USA > Connecticut > Representative citizens of Connecticut, biographical memorial > Part 44
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62
Mr. Stoughton was united in marriage, March 11, 1855, with Mary A. Hemingway, of Chicago, a daughter of Allen and Maryett (Lindsey) Hem- ingway. Five children were born to them, four of whom survive their father. They are: George N. and Andrew, both residents of Hartford; Edward C., of Thomaston, and Lizzie, wife of Rev. Fred H. Sawyer, of Woodbury, Connecticut. The fifth child, a daughter Nellie, died in infancy. Mrs. Stoughton survives her husband and is still a resident of Thomaston.
This sketch cannot be more appropriately ended than by the words of a dear friend, who wrote of Mr. Stoughton these appreciative remarks at the time of his death: "He has done his full share of the world's work, done it in the best possible way, and done it for about twice the length of time that most men are privileged to do it. He has by his sympathetic, unselfish inter- est in everything that goes to make the individual or the community happy, done more in proportion to his means than any man I have ever known. In him was no cant, no hypocrisy, no pretence, but always and forever, a hearty, sympathetic interest in all who were in trouble or distress, not an interest that exhausted itself in words, but a sympathy that found expres- sion in real substantial help."
Samuel C. Beckley
T HE CHARACTER OF a community is determined in a large measure by the lives of a comparatively few of its members. If its moral and intellectual status be good, if in a social way it is a pleasant place in which to reside, if its reputation for the integrity of its citizens has extended into other localities, it will be found that the standards set by its leading men have been high and their influence such as to mold the char- acters and shape the lives of those with whom they mingle. In placing the late Samuel C. Beckley, of Canaan, Litchfield county, Connecticut, in the front rank of such men, an act of justice is done, recognized throughout the locality long honored by his citizenship by those at all familiar with his history. Although a quiet and unassuming man, he contributed much to the civic and moral advancement of his community, while his admirable qualities of head and heart and the straightforward, upright course of his daily life won for him the esteem and confidence of the circles in which he moved, and gave him a reputation for integrity and correct conduct such as few achieve, so that, although he is now sleeping "the sleep of the just," his influence still lives, and his memory is still greatly revered.
John Adam Beckley, father of the Mr. Beckley of this sketch, and a de- scendant of Squire Forbes, founder of the iron industry in Canaan, followed in the footsteps of this ancestor, and successfully founded and operated an iron furnace on the lower road to East Canaan, this being later purchased by the Barnum, Richardson Company. Subsequently he was the owner of furnaces near Housatonic, at North Adams and at Chatham, New York, his death occurring in the last mentioned town. He married Sally D. Munson, and they had children : Myron, who died at the age of twenty years; James, who owned and operated iron furnaces in Dover, New York, and at various other places, and who died in 1888; and Samuel C., the particular subject of this review.
Samuel C. Beckley was born September 30, 1845, and died September 15, 1910, as a result of heart trouble, rather suddenly, although he had been somewhat ailing for a few weeks prior to his death, but no serious result of this ailment had been apprehended. His birth occurred on the old Beckley homestead, which stood at the time on the present site of Mrs. Corbit's residence, but which was later removed to the west of this location. He was still very young when he engaged in a mercantile career, but he dis- played business ability far in advance of his years. At North Adams, Mas- sachusetts, he conducted a store in connection with the furnaces operated by his father, and there Sheridan Barnes became associated with him in the conduct of this store, thus commencing a friendship which remained uninter- rupted until severed by death.
