USA > Massachusetts > Biographical history of Massachussetts; biographies and autobiographies of the leading men in the state, 1911, vol 1 > Part 6
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At this same time a classmate of Dr. Dowse at Amherst - the class of 1836 was a large and distinguished one, ex-Governor Alex- ander H. Bullock, of Massachusetts and Roswell D. Hitchcock, of New York, and other eminent men were members - gave some interesting personal reminiscences of him at college, saying: "I remember that he had a good physical development, an average
EDMUND DOWSE
size, a fresh countenance, and a rather large head. He was quite studious and soon took high rank as a scholar. He was always genial and pleasant as a companion, and his deportment was such that I am sure he never got into any scrapes, or incurred the disci- pline of the Faculty. Mr. Dowse inherited a physical system re- markably well-balanced in all its parts. His body must have been sound and healthy in every organ so that, like a perfect machine, all its operations would work harmoniously, resulting, with care, in uniform good health. His brain is relatively large and equally well developed in every part, giving harmony and consistency of charac- ter. This furnishes the groundwork for strong, social and domestic affections as well as for energy and decision of character. This development of brain results also in such a manifestation of the observing and reflecting faculties as to give a nice sense of pro- priety, sound judgment and good common sense. Then, with such a brain, the moral and religious faculties are so developed and exercised as to give a decided, harmonious and consistent moral character. Let external religious influences of the right kind be brought to bear upon such an organization, always taking the lead, and we have a beautiful, consistent Christian character."
Again, on October 13, 1898, the sixtieth year was observed with equal or greater impressiveness. On that occasion one of the eulo- gists, Rev. Dr. F. E. Sturgis, said: "Dr. Dowse is the youngest octogenarian I ever knew; no spectacles, no ear trumpet, the hair of his youth, erect, vigorous in mind, his natural force hardly abated, still in the pulpit, still at the front of every good cause, still interested in all the affairs of the State and the Nation. In all our ministerial fellowship I scarcely know a man more companionable, more fresh in enthusiasm. Through cold and heat and flood and gale he goes regularly to his duties at the State House. His modern life is shown in his mastery of all present-day educational themes and methods. His religious catholicity is shown in his perpetual office of chaplaincy in the Senate, elected year after year, for his broad and brotherly spirit, for the brevity and appropriateness and beauty of his prayers.
"Instead of Dr. Dowse it should be Bishop Dowse, if not Arch- bishop Dowse, for he is the patriarch, the metropolitan of allour churches. On his shoulders has rested the care of so many of our parishes when they have been without pastors. No minister here-
EDMUND DOWSE
abouts is so often called upon for services outside his parish, in marriages, in funerals. He has served the living and the dead in all this section of the country for sixty years, going night and day, whenever and wherever requested, and without reward. He is the most widely known, the most beloved, the most universally honored minister in this part of the State. In how many of our homes and churches is his name a household word, spoken with children's reverence and remembered with tenderest gratitude. His character is an inheritance of faith, charity, righteousness in all this eastern Massachusetts. His life has ever been a manifestation of love, patience, graciousness, friendship."
Dr. Dowse continued to serve his parish devotedly to the end of his life, on April 27, 1905, and deep was the grief of his people of Sherborn and of his friends throughout the Commonwealth when they realized that the venerable pastor was no more. Dr. Dowse was at that time the oldest Congregational minister in New England and the oldest living graduate of Amherst College.
The honored family name has a conspicuous living representative in the only son of Dr. Dowse, William Bradford Homer Dowse, named for a classmate of his father, who has won reputation as a patent lawyer in Boston and New York and is the president of the great Reed & Barton Corporation of Taunton, Massachusetts. A surviving daughter of Dr. Dowse is Mrs. Deborah Perry Coolidge of Sherborn. Dr. Dowse was thrice married - to Miss Elizabeth Reeves Leland in 1838; some time after her death to Miss Elizabeth Bowditch in 1843; and after her death, in the anxious years of the Civil War, to Miss Caroline D. Davis in 1865. From the birth of the Republican party Dr. Dowse was an earnest believer in its princi- ples, and he rendered useful service in the struggle for the Union cause in the work of the Sanitary Commission in the South.
