USA > Connecticut > Representative men of Connecticut, 1861-1894 > Part 70
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 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72
It was but natural that his fellow-citizens should desire to have him serve them in an official capacity. In 1872, Mr. Lines was elected to the lower branch of the state legislature, and for the years 1878-79, he was a member of the Senate. While in the Senate, he
440
REPRESENTATIVE MEN
served as chairman of the committee on citics and boroughs, and also of the committee on contested elections, doing faithful and satisfactory work in each instance. Such is his popu- larity in Middletown that he was placed in the mayor's chair for three consecutive years, liis term of office covering 1877-78-79. Hc was elected as a Republican, being the first mayor chosen inder strict party alignments. The Council was a tie the first year, but it contained a good Republican majority the two last years. During Mr. Lines's administra- tion, a complete revision of the city charter was made, and also a thoroughi reformation in regard to the running of the city by departments, and the system of keeping accounts introduced by him has been continued by the city officials ever since. It was the first year the city had ever been managed within its income, and at the same time the debt was slightly reduced. For his last year, he received two-thirds of all the votes cast, and was unanimously nominated for a fourth term, but he positively declined to accept the office longer. His administration of the office was one of the most successful in the line of excel- lent mayors which Middletown has possessed. In 1888, Mr. Lines was the Republican candidate for Congress from his district, but it was not a good year for candidates of that party. He was beaten by between seven and eight hundred votes, while Grover Cleveland received a majority of about twenty-five hundred, and the Democratic nominee for governor had thirty-two hundred.
In all that pertains to the welfare of his adopted city, Mr. Lines has always taken a zealous interest. Every plan for advancing the material development of the city finds in him a ready helper, and to many of the important improvements of the past he has contributed valuable assistance. The influence of the work hie accomplished while in the mayor's chair is still felt at the city hall, and he unconsciously set a standard which later officials have simply striven to equal. Having but recently passed the half-century mark, Mr. Lines is now in the very prime of his matured powers, and there are yet higher honors awaiting his acceptance in the future.
H. Wales Lines was married in June, 1861, to Sarah C., daughter of Rev. Washington Munger, Baptist minister of Waterford, Conn. Four daughters were the result of this union, of whom all are now living and married.
UBBARD, LEVERETT MARSDEN, of Wallingford, attorney-at-law, and ex- secretary of state, was born at Durham, Conn., April 23, 1849. His grandfather, Eber Hubbard, moved from Massachusetts, when a young inan, to Martins- burg, Lewis County, N. Y., and, in 1843, he transferred his residence to Alexandria Bay, where he made his home until his death. Rev. Eli Hubbard, father of Leverett M., was a distinguished pulpit orator, and for many years before his death, in 1868, had been a clergyinan of note in Mississippi. He married a daughter of Mr. L. W. Leach, a prominent merchant and honored citizen of Durham. She was the only sister of Hon. L. M. Leach and Hon. Oscar Leach, both of whom are recognized as among the most substantial and influential men of Middlesex County.
Mr. Hubbard was prepared for college at Wilbraham Academy, and entered Wesleyan University, but did not graduate. After leaving college, lie decided to enter the legal profes- sion, and at once began the study of law at the Albany Law School, from which he was graduated in 1870. In August of the same year he located at Wallingford, and soon became marked by the bar of the county, as well as the community at large, as a young man of fine
44I
OF CONNECTICUT, 1861-1894.
spirit and rare intellectual endowments. From that time he has steadily grown in the confi- dence and esteem of the people, until 110w no lawyer of his age in New Haven County has more remunerative practice or is more widely known and thoroughly respected. From the beginning of his practice he has maintained an office connection in New Haven. To supple- ment the work of the law school he pursued his studies a year with the late Charles Ives. From 1874 to 1877 he was a law partner of Morris F. Tyler, and since that time he has been associated with John W. Alling, one of the leading lawyers in the state.
In the course of his practice, Mr. Hubbard has been connected with several notable criminal cases. He was the original counsel of Rev. H. H. Hayden, who was accused of the murder of Mary Stannard ; the trial lasted four months, and all the jury save one were understood to be in favor of acquittal. With the state's attorney, he assisted in securing the conviction of John Anderson, charged with killing Horatio G. Hall. The case was carried first to the Superior Court and finally to the Supreme Court, where a sentence of imprisonment for life was pronounced. He was the counsel for the state in the case of State vs. Frank Carroll, arraigned for the murder of Michael Ealy. Gradually he has secured a large corporation practice, and is attorney for all the immense manufacturing establish- ments in Wallingford.
