USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and personal memoirs of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Vol I > Part 32
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was elected on the Republican ticket to the general assembly, and served on the committee on education, of which John Addison Porter was chairman. For nine years he was a director in the Young Men's Chris- tian Association of Torrington. He was superintendent for five years of a Baptist Sunday school in Northampton, Massachusetts, and held the same position in a Sunday school in Torrington for four years, the latter school being attached to a Congregational church. At one time he presided over the social work of the Hanson Place Baptist church, Brooklyn, New York. Personally Mr. White is extremely popular. He was married December 8, 1874. in Brooklyn, New York, to H. Minnie, daughter of the late John B. Cole.
WILLIAM HENRY WEASER.
William Henry Weaser, a leading optician in the city of his nativ- ity, was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, July 31. 1869. He is a son of Frank and Veronica (Siegfried) Weaser, natives of Bavaria, whence they came in youth to the United States, resided for a few years in New York, were there married and came thence to Pittsfield.
William H. Weaser attended the public and high schools of Pitts- field, and then entered Pernin Business College of Detroit, Michigan, for the special purpose of acquiring the Pernin system of stenography. Two interests served to divert him from a half-formed purpose to enter mercantile life, the one an ardent love of music, the other a strong inclination to study medicine. The first led to his early connection with the Pittsfield band and other semi-professional musical organiza- tions, and he subsequently became a member of the Musicians' Union and as an accomplished cornetist made his last professional appearance in 1893 during the World's Fair at Chicago. His inclination to the
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study of medicine led to his devotion to that science of his spare time from musical culture, and this was subsequently supplemented by two years of close and constant application under competent medical pre- ceptorship. Concentrating his attention upon diseases of the eye and disordered vision generally, he eventually determined upon the profes- sion of an optician as his life work, and to this end entered the New York College of Optics and was graduated from that institution in September, 1900. Immediately thereafter he returned to Pittsfield, ยท where he established himself in business in the Wright block, and has met with substantial success in his chosen profession. An invention of Mr. Weaser's, recently patented, which obtained instant recognition as a most valuable addition for optical appliances, is an eye-glass mount- ing designed to prevent a change in the axis of the lens. With the mounting in question the lens may be raised or lowered by placing the guards above or below the stud, enabling the best results obtainable in correcting astigmatism. An additional valuable feature of this mount- ing is that there are no side screws to loosen or to cause irritation to the nose, as is the case with all other mountings.
ERNST OSCAR ENGSTROM.
Ernst O. Engstrom, a pharmacist of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, was born at Trelleborg, the extreme southern town of Sweden, August 7, 1865. His father, a leading merchant of Trelleborg, died during the early childhood of the son, and his mother remarried and came to America with her family in 1882, locating in Boston, Massachusetts.
Ernst O. Engstrom received his initial schooling in his native town and completed his education by a four years' high school course, latter- ly at Malmoe, the third largest city of Sweden. The following three
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years were spent as one of the office force in the salvage and commis- sien business of his father's former partner, and this was interrupted by the removal of the family to America. Upon his arrival here he found immediate employment with an uncle, Mr. Franz L. Braconier. a pharmacist of Brockton, Massachusetts. During the period of this service he entered the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and was graduated from that institution with first honors in 1887. In that year his uncle, aforementioned, concluded to retire from business and to re- turn to his native land, and his nephew being equipped to succeed him at once entered the pharmacy at Brockton and conducted the business successfully for three years. At the end of this period of time his uncle returned to the United States, repurchased his old store, and Mr. Eng- strom applied the money that he had made and saved in the drug busi- ness in establishing. in conjunction with others, a shoe manufacturing business at Brockton under the name of the Brockton Shoe Co., of which Mr. Engstrom was elected president. Depressed business condi- tions of 1892 led to the dissolution of this company in that year, pay- ing, however, one hundred cents on every dollar of its indebtedness, and leaving Mr. Engstrom with little save a dearly purchased experi- ence and an untarnished reputation for business integrity. He then ac- cepted a position as traveling salesman for Fox, Fulz & Co., wholesale druggists' sundries, dealers of New York and Boston, and this connec- tion continued until July 1, 1899, the date of his purchase of a half- interest with Carl Hydren of a pharmacy which the latter had opened at Pittsfield, nine years earlier. Two years later Mr. Engstrom pur- chased his partner's interest in the business, and he has since continued to conduct the same with a satisfactory measure of success. He is a member of Mystic Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons : Berkshire Chap- ter, Royal Arch Masons: Osceola Lodge, No. 125, Independent Order
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of Odd Fellows: Onota Lodge, No. 90, Ancient Order of United Workmen; and Onota Council, No. 568, Royal Arcanum. Mr. Eng- strom was married in September. 1896, to Mida Louise Hooper, daugh- ter of the late William Hooper, late president of the Ticonderoga Na- tional Bank and manager of the Dixon Graphite Company's mines at Ticonderoga, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Engstrom are members of the Pittsfield Methodist Episcopal church, the latter named taking an especial and active official interest in the work of the home and foreign missionary societies of that congregation.
