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Denning Duer, for many years the head of the banking firm of James G. King’s Sons, of this city, and the oldest member of the New-York Stock Exchange, died yesterday at his home of Hauxhurst, near Weehawken, N.J., aged seventy-nine years. The Duer family has been identified with the history of the country and of New-York City from the early colonial days. William Duer, the grandfather of Denning Duer, married Katharine, the daughter of General William Alexander, of the Continental Army, commonly known as Lord Stirling. His son was Judge William A. Duer, of Albany. N. Y., who was afterward president of Columbia College from 1829 to 1841. Judge Duer married Maria Denning; and their son, Denning Duer, was born in Rhinebeck. N. Y., in December, 1812. Denning Duer came to this city in his seventeenth year, and became a clerk in the counting-house of W. F. Cary & Co. In 1837 he married Caroline, daughter of James G. King, and became a partner in the banking house of Prime, Ward & King, one of the oldest firms in Wall Street. The style of the firm was changed to James G. King & Sons, and then to James G. King’s Sons, its present name. Of the latter firm Mr. Duer was senior member until failing health compelled him to retire from business activity in 1875. He entered the Stock Exchange on April 28, 1843, and was a member up to the time of his death.
After his retirement from business, Mr. Duer spent most of his time at his home at Hauxhurst, which he built In 1848. The house stands surrounded by forest trees on the ridge between the highway and the Hudson, about a mile below the piers of the West Shore Railroad. Mrs. Duer died in 1863.
Three sisters of Mr. Duer survive him, who are Mrs. Henry S. Hoyt, Mrs. George T. Wilson and Mrs. A. Gracie King. Mr. King, who is the present head of the firm, has made his home near that of his brother-in-law, on a high bluff overlooking the Hudson. There are six children. Two daughters, who are unmarried, have lived with their father at Hauxhurst. Of his four sons, Edward A. Duer lives with the family; James G. K. Duer, of this city, is a partner in the firm of James G. King’s Sons; William A. Duer, who married a daughter of William R. Travers, is a lawyer of this city, and Denning Duer, Jr., lives in New Haven, Conn.
Mr. Duer’s life was devoted chiefly to business interests. He never entered public life. He was a strong Republican, and one of the earliest members of the Union Club, joining in 1838, two years after its foundation, and being at the time of his death the oldest living member except his brother-in-law, Henry S. Hoyt. For the last twenty years of his life he suffered from ill health, and for a year has been gradually failing, so that his death was not unexpected.
The funeral will take place on Friday, at Jamaica. L.I., which has been for many years the home of members of both the Duer and King families. A special train will leave the station at Long Island City about 11 a.m., and the services will be held in Grace Chapel, in Jamaica, upon the arrival of the train.⁴

As a young man he wished to obtain an official post in Uganda where his friend Major Thruston held a senior military appointment. Major Thruston was killed by the mutineers in the revolt of the Sudanese troops in Uganda in 1898, and it was perhaps fortunate for Duff that the Foreign Office offered him in 1897 the post of an Assistant Resident in the British Central Africa Protectorate, as he might otherwise have shared his friend’s fate. He accepted the offer and proceeded direct from India, where he was travelling at the time, to the Protectorate.
With the appointment of Mr. (later Sir Alfred) Sharpe in 1897 as the new Commissioner the country may be said to have embarked upon the normal course of a settled British dependency with a future before it of steady, if not sensational progress. In this new era of development Duff and his colleagues in the provincial administration were called upon to play an important part. To them was entrusted the duty of maintaining peace among the natives by peaceful methods, of assisting them in the agricultural development of their lands, and so forth.
In 1903 Duff resigned but was re-appointed in the early part of the following year. In 1906 he was promoted to be Resident and in 1911 he was further promoted to a First Grade Residentship. From this time onwards he frequently acted as Deputy Governor. The control of the Protectorate had been transferred from the Foreign Office to the Colonial Office in 1904 and the post of Consul-General had been abolished. By an Order in Council which came into force in October, 1907, the Commissioner became a Governor and Commander-in-Chief and Executive and Legislative Councils were established. Also the old name of the “Nyasaland Protectorate” was revived.³