USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Historical review of Chicago and Cook county and selected biography, Volume III > Part 10
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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
On September 1, 1864, Judge Field was united in marriage with Miss Mary Jackman, of Sycamore, Illinois, and their four children are as follows : Charles E., general claim agent of the Chicago, In- dianapolis & Louisville Railway Company; Cora Belle, now Mrs. G.
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V. Crosby, of Chicago; Robert L., a graduate of the Bethel Military School, of Virginia, and commissioned captain by the governor of the state ; and Bernice Ray Field. The Judge has always been an earnest Republican and while a resident of Indiana attained to a position of national influer.ce, serving in 1888 as a delegate from the tenth con- gressional district to the national convention held in Chicago. Since coming to this city his broad and pressing railway duties have barred him from continuous participation in politics, although in 1904 he served ?s a presidential elector from Illinois. In view of his family genealogy, he enjoys membership in the Illinois Society of the Sons of New York, and upon the organization of the Indiana Society of Chic' go was elected its first vice president, in which office he is still prominent in its affairs. As he resides at No. 542 West Sixty-first street he is also identified with the Englewood Men's Club.
In the management of the street railways of a large city is re- quired a specially clear-headed order of ability, one which is active,
THOMAS E. penetrating and far-seeing; for the rapid extension of these transportation systems must be prosecuted
MITTEN.
without interruption to the seething torrents of travel which continually pour through the city's thoroughfares. Through long experience and natural aptitude, these problems have been well solved by Thomas Eugene Mitten. now president of the Chi- cago City Railways Company.
Mr. Mitten is an energetic, level-headed Englishman, born in Sus- sex, in the year 1865. As he came to the United States in 1880, he simply brought with him the national constitution and temperament ; everything else. his mature training, the practical education which has determined his mode of advance and his station in the business world -all of this has been of the western American type. At the age of nineteen he began his railroad career as a telegraphic operator for the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad, and later filled the positions. successively, of agent, train dispatcher. trainmaster and adjuster of claims for the same corporation. Mr. Mitten was appointed general superintendent of the Denver. Lakewood & Golden Railroad Company. and also entered the field of street railway management in Milwaukee. He located in the Cream City as general manager of the Milwaukee Street Railroad Company, and held that position until 1901, when he became general superintendent of the International Railway Com-
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pany of Buffalo, New York. In December, 1901, he was promoted to the position of general manager of the same, and continued to be thus engaged for about four years. In 1905 he was elected first vice presi- dent of the Chicago City Railway Company and came to this city to live, discharging the duties of the office so acceptably to the manage- ment that he was elevated to the presidency.
Dwight Foster Cameron is one of the best known lawyers identi- fied with the management of railroads in Chicago. He was born in
DWIGHT F.
Stockbridge, Madison county, New York, on the
CAMERON. 28th of July, 1834, son of John and Isabella ( Min-
zie) Cameron. Until he was sixteen years of age he remained on his father's farm in Madison county, near the village of Peterboro, his schooling having thus far been limited to instruction in the district school during the winter terms. From this time, for four years, he was enabled to obtain a more systematic mental training as a pupil in the Peterboro academy. During this period the youth not only studied hard but paid his own expenses, teaching in the winter months for this purpose.
When he was twenty years of age Dwight F. Cameron left his schooling and his home and started for the west as the pioneer of the family, all the members of which followed him eventually. Locating in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1854, he first entered a bank as a clerk, but after a few months in that capacity connected himself with the law office of Glover and Cook as a student. Although he began to practice before the justices when he had been in the office but a month, lie was not regularly admitted to the Illinois bar until 1856. His assur- ance based upon pronounced ability brought him success from the first, and during the fourteen years of his residence at Ottawa he earned a substantial reputation throughout the state as a lawyer identified with railroad management and promotion. From 1864 to 1870 lie served as attorney and director of the Ottawa, Oswego & Fox River Valley Railroad, participating in the promotion and the building of its lines. During this period he transacted virtually all the legal business of the company, and as its condemnation suits were under a constitutional provision new at that time, they presented many difficult and delicate problems.
