USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913 > Part 25
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HENRY J. CUNNINGHAM
CUNNINGHAM, HENRY J., commissioner of public safety, was graduated from St. Dunstan's College in 1887, after which he entered upon a five years' course of philosophy and theology at the famous Urban University, commonly known as the College of the Propaganda, Rome. His health failed him, however, and at the end of two years, he returned home, finally abandon- ing the ministry and devoting himself to the business which he has carried on with such pronounced success.
In 1894 he established the real estate firm of Cunningham Brothers, one of the largest in Cambridge. He was the active member of the firm until this year (1912) when he retired in order to give his entire time to the city as Commissioner of Public Safety. The appoint- ment was made by Mayor Barry, under the provisions of the Act of the Legislature of May 20, 1912, which places the police and fire de- partments of Cambridge in charge of a single commissioner.
Mr. Cunningham has long been interested in social, commercial and political interests of the city, and has taken an active part in public life for several years. He has been on the executive committee of the Cambridge Tax- payers' Association, a member of the Citizens' Trade Association, and of the Intercolonial Club of Boston; was formerly president of the Catholic Union of Cambridge; one of the founders of the Hospital Aid Society of the Holy Ghost hospital, and today acts as one of its board of directors. Mr. Cunningham's judgment as an insurance man is highly re- garded. He was for several years a member of the rating committee of the Cambridge Board of Fire Underwriters. He was the first chair-
man of the Board of Trustees of Cambridge lodge of Elks. He is one of the ablest of our citizens. A man of education, he brings within the circle of business a ripeness of culture and breadth of courtesy which has greatly assisted his keen intelligence in carving out his high
HENRY J. CUNNINGHAM
position among local business men. Mr. Cun- ningham was formerly chief of police of Cam- bridge. He is an active leader in Democratic affairs in the city. Mr. Cunningham is a bache- lor and resides at Camelia Avenue.
THOMAS EDWARD CUNNINGHAM, M.D.
CUNNINGHAM, THOMAS EDWARD, M.D., son of John and Mary (Murphy) Cunningham, was born in Prince Edward Island, January 5, 1851. His general education was obtained in the schools of his native town and at St. Dunstan's College, Charlottetown, P.E.I. Then he began the study of medicine with Dr. Breer of Charlottetown, a leading practitioner of that place, and in 1870 came to Boston. Two years after he entered the Harvard Medical School. Graduating in 1876, he established himself in Cambridge, and
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in a few years built up a large and successful practice. He is a member of the Harvard Alumni Association, Massachusetts Medical Society, Cambridge Medical Improvement Asso- ciation, Boston Medical Library, Advisory Board of the Hospital for Contagious Diseases, American Medical Association. He organized the Hospital Aid Society of the Holy Ghost
THOMAS EDWARD CUNNINGHAM, M.D.
Hospital; and for the first five years was the only visiting physician; he was the first Medical Director of the Hospital.
Dr. Cunningham has been married twice. His first marriage occurred in 1879, to Miss Mary Dooley (deceased); and the second on February 3, 1891, to Miss Mary Kane. He has two children, Edward and Thomas Cunning- ham.
SAMUEL SILAS CURRY
CURRY, SAMUEL SILAS, president of the School of Expression, Boston, author and educator, was born on a farm in Chatata, Bradley County, Tenn., November 23, 1847. His father, James Campbell Curry, was a farmer, characterized by honesty and upright- ness. He married Nancy Young, a relative
of David Crockett. Dr. Curry's great-great- grandfather on his father's side was Robert Campbell (1755-1831), brother of Col. Andrew Campbell and of Col. Arthur Campbell (1745- 1781), whose ancestors came from Scotland through the north of Ireland and settled in Augusta County, Va. Dr. Curry's great-grand- mother had eight uncles in the battle of King's Mountain.
Samuel Silas Curry was brought up in the country on his father's farm. He did his full share of hard work while preparing himself for college during the period of the Civil War and, while at college, during vacations. He had few books in childhood, but studied history by the advice of his father.
He planned to enter one of the eastern col- leges, but through the influence of Dr. N. E. Cobleigh, president of East Tennessee Wesleyan University, at Athens, he matriculated there, in 1869, taking his A.B. degree in 1872, with the highest honors of the class or of any pre- vious class of the college, having done four years' work in two and a half years of resi- dence. He had an imaginative and artistic temperament.