Mr. Hubbard was appointed postmaster of his town by President Grant in 1872, an office he held by successive appointments until the inauguration of President Cleveland in 1885, when he resigned with an unexpired commission for three years. His administration of the office was marked by great fidelity, and an exceptionally intelligent conception of the requirements of the position which naturally secured for him the universal appreciation of the patrons. Upon his retirement he was tendered a complimentary banquet by citizens of both political parties, an affair which was widely remarked at the time for its elaborateness and the enthusiasm with which it was attended.
Mr. Hubbard has been borough attorney for Wallingford since 1870, and counsel for the town during most of the same period. He has been a director in the First National Bank since its organization in 1881. On the death of Mr. Samuel Simpson in the spring of 1894, who had been at the head of the Dime Savings Bank from its foundation twenty-five years ago, he was elected to the presidency. As he had controlled the management of the bank for some months during Mr. Simpson's illness, and had been a director for ten years, he was in every way qualified for the position. Since 1881, he has been a trustee of the Wesleyan Academy, Wilbraham, Mass., and served as a member of the committee on finances. Upon the establishment of a borough court for Wallingford by the legislature of 1886, he accepted the position of first judge, and is still discharging the duties of that office to the eminent satisfaction of the community.
At the Republican State Convention, in 1886, Mr. Hubbard was unanimously nominated as the candidate for secretary of state on the ticket with Gov. P. C. Lounsbury. He had the honor of receiving the largest vote of any one of his associates, running ahead of his ticket five hundred votes, and changing a normal Democratic majority of one hundred and seventy- five in Wallingford to a majority of fifty for himself. It is not too much to say that in dignity, ability and enterprise, Mr. Hubbard's administration as secretary has rarely been equalled and never excelled in the history of the state. Among the many noteworthy services he rendered while in that office, for which he was universally esteemed, was his preparation and publication of the most comprehensive and elaborate " Register and Manual of the State of Connecticut " ever issued. It has been the model upon which all subsequent editions have been fashioned, and is highly valued for its accuracy and variety, and easily ranks among the
442
REPRESENTATIVE MEN
most complete books of its kind ever compiled. Another feature deserving of mention was that through his special efforts the matter was arranged and the work brought ont immediately after thic close of the legislative session.
Though he has invariably declined to allow his name to be used, he has been inentioned as a candidate for Congress from his district on several occasions. Hc was a delegate-at- large to the Republican National Convention which nominated President Harrison.
In religious belief he is a Methodist, but he attends the Congregational church and takes part in the management, giving freely of his time and money. Mr. Hubbard is esteemed throughout the community, of which he foris an important part, as an honorable and upright citizen, and he possesses great popularity among all classes and in both political parties.
Mr. Hubbard was married May 21, 1873, to Florence G., daughter of Wooster Ives, a lineal descendant of Governor Wolcott and Jolin Davenport, the first minister to New Haven. Four children have been born to them, all of whom are living : Georgiana, Samuel Wolcott, Leverett Marsden, Jr., and Kenneth Davenport.
UCK, EDWIN A., of Willimantic, merchant and ex-state treasurer, was born in Ashford, Conn., Feb. 11, 1832. After passing through the common schools of his native town, one term at the Ashford Academy completed his education. He commenced teaching at cighteen, and for six years following he continued the occupation of teacher in the winter and of working on the farm during the summer months. In 1856, Mr. Buck really began the business of his life. At that time he engaged in the sale of sawed lumber, and this soon grew into an extensive trade, his specialties being car timber, plough handles and bcams, and also chestnut finishing lumber, large quanti- ties of which were shipped to New York. Several water-power saw-mills and a small regiment of men were cinployed in supplying material. Just after the close of the war he purchased at bankrupt sale the property of the Westford Glass Company, and associating with him Capt. John S. Dean and Charles L. Dean, both residents of Ashford, he commenced the manufacture of glass under the firm name of E. A. Buck & Co. This firin made a valuable addition to the business interests of the town, as it gave employment in various capacities to about one hundred and fifty men. The business was managed so successfully that it became necessary to establish houses botlı in New York and Boston, not only for the sale of the firm's goods, but other lines of goods not manufactured by them. As his lumber interests required his close attention, in 1874 Mr. Buck sold out the glass business.
