USA > Connecticut > Illustrated popular biography of Connecticut > Part 44
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from 1873 to 1877; and was democratic can- didate for state treasurer in the autumn of 1890, re- ceiving an apparent majority of all the votes cast, but failing to receive official recognition from the house of representatives at its session the following January, owing to a disagreement between the two branches of the legislature as to the accuracy or validity of the returns,-as was the case with all the candidates on the democratic state ticket, with the exception of the comptroller.
Mr. Sanger is a member of the Congregational ecclesiastical society of Canterbury, and of the Masonic fraternity, his local connection being with Mount Moriah lodge of Danielsonville. He is one of the most prominent members of his party in Windham county, and among the foremost citizens of his town.
THEODORE H. SUCHER, NEW HAVEN : Mer- chant.
Captain Theodore H. Sucher was born in New Haven February 26, 1859, and was educated in the public schools. He has pursued the avocation of a brass worker but is now a dealer in hats and gentlemen's furnishing goods. He is the presi- dent of the International Brotherhood of Brass- workers, noble chief of the Knights of the Golden Eagle, and a member of the Knights of Labor. Captain Sucher is the senior line officer in the Second Regiment, Con- T. H. SUCHER. necticut National Guard. His commission as the commanding officer of Company E, of the Second, dates from December 15, 1884. He has been in the National Guard service fourteen years. Captain Sucher has risen from the ranks. He enlisted as a private in Company E, May 7, 1877, and was made corporal May 1, 1879. He was discharged May 6, 1882, and re-enlisted the next day, retaining his rank as corporal. He was commissioned second lieutenant March 5, 1883, and first lieutenant March 4, 1884, retaining that position until December, when he received his captain's commission. His company ranks among the first in the National Guard of the state. Captain Sucher is a member of the Lutheran church in New Haven and is a re- publican in politics. He has been a member of the court of common council in his native city and is a popular leader. He has a wife and two children. The former was Miss Hertha Hax before her marriage.
DR. ALFRED R. GOODRICH, VERNON: Pres- ident Mutual Benefit Life Company of Hartford.
Dr. Goodrich is a direct descendant of Ensign William Goodrich, who, with his brother, John Goodrich, settled in Wethersfield about the year I636. His grandfather, George Goodrich, served in the revolutionary war, and after its close re- moved to the town of Gill, Mass., where he died at the advanced age of 92 years. A large family of children sur- vived him, but his wife, Lucinda Wells, died in 1814. Alfred Goodrich, the father of Alfred R. Goodrich, was born in A. R. GOODRICH. Gill in 1787, and occupied the old homestead, where he also reared a large family of children. He died in 1866, at the age of seventy-nine. His wife was Abigail Howland, daughter of Solomon Howland, of Greenfield, Mass. She died in 1821, leaving three sons, of whom the subject of the present sketch was the youngest. He was born at Gill in 1818, and was educated at the Deerfield Academy. Subsequently he became an associate teacher and principal in the institution. In 1843 he commenced the study of medicine under the instruction of the late Alden Skinner, M.D., and graduated in 1846 with distinc- tion from the Berkshire Medical College. He prac- ticed for some time in New York city, and remained there during the terrible epidemic of ship fever. Dr. Goodrich was himself prostrated by the disor- der, but finally recovered from the attack. After his restoration to health he went to Vernon, and has since been engaged in his profession there, en- tering also into mercantile and manufacturing interests. In 1870 Dr. Goodrich was elected as the first democratic representative from his town, re- ceiving, as he has invariably done when a candidate for public office, a very flattering vote from his political opponents. In 1871 he was the democratic nominee for congress in the First District, and came very near securing his election. Dr. Good- rich was elected state comptroller in 1873, and was re-elected for the three succeeding terms, discharg- ing the duties of the office with fidelity and honor. He was successful in largely reducing the expenses of the state. Since 1874 he has been president of the Mutual Benefit Life Company of Hartford, which was chartered by the legislature in 1869. Previous to 1874 he was vice-president of the com- pany. In 1879 he was elected president of the Connecticut State Medical Society, but declined a re-election. He is also a member of the State
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board of agriculture, a director in the Rockville Savings Bank, a member of the Tolland County and State Medical societies, chairman of the town board of education, a justice of the peace, and on the building committee which has charge of the proposed new high school building in Rockville, in the town of Vernon. Dr. Goodrich was treas- urer of the state of Connecticut in 1883-84, having been elected to that office by the democratic party on the state ticket headed by Governor Waller. He has been almost constantly in office in the town of Vernon, rendering important service wherever placed. He was on the building committee which erected the fine memorial hall in Rockville, and served in a similar capacity on the committee which had in charge the recent expensive enlargement of the town almshouse.
