History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 250

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 250

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The Haverhill Woman Suffrage Association was organized February 7, 1878, with the object of se- curing "to women full equality of rights, political and legal, with men; and to educate them for the in- telligent exercise of the highest duties of citizen- ship." The present number of members is about seventy five.

The Female Benevolent Society, now in active ope- ration for about seventy years, continues in a prosper- ous condition. Its membership is three hundred and thirty-three. Its income is derived from rent, interest on bequests, annual donations from friends, collection at the anniversary and membership dnes. It has al- ways enjoyed and deserved the public confidence.

The Old Ladies' Home is a charity which has won its way very modestly and unobtrusively. As far back as 1856 the sum of $100, net result of a levee held in aid of the poor, was put in savings bank as the beginning of a fund. A society was duly incor- porated as the Haverhill Charitable Society. Mrs. Stephen Minot framed the constitution. The original members numbered forty-two, afterwards increased to two hundred. Funds were accumulated by the yearly dues of members, an annual entertainment and occa- sional lectures.

March 6, 1858, it was voted to change the constitu- tion so that instead of raising funds to aid the deserv- ing poor, the object of the society should be that of providing a home for aged indigent women of Haver-

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hill, and afterwards the name was changed to the Old Ladies' Home Association.

For years funds were obtained by a May Fair. In 1874 the association bought a suitable lot of land on Main Street, and in 1876 built a home at a cost of about 810,000. It was dedicated October 18, 1876. Seven inmates were received the first year, twenty-one up to the present time ; eight have died.

The property of the association was reported May 1, 1887, at $28,060.41, exclusive of the Home. Presi- dent for 1887, Mrs. John Crowell; Secretary, Mrs. Jones Frankle. Excellent reports are heard of the good management of the Home and the comfort of its inmates.

A brief sketch of the origin of the Elizabeth Home for destitute children is given elsewhere. The society has $13,381.71 invested in mortgages and savings bank, the Elizabeth Home, a house on Pond Street and one on Sixth Street. In 1885 its receipts were $1838.23, its expenditures $1876.39, leaving a de- ficiency of $38.16. In 1887 the deficiency was 8130.43. Those who were at the annual levee of the society in 1887 are not likely soon to forget the happy, contented faces of the children, the neatness and comfort of the llome, and the apparent excellent management of the executive committee and resident officers. There are ninety-one life members and two hundred and seventy- nine annual.

February 13, 1882, the city of Haverhill accepted an act of the Legislature, authorizing the city to erect and maintain a hospital, to receive donations therefor, and to elect a board of trustees for its management. Under the will of Hon. E. J. M. Hale, the trustees of his estate placed at the disposal of the trustees of the hospital the sum of $50,000 and an estate on Kent Street. The latter not being considered suitable for the purposes of a hospital, the trustees were author- ized by a decree of the Supreme Judicial Court to sell that land upon certain conditions to fulfill the trust. The trustees were taking steps to that end when James H. Carleton, Esq., tendered them for their purposes the estate known as Midlake Farm on Kenoza Ave- nue, consisting of a fine house with suitable build- ings and seven and a half acres of land, all being en- tirely eligible. The trustees were thus enabled to fit up a cottage hospital, regarded as sufficient for the needs of the city for many years.

The house, remodeled and supplied with admirable equipments, was dedicated to its work Thursday, De- cember 29, 1887. Many donations were made with the greatest cordiality, to supply whatever was needed for the beneficent charity. Within less than a week a ter- rible railway accident at Bradford more than taxed the entire resources of the new hospital, causing uni- versal congratulation that it was in readiness with its appliances to alleviate suffering.

This was not the first important gift of Mr. IIale to the city. January 29, 1873, he addressed the mayor and City Council, proposing to found a public library and

convey a specific lot of land on Summer Street for the site of it, with $30,000 in money, provided an equal sum of money should be raised and paid to the trustces to be appointed within six months, and that the city should bear the current expenses of the library. The con- ditions were accepted and the money raised. A board of trustees was elected, with Mr. Hale at the head. The building was erected at the cost of $49,543.32, and is, on the whole, well adapted to the purpose. It was dedicated November 11, 1875, with appropriate exer- cises. Mr. Hale thereafter gave liberally to the insti- tution in money, books and works of art, and by his will $50,000 as a fund, the income to be expended in the purchase of books, and a similar amount, the in- come to be applied to maintenance.

On January 1, 1888, the fund remained unimpaired, whilst the total number of volumes reached nearly 45,000. Edward Capen, the librarian in charge from the beginning, places all frequenters of the library under personal obligations to him by his thoughtful- ness and care, and the number availing themselves of its privileges must be constantly increasing.

