USA > Connecticut > Representative men of Connecticut, 1861-1894 > Part 36
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TORRS, MELANCTHON, M. D., of Hartford, ex-president of the Connecticut State Medical Society, was born in Mansfield, Conn., Oct. 2, 1823.
Storrs is a Scandinavian, or rather Teutonic word, meaning great, in the sense of royal power or authority. Its form in old Norse is Stor; in Anglo- Saxon, Stor, Stur, and old German, Stur, and in English, Stor, Storr, Storrs. The spelling of the names in England was not settled till about 1700, and the name Storrs is varied like the others, ranging through a dozen changes from Stor to Stoares and Storyes. Storrs is found in documents of the thirteenth century, and may then have been long in use. Through Johanna White, wife of Robert Storrs, the family is allied to the Shelleys and Sidneys, two of the historic families of England.
The earliest known ancestor of Samuel Storrs, the emigrant, was William Storrs, of Sutton-cum-Lound, whose will was proved in 1557. From him the line comes down by direct succession through Robert Cordall, to Thomas Storrs of York. His wife's name was Mary, and of their seven children Samuel was the fourth. He was born in 1639, and came to Barnstable, Mass., in 1663. On so excellent an authority as Mr. Charles Storrs, who spent twenty years preparing a history of the family, it may be stated that with the exception of a small family of the same English stock in Richmond, Va., no one of the name of Storrs has been found in this country who is not descended from Samuel Storrs of Barnstable. About 1698, he removed to Mansfield, Conn., of which town he and his eldest son, Samuel, Jr., were among the proprietors. He was one of the original nine inale members of the Mansfield church, and is said to have been a large, fine looking man, and the allusions to him show him
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to have been prominent and influential in the religions and social affairs of the town. Joseph, son of Samnel, Jr., was the father of Rev. William Storrs, a most faithful pastor of Asliford, Conn. His son, William, Jr., married Harriet E., daughter of Othniel Woodward of Westford, Conn., and of their eleven children Melancthon was the eldest. William Storrs was an industrious and frugal man, a farmer and manufacturer of furniture, who lived to the good old age of nearly ninety-two, enjoying to the last the confidence and respect of all who knew him. Mrs. Storrs was said to have been "a woman of good com111011 sense, devoted to the welfare of her family, unmindful of her own ease and comfort. In her strong faith and exemplary life, she left a rich inheritance to her children."
Until he was twenty-one, Melancthon Storrs lived at home, alternately working with his father and teaching in the district schools. The theory and practice of micdicine being attractive to his tastes, he commenced its study with Dr. F. L. Dickinson of Willington, Conn. At the end of two years his studies in medical lore were suspended to enter Brown University. In 1850, he entered Yale College, and was graduated from there in 1852. The following year was spent in New York teaching deaf mutes, continuing the medical studies as he had opportunity. Later he took a course at the Yale Medical College, and received his degree of M. D., in the latter part of 1853. Locating in Colchester, Conn., Dr. Storrs at once entered upon the practice of his profession, and remained there until the call was made to arms in 1861. Though he was rapidly gaining reputation and success as a practitioner, he was not long in determining the course for him to pursue. When the Eighth Regiment was organized in the fall of 1861, he entered the service as surgeon of that command. His ability was promptly recognized, and he was promoted to the brigade headquarters inder General Harland of Norwich, who commanded the Connecticut Brigade. This organization at Antietam was composed of the Eighth, Eleventh and Sixteenth Connecticut and a regiment from Rhode Island. Subsequently the Twenty-first and Fifteenth Regiments were added to the command. The officers at headquarters were principally Connectient inen, and the comrade- ship of the staff was of the finest character. In the group Dr. Storrs was a prominent and noted figure, being fitted by education and natural qualifications for the social position that was conceded him. Not that he ever thought of assuming superiority on account of his position. That was not possible with a inan of his temperament and modesty. But he was one of the most enjoyable of associates, and was loved by the brigade. He was in several of the hardest battles of the war, including Antietam and Fredericksburg. Towards the con- clusion of the contest, he was executive surgeon of the army hospital at Fortress Monroe, a position of great responsibility and trust. In October, 1864, Surgeon Storrs completed his three years' term of service. Under a general act of Congress he remained in the field as acting staff surgeon United States Army until July 17, 1865, making nearly four years of active service in the army. These years were characterized by the pleasantest of memories not less than by the most exacting requirements.
