History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 125

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1672

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II > Part 125

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The subject of this sketch received his education in the various places where his father was stationed, and at the age of fifteen years became a clerk in the bank- ing-house of S. & M. Allen, of Portland, Maine. His connection with this business was of short dura- tion, owing to the failure of his employers, but it was sufficiently long to train him in the business of banker, which, in after-life, when he had achieved success, he re-entered with a competent knowledge of its methods and means.

Ifis next venture was in the commission business on his own account in Portland, which continued until his failure, in 1835, when, at the age of twenty- three, he went to New York and became a clerk in the Astor House, then recently opened under the management of Coleman & Stetson.

In 1840 he went to New Orleans, where, until 1845, he was the proprietor of the St. Charles Hotel, then new. New Orleans was, at that time, in the height of its prosperity, and the St. Charles became at once the leading hotel,-the gathering-place of the mer- chants and a sort of exchange. During his five years management of this house Mr. Mudge acquired what was then considered a fortune, and in 1845 returned to New York and became interested in manufactures. In 1846 he built the Saratoga Victory Cotton Mills, acting as its treasurer, and buying his own cotton in the New Orleans market. He next formed a connec- tion with David Nevins, in the importation of dry-

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goods, and shortly after established, in Boston, the banking-house of Fay, Mudge & Atwood, which continued in business until 1857.

The great ability of Mr. Mudge, which had led him so truly and successfully along the difficult paths of business life, soou attracted the notice of manufac- turers, and at their solicitation he established a com- mission-house in Boston, with a branch in New York, having the agencies of the Washington Mills, the Chicopee Cotton Mills, the Burlington Woolen Mills, and the Victory Cotton Mills, of the last of which he had continued from its establishment to be the treas- urer. These mills, with a capital of three millions of dollars, ran ninety thousand spindles, and with four thousand operatives, yielded a product valued at nine millions of dollars, which was sold by the house of E. R. Mudge & Co., and manufactured under their direction.

Mr. Mudge, while in business in Boston, held his residence in Swampscott, and in 1868 represented the First Senatorial District of Essex County in the State Senate. His life was active to the last, and while pursuing, with zeal and energy, his large and increasing business he was stricken down while his career seemed far from finished, and died at his home in Swampscott, in 1881, at the age of sixty-nine years.

Though Mr. Mudge seemed immersed in the over- whelming duties of a business life, he lost no opportu- nity to educate an intellect naturally strong, and cul- tivate tastes which seemed a part of his refined and gentle nature. For the gratification of these tastes he possessed ample means, and he surrounded him- self with books and paintings and works of art, which not only illustrated his fondness for the beautful in life, but taught him daily lessons for its higher eleva- tion and advancement.

Mr. Mudge was a man of an affable and winning deportment and won not only the respect, but affec- tion of those about him. After his death the Board of Trade of B ston, of which he was an active and hon- ored member, held a special meeting to express the feelings of the Board relative to the sad event, and appointed a committee, which reported an address ap- propriate to the occasion. It said : " In the life of our late associate, Enoch Redington Mudge, we have seen how large a place, and many-sided, a good man can fill. A tender and loving husband and father; a Christian gentleman, tolerant of the sincere opinions of others, yet firm in the courteous assertion of his own ; a devoted lover of his country, ready for any sacrifice in her hour of peril, and a partisan only for her sake; an open-handed and warm-hearted philan- thropist, earnest in all good works ; a good citizen, faithful to every public duty ; courteous, genial, los- pitable as a companion and neighbor, possessing, in a rare degree, the high qualities which give assurance of a man worthy the respect and admiration of other good men ; such was Mr. Mudge, and in these char-'

acteristics he will be honorably and fitly remembered by other bodies than ours in which he has borne a part.

" It is of Mr. Mudge in his character as a man of business, as a manufacturer and an eminent merchant, it is most fitting that the Boston Board of Trade and other commercial bodies should speak. In business he was successful beyond the hopes of all but the few and foremost. In his own lectures to the young men of Boston, he taught the lesson of commercial success, the key to his own-the alliance of strict integrity with devoted attention to business, fidelity to every trust, with cool and sagacious study of the markets and of events that affect markets. But Mr. Mudge was successful beyond the accumulation of wealth, be- yond anything of which he could teach the art to others. His self-possession and courage in emergen- cies, his qniet, but great force of will and gracious power of influence, quick perception of opportunity, sagacity that rarely failed to distinguish between the safe and dangerous in the character of persons, or circumstance, were qualities not granted to all men to hold in such large measure, combined with his moral qualities. .