The Haverhill Aqueduct Company was one of the earliest organized in the country-in 1802. The source of supply was Round Pond. The conduits employed were wooden logs of four-inch bore. These primitive pipes met for many years the demand for water, but the great pressure of one hundred and twenty feet fall from the Pond to Water Street caused frequent breaks in them ; so many and expensive re- pairs were required each year as largely to absorb the receipts. In 1842 the company began replacing the wood with iron pipes. These giving a surer supply, the water-takers rapidly increased. In 1856 the mill rights to draw down the waters of Plug Pond were purchased. Eleven years later application was made to the Legislature for increased powers, which were granted by the act of 1867, as well as the right to take and use the waters of Plug and Kenoza Ponds in addition to Round Pond. Before the end of the year, Plug Pond was connected with the company's service. Ilitherto the supply had been wholly by gravitation, but as building was rapidly going forward towards the highlands about the ponds, it was necessary to provide a reservoir and pumping engines to raise water for this section. In 1879, this high service was completed. The same year the Silver Hill Aqueduct, a small plant supplying a few families on the west side from springs, was absorbed.

Four years later application was made to the Legis- lature for the right to take and use Crystal Lake, on the west side of the city, which was granted in 1886. The company now has a model aqueduct, surpassed by none for the purity of water and abundance of supply. The sources of supply are all fed by springs, and are uncontaminated by any polluted streams flow- ing into them. By an ingenious system of pipes and water-gates, the service is so sub-divided that it is practically three aqueducts, either of which in emer-

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

gency can temporarily supply the city, or the three can be united. At present the company has thirty- two miles of street mains. All its departments are splendidly equipped, and its capacity is ample to sup- ply abundant water for a city many times larger than the Haverhill of to-day.

In a cotemporary diary is the following entry : " Haverhill Aqueduct built summer 1803 by Mr. Moses Bricket."

We have observed that in the early history of the town the waters of Plug Pond, flowing through Mill Brook, were largely used as the source of water-power. This continued down to a comparatively late day. The Upper Mill, as it was called, was built by William White, father of James D. White, in 1816. He sold] it to Col. John Woodman. It then fell into the hands of the Savings Bank, from which Samuel and James D. White bought it in September, 1846. About 1856 they sold their rights, as above stated, to the Aqueduct Company, who sold the land to Linwood Cemetery. thus extinguishing Mill Brook, with its traditions of mills and manufactures, and the occult meaning of Plug Pond.

There was formerly a pond at the foot of Mill Street, on the south side of Water. A tannery was carried on there by Col. Woodman.

The Haverhill Gas-Light Company was incorpo- rated by act of the Legislature, February 12, 1853. The return for the year ending June 30, 1887, shows total sales of gas 36,024,700 cubic feet, or an average of 98,697 feet per day. The charge to consumers was $1.80 per 1000 feet. The company supplied 319 street lamps, burning an average of six hours per night, at the price of five cents per night for each lamp. December 15, 1887, the price of gas to con- sumers was reduced to $1.70 per 1000 feet, with a dis- count of twenty cents for payment before the 10th of each month. The company at the latter day sup- plied 217 street lamps, burning on au average eight hours per night, at a price of 62 cents per lamp per night (ahout 119 having been displaced by electric light).

November 1, 1887, the amount of deposit in Haver- hill Savings Bank was $4,355,745. The amount of de- posit in the City Five Cent Savings Bank was $866,629.

The Haverhill Co-operative Savings Bank made its ninth annual report November 1, 1886. The bank was chartered August 20, 1877, and began business September 3, 1877. The shares earned interest at the rate of seven per cent. the previous year (1885), and the same was passed to the credit of the shareholders. The secretary, J. A. Page, wrote some little time since: " The Haverhill Co-operative Savings Bank was the second to receive a charter, and has been very successful during the ten years of its existence. It has at present about six hundred shareholders. In 1882 the assets of the bank were only $30,000. Now they are very near $100,000, nearly all invested in dwelling-houses of moderate cost. The borrowersare

generally persons of small or moderate incomes, who could not otherwise build houses and pay for them. The demands for loans is constant and increasing.

" A second co-operative bank has just started in Haverhill. Our bank has sustained no losses."

December 7, 1787, the capital stock of the National Banks in llaverhill was as follows: First National $300,000; llaverhill National, $200,000; Essex National, $100,000; Merrimack National, $240,000; Second National, $150,000.

In the summer of 1877 the Haverhill and Grove- land Street Railway was built from the Boston and Maine station in Haverhill to the Groveland end of Groveland Bridge, three miles, and was equipped with four cars and eight horses, carrying daily about four hundred passengers. Its capital stock was $24,000.

In September, 1884, it was extended one mile in Groveland to Savaryville, and its capital stock was increased to $32.000. In the summer of 1886 it was extended from Savaryville to West Newbury, Haver- hill to Bradford, and in various parts of Haverhill, increasing its tracks to about fourteen miles. The company now run thirty-eight cars and one hundred and five horses, and carry daily about twenty-five hundred people. The capital seock is $144,000.

