maguire &
Gaffney. Joseph Maguire died in 1904.

[Illustration: THOMAS VAN LOAN, NEW YORK]

Mr. Gaffney died on March 20, 1912, and the name of the business was
changed to Van Loan & Co., with Thomas Van Loan as the head of the
business, under which name and management it still continues at 64 North
Moore Street.

O'Donohue is a well known name in the development of both the green and
roasted coffee trade of New York City. John O'Donohue was a leader in
the green coffee business in 1830. It was John O'Donohue's Sons in 1873.
John B. O'Donohue, son of Peter O'Donohue and grandson of the original
John, after leaving John O'Donohue's Sons, formed a partnership with
Robert C. Stewart (the present head of R.C. Stewart & Co.) to engage in
the green coffee jobbing business as O'Donohue & Stewart. This
partnership was dissolved in 1893. For a few years, John O'Donohue was
associated with the coffee-roasting firm of Wing Bros. & Hart. About
1898, he formed the O'Donohue Coffee Co. at 284 Front Street. In 1910,
this was consolidated with the Potter Coffee Co. and Bennett, Sloan &
Co. to form the Potter, Sloan, O'Donohue Co. The firm dissolved in 1915.
Ellis M. Potter came to New York from the Potter-Parlin Spice Mills in
Cincinnati. Mr. O'Donohue died in 1918.

In the seventies Frederick Akers was proprietor of the oldest and best
known trade roasting establishment in New York. The plant was known as
the Atlas Mills, and was at 17 Jay Street. Mr. Akers died in 1901. The
same year, William J. Morrison and Walter B. Boinest, former employees
of Akers, formed a partnership to carry on the same kind of business at
413 Greenwich Street. It is still at that address under the name of
Morrison & Boinest Co.

Col. William P. Roome, a Chesterfieldian figure among New York coffee
roasters, came into the trade in 1876, when he established the firm of
William P. Roome & Co., with T.L. Vickers as partner. In the Civil War