Dr. Goodrich married Charlotte Dobson, daugh- ter of the late Hon. Peter Dobson, the founder of cotton manufacturing interests in Vernon. He has one son, George Dobson Goodrich, who is trcas- urer of the life company in Hartford of which his father is president.
WILLIAM WALLACE LEE, MERIDEN: Machin- ist.
William Wallace Lee was born in Barkhamsted, July 20, IS2S, and received a common school educa- tion. He learned the machinist trade with Taylor & Whiting of Winsted, and has worked at his trade in the city of Meri- den, where he has resided since 1862. Prior to that period he worked in Guil- ford, Colt's Manufactory in Hartford, Ansonia, Bridgeport, Westville, and Birmingham. He repre- sented Meriden in the general assembly in 1885 and 1886, and was as- signed to important com- mittees each year. Mr. W. W. LEE. Lee has served four years on the board of alder- men of Meriden, and is prominently identified with political interests in that city. He was a delegate to the first republican convention held in Connecticut in 1856, and was a free soiler in IS4S. He voted for President Lincoln in 1860, and in IS72 cast a vote for Horace Greeley, considering these votes as the proudest acts in his political life. Mr. Lee has never knowingly missed an opportunity for recording his vote in favor of equal rights, tem- perance, and good morals. It has been his aim to give, so far as his vote can effect that result, an equal chance for every man to make the most of himself. He is one of the most widely known
secret society representatives in the state. He has been a member of the Sons of Temperance since he was eighteen years of age, and has held all the offices of importance in the order in this state, and was for thirty-five years connected with the national organization. He was grand master of the Con- necticut Grand Lodge of Odd Fellows in 1877 and 1878. His masonic career was begun in 1852. In 1875 he was knighted in St. Elmo Commandery of Meriden, and was grand master of the grand lodge in 1874 and 1875. Prior to that he had held the office of grand high priest in the grand chapter of this state, occupying the position in 1872 and 1573. For the past twelve years he has been the president of the Masonic Veteran Association of the state of Connecticut. He is a member of the order of Red Men. In the various orders with which he is connected he possesses the fullest confidence of his associates, and is a man of decided personal popu- larity. Four brothers of the subject of this sketch served in the army during the war, two of them dying on the field. The grand army post at New Hartford is named in honor of one of Mr. Lee's brothers, and the principal address on the occasion of its flag presentation was delivered by the ex- representative. Mr. Lee also delivered an interest- ing address at the Barkhamsted Centennial a few years ago. The only surviving brother, Major B. D. Lee of the Second Heavy Artillery, is a member of the bar at St. Louis, Mo. Mr. Lee is the secre- tary and treasurer of the Lee Association, which was organized in this city in 1884 by the descend- ants of Jolin Lee, who came to Hartford in 1635. from England, and in 1641 removed to Farmington, becoming one of the original proprietors of the town. The gentleman whose life is the subject of this sketch is a grandson of David Lee of Farming- ton and of Joseph Somers of Milford, and a great- grandson of Andrew Hays of Simsbury and of Elihu Crane of Killingworth, all four of whom were private soldiers in the army of the revolution. In view of this fact it is but natural that he should feel a genuine interest in the Sons of the American Revolution. He is a charter member of the Con- necticut society and was a delegate to the national body, which met in Hartford April 30. Although holding so many positions. he has never sought office or even asked anybody to support or vote for him. The two brothers of Representative Lee who were killed in action during the war for the Union were Captain Edwin R. Lee of the Eleventh Con- necticut, and Lieutenant Henry B. Lee of the Seventh. Representative Lee enlisted himself in the service, but was rejected on account of physical disability. He was formerly a lieutenant in the state militia. The wife of Mr. Lee was Miss Mary Jane Carrington of New Haven. She is still living. There is one daughter in the family.
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LOVELL HALL, A.M., LL.B., MIDDLETOWN : Attorney-at-Law.