There was formerly a store on the east side of the Housatonic tracks, about where the drinking fountain now stands, and in 1866 Mr. Beckley pur- chased the interest in this held by Deacon Charles Kellogg, the name of
373
Samuel C. Beckley
the firm being changed to read Brown & Beckley, with Luther Brown as senior partner, he having formerly been the associate of Deacon Kellogg. Mr. Brown's health failed, and in August, 1866, he sold out his share in the business to Mr. Beckley, who was also for a number of years postmaster and telegraph operator. It became necessary to remove the old store in 1871, owing to the construction of the Connecticut Western Railway, and the building was sold to Patrick Lynch, moved to Railroad street, and there it is still standing in reasonably good condition. Mr. Beckley removed to the Town Hall building, where he transacted business for a number of years. Commercial business was not, however, sufficiently congenial occupation for a man of Mr. Beckley's intellectuality, and we find him, in 1883, proprietor and editor of "The Connecticut Western News," which he had purchased from Colonel Hardenbergh. As an editor he was of great service to the town, not alone because of the high standard of the editorials which he wrote, but for the fact that he collected numberless tales and anecdotes of the town and its environment, and by printing them in the columns of his valuable paper gave them permanent record which has been of the greatest possible assistance to the historians of recent years. In addition to editing and publishing this paper, Mr. Beckley conducted a general printing business with great success until he sold it, April 2, 1906, to the Canaan Printing Company, and at this time retired from active business responsibilities. By natural disposition a devout man, he was one of the leaders in the move- ment for preaching services at the hall, and this was the spur toward the organization of the Pilgrim Congregational Church. He was of an intensely patriotic nature, and all holidays would find him hanging out the old flag which blew from the town flag staff throughout the fateful days of the Civil War. It was greatly to his regret that he was unsuccessful in a movement he started some years prior to his death, for the erection of a soldiers' monu- ment. His fraternal affiliation was with the Order of Free and Accepted Masons.
Mr. Beckley married, December 29, 1869, Rhoda Eliza Gillette, a daughter of Charles Gillette, and a descendant through him from one of the oldest families in the town. She is a woman of much charm of manner, and, like her husband, has the gift of making and retaining friends. She is very domestic in her tastes, loving her home better than any other place, and there she evinces at all times the old fashioned spirit of true hospitality. Of the two children born of this union, the elder, a daughter, died in infancy, and the other is John Gillette Beckley, well known in the younger circles of society in Canaan. Mr. Beckley had been a charter member of Housatonic Lodge, and he was buried with Masonic rites, which were conducted by Grand Steward Leonard J. Nickerson.
Personally, Mr. Beckley was generous hearted and no needy person ever appealed to him in vain-indeed, many of his charitable acts were entirely unsolicited, though in this, as in everything else he did, he was entirely undemonstrative, caring little for the plaudits of the multitude, as long as he had the approval of his own conscience. He understood well the springs of human motive and action, so that he was kindly and tolerant in his judgment, and ever ready to lend a helping hand to any worthy move-
374
Samuel C. Beckley
ment. His long residence in Canaan, his upright life and mature judgment, and the many services he rendered made his name a synonym for character and worth. He was a man of sterling characteristics of head and heart, and among his fellows he was looked upon as a man among men, one whose memory will long be revered in his home city. It is fitting that this article should close with a tribute to his worth which appeared in "The Connecticut Western News" at the time of his death and which is here given, but not in its entirety :
"Why is it that we never fully realize how much we think of our friends until death comes to take them away from us?" Such was the remark of a lifelong citizen-a man not given to sentiment nor swayed by emotion-referring to the passing away of Sam- uel C. Beckley. And how truthful and apt the remark as applied to "Sam" Beckley! For three-score years he had been among us, the familiar friend of three generations of Canaanites, much of the time in close personal and business relationship with the whole community. The very intimacy of his uninterrupted association with the people perhaps gives a peculiar aptness to the tribute. In his daily coming and going, through all these years, he was to us as familiar a figure as any landmark in the town. Few of us can remember when we had no "Sam" Beckley with us, and the shock of the sudden knowl- edge that we have him no more, brings with it a realization of the full measure of our regard for him. Now that he is gone we realize "how much we thought of him." "Sam" Beckley was distinctly a Canaan son, with an inborn affection for his home town that asserted itself all through his life. He had witnessed its growth and expansion from a scattered, rustic hamlet, to its present proportions as a progressive and beautiful little metropolis of the "hill county," and had played no small part in that growth and develop- ment. He was at once conservative and progressive. He would be
Not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
He would espouse no cause, nor lend his support to any movement affecting the public welfare, until convinced of the merit of that cause or movement, and once his convictions were formed he followed them consistently and conscientiously. It was in his conduct of "The Connecticut Western News," during his twenty-three years' incum- bency as editor and publisher, that Mr. Beckley revealed himself most fully and clearly as a man of sincerity, public spirit and local patriotism. His newspaper work was char- acterized by a painstaking regard for truth, accuracy and fairness, and above all, a manifest desire to conserve the best interests of the community.
