USA > Massachusetts > Biographical history of Massachussetts; biographies and autobiographies of the leading men in the state, 1911, vol 7 > Part 7
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Mr. Carr's early education was obtained in the Bunker Hill School at Charlestown; at eighteen years of age (his father having five years before removed his family home to Newton) he graduated from the Newton High School and shortly after began his business career as corresponding clerk in a Boston bank. Fifteen years of banking experience followed. During that time he was Assistant Cashier, Cashier, and President of three different banks, and for several of those years his father, his brother (George E. Carr), and he were at the same time Cashiers of three Boston banks.
In 1883 he became the private secretary of Frederick L. Ames, one of the large capitalists of New England, and remained asso- ciated with Mr. Ames till his death in 1893, when he became one of the Executors and Trustees of Mr. Ames' estate. In 1895 Governor Oliver Ames died and Mr. Carr became one of the Ex-
SAMUEL CARR
ecutors and Trustees of his estate. His principal business since that time has been the active management of the affairs connected with these large estates. This has brought him into connection with many important corporations and prominent men of affairs in all parts of the country.
Mr. Carr was closely connected with several of the great rail- road reorganizations from 1893 to 1898. It devolved upon his co-executor, Mr. Oliver Ames, and himself to petition the Union Pacific R. R. Company into the hands of a Receiver in 1893, and in 1895 Mr. Carr organized the Reorganization Committee of the Oregon Short Line R. R. Company, the principal branch of the Union Pacific R. R. Company. He became Chairman of that Com- mittee, and after completing the reorganization became President of the new company, holding the position for two years. He is still a Director in that company. Mr. Carr's long business training and experience have prepared him for advisory positions of trust and responsibility, and for the last twenty-five years he has served as a Director in several important railroad and other influential cor- porations of the country.
In business ability Mr. Carr's place is in the front rank of the men of his time. In business integrity he stands equally high. In disposing of the old Tremont House, Mr. Carr said to a gentle- man who represented purchasers that the property could be had for one million dollars. When the money needed was raised some one asked the pertinent question, "What assurance have we that we can buy this property for one million dollars?" The answer of the original negotiator was swift, idiomatic, familiar: "Sam Carr's word."
While Mr. Carr's career has been that of a business man and his energies have been largely expended in the practical affairs of life, he has found time to develop his great æsthetic gifts through the study and practice of music. Inheriting from his father and grandfather a strong love of music which manifested itself at a very early age, his father wisely provided him with competent instruction beginning when he was ten years old, in order, as his father said, "that life might be pleasanter and more satisfactory especially in his later years." Beginning thus early the study of the piano and the organ and composition, he was able to start his musical career as organist of the Congregational Church in West
SAMUEL CARR
Newton at fifteen years of age; he continued it in various churches, mainly in Boston, with only a few months' intermission, for forty years. His last position and that of the greatest prominence was at the Old South Church in Boston where he was organist and Director of Music from 1884 (the time of the installation of Rev. George A. Gordon, D.D.) till 1904, and where he still, as Chairman of the Music Committee, supervises the music of the church, and on special occasions conducts choral services.
When Mr. Carr retired in 1904 from his position as organist and musical director in the Old South Church his friends presented him with a handsome testimonial in silver, with an inscription from Wordsworth that told the story of their appreciation and respect:
"The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more."
Mr. Carr became a member of the Standing Committee of the Old South Society in 1905, and in 1915 that Committee voted to ap- point him Honorary Musical Director and Organist of their church as an expression of their sincere appreciation of his enthusiastic and able services and of the inspiration and benefit his direction of music had been to the church and the congregation for a long period of years. Mr. Carr has specially devoted himself to the study of the organ and to the development of church music. He has composed and arranged a number of hymns and anthems, and his influence upon the elevation of church music has been widely felt. For years he has been a Trustee of the New England Con- servatory of Music and he is an honorary member of the New Eng- land Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
If Harvard or Yale had been in 1870 what they are to-day Mr. Carr would doubtless have gone to college, for two reasons: first for the more rapid and systematic development of the intelligence that he was later to apply to business; and, second, for the world of music into which he would have been led more swiftly by competent and inspiring guides. His father, however, decided, and wisely, that his son must go into business; he was confident that the artistic impulse would hold its own against its utilitarian rival, and in- deed stand as victor in command of the field at the end of the day. This forecast is almost certain to come true.