Lovell Hall is a practicing lawyer at Middle- town. He was born May 12, 1844, at East Hampton (town of Chatham), Conn., which is within the ancient limits of Mid- dletown; and in these two places the family have lived for nine generations. His first American ances- tor, John Hall, helped settle Cambridge, Mass., in 1633; Hartford in 1635, and Middletown in 1650. His great-grandson, Giles Hall, Esq., married a sis- ter of Supreme Court Judge Jabez Hamlin, and LOVELL HALL. their son, John Hamlin Hall. settled in the east part of his native Middletown, now East Hamp- ton. Other branches of the family removed to Ver- mont, from whom sprung Hiland Hall, congress- man, governor, and supreme court judge of Vermont, and U. S. commissioner to settle land titles in the (then) territory of California; and to New York state, whence General Amos Hall of that state. The whole family have always lived on the land, and been interested and informed on public questions, and often public men, when the surrounding popu- lation happened to hold views according with their own; which are public-spirited and thoroughly in- dependent, based on experience, reflection, and reading, and not on appetite and clamor, and al- ways heading the same way, no matter how the tide runs. It would be hard, perhaps, to find a family more uniform in many states and through nine generations, - books on the shelves and some- thing on the table from the family orchard and gar- den. Mr. Hall's grandfather was a Baptist, that is, for religious toleration, - his father an abolition- ist, Hiland Hall a free-soiler, long before the world wheeled into line, and would have continued had it not wheeled into line at all; and, had fruits not im- proved, it is probable that apples would be growing on the family property to-day, the descendants of cions brought by John Hall from England in 1633.
Mr. Hall's mother is from a Massachusetts family equally old; latterly, to a considerable extent,clergy- men; they were, earlier, sea captains on Cape Cod, descended from Robert Lovell, who settled in Weymouth, Mass., in 1635; and this bent, to some extent, re-appears in L. N. Lovell, New York manager of the " Fall River Line " (steamers).
Lovell Hall was fitted for college in the Fall River high school, ranking first in his class, having spent his youth in East Hampton in the district school and at his father's farm and factory, where,
and later, his hands have become familiar with ev- ery farm operation, and many of those of manufac- turing, from using a pair of pliers to an engine or 52-inch Hoe saw. He has carried his dinner-pail to the brass shop and lumber woods, as well as eaten New England society dinners at Delmonico's. In 1862 he stood first for one term in the class of 1866 at Wesleyan University, Middletown, and then en- tered the same class at Yale, with which he gradu- ated. Here, as later in New York city, he culti- vated his tastes in every direction, and is at least passable company for a great many different kinds of men. He was organist at the First Baptist church, New Haven, president of Linonia, a high oration man in scholarship, Townsend literary prize man, and divided the Yale literary prize medal; and contributed to the intellectual life of his class with such men as Geo. C. Holt of Pomfret, Prof. Hincks of Andover, Chas. H. Adams of the Hart- ford Courant, Judge John M. Hall, and others of his class. He also wrote the class song, and was active in founding the Yale Courant. After grad- uation he was tendered and declined a nomination to the assistant-professorship of ethics at the An- napolis naval school. His love and tastes drawing him rather to the old homestead and an open, coun- try life, in 1866 he was acting postmaster and town clerk at East Hampton; in 1867 taught the princi- pal's studies in a ladies' school at Canandaigua, N. Y .; in 1868 entered Columbia College law school, New York city, graduating in 1870, meanwhile be- ing admitted to the bar there on examination in 1869, and singing in St. Bartholomew's church. The years from 1870 to 1875 he spent at East Hampton, developing the family real estate under the new conditions of the Boston & New York Air Line Railroad, now the Air Line Division of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, losing heavily and financially crippled by delays in its building, etc., but being the main instrument in locating its station to the convenience of the public and the family property, and confirming his health by air, labor, and horseback riding. Since 1875 he has been engaged in law practice at Middletown, keeping up oversight of the family farms at East Hampton - sometimes spending ev- ery night there. Here he is quietly developing a country home, such as old-time Connecticut profes- sional and public men enjoyed. Choice poultry. registered Jersey stock that well know their mas- ter's hand, smooth gardens and fruit trees for which he has cut the cions with his own hands from the tallest trees, and long distances away; wild berries with their flavor, forest flowers, nuts, brooks, and forest trees trimmed and culled to avoid crowding and monotony, are here. And the old brick oven, crane, and five-foot fireplace, are safe at least in his day. Here, one-half mile from the station on a main
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New York and Boston traffic artery, behind ancestral shade trees, with scores of neighbors in a stone's throw, a hundred men might stand a siege of a hun- dred years against famine, pestilence, and a thou- sand human follies, and want not shelter, food, fuel, clothing, nor the outward ministrations to thought, nor the inner ones to beauty, while the waves of the world, its follies. fashions, prejudices, contro- versies, broke outside and sent within hardly a rip- ple. A visit is like what the Catholic clergy call a "retreat," and gives what Emerson sought when he wrote :
"Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home."
