USA > Connecticut > Representative men of Connecticut, 1861-1894 > Part 7
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Mr. Slater was an excellent judge of character in inen, and especially of their ability and knowledge, and thus in his latter days his manufacturing business was so organized that he could give much of his time to other affairs, while he kept the reins in his own hands. It was always his effort to run the mill as many days in the year as possible, and in hard times or in war times to keep the machinery in operation to the last moment. During the War of the Rebellion he continued to run his mill some time after most of the mills in his neighbor- hood had stopped, and in fact till cotton went up to sixty-seven cents per pound, never fearing but that the Union forces would be victorious. When the subject was agitated in 1872-73 of shortening the hours of labor by one hour per day, he was one of the first to apply the change to his own mills.
It is generally supposed that Mr. Slater inherited a large fortune from his father. This, however, was not the case. Perhaps he may have had fifty thousand dollars from this source, but the foundation and the large part of the fortune which he accumulated were the results of his management of his mills. His mind was of sufficient calibre to grasp a variety of enterprises, including manufacturing, railroad and miscellaneous corporations. Never a speculator, it may be confidently stated that even in his earlier days no shares of stock were ever purchased on a margin. In his later days, when his credit was almost limitless, it was never his custom to buy stocks with money advanced on credit, but always waited till he had the funds accumulated and available for investment. For the last dozen years of his life Mr. Slater's interest in railroads was greater than in manufacturing. Though living quietly, away from the centers of trade and finance, he kept himself conversant with the great railroad
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systems of the country, and was an authority on the subject in his neighborhood, as the m111111ber of calls and letters he received asking information would bear abundant testimony. Familiar with all his different interests, lic carried the accounts so perfectly in his head, that if necessary lie could correct the double entry books with which the record of his transactions was kept. With no office except in his house, he managed all his diverse operations with an ease which gave no impression of the magnitude of his concerns.
Before his last great gift, Mr. Slater made generous contributions to religious and educa- tional enterprises. He was one of the original corporators of the Norwich Free Academy, to which lic gave at different times more than fifteen thousand dollars. To the construction of the Park Congregational Church, which he attended, he gave the sum of thirty-three thousand dollars, and subsequently a fund of ten thousand dollars, the income of which is to keep the edifice in repair. At the time of his death he was engaged in building a public library in Jewett City, which has since been completed at a cost of sixteen thousand dollars. His private benefactions and his contributions to benevolent societies were also numerous. During the war his sympathics were heartily with the Union, and he was a large purchaser of the govern- ment bonds when others doubted their security.
Some years before his death Mr. Slater formed the purpose of devoting a large sum of money to the education of the freedmen. It is believed that this humane project occurred to him, without suggestion from any other mind, in view of the apprehensions which all thoughtful persons felt, when after the war the duties of citizenship were suddenly imposed upon millions of emancipated slaves. Certainly, when he began to speak freely of his intentions, he had decided upon the amount of his gift and its scope. These were not open questions. He knew exactly what he wished to do. It was not to bestow charity upon the destitute, nor to encourage a few exceptional individuals ; it was not to build churches, school-houses, asylumns or colleges; it was not to establish one strong institution as a personal monument; it was on the other hand, to help the people of the South in solving the great problem which had been forced upon them, - how to train, in various places and under differing circumstances, those who have long been dependent, for the duties belonging to them now that they are free. This purpose was fixed. In respect to the best mode of organizing a trust, Mr. Slater sought counsel of many experienced persons, -of the managers of the Peabody Educational Fund, in regard to their work ; of lawyers and those who had been in official life, with respect to questions of law and legislation ; of ministers, teachers and others who had been familiar with charitable and educational trusts, or who were particularly well informed in respect to the condition of the freedmien at the South. The results of all these consultations, which were continued during a period of several years, were at length reduced to a satisfactory forin, and were embodied in a charter granted to a board of trustees by the state of New York, in the spring of 1882, and in a carefully thought out and written letter, addressed to those who were selected to administer the trust.