Mr. Cameron located in Chicago in 1870, and for the following twenty-one years he was engaged in various broad enterprises, in
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which his thorough legal training made him an invaluable managerial factor. In 1891. in connection with the late Columbus R. Cummings, he built the South Chicago City Railway, and thereafter developed the Hammond. Whiting & East Chicago Electric Railway.
In 1858 Mr. Cameron was united in marriage with Miss Fanny E. Norris, daughter of George H. Norris, a well known banker of Ottawa, Illinois. She died in August, 1903. Three children were born to them, their eldest, George H. Cameron, being now captain in the Fourth United States Cavalry, stationed at Fort Riley as assistant commander, in charge of the school of cavalry located at that post. As a cadet from Illinois, he entered the West Point Military Academy July 1, 1879, under competitive examination ; was appointed second lieutenant in the Seventh Cavalry June 13, 1883 ; became first lieuten- ant of the Fourth Cavalry March 9, 1891 ; promoted captain in the same command March 2. 1899, and was brevetted adjutant of his regi- ment August 16, 1900. The two other children of Mr. and Mrs. D. F. Cameron are Mary Gertrude, wife of Williston Fish, a lawyer connected with the Chicago Union Traction Company, and Rev. Dwight F. Cameron, Jr., an Episcopalian minister of New York city. On August 12. 1907, Mr. Cameron was married to Elizabeth F. Colvin, daughter of ex-Mayor Colvin, deceased. In politics. Mr. Cam- eron is a Republican.
John Millard Roach. president and general manager of the Chicago Consolidated Traction and the Chicago Railways Company, is one of
JOHN M. the successful and practical street railway men of
ROACH. Chicago who is "doing things" in the solution of the great transportation problem, instead of talking about them. From a conductor to the head of a system which em- braces more than five hundred miles of city and suburban tracks, all within thirty-five years, implies an advancement at the expense of ceaseless labor and an executive and initiatory ability of the highest order.
The original Roach stock was Scotch-Irish, and Virginia was the first of the American commonwealths to be chosen as a home by the emigrating ancestors of the family. From the Old Dominion the family migrated to Jackson county, Ohio, where John M. Roach was born January 30, 1852. His parents were John M. and Sarah ( Mac- kay) Roach, and in 1863 left their Ohio home with their family and
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located in DeKalb county, Illinois. The elder Roach had long been a thrifty merchant and wool grower in the Buckeye state, and quite a colony of neighbors settled with him in his new Illinois home. There he passed his remaining years, but his wife, the mother of John M., still survives him and resides at Belvidere, Illinois.
When fifteen years of age John M. Roach returned to Ohio and entered the college at Beverly, where he spent two years, after which he started for the west and located at Helena, Montana, where he was engaged for a time as a newspaper reporter. Then he advanced (on horseback ) to Walla Walla, Washington ; Portland, Oregon, and down the Pacific coast to Los Angeles; from this point he turned eastward and rode to Salt Lake City, and, still unsatisfied with the outlook. made for Chicago.
Mr. Roach's coming to this city dates from 1872-the commence- ment of a reformatory period succeeding the ravages of the fire in which originated the careers of many of the strongest Chicago men of present middle age. The young man took the first living position which offered, that of a horse-car conductor, but six months of this lowly occupation brought him advancement to a cashiership with the company-the North Chicago Street Railway. In 1879 he attained the dignity of a purchasing agent, became assistant superintendent in 1887, and superintendent in 1890. Three years later the management promoted him to the position of second vice president and general manager of the company. In 1897 he was elected vice president and general manager of the West Chicago Street Railway Company, and the same year president of the Cicero & Proviso Street Railway Com- pany. In 1899 Mr. Roach was chosen to the vice presidency of the Chicago Union Traction Company, and in 1901, with the consolida- tion of the north and west side lines, to the position of president and manager of the Chicago Consolidated Traction Company. So that outside of the elevated roads, Mr. Roach now is the most powerful leader of local transportation in Chicago.