The capital invested in the manufacture of wool and fur hats in Haverhill and Bradford, is stated by a competent authority to be $500,000; employing some 400 persons ; and manufacturing daily between four and five hundred dozen. The value of the annual pro- duction is stated at from $850,000 to $1,000,000.

Stevens & Co., at their Haverhill mill, have ten sets woolen machinery; their produet is 800,000 yards a year of ladies' dress goods. They consume 500,000 pounds of wool ; employ 159 hands; and their pay- roll is $5000 per month.

This mill is the successor of mills formerly carried on by the Hales upon the same spot at Little River. Ezekiel Hale first made cotton goods there about the beginning of the century. In 1804, he established a woolen factory there. His son, Ezekiel, succeeded him, and in due course, his son, the late E. J. M. Hale, became associated with him.

We may remark that the early trades or manufac- tures carried on in the town, and to which it gave some encouragement, do not seem to have taken any permanent foothold. The rum distilleries, the growth of which here, at one time excited the animadversion of Boston, long since disappeared, partly, at least, owing to an awakened moral sentiment on the subject. Ship-building is gone. The hat and the shoe manu- facture, which struggled up of themselves, alone seem to have had sufficient vitality to survive competition.

Chase thinks hats were manufactured to a consider- able extent one hundred years ago. He believes that Jonathan Webster may have made hats as early as 1747. The Appletons, for several generations, carried on the business at the corner of Main Street and Mechanics' Court.

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One Ladd had a shop a long time before 1800, next south of the City Hall. Nathan Webster, who learned the trade of his brother, Jonathan, who had learned it of Stephen Webster, carried on the business on quite a respectable scale, in 1815, at the southeast corner of Moore and Water. At first, it is true, he only had two apprentices, but afterwards he employed six to eight, with more than twenty journeymen and twenty girls. In 1835 Nathan Webster went into partnership with his brother David, who had also manufactured since 1818.

Isaac How, brother of David How, was the first hat manufacturer in the West Parish, near the foot of Scotland Hill. His sons, Phineas and Isaac, carried on the business quite largely for many years. Phineas had a hat factory at the outlet of Creek Pond. Isaac How, Jr., about 1835, made forty to fifty dozen per day.

In 1830 31 Mirick wrote that hats were manufac- tured to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars annually. Isaac How's son-in-law, John Ayer, learned the trade and carried on business for himself, near Greenleaf's Corner. His son-in-law, Jonathan Crow- ell, succeeded him in business finally at Ayer's vil- lage, to which John Ayer had removed. Crowell continned the business for more than forty years, till he died in 1860. He was then manufacturing, under the style of Jonathan Crowell & Co., about eight hun- dred dozen hats a month, worth about six dollars and a half per dozen, and employing about fifty persons.

In 1860 there were several firms carrying on the manufacture at Ayer's village. Isaac How and othersin the West Parish formerly made wool hats, which they carried for sale to Boston, Salem and other places, on horseback or in boxes slung below the axles of a pair of wheels with shafts attached. Ladd, Appleton and Marsh, in the main village, made hats of the fur of the beaver, and ordinary hats of the raccoon and muskrat. The best fur hats would cost about seven dollars. A man bought one when he got married and expected it to last him the re- mainder of his life. Then there were cotton-plush hats with pasteboard bodies, and "napped " hats. Finally the Hows and Mitchells moved into the village of Haverhill, where Greenough, Cook & Co. had begun manufacturing about 1830. Others followed and gradually the business died out at Ayer's village and iu the West Parish. The Haverhill Hat Com - pany and William B. Thom & Co. have carried on the business on a large scale for a long time. The busi- ness is very active in town at present.

The last vessels built in the town were hy John C. Tilton, in his yard on River Street, above the rail- road bridge. The keels were laid in 1874, and the vessels launched in 1875. They were the " Lucy Jane " and " Eliza Ann."

Chase says the first shoemaker in town was Andrew Greeley ; but he mentions no fact to sustain the as- sertion, which he must base upon tradition, though he

does not even say that. Other writers have had a good deal to say, by way of joke and otherwise, because the town would not admit William Thomp- son and Peter Patie to settle and become freemen. Of course the fact of their being shoemakers was not the cause of their exclusion, but the fear that they would become paupers. They had no property, and were thought to be "tramp " shoemakers. It is possible the fathers did not see the necessity of encouraging shoemakers so directly as blacksmiths or mill- wrights. The latter were obliged to have a plant. The shoemakers could "whip the stump," viz., go around from farm-house to farm-house, with their kit, and stop long enough to make up the boys' shoes for a year to come. They were rovers like John Keczar, coming home from a cobbling sojonrn in Amesbury, at dawn on that mild Sunday morning when the French and Indians swooped down.