Literature was from his childhood his ambi- tion, and President Cobleigh therefore advised him to adopt it as a profession. He entered Boston University as a post-graduate student, taking within eight years the successive degrees of 'A.D., A.M. and Ph.D. Much of his work was done in the Boston Public Library, where he pursued many courses in reading and inde- pendent investigation. He was teacher of Latin and Greek in New Hampshire Seminary in the spring of 1873. In 1878 he was gradu- ated in the Boston University School of Oratory. He had expected to enter the ministry, when the loss of his voice compelled him to relin- quish his plans, but not till after he had taken vocal lessons of specialists in all parts of the world in hopes of regaining his voice. This experience led him to take up the teaching of speaking as his life-work.
In 1879, on the death of Prof. Lewis B. Munroe, dean of the Boston University School of Oratory, and the consequent discontinuance of the School of Oratory, he became instructor of elocution and oratory in the College of Liberal Arts connected with the University.
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He made three trips to Europe, and while there was a pupil of Lamperti, James, Good- sonne and Ricquier, and had the advice and counsel of Regnier with the privilege of ob- serving the methods at l'Ecole de Declamation in the Conservatoire. Besides his instructions from these masters, he was a pupil for several years of Steele Mackaye, the pupil and succes- sor of Delsarte, and Mackaye made him a tempting offer to take charge of a school of acting in New York City, which he declined. In 1883 he was made Snow professor of oratory in Boston University, and in 1880, he was granted the privilege of arranging special classes from the overflow of applicants, and these classes in 1884 became a part of the School of Expression. In 1888 he presented to the directors of the University the alternative of allowing him to establish a separate depart- ment, or to accept his resignation as a teacher in the University. An increase in salary and other advantages were offered to him, but the University again declined to recognize officially a school of oratory, and he thereupon resigned and devoted the time thus released to develop- ing the School of Expression which had already become well known. He has been acting Davis professor of oratory at Newton Theological Institution from 1884; instructor in elocution, Harvard College, 1891-94; in Harvard Divinity School, 1892-1902; instructor in Yale Divinity School, 1892-1902; Teachers' College of Colum- bia University; the University of Chicago; lecturer on art, the State University of Minne- sota, The State University of Washington, and in many other leading educational insti- tutions throughout the country.
In 1895 he founded a quarterly review, Ex- pression, and made it the organ of the School of Expression. Its aim, like that of the school, is to show the relation of vocal training to education; to make the spoken word the ex- ponent and servant of the highest literature, and thus to save elocution from becoming merely mechanical and artificial; to raise the standard of public taste and to prove the possi- bility of successfully reading the best literature in public entertainments. Sir Henry Irving gave a recital for the benefit of the school, in 1888, the proceeds endowing the Irving lectureship.
From this school-teaching experience, Dr. Curry undertook a series of works based upon his investigations and discoveries in regard to voice training, vocal expression and delivery, and the relations of these to art, with a view of publishing them as text-books. The first of these was "The Province of Expression" (1891), followed by "A Text-Book on Vocal Expression" (1895); "Imagination and Dra- matic Instinct" (1896); "The Vocal and Liter- ary Interpretation of the Bible" (1904); "Alexander Melville Bell," (1906); "Founda-
SAMUEL SILAS CURRY
tions of Expression" (1907); "Browning and the Dramatic Monologue" (1908); "Mind and Voice" (1908). He also edited "Classics for Vocal Expression," (1888), and has several volumes (ready for publication) in prepara- tion.
He received the degree of Litt.D. from Colby University in 1905. He served the Boston Art Club for fifteen years as librarian. He has made scientific investigation of the cause of minister's sore throat, of stammering, of the primary cause of the misuse of the voice, of the fundamental principles underlying the science of training the voice, also of training the body. He has endeavored to reform all
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elocutionary teaching, and to show that true speaking can only be taught by stimulating the processes of the mind. In speaking of his experiences he says: "Young people should dare to do as they dream; to think about what they do and to act out what they think; not to be governed too much by outer influences."