And frequenting it for years, and may be genera- tions, breeds those staying powers by which Mr. Hall has been able to work forty-two hours on a stretch, or walk twenty-five miles in a day.
Mr. Hall won his first case for the most unpopu- lar man in Middlesex county against its two fore- most lawyers, and has always taken a just case, no matter what the standing of either party.
In 1879 he was appointed prosecuting agent of Middlesex county, and so continued most of the time, and latterly sole officer until July, 1887, when he was succeeded by a more active party man. He carried out of office the hearty written endorsement of nearly every prominent and conservative man interested in that matter in every town of his county, save one, where there had been no call for his functions. At the close of his course he gained seventeen successive cases, - and lawyers know if that be easy, - and many sections of the statutes are in the very language prepared by him.
In 1883 Mr. Hall was appointed county coroner under the new law, and held that office two terms till 1889, the state's attorney meanwhile going out of office, and judge dying who had caused his nom- ination and confirmation. In this office, under a new law which first gave that power and duty to a single man, he held Arthur Jackson for the suspected murder of Seymour A. Tibbals. In this case, Mr. Hall was petitioned against, caricatured, and the jailer finally served with a writ of habeas corpus to be heard by Chief Judge Park. The labor of defend- ing this Mr. Hall escaped by working forty-two hours on a stretch, finishing his investigation, finding prob- able cause against Jackson (and others), and thus devolving the responsibility on other officers who re- leased Jackson before the hour of hearing the habeas corpus. But Jackson, later, cut his wife's throat, and it was generally conceded that he killed Tibbals.
Finding, at the end of his term, that others, more active politicians, were seeking the place, Mr. Hall made no contest for a further appointment, belicv- ing that the record of his painstaking cases and the fact that the medical examiners whom he had se- lected and for six years trained into the new law,
were to a man re-appointed, was a sufficient en- dorsement, partisanship aside, of his career. He was succeeded as coroner by Stephen B. Davis, of Davis Bros., coal dealers, Middletown.
As a public officer, Mr. Hall considered each man as an individual to whom -justice, restraint, or mercy, was due, and not the class, clique, or society to which he belonged. If he thought it his duty to strike, he struck, no matter how large a hornet's nest might be behind the offender. Though know- ing well that the "popular " officer appears busy and dutiful by whacking the poor and isolated only, when a sense of duty had made him take hold, a sense of fear never made him let go.
His scholarship made him a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and he is a warm-hearted Psi Upsilon, but never carried his feelings towards those inside to the extent of injury to those outside. He was raised in the Baptist church, but attends in Middletown the old mother church (Congregational) founded by his ancestors. He has friends in all classes and churches, giving full appreciation, though by no means adhesion, to the Catholic church, the old mother of. all, and values the table which she spreads for her sons, though himself choosing more modern housekeeping. Mr. Hall never looks down upon any class of men, though keeping out of the way of the filthy, drunken, and profane; and admires any man who has mastered his calling (if useful), no matter what it is. He has never aimed solely to attain " success," or to follow the various openings which might lead to it; but first to live the solid life of his fathers (having no brother with whom to divide it), and to do whatever else duty and opportunity may present beside.
JAMES M. THOMSON, HARTFORD: Dry Goods.
