USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913 > Part 26
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HENRY ENDICOTT
ENDICOTT, HENRY, was born in Canton, November 14, 1824; son of Elijah and Cynthia (Childs) Endicott. He belongs to the branch of the Massachusetts family of Endicotts that settled in Canton in 1700. Mr. Endicott was educated in the public schools, and began business life in the manufacturing of steam engines and boilers in Boston, in 1845, under the firm name of Allen & Endicott, and has had a long and successful career in this branch of work. He was president of the Allen & Endicott Building Company, director of the Cambridge Gas Light Company, director of the First National Bank of Cambridge, and president of the Cambridgeport Savings Bank. Mr. Endicott was connected with the Masonic order fifty-seven years, being Master Mason, in 1860, in Amicable Lodge, and Worshipful Master in 1864, '65, '66; was Master Mason of Mizpah Lodge (U.D.) in 1868, and elected Worshipful Master in 1869, under charter, and was District Deputy Grand Master, District No. 4, in 1867, '68. Was exalted, in 1861, in St. Paul's Royal Arch Chapter, Boston; was Scribe in 1862, '63; King, 1864; High Priest, 1865, '66; also High Priest of Cambridge Royal Arch Chapter (U.D.) in 1865, and Grand King of the Grand Chapter of Mass- achusetts in 1867. He was made Royal and Select Master, in Boston Council, in 1861, and was made a Knight Templar, in 1861, in Boston Commandery, and became a member the same year; was elected Captain General in 1868;
Generalissimo, 1869, '70; and Eminent Com- mander in 1891, '92. He received the degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, from the fourth to the thirty-second, in the Grand Consistory of Massachusetts. Mr. Endi- cott has filled a number of other important offices in the order, was a member of the Colonial Club, of Cambridge, and the Union Club. He married, in 1847, Miss Miriam J. Smith, who died in 1849. In 1851 he was again married, to Miss Abby H. Browning, of Petersham. They had four children, of whom one only survives: Emma Endicott Marean. He has five grandchildren. Mr. Endicott died Nov- ember 8, 1913.
ROBERT OLIVER FULLER
FULLER, ROBERT OLIVER, son of Oliver and Sarah (Richardson) Fuller, was born in Cam- bridge, September 12, 1829.
He was educated in the public schools. He began his commercial career in the iron business in 1855, under the firm name of Gay, Manson & Co., changed in 1857 to Robert O. Fuller, then Fuller & Dana in 1860, and in 1866 to Fuller, Dana & Fitz.
Mr. Fuller was a trustee of Worcester Acad- emy, Colby University, and Newton Theologi- cal Institution. He was one of the founders of the Boston Baptist Social Union, and its presi- dent in 1874; president of the Boston Baptist Bethel; president of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, and a member of the executive committee of the American Baptist Missionary Union. He was a member of the Cambridge common council in 1861-'62, but had uniformly declined all other city offices.
He was a member of the House of Represent- atives, 1871; in 1872-'73 a member of the state Senate, and in 1889 a member of the executive council of Governor Ames, from Cambridge.
Mr. Fuller was married in Cavendish, Vt., May 31, 1855, to Sarah P., daughter of Joseph and Emma (Baldwin) Parker. Of this union were seven children: Mary F., Robert O., Alfred C., Grace, Annie, Charles Sumner and Helen Fuller.
Mr. Fuller died on the ninth of March, 1903.
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ARTHUR ELMER DENISON
DENISON, ARTHUR ELMER, for thirty-six years a resident of Cambridge, was born in Burke, Vt., December 5th, 1847. He fitted for Tufts Col- lege at Westbrook Seminary, during which period he enlisted in the service of the United States Army, being mustered out with the rank of Sergeant, and graduated from Tufts in 1869 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He was also a member of the Phi Beta Kappa.
After his graduation, he returned to Maine, and there founded and became the first cashier of the Norway National Bank, reading law in his spare moments. After he had made the decision that he was fitted to adopt the legal profession as his life work, he resigned his posi- tion in the Bank, went to Portland and entered the office of the Hon. William Wirt Virgin, who later became one of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of Maine, and in whose office Mr. Denison received a fine legal training.
He was admitted to the Maine Bar in 1872, and directly afterward came to Boston, where he was associated with Henry W. Paine, then one of the foremost lawyers and citizens of the Commonwealth, and for thirty-eight years thereafter practised law in Boston, where he attained the highest eminence in his chosen profession, both as a practicing attorney, and as Master and Auditor in numerous important and complex cases.