"The merchants of Boston feel that in the sudden death of Mr. Mudge they are deeply grieved. lu this affliction they gratefully remember that the in - fluence of his useful life will survive as an example of what a merchant's life should be, and they desire that the officers of this meeting convey to the family of Mr. Mudge a suitable expression of sympathy of the members in their great sorrow under this bereave- ment."

Mr. Mudge married, May 9, 1832, Caroline A. Pat- ten, danghter of Johu and Olive Patten, of Portland, and had the following children : Olive Patten, born February 12, 1835; Fanny Olive, August 5, 1837 ; Charles Redington, October 22, 1839; Lucy Anne Je- rusha, July 20, 1841 ; Marie Louise, July 12, 1844; Caroline Estelle, July 9, 1850; and Henry Sanford, July 1, 1852.

Charles Redington Mudge, the oldest son, gradu- ated at Harvard in 1860, and was commissioned first lieutenant in the Second Massachusetts Volunteers, May 25, 1861. He was made captain July 8, 1861, major November 9, 1862, lieutenant-colonel June 6, 1863, and was killed at the battle of Gettysburg, July 3,1863.

EBEN B. PHILLIPS.

Eben B. Phillips, the third child and second son of James Phillips, and of Mary (Burrill), his wife, was born July 8, 1808, in Swampscott, Mass., then known as Lynn.

His parents were constant attendants at the church of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and he was brought up in that faith, receiving such an education as was possible in his native town, in a small country school, at that period.

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His natural abilities were great even in the days of his boyhood, following fishing for some years. It was during one of these trips that he was driven to sea in a severe gale and snow-storm, in the little schooner called the " Essex," in 1829.

No land could be seen, and it was necessary to lash the helm and for all to go below to await the result. All on board gave themselves up as lost; but after many days of exertion they effected a landing at ('hatham, Mass. Being completely iced up, and without provisions, it was through the determined effort of Captain Phillips that all on board were saved.

Mr. Phillips' operations in business at the first stages was to supply fish-oils to the manufacturers of leather in the towns of Woburn and Salem, and also to the making of what was known as the "Phillips Beach Dun fish," which were well-known for their excellent qualities, causing his trade to be very ex- teuded.

In the days of his early manhood considerable at. tention was given to farming pursuits; he excelled any of the others employed about his place in physical labor. One instance of the amount of work done by him in one day alone was in digging one hundred bushels of potatoes ; and in mowing or any other man- ual duties performed, he was bound to take the lead.

From doing his fish-oil business in a small way, it had increased so largely that in the year 1830 he es- tablished a store in Boston, on Fulton Street, for the sale of his products.

One special branch in the line of his business was the manufacture of cod-liver oil, for medicinal pur-

After some years he established a second store in the same city on Congress Street, to prosecute the same line of business.

He was the first man who started the extracting of oil from menhaden fish. Purchasing nets and kettles, he employed parties near Blue Hill, Maine, to manu- facture for him, and since that time the business has so greatly extended that steamers are employed, and thousands of dollars are invested in factories for the production of this oil.

Not only in New England did he transact an im- mense business, but also in the Western States, being often styled in his latter years "Oil King," as the volume of business done by him governed the market. Much of his accumulated wealth was invested in Boston store property, owning not less than sixteen at the time of the great Boston fire in 1872, which swept down during that conflagration every one which be owned; and being obliged to meet the loss with no insurance to speak of, he gave his personal attention to the re Wilding of all these stores im- mediately after the fire; and it was in one of his largest new stores that he continued his fish-oil busi- ness up to the time of his death.

Another of his favorite investments was in sea-shore property along the coast of Swampscott, Rockport and Pigeon Cove, Mass.