GEORGE BARKER.
The mandolin of song and story and that of modern workman- ship differentiate as markedly as do the old and new devices in utili- tarian directions, and from being used solely as a crude accompaniment to the voice, it has been demonstrated to contain rare possibilities of instrumentation under the touch of cultured musicians. In tonal quali- ties more penetrating, yet daintier and sweeter than the guitar. the mandolin has long since supplanted that instrument in popular favor and is fast gaining ground upon its most formidable rival, the violin. Its study is now one of the special features of all well-equipped con- servatories of music. Among the master minds along this line of mod- ern musical development a first place must be accorded George Barker, of Pittsfield, who has the distinction of having been the author of the first mandolin instructor and the composer of the first music published in the United States for that instrument, and the first teacher of the mandolin in New England.
He was born March 9, 1852, in Boston, Massachusetts, a son of Thomas T. and Jane L. (Fuller) Barker, the former a native of Not-
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tingham, England, and the latter of Dorchester, Massachusetts, a lineal descendant of Samuel Fuller, one of the Pilgrim Fathers. Thomas T. Barker (father) was a lace merchant, a business to which he naturally turned as a native of one of the most famous of lace manufacturing towns, and in which he continued to be engaged up to the time of his decease. He was born in 1813, and died in 1873; his wife was born June 17, 1830, and died December 4, 1888.
George Barker acquired his general education and early business training in Boston, his first employment being with the Henry Tolman music house, with which he was associated for several years. He then yielded to a youthful longing for travel and adventure, and shipped as an ordinary seaman on the whaling vessel " Alcyone " bound for the Indian Ocean, the smallest American schooner (92 tons burthen) that up to that time had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. His seafaring career of two years and a half and his subsequent travels completed his circumnavigation of the globe, and involved him in varied experiences in many lands and satisfied to the full his thirst for adventure. He recalls with especial vividness a landing effected by the little craft upon which he sailed at a point in Tulu Bay, Madagascar, where the vessel was boarded on a sultry summer day by the native king, whose royal costume consisted solely of a heavy winter overcoat and a plug hat. The king condescended to accept as port charges a bucket of hard tack and a roll of calico, and he took personal charge of the goods. It is strik- ingly illustrative of civilization's giant strides that at this very point there now flourishes a town containing many fine dwelling houses and business blocks, and which is supplied with such up-to-date equipments as trolley car lines and electric light plants. The captains of such ves- sels as the " Alcyone" were anything but tender in the treatment of their crews, and the hardships and brutality to which he was subjected
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led young Barker to put into execution a long cherished plan for de- sertion of the whaler. and when at a port in the Island of Mauritius he succeeded in stowing himself away in the hold of an English vessel bound for Melbourne, Australia. His Australian experiences embraced four years' employment in a Melbourne mercantile establishment. After his return to America he entered into business relations with a brother and they established a laundry in Boston, Massachusetts, and at the same time he resumed his interest in music and again took up the study of the same. In 1882 he determined to devote his entire time to the vocation of musical instructor, and it was in that year that he opened a studio in Boston and instructed pupils on the guitar and shortly there- after on the banjo and mandolin. In 1886 his first mandolin music and his mandolin instructor, mentioned above, were published. He acquired instant recognition as a capable writer of music, and speedily won an enviable reputation for ability as a teacher, securing a large patronage from individual pupils, also classes, and was successively employed as instructor of mandolin, guitar and banjo in the music departments of Harvard, Wellesley and Tufts Colleges and Groton School for Boys. His Pittsfield studio is in the Wright block.
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