He was married in 1873 to Ida E., a daughter of the late Dr. Ward Eddy Wright of Cambridge. Of this union two children were born, one, a daughter, died in infancy; the other, a son, is now a practicing attorney in Boston. After Mr. Denison's marriage, he moved to North Cambridge, and here he spent the remainder of his life. Suggestions of public honors were frequently made to him, to all of which he gave a firm refusal, but in his own quiet way, and by the very force of his remarkable personality, he found much good to do in the world as a citizen in the ranks.
He was a member and had been a vice-presi- dent of the Cambridge Club; a past president of the Universalist Club of Boston; a member of the Mizpah Lodge of Masons; and honorary counsel of the Avon Home. He was a trustee of Tufts College, to the duties of which he gave
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largely of his time, strength and ability, which the College recognized by giving him the hon- orary degree of Master of Arts in 1908. For many years he was Chairman of the Standing Committee of the First Universalist Church on Inman Street; and later, after his removal to North Cambridge, he took a prominent part in
ARTHUR ELMER DENISON
the affairs of the Third Universalist Parish, and was Chairman of the Board of Trustees for thirteen consecutive years.
Mr. Denison died on the 18th of May, 1910, after a brief illness, closing a life full of honor, and possessed of the respect of all who were privileged to know him.
HENRY DEXTER
DEXTER, HENRY, sculptor, was born at Nel- son, Madison County, New York, October 11, 1806, on a farm in the midst of an unsettled wilderness, where his parents had settled shortly before. He is notable as having been one of the earliest sculptors of the United States, and typically American, in that being entirely a self-taught genius, his achievements were wholly due to his natural talents and his own unguided
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efforts. As a child he made pictures on cloth, paper being an unattainable luxury, with colors made from fruit juices. When he was eleven years old his father died, and the family re- moving to Connecticut, he was put to work with a farmer, who sent him to school in winter. He sought to obtain employment with a family named Alexander, whose son, Frank, then little more than a boy, was already a recognized artist, and it became the dream of young Dexter's life to meet this "Frank" and learn his art from him. Years afterwards he became
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HENRY DEXTER
his friend, and related to him by marriage, and though at first discouraging him from an artists' career, he finally proved of great assistance to him. In the meantime, when he left the farm, Dexter was, much against his will, apprenticed to a blacksmith; and after learning the trade, he made it necessary for himself to follow it, by marrying a niece of Alexander, and thus assuming the responsibilities of the head of a family. He made his first attempt at portrait painting about this time; but Alexander him- self expostulated with him for even dreaming of giving up his trade, and he reluctantly con- tinued it for seven years. Then, in 1835, he went to Boston, resolved that, whether success-
ful or not, he would at least try to become an artist, and, with the assistance of Alexander he soon made a certain reputation as a portrait painter. In the following spring he went to Providence, R.I., where he painted portraits of General Carpenter and his family. Return- ing in the autumn to Boston, he followed the profession of a portrait painter until Mr. Alex- ander, chancing to suggest to him to obtain a quantity of modeling clay, his attention was thus accidentally turned to the art of sculpture, and he at once achieved remarkable success in making portrait busts. His first commission in marble was to make a bust of the mayor of Boston, Hon. Samuel A. Eliot, after whom many of the most distinguished gentlemen of Boston made request for similar works. He made busts of Longfellow, Agassiz, Henry Wilson, Cornelius C. Felton, president of Har- vard College, Anson Burlingame, and of Charles Dickens, when that novelist visited Boston, as well as of several hundred others; and the work, executed entirely by his own hands, was frequently of surpassing merit. In statuary he executed the figure now in Mount Auburn cemetery, known as the Binney Child, a colossal figure of a "Backwoodsman"; figures of the children of J. B. Cushing, of Watertown, ex- hibited as "The Young Naturalist" and "The First Lesson;" a statue of the daughter of William P. Winchester; a statue of Gen. Joseph Warren, now at Bunker Hill, and figures entitled "Nymph of the Ocean," and "Devo- tion." In 1860 he set about making a group of busts of the president of the United States and all governors of states then in office, and in the execution of this work he traveled over every state except California and Oregon. On completing the casts, he exhibited them in the rotunda of the State House in Boston, and though the outbreak of the Civil War prevented him from executing all of them in marble, the work in its partial completion is still a valuable portion of the art collection at Washington. Among the best of these busts are those of Governors Hicks, Morgan, Morrill, Banks, Ellis and Chase.
