History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 203

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 203

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In his domestic relations Mr. Sargent was fortunate and happy. In 1852 he married Miss Ellen Clark, of Newburyport, an estimable lady, who survives him. To them were born two daughters and a son, all of whom he educated to practical duties and callings, and they have shown that they inherited the abili- ties of their parents. The son, George, has succeeded to the place of his father in the law-office; Lizzie has been thoroughly educated in the schools of this country and Germany as a physician, and in the treatment of the eye and ear is the highest anthority in California ; Ella is a popular writer for the news- paper press and magazines.

On the death of Mr. Sargent, in August, 1887, there was nniversal mourning in California. All personal feeling and political animosities disappeared, and the people vied with each other in their tokens of respect for the dead. The many associations to which he belonged hastened to eulogize his character. At his funeral more than a hundred carriages were in the procession, and the grave in which he was laid was literally filled with flowers. The newspapers over- flowed with kindly words, and could have said no more had he died President of the United States. He sleeps his last sleep far from the place of his birth, but where the people had learned to trust, respect and love him. His name passes into the history of his country, and his fame will be more enduring than brass and more pure and white than the marble that will mark his last resting-place.

" Around his grave are quietude and beauty. And the sweet heaven above-

The fitting symbols of & life of duty, Transfigured into love."

1820

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

WILLIAM WHEELWRIGHT.1

Mr. William Wheelwright was literally a citizen of the world, and the world wherever he dwelt upon it was made better by his presence. In whatever country he might be, he was there for the improvement of the condition of the people, for their advancement in ma- terial prosperity and intelligence. IIe was a mission- ary sent abroad by himself, at his own expense, inspired by a spirit of enterprise which communicated itself to all around him. He could say with the old Roman, " Homo sum et nil humanum a me alienum puto," for everything that benefited mankind benefited him, because he was, in the noblest sense of the word, him- self a man. He never undertook any great work from merely selfish motives. While he accumulated wealth for himself, he added vastly more to the wealth of others, and what he gained he did not employ for the purposes of self-gratification, but for the use of sweet charity. It was a pleasure to him to earn a fortune, simply because it would come into his posses- sion for distribution. That was absolutely the only value he attached to money. His aged parents and his relatives received his first care, but his benevolence did not end there. It went out to hospitals, schools, colleges and to the poor around him, and his early religious training prompted him to contribute to missionary work among the benighted nations of the earth.

He was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on the 16th of March, 1798, having descended from that sturdy old Puritan, Rev. John Wheelwright, who emi- grated from England in 1629, and after being perse- cuted and driven from place to place by his fellow- colonists, finally settled at Piscataqua. He was a brother-in-law of Ann Hutchinson and advocated her vagaries, participating in the persecutions she en- dured. In his youth he and Oliver Cromwell were intimate friends and labored together for the "glory of God," which they desired to spread throughout the world. It was determined that one of them should make the Eastern Continent the theatre of his oper- ations and that the other should evangelize the new continent of the west. To apportion the division of work they drew lots, and thus by the length of a straw the fate of a kingdom was decided, and after the lapse of many years, republies had cause to be grateful.

As certain physical resemblances are transmitted from generation to generation, so moral and intellect- ual characteristics are often perpetuated in the heart and brain. Even religion may be said to be hereditary. New Englanders generally, as long as their blood was not mixed with the stream of immigration which has flowed in later years from all nations, have been noted for their tenacity ofpurpose, which it is not unjust to say emanated from what we now term bigotry, but which they regarded as a conscientious acting up to their own ideas of right, causing them to be certain that all

others who did not agree with them were unquestion- ably wrong. A great injustice has been done to the memory of these men in attributing to them the pre- tense of expatriating themselves that they might maintain the cause of religious freedom, so that every man should have " the right to worship God, according to the dictates of his own conscience." They never laid any claim to this purpose. They said emphatic- ally that they had come here to worship God in their way, and, as has just been instanced, they inti- mated very distinctly to those who did not agree with them, that America was a very large country and that there was room enough for them elsewhere. Had they been like the liberal people of the present day, whose temperament is the result of opposing forces that have neutralized each other, they would have had no such fixed principles to transmit to their descendants. The absolute certainty that they were right in their religion made them quite sure that they were right in their politics and in their opinions on other subjects that would elsewhere be discussed, but by them were simply announced.

