USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Brockton > History of Brockton, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 1656-1894 > Part 81
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BIOGRAPHICAL.
of Brockton was inaugurated, he has been much of the time Vice-Chairman of the Board, a term of service not exceeded in the history of Brockton. He has discharged the duties of his office with the utmost fidelity to the educational interests of Brockton with exceptional wisdom and efficiency, and to him as much as to any one of the meni- bers of the Board is the present excellence and improvement of the city schools largely due.
In 1876 and '77 he was chosen one of the selectmen of the town. During 1877, '78, '79 and '81, he was one of the assessors of the town and city, an office which calls for the best judgment, utmost impartiality and personal honesty.
Of the private life and character of Mr. Packard, the writer can say of his personal knowledge, having attended the same school with him, as a boy, he was of a mild peaceful disposition, modest and unassuming in his deportment, and improved to the best of his ability the limited advantages in his day. He utilized such as came within his reach whether at home, abroad, behind the counter, or in the counting room. He was a learner always and everywhere, seizing opportunities, so many throw away, to gain knowledge of men, methods, principles and business as well as from books. He in- stinctively shrank from all obtrusion upon the public, and from offensive expression of his views, when productive of no good. He has ever been a friend to the educational interests of his native town, as may be seen by his term of management of the same, and the repeated confidence placed in him by his fellow townsmen. He has ever been ready by word and deed to favor any proposition that wonld reasonably improve the condition of the public schools of the town and city.
The affectionate esteem in which he is held by the entire community he also possesses in the narrower field of church fellowship and activity. He has ever felt a deep inter- est in the welfare of the church and society, which was for a long time the only one in Campello, the Trinitarian Congregational Church of which he has been a consistent member and an officer for a long term of years. The confidence placed in him by the society has often been manifested, as appears in the records, by placing him in the chair to preside over the affairs of the society at their meetings and in electing him treasurer and collector for nearly twenty years from 1871. In 1867-'70 he was a member of the parish committee.
Mr. Packard is a man of fine tastes in musical matters and has always taken a lively interest in improving the standard of music in the town, and especially has he been active in the regular church services of the sanctuary on the Sabbath at Campello, where he served the South Congregational church as musical director for the term of twenty-nine years, from 1859 to 1888, and in recognition of his long and faithful interests in their behalf he was presented with an elegant gold watch, appropriately in- scribed, which was a deserved testimonial. In 1893 Mr. Packard visited England, Wales, and France, accompanied by his son, Frank E. Packard. In 1894 he made an extended tour through the Western States to California and into Mexico.
FAMILY RECORD.
Mr. Packard married Louisa, daughter of Bela and Mary (Kingman) Keith, of Cam- pello, Mass., January 25, 1855. Mrs. Packard was a warm hearted friend and com-
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HISTORY OF BROCKTON.
panion, a true Christian, a devoted mother, of bright and sunny disposition, one whose friendship was strong and lasting, and finding her chief happiness in her home and among her friends and caring for and administering to those she loved.
CHILDREN :
I-Frank Edward Packard, born May 7, 1857, graduated at the Brockton High School in 1874, finished his preparation for college at Adams Academy, Quincy, Mass., graduated at Amherst College 1880, principal of the Sprague School in Brock- ton, 1881. During the next three years he was employed in the Syrian Protes- tant College of Beyroot as instructor of English and mathematics; while in the college he was their organist, 1879-80, and after his return home was organist at the South Congregational church at Campello, then occupied the same position in the Central Methodist Episcopal church in Brockton, and later the Campello Methodist church, and is at present a partner with his father, under the firm name of S. F. Packard & Son, Campello, in the real estate and insurance busi- ness. He married Nellie Evans of Brockton.
II -- Nellie White Packard, born March 4. 1862, married Horace Alden Keith, in that portion of West Bridgewater, now forming a portion of the city of Brockton, April 12, 1887.
CHILDREN :
1-Roger Keith, born May 8, 1888. 2 -- Louisa Keith, born January 25, 1889. 3 -- Gerald Keith, born March 13, 1893.
III -- Alice Louisa Packard, born May 14. 1863 ; died August 15, 1863.
EDWIN KEITH.