On July 4, 1872, Mr. Roach married Miss Kate E. Lyon, of Rock- ford, Illinois, and they have one child, Frederick Lyon Roach. The elegant family residence is at Elmhurst, Illinois. Mr. Roach is widely identified with the club life of Chicago and vicinity, as is evidenced by his membership in the following organizations : Union League, New
Vol. III-7.
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Illinois Athletic, Union, Marquette. Illinois, Chicago Country and Exmoor Country clubs.
George Weston, a leading civil engineer and special expert in the construction and valuation of street railway lines, is a native of Kala-
GEORGE
mazoo, Michigan, born on the 30th of January, 1861.
WESTON. He is a son of John and Katherine (Clark) Wes-
ton, the family being of English descent, although branches of it have long been established in the United States. His father came to the United States in 1854, first settling in New York and two years afterward in Michigan, where for years he was a build- ing contractor. George Weston received his early education in the Kalamazoo schools. After leaving the city high school he pursued spe- cial courses of a technical nature and in 1880, when nineteen years of age, he joined the engineering corps of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad Company, serving as rodman in the construction of the work south from Fort Worth, Texas. In 1882-5 he engaged in mer- cantile pursuits and then went with the engineering corps of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad Company. He was advanced suc- cessively to instrument man and assistant engineer in charge of con- struction, and remained in that company's employ until the spring of 1887, when he resigned his position in order to enter the employ of Charles T. Yerkes in Chicago.
At the time Mr. Weston became a resident of this city the north side cable lines were in course of construction, and he was placed in charge of the building of the Clybourn avenue, Milwaukee avenue, Blue Island avenue and Halsted street lines of the north and north- west sides. He also rebuilt about seventy-five miles of horse car lines on the west side converting them into electric systems. In July, 1896, he resigned his position under Mr. Yerkes and became manager of the construction department of Naugle. Holcomb & Company. In this capacity he superintended the building of the lines of the Sub- urban Railroad Company of Chicago, as well as the changing from steam to electrical power of the Chicago Terminal Transfer Company, and, in outside territory, the construction of the Tennessee Central Railway. In 1901. Mr. Weston formed a partnership with his brother, Charles V. Weston. They conducted a flourishing business as consult- ing and constructing engineers until March, 1903, when the latter was appointed chief engineer of the South Side Elevated Company.
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The partnership was dissolved but both continued to follow the chosen profession.
Under the commission appointed by the city of Chicago, in 1906, to place a value upon the tangible and intangible properties of the Chicago City Railway Company and the Chicago Union Traction Company, the separate departments of the work were placed in charge of engineers especially experienced in the several lines, each of whom was supplied with a corps of competent assistants. The entire or- ganization of office and field forces was under the personal direction of George Weston, who for the preceding twenty years had been identi- fied with the transportation problem in Chicago.
In 1907, he was appointed by the Wisconsin Railroad Commis- sion as a member of its valuation staff to appraise the properties of the Milwaukee Street Railway and Light Company. In the perform- ance of similar duties, both in Chicago and Milwaukee, he demon- strated his right to be classed as one of the foremost experts in the country in the appraisal of street railway properties.
In May, 1907, Mr. Weston was appointed "Assistant Chief Engi- neer of the Work" under the Board of Supervising Engineers, Chi- cago Traction, and in January, 1908, was appointed a member of the Board of Supervising Engineers, Chicago Traction, to represent the city of Chicago.
In January, 1903, Mr. Weston was united in marriage to Miss Georgina E. Becker, of Dubuque, Iowa. Mr. Weston's professional membership is with the American Society of Civil Engineers, Western Society of Engineers, Chicago Engineers Club and the Engineers Club of New York City. Socially, he is identified with the Exmoor Country Club and the Chicago Athletic Association.
An unusual combination of legal and executive talents has enabled Mason Brayman Starring to rise from the position of clerk to the vice-presidency of the Chicago City Railway Com-
MASON B.
STARRING. pany and later to the presidency of the Northwest- ern Elevated Railway system, of Chicago; and this remarkable advancement has all been accomplished within a period of twenty years. A long line of sturdy American ancestors who have participated in the upbuilding of the nation since its inception, combined with his own ambition and concentration, have contributed
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to his success. The circumstances of his birth and rearing in Chicago may also have had their promotional influences upon his career.
