USA > Massachusetts > Biographical history of Massachussetts; biographies and autobiographies of the leading men in the state, 1911, vol 7 > Part 23
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These two tributes by Athol editors indicate in how high esteem Mr. Starrett is held by his fellow townsmen, for they voice the sentiments of all citizens of the town who easily regard him as their first citizen. His successful business career from an humble be- ginning to the present sphere of large influence and great promi- nence furnishes a story of deep interest.
Bower Vufta
BOWEN TUFTS
B OWEN TUFTS was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, June 17, 1884. His father was Albert Nelson Tufts (1843-1899). His mother was Mary Tufts Locke. Both parents were de- scended from the English immigrant, Peter Tufts, who settled in that part of Charlestown which is now Malden, about the year 1650. He died in 1700 at the age of eighty-three years. His son, Peter, born in England, 1648, on reaching maturity settled in Med- ford, where he was an eminent citizen. Charles Tufts of Somer- ville gave a hundred acres of land in Medford for the site of the college that bears his name-Tufts College.
The mother's family of Locke is descended from Deacon William Locke, who came from London, March 22, 1634.
Peter Tufts was of the party that fortified Dorchester Heights in March, 1776; his mother, Anne Adams Tufts, helped dress the wounds of eight soldiers brought to her house on the top of Winter Hill after the Battle of Bunker Hill, and, later, when Burgoyne's men were encamped on Winter Hill as pris- oners of war, went to the camp and nursed the dying wife of one of the prisoners. In her honor, the Somerville Daughters of the American Revolution have named their Chapter. Francis Tufts was Adjutant in the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment. He enlisted in 1776 and was at Ticonderoga and at Saratoga. At Stillwater, seeing the standard bearer fall, he rescued the stand- ard, bore it at the head of his regiment, and that day was made ensign by General Gates. At Ticonderoga in 1780 he was made Adjutant. Another ancestor, Dr. Francis Moore, was with Col- onel Pepperell at the Siege of Louisburg, where he served as sur- geon. His son, Francis Moore, went undisguised to help throw the tea overboard in Boston Harbor, and later was in the Battle of Bunker Hill. A great grandfather, Joseph Adams, gave shel- ter to the Lady Superior and her pupils, fugitives from the Ursu- line Convent in Charlestown, when that building was attacked and burned by a Boston mob in 1834. This Joseph Adams was a de- scendant of John Adams, who was born in 1622 and settled, 1650, in Cambridge as a millwright.
These notes of Mr. Tufts' ancestry show him to be of good, sturdy, New England stock. His personal qualities are illustrated by his remarkable success in his chosen business. With little more than a common school education-his schooling having been cut short after one year in the high school by the death of his fa- ther -- he entered, as office boy, the banking concern of C. D. Parker and Company, with which he has ever since been connected. Since
BOWEN TUFTS
1908 he has been elected a director of the following: The Athol Gas and Electric Company, the Amesbury Electric Company, the Marlboro Electric Company, the Marlboro-Hudson Gas Company, the Connecticut Valley Street Railroad, the Massachusetts North- ern Street Railroad, the Concord, Maynard and Hudson Street Railroad, the Weymouth Light and Power Company, the Worcester Suburban Electric Company, the Plymouth Electric Company, the Southeastern Power and Electric Company, the Union Light and Power Company, the Norwood Gas Company, the Gardner Gas Company, the Central Massachusetts Electric Company, the Ware Electric Company, and the Blackstone Gas and Electric Company. He is a Trustee of the Lynn Realty Trust Company, the Massa- chusetts Lighting Company, the Central Massachusetts Light and Power Company, the Commonwealth Gas and Electric Company, the Old Colony Light and Power Company, the Merrifield Build- ing Trust, the Provincetown Light and Power Associates, the North Brookfield Light and Power Associates, the Franklin County Power Company, and the Merrimac Valley Power and Building Company; Treasurer and member of the Executive Committee of the New England section of the National Electric Light Associa- tion and member of the Executive Committee of the Massachusetts Gas and Electric Association.
He is a member of the Engineers Club, the Exchange Club, the Belmont Springs Country Club, of which he is a director; the Bos- ton Yacht Club, the Old Beacon Club, of which he is President; the Medford Club, the Unitarian Club, and the Mt. Hermon Lodge of Masons.