Jag. V. Sowas
WM. BRADFORD HOMER DOWSE
T O come of distinguished lineage and to add to that distinc- tion is to be doubly fortunate. A man thus circumstanced has the most substantial cause of pride and thankfulness. William Bradford Homer Dowse, eminent patent lawyer of Boston and New York, and president of the famous Reed & Barton Corpo- ration of Taunton, is the son of one of the most celebrated of Mas- sachusetts clergymen, Rev. Edmund Dowse, D.D., who lived to be ninety-two years old and yet was always accounted young; who served sixty-seven years as pastor of one church, the Pilgrim Church of Sherborn, and was for twenty-five years the chaplain of the Mas- sachusetts Senate.
Mr. Dowse, the younger, was born at his father's home in Sher- born, Massachusetts, February 29, 1852. His mother, Elizabeth (Bowditch) Dowse, daughter of Galen Bowditch, was a fit coworker in home and parish for her husband. Their son had the sound character and the physical sturdiness of an ancestry which, from the foundation of Boston, had borne an honorable part in the affairs of Massachusetts. Three of the boy's forefathers fought in the battle of Bunker Hill. The family had lived in Charlestown from 1630 to 1775. Their home was burned and their property destroyed when the British fired the town on that battle day of June 17, and they removed to Sherborn.
Here, in this fine, characteristic New England rural community, the son of the beloved minister had opportunities both for enjoy- ment and for profit that are denied to city lads. He was fond of out-door life, and he early developed a keen aptitude for mechanics. He could wield the carpenter's tools skilfully, and was exert in vari- ous kinds of metal work. One task or another kept him constantly employed, but such was his industry that they seemed not tasks, but pleasures. His early education he procured easily in the Sher- born schools, but when his own ambition and his father's wish led him to fit for college he had to walk six miles a day to attend a pre-
WILLIAM BRADFORD HOMER DOWSE
paratory school and, in addition, for several years rode twenty miles on the railroad back and forth from his father's home. From Allen's English and Classical School he entered Harvard University, winning the degree of A.B. in 1873, and of LL.B. in 1875. He was a quick and receptive scholar, and was particularly fond of autobiographies of distinguished men and of works on history, travel and explora- tion.
Mr. Dowse had no difficulty in choosing a profession. The law was his own preference and his strong tastes for the mechanical sciences drew him naturally enough into the important field of patent law, where he promptly achieved distinction. He began his active practice as a patent lawyer in 1876 in both Boston and New York City, and he followed this career assiduously from 1876 to 1898, with offices in New York and Boston. Other and even weigh- tier interests have attracted him. He is president of one of the world famed American manufacturing industries, the Reed & Barton Corporation of Taunton, Massachusetts, with large salesrooms in New York. This company has long had an enviable reputation for the beauty and finish of its designs of sterling silver and electro- plate, and is one of the American houses which have elevated manu- facturing to the dignity of a fine art.
Mr. Dowse is active and conspicuous also in other large business affairs. He is president of the United States Fastener Company, of Boston, the Consolidated Fastener Company, the Booth Manufactur- ing Company and other concerns. He has taken out a number of metal working patents of originality and merit. Not often does one man display so much versatility and win such success in both profession and business.
In one of the loveliest neighborhoods of West Newton Mr. Dowse has an elegant home, Eswood House, where he and his wife dispense a charming hospitality. Mr. Dowse was married on June 20, 1883, to Miss Fanny Reed, daughter of Henry G. Reed and Frances (Wil- liams) Reed, of Taunton, Massachusetts. Three children have been born to them - Dorothy P., Margaret and Beatrice.
Mr. Dowse is a member of the Boston Merchants' Association, the Home Market Club and the National Association of Manufac- turers. In social life also he has wide and important associations. He is vice-president of the Brae-Burn Country Club of Newton, and a member of the Masonic Order; the University Club and the Ex-
WILLIAM BRADFORD HOMER DOWSE
change Club of Boston; the Country Club of Brookline; the Newton Club of Newton; the Neighborhood Club of West Newton; the Com- modore Club of Maine; the Manhattan Club; the University Club; the Harvard Club of New York City and the Massachusetts Auto- mobile Club.