In 1882 he married Anna Baright, of Pough- keepsie, N.Y. Miss Baright was of a long line of Quaker ancestors, including the Car- penters, Deans, Mabbets and Thornes, well- known families of Duchess County. Her maternal great-grandfather, the only break in the Quaker line, was Gen. Samuel Augustus Barker, who served in both wars between the United States and Great Britain, and after- ward was a member of the New York Legis- lature. Mrs. Curry was a graduate of the Boston University School of Oratory, and has been a teacher at the School of Expression from its establishment. They have had six children, of whom four are living.
FREDERICK W. DALLINGER
DALLINGER, FREDERICK W., was born in Cambridge, October 2, 1871, graduated from the Cambridge Latin School in 1889, entering Harvard College in the fall of the latter year, where, in 1893, he received the degree of A.B. summa cum laude. He received the degree of A.M. in 1894, and of LL.B. in 1897. During his eight years at the university he paid his expenses by working during the summer and by private tutoring. He was one of the origi- nators of intercollegiate debating, having been secretary and president of the old Harvard Union, a member of the victorious Harvard debating teams in 1892 and 1893, and the man- ager and coach of many subsequent Harvard teams. He was also president of the Harvard International Law Club, and a member of many other college organizations. In the fall of 1893 he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and was re-elected by a large majority the following year.
As chairman of the committee on county estimates, single-handed, at a time when reform was not popular, he fought the state and county machines of his own party and succeeded in
securing the enactment of laws completely reorganizing the whole system of county finances. He was one of a handful of Republican members who supported Governor Greenhalge in his veto of the Fall River police bill and of the Bell tele- phone stock watering bill.
Because of his fearless attitude, a determined effort was made by the state and county ma- chine of his own party, the corporations and the liquor interests to prevent his return. Al- though it was for his own personal benefit to devote himself to his studies at the Harvard Law
FREDERICK W. DALLINGER
School, he felt it his duty to the public to go back to the legislature. Accordingly he an- nounced himself as a candidate for the Senate, which body had blocked some of his measures in the interest of the people. His candidacy was ridiculed by the press, and a number of other strong candidates entered the field. He went straight to the people of Cambridge, how- ever, and carried every ward by large majorities, and received a unanimous nomination in the convention. His election was bitterly contested and a very large sum of money was spent to accomplish his defeat. Most of his enemies,
Bicharoco Java.
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BIOGRAPHIES
then, as now, were in his own political party, but he was elected by over 900 majority.
In the Senate he made good, and the next year he was re-elected by 2,750 majority.
He is a member and officer of the Cambridge Board of Trade, and is now (1912) serving his third year as president.
For many years he has been a director of the Cambridge Young Men's Christian Association, and was for some time vice-president of that beneficent organization.
He is a member of the board of directors of the Odd Fellows Hall Association and was one of the incorporators of the Cambridge Masonic Hall Association. He is warden, treasurer and president of the Men's Club of the Church of the Ascension; vice-president of the Middlesex Branch of the Massachusetts Sunday School Union; member of the council of the Middlesex Bar Association, and chairman of the legislative committee of the Massachusetts Conveyancers' Association. He has for many years been a public administrator for Middlesex County and attorney for the Reliance and Columbian Co- operative Banks.
Mr. Dallinger was awarded highest honors in political science by Harvard University, and in 1897 Longmans, Green & Co. published his book, "Nominations for Elective Office in the United States," which soon came to be recog- nized as a standard authority throughout the country.
He is married and has four children-two boys and two girls.
RICHARD HENRY DANA
DANA, RICHARD HENRY, lawyer, was born in Cambridge, January 3, 1851. His father, Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882), was a son of Richard Henry (1787-1879) and Ruth Charlotte (Smith) Dana, and grandson of Francis (1743-1811) and Elizabeth (Ellery) Dana, and John Wilson and Susanna (Tilling- hast) Smith, of Taunton, Mass., great-grandson of Richard (1700-1772) and Lydia (Trow- bridge) Dana, and of William Ellery, the signer, and a descendant from Richard and Ann (Ballard) Dana, through Daniel their youngest son and Naomi (Croswell) Dana, his wife. Richard Dana, the emigrant and progenitor
of the Dana family in America, was probably of French descent. Richard settled in Cam- bridge by or before 1640 and died in 1690. Richard (1700-1772) of the third generation was graduated at Harvard, 1718, was a Son of Liberty, and presided at some of their meetings in Faneuil Hall. He subjected ยท himself to the penalties of treason by taking the oath of Andrew Oliver, not to enforce the Stamp Act (1765). He was representative to the General Court and was at the head of the Boston bar. He married Lydia, daughter of Thomas and sister of Judge Edmund Trow- bridge, of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, one of the first to wear the scarlet and powdered wig. Francis Dana (1743-1811), Harvard, 1762, was a Son of Liberty, delegate to Conti- nental Congress from November, 1776 to 1784-85, signer of the Articles of Confederation; United States Minister to Russia, 1781-83; judge of the Supreme Court of Massachu- setts, 1785-91, and Chief-Justice of Massa- chusetts, 1791-1806; a founder and vice- president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; LL.D., Harvard, 1792.