EDWIN KEITH, whose portrait accompanies this sketch, is the son of Capt. Ziba and Polly (Noyes) Keith, born August 21, 1840, in the homestead of his father at the cor- ner of Main and Plain streets, on the site of the elegant residence of George E. Keith. After the usual attendance in the district schools at Campello, like most of his Keith relatives, he engaged in what was the common occupation of the village, shoemaking, and afterward in 1859, when sewing and stitching machines were introduced into the manufacture of boots and shoes, Mr. Keith became superintendent of the stitching room in the shoe manufactory of his brothers, Martin L. Keith and Franklin Keith, then at the corner of Main and Plain streets, which was a large and successful establishment, under the firm name of M. L. Keith & Co. This establishment, which was destroyed by fire in 1874, stood upon the site of the elegant residence of Hon. Ziba C. Keith. In February, 1874, he became associated with an older brother, Daniel Noyes Keith, for the purpose of manufacturing shoes, under the firm name of Keith Brothers, which firm was dissolved by mutual agreement in November, 1881.
asjones
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BIOGRAPHICAL.
Soon after the dissolution Mr. Keith purchased and furnished the factory formerly occupied by George Stevens on Montello street, and immediately entered into a success- ful career of business life, manufacturing shoes, where he is at the time of this writing. In 1871 Mr. Keith purchased the well known dwelling house formerly occupied by one of the former pastors of the South Congregational church, Rev. Daniel Huntington, where he resides at the present time. Mr. Keith is largely interested in real estate, having several houses on what is well known as the Amzi Brett place, one of the earher inhabitants of the south part of the old town of North Bridgewater. His real estate operations are extended to Monument Beach, iu the town of Bourne, Mass., where he owns several cottage houses, and where so many Brockton people resort in the summer season.
Mr. Keith united in marriage November 26, 1862, with Ellen Richardson, daughter of Welcome and Susan (Tilden) Howard, of Brockton, granddaughter of Col. Caleb and Sylvia (Alger) Howard, and a direct descendant in the seventh generation from Jolin Howard, the first settler of the name of Howard in the old town of Bridgewater, prev- ious to its division, which is in the following order; John1, Ephraim?, Ephraim3, George4, Col. Caleb®, Welcome,6 Ellen Richardson7.
CHILDREN :
I -- Albion Howard Keith, born April 16, 1864 ; died, July 31, 1865.
II -- Lester Carlton Keith, born September 27, 1866; married, Rebecca May, daughter of Capt. Obed Baker3 of West Dennis, Mass., and has one daughter, Florence May, born May 24, 1843.
Lester C. Keith is interested in real estate in Campello.
III -- Mae C. Keith, born May 25, 1868; died, August 23, 1868.
IV -- Forest Noyes Keith, born April 29, 1876; died, December 24, 1881.
In 1893 Mr. Edwin Keith took his son, Lester Carlton Keith, into partnership with him under the firm of E. & L. C. Keith. The son is a graduate of Greenwich Seminary and is one of the progressive men of the time.
AUGUSTUS TURNER JONES.
NORTH BRIDGEWATER had been an incorporated town twelve years before the birth of the subject of this sketch. It was then but a straggling country village with a large surrounding area devoted to farms and a still larger section still covered by her native forests. His father was well known through a long life as Capt. Augustus Jones, and his paternal grandfather was Capt. Asa Jones, both having received their military titles in the days when every able-bodied citizen was enrolled for public duty and the main- tenance of public safety. His mother was Almeda Torrey, eldest daughter of Turner Torrey, who himself came from Weymouth, and married Sarah Snell, a descendant in direct line from the Pilgrim John Alden and Priscilla Mullins.
Mr. Jones was born on the 21st day of May, in the year 1832, and with the excep- tion of about three years, has spent the whole of his life in his native town. His par-
G
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HISTORY OF BROCKTON.
ents were those who believed a good education for their children to be the best sort of an inheritance they could bestow upon them, and so gave him every opportunity at their command for attending school. After completing the course prescribed in the public schools, he was given a chance, which he eagerly embraced, for further study, and spent part of two years in the Adelphian Academy in his own town. Subse- quently he entered Phillips Academy in Andover, then under the principalship of that distinguished scholar and disciplinarian, Samuel H. Taylor, LL.D., where he completed the regular classical course fitting for entrance to college. In 1854 he became a mem- ber of Amherst College, and in 1856 transferred his college relations to Yale, where he was distinguished for high and accurate scholarship, and from which he graduated with high rank in 1858. Immediately after leaving college, he was, by recommendation of Pre- sident Woolsey, of Yale, given a position as classical instructor in a large training school in Stamford, Conn., and remained there one year, when his services were sought as principal of a new institution then recently opened in Williamsburg, Mass. Two years of faithful and efficient work were given to this school, and it was placed upon a good foundation, when Mr. Jones resigned his place much to the regret of the friends of the school, and returning to the town of his nativity entered upon a career which proved to be the important work of his life, that of a journalist.