No officer is brought more intimately into relationship with the men than the surgeon who is faithful to the duties entrusted to his attention. - Equally with the chaplain he is the confidant and adviser of the men, and there is a trust felt in him that cannot be felt towards any one else. The office of army surgeon is one deserving of great respect and admiration, and, when occupied by a man of the high personal traits of Dr. Storrs, it becomes one of most influential positions in the brigade or division. He made the office all that it was intended to be, surrounding it with the most pronounced personality and good fellowship. It should not be presumed that Dr. Storrs was not a strict disciplinarian, for such he was, and always demanded that recognition which he was invariably willing to extend to the rank and authority of others. In camp and on the march he was the soul of honor and justice, dealing with the
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men and interests pertaining to the position which he held with the utmost fairness. With the veterans he holds the most admirable position to this day, and is the possessor of their unswerving respect and confidence.
Speaking of the suffering of the troops, in one place the "Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War," says: "Of the Eighth Regiment, sixty lay sick of fever at Morelcad City, and nearly forty dicd of typhoid fever. There were only two captains present for duty April 21, and Surgeon Melancthon Storrs was the only well man of the field or staff officers; and it was fortunate that he was an exception, for liis skill and tireless devotion to the regiment rendered him of incalculable service." In another place the same authority says of him : " He had showed himself diligent; quietly faithful, skillful, cool in battle, quick to see, and steady and calm in executing. He was often summoned from his regiment to positions requiring ability and reliability at corps and general hospitals. So manifest was hiis excellence, that he was sent for a special purpose to Washington. Dr. Eli Mcclellan, the surgeon of the regular army in charge of the United States General Hospital of Fortress Monroe, in endorsing his orders added the statement that 'Dr. Storrs was the most efficient surgeon ever on duty at this hospital.' "'
At the close of the war Dr. Storrs settled in Hartford, where he has since made his home. He is one of the trio of physicians who form the front rank of the profession, and he worthily deserves the place accorded him. Dr. Storrs has successfully performed some of the inost intricate and difficult operations known in the range of surgical knowledge, and his skill in this peculiar field is unrivalled. His removal of the tri-facial nerve, and his work on the cleft palate should receive special mention, as he is the only man in the state wlio performns this operation, while in the line of intestinal surgery he stands unequalled. At the meeting of the Connecticut Medical Society in May, 1887, he read an interesting paper on "The Neurectomy of the Tri-Facial Nerve," a subject with which he is most intimately acquainted.
That Dr. Storrs is highly esteemed by his contemporaries is evidenced by the numerous official positions to which he has been elevated. In 1891, he was elected president of the Connecticut State Medical Society, and his address at the meeting on "The Health of Our Schools " was afterwards published by the state as a school document, such was its inherent value. It touched upon the school building, its ventilation and safety from fire, and went on to discuss the age and time of study, exercises, manual and industrial training, inspection, sanitary legislation, and closed with the following words:
It has been said that the Connecticut school has relatively declined. It may be that in the great success, in the glorious traditions of the early schools of the state, we have relied too much upon our inherited advantages, or been too conservative in the adoption of the new methods of study and management, successful in other states. But our discussion confines us to the lines of health. We presume that in the first schools planted here in the wilderness, though they were under the supervision of such illustrious men as Davenport, Mason, Hopkins, Hooker and Eaton, some of whom had studied the free schools in their exile home in Holland, the matter of school sanitation had never been discussed. Neither did the pilgrims on board the Mayflower discuss the question of putting a steam engine into that little ship. Sanitation is a word of this generation, and already is not fully expressive of the most advanced ideas in this direction. The hygienic watchword to-day in Europe, more than in this country, is asepsis. It is this that is cleaning the streets of the continent. It is reducing the death rate of the cities, and bids defiance to plague and pestilence, and our mission as physicians in this great work is not ended, until we see this great principle not only pervading and permeating our schools, but made authoritatively and permanently effectual. When this is done a long step forward has been made in regaining the reputation and the glory of tlie Connecticut school.