In May, 1828, he was married to Miss Kelley, the niece of the artist Francis Alexander. They had three children: a son who died in infancy and two daughters; one of the latter, Mrs.
BIOGRAPHIES
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Harriet D. Mason, is dead; the other, Mrs. Anna E. Douglas, is living. His first wife died in 1857. Just before beginning a tour through the United States, he married Mrs. Martha Billings, of Millbury, Mass.
Mr. Dexter resided in Cambridge, Mass., for many years, having a studio on Broadway. He died there, January 23, 1876.
WILLIAM BULLARD DURANT
DURANT, WILLIAM BULLARD, died at his home, Lowell Street, Cambridge, on Wednesday, October 4, 1911.
Mr. Durant was born in Barre, Mass., in 1844, the son of Rev. Amos Bullard and Mary Ann Durant. He was known as William Bullard until after he had finished his education, when he took as his surname the maiden name of his mother. He received his elementary education at the Leicester Academy and graduated from Harvard in the Class of 1865. He received an A.M. in 1868, and his degree from the Har- vard Law School in 1869. He married, in 1879, Caroline V. Aldrich, the daughter of Judge P. E. Aldrich, of Worcester; and she and three sons-Aldrich, an engineer at Havana, Cuba; Henry W., a lawyer in Boston; and William B. Durant, an engineer at Greenfield, Mass.,- survive him.
Mr. Durant lived in Cambridge for fifty years, and always took an active interest in city affairs. He was sent to the Common Coun- cil in 1880 and 1881, and his ability was at once recognized by his fellow citizens. He was a member of the House of Representatives in 1894 and 1895. He served as president of the Water Board from 1899 to 1906, and here his legal training was most valuable, and he was able to render great service in settling many important questions. At the time of his death he was a director of the Charles River National Bank and a trustee of the Cambridge Savings Bank. He was an attendant at the First Con- gregational Church, a member of the Oakley Country Club and the Cambridge Club.
Mr. Durant was the typical "good citizen," and was always found ready to perform his duty in serving the City. He could be depended upon to lend his support to any movement
which seemed to be for the public welfare, and to all the duties of the various offices which he was called upon to fill he gave freely of his time and talents.
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
ELIOT, CHARLES WILLIAM, president emeritus of Harvard University, was born in Boston, on March 20, 1834, the grandson of one of the famous merchant princes of the New England capital, and the son of Samuel Atkins and Mary (Lyman) Eliot. His father was one of the most eminent public men of the Commonwealth, having been mayor of Boston, a member of
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
Congress, and the treasurer of Harvard College. The family was descended from Andrew Eliot, who came from Devonshire, England, about 1632, and settled in Beverly, Mass., very soon after the first Puritan migration.
To have sprung from such a sterling race is more honor than kinship with any titled aris- tocracy. Through every generation the men of the Eliot name have justified their heritage. No youth could have had a more fortunate or inspiring environment than that of the Boston home whence young Eliot went to the Boston Latin School and to Harvard College. His was the class of 1853. Graduating with the degree of Bachelor of Arts and an enviable
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reputation for scholarship, second in rank in his class, Mr. Eliot remained at the college as a tutor in mathematics, studying chemistry meanwhile with Professor Josiah P. Cooke, and in 1856 receiving the degree of Master of Arts. For two years more he continued to be an in- structor in mathematics, applying himself at the same time to research in chemistry, but in 1858 he became assistant professor in mathe- matics and chemistry in the Lawrence Scien- tific School at Harvard.
In 1861 Mr. Eliot relinquished one part of his double professional duty to become assist- ant professor of chemistry alone, holding this post for two years. From 1863 to 1865 he studied chemistry and investigated educational methods in Europe. Returning to America, he became professor of analytical chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then a young institution brought into being by the progress of New England and the need of a more thorough scientific knowledge in the industrial arts.
For four years, from 1865 to 1869, Mr. Eliot continued in the Faculty of the Institute of Technology, passing parts of the years 1867- 1868 in France.