Mr. Tufts' reading is mainly of business and technical books; his favorite sports are golf and tennis.
He is a Republican in politics, and in religious faith a Uni- tarian.
His advice to young people is thus summarized in his own words: "Don't smoke until age of twenty-one; then moderately. Total abstinence from liquors is the safest rule. Pick a man who has won true success and work persistently to duplicate and im- prove upon his attainments. Depend always on your own efforts. Acquire the largest possible number of desirable associates who will help mould your character toward success."
Mr. Tufts married, September 24, 1907, Octavia C. Williams, daughter of David Williams and Mary Octavia Charlton, grand- daughter of Richard Charlton and Ann E. Wilson and of Matthew B. Williams and Margaret McAllister, and a descendant of Sir Lachlan Maclean of Sudbury, England, and from Sir Roger Williams. Three children have been born to them: Mary Octavia Tufts, Bowen Charlton Tufts, and David Albert Tufts.
THEODORE NEWTON VAIL
A MONG the leaders of American business industry to-day there is no one more prominent than Theodore N. Vail, president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Com- pany, and the head of the entire Bell Telephone system.
His ancestry, both on his father's and mother's side, connects him with prominent families in Morris County, New Jersey. He is a descendant of the Quaker preacher, John Vail, who settled in New Jersey in 1710.
In early days, Lewis Vail, his grandfather, a civil engineer, went to Ohio and identified himself with the interests of that state as a builder of canals and highways. Davis Vail, his son and the father of Theodore N. Vail, was born there but at an early age went to New Jersey and became connected with the Speedwell Iron Works near Morristown, which had been founded by his uncle, Stephen Vail. Most of the machinery for the Savannah, the first steamship that crossed the Atlantic Ocean, was built at these iron works. Here, too, the magnetic telegraph was first brought into successful opera- tion by Samuel F. B. Morse. He was largely aided in bringing this about by the help of the Vail family. Stephen Vail furnished the money and his son Alfred the mechanical turn of mind which put into practical form the scientific theory of the telegraph which Mr. Morse was trying to work out. The Morse Alphabet in telegraphy or the Dot and Dash Alphabet, as it was first called, was also devised by Alfred Vail.
Davis Vail married Phœbe Quinby, the daughter of Judge Isaac Quinby of Morris County, and a sister of Doctors William and Augustus Quinby and of General Quinby who, after graduating at West Point, became distinguished as a mathematician and pro- fessor of mathematics in Rochester University and as a general in the Civil War. After his marriage Davis Vail went back to Carroll County, Ohio, where Theodore N. Vail was born July 16, 1845. When he was about four years old his father again returned to New Jersey, where he was connected with the Speedwell Iron Works until 1866, when he removed to Iowa and took up farming on a large scale.
THEODORE NEWTON VAIL
Theodore N. Vail took a thorough course in the old academy at Morristown and then read medicine with his uncle, Doctor William Quinby, for two years. In Morristown, telegraphy was almost in the air, as the result of the activity of Morse and Vail, so that Theo- dore had wires and keyboards for playthings at the Vail homestead. He also studied and practiced telegraphy in a local office.
He went with his father to Iowa, and about a year later took a position with the Union Pacific Railroad as agent and telegraph operator at a small station on that line. In the spring of 1869, through the kindness of Gen. Grenville M. Dodge, chief engineer of the Union Pacific, he was appointed clerk in the Railway Mail Service. This service was at that time in its infancy. The mail was not distributed on the cars, as it is now, but was gathered up and carried on to certain large post-offices where it was sorted and forwarded. To remedy this delay the scheme of sorting the mail on the cars was begun, each clerk devising his own way of distribu- tion. The question of methods was discussed by the clerks among themselves in the effort to secure more systematic results.
Mr. Vail took up the study of the distribution and dispatch of mails primarily for his own convenience, but also seeking that of his fellow-clerks. Looking for the shortest and quickest routes to destination he arranged a map and charts which he and others put into immediate use. This proved so helpful that the authorities at Washington soon called him to that city and he was appointed Assistant Superintendent of the Railway Mail Service under George I. Bangs. Mr. Bangs was one of the most progressive officials in the department at Washington, and, through his large experience and acquaintance in politics, he was able to aid Mr. Vail very materi- ally in introducing progressive methods into the Service.