James M. Thomson was born in Perthshire, Scot- land, November 28, 1838, and spent several years in the common schools. At the age of fifteen he left school, going to Glas- gow in 1853, to learn the dry-goods business. He served an apprenticeship of four years with Arthur & Frazier, remaining with them until 1860. In Au- gust of that year he landed in Boston, having accept- ed a situation from Hogg. Brown & Taylor. He continued with them until 1866, when, in company with Frank S. Brown and Wm. McWhirter, the dry- J. M. THOMSON. goods firm of Brown, Thomson & Co. was organized in Hartford, and has continued unchanged in name ever since, although its personality has been
e
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changed by the retiracy of, Mr. McWhirter in 1878 and of Mr. Frank S. Brown in 1891. On the first of January, 1891, a new partnership was formed by Mr. Thomson admitting to the company George A. Gay, Wm. Campbell, Harry B. Strong, and George M. Brown, still under the same firm name of Brown, Thomson & Co. This firm is known all over the state for its straightforward business prin- ciples. It is a well-known fact that they have the largest store and carry the largest stock of dry and fancy goods in the state. Mr. Thomson is still in the prime of life, is active in business, and has every reason to anticipate a long and prosperous future. For the last seventeen years he has made West Hartford his home, having one of the most attrac- tive suburban residences in the neighborhood of Hartford. Politically he is a republican, and in church matters a Congregationalist. He married Miss Cornelia Catharine Hotchkiss, and their family includes three children.
WILLIAM L. BIDWELL, WINDSOR: Paper Man- ufacturer.
The subject of this biography was born in the village of North Manchester, in June, 1838, being now in the fifty-third year of his age. He received a common school, acade- mical, and business train- ing in his youth, and has since maturity been actively engaged in the manufacture of paper. Since 1864 he has held the important position of treasurer and manager of the Springfield Paper Company of Rainbow, Conn. For the last thirty- four or five years he has resided in Windsor, and W. L. BIDWELL. in politics has always acted with the republican party. His personal popularity was attested in the fall of 1876, when he was elected to the state legislature on the republican ticket, the town being at that time nominally demo- cratic by a hundred majority. Mr. Bidwell has, during his residence in Windsor, been interested in all matters relating to the public schools and church. He has three times made extensive trips through the south and west for rest and recreation, the first being in the winter and spring of 1876, at which time he visited the Bahama Islands; next in the winter and spring of 1888 he traveled south to Florida, and west to California and the Pacific coast ; and again during the recent winter and spring of 1891 he made quite a protracted and agreeable sojourn in the extreme southern states.
CHARLES B. WHITING, HARTFORD: President Orient Insurance Company.
Charles B. Whiting, a son of Jonas Whiting of New Hampshire, was born in Greenbush, Rens- selaer County, New York, Sept. 3, 1828. He is a descendant from Rev. Samuel Whiting, first minister of Lynn, Mass., who came to America from England in 1636. The wife of Rev. Samuel Whiting was Miss Eliza- beth St. John prior to her marriage, a sister of Sir Oliver St. John, lord chief justice of England under Cromwell. She was an own cousin of Oliver Cromwell. The father of the subject of this sketch C. B. WHITING. was a merchant, and the youthful career of the lad was partly in the store and partly at school, his educational experience being first at the public schools, and finally at a boarding school in Wil- liamstown, Mass. At the age of twenty-one he left home and entered the employ of the Boston & Albany Railroad Company at East Albany, remain- ing three years, after which he had two years' ex- perience in steamboating with the " People's Line " of Hudson River steamers. In 1855 he went west and settled in the town of DeSoto, Wisconsin, on the Mississippi River, where for nine years he was variously engaged as railroad and steamboat agent, postmaster, and local agent for the Ætna Insurance Company of Hartford, Conn. In 1866 he went to New York and formed a connection with the Acci- dental Insurance Company of that city. In Octo- ber of the same year he was engaged by the exec- utive committee of the national board of fire un- derwriters, and became its secretary, remaining such until May, 1870. At that time the Home In- surance Company offered Mr. Whiting the position of state agent of that company for New York, and he thought best to accept it. He served the com- pany faithfully for ten years, when he was forced to resign on account of the condition of his health. A few months of rest followed, when he again went into active service, for the Springfield (Mass.) Fire and Marine Insurance Company; but in October following, having been unanimously elected secre- tary of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company, he removed his residence to this city. He remained with the Hartford until called to the presidency of the Orient in May, 1886, in the duties of which lat- ter position he is at present engaged. His success- ful management of the Orient, in connection with his associates, is well known.
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