In 1892, Dr. Storrs was made president of the Section of Surgery at the centennial meeting of the society, and read a most valuable and interesting paper on "A Century of Surgical Progress-its Causative Conditions." As an example of the style of that which preceded it, the closing paragraph is quoted :
C. E. Millings
Morachusetts Publishing :o. Everett. Mass
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When we talk of medicine and surgery in this little state, we feel that we have a common country, and a common inheritance, that we are one together like England, like France. But yet this little state of Connecticut has had her share of glory. Her surgeons dead and alive have ever been in the front. Her illustrious surgical teachers, Nathan Smith and Jonathan Knight, have been to the medical republic what Trumbull, Sherman and Ellsworthi as statesmen were to the nation. The roll-call of the great men in medicine, as in all the walks and professions of life throughout the country, would find inany whose lineage runs back to Connecticut. We have now taken a glance at some of the general causes of surgical progress for a century, and having viewed them in their relations to the earlier ages, and having seen that the truths and the facts of earlier history have found their fuller growth and completion in later history, we can but feel, as we contemplate the surgical triumphs already made, and the possibilities inherent in the future, that we are in some way joined to the grander progress of the future, and that all the discoveries, and all the steps of progress to be made, will be so many links to bind more compactly together the centuries past and the centuries to come.
For thirty years Dr. Storrs has been a director and medical adviser in the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company. He is a director in the Hartford Hospital, and is one of the visiting surgeons. He is a member of the Hartford City Medical Society, of the Con- necticut State Medical Society, of the American Medical Association, of the American Asso- ciation of Gynæcologists and Obstetricians, and at the International Congress in 1887, was one of the vice-presidents of the Surgical Section. At the Berlin Medical Congress in 1891, of which he was a member, Dr. Storrs read a paper on " The Neurectomy of the Superior Maxillary Nerve," which was most favorably received. Writing from Berlin at the time, a correspondent of the Hartford Courant said: "From a physician I heard that Dr. Storrs of Hartford read a fine paper here before the recent medical congress. As there were about five thousand physicians from different parts of the world, it was a inarked. honor, and especially so, as the Germans, who were noticeably tired from preceding papers, showed their interest in this, by marked attention throughout the delivery."
Perhaps the most valuable work Dr. Storrs ever did for the state at large was in connection with the "Medical Practice Bill." He was chairman of the committee from the State Medical Society, which was instrumental in securing the nceded legislation, and throughout the entire time he held the laboring oar. This bill makes registration of physicians necessary, enforces examination before persons are allowed to practice, and in every way raises the standard of the profession. His zeal in this instance deserves the highest appreciation and commendation.
Dr. Melancthon Storrs was married Nov. 29, 1853, to Jane D., daughter of Rcv. Charles S. Adams of Westford, Conn. Four children have been born to them. Charles Adams, who died in his fourth year, William Melancthon, now in the hardware business in Hartford, Frank Herbert, in the wholesale grocery business, and Jennie Gertrude, now the wife of Rev. Frederick J. Perkins, a missionary in Brazil under the Presbyterian Board of Missions.
B ILLINGS, CHARLES ETHAN, president of the Billings & Spencer Company, Hartford, was born in Weathersfield, Vt., Dec. 5, 1835. This year saw the birth of a number of men who have made a name for themselves in different spheres of action. Mr. Billings is descended from a sturdy Green Mountain stock. Rufus Billings was a respected farmer of Windsor, Vt., and his son, Ethan F., married Clarissa M., daughter of James Marsh of Rockinghamn, Vt. The latter was a blacksmith, with a practical turn of mind, so that the present manufacturer comes honestly by his inventive faculty.