A systematic plan for distributing the mail was put into opera- tion all over the country in connection with an efficient civil service system. Mr. Vail was also very active in the development of the fast Railway Mail Service, giving fast mail trains the right of way over all others. The mail was soon sent from New York to Chicago in twenty-four hours, and at the present time in eighteen hours.
The marked ability of Mr. Vail as an organizer had so mani- fested itself in building up the progressive ideas of Mr. Bangs and putting the railway mail service of the country in the high place it occupies with the business world and the general public, that in
THEODORE NEWTON VAIL
1876 he was appointed General Superintendent, although the young- est officer in the service. After two years in this position he felt that he could go no further in this direction without going into politics as a business. This he was not inclined to do and he made up his mind to leave the service.
At this time American civilization was taking on new forms. Machinery was displacing the hand and one man in a factory was doing the work of fifty at the cobbler's bench or weaver's loom. Railways were supplanting the stage-coach and the team, and the telegraph and the cable had put people within sight of each other and given them a deaf and dumb speech. The time was ripe for the telephone to furnish the hearing. And it did it. It was the key- stone to the arch.
Professor A. Graham Bell and his three associates in the " Bell Telephone Association" had been trying for months to get the tele- phone upon the market, but with no success. They had a monopoly of the telephone business and everybody else was willing. They had the patents but there was no capital. The Western Union Telegraph Company was their natural enemy as a means of com- munication by wire. The telegraph people made fun of the telephone until they learned that some of their instruments had been sup- planted by it. Then they quickly organized the " American Speak- ing-Telegraph Company," with large capital and such electrical in- ventors as Edison, Gray and Dollbear upon its staff, and made the announcement that they had " the only original telephone."
The result was unexpected. Of a sudden the telephone was no longer a "scientific toy," as people had regarded it, but an article of commerce. In a short time telephones were being rented at the rate of a thousand a month and little telephone exchanges were being started in a few cities, but there was lacking a business organization.
Of the four men who formed the Bell Telephone Association, Mr. Bell invented the telephone, Thomas Watson constructed it, Thomas Sanders, a leather dealer, financed it, and Gardner G. Hubbard, father-in-law of Mr. Bell, and a prominent lawyer of Boston and Washington, introduced it, but the business manager was lacking.
Hubbard had recently been appointed by President Hayes as the head of a commission on mail transportation. He and Mr. Vail were thus thrown together on trains and in hotels. Hubbard
THEODORE NEWTON VAIL
always had a pair of telephones in his valise. His enthusiasm met with a hearty response in Mr. Vail, who had been interested in the experiments made at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, and believed that the telephone had a successful business future before it.
This first-hand acquaintance with Mr. Vail as a successful busi- ness organizer in the mail service led Mr. Hubbard to say to Mr. Wat- son one morning, "I know our man in Washington," and he offered the position of General Manager to Mr. Vail, who accepted it promptly and, a week later, was in the little office in Reade Street, New York.
He was so confident of the future of the telephone that he after- wards said he was willing to leave a Government job with a small salary for a telephone job with no salary.
At this time all Bell telephone apparatus was made by Watson in a little shop in Court Street, Boston, but the business soon out- grew the shop and four other manufacturers were licensed to make bells and switch-boards.
The Western Electric Company of Chicago, had also begun to make Gray-Edison telephones for the Western Union, so that there were six groups of mechanics experimenting with a machinery that could talk. Vail soon recognized the fact that there was plenty of apparatus but too great variety, and, if there was to be any uni- formity in their action, the work should be consolidated. By 1881 he had bought the six companies and brought them under one management. This was the first merger in telephone history and was of immense importance. Without that the Bell Company could not have successfully met the warfare that was waged against it for years.
The business now developed rapidly until the streets in some cities had become almost black with wires strung on poles some- times fifty feet in height. The urgent necessity of burying the wires was evident, but the question was, how to do it. The constructive imagination of Mr. Vail came to the rescue. He began a series of experiments to find out what could be done, the result of which was the laying of an experimental cable in Boston and the next year an experimental system for New York.