Richard Henry (1787-1879) was the author, poet and essayist. He was one of the founders of the North American Review. Richard H. Dana (1815-1882) was the defender of Sims and Anthony Burns, fugitive slaves; counsel of the United States government before the International Conference at Halifax, N.S., in 1877, growing out of the Geneva Award of 1872; author of "Two Years Before the Mast" (1840), (1869), "To Cuba and Back" (1859), "Annotations to Wheaton's International Law" (1886), etc. Richard Henry Dana, born January 3, 1851, counts among his direct ancestors Governor Simon Bradstreet and Thomas Dudley, and the first American Poetess, Ann Bradstreet. He was prepared for college in public and private schools of Cambridge, Mass., and at St. Paul's School, Concord, N.H., and was graduated at Harvard University, class orator and A.B., 1874, and at the law school of the University LL.B., 1877. He was stroke oar of the freshman crew, 1870; for three years stroke oar and for two years captain of the University crew, and during his law course at the University he had the ad- vantage of extended travel in Europe, where
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he carried letters of introduction that brought him in contact with persons of distinction in society and statesmanship in every city he visited. He continued the study of law in the office of Brooks, Ball & Storey, and in 1879, made the trip in a sailing vessel from New York to San Francisco, in which voyage he visited many of the scenes so graphically described in his father's "Two Years Before the Mast." He declined the position of secre- tary of Legation at London, proffered by President Hayes in 1877, and on January 6, 1878, he was married to Edith, daughter of Henry Wadsworth and Frances (Appleton) Longfellow, and one of the "blue-eyed banditti" of the poet's "Children's Hour." Six children, four sons and two daughters, blessed this union. Mr. Dana's law practice soon became extensive and his service in behalf of various religious, and charitable and civil service reform organizations was freely given. He became a regular contributor to the "Civil Service Record," which he edited in 1889-92, and he was an uncompromising advocate of tariff and political reform. He was for many years secretary of the Massachusetts Civil Service Reform League; in 1888 he drafted the act which resulted in the adoption of the Australian ballot by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the pioneer in the movement in the United States in that direction. He planned the scheme of work of the Associated Charities of Boston, 1878-79, and was chairman of its committee of organization. He served as president of the board of trustees of the New England Conservatory of Music, 1891-98, and during that time raised $165,000 for the institution. He has been president of the Boston Young Men's Christian Association 1890-91, and was active in trying to intro- duce into Massachusetts the Norwegian system of regulating the sale of liquors. He served as president of the Cambridge Civil Service Reform Association, 1897-1901. He was a member of the standing committee of the diocese of Massachusetts, and was elected a substitute delegate to the general convention of the Protestant Episcopal church in America, held in Boston in 1904, serving as chairman of the general convention committee. He was
made trustee and treasurer of the Episcopal Theological School, of Cambridge, in 1894, and has held the office of president of the Alumni Association of St. Paul's School, Concord, N.H. In 1901, Governor Crane, of Massachusetts, appointed him one of the three commissioners to inquire into the question of constructing a dam at the mouth of the Charles River, and the favorable report of the commission made in 1903, which led to the accomplishment of the great project, was written largely by Mr. Dana. In 1901 he was appointed by the board of overseers of Harvard University on the visiting committee in the department of phi- losophy, and organized the movement for raising funds for building Emerson Hall, which resulted in procuring about $165,000. He was a member of the executive committee of the Cambridge Good Government League and the Massachusetts Election Laws League, was presi- dent of the Massachusetts Civil Service Re- form Association, and is chairman of the council of the United States Civil Service Reform League. He is a vice-president of the Massa- chusetts Reform Club; a member of the New York Reform Club, and was president of the Library Hall Association, organized for the improvement of the municipal government in Cambridge. His social club affiliations include the Union and Exchange Clubs, of Boston; the Essex County Club; the Oakley Country Club, of Watertown, of which he was president; and the Harvard Club, of New York. His trusteeships have included the New England Conservatory of Music; the Oliver Building Trust; the Washington Building Trust; the Delta Building Trust; the Brom- field Building Trust and the Congress Street Building Trust. He is the author of "Double Taxation Unjust and Inexpedient" (1892); "Double Taxation in Massachusetts" (1895) ; "Substitutes for the Caucus" (Forum, 1886); "Workings of the Australian Ballot Act in Massachusetts" Annals of American Academy, (1892); and Conference of Good Government, (1906); Address on the One Hundredth Anni- versary of the Town of Dana (1901); and other papers and addresses on civil service reform, taxation, ballot reform, election expenses and better houses for working men.