He was one of the original incorporators of the Stafford Savings Bank and was elected president of that institution, and for several years lie was a director in the Stafford National Bank. Becoming interested in real estate in Willimantic, he resigned his offices in the Stafford banks in the autumn of 1875, and removed to that town, where he has since made his home. Two years later, Mr. Buck formed a partnership with Allen Lincoln of Willi- mantic and E. M. Durfee of Asliford, for the purpose of carrying on the grain business, and soon after he bought out Crawford & Bauford, hardware dealers at Stafford Springs, and located his eldest son at that place to look out for his interests. This business is still carried on in the same firm name of E. A. Buck & Company, and besides this he has two other firms of E. A. Buck & Company, one in oil and the other in hardware at Paliner, Mass. In addition to the Willimantic firm of E. A. Buck & Company, dealers in hard wood lumber, of which firm Colonel Marvin Knowlton is a member, he is also the head of the firm of E. A. Buck & Co., wholesale and retail dealers in flour and grain, his son, W. A. Buck, being the junior partner.
443
OF CONNECTICUT, 1861-1894.
Financial matters have always occupied a share of Mr. Buck's attention, and his opinions have ever been valued by contemporaries. In 1885, he was elected a director and the following year president of the Willimantic Savings Institute, and held the position for two years. During this time the bank passed through a very critical period of its history, caused by the irregularities of its treasurer, but he finally placed it on a sound financial basis.
It is but natural that men of Mr. Buck's stamp should be sought after to accept official station at the hands of their fellow-citizens, but he commenced his office-holding functions at an exceptionally early age. When he had barely attained his majority, he was elected con- stable of his native town, and in 1856, in his twenty-fifth year, he was elected by the Republican party a member of the state legislature, being the youngest member of the House. Four years later he was again elected to the legislature by a coalition of the Republican and Union Democrats by a very handsome majority.
He was also appointed by the town to fill its quota of soldiers, and was a firm friend of the Union cause, furnishing money to pay for enlisted mnen which was afterwards repaid by the town. Mr. Buck has never lost his interest in the soldiers who fought for the preservation of the Union, and has assisted many of them in obtaining pensions from the government. In the closing year of the war he changed his political faith and joined his fortunes with the Democratic party, and the town, which had previously been Republican, was carried by the Democrats. The following year he was elected to the state legislature from Willimantic, and served on various important committees.
Mr. Buck has a firm hold on the affections of his fellow-citizens and has held nearly all the offices within their gift. He has been successively assessor, selectman, town clerk and judge of probate. In 1874, and again in 1875, he represented Willimantic in the lower branch of the legislature, and served both sessions on the judiciary committee. In the spring of the centennial year he was elected to the Senate, it being the last session in the old state house. His faithful committee work gained him an excellent reputation in the state capitol.
At the Democratic Convention in the fall of 1876, he was nominated as the party candi- date for state treasurer, and the nomination being ratified at the polls, he filled the office for two years. Mr. Buck was renominated for the same position in 1878, but shared the fate of the rest of the Democratic ticket. Political life always had an attraction for him, and the various official stations he has held show that his services and experience have found ready appreciation among his fellows. For many years he was a member of the town committee, and also of the state central committee of the Democratic party, and for two years was a member of the finance committee.
Honored at home and throughout the state, Mr. Buck can look back upon a career it would be hard to parallel. A thorough man of business and equally interested in the affairs of state, he occupies an enviable position in the community where he resides. Having just passed his three-score years, he is now in the very prime of his later manhood, with inany opportunities yet before him for benefitting his town and state and for active work in the political organization of which he forins a prominent part.
Edwin A. Buck was married in 1855, to Delia Lincoln of Ashford. Of the children born to them four are now living.
444
REPRESENTATIVE MEN
B ATTERSON, JAMES GOODWIN, of Hartford, is one of the most widely known citizens of Connecticut. Through the magnitude and variety of his business interests, thic zeal with which he applies himself to them, the scholarly uses to which his leisure is devoted, his public spirit, - the whole wide range of liis tireless activity, -he occupies a position of peculiar prominence.