Mr. Dowse is a vigorous Republican, and has represented his influential Republican city at many of the important conventions of his party in this Commonwealth. His religious affiliations are with the Unitarian Church. He and his family have a host of friends in their home city of Newton and in Boston. Mr. Dowse retains to the full his boyhood love of out-of-doors, and is an enthusiast for golf, riding, fishing, shooting and auto-touring. These wholesome recreations, he believes, "are a part of the strength of the life of a successful business and professional man - as much a part of his equipment as a liberal education." A splendid line of long-lived ancestry, crowned by the distinguished clergyman, his father, who lived to be four score and twelve and was remarkable for physical as well as mental activity, is strong confirmation of the soundness of Mr. Dowse's philosophy of living.
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
C YHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, president of Harvard Uni- versity, and the foremost educator in America, is of Bos- ton birth and distinguished Massachusetts lineage. He was born on March 20, 1834, the grardson of one of the famous mer- chant princes of the New England capital and the son of Samuel Atkins and Mary (Lyman) Eliot. His father was one of the most eminent public men of the Commonwealth, having been mayor of Boston, a member of Congress, and the treasurer of Harvard Col- lege. The family was descended from Andrew Eliot, who came from Devonshire, England, about 1632, and settled in Beverly, Massachu- setts, very soon after the first Puritan migration.
To have sprung from such a sterling race is more honor than kinship with any titled aristocracy. Through every generation the men of the Eliot name have justified their heritage. No youth could have had a more fortunate or inspiring environment than that of the Boston home whence young Eliot went to the Boston Latin School and to Harvard College. His was the class of 1853. Graduating with the degree of Bachelor of Arts and an enviable reputation for scholarship, second in rank in his class, Mr. Eliot remained at the college as a tutor in mathematics, studying chemistry meanwhile with Professor Josiah P. Cooke, and in 1856 receiving the degree of Master of Arts. For two years more he continued to be an instruc- tor in mathematics, applying himself at the same time to research in chemistry, but in 1858 he became assistant professor in mathe- matics and chemistry in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard. He had taken up his profession with enthusiasm, and these earlier years of precise scientific application and the daily teaching of exact truths had a most important effect upon his character.
In 1861 Mr. Eliot relinquished one part of his double professional duty to become assistant professor of chemistry alone, holding this post for two years. From 1863 to 1865 he studied chemistry and investigated educational methods in Europe. Returning to America,
Charles r. Slot
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
he became professor of analytical chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then a young institution brought into being by the progress of New England and the need of a more thorough scientific knowledge in the industrial arts.
For four years, from 1865 to 1869, Mr. Eliot continued in the Faculty of the Institute of Technology, passing parts of the years 1867-1868 in France. His career at the Institute was one of broaden- ing success, and his executive capacity, alertness and power of leader- ship began to draw attention to him as one sure to be a potent factor in the educational development of America.
Through the stormy years of the Civil War the urgent problem of American higher education had been thrust aside, but it came to the forefront as soon as the war had ended. There was much of dissatisfaction and unrest at Harvard. New methods and new men were demanded. The election of a new president of Harvard was impending when Professor Eliot printed in the Atlantic Monthly, two vigorous and stirring articles on "The New Education," which stamped him at once as an iconoclast in the judgment of conser- vative Massachusetts. But there were powerful men of progress to whom these new ideas appealed, and Professor Eliot, in 1869, was elected by the Harvard corporation as president. The overseers at first refused to concur, but finally yielded, and Dr. Eliot began his great work of educational reformation.
His path for a long time was beset with difficulties. Those of orthodox religious faith dreaded him as a champion of free thought. He was not a clergyman and the ancient traditions of New England held that none but a minister was fit to be a college president. He was a scholar, indeed, but a practical man of affairs also, with such conspicuous business talent that he had been besought to take the management of a great mercantile corporation. All of these things jarred on New England conservatism. The position of the new president of Harvard was an exceedingly delicate one, and impos- sible to a man without some leaven of tact in his courage and ambition.