Through the stormy years of the Civil War the urgent problem of American higher educa- tion had been thrust aside, but it came to the forefront as soon as the war had ended. There was much of dissatisfaction and unrest at Harvard. New methods and new men were demanded. The election of a new president of Harvard was impending when Professor Eliot printed in the Atlantic Monthly, two vigorous and stirring articles on "The New Education," which stamped him at once as an iconoclast in the judgment of conservative Massachusetts. But there were powerful men of progress to whom these new ideas appealed, and Professor Eliot, in 1869, was elected by the Harvard corporation as President. The overseers at first refused to concur, but finally yielded, and Dr. Eliot began his great work of educational reformation.
President Eliot, once seated, began straight- way to broaden the curriculum of the Uni- versity and to give the individual student some freedom of choice in the courses which he should pursue. This was a perilous attack on im-
memorial custom. Latin, Greek, mathematics, a smattering of modern languages and a smat- tering of some of the sciences had been the prescribed higher education of New England ever since the beginnings of education there. Regardless of individual characteristics and regardless of the careers which they were to pursue, the young men of one academic gen- eration after another were passed through the same mold and rigidly required to learn the same things, or try to learn them, whether the topics interested them or not.
President Eliot changed all this, but the process required years of patient endeavor. The "elective system," as it came to be called, did not win a complete triumph at Harvard until about 1884. Yet there was progress from the first; the broadening which the new president began was never halted. The gradu- ate school was developed and "That truth should be the final aim of education and that without liberty the attainment of truth is thwarted," became the guiding principle at Harvard. At the same time, President Eliot gave his splendid energies to the allied task of making Harvard a genuine university. There were law and medical schools, a divinity school, a scientific school and a school of den- tistry, but the organization was loose and sprawling, and Harvard in 1869 was still a university only in name. The new president sought to bring these scattered departments genuinely together after a new plan which was not European, but American. "A uni- versity in any worthy sense of the term," he said, "must grow from seed. It cannot be transplanted in full leaf and bearing. It cannot be run up, like a cotton mill, in six months, to meet a quick demand. Neither can it be created by an energetic use of the inspired editorial, the advertising circular and the frequent telegram. Numbers do not con- stitute it, and no money can make it before its time."
One of the first points upon which President Eliot insisted was that the departments of the university should have a common treasury and a uniform and efficient system of govern- ment. He carried his point, and went on to modernize the methods of instruction in the various schools. He gave his personal atten-
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tion and presence to the various branches of the university. "Well, I declare," said Gov- ernor Washburn, when the new president first appeared officially in the law school, "the presi- dent of Harvard College in Dane Hall! This is a new sight."
The leadership of President Eliot in American education has been frankly and graciously recognized abroad as well as at home. He is an officer of the Legion of Honor, of France, and corresponding member of the Institute of France. In this country he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society and of many other organizations for intellectual and social advancement.
JOHN R. FAIRBAIRN FAIRBAIRN, JOHN R., Sheriff of Middlesex County, was born in Boston, January 26, 1851, of Scotch ancestry. His father, John Fairbairn,
JOHN R. FAIRBAIRN
was born near Glasgow, and served eleven years in the Forty-Second Regiment Scottish High- landers before emigrating to America. Shortly after the birth of the son, the family moved to Cambridge, where the subject of this sketch was educated in the public schools. At an early age he was apprenticed to the upholstery trade, at which he worked several years as a journey- man after completing his term of service. In
1874 he established himself in East Cambridge as an auctioneer and dealer in real estate, in which he was successful. He was appointed Deputy Sheriff in 1884. In 1889 he was a member of the Common Council of the city of Cambridge; and in 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1895 and 1896, one of the Board of Aldermen, serving as President in 1893, 1895 and 1896. In June, 1896, he succeeded the late John M. Fiske as keeper of the jail and master of the house of correction in Cambridge, and as Special Sheriff under Henry G. Cushing. June 22, 1899, after the death of Sheriff Cushing, he was appointed Sheriff by Governor Walcott to fill the vacancy, and subsequently elected by the people term after term, and is now serving his second year of a five-year term. He is connected with the Masonic fraternity in Cambridge, being a member of the lodge, chapter, council and com- mandery, and several other fraternal organiza- tions.