The education of young Billings was limited to that which could be obtained in the common schools of the town of Windsor, in the Green Mountain state. At the age of seventeen years he entered as an apprentice in the machine works of the Robbins & Lawrence Company of Windsor, and served the regular term of three years. After becoming a journey-
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man machinist, he was employed for some time by the same company in their gun department. The year 1857 found him at Hartford, and, with the exception of a few years spent in Utica, New York, he has since made that city his home.
The idea of drop forgings was probably introduced into the United States by that many sided man, Samuel Colt. To a slight extent they were afterwards used at the armories at Springfield, Mass., but the processes of manufacture were crude, thic work imperfect in its nature, and the practical results within exceedingly narrow limits. It was left for Charles E. Billings to raise an unimportant adjunct of the machine shop from a lowly position to its present dignity and consequence in the world of mechanics. In 1856, Mr. Billings went into the employ of the Colt's Arms Company as tool maker and die sinker, and it was here that he first gained an insight into that line of business with which his future life was to be identified. He was confident that certain parts of the work could be accomplished in a far easier way than by the old methods, and he bent his mind to the solution of the problem. The second year of the war he was called to the gun factories of E. Remington & Sons at Ilion, N. Y. Here, in the face of inild opposition and much open doubt, he built up a plant for drop forgings which increased by forty-fold the efficiency of labor in the production of various parts of their pistols. The effect was quite a revelation to the company and clearly showed the possibilities there were in the new idea. Returning to Hartford in 1865, for three years he acted as superintendent of the manufacturing department of the Weed Sewing Machine Company.
After a few months spent at Amherst, Mass., he settled permanently in Hartford in 1869. With Mr. C. M. Spencer, he at once organized the firin of Billings & Spencer, and at the very outset of their career they experienced severe reverses by engaging in the manit- facture of the Roper sporting arms. In 1870, they took up drop forgings as a specialty, but by gradual degrees it became their whole business. As the development of this business has really been Mr. Billings's lifework, a descriptive paragraph to the uninitiated will not be inappropriate. He saw the immense saving of labor to be effected, as well as the im-
provement which could be made in numerous small parts of machines. Starting from the crude efforts of the two or three who have preceded him, by successive stages he has brought the art (for art it certainly is) up to its present high standard. Bars of iron, steel, bronze or copper could be transformed into pieces of irregular shape and size with rapidity and precision. The dies are made from blocks of the best bar steel, and in these are cut the form of the article to be forged, one-half of the thickness in the lower and the other half in the upper die, and both parts are then hardened to the proper temper. One die is fastened to the base and its counterpart to the hammer of the drop. Where the shape to be produced is unusually complicated, a series of dies is used and red hot bars are subjected to the blows of the hammer until the desired figure is reached. Guided by the uprights of powerful framnes, hammers weighing from three hundred to two thousand pounds fall from one to six feet and a few rapid blows complete this part of the process. The forgings are then passed on to other rooms to be finished and polished.
The all-pervasive force in the development of the extensive plant on Broad street has been the inventive talent of Mr. Billings. Let a single instance suffice. When passing through the Edison Electric Works in 1886, he noted the existing method of making com- mutator bars. These are L shaped pieces of copper set at an angle to each other. Horizontal belts, thin and wedge-like, separated by some non-conducting substance, are placed side by side around the shaft of the dynamo and bound firmly together. Electricity is generated by the friction of metallic brushes revolving at high speed against the edges of the bars. Here was Mr. Billings's opportunity and he wisely improved it. The bars had previously been made in two pieces, united by pins and solder, and, as the current was partly broken, the best results could not be obtained. The electrician of the works was sure they could not be
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produced in any other way, but the inventor's mind had even thien solved the difficulty. Returning home, Mr. Billings cut the dies and in less than three weeks sent to the Edison Company an invoice of bars forged in a single piece from pure copper, and having a homo- geneous, molecular structure throughont. The material is of the greatest possible density. By this invention of Mr. Billings the cost of the bars was greatly diminished and their efficiency increased in like degree. The best proof of their success lies in the fact that they almost immediately sprang into favor with the electric companies.