The characteristics of this gift were its Christian spirit, its patriotismn, and its freedom from all secondary purposes or hampering conditions. In broad and general terms the donor indicated the object which he had in view; the details of management he left to others, confident that their collective wisdom and the experience they must acquire would devise better modes of procedure, as the years go on, than any individual could propose in advance. The words which Mr. Slater employed to express his aim were these :
The general object which I desire to have exclusively pursued, is the uplifting of the lately emancipated population of the southern states and their posterity, by conferring on them the blessings of Christian education. The disabilities formerly suffered by these people, and their singular patience and fidelity in the great crisis of the nation, establish a just claim on the sympathy and good will of humane and patriotic inen. I cannot but feel the compassion that is due in view of their prevailing ignorance, which exists by no fault of their own.
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But it is not only for their own sake, but also for the safety of our common country, in which they have been invested with equal political rights, that I am desirous to aid in providing them with the means of such education as shall tend to make them good men and good citizens, - education in which the instruction of the mind in the common branches of secular learning shall be associated with training in just notions of duty toward God and man, in the light of the Holy Scriptures.
The means to be used in the prosecution of the general object above described I leave to the discretion of the corporation ; only indicating, as lines of operation adapted to the present condition of things, the training of teachers from among the people requiring to be taught, if, in the opinion of the corporation, by such limited selection the purposes of the trust can be best accomplished ; and the encouragement of such institutions as are most effectually useful in promoting this training of teachers. I am well aware that the work herein proposed is nothing new or untried. And it is no small part of my satisfaction in taking this share in it, that I hereby associate myself with some of the noblest enterprises of charity and humanity, and may hope to encourage the prayers and toils of faithful men and women who have labored and are still laboring in this cause.
On the 18th day of May, 1882, Mr. Slater met the board of trustees in the city of New York and transferred to them the sum of one imillion dollars, a little more than half of it being already invested, and the remainder being cash to be invested at the discretion of the board. After completing their organization, the board addressed to the founder the following letter, which was signed by every member :
NEW YORK, May 18, 1882. To JOHN F. SLATER, EsQ., Norwich, Conn. :
The members of the board of trustees whom you invited to take charge of the fund which you have devoted to the education of the lately emancipated people of the southern states and their posterity, desire at the beginning of their work to place on record their appreciation of your purpose, and to congratulate you on having completed this wise and generous gift at a period of your life when you may hope to observe for many years its beneficent influence. They wishi especially to assure you of their gratification in being called upon to administer a work so noble and timely. If this trust is successfully managed, it may, like the gift of George Peabody, lead to many other benefactions. As it tends to remove the ignorance of large numbers of those who have a vote in public affairs, it will promote the welfare of every part of our country, and your generous action will receive, as it deserves, the thanks of good men and women in this and other lands. Your trustees unite in wishing you long life and health, that you may have the satisfaction of seeing the result of your patriotic forecast.
Since that time the trustees have met frequently and made appropriations in accordance with the founder's wishes. As a general agent, they made choice of the Rev. A. G. Haygood, D. D., of Oxford, Ga., who was succeeded in 1890 by Dr. J. L. M. Curry, also general inanager of the Peabody fund.
The appreciation of Congress was shown by the following resolution :
Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the thanks of Congress be, and they hereby are, presented to John F. Slater, of Connecticut, for his great beneficence in giving the large sum of one million dollars for the purpose of "uplifting the lately emancipated population of the southern states and their posterity, by conferring on them the blessings of Christian education."
SECTION 2. That it shall be the duty of the President to cause a gold medal to be struck, with suitable devices and inscriptions, which, together with a copy of this resolution, shall be presented to Mr. Slater in the name of the people of the United States.