In the latter place he built miles of avenues and numerous summer cottages to beautify the place, and it is at the present time one of the most favorite sum- mer resorts along the north shore. Ilis commercial transactions, demanding great attention, occupied most of his time, but in the intervals of business he found great pleasure in shooting sea-fowl, which were to be found among the i-lands of Massachusetts Bay.

During the winter months he would often take the risk, with the temperature below zero, to row many miles for the pleasure realized in this sport. And being an excellent shot, it was a common occurrence in these times for him to bring home a wagon-load of ducks. On an invitation from the Massachusetts Gunning Club, while shooting on his farm at Swampscott, he killed nineteen live pigeons out of twenty.

The great charm of the sea had so fastened itself upon him, since his youth, that he owned for many years a small schooner ealled the "Moll Pitcher," and in about the year 1870 the now well-known yacht " Fearless" was purchased by him. On dif- ferent occasions he changed her rig somewhat, and making some alterations to her hull, she became one of the fastest vessels of her size afloat, taking out of twenty-six consecutive races nearly every first prize, and in no instance did she ever sail in any race unless Captain Phillips was at the wheel, or the vessel was under his special command.

In person Mr. Phillips was heavily built, broad and square-shouldered, of middle stature, with very regular features, a high, square forehead, and blue eyes.

He was a very peculiar person, sometimes a man of very few words, and one who held within himself that which he did not choose to give forth, but very ob- serving, and a great lover of poetry, taking great pleasure in committing to memory his favorite author, the famous Alex. Pope.

Mr. Phillips was president of the National Grand Bank at Marblehead for many years, and was director in the Providence and Worcester Railroad, and the Shoe and Leather Insurance Company up to the time of his death, which was November 26, 1879, being then in his seventy-first year. He was twiee married,-first to Nancy (Knowlton) in February, 1837, from which union there was one son, still living; secondly, to Maria (Stanwood) in April, 1841, by whom he had seven sons and three daughters ; the seven youngest children are still living.

The love of labor seemed to be his great ambition. So fully, indeed, was he impressed with the idea that constant employment was one of the greatest duties in life, that he kept in active operation up to his last sickness, just previous to his death.

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" Extremes in nature equal good produce, Extremes in man concur to general use. Ask we, what makes one keep, and one bestow ? That power who bids the ocean ebb and flow."

The merits and means by which he acquired his immense fortune were probity of the strictest kind, diligence unsurpassed, perseverance in all pursuits, and a frugality as remote from parsimony as from ex- travagance. His person, his habits and his home evinced the love of what was simple.

His disregard for ostentation, above all men most able to revel in luxury or to roll in a splendid equip- age, he fared at all times alike, and within a few years of his death rode in the style of a plain farmer, rather than that of a millionaire.

Could his lips open once more in the language of this earthly state, he would say : "They may think of me as dead and gone : as one whose shrewdness and business capacities are forever repressed ; but they are mistaken. All the power, impulse and energy that surged within me, and made me success- ful in days gone by, live, and will eternally live to be manifested in other forms, and through new avenues in days to come."

COLONEL HENRY G, PARKER.

Col. Parker, whose portrait appears in connection with this notice, may be properly called a man of des- tiny. Though beginning his career in pursuits far removed from that in which he is now distinguished, each step in his life seems to have been guided by a power beyond himself, until at last he entered the field of journalism, for whose exacting labors it is now easy to believe that he was born and, without being conscious of it himself, had been educated and pre- pared. Few men have, like Colonel Parker, been tossed on what seemed to be the waves of accident and circumstance, and at last unmistakably shown that accident and circumstance were only the man- dates of an unerring law, by which they were draw- ing towards a profession which they were destined to follow with ardor and skill and success.