Born in Chicago, May 8. 1859. the son of Henry J. D. and Alida M. (Tower) Starring. Mason B. Starring traces his historic ancestry to Holland and later to heroes of the American Revolution. Being thus endowed with sturdy, fighting blood, obstacles have had no ter- rors for him, but only stimulated him to persistent activity. He passed with credit through the Chicago public and high (the old Central) schools. and at the age of eighteen entered the baggage department of the Chicago. Burlington & Quincy Railway. His father had long been at the head of that department, and had not only been a faithful officer, but one who had demonstrated his originality by inventing the system of checking baggage which was first adopted by the great system with which he was connected and has subse- quently extended to the railways of the United States. At the age of twenty years the younger Starring became a general officer of the company, being made head of the baggage department to succeed his father: this was probably an unheard of honor for one of his age. Until 1885 he continued in the employ of the steam railways, part of the time being general baggage agent of the Pennsylvania Com- pany. From 1885 to 1888 he engaged in business for himself, settling in Iowa as a banker and grain dealer.
Mr. Starring has been a resident of Chicago since 1888, when he entered the office of the Chicago City Railway Company as a clerk. It is said that the ultimate ambitions of a young man are well indi- cated by the way in which he spends his nights, and as Mr. Starring passed them in digging among ponderous law books, it may be readily surmised that his mind was above the desk of a mere railway clerk. In due time he was adınitted to the bar. and in 1894 was made assist- ant general counsel of the Chicago City Railway under Julius S. Grinnell, and at the death of his superior in 1898 was made acting general counsel. In 1903 his title was changed to general solicitor, he was elected a director and general manager of the company in- May, 1903. and in February, 1906, was promoted to the vice-presi- dency. By this time Mr. Starring was generally recognized as one of the greatest figures connected with the all-important traction inter- ests of Chicago, and therefore could not but perceive that the elevated systems were destined to be the field of the most extensive future
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development. None was making more rapid advances into unoccu- pied territory, or. promised better service, than the Northwestern Elevated, and when the presidency of that system was therefore offered to him, in March, 1907. he accepted its responsibilities, with the present prospect of materially extending a reputation which, in the field of city transportation, is already national in its scope.
Mr. Starring's wife, to whom he was united in marriage October 27. 1886, was Miss Helen Swing, daughter of the late Professor David Swing, one of the greatest liberal and independent preachers which America has produced. They have had two children: David Swing and Mason B. Starring, Jr. The elder son, who is a namesake of his famous grandfather, is a student at Harvard. The family residence is at 568 East Division street, in the winter, and at Lake Geneva in the summer. Mr. Starring is a member of the Chicago, Calumet, Industrial and Lake Geneva Country Clubs, and is a mem- ber of the board of governors of the South Shore Country Club. He is also a member of the executive committee of the Chicago Commer- cial Association, and a member of the board of managers of the Sons of the American Revolution.
The remarkable development of the industries of the United States is in nothing more evident than in the fact that in some of
their most important branches the founders thereof
NATHANIEL S. BOUTON. are still alive. The phenomenal expansion of the railroad interests of the country has stimulated all the manufactures relating to structural work and equipment. Not- withstanding these preparatory statements, it will scarcely be credited by many that the first manufacturer of car wheels in the United States is living in Chicago today in the person of Nathaniel Sherman Bouton, and that for several years in the late fifties the firm of which he was a member built nearly all the railroad bridges constructed in the west. Mr. Bouton is not only the pioneer car wheel manufac- turer, but one of the fathers of the industry known as structural iron work in the United States.
Born in Concord, New Hampshire, on the 14th of May, 1828, Mr. Bouton is rapidly nearing his eightieth birthday, and, although he has been retired from active life for some years, still remains in touch with the industries which he did so much to establish. Mr. Bouton's parents were Rev. Nathaniel and Harriet (Sherman) Bou-
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ton, the paternal branch of the family being of French-Huguenot descent. The American ancestor was John Bouton, who emigrated from England to the United States in 1635. The mother of Na- thaniel S. Bouton was granddaughter of Roger Sherman, the cele- brated statesman and philanthropist. The father, Dr. Bouton, was a profound scholar and a learned historian, as well as an eminent Con- gregationalist. and preached for forty-two years in Concord, New Hampshire.