After giving an exceedingly fair and just estimate of Mr. Slater's character in a inemorial address, his pastor, Rev. S. H. Howe, D. D., said: "The gift of Mr. Slater was one of striking originality and uniqueness. Originating without suggestion from others, wholly with himself, and elaborated to its minutest detail in his own thought, he chose to inake his offering, not to conspicuous institutions whose name or whose work should hold the giver perpetually in the public eye, but, crossing the whole diameter of society, he carried it to the lowest groove in our social and national life, to the poorest of this nation's poor, and set it to work in spreading intelligence and building character in the present and oncoming generation of a lowly race. With the sagacity of wise statesmanship and the fervor of purest patriotism and the spirit of the Christian, he went to the lowest place and to the weakest spot in our national fabric to strengthen it; to put a rock bottom underneath the foundation of the nation he loved and we all love so well. He did one of the things which the Christ, were He to come again, would commission His servants unto whom God has pleased
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to grant prosperity in business to do, a work whose far-reaching influences on the life of the nation no eye can yet foresee. We have done full honor to the brave men who were thic inaugurators of the movement which cut the fetters of the slave, and to the brave armies which fought the desperate battle to its successful issuc. We to-day, and we shall more fully in the future, do honor to a man who with others has taken up the more difficult work of rehabilitating the emancipated slave, clothing him with the intelligence and the manhood which qualify him for citizenship. It is a noble thing to break a slave's fetters, but it is equally noble to help the slave to manhood, and give his race a future. At the end of the next generation, and of the next and of the next, when this munificent charity has gone into the culture and recovered manhood of the colored race, Mr. Slater's work will be appreciated at its real and its far-reaching wortlı."
John F. Slater was married May 13, 1844, to Marianna L., daughter of Amos H. Hubbard. Six children were born to them, of whom only the oldest and the youngest, a daughter and a son, survived the period of infancy, and of these the son alone is now living. William A. Slater is continuing the good work his father began, and by numerous benefactions to his native city and elsewhere is giving expression to the kindness of his heart.
J EWELL, PLINY, of Hartford, president of the Jewell Belting Company and various other corporations, was born Sept. 1, 1823, in Winchester, N. H. This ancient town was the residence of the Jewell family for several generations. The record of the family line has been preserved unbroken for over 250 years. The list of the descendants of Thomas Jewell, published in the Jewell Register, says that gentleman was probably born in England about the year 1600, and that sundry considerations lead to the conjecture that he was of the same stock as Bishop Jewell, one of the early fathers of the English Protestant Episcopal Church. Thomas Jewell appears in the Boston Record of Feb. 24, 1639, as the recipient of an additional grant of twelve acres of land. He married Grisell Gurney, by whom he had several sons and daughters, and died in 1654. His son Joseph, born April 24, 1642, first lived in Charlestown, Mass., and kept the ferry between that place and Boston; about the age of fifty, he moved to Stow, Mass., and died there at an unrecorded date. Joseph Jewell, Jr., was born in June, 1673, and died at Dudley, Mass., in 1766. He was married Sept. 14, 1704, to Mary Morris of Boston, the ceremony being performed by the Rev. Cotton Mather. Of their six children, the fifth, Archibald, was born April 8, 1716, at Plainfield, Conn., the family in the meantime having moved to this state. Archibald Jewell imarried Rebecca Leonard, Jan. 6, 1741, and was the father of eleven children. The second of these, Asahel, was born Aug. 2, 1744, married Hannah Wright Nov. 5, 1767, by whom he had ten children, and died April 30, 1790. Asahel Jewell, Jr., was born May 16, 1776, just before the Declaration of Independence. He married Hepzibah Chamberlain, Feb. 21, 1797, and was the father of six children, of whom Pliny, the eldest, was born Dec. 27, 1797.
Pliny Jewell was an active member of the Congregational Church, and was politically identified with the old Whig party, and was at several different times elected to the New Hampshire legislature. For many years he carried on business as a tanner in that state, and in 1845 he removed to Hartford, where he continued dealing in and finishing of leather, and later added the manufacture of leather belting and tanning. The business of which he laid the foundation so solidly is now successfully managed by his sons. He married Emily
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OF CONNECTICUT, 1861-1894.
Alexander, Sept. 9, 1819. Ten children were the result of this union, of whom Pliny Jewell was the third. Marshall Jewell, three times governor of Connecticut, and minister to Russia, and postmaster-general under President Grant, was one of the sons, and a sketch of his life will be found elsewhere in this volume.