No boy could be born at the close of the last cen- tury without inheriting this trait of his ancestry and being confirmed in it during his childhood. When the subject of this memoir was sent to school at An- dover at the age of fourteen it was still more forcibly impressed upon him. But when he emerged from his youthful surroundings and commenced his profes- sion as a seaman, coming in contact with mankind in general and discovering that Massachusetts was not all the world and that all the world did not think exactly like the people of Massachusetts, the genial part of his nature developed itself, and the ocean, his new home, taught him a new theology in its lessons of almighty power and benevolence enforced by its storms, bestowed by its sunshine and breathed into his soul by its poetry. The sun and stars over his head, the universe around him by day and night, told him that God was everywhere, and it was revealed to him that the Father is worshipped in all places of his dominion as well as in Jerusalem or in New Eng- land. His views became enlarged and his religion embraced all humanity. Still there remained within him one of the best elements of his inheritance and early training-a stubborn adherence to what he con- ceived to be right and a determination to succeed in whatever he undertook to perform. This firmness of purpose was his great characteristic. It made him indomitable in all his enterprises, which were first well considered and then carried out regardless of all opposition. Iu his steps of advancement from the humble position of a cabin-boy to the command of a ship, at which he arrived at the early age of nineteen, he recognized the authority of those under whom he served, and when he was placed over others the youthful commander maintained a discipline that no sailor dared to disobey. Without resorting to severity, he held his crews in check by the mere

1 By John Codman.

1821

NEWBURYPORT.

force of his character, for they knew that his was a will that at all hazards would be asserted. His father and his maternal grandfather had been ship-masters and afterwards merchants. The last business naturally followed the first in those days, graduating from its pre- paratory school. The captain of a vessel was not then a mere wagon-driver sent from place to placc by tele- graphic orders and carrying freight "for whom it may concern." He was entrusted with the cargo as well as with the ship, and cargoes were generally " for owners' account."

The writer of this sketch may be excused for quoting a letter of instruction given him at a much later period, but at a time when this method still prevailed :

" BOSTON, Nov. Ist, 1841.

" SIR,-You will proceed around the Cape of Good Hope to such port or ports as you may select, dispose of your cargo, purchase another and return to Boston. Very truly yours,

"CURTIS & STEVENSON."

It was this confidence reposed in American ship- masters that made them the superiors in their pro- fession to those of all other nations. From the early days of New England down to the time that our sailing ships were supplanted by foreign steamships this superiority was maintained, and it would have been continued to this day, notwithstanding the changes of trade, if our government, in its anxiety to "protect " the effete industry of wooden ship-build- ing, had not forbidden its citizens to be ship-owners and had not condemned its captains, officers and sailors to abandon a profession of which they were so justly proud.

Mr. Wheelwright rose rapidly through all the grades of seamanship, from that of cabin-boy to master of different vessels, so that while he was yet almost a boy he was entrusted with the command of the fine ship " Rising Empire," owned by William Bartlet, a distinguished merchant of Newburyport. It was not the custom then for merchants who had become moderately successful in small seaports to find themselves dissatisfied with their surroundings and to be stirred by ambition to remove to Boston as a larger and more central point for their operations. Salem and Newburyport were active claimants for their share of the world's commerce, and the Pin- grees, Derbys, Peabodys and their associates, who had begun their lives in poverty in Salem, remained there to end them in wealth; and so in Newburyport, Bart- let, Coombs, Wheelwright, Lunt and others of the same character, there began, continued and ended their mercantile career. Mr. Bartlet, next to William Gray, was then the largest ship-owner in New Eng- land. He could say with Gray, " I don't care how the wind blows. It is fair for some of my ships." It was not an idle compliment for a youngster like Mr. Wheelwright to be offered without solicitation the command of one of his best ships, and it was a proof of Mr. Bartlet's confidence in him, that when the first apparently great misfortune of his life overtook