In 1872, Mr. Carr was married to Susan Waters, daughter of the Rev. I. N. Tarbox, D.D. of beloved memory. Mrs. Carr's attain-
SAMUEL CARR
ments, tastes, and high character have exercised an important influ- ence upon the life of her husband. They have two children: Margaret, married in 1902 to Charles Frothingham Leland; and Elsie, married in 1908 to Robert Edward Brewer. Five grandchil- dren keep Mr. and Mrs. Carr in happy fellowship with the genera- tion out of which is sure to come the greater America of the future.
Mr. Carr's advice to young men, written by him especially for the readers of this work, is:
"Start business or professional life with an ideal; keep this ideal always in view and work towards it. Persistent hard work, if accompanied by a desire for honorable accomplishment, will be rewarded by true success, happiness and ever increasing satisfac- tion. Do not become entirely absorbed in business or professional life. Probably every one has artistic tastes of some kind. Let him seek opportunity to develop such tastes through life with enthusiasm and he will find that they become not only a pleasant recreation in the daily routine, but will enlarge the outlook of the mind, and, if one is successful in business or profession, serve to show him how best to use his success for the benefit of others as well as himself. As one grows older he realizes more and more that the lasting satis- factions of life come from service to others."
Our last word is of Mr. Carr as a citizen. Here the fact is re- corded that three different Mayors of Boston have appointed him a Trustee of the Public Library. In his character as a citizen, Mr. Carr has been a Trustee of American honor and freedom. In the final analysis it may be said that Mr. Carr has won in the business world a position of dignity, confidence and honor, and by his ar- tistic achievements he has added to his own happiness and given to others encouragement and inspiration.
Queles Chatten
EARLE PERRY CHARLTON
E ARLE PERRY CHARLTON was born in Chester, Con- necticut, June 19, 1863, the son of James D. Charlton, 1826-1900, and Lydia Ladd Charlton. The father was a man of stern but sterling qualities, doubtless inherited from his ancestors of the Otis and Charlton name, who emigrated from England in 1636 on the ship Mary and John, and settled in Windsor, Connecticut.
During his childhood and youth, Mr. Charlton's chief desire was an ambition to succeed, that he might be of assistance to his parents, and a son of whom they might be proud. He was brought up in a good home by devoted parents, who, understanding the value of thrift, taught their son its importance, and also the greater importance of sound character. His mother, a woman of lofty aims, exercised a profound influence on the moral and spiritual life of her son.
He studied in the public schools of Hartford, Connecticut, but experienced much difficulty in securing an adequate education. Leaving school at the age of seventeen years he went to Boston with the firm determination of becoming a merchant, and was employed for eight years with the Thomas C. Newell Company of Boston, acquiring proficiency in the business, in which he has now been engaged thirty-two years.
On January 1, 1912, the fifty-four stores which he then owned were merged into the F. W. Woolworth Company of which Mr. Charlton is Vice-President and one of the five founders of the F. W. Woolworth Co., being the largest retail corporation in the world, doing a business of upwards of seventy million dollars per annum and operating over eight hundred and fifty stores in the United States, Canada, and England. He was also instrumental in building the Charlton Mills of Fall River, Massachusetts, of which he is President. These mills make fine cotton goods.
Mr. Charlton is a Republican in politics, and a staunch member of the Congregational Church. He is a member of the Bankers and Squantum clubs, the New York Yacht Club, the Algonquin Club of Boston, and of the Quequechan Club of Fall River, and is much interested in boating and golf.
EARLE PERRY CHARLTON
Mr. Charlton was married in 1889 to Ida, daughter of Charles and Mary Stein, of Buffalo, New York, and their three children are: Ruth, Earle Perry, and Virginia.
He has always considered home influences and contact with men in active life potent factors in his own success, and his advice to young men, written for the readers of this work, is "to go into a business that they can take an interest in without regard to the remuneration, to be strictly honest in all dealings, temperate in all things, and to acquire as soon as possible an absolute confidence that success will follow effort."