Colonel Parker was born in Plymouth, Mass., March 19, 1836. His father, Ebenezer Grosvenor Parker born in Falmouth, Mass., in 1796, was bred to business in Boston, and in 1832, at the time of the organization of the Old Colony Bank in Plymouth, was chosen its cashier, and aeted in that capacity with marked skill and fidelity until his death, on the 9th of September, 1840. The grandfather of Colonel Parker, Dr. Henry Parker, also born in Falmouth, was a surgeon in the United States Navy, and died in Batavia June 12, 1800. He married Mary, daughter of the Rev. Ebenezer Grosvenor, a descendant from John Grosvenor, who came from Chester County, in England, to Roxbury, and was one of the settlers of Pomfret, Conn., who obtained a grant of land from the General Assembly in 1686, and an act of ineor-

poration as a town in October, 1713. This grant of land, commonly called the Mashamoquet purchase, was made to James Fiteh, Wm. Ruggles, John Gore, John Pierpont, John Chandler, Benjamin Sabine, Samuel Craft, John Grosvenor, Joseph Griffin, Sam- uel Ruggles, John Ruggles and Nathan Wilson, all of whom, it is believed, were or had been Roxbury men.

Ebenezer Grosvenor was born in Pomfret in 1739, graduated at Yale in 1759, and, after a settlement of seventeen years in Scituate, removed to Harvard in 1782, where he officiated as a settled minister until his death, in 1788. The Grosvenor family, though not largely represented by name at the present day, carried in its veins the best blood of the Massachu- setts colony, and in each generation has been charac- terized by learning and public spirit.

Dr. Henry Parker, the grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was the son of Joseph Parker, of Falmouth, who married Hannah, daughter of Nathaniel Stone, of Harwich ; the grandson of Joseph, who married, in 1734, Rebecca, daughter of Benjamin Freeman, of Har- wich ; the great-grandson of Joseph, born in 1658, who married, in 1698, Mercy Whiston; and great-great- grandson of William Parker, who was a freeman of Scituate in 1640, and married, in 1639, Mary, daughter of Thomas Rawlins, and, in 1651, Mary, daughter of Humphrey Turner.

The mother of Colonel Parker was Rebecca Mor- ton, daughter of William Davis, of Plymouth, who, until his early death, in 1824, was associated in busi- ness with his father, William Davis, widely known as an eminent and opulent merchant. The Davis family, which has for many years been identified with Plymouth, is descended from Thomas Davis, of Albany, who, about the year 1700, married Katherine Wen- dell, of that town. The grandmother of Colonel Parker, on his mother's side, was Joanna, daughter of Gideon White, of Plymouth, directly descended from Peregrine White, the first-born child of New Eng- land.

Thus it will be seen that in his ancestry Colonel Parker can find much of which he may well feel proud. Few ean claim with him that they are de- seended from twelve passengers of the " Mayflower." It may be said of him, however, with truth that he holds aneestry to be of little account in the real value of men, and that what a man by his own efforts and talents makes himself should alone enter into an estimate of his character and worth,

Col. Parker, in his earlier years, attended the com- mon schools in his native town, but after the removal of his mother to Boston he attended a famous private school in Brookfield, Mass., where William Bliss, president of the Boston and Albany Railroad, Charles P. Clark, president of the New York and New Haven Railroad, Stanton and Arthur W. Blake and their brother, the late George Baty Blake, were among his fellow pupils. Later he attended the Adams School and Chauncy Hall School in Boston. On his retire-

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

ment from senoot, when his entrance into college would have been an easy step, his mother yielded re- luctantly to his strongly expressed wishes for an ac- tive life, and he entered, as a boy, the store of Blan- chard, Converse & Co., of Boston. After a year's service there he became assistant book-keeper in the counting-room of Callender, Rogers & Co., also of | Boston, where he remained three years. During the succeeding three years he was employed as book- keeper by Blodget, Clark & Brown, and subsequently took the position of confidential clerk in the private office of Jordan, Marsh & Co.'s wholesale establish- ment, which he held until 1869. At this time he re- ceived, from Francis Skinner & Co., an offer to act as treasurer of one or more of their mills, too tempt- ing to resist, but which eventually failed in conse-

quence of the unfortunate suspension of that emi- nent firm. Another offer, from James Fisk, Jr., who had left the firm of Jordan, Marsh & Co., to enter upon his astonishing career in New York, to join him as an assistant, at a large salary, was declined ; and for a few months he was without settled occu- pation. While with Jordan, Marsh & Co., he mar. ried, on the 7th of June, 1865, Lucy Josephine, daughter of the late William Brown, well known as a druggist, who had pursned his business many years in Boston with eminent success. A daughter was born on the 21st of June, 1868, around whom the af- fections of father and mother gathered with an in- tensity which her death, in 1877, seems never to have weakened. Indeed, the tenderness always manifested by Col. Parker to his only child, and the softening influences which her memory sheds on his life, attest the warmth of heart, which is a marked trait in his character.