him in the loss of the vessel his owner did not attrib- ute it to his fault. He would have conferred an- other command upon him at once, had circumstances been such that he could have accepted it. Not long afterwards he gave his cheerful assent to his taking from his household a prize which the young captain valued more than all the ships of his fleet and all of his wealth. " Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of the Lord." Mr. Wheelwright was a close student of the Bible, and if there was any text more firmly impressed upon his remembrance than any other it was this. For forty- four years they lived together a life of happiness, which prosperity did not increase uor adversity diminish, interrupted only by the loss of their chil- dren, for which no honor or wealth could compensate them. Some of us can remember the bride as, fresh in her youthful beauty, she stood at the altar and gave her hand and her whole heart to the noble man who was so justly entitled to them. Together they went from continent to continent again and again. Together they dwelt sometimes in luxury, sometimes undergoing privations in a land of strangers with no congenial society but their own, and they still live together in spirit, although he has found his haven of rest in another sphere, while she, in the old home- stead, serene and cheerful, awaits the reunion with those who have gone before.

The loss of his ship, which would have been dis- couraging to almost any other young man in the outset of his career, aroused the energy of Mr. Wheel- wright instead of abating it. It proved to be a benefit to him and to the South American Continent, which thenceforward became the chief sphere of his operations.

Señor Alberdi, of Buenos Ayres, who, for the in- struction of his own people, has written a memoir of Mr. Wheelwright in their language, thus practically and truthfully summarizes them : "It may be said that Wheelwright had two births, two lives, two countries ; at least his life may be divided into two parts, which form, as it were, two separate existences. The first of these begins with his birth in 1798 and closes at the age of twenty-five; the other, with his escape from shipwreck in 1823, when he nearly lost his life, in Buenos Ayres, until his death in London, fifty years afterwards. Forty years of his life were spent on the Pacific Coast, and twelve on the banks of the Rio de la Plata. It was a singular but very natural cir- cumstance that this man of the two Americas should have directed his operations from London ; for that city is the centre of universal progress; it is the great mine of capital, of freedom and of intelligence for all nations.

" Thus Wheelwright was a gift which the waves of the Rio de la Plata brought to South America, his vessel having gone to pieces on the Bank of Ortiz. A new Hernando de Cortes, he remained in the land of his shipwreck, in order to conquer its soil, not by

1822

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

arms, but by steam ; not for Spain, but for civiliza- tion ; not for the all-absorbing North America, but to assure South America in the possession of herself."

The late Caleb Cushing, a townsman of Mr. Wheelwright, wrote in the same strain : " Peace has her heroes as well as war. Bolivar and San Martin well earned their titles of 'heroes of the Andes,' by scaling those lofty summits with their cannon ; but shall we deny the same title to Wheelwright and Meiggs, his countryman, who have crossed them with iron locomotives ? Such an exploit is almost as won- derful as that of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, who car- ried over them, three centuries before, the first Euro- pean vessels ever seen in the Pacific."

This is the warp of the story, and we have only to fill in the threads.

The shipwrecked crew of the "Rising Empire," after an exhausting pull of twenty-four hours in their boats, landed weary and forlorn on an inhospitable shore ; but they conciliated the Indians, whom they fortunately met, by presenting them with everything that they had saved from the wreck, in return for a supply of food and for pilotage through the forest to the nearest Spanish settlement. From thence they found their way to Buenos Ayres, and as there were no vessels there in which they could return to the United States, they dispersed to obtain employment in others. It was the good fortune of Mr. Wheel- wright to secure the situation of supercargo of a ship bound around Cape Horn to Valparaiso. This voy- age gave him a practical knowledge of the south- western coast, which was afterwards of immense ad- vantage. From Valparaiso, as he could obtain occu- pation, he still further explored the coast to the north, his errands sometimes leading him into the interior. Twice, in these journeys, he was roughly handled by bandits, who robbed him of everything and severely wounded him. Escaping all the dan- gers of travel, he at length arrived at Guayaquil, where he found such encouragement to enter into business that he resolved to remain. So scanty were the postal conveniences in those days that two years elapsed before he heard from home in answer to his first letter announcing his shipwreck. He had, how- ever, little reason to complain, since his address was so difficult to find.