The history of the firmi is so clearly and truthfully told in a carefully compiled book, issued by the Hartford Board of Trade in 1889, that it is reproduced here as a whole :
Pliny Jewell, Sr., born at Winchester, N. H., in 1797, came to Hartford in 1845, and began active life in his new home by engaging in the leather and currying business. For several generations his ancestors in the male line had been tanners, so that he brought to the work all the knowledge and skill of the time. In 1848 he opened a shop on Trumbull street for making leather belts, having been the third person in America to engage in this special business. The father and his sons after him did much to educate the manufacturers of the United States, and indirectly of Europe, to substitute this means for the conveyance of power in place of the costly and cumbersome system of gearing then largely in use. For a number of years work in the shop was per- formed almost entirely by hand, the few mechanical appliances employed being rude and primitive. Four of the five sons, - Pliny, Jr., Marshall, Charles A., and Lyman B., - were successively admitted into the partnership, which, under the name of P. Jewell & Sons, soon won a world-wide reputation for the magnitude and excellence of its product.
In 1863, the firm bought the plating factory of the Rogers Brothers, at the corner of Trumbull and Hicks streets, which they enlarged and partially rebuilt. The structure is now 185 x 44 feet, five stories high, with an L of three stories. Three years ago, in order to accommodate their increasing business, they added another building adjoining their old property, 100 x 60 feet, and five stories high. With an abundance of room, and steam power and machinery -invented mostly by manufacturers of shoes, but adapted by the firm to the requirements of belt-making, -the business, under the stimulus imparted by the war, expanded with great rapidity.
About 1856, they established a tannery at Detroit, Mich., where, for twenty-five years, their leather was chiefly prepared. At present they are operating large tanneries both at Rome, Ga., and Jellico, Tenn., whence their materials for belting are now almost exclusively drawn. With the destruction of forests in Michigan, it has been found more profitable to use the works at Detroit for the production of other grades of leather, the proximity of an abundance of oak giving to the southern locations an advantage which greatly ontweighs the disadvantages. In 1869, at the ripe age of seventy-two, Pliny Jewell, Sr., passed away, having lived to see the establishment he founded the largest of the kind in the country, and bequeathing, as a still more precions inheritance, the record of a noble and spotless life.
The education of the younger Pliny Jewell was obtained chiefly at the little red school house at the fork of the roads, with an occasional three months' instruction in a school of a higher grade which was provided in the autumnn of each year, in the center of the town, for pupils that had exhausted the resources of the district school. These are all the advantages tliat any of the young Jewells ever possessed except Harvey, the eldest, who was a graduate of Dartmouth college at Hanover.
Under the act of incorporation granted by the state in 1881, the Jewell Belting Company was organized in April, 1883, as the successors of P. Jewell & Sons. The executive officers are Pliny Jewell, president ; Lyman B. Jewell, vice-president ; Charles A. Jewell, treasurer ; and Charles E. Newton, secretary. From this industry there have been developed by suc- cessive steps the Jewell Belt Hook Company, the Jewell Pin Company, and the Jewell Pad Company, each company being a thriving business in itself. In this trio of corporations Mr. Jewell is a stockholder, and of them all he fills the office of president. The inanu- facturing operations of the allied industries are carried on in one or another of the cluster of factories which constitute the plant of the Jewell Belting Company, the parent establishment.
Official life has had little attraction for Mr. Jewell, and his tastes have led him to remain in the ranks of the private citizens of the state. Banking and business corpora- tions have sought the benefit of his knowledge of affairs and long experience. He is a director in the Hartford National Bank, the Travelers' Insurance Company, and the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company, and is a trustee of the Hartford Trust Company. Outside of these, his activities are centered in the companies of which he is a stockholder. Taking
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a zealous interest in all that pertains to the welfare and advancement of the city of his adoption, he is one of the vice-presidents of the Hartford Board of Trade and is a member of thic Hartford Club.
Practically the whole of Mr. Jewell's life lias been spent in connection with the leatlier business, and with all its detalls lie is intelligently familiar. Such intimate knowledge of the processes of manufacture and such a grasp upon all the forces of the business world, lave naturally carried material success in their train. Althoughi having reached the Biblical limit of three-score and ten, he is still in perfect health, and quite as active in the business as lie cver has been, continuing in the command and general direction of every depart- ment, ably assisted by his two brothers, and his energetic and efficient secretary, Mr. Charles E. Newton. He gives more particular attention to the manufacturing department, which he has kept well in hand up to the present time, and proposes to as long as his strength and health hold out.
In political life Mr. Jewell is a Republican of the stalwart kind, having been one of the original organizers of the party in this state. Though accepting no preferment at the the hands of his party associates, he has been a member since the days of Fremont and Lincoln. His religious connections are with the Pearl Street Congregational Church and Society, and his gifts are liberal for the support of public worship.