The firm was organized on a stock company basis, in 1869, under a liberal charter, the capital being $125,000, with the privilege of increasing to $300,000. The present officers are Charles E. Billings, president and general manager; E. H. Stockler, secretary ; Lucius H. Holt, treasurer ; F. C. Billings, superintendent ; and H. E. Billings, assistant superintendent. It is the leading concern of its kind in the United States.
Besides developing the drop forging business, which owes so much to his genius and persistence, Mr. Billings is the inventor and patentee of numerous useful articles manufactured by his company, which are largely sold in this country and Europe. Among them may be noted screw plate, double-acting ratchet drill, adjustable beam caliper, breech-loading firearmns, pocket knife, drill, chuck, adjustable pocket wrench, etc.
In the mysteries and teachings of the Masonic Order, Mr. Billings has been greatly inter- ested, and by initiation has become familiar with all of the York and Scottish degrees, and is an honorary member of the Supreme Council Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for tlie Northern Masonic jurisdiction of the United States, 1874 ; also, a member of the Royal Order of Scotland, 1891. He was grand commander of the Grand Commandery of Knight Templars of Connecticut in 1887. His local membership is with Washington Commandery. For several years he served as a private in the ranks of the First Regiment Connecticut National Guard. It was but natural that official station should be presented to Mr. Billings for acceptance, though he has allowed his name to be used in this connection to a very limited extent. He has been a member of the Court of Common Council, and for four years he represented the third ward in the Board of Aldermen. During the last two years of his service he was chair- man of the ordinance committee, and in that capacity he exerted an important influence in moulding affairs for the best interests of the city. At present he is president of the board of fire commissioners. Though not an active politician in any sense of the word, Mr. Billings's sympathies have always been with the Republican party, and his thought and voice have ever been cast in furtherance of its principles. In religious matters he affiliates with the Second Ecclesiastical Society, and is a liberal contributor to its support. Concerned in all that affects the enlargement of the scope of business of his adopted city, he is a trustee of the State Savings Bank and the Hartford Trust Company, and is a member of that energetic organiza- tion, the Hartford Board of Trade, and also of the Hartford Club.
During the summer of 1890, Mr. Billings visited Europe and came back with clearer ideas of the possibilities there are in his own country. A gentleman of the most enjoyable personal character, he is regarded as one of the foremnost business men of the capital city. His success as a manager of industrial interests is phenomenal, and as a pioneer along a new line of manu- facturing development, he deserves the highest praise. In private life, as a public official, and as the head of one of Hartford's leading establishments, Mr. Billings is honored and esteemned by his fellow-citizens.
Charles E. Billings has been twice married. First, to Francis M., daughter of Willard Heywood. She died, leaving him two children. For his second wife he married Eva C., daughter of Lucius H. Holt of Hartford. Two children were the result of this union. His sons, F. C. and H. E. Billings are associated with him in business, the former as superin- tendent and the latter as assistant superintendent of the Billings & Spencer Company.
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HAFFEE, CHARLES ELMER, of Windsor Locks, president and treasurer of tlie Medlicott Company, was born in Monson, Mass., Junc 30, 1818. This year is noted for the long list of inen prominent in state and national politics, as well as in the world of business, who first saw the light within its limits.
The Chaffee family is of Welsh origin, and many of the Connecticut branch have been tillers of the soil. Chadwick Chaffce was a fariner of Monson, Mass., and his son, Freeborn M., fought in the defence of his country in the war of 1812. Mr. C. E. Chaffee was the son of Freeborn M. and Betsey (Leonard) Chaffee, the latter being a resident of Stafford, Conn.
The ordinary district schools afforded him all the education he received. At the age of seventeen he went into the Holmes & Reynolds Mill, for the purpose of learning the trade of wool sorting. Sixty years ago the sorting of wool in this section was more important and extensive than at the present time, and the future manufacturer served a long appren- ticeship. The training gained in this humble position was more valuable to Mr. Chaffee in after life than had the same time been spent in Yale College. It was here that the gerin of that thorough knowledge of wool was planted, which has grown during years of patient study and labor, and which now gives him the reputation of being one of the best judges of wool in the country.
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