BIOGRAPHIES
190a
ROBERT DOUGLASS
DOUGLASS, ROBERT, the second child and older son of Robert and Betsey Hadley Douglass, was born in Cambridge, Mass., June 17, 1806. In 1812 his parents left that City, business being at a standstill on account of the Embargo. His father was a carpenter and an expert me- chanic, and set up the machinery in cotton mills which were being built at that time. They re- turned in 1816 or 1817, after having lived in sev- eral towns of Massachusetts. With that excep- tion Cambridge was always his home. As a boy he worked with a carpenter, but this was too hard for him. In 1822 his father died, leaving his mother in very poor circumstances with a
ROBERT DOUGLASS
family of seven children dependent upon her. It was necessary that the older son should help his mother, and he was apprenticed to Isaac Lum, probably the earliest manufacturing confectioner in Cambridge, of whom he learned the trade. After leaving the latter's establish- ment, he spent a short time in Roxbury, and in June, 1826, before he was of age, commenced business for himself on the corner of School and .
Cherry Streets. He bought his sugar in small quantities and brought it out of Boston him- self, and after it was made into candy carried it into Boston to sell. From this small beginning by untiring industry, strict economy and fair dealing was built up the largest confectionery manufactory at that time in New England, sending wagons all over these states. Soon he moved to near the corner of Windsor and School Streets. On account of his increasing business and of loss and annoyance caused by the high tides, which in those early days had unobstructed rise over the marshes, one of which in 1830 covered the place to a depth of three feet in fifteen minutes, he bought an estate on what is now Massachusetts Avenue, corner of Douglass Street, where his business
was carried on. He introduced the manu- facture of English and medicated lozenges in this vicinity. In 1834 his brother Royal became his partner, and in 1843 this firm was dissolved. In the following year he entered into partnership with Charles Everett, under the firm name of Everett and Douglass, for the sale of domestic goods on commission in Boston. This continued for three years only, and he was never afterwards in any active business. In 1836, he bought shares in the Cambridge Bank. He was connected with that institution and its successor, the Cambridgeport National Bank, as director or president for more than forty-four years, holding the latter office for nineteen years. He was trustee of the Cam- bridgeport Savings Bank from its incorporation in 1853 until his death, and vice-president for the last twenty-six years of his life. He served as one of the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund of the city of Cambridge, was a member of the Cambridge Water Board, and was the treasurer of the Union Glass Works of Somer- ville. He always attended the First Universalist Church, having identified himself with that society when very young. He was married in 1832 to Adeline M. Welch, daughter of Joseph W. Welch of Cambridge, who died in 1857. In 1860 he married Anna E. Dexter, daughter of Henry Dexter of Cambridge, and they had three daughters. Mr. Douglass died February 19, 1885. Mrs. Anna E. Douglass
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died October 26, 1913. Mr. Douglass was pre-eminently a self-made man. He had little opportunity to obtain an education when a boy; but notwithstanding that fact, he became a successful business man, and one whose advice was sought by many, and this he was always most willing to give. He was kind and genial to all with whom he was brought in contact. He was a man of the strictest integ- rity, of whom it could truly be said that his word was as good as his bond. He was very quiet and retiring, and refused to hold any public office.
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