Mr. Vail next started a series of experiments to discover a better type of cable than the oil-filled one then in use, which resulted in the discovery that hot lead might be moulded around a rope of twisted wires, thus making tight coverings that shed the moisture.
THEODORE NEWTON VAIL
At first the telephone was thought of as a local convenience, but the vision of Mr. Vail was not satisfied until he saw the wires and heard the "Hello" between New York and Boston. Long dis- tance telephoning was established and had only to be improved upon to become longer. The galvanized iron and steel wires in use were too noisy, and copper wire was too soft and weak. Mr. Vail asked a Bridgeport manufacturer to experiment upon copper wire to see if drawing would not harden and toughen it. The experi- ment was successful. By the use of drawn-copper wire, the estab- lishment of the long-distance system and the organization of local companies in the principal cities, all under one general management, Mr. Vail had by 1884 established the business on a sound basis, com- manding national recognition both as to its present value and future prospects. He organized the Bell Telephone Company of New York in 1878 and was its president from 1885 to 1890, when he resigned his position as general manager of the present company and retired from the telephone business.
While with the telephone he had worked a small farm near Bos- ton, and when he left the company he bought another farm of 1500 acres in Vermont. This he called the Speedwell Farms, and com- menced stock-raising on a varied and extensive scale. But this was not enough. He did not confine himself to his farm, but spent much time in travel, making a trip to South America in 1893, where the opportunities of the Argentine Republic attracted his attention.
With the purpose of developing its resources, he constructed, by permission of the government, an electric station which furnishes machinery for factories, light for streets and dwellings, and power for a street railway in a neighboring city. He bought a horse-car line in Buenos Ayres and changed it to a trolley line with thoroughly equipped cars from the United States. A well-organized company controlled it and bought up all competing lines.
This company was a British corporation and for its better manage- ment called Mr. Vail to London. In 1904, when he had the busi- ness in thorough working order, he gave up his active connection with it and returned to his farm in Lyndon, Vermont, which had now grown to 4,000 acres.
Mr. Vail remarked that the city of Buenos Ayres had paid him more for giving it a system of trolleys and electric lights than the United States had paid him for putting the telephone on a business
THEODORE NEWTON VAIL
basis. He was ready to forget the troubles of city and telephone, and have a playtime on the farm.
In August, 1869, soon after he entered the Railway Mail Service as clerk, he married Miss Emma Righter of Newark, N. J. Their married life was very happy, as she was in full sympathy with him in his successful business career. They had one son, David R. Vail, who gave much promise as a young lawyer. The great sorrow of Mr. Vail's life came to him in 1905, when both wife and son passed away.
The supervising of the various interests of his farm, building barns, watching his Welsh ponies and Swiss cattle and directing the plowing, harrowing and seeding, occupied much of his time, but the home-life had changed, so that when a delegation of telephone direc- tors, most of whom were his old-time associates, came to him one May morning in 1907 to urge him to resume his old place with them, he was ready to step out into the business world again.
At sixty-two years of age he took the presidency of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which unites the Associated Bell Companies that provide service throughout the country. The "grand telephone system" that Mr. Vail had imagined thirty years ago has gone on until the control of the Western Union has passed over to the American Telegraph and Telephone Company. Many telephone offices are now telegraph offices also, and still the work goes on.
Mr. Vail divides his time between the executive offices of the company in Boston, the headquarters in New York and his Vermont farm. He is a member of leading clubs in New York and Boston, and active in the social life of the two cities.
In 1907 Mr. Vail was married to Miss Mabel R. Sanderson of Boston.
From the above sketch of Mr. Vail we may see how well qualified he is for the head of this great company. He has known the telegraph and telephone from the start and has a wonderful faculty for organizing a great business enterprise as well as shaping its finances, so that we repeat there is no more prominent man among the leaders of American business industry than Theodore Newton Vail. Mr. Vail says that his promotion to be the head of one of the largest industries in the world is the result of beginning at the bottom and "sticking to the job."
Joseph Van Viso.