It was in 1863 that he became proprietor and editorial manager of the North Bridge- water Gazette, then a weekly journal of limited circulation, but occupying a field of rapidly growing importance. Mr. Jones entered upon his new work with the same enthusiasm and earnestness which had characterized all his previous efforts. From the outset it was his ambition and his purpose to give the people a clean and wholesome newspaper and to make it an agent for the promotion of the welfare of his town and vicinity in all that pertained to elevated morals, an enlightened intelligence and sub- stantial material prosperity. The tone of his paper was never lowered to meet the vitiated taste of the vulgar or to cater to an appetite for the sensational. With a high appreciation of the great opportunities afforded a newspaper as a medium for public education, and an ever present sense of the responsibility thus laid upon him, he con- scientiously sought to discharge his duties as an editor so that the people would be up- lifted and helped. With this high ideal before him, it is not surprising that the Gazette made for itself a character and won for itself a place in the public esteem that was widely recognized. In all local enterprises it was ever a leader, and in the discussion of all public questions it was always candid, conservative, and always in touch with the best sentiment of the people. When after twenty years of active newspaper work, Mr. Jones gave up the editorial chair and all his pecuniary interest in the Gazette to an- other he left it a journal well established, widely read, and bearing a reputation not surpassed by any in the State.
Of Mr. Jones's record as a public man the archives of the city and town very fully show. In 1864, the year following his return to his native town, he was chosen a member of the school committee, and was an active man on the committee in the first organization of the High School of the town in that year. To this office, as well as to that of trustee of the public library, he was repeatedly re-elected, and has ever shown a great interest in public education. In 1878 when the question of the establishment
51
BIOGRAPHICAL.
of public water works in Brockton, was after much discussion settled in the affirma- tive, he was selected a member of the committee for deciding upon the best source of supply and of inaugurating the system. His ability as a presiding officer in public assemblies was early recognized, and he was frequently called upon to serve both as moderator in town meetings and as chairman in political conventions and other public gatherings. He was appointed a member of the committee chosen by the town to frame a city charter for Brockton, and after its adoption was elected by his ward to the first city council, of which he was made president by the unanimous vote of his associ- ates on the board. In the years 1886, 1887 and 1891 he was chosen collector of taxes, and in 1887 succeded Henry A. Ford as city treasurer, holding this responsible position for seven years. In 1872 he received from President Grant a commission as post- master, and a renewal of the same in 1873. In all these important official positions his course was characterized by a high conception of duty and an integrity of purpose that always brought to him the largest public confidence.
Mr. Jones has for many years been prominent in his relations with the Porter Con- gregational Church and one of its most valued members. He has been superintendent of its Sunday school, and for a long series of years among the liberal supporters of the church, and chairman of the board of finance. Few movements have been inaugurated in behalf of this church during the past twenty-five years in which he has not borne a conspicuous part. He was one of the original promoters and members of the Old Colony Congregational Club, was its secretary for five years and has been its presi- dent the past two years. He is also a member of the Commercial Club, of the Old Bridgewater Historical Society, and of a number of Masonic organizations ; also on the board of directors of the Plymouth County Safe Deposit and Trust Company. In politics Mr. Jones has been a life-long Republican, casting his first vote for Jolin C. Fremont for president, and never forgetting his political duty either at the caucus or at the polls. For several years he performed efficient service for his party as chairman of the Republican town committee. In 1888 he spent several months in foreign travel, sailing from Montreal and making a tour through England, Scotland, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and France.