He was a man of intensely sensitive nature, deeply sympathetic and broadly chari- table; in his friendships he was loyalty itself, and in his generosity self-forgetting. Many have cause to remember his quiet, timely deeds of charity and kindness, performed without ostentation, and to him the words of eulogy pronounced upon another, would fitly apply: "Were everyone for whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers."
John henry Wood
E IGHTY-THREE YEARS of life, the larger portion of which was spent in almost continuous service of his fellows, espe- cially those of his own community, is the record of John Henry Wood, of Thomaston, Connecticut, whose death there on August 30, 1911, brought to a close the career of one who, notwithstanding his great age, was still a most active and valuable member of society, who still performed the functions which had made him one of the principal figures in that region.
Born June 30, 1828, in Plymouth, Connecticut, many years before the section now known as Thomaston had been made a separate community by the Legislature, he passed his entire life in the neighborhood, content to discover his Eldorado in his own home instead of seeking farther and faring worse as has been the fate of so many. His childhood was passed in the usual occupations of that age, his education, which was limited, he beginning work at the tender age of eight years, being obtained in the excellent local public schools. At the age of twenty years he embarked upon his business career, entering at once into an association that continued for the better part of half a century, or from 1848 until 1892. This began with a humble position in the employ of the Seth Thomas Clock Company, and with this concern he remained, excepting only about nine months of absence, for that long period, gradually working his way up to a place of trust and respon- sibility. It was about 1862 that he was given the position of superintendent of the movement factory, and continued to serve in this capacity during the remainder of his association with the company. This was not the only con- nection with the business world of Plymouth and Thomaston that Mr. Wood had, however. He was one of the original incorporators of the Thomaston Savings Bank, and to no one more than him is the present suc- cess and high standing of the institution due. For several years he was its president and during that term he devoted himself with most entire disinter- estedness to its interests, conducting its affairs with the most masterly skill and foresight and placing them upon a perfectly secure foundation. An- other enterprise in which he was deeply interested was the Thomaston Knife Company, in the organization of which he was also one of the prime movers, and its president for many years. To this concern, also, he gave his energies with the greatest devotion and developed a large and lucrative business.
In another realm besides that of business Mr. Wood has signally dis- tinguished himself in his native town. Always interested in politics, since he was able to understand the questions involved, upon reaching manhood, he allied himself with the local organization of the Republican party, and took an active part in public affairs. He served a number of times as a grand juror, and was elected to the School Committee for the town for a consider- able period. His services in every office he undertook to fill were of so superior and efficient a kind that he gained a very high place in the regard of his party and, indeed, of the whole community. He was finally made the
376
John Henry Quood
nominee of his party for the State Legislature, and was duly elected, serving during the legislative session of 1887 as the representative from Thomaston. It is an excellent illustration of his great personal popularity that in spite of the presence of three candidates in the field against him, Mr. Wood obtained a clear majority of the votes over them all. Mr. Wood was strongly religious in his beliefs and feelings. He affiliated with the Thomaston Methodist Episcopal Church, of which his wife is a member. He was very generously disposed towards it and had its interest strongly at heart, so that he gave a great deal of time, effort and money to the advancement of its cause.
Mr. Wood was united in marriage, October 21, 1849, with Mary Ostrom, of Torrington, Connecticut, a daughter of Henry I. and Sarah (Platt) Ostrom, of that place. Mr. Wood is survived by his wife who is now a resident of Thomaston, and a grandson, the Rev. F. H. Sawyer, of Stepney, Connecticut. His son, Henry O. Wood, born November 21, 1852, died at Waterbury, April 18, 1913. He was connected with the Waterbury Brass Company ; he was elected city comptroller and served two terms; at one time he was a member of the Board of Education; member of the Free and Accepted Masons, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and member of the Methodist church, of Waterbury. Mr. Wood, Sr., was but twenty-one years of age at the time of his marriage, so that he and his wife had nearly completed sixty-two years of married life, during which period there existed a most edifying degree of harmony and affection in all the household relations, so that the home life was an ideal one.