President Eliot, once seated, began straightway to broaden the curriculum of the university and to give the individual student some freedom of choice in the courses which he should pursue. This was a perilous attack on immemorial custom. Latin, Greek, mathe- matics, a smattering of modern languages and a smattering of some
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
of the sciences had been the prescribed higher education of New England ever since the beginnings of education there. Regardless of individual characteristics and regardless of the careers which they were to pursue, the young men of one academic generation after another were passed through the same mold and rigidly re- quired to learn the same things, or try to learn them, whether the topics interested them or not.
President Eliot changed all this, but the process required years of patient endeavor. The "elective system," as it came to be called, did not win a complete triumph at Harvard until about 1884. Yet there was progress from the first; the broadening which the new president began was never halted. The graduate school was de- veloped, and "That truth should be the final aim of education and that without liberty the attainment of truth is thwarted " became the guiding principle at Harvard. At the same time, President Eliot gave his splendid energies to the allied task of making Harvard a genuine university. There were law and medical schools, a divinity school, a scientific school and a school of dentistry, but the organiza- tion was loose and sprawling, and Harvard in 1869 was still a uni- versity only in name. The new president sought to bring these scattered departments genuinely together after a new plan which was not European, but American. "A university in any worthy sense of the term," he said, "must grow from seed. It cannot be transplanted in full leaf and bearing. It cannot be run up, like a cotton mill, in six months, to meet a quick demand. Neither can it be created by an energetic use of the inspired editorial, the ad- vertising circular and the frequent telegram. Numbers do not constitute it, and no money can make it before its time."
One of the first points upon which President Eliot insisted was that the departments of the university should have a common treasury and a uniform and efficient system of government. He carried his point, and then went on to modernize the methods of instruction in the various schools. He gave his personal attention and presence to the various branches of the university. "Well, I declare," said Governor Washburn, when the new president first appeared officially in the law school, "the president of Harvard College in Dane Hall! This is a new sight." Within a few years President Eliot had brought about a thoroughly new, centralized plan of administration, which has been the model of the organiza-
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
tion of American universities. The doubters and cavillers were gradually silenced. Harvard grew steadily in numbers, authority and wealth. Its affairs, administered on sound, progressive busi- ness principles, won for the university the confidence of business men and a great stream of intelligent and liberal benefactions.
In justice to the older Harvard it must be said that the progress which President Eliot has wrought, while by no means easy of accom- plishment, was not so difficult as it would have been elsewhere, for even the older and conservative Harvard had responded more quickly than other American colleges to the quickening of new and better thought. Some of the changes which President Eliot worked out had been initiated before his administration. Yet the honor of inspiring most of these changes and of guiding and perfecting all of them is unquestionably his. His influence has not ceased with his own great university. He has been a leader and a reformer in the educational thought of all America. He has successfully ex- horted other universities to follow the development wrought out at Harvard. He has been a prophet and a guide to other college presidents, conquering ancient prejudices and winning in these later years the utmost regard, gratitude and admiration.
In 1902-1903 Dr. Eliot was the president of the great National Educational Association. The university and its high and noble work has not absorbed his entire energies. His genius has helped to shape the advance of primary and secondary education. He has been a severe but beneficent critic of the public schools and academies, and he has lived to see his exhortations heeded and the soundness of his ideas recognized in the common school systems of a considerable portion of the American continent. This coordinating of the higher education of the university with even the humblest rural schools, this emphasizing of the idea that the work of education wherever it is undertaken is a noble one, deserving of the considera- tion of the wisest men among us, is not the least of the great services which President Eliot has rendered to his nation and his time.