Mr. Jones was united in marriage on the 2d of December, 1860, with Miss Helen Eveleth, daughter of Moses and Betsey (Preble) Eveleth, of New Gloucester, Me., a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College of the class of 1856. Their children were Bertha Ev- eleth, born September 7, 1866, and Lizzie Lee, born September 25, 1868. The former graduated at Wellsley College in 1889, and in 1894 was married to Edward Dwight Blodgett, of Cortland, N. Y., a graduate of Amherst College in 1887. Lizzie Lee grad- uated at Wellesley in 1891, and is now a teacher in the Brockton High School. The wife died in 1875, and on March 10, 1876, Mr. Jones was married to Mrs. Harriet (Drake) Pettee, of Stoughton. They have one son, Everett Augustus, born August 16, 1878, and now preparing for admission to Amherst College.
The subject of this sketch represents in his life and character the sturdy principles of a Pilgrim ancestry, and is worthy of the high esteem in which he is universally held. He is an honored and useful citizen.
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HISTORY OF BROCKTON.
NATHAN KEITH.
NATHAN Keith was born in the West Parish of Bridgewater, now city of Brockton, February 11, 1814. He was a descendant from Rev. James Keith, the first settled minister in Bridgewater. His direct line of ancestry is as follows : James', Timothy2, Nathan3, Simeon4, Pardon" and Nathan", who was the second son of a family of nine children, who have all lived to have families.
On the maternal side, his mother was a daughter of Silas Wild, jr., of Braintree. Her grandfather, James Thayer of Braintree, was a great-grandson of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, who came over in the Mayflower. Mr. Keith married Elizabeth Copeland Perkins, daughter of Nahum and Vesta (Copeland) Perkins of North Bridge . water, now Brockton, September 15, 1853.
CHILDREN :
1. Allie Vesta, born February 19. 1857. Married Paul Franklin Green, November 28. 1876; had Pauline Frances Green, born May 30, 1881. She afterwards inarried Charles Herbert Kingman, June 23, 1885, and had Arlene Lorna, born July 24, 1886.
2. Annie, born September 24, 1859; died October 10, 1859.
Mr. Keith, like all boys in Massachusetts brought up on a farm, had the advantage of a common school education, with the addition of a private school in West Bridge- water taught by Moses Mandell for a term of about four months. He was then about sixteen years old, which finished his education. Realizing the drudgery in the way the farming was then done, boys generally looked for some other occupation. His elder brother was learning to make shoes, but soon commenced to take out work from Mitchell & Bryant of Joppa. He and his brother followed that for a short time, and then commenced cutting their own stock. They made principally brogans and sent them to a commission house in New Orleans, which gave a fair price for labor. If they averaged seventy-five cents to a dollar a day they thought they were doing well.
They then opened trade in low cut shoes known as sailor's pumps for the whale fishery, which was then in its glory in New Bedford and Nantucket. It took less stock to make a pump than a brogan, and they sold for about the same price. There being quite a limited trade in that kind of goods, they looked for another market. They formed a company to manufacture boots and shoes, under the firm name of W. Keith & Co., the partners being Williard Keith, Nathan Keith and Thomas Packard. They manufactured in a shop opposite where Caleb H. Packard now resides, and opened a boot aud shoe store in Albany, N. Y. He they remained one season, when, business being very dull, Thomas Packard retired from the company and closed the manufactory and the two Keiths went to Albany. They afterward concluded to go West and grow up with the country. They removed their stock to Columbus, O., and opened a boot and shoe store, purchasing their goods in Boston. Owing to the great depression in business and difficulty of getting exchange, they became discouraged, and in the fall of 1837 they removed to Little Rock, Ark. Here they continued the business about two
Nathan. Keith.
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BIOGRAPHICAL.
years, and then bought a steam saw mill. They had a good market for the most of their lumber at home, and rafted considerable down the Mississippi River.
In 1839 the subject of our sketch retired from the mill business, his brother continu- ing the same until the land on which the mill was located, which had been in litigation for some fifteen years, was settled. His brother then purchased the steam ferry boat at Little Rock, Ark., where he continued some years. Among thie incidents of his life he ferried Col. Cassius M. Clay's Kentucky regiment across the Arkansas River in time of the war with Mexico.