JOSEPH VAN NESS
J OSEPH VAN NESS, author and publisher, was born in Andover, Massachusetts, December 13, 1849, and died in Lex- ington, Massachusetts, July 8, 1901. His father, James Van Ness, was a native of St. Andrews, Scotland; his mother, Elizabeth Robb, came from Dundee, Scotland. The name indicates that the paternal line harks back to a Dutch ancestry. The family came to America in 1847.
The father had been a teacher in his native land and continued the practice of his vocation in his adopted country. Shortly after the birth of Joseph, the family, lured by the larger opportunities of the Mississippi Valley, removed to the Middle West. Here in 1851 when his little son was only eighteen months old, the father died.
The little boy's mother, a canny Scotch woman, prudent, indus- trious, and of excellent business ability, became owner and manager of two farms and a general store in the then comparatively new country. When Joseph was a little more than four years old she allied herself in a second marriage with a Scotchman by the name of Stevens.
Joseph was a bright, active boy, very fond of knowledge and eager in its pursuit. At eleven years of age he had gained such knowledge as the elementary schools of his town could impart and had made diligent use of the town library. He was fired with the desire for a liberal education. His prudent mother, although very fond of her bright son, was not impressed with the desirability of a literary career for him. She did not actively oppose his ambition but gave it no open encouragement. The hopeful boy was not dis- heartened by his mother's indifference to his cherished ideal. He discussed his desire for more education with the genial and tolerant traveling salesman who periodically visited his mother's store to sell his goods. The boy finally persuaded the drummer to let him come and work for his board in his family and go to school. Under such circumstances Joseph made his preparation to enter and pursue a course in the Illinois Industrial University at Urbana, Illinois. That he probably rendered good value for such maintenance as he received is attested by the fact that he was almost twenty-seven years old when he gained his degree of Bachelor of Science from the Illinois University. He was a good student, conscientious in his work and far more intent upon genuine attainment than the mere possession of a college degree. His standing in all his studies was high. He received his degree in 1876 at the Illinois Industrial University and immediately registered at Cornell University, from which in 1878 he received the degree B.S. Although he pursued a
JOSEPH VAN NESS
scientific course he was especially fond of languages and made not- able progress in Latin, German, Spanish and early Swedish, at the same time paying particular attention to his native tongue. Thus in mature manhood, seasoned by a long fight to maintain his phys- ical existence while acquiring the tools for a literary career, he stood at the gateway of his life work. His Scotch blood, the strict train- ing of his mother in orderly ways, the strong impress upon him of her sterling character had proved invaluable assets. But although thus equipped by parental inheritance and acquired attainment he well-nigh failed at this juncture of realizing his ambition by reason of an overtaxed nervous system and a threatened collapse. His physician ordered him to a life in the open. Selling his library and other effects to pay the expenses of a journey, he went to Colorado. For the next four years in the clear stimulating air of Colorado and under the sunny skies of California he did penance to outraged nature and wooed back in large measure the well-nigh lost physical powers which are fundamental to all human achievement. During this period of rest and recuperation he defrayed his expenses by writing for the newspapers.
Domiciled near an irrigated section of Colorado owned and oper- ated by an English syndicate, his reporter instinct led him to gather a mass of interesting information about irrigation. This he worked up into a series of interesting articles which the Denver Republican published and paid for. In California he was able to write of the mining interest of the State in a way to win pay and patronage from the newspapers of the Golden Gate. With the lapse of four precious years and a measurable return of health Mr. Van Ness became impatient to buckle down to a regular business. Ac- cordingly he returned to Illinois and obtained the position of East- ern Representative of the Shoe and Leather Review published by C. L. Peyton of Chicago. He opened offices on Bedford Street in Boston. Later, he removed to Lincoln Street where he was burned out and thence removed to Atlantic Avenue where he was a second time burned out. He managed the affairs for the Shoe and Leather Review with so much tact and energy that it became the leading trade journal in the East. He spent the years from 1882 to 1885 in promoting the interests of the Review.
In 1885 he cut loose from the Review to establish an advertising agency for shoe machinery and leather interests. His business instinct showed him here an unoccupied field where energy, tact and good sense might win golden returns. Business came to his hand in satisfactory and increasing volume. At first he paid some attention to general advertising but the most satisfactory field proved to be the shoe making interests, especially the machinery end
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