He was born in Wintonbury, Conn., now Bloomfield, a few miles from Hartford, Feb. 23, 1823. Subsequently the family removed to New Preston, Litchfield County (the birthplace of the Rev. Dr. Horace Bushnell), and there he lived until he was sixteen years old, studying in the schools and academy of the neighborhood with the hope of entering college. But circumstances not being propitious he went to Ithaca, N. Y., as an appren- tice to the printing house of Mack, Andrus & Woodruff, mastering the printer's art and following up on his own account the hints to study that the business gave to a naturally active mind. After lie had served his time as a printer he returned to New Preston and the family then removed to Litchfield, a dozen miles away, where he went into business with his father, and subsequently entered the office of Judge Origen S. Seymour and read law. Lack of means, however, led him to give it up, and he once inore joined his father, Simeon S. Batterson, in the marble business. He held to this for five years in Litchfield, and then, seeking a larger opportunity, removed to Hartford, and this city has been his home ever since. His father also went to Hartford and they conducted together the inarble business there. Their work at first consisted largely of monuments and other cemetery work, but gradually developed into the construction of buildings, first at home and later all over the country. From its small beginning, he has developed this industry to one of very large importance, and has been interested in putting up many of the finest structures in the country.
In Hartford he made the plans for and built the old brown stone Pratt Street Savings Bank, taken down a few years ago, because outgrown, and built the brown stone State Savings Bank building on Pearl Street, the marble building on Main Street of the Phoenix National Bank, the granite and marble work of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company's building, corner of Pearl and Main Streets, and the famous marble capitol on Bushnell Park, besides various other works of importance. About 1860, after he had been in the business about fifteen years in Hartford, Mr. Batterson established his marble works in New York City, and from that has built up what is now the largest and best equipped establishment in that line in the United States. It is on Eleventh Avenue, and employs about five hundred men. His first New York contract was the Worth monument at the junction of Fifth Avenue and Broadway in 1857. Other work of his includes the stone and marble part of the Mutual Life building in New York, the granite and marble of the Equitable Life building, the Manhattan Bank building in Wall Street and many other banks, the marble work on the Waldorf and Imperial hotels in New York, Cornelius Vanderbilt's house in New York, W. K. Vanderbilt's inarble residence at Newport, R. I., the City Hall in Providence, R. I., and the granite and marble work of the great Library for Congress now going up in Washington.
His success in this work is a result not merely of his indomitable energy and push, but also of the application of intelligent study to the subject. Mr. Batterson is well up in geology as well as a dealer in stone, and liis attention to this branch of science was developed almost accidentally. New Preston, where he lived as a boy, is near Lake Waramaug and on the east side of the lake rises the pinnacle of Mt. Waramaug. One day J. G. Percival, the poet-geologist of Connecticut, came through that region and hired the
Massachusetts Publishing Co. Everett, Mass.
allemore
OF CONNECTICUT, 1861-1894. 445
boy Batterson to guide him to the top of the pinnacle. (Percival used to make trips all about the state in liis studies and made the first geological survey of the state.) As they went up the pinnacle he kept hammering the rocks and gathering specimens until the boy, who was ordered at such times to hold the horse, thought the stranger crazy and was on the point of surrendering his contract and running home. He mustered courage, however, to ask first what all this was for, and Percival finding the boy interested sat down and gave him his first lessons in geology, put with such clearness and enthusiasm that the young hearer was delighted and at once began to apply himself to the same study. He has become now an acknowledged authority in that line and his scientific attainment as well as his business progress inay be traced to the chance meeting with Percival and the trip up the pinnacle of Waramang.
Mr. Batterson lias traveled frequently and extensively abroad. His first trip was in 1858, when he was sent out by Col. Samuel Colt, Enoch Pratt and others, to settle the affairs and bring home the works of the promising Hartford sculptor, Bartholomew, whose untimely death at Rome had closed a most promising career. Bartholomew's works are now in the keeping of the Wadsworth Atheneum at Hartford. Mr. Batterson put up a monument for the sculptor close by Vergil's tomb, near Naples, where he was buried.
The winter of 1858-59, he spent in Egypt where he met Brunel, the great English engineer, and made a critical study of the ancient monuments in the valley of the Nile.