U'p to this time, aside from the business pursuits in which he was engaged, Col. Parker constantly in- dulged in an avocation which was preparing him for the career of journalism, which he eventually en- tered. Hle had, by inheritance, a ready pen, and used it in the production of fugitive articles in some of the Boston dailies, in letters to the New York Shrror as its regular correspondent and in dramatic criticisms and book notices for the Boston Daily Cour- ier, when that journal was conducted by George S. lillard, George Lunt and John Clark, and in the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, when that journal was conducted by Col. William W. Clapp, now edi- tor of the Boston Journal. These relations with the press, assumed for the purpose of occupying and amusing his active mind, were all the while instruct- in him in the methods and the requirements of the profesion to which, sooner than he was aware, he was destined to devote all his energies and talents. His criticisms of the actors of that day were marked by strict impartiality and good judgment, and won the commendation of both the theatrical guild and the move. He was always frank in his praise and fearless in his disapproval. No actor of merit, com-

ing unheralded under his observation, failed to receive from him words of encouragement, and none, with a reputation which he believed undeserved, escaped the sting of his pen.

In 1870 the opportunity came to purchase the Saturday Evening Gazette, and in April of that year Col. Parker became its proprietor and editor. That journal had long enjoyed a high reputation and large circulation, both which were then somewhat waning, and it required all the courage which he possessed to attempt its revival. The Gazette was the oldest news- paper in Boston, and a man less conseions of his own skill and resources would have feared that its de- cline was a symptom of age antecedent to its dissolu- tion. It was established in 1813, by Wm. Burdick, and soon passed into the hands of William Warland Clapp, the father of Col. William Warland Clapp, by whom it was conducted until 1846, Charles W. Clapp being, during the last eight years, associated with his father in its management. For a short time after the last-named date C. W. Clapp and his brother, W. W. Clapp, conducted the paper, the latter, how- ever, soon assuming its exclusive control. In 1865 . the Gazette passed into the hands of P. B. Goodsell, Roland Worthington and others and five years later into the hands of Col. Parker. It is not intended to en- ter here into a detailed history of the journal or of the methods adopted to resuscitate it, and which soon placed it upon a firmer footing than it had ever held before. It is sufficient to say that at the end of the first year its circulation and advertising patronage had been so far enlarged as to yield a profit to the proprietor of twenty-one thousand dollars. This tells the whole story of the fitness of Col. Parker for the position in which he was placed. From that time to the present the energy which marked the re- vival of the Gazette has never relaxed, nor has its popularity, in social and business circles, ceased to strengthen. It is not too much to say that while there are other journals in Boston printing larger editions, there are none whose roots are more deeply imbedded in the affections of the people among whom it was born seventy-five years ago. The per- sonal columns of the Gazette represent a feature of journalism new to Boston, which Col. Parker initiated against the current of popular opinion, but which has long since been unanimously approved by the commu- nity, and imitated by journals by which it was at first severely ridiculed and condemned.

Colonel Parker has heen conspicuous in other fields than that of journalism. In 1869, while with Jordan, Marsh & Co., who were prominent among the projec- tors of the first National Peace Jubilee, he was selec- ted as general secretary of the executive committee, of which the Hon. Alexander HI. Rice was chairman, and performed his arduous duties with such prompt- ness and good judgment that at the second jubilee, in 1872, his services in the same capacity were demanded and somewhat reluctantly yielded. Serving as he did

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under the eye of Mr. Rice, that gentleman had the best opportunity of estimating his peculiar gifts, and when inaugurated Governor of Massachusetts in 1876, he appointed him a member of his staff. He served in this capacity during the three years' term of Gov- ernor Rice and received the deserved compliment of a reappointment by Governor Talbot, during whose single year as commander-in-chief he also served.

Since his retirement from the staff he has devoted himself assiduously to his labors as journalist and to the advancing success of his paper, in which he feels a just pride.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 125

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1672

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1672