When he was fourteen years of age Nathaniel S. Bouton went to work upon a farm in Connecticut, upon which he remained until he was sixteen. when he taught school for a short time in the same state. His first prospecting tour through the west was taken in 1846, and upon his return to New Hampshire he entered the employ of E. & T. Fairbanks & Company, scale manufacturers, and in their interest trav- eled on horseback and by stage through Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana. Michigan and Illinois. During the six years thus spent he acquired a thorough familiarity with the conditions and resources of the western country, and finally decided to locate in Chicago, obvi- ously destined to be the center of a prodigious territorial development.
Mr. Bouton located in this city in 1852, first becoming connected with George W. Sizer & Company, who already had extensive foun- dries in Cleveland and Cincinnati and were about to organize one in Chicago. Mr. Bouton was placed in charge of their business in this city, and later became a partner in the firm. The foundry which he established on Clark street near Fifteenth was chiefly engaged in the manufacture of car wheels and castings for the rolling stock which was being placed on the various railroads pushing out of Chicago into the surrounding territory. They also furnished all the castings and wheels required for the Union Car Works of Messrs. Stone & Boomer, car and bridge builders. When the plant of the latter firm was burned in September, 1855, Mr. Bouton purchased for them the works of the American Bridge Company, and shortly afterward became a member of the firm, whose name was changed to Stone, Boomer & Bouton. The manufactory became known as the Union Car and Bridge Works, which were sold in 1857 to the Illinois Cen- tral Railway Company. During the busy two years of Mr. Bouton's connection with the enterprise the works turned out nearly all the railway bridges built in the west, including the first one thrown
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across the Mississippi river at Rock Island. In that year he associated himself with Christopher B. Bouton and Edwin F. Hurlbut to form the firm of N. S. Bouton & Company, and after nine years of suc- cessful business the concern was incorporated (in 1871) as the Union Foundry Works, with N. S. Bouton as president, Mr. Hurlbut as vice-president and superintendent, and Christopher B. Bouton as sec- retary and treasurer. The structural iron work of many of the prominent buildings of Chicago and the west was produced by this well known establishment. In 1881 the premises were acquired for right of way by the Western Indiana Railway Company, and a new company was organized under the name of the Union Foundry and Pullman Car Wheel Works and located at Pullman, Mr. Bouton being chosen president of the enterprise. The new plant covered eleven acres of ground, and, besides being a general foundry and ma- chine shop, manufactured car wheels and castings for the Pullman Car Company. In 1886 Mr. Bouton disposed of his interests in the Pullman Palace Car Company, and established the Bouton Foundry Company in Chicago, from the active operations of which he gradu- ally retired, leaving the business eventually in the hands of several of the younger men who had been his associates and employes.
Mr. Bouton's participation in public affairs has been both active and permanently useful. In 1857 Mayor John Wentworth appointed him superintendent of public works, and during his administration the first street paving was done and the present city grade established. In 1862 he became quartermaster of the Eighty-eighth Illinois In- fantry, but served as staff officer, A. A. Q. M., until the battle of Chickamauga, when the pressure of private business compelled him to resign. Mr. Bouton was one of the twelve original members of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, having not only its widely ex- tended charitable work in charge, but was the special dispenser of the great fund of $100,000 raised for the relief of sufferers of the fire of 1871. For five years the work which he performed in this connec- tion was hard and continuous, the bearing of this additional burden seriously affecting his health. But he had the eventual satisfaction of knowing that the fund had been honestly distributed.
Mr. Bouton has always been active in religious work. He was an elder of the Olivet Presbyterian church at one time, afterward united with the Second, and was finally prominent in the organization
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of the Kenwood Evangelical church, which ignores sectarianism alto- gether. He was the first president of the Chicago Bible Society, and devoted much time to its work.
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