Again, in 1863, he went abroad and on this trip he noticed the system of railway passengers' assurance that was then beginning to prove itself a success in England. He consulted the actuaries, brought home the idea and organized the Travelers' Insurance Com- pany of Hartford. The scheme was first laughed at as visionary and then, when its success was apparent, was threatened with extinction through reckless and universal competition. Seventy rival companies were started within a few years, but all of them died and the Travelers absorbed the business. It was the first company of its kind in the country and is now not only the oldest but the largest and most famous in the world. A wise management, which includes the prompt payment of losses, has inade it known all over the civilized world wherever accidents happen. In 1866, the company added also a regular life insurance to its business and it is now one of the great life companies of the country. Mr. Batterson has been the president of the Travelers ever since it was established, and the founding of this company in the face of doubt and even ridicule, and making of it the great and famously successful institution that it is, will probably be reckoned his great- est work in life. At the time of this writing, July, 1894, the Travelers' Insurance Company has over $16,000,000 invested assets, and has paid over $25,000,000 in losses to policy-holders.
Speaking of the fact that the Travelers entered upon an untrodden field in the range of insurance, "Hartford in 1889" says :
For eight generations children have read with unabated interest of the pilgrimage of Hooker and his flock through the trackless forest, from Massachusetts Bay to the banks of the Connecticut, with only the compass and north star for guides. On starting into the wilderness the Travelers had the benefit of neither compass nor star. At home no one had gone before to cut a bush or blaze a tree, while the conditions underlying the casualty business in England differed so widely from those in America that the scanty generalizations formulated in tables by the pattern company proved treacherous and misleading. From the bottom stone in the foundation to the flag-staff on the tower, the officers constructed as they went, without aid from architectural designs or preformed plans, necessarily making many mistakes, and costly mistakes, too- tearing down, changing, rebuilding, adding here and discarding there -till from a chaos of materials grew the present solid, stately and enduring edifice, the despair of rivals and the delight of friends.
No kind of business, and especially no branch of insurance, can be carried on with safety till its laws have been generalized from a wide range of experience. In the case of the Travelers, it was necessary to get the experience and to deduce the governing principles simultaneously. The process of adjustment demanded frequent and radical changes in classifications and rates, introducing confusion into methods, annoying and
57
446
REPRESENTATIVE MEN
losing patrons, and exciting in faithful agents ebullitions of sore displeasure. The knife of the surgeon was in constant requisition. Meanwhile, the executive officers did not sleep on beds of roses, at least till the small hours of the morning, for midnight often found them at headquarters, toiling over the solution of ehangeful problems, or anxiously discussing what should be done next.
A sketch of Mr. Batterson in "An Illustrated Popular Biography of Connecticut," speaking of this portion of his life, says :
Mr. Batterson in 1863 had been on one of his various tours through Europe and the East, which have made him one of the best informed men of the generation on Oriental geography, history, politics and social life ; and returning from Italy, where he had given acute attention to marbles and architecture, passed through England, where the success of the Railway Passengers' Assurance Company, founded a few years before, had demonstrated that accident insurance was practicable-a fact much shadowed by the failures of previous petty attempts in England. Grasping at once the possibilities of the new business, and as a Hartford man feeling the instinctive local capacity for success in the insurance field, he induced a number of other capitalists and active business men to join with him in starting an accident company ; $250,000 was paid in as capital, and a charter obtained the same year for insuring against accidents of travel alone. But it was not till the next year, when the charter was amended to allow it to insure against accidents of all kinds, that much business was done. Very few but the promoters expected it to live any length of time, and when in a year or so it became evident that it was to be one of the great business successes of the age, this sudden growth and prosperity came near being more ruinous than its first difficulties ; for it inspired such a belief that the accident business was the sure road to wealth, that, in the "boom " which followed, a swarm of new companies were organized, and most of the great railroads ejected the Travelers and started accident organizations of their own. A new corporation, the Railway Passengers' Assurance Company, composed of representatives from all the leading accident companies, was formed in the winter of 1866 to consolidate the railway "ticket " business under one management ; a few years later every one of the others was dead, and the Travelers, as the sole legatee, turned the company into the ticket department of its own organization. Its superiority of brains, money, and incredibly hard work and economy, had enabled it to remain the solitary survivor. Meanwhile in 1866, it had added a regular life-insurance department, which in the last few years has taken sudden and enormous strides that have placed it among the foremost of New England companies.
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.