He commenced business at once in Guayaquil, and soon the appointment of United States consul was conferred upon him. It was an office of little emolu- ment, but it gave him a social position, and promoted his mercantile interests. Gradually the destitute sailor, who had been thrown a waif on the south- eastern shore of the continent, became a prosperous merchant on its northwestern boundary. In five years, the man who had been indebted to the Indians for his bread, could command one hundred thousand dollars of his own. He had triumphed over all his early disappointments, escaped periis of travel by land and by sea, the effects of fevers and attempted

assassination ; and he had cause to thank God, as he fervently did, for all His goodness towards him. He had reached the first summit of his ambition, from which he was destined to descend into the depths again, to rise once more to loftier heights.

He was now thirty years of age, in robust health and in the pride of manly beauty. He was rich, too, as wealth counted in those days, and the prosperity that had dawned upon his path, lighting up the shadows of the past, threw its cheering rays far into the future. Long before this he might have claimed his promised bride, but he would not ask her to share his disappointments ; he wished her to be the partner of his success. Little did he know what her value would be to him in both conditions that were to fol- low. He arranged his business in a manner that he deemed secure and left it in the control of an associate. On his way home he made his first journey over the Isthmus, which led him afterwards to institute the earliest surveys, indicating almost exactly the line on which the Panama Canal is being constructed. The joy of the happy meeting after an absence of six years may be imagined, and of his reunion, too, with his parents and his brothers and sisters, who had waited so long to welcome him. He was married to Martha G. Bartlet, daughter of Edmund Bartlet, Esq., on the 9th of February, 1829, and almost im- mediately they started for the Isthmus.

At the present day the voyage from New York to Guayaquil is a pleasure excursion of fifteen days by steamship and railroad. In 1829, Mr. and Mrs. Wheelwright had a very different experience on their bridal trip. They embarked on a wretched sailing packet at New York for Carthagena, subsist- ing on salted provisions and hard-tack for a month. After remaining at Carthagena for ten days they came to Chagres in a small schooner in four days. From thence, in alternate heat and pouring rain, they were poled up the river in three days more. It was an absolute relief for them to get upon mule-back and to descend in this manner to Panama. On arrival there they found the port blockaded, so that there was no ingress or egress for nearly two months. At last they escaped in a leaky boat, pump- ing and bailing continually, stopping along the coast frequently for repairs and provisions, and threat- ened with mutiny and desertion of the crew. In this way they arrived at their destination, more than three months after their departure. The only alle- viation was the hospitality and kindness which they received from the friends of Mr. Wheelwright at Carthagena and Panama, and which never could have been more welcome or more highly appreciated.

But, through all their disappointments and vexa- tions, there loomed up before them in imagination the blessed light of their future home. Happily, they did not know that it had been extinguished by the perfidy of a trusted friend and partner, who, in Mr. Wheelwright's absence, had robbed him of every

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1823

NEWBURYPORT.

dollar that he possessed and left him as poor as when lie had landed, a shipwrecked sailor, on the southern coast. He was doubly poor now, for it was poverty for one who was far dearer to him than life. It was a crushing blow, under which few men could have stood. He had capital, however, that he had not in his first experience of misfortune. It was the capital that he had since acquired, and it was one which would not, like riches, take to itself wings and flee away. It was the confidence and friendship that his character had honestly earned. For the whole length of the coast, in all the different republics, and among parties hostile as they might be to each other, there were friends for Mr. Wheelwright.