Although Mr. Wood was above eighty-three years of age when his life finally came to an end, he was very much missed in the community and his death felt as a very real loss. His strength and the clearness of all his facul- ties were such as to admit of his participating but little less than ever in the life about him up to about three or four years prior to his death, but during the last year of his life his mind was not as clear as usual. His venerable figure was well known to everyone, for to no one did he deny his ready smile and warm greeting. His heart was a large one with room for a general goodwill for all, a goodwill which one felt at once from his straightforward manner to be genuine and spontaneous. His character was based, as all truly worthy characters must be based, on an essential honesty very typical of the best of his fellow New Englanders. Whatever the present age, a little more lax in its beliefs, may think of the stricter and more scrupulous ideals of the past generation, no one will be found foolish enough to deny that they were responsible for a splendid set of men, in whom capability and worldly wisdom were harmoniously combined with the utmost degree of probity, the set of which John Henry Wood was in every sense representative.
Isaac Gleason Allen
T O ONE WHO had been studying the general history of New England and whose mind had become thoroughly imbued with the profoundly democratic bias of popular sentiment there and the strong distrust of anything like a privileged class, it might come as a considerable surprise, upon turning to those more particular records of town or county, to dis- cover the presence of what would appear to him as certain families who from generation to generation maintained a position of promi- nence and influence in their respective communities. It would not be until he had examined still further that he would make the discovery that such dominance on the part of particular houses did not depend upon any aristo- cratic institution at all, however much it might give that appearance, but simply upon the inherited qualities of leadership which continued to show itself in the members of such families from the earliest times to the latest and in the midst of such different environments as those of the ancient pioneer and the member of our modern industrial society. The local his- tories of New England are, indeed, crowded with such family names, the bearers of which to-day can look back from their own positions of promi- nence over a long line of worthy ancestors, the beginnings of which were synchronous with the first wave of colonization. Such a family is that which bears the name of Allen and which in the past generation was represented by the distinguished gentleman whose name heads this brief record. The coat-of-arms of the Allen family is as follows: Paly of ten argent and azure, over all a cross potent, or. Crest-A lion salient sable and a tower or and argent. Motto-Fortiter gerit crucem.
A number of the most important Allen families in the United States, including that of Hartford, with which this sketch is more particularly con- cerned, trace their descent back to three brothers of the name, Mathew, Samuel and Thomas, who about 1630 came from Braintree in the county of Essex, England, and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is claimed with every circumstance of probability that Ethan Allen, colonel of the "Green Mountain Boys" of Vermont in the American Revolution, who was a native of Litchfield, Connecticut, was descended from one of these brothers. The brothers did not remain in Cambridge a great while, but joined the party under the leadership of the redoubtable Dr. Hooker and participated with that worthy divine in the honor of founding Hartford, Connecticut, in which city and the surrounding towns many of their de- scendants reside to this day.
The second of the Allen brothers, Samuel, who was born in Braintree, England, moved from Hartford to Windsor when the latter place was but newly settled and there took up his abode permanently. His descendants, however, did not remain there but dwelt in a number of different localities both in Connecticut and Massachusetts during the unquiet times preceding the Revolution. They were involved in many of the desperate struggles
378
Isaac Gleason Allen
with the Indians and played their part in the hard and perilous task of clearing the wilderness and developing the country.