The leadership of President Eliot in American education has been frankly and graciously recognized abroad as well as at home. He is an officer of the Legion of Honor, of France, and correspond- ing member of the Institute of France. In this country he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society and of many other organiza-
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
tions for intellectual and social advancement. Williams College and Princeton, in 1869, conferred on him the degree of LL.D .; Yale in 1870, and Johns Hopkins in 1902. In the midst of his administra- tive labors he has found time for much notable literary work and for a great number of scholarly addresses and orations. Indeed, as a public speaker, critical judges regard President Eliot as in the first rank of Americans, and his addresses as examples of the most finished English of our time. His published works are many. Among them are "Five American Contributions to Civilization and Other Essays" (The Century Company, New York, 1897); "Educational Reform" (The Century Company, 1898); "Charles Eliot - Landscape Archi- tect " (the biography of a beloved son, Houghton, Mifflin & Company, Boston, 1902); "More Money for the Public Schools" (Double- day, Page & Company, New York, 1903); "John Gilley" (American Unitarian Association, Boston, 1904); "The Happy Life" (new edition, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, New York, 1905); "Four American Leaders" (1906). Throughout all the years of his ad- ministration Dr. Eliot's annual reports as president of Harvard, have been treasure-houses of the best educational thought.
No truer message can be given to young Americans than these words of the great leader of our modern education: "Cultivate the habit of reading something good for ten minutes a day. Ten minutes a day will in twenty years make all the difference between a culti- vated and uncultivated mind, provided you read what is good. I do not mean a newspaper; I do not mean a magazine. I mean by the good, the proved treasures of the world, the intellectual treasures of the world in story, verse, history and biography."
President Eliot has been keenly alive to political tendencies in America and outspoken in his views of public men and public policies. His personal course has been one of political independence. His religious faith has always been that of the Unitarian Church. In youth and maturity his physical vigor has been maintained by wholesome out-of-door exercise, of which he is very fond, by bicycle riding, sailing, walking and driving. Dr. Eliot was married first to Ellen (Derby) Peabody, who died in 1869, and afterward to Grace Mellen Hopkinson.
Henry Ho. Façon ,
HENRY HARDWICK FAXON
H ENRY HARDWICK FAXON was born in Quincy, Massa- chusetts, September 28, 1823, and died there November 14, 1905. He was the son of Job and Judith B. (Hardwick) Faxon. The name appears frequently on the town records, as borne by substantial farmers and trusted town officers, and runs back to Thomas Faxon, who came from England at some time previous to 1647, and settled in that part of Braintree now known as Quincy. Job Faxon was a farmer, industrious and frugal, and brought up Henry to the hard work befitting a farmer's boy. After a common school education, he was, at the age of sixteen, apprenticed to a shoe- maker and worked at this trade five years. At the end of this period, he, together with one of his brothers, began the manufacture of boots and shoes. After three years he gave up manufacturing for mer- cantile life and opened a retail grocery and provision store in Quincy, where he had a successful business for seven years. In 1854 he dis- posed of this business and became a member of the firm of Faxon, Wood & Company, retail grocers in Boston. This firm afterwards was changed to Faxon Brothers & Company, and the business from retail to wholesale.
In 1861, just before the breaking out of the Civil War, he retired from this firm and engaged in still larger commercial ventures. In Boston, or traveling South to New Orleans and Cuba, Mr. Faxon bought and sold in large quantities all sorts of merchandise. It was at this time that, with his quick preception of the situation of affairs, he anticipated a sharp rise in the price of liquors, and placed in store, and later sold at an advance, several hundred barrels. This single transaction is the foundation of the charge that Mr. Faxon made his money by selling rum. It was not an inconsistency, for up to that time he was not a temperance advocate. His fortune was made in ordinary mercantile ventures and in real estate dealings. As a business man Mr. Faxon seemed to know intuitively the state of the future as well as current markets; and the boldness of his
HENRY HARDWICK FAXON
operations, and the manner of his purchases, though unerringly clear to himself, seemed to others audacious, even wild and reckless, and astonished his associates by their successful issues.
On November 18, 1852, he married Mary Burbank Munroe, daughter of the Boston merchant, Israel W. Munroe and Priscilla (Burbank) Munroe. To them was born a son, Henry Munroe Faxon, who ably continues his father's public spirited activities. Mrs. Faxon died in 1885.
Mr. Faxon's claim to distinction rests mainly upon his incessant and uncompromising opposition to the liquor traffic. As he entered middle life, those restless energies which, in earlier years, had been devoted to the acquisition of a competence, took on a moral earnest- ness and launched him upon a new career.
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