He wrote to his brother-in-law in New York to send out to him a small schooner, in which he pro- posed to begin his life anew. Accordingly the little " Fourth of July," of sixty tons, was despatched to Valparaiso, whither he went, and where, for many years, he established his home. The schooner arrived in due time, and, sailing under the American flag, she enjoyed immunity in all ports, and the popularity of Mr. Wheelwright was such that she had a monopoly of the transportation of specie and bullion, the profit upon which was enormous. Fortune smiled once more, and he became a successful merchant in Valparaiso.

Two of his children were born there, and his faithful wife, whose health had suffered in an uncon- genial climate, returned in 1835 with her little girls for a visit to her home, making a rapid passage of sixty-five days in a sailing ship around Cape Horn. The younger child succumbed to the rigor of a northern winter, but the elder, with her brother, afterwards born at Newburyport, accompanied her parents in their subsequent voyages from continent to continent, abiding with them for the most part in Valparaiso and Rosario. She afterwards married Mr. Panl Krell, and, having survived her father, set- tled at Oatlands, in the suburbs of London. Inherit- ing, with a share of her father's fortune, his amiable disposition and generous impulses, she devoted herself to a life of charity, exemplifying her religious faith by carrying its precepts into practice. She died in 1886, deeply mourned by her surviving parent and lamented by the poor, whose welfare she always had at heart.

Mr. Wheelwright's son, William, died in Eng- land, at the age of twenty-two. Ile was a youth of rare promise, who, having received a thorough edu- cation, was preparing to join and succeed his father in the management of his great railroad interests. But the fond hopes of his parents were frustrated by his early death, the only consolation remaining to them being his happy release from the sufferings of a lingering disease.

When we consider the difficulties which the first projectors of steam navigation between England and

the United States had to encounter, we may more fully appreciate the labor of Mr. Wheelwright in convincing people that it was feasible to navigate steamships around Cape Horn and to establish them permanently on the west coast of South America. It was but recently that one of the greatest scientists of the age had demonstrated, to his own satisfaction and to that of the public in general, that it was impossi- ble for a steamship to carry a sufficient supply of coal to take her from Liverpool to New York; and not- withstanding the intelligence of the Anglo-Saxon race and of the desire of that great family who lived under different governments, but who were bound to- gether by so many ties of consanguinity, friendship, literature and trade, they had well-nigh resigned themselves to the impossibility announced by Dr. Lardner.

It was while this despondency prevailed in Eng- land and in the United States that Mr. Wheelwright had the audacity to propose to the slow, indolent and easy-going people of the Spanish South American republics, that they should aid him in bringing to them steamships over an ocean expanse of ten thousand miles and should put them in regular communication with each other-changing the time of months and weeks to those of days and hours. "There comes that insane Wheelwrightl" exclaimed the president of one of those republics; "tell him I am not at home !" It is doubtful if he, with all his indomitable pluck, would have had the courage to persevere, had not his well-known character enlisted the sympathy of the European residents and particularly of the merchants, who saw the advantages of an enterprise which even they looked upon with doubt. They would not have listened for a moment to any other man. At last an influence was brought to bear on the different govern- ments. This was more difficult to bring about, as they were antagonistic, jealous of each other and not infrequently at war. Here, an admirable resolution of Mr. Wheelwright's was of immense value. In all his intercourse with those nations, from the beginning to the end, he had determined to preserve a strict neutrality. He made friends with them all and even with the " mammon of unrighteousness," whether they fought with each other or among themselves, and he never betrayed the confidence reposed in him by the men who happened to be in power, by revolutionists or pronunciados. To fuse these discordant elements into an appreciation of their common interests was the labor which he undertook and accomplished. But it was not done in a day. Months and years rolled on, sometimes the hands of the dial turned backwards, but gradually they moved forward, until they reached the high-noon of his desires. He never asked for any direct pecuniary aid. All that he de- manded was the grant of four " concessions,"-1st. An exclusive steam privilege for ten years. 2d. The lib- erty to put into all ports for freight and passengers. 3d. The right to establish receiving ships for ccal.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 203

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