William M. Tweed begins his thirteen-year term…

1858 CE

William M. Tweed begins his thirteen-year term as "Boss" of Tammany Hall in 1858.

Tweed was born April 3, 1823, at 1 Cherry Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The son of a third-generation Scottish chair-maker, Tweed grew up on Cherry Street.

His grandfather arrived in the United States from a town near the River Tweed close to Edinburgh.

Tweed's religious affiliation was not widely known in his lifetime, but at the time of his funeral the New York Times, quoting a family friend, reported that his parents had been Quakers and "members of the old Rose Street Meeting house".

At the age of eleven, he left school to learn his father's trade, and then became an apprentice to a saddler.

He also studied to be a bookkeeper and worked as a brushmaker for a company he had invested in, before eventually joining in the family business in 1852.

On September 29, 1844, he married Mary Jane C. Skaden and lived with her family on Madison Street for two years.

Tweed became a member of the Odd Fellows and the Masons, and joined a volunteer fire company, Engine No. 12.

In 1848, at the invitation of state assemblyman John J. Reilly, he and some friends organized the Americus Fire Company No. 6, also known as the "Big Six", as a volunteer fire company, which took as its symbol a snarling red Bengal tiger from a French lithograph, a symbol that will remain associated with Tweed and Tammany Hall for many years.

At the time, volunteer fire companies compete vigorously with each other; some are connected with street gangs and have strong ethnic ties to various immigrant communities.

The competition can be so fierce that buildings will sometimes burn down while the fire companies fought each other.

Tweed had become known for his ax-wielding violence, and was soon elected the Big Six foreman.

Pressure from Alfred Carlson, the chief engineer, had gotten him thrown out of the crew, but fire companies were also recruiting grounds for political parties at the time, and Tweed's exploits came to the attention of the Democratic politicians who ran the Seventh Ward, who put him up for Alderman in 1850, when Tweed was twenty-six.

He lost that election to the Whig candidate Morgan Morgans, but ran again the next year and won, garnering his first political position.

Tweed then became associated with the "Forty Thieves", the group of aldermen and assistant aldermen who, up to this point, are known as some of the most corrupt politicians in the city's history.

Tweed had been elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1852, but his two-year term was undistinguished.

In an attempt by Republican reformers in Albany, the state capital, to control the Democratic-dominated New York City government, the power of the New York County Board of Supervisors is beefed up.

The board has twelve members, six appointed by the mayor and six elected, and in 1858 Tweed is appointed to the board, which becomes his first vehicle for large-scale graft; Tweed and other supervisors force vendors to pay a 15% overcharge to their "ring" in order to do business with the city.

The board also has six Democrats and six Republicans, but Tweed often just buys off one Republican to sway the board.

One such Republican board member is Peter P. Voorhis, a coal dealer by profession who absents himself from a board meeting in exchange for twenty-five hundred dollars so that the board can appoint city inspectors

Henry Smith is another Republican who is a part of the Tweed ring.