In 1840 Nathan purchased a small stock of goods and shipped them on the steamer Cherokee at Little Rock for Fort Smith; the next morning they stopped at a plaee called Lewisburg, and as they were starting from the wharf the boilers exploded. Nathan Keith was standing in the social hall directly over the boilers, and soon tound himself on the bank of the river. Almost everyone near him was killed or wounded. He was scalded and bruised, and there were some fifteen or twenty men missing. There were quite a number of ladies on board, all of whom escaped; they were in the after part of the boat, which sank a few minutes later. Mr. Keith lost all his goods. He had friends up near the Indian nation, where he lived for the next four years, en- gaged in stock raising. He bought about 125 sheep in the north part of the State and drove them down to Grand Prairie, south of the Arkansas River; but wolves were so troublesome he sold out. He then took his horses and went to Texas and Louisiana, sold them and went to New Orleans, where he engaged in the daguerreotype business in the city and villages throughout Louisiana and Alabama.
In 1849 he removed to Matamoras and Fort Brown, Texas, and was engaged as a clerk in a store at Fort Brown, He left there for California in November, 1849. He was thirty -five days travelling from Texas to the - Pacific Ocean, about eleven hundred miles. He made a stop of a day at the principal cities of Monterey, Saltillo, Buena Vista battle ground, where General Taylor and Santa Anna fought about three years be- fore. The next city was Durango, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, about three hundred miles from the Pacific; they were assured that their raw animals could not take them over the mountains without a pilot and also from danger from the Indians which they had heard almost every day since they had left the Rio Grande. His com- pany consisted of sixty men, and many of them armed with guns and pistols. They finally concluded to ride their own mules instead of riding pack saddles. The Mexican government had made a mule road three or four years previously. All the traffic to the Pacific from Durango was done by a tribe of Indians; they carried what they called a cargo (125 pounds). They met and passed companies of them. They arrived on the Pacific at Mazatlan, Mexico, about the middle of January, 1850, in good condition, and sold their stock and saddles for about three-fourths of what they cost on the Rio Grande. They found an old hulk of a vessel, which they fitted for sea, and in about a week they sailed for San Francisco.
They were thirty-five days on the passage, stopped one day in San Francisco, went to Sacramento the night after landing in the city, took a stern wheel boat for Marys- ville, and from there went to Foster's Bar on foot twenty-five miles, on the Yuba River. He and his partner bought a pick and shovel for which they paid one ounce-sixteen
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HISTORY OF BROCKTON.
dollars as gold was then valued. He lived in California about three years, engaged at times in packing supplies up to the mines, keeping a toll bridge on the Yuba River, and placer mining with fair success. The most he made in California was by investments in San Francisco at a large rate of interest.
In 1853 he returned to his old home, in the vicinity where he has resided for the last forty years, a respected citizen, engaged in agriculture and improving the farm on which he resides. It was mostly through his enterprise that Perkins avenue was built, where there are now over eighty houses on thic Perkins farm, and about the same num- ber on the adjoining estates that have been built within about twenty years.
In politics Mr. Keith was a Whig and afterwards a Republican, having voted four times in presidential elections, including the two Harrisons. He never had much ambition for office, although he was councilman in the first city government in Brock- ton, being the senior member. He also received a lieutenant's commission from Gov. Davis in the old Massachusetts militia. He is an independent thinker, and co-operates in everything that tends to benefit the community. He is a member of the Society of Pioneers of New England.
RUFUS PACKARD KINGMAN.
RUFUS PACKARD KINGMAN Was the son of Benjamin and Rebecca (Packard) Kingman, was born in North Bridgewater now Brockton, November 4, 1821, only a few months after the birth of the town of North Bridgewater. He was in the seventh generation from Henry Kingman, who with his wife Joanna and six children, landed in Weymouth, Massachusetts, July 10, 1635, and who came from Weymouth, England. At the time of his entrance to the town it was a small settlement, nearly all farmers and shoemak- ers, and the business of the village was very small, the principal manufacture being shoes. The early days of Mr. Kingman were uneventful, attending such public schools as the town afforded and such private instruction as could be had, under the teachings of Mrs. Nathan Jones, Miss Julia Perry, Dea. Heman Packard and Rev. Jonathan Coe. At the age of twelve years his father erected a public house on the spot where Washburn's block now stands, and the young boy 'immediately entered upon the duties incident to hotel life. Upon the retirement of his father from the hotel, he assisted in the labors of farming till he arrived to the age of eighteen. In 1840 he entered the dry goods and variety store of William F. Brett, then the leading one in the town, located in the hotel building, corner of Main and School streets. There he remained until 1846, when he became a partner in the business, under the firm name of Brett & Kingman, giving his entire time and energy to the business till 1854, when he was obliged to give up active business on account of feeble health.
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