John H FinleyFrom 1900 to 1903, John Huston Finley was Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and from 1903 to 1913, he was President of the City College of New York before being appointed President of the State University of New York and Commissioner of ducation. In 1940, a promenade along the western bank of the East River between 63rd and 125th Street in Manhattan was called the John Finley Walk after the man who frequently toured the perimeter of the city. He was born in October at Grand Ridge, Illinois, as the oldest son of James Gibson Finley and Lydia Margaret McCombs. His father and mother were among the first to arrive on the prairies from the east. His father was the great-grandson of Reverend James Finley, the first minister to permanently settle beyond the Allegheny Mountains in Western Pennsylvania, and the brother of Dr. Samuel Finley, President of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in the mid-eighteenth century. Mr. Finley's brother, Robert, who died in his early thirties, was an associate editor at the Review of Reviews, and his sister, Bertha, died while serving as a missionary in Korea. Read More Read Less