Mr. Charlton is not only a successful manufacturer, financier, and merchant but a man of such sterling character that to all the responsibilities which he assumes, he honestly and faithfully de- votes himself. His word is as good as his bond, for he will put up with nothing superficial. The whole structure of every institution which he manages must be thoroughly sound and strong from its foundation. Not only is he a strong practical man of business, firm in his convictions and just in all his dealings, but he has a heart sensitive to all the needs of humanity and the beautiful in art and nature. In short, he is of the best product of our New England life and character.
Mr. Charlton's record carries its own lesson. He is a tireless worker, his concentration on the work in hand being one chief source of his strength. He gives all his mind to whatever question he is considering. In him, caution, memory, vigilance, insight, seem mingled in just proportion. Admiration is a tribute which none can fail to pay him who have watched his methods and their results.
His acquaintance among those best worth knowing is large, and no citizen in the Commonwealth commands in a higher degree the respect of those who have been his life long friends. His work is full of successful achievement and, while generous recognition has come to him in abundant measure, it has been unsought though not unearned.
A summary of Mr. Charlton's success would declare the legit- imate result of hard, painstaking work, fidelity to duty, and a resolute determination to practice the golden rule in all attempts to serve his fellows.
Joseph A. Choate
JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE
J OSEPH HODGES CHOATE was born in Salem, Massachu- setts, on the 24th of January, 1832, the son of George M. and Margaret M. (Hodges) Choate, and a lineal descendant of John Choate who came to America probably from Finchingfield, Kent, England, about the year 1643. He prospered in the new country and owned a large tract of land in what is now the town of Essex. In those days, no member of the Church of England could have the franchise, and it was nearly twenty-five years before John Choate took what was called the Freeman's oath, and entered into full citizenship in the Colony. He was a man of influence in his community.
About thirty descendants of John Choate fought in the War of the Revolution, and in all the eight generations from his day to the present there have never been wanting men of note in this family. Widely known among the many distinguished names is that of the great lawyer, Rufus Choate, descended from Thomas, one of the eight children of John Choate.
Joseph Hodges Choate enjoyed every opportunity for the fullest development of his inherited powers. He graduated from Harvard in 1852 and immediately entered the Harvard Law School, attain- ing his LL.B. degree two years later. In 1855 he was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar; but soon decided to remove to New York and take a course of study in the office of Scudder and Carter. The next year he was admitted to the Bar in that city. A little later, he formed a partnership with W. H. L. Barnes, which was continued until 1859 when he became a member of the firm of Evarts, Southmayd and Choate.
The strong mind and brilliant eloquence of Joseph Choate soon raised him to the first rank of his profession. He was engaged in important cases, many of them having world-wide interest. Among them are the DelValle breach of promise case, the de Cesnola Libel case, Gebhard vs. the Canada Southern R. R., Stewart vs. Huntington, and the case of General Fitz-John Porter, in which Mr. Choate was able to gain the reversal of the decision of the Court Martial, and secure the General's reinstatement to his army rank.
JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE
In the presidential campaign, in 1856, Mr. Choate became well known as a ready and convincing speaker in behalf of Fremont; and from that time he was in demand during every national cam- paign as a speaker on the Republican side.
In 1860, Mr. Choate received his A.M. degree from Harvard University.
In October of 1861, he married Caroline Dutcher Sterling. The next ten years were full of work along many lines, including professional, social, and political activities. In 1867 he was elected President of the New England Society, an office which he retained until 1871. It was in the latter year that he was one of the famous Committee of Seventy which rid the city of New York of the Tweed Ring, a political gang which had dominated politics for some years. There was a Subcommittee of Elections, of which Mr. Choate was Chairman.
Other clubs sought him as presiding officer, and he accepted the Presidency of the New York Union League Club from 1873 to 1877, and of the Harvard Club from 1874 to 1878. In 1877, he was made Governor of the New York Hospital, and he was a Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and of the American Museum of Natural History from the date of the foundation of these two institutions.