JOHN FISKE
FISKE, JOHN, philosopher, historian and man of letters, was born in Hartford, Conn., March 30, 1842; son of Edmund Brewster and Mary Fiske (Bound) Green; grandson of Humphreys and Hannah (Heaton) Green of Delaware, and of John and Mary (Fiske) Bound of Middletown, Conn., and a descendant from Phineas Fiske of Fressingfield, Suffolk, England, who came to America in 1641, and settled in Wenham, Mass. His name was originally Edmund Fiske Green, and in 1855, on the marriage of his widowed mother to Edwin W. Stoughton, he took the name of his maternal great-grandfather, John Fiske, there being no other male descendant of the family to carry down the name.
He passed his early boyhood with his mater- nal grandparents who lived in Middletown, Conn., and displayed great precocity as well as diligence in preparing for college. He entered Harvard as a sophomore in 1860, although he had already advanced in every department farther than the college course could take him. Here he became an enthusiastic investigator on his own account in history, philosophy and comparative philology, averaging fifteen hours of work daily.
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He had studied Euclid, algebra, trigonome- try, surveying and navigation at twelve; could read Plato and Herodotus, and had begun Ger- man at fifteen; could read Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese at seventeen, studying Sanscrit and reading the Bible in Hebrew at eighteen, meanwhile continuing an incessant course of reading.
He was graduated at Harvard in arts in 1863, and in law in 1865, having been admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1864. He was married at Appleton Chapel, Cambridge, September 6th,
TOHN FISKE
1864, to Abby Morgan, daughter of Aaron Brooks, Jr., of Petersham, Mass.
He never practised law, devoting himself to literature, gaining position as an author, from the publication of his first article in the National Quarterly Review, in 1861, a review of Buckle's "History of Civilization," which won for him the consideration of editors of both American and English periodicals, and he became a frequent contributor to the leading magazines and reviews.
He was university lecturer at Harvard, 1869-71, his subjects being "Positive Philos- ophy," and the "Doctrine of Evolution." He was instructor in history there, 1870; assistant
librarian, 1872-79; overseer, 1879-91; and member of the Board at the time of his death.
He was non-resident lecturer on American history in the University College, London, England, 1879, at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 1SS0, and in Washington Uni- versity, St. Louis, Mo., 1SS1-1SS5; and from 1SS5, non-resident professor of American history in that institution.
After 1880, he gave his entire time to writing and lecturing. On April 4th, 1881, he gave by request a lecture on the Old South Meeting House on the site of the pulpit where Samuel Adams and Warren once roused the people to resist the encroachments of George III. He wound up with a grand and eloquent appeal to save the building, and convert it into a place for teaching American history. The audience was large and most enthusiastic, and a fresh impulse was started towards saving the building.
"The Old South meeting-house, and John Fiske inside it, is a combination that can make an honest patriot of anyone," was the remark of a certain Boston statesman. These words but reflect the public estimation of this big, hearty, clear-minded teacher of the people.
He delivered in 1890, 1895, and 1S9S three series of twelve lectures each on " The Discovery and Colonization of America"; "Old Virginia"; and "The Dutch and Quaker Colonies," before the Lowell Institute, Boston.
He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; a member of the Historical societies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, California, Oneida County, N.Y .; the Military Historical Society of Massachu- setts; the Essex Institute; the American Antiquarian Society; the American Geographi- cal Society; and the American Folklore Society; was given the degree of LL.D. by Harvard in 1894, and that of Litt.D. by the University of Pennsylvania the same year.
He composed a mass in B minor, and several hymns and songs, and was president of the Boylston Club of Singers, Boston, from 1876 to 1881. He was joint editor with James Grant Wilson of Appleton's "Cyclopaedia of American Biography" (6 vols.) 1887-1889.
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His published works include: Tobacco and Alcohol (1868); History of English literature, abridged from Taine and edited for schools (1872); Myths and Myth-makers (1872); Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy based on the Doctrine of Evolution (2 vols. 1874) appeared simultaneously in London and in Boston; two years later, The Unseen World (1876); Darwinism and Other Essays (1879); new edi- tion (1885); Excursions of an Evolutionist (1883); The Destiny of Man viewed in the Light of his Origin (1884); The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge (1885); American Political Ideas viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History (1885); Washington and His Country (1887); The Critical Period of American History, 1783- 1789 (1888, illustrated edition, 1897); The Beginnings of New England or the Puritan Theocracy in its relation to Civil and Religious Liberty (1889, illustrated edition, 1898).
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