Pliny Jewell was married Sept. 5, 1845, to Caroline Amelia, daughter of William and Matilda Bradbury of Manchester, England. Their two children are Edward, born Jan. 26, 1847, now a prominent leather dealer in Boston, and Emily Maria, now the wife of Mr. Walter Sanford, the artist, of Hartford
LLEN, JEREMIAH MERVIN, of Hartford, president of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company.
Till quite recently, young Americans, conscious of ability and eager for a career, were largely attracted to the "learned " professions. Graduates from the academy and from college, when confronted with the necessity of choosing a vocation, felt almost confined to the pulpit, the bar, medicine, and teaching. Within half a century the marvellous progress of science, with the countless applications of its discoveries to practical affairs, has given a new trend to ambition, by opening fresh and illimitable fields to human effort. While the ancient highways, worn by the monotonous tread of generations, are still thronged with dusty travellers, pursuits variously combining science with business now attract with growing force keen and adventurous minds. On one line of this manifold and wonderful development the subject of this sketch has been both pioneer and creator, having built up an institution that has brought ample returns to the holders of its shares, while reaching with its beneficence every part of the country and beyond.
From Samuel Allen, the emigrant ancestor who settled in Cambridge, Mass., in 1632, Jeremiah M. Allen was the seventh in descent, and comes of sturdy Puritan stock. General Ethan Allen was a descendant of Samuel. The family intermarried with the branch of the Adams family that gave Samuel and John to the Revolution. A taste for science and mechanics seems for a long period to have been transmitted from father to son. One was an astronomer at a time when the appearance of "Allen's New England Almanac" was welcomed as a notable event of the year. Another was one of the earliest in this country to engage in the manufacture of telescopes and microscopes. Others were contractors and builders.
The Calling
: Pobe w La Everett. Mass.
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OF CONNECTICUT, 1861-1894.
J. M. Allen, son of Jeremiah V. and Emily (Pease) Allen, was born at Enfield, Conn., May 18, 1833. He was educated at the academy in Westfield, Mass., with the view of becoming a civil engineer. Subsequently he taught for four years, diligently improving leisure moments in reading and study. In 1865, he was inade the general agent and adjuster of the Merchants' Insurance Company of Hartford, and later he accepted a similar position in the Security Fire Insurance Company of New York City. In both places he labored with characteristic fidelity, and with a success that attracted the attention of insurance circles. Meanwhile the life-work for which Mr. Allen had been studiously but unconsciously preparing, fell to him unsought. How the conception of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company took form, and how it grew from weakness to strength, are concisely told in the descriptive and historical volume, " Hartford in 1889," written by P. H. Woodward.
In the year 1857, a coterie of young men iu Hartford, drawn together by similarity of tastes, organized the "Polytechnic Club " with the view, primarily, of investigating and discussing questions of science in relation to the utilities of practical life. Among the members were Elisha K. Root, who succeeded Colonel Colt in the presidency of the armory, Francis A. Pratt, Amos W. Whitney, E. M. Reed, Professor C. B. Richards of Yale, Charles F. Howard, Joseph Blanchard, J. M. Allen, and others. Although few in number, they have, on different lines of effort, made a marked impression on the events of the period. About this time Professor Tyndall threw out the suggestion incidentally in one of his lectures that the spheroidal condition of water on the fire-plates of boilers might be the cause of disastrous explosions. The hint, for it was scarcely inore, became the text of frequent talks regarding the cause of such explosions and the best methods of prevention. Meauwhile, Mr. Reed, on returning from a European trip, brought home the results of late experiments conducted under the direction of Sir William Fairbairn. It also became known that the Manchester Steain Users' Association had already been organized in England with the view of preventing boiler explosions by periodical inspection. Under the system as started there, the manufacturer paid a certain sum annually for the examination, receiving in return either a certificate of the safe condition of his boiler, or a report condemning it, but the certificate, like those in some places since issued by direct appointees of the state, involved no pecuniary obligatiou whatever, aud if disaster occurred, the paper, while relieving the holder from the charge of carelessness, entitled him to no indemnity.
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