John Allen, the third child of Samuel Allen, the founder, moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, and was killed by the Indians in the battle of Bloody Brook in Deerfield, September 18, 1675. He was an ancestor of the Isaac Gleason Allen of this sketch. Joseph Allen, a grandson of the above mentioned John Allen, married Mary Hulit, born July 12, 1703, in Concord, Massachusetts, died in East Windsor, Connecticut, aged seventy- eight years. She bore him eight children. Mary Hulit was the daughter of John and Hannah (Whittaker) Hulit, of Hobarth, Massachusetts, a border town of Rhode Island; they were married August 13, 1702, by Rev. Mr. Joseph Estabrook. Mr. Hulit removed from Hobarth to Enfield, where he lived a few years, then returned to Hobarth. Jonathan Whittaker, father of Hannah Whittaker, was a son of John Whittaker, of Watertown, Massa- chusetts, and was in Concord before 1690.
Isaac Gleason Allen was the son of Hezekiah and Azubah (Gleason) Allen, of East Windsor, Connecticut, where he was himself born, January 6, 1807. East Windsor was the home of a great number of his relatives, and here as a child he attended the local schools, which were somewhat primitive in those days, and there obtained his education. Then, as now, however, the degree of education depended more on the pupil than the school, and young Allen by the time he had completed his studies was well read and possessed of a large fund of knowledge which he turned to practical use in after life. In the year 1834 he left East Windsor and the parental roof forever, and removed to Hartford, where he established himself in a mercantile line of business. He was successful in this enterprise from the outset and became one of the leading business men of the city in the old days when the river trade was the most important feature of the Hartford business world. The streets bounding the river were in those times the center of commercial activity in the city, and it was in this region that Mr. Allen had his establish- ment, and won his very considerable fortune. He developed a very large and important trade and came to be regarded as one of the most influential men in the city and an important factor in the business interests of the region, besides winning the highest kind of a reputation for himself for his honorable and just way of conducting his affairs and living up to the spirit of his contracts.
Mr. Allen married, October 20, 1831, Sabra Thompson, a daughter of John McKnight and Sabra (Allen) Thompson, of East Windsor. John Mc- Knight Thompson was one of the most prominent citizens of East Windsor and closely identified with the development of the town. His wife was a daugh- ter of Samuel Allen and a granddaughter of Joseph and Mary (Hulit) Allen, already mentioned, so that Mrs. Isaac Gleason Allen was a distant cousin of her husband. To Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Gleason Allen were born two chil- dren, Emily Gleason, died in infancy, and Emma Gleason. Mr. Allen's death occurred August 23, 1886, his wife surviving him for two years or until September 11, 1888. Mr. Allen purchased during his residence in Hartford a handsome dwelling on Webster street and here he and Mrs. Allen lived until their deaths. It is now occupied by Emma Gleason Allen.
H
FORTITER
GERIT
CRUCEM
379
Isaac Gleason Allen
With the death of Mr. Allen, Hartford suffered the loss of one of the splendid old merchants of the past generation, a type which has done so much to dignify and broaden business ideals in this country. Perhaps it was the enlightened, broad-minded outlook of these men, their sterling character, their cosmopolitan culture, that has, as much as anything, been responsible for the destruction of the foolish prejudice against business and mercantile pursuits, which for a time persevered even in this democratic country, the residuum of an outworn age and dispensation. But before the example of men so wholly admirable as these, prejudices of this kind had inevitably to give way until to-day the opposite extreme has been reached, and no criter- ion of a man's ability is so universally considered conclusive as success in the business world. Certainly the success of such men as Mr. Allen was of a kind to command general and well deserved commendation, combining as it did his own interests with the welfare of the whole community. Nor was his distinction wholly based on his success in business. In all the relations of life he maintained a high standard of conduct, and his record may well be held up as an example of pure and disinterested citizenship.
Charles Samuel Bissell
T HERE IS SOMETHING extremely gratifying in noting, as we are so frequently able to do in the genealogical annals of New England, the perseverance, from generation to gener- ation within a family, of certain staunch virtues and qualities of character, the possession of which entitles its members to a high place in the regard of the community. It seems, indeed, that in the case of some families such qualities are so firmly bred in the bone that even the most adverse conditions are insufficient to remove them, although on the whole it is surely true that the conditions of life prevailing in New England throughout its history have been cal- culated rather to inculcate and foster such characters than to discourage them. However this may be, one would certainly have to look far for a better example of inherited virtues and ability than that to be found in the old and honorable Connecticut family of Bissell.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.