Mr. Choate is a man of too commanding abilities to limit his sphere of action to a single city, even such a metropolis as New York. His clear mind and keen wit, above all his rare tact, were especially adapted to the field of diplomacy, and it was there that his most distinguished services were rendered. In 1899, he was appointed by President Mckinley, United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James, a position which he filled most acceptably. On his retirement in 1905, he was elected Bencher of the Middle Temple.
Two years later, he was appointed Ambassador and first dele- gate from the United States to the International Peace Conference at The Hague, and was the Vice-President of the American Society for Judicial Settlement of International Disputes.
Had his busy life permitted, he might have made a name for himself in the literary world; as it was, his contributions have been mainly in the line of published addresses, such as the address on Rufus Choate, delivered on the occasion of the unveiling of his statue in the Court House of Boston ; on Abraham Lincoln, Admiral
JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE
Farragut, and others. Mr. Choate is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Honorary degrees have been showered upon him. From Am- herst, Harvard, Cambridge, Edinburg, Yale, St. Andrew's, Glas- gow, Williams, Pennsylvania, Union, McGill, Columbia, and To- ronto he received the LL.D. degree between the years of 1887 and 1916, and the degree of D.C.L. was conferred upon him by Oxford University in 1902.
That Mr. Choate possesses unusual ability and charm is shown by the many offices which he has filled with distinction, by his mem- bership in societies of such varied interests as the Union League Club, the American Philosophical Society, and the Massachusetts Colonial Society; by his political services in purifying New York politics, as President of the New York Constitutional Convention, and in the wider field of foreign diplomacy; and in addition to all these outside labors, by his eminence in his chosen profession. To succeed in any one of these things would have contented the ambi- tion of the average man. Joseph Hodges Choate has succeeded in all.
Mr. Choate appears to have acted through life in the practical application of one or two favorite maxims of his, which he is in the habit of recommending to the young men of his acquaintance.
First, "If you do not know a thing, look it up at once." Mod- ern life calls for such a wide range of knowledge on every possi- ble subject, that it is not practicable or possible for any man to pretend or to attempt to master it all, but in every man's experience there comes up almost daily some point or subject which he does not know, and Mr. Choate's rule has always been to look it up at once, so that he can understand as he goes along what comes be- fore him.
Second, "Duty first, and pleasure afterwards." In Mr. Choate's boyhood this was the universal rule in the New England discipline, but things have changed very much in eighty-four years, and the rule seems to have been in large measure reversed. He thinks that the world would be much better off by going back to the old rule and sticking to it.
Third, "Moderation in all things, in work and in play, in eat- ing and drinking, and everything else." This rule, if adopted in early life and practiced upon, to the end, would carry many a man to ripe old age who falls by the way.
ALEXANDER COCHRANE
A LEXANDER COCHRANE is of Scotch descent, from which have sprung some of our foremost citizens. Mr. Cochrane was born in Bar Head, Scotland (May 12, 1840). His father, Alexander Cochrane (April 27, 1813-August 11, 1865), was the son of John Cochrane (1781-1832) and Isabella Ramsey. His mother was Margaret Rae.
The business of Alexander Cochrane, Sr., was that of a manu- facturing chemist. His manners were simple, sincere, kindly, blended with true Scotch courage and perseverance. He, through his grandmother, Bethiah Douglas, was descended from Archibald Douglas, fifth earl of Angus, known in Scottish history as "Bell the Cat," and one of the characters in " Marmion," and traced his ancestry to Robert Bruce. He came to this country from Scotland in 1847, at the age of thirty-four, and settled in Lodi, New Jersey. April 1, 1849, he entered into business at Billerica, Massachusetts, with C. P. Talbot and Company, of which the late Governor Thomas Talbot was the junior partner. He planned and built a chemical works, and took the conduct and management of manufacturing the chemical products; and for this he received one third of the net profits. He was in Billerica more than half the portion of his life spent in this country, and entered fully into the life of the New England village in which his lot was cast. He was a member of the School Committee and active in the church. Being Scotch, he naturally took an interest in the religious life of the country, and although, like all his family, he belonged to the Established Church of Scotland, he here acted with the church that could best harmo- nize the somewhat scattered elements of the community. The minister filled the double role of schoolmaster during the week and preacher on Sunday.
Mr. Cochrane retained his connections with Europe by corre- spondence and by an occasional visit, which in those days was still an event. The main object of these visits was to keep up with the
Refanden Portrave
ALEXANDER COCHRANE
advancing knowledge in manufacturing chemicals. His pleasant relations with the Messrs. Talbot stood the strain unusually well when he afterward built his own works and became their active competitor. As an evidence of this, Governor Talbot offered one of his family a position of high trust on one of the state boards, which for personal reasons was declined. During his residence in Billerica the chemical business gradually increased and the products early obtained the highest rank for standard quality.
In 1859 Mr. Cochrane took up his residence in Malden, and erected works there for himself, since transferred to Everett, and laid the foundation for the business subsequently carried on by the corporation which bears his name. Without going into the details of the hard work involved in building up a business, which are so much alike in all fields of enterprise, suffice it is to say that these difficulties had been surmounted, and the business, which has since become the largest of its kind in New England, was successfully established before his death. Mr. Cochrane inherited his business ability, for it appears in the registers and records of Renfrewshire, that this branch of the Cochranes were among the earliest to engage in manufacturing in this part of Scotland. In the Renfrewshire Seisines, his ancestor is styled "John Cochrane, manufacturer, New Street, Paisley."
Alexander Cochrane, Sr., died August 11, 1865, at the age of fifty-two, at Swampscott, where he had taken a house for the sum- mer with his family. Although genial, he always preserved a touch of austerity that did not invite undue familiarity. His early Scottish training in the atmosphere of the Kirk accounted for this. He used to recall the line of his brothers and sisters who on Sunday walked from his father's residence, Glanderston House, to Neilston Church, under his father's eye. His father brought up the rear in order that no youthful escapades during the two-mile walk should mar the sacredness of the day. No reading was allowed on that day but the Bible and a few other religious books. The carly manners in New England had many points of resemblance to life at the same period in Scotland. His life, like so many other lives, was spent in the day of small things -in sowing seed for others to reap, and the parable of the sower was selected as best illustrating his life, when his family placed a window to his memory in Trinity Church, Boston. In a somewhat trying battle with Fortune, both in the
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ALEXANDER COCHRANE
Old World and in the New, he did what his hands found to do, with a perseverance and an ability which commanded success.
This brief statement regarding the father will show the influ- ences which surrounded the son in youth.
Alexander Cochrane, Jr., first made himself useful in his father's manufactory of chemicals at Billerica. He enjoyed the advantages of the public school in Billerica and a private school in Lowell until he was twelve years of age, when he entered the Howe School Academy at Billerica, where he remained until he was eighteen. This afforded him his entire privileges in scholastic training. He became a student of practical chemistry under his father's tuition in Billerica, and soon became a member of the firm of A. Coch- rane & Company. In 1883 the Cochrane Chemical Company was incorporated and he became its president.
Mr. Cochrane's work as director of various telephone companies, is the most interesting to the public. He became a director of the New England Telephone Company on its formation in 1878; of the National Bell Telephone Company in 1879; of the American Bell Telephone Company in 1880; and of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1899. Recently this last company has acquired the control of a substantial minority interest in the shares of the Western Union Telegraph Company, thus making it one of the greatest utility companies of the country. Mr. Cochrane has remained a director and a member of the executive committee during all these changes and was acting president of the American Tele- phone and Telegraph Company in 1900, until a permanent president could be selected.
Mr. Cochrane was a former director of the Eliot National Bank; the Chicago, Burlington & Northern Railroad; the Boston and Lowell Railroad, and the president of the Manufacturing Chemists' Association of the United States. He is now a director and vice- president of the New England Trust Company; director of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad; the New England Navigation Company; the Boston and Maine Railroad; the Maine Central Railroad; and the Massachusetts Electric Companies. He is president of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital trustees. He is a vestryman with continuous service in Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church, Boston, Massachusetts, and was chairman of the committee on building its porch and western tower in 1894; and a member of
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