The farmer, too, in the beginning, made his own shoes or certainly mended them. He kept his own little bits of leather and was a jack at all trades. A few years ago a very rich farmer died at a great age in another town of the State, who had never worn shoes not of his own making ; he bore a well-known colonial name and had always lived after the ways of his fathers. Gradu- ally the tramping cobblers settled down and had shops and kept a little leather, "living like other folks." Then the traders and all the people carried on business by barter. The traders took calf skins and others ; what so easy as to sell these to the shoemaker, taking pay in shoes? and when he made a quantity he would take his pay "out of the shop; " it was an en- largement of trade. In this way, Moses Gale came to advertise in August, 1795, that he had "several thousand " fresh and dry hides which he would ex- change for shoes, giving credit for the hides till the shoes could be made. The shop-keeper could sell a few from his own place of business, and send a few to Salem aad Boston ; but how to find a channel to ship off more ? Moses and James Atwood kept a store and took in shoes. During the War of 1812 they sent a wagon-load of shoes to Philadelphia and found it paid very well. Chase says Mr. Atwood afterwards removed to Philadelphia and started the first whole- sale shoe house there. Later, others followed and made money, and others went to other cities and did the like. Some have it that David How made the first foreign venture. If there was anything left in him of the unlicensed sutter of 1776, it would not take him long to discover that there was money in it.

Aroet M. Hatch was in the shoe business here in 1812. He had married a sister of Paul Spofford, of Georgetown. The two went up to Salem, New Ilamp- shire, and began to make shoes. After a year, or about 1817, they came back to Haverhill, and manu- factured as Hatch & Spofford, in the Bannister Block.

The town got into ladies' foot-wear trade early. In 1814, Chase & Cogswell sold " ladies' black morocco

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

shoes, with heels; ladies' colored morocco shoes, with heels ; and ladies' colored and black sandals, with heels." Amos Chase sold roan ties in 1810, made by himself.

Phineas Webster is considered to have been about the first to manufacture shoes by the wholesale and do nothing else. This was not far from 1815. At first he exchanged his shoes with Danvers tanners and curriers for morocco and leather. They packed them in boxes, barrels, tea-chests, hogsheads, and shipped them on the little eoasting vessels to Phila- delphia and Baltimore, where they were exchanged for produce. Arrived there, where the people soon learned the kind of goods brought, the skipper would hoist up a barrel of shoes and dicker them off. If he were a "drefful smart Yankee," he soon, doubtless, discovered some local trader whom he made his agent. Distribution was the great problem.

Samuel Chase began to manufacture here about 1815; Warner Whittier, at least as early as 1818, manufactured extensively aud was followed in the business by his son, the present Warner R. Whittier.

Thomas Tileston, the printer, as we have said, went to New York as early as 1818, where, in connection with Paul Spofford, he started a commission business, and received consignments of Haverhill-made boots and shoes. It put them in the way of fortune and was of great value to the Haverhill makers. Thirty years after, Spofford & Tileston sent out into the West young men whom they had educated in business and who made fortunes in their turn by selling Hav- erhill shoes, and engaging themselves as pioneers of manufacturing in that then new region.

In 1817 it is said there were probably two hundred shoemakers in town. Daniel Hobson, in 1828, made " Hobson's pumps."

In March, 1832, there were twenty-eight shoe man- and Sewell E. Jewett, located near the line of the ufacturers in the town, of whom at least sixteen kept " English and West India goods." There was profit on those, if not on the shoes-probably on both.

Jesse llarding was the first morocco dresser in the town.

Miriek says that in 1830 a few houses manufac- tured over one million dollars. He adds that the combs manufactured in 1831 would exceed thirty thousand dollars, and employed about one hundred persons.

Leather gloves had been made quite extensively a few years before, and about thirty had been employed in making plated ware for saddles. The first "turned" shoes were made by a Philadelphia "tramping jour.," who worked long enough in Charles- town for James Gardner, of Bradford, to give other people facilities of finding out the art, which made a great sensation in the trade.

Rufus Slocomb began to run a two-horse "bag- gage waggon " in 1818, between Haverhill and Boston, to carry freight. One of the writers says that the tythingmen, stopping him for driving on the Sabbath

(and there was indeed a great crnsade on that subject at this time and many county meetings), asked him what his name was. " My name," said Rufus, "is Slowcomb and fast-go," and with that, whipping up his horses, he was out of sight in a moment. He did not use horses altogether, however. One day in the spring of 1836 he had full loads out of town for forty-one horses and eight oxen. In that year he made one hundred and fourteen trips, carrying 26,- 955 cases shoes.

In March, 1837, there were forty-two shoe manu- facturers and fourteen tanners and leather dealers. But the financial panic of that year was a disastrous blow to the shoe interest, from which it did not re- cover till the discovery of gold in California.

In 1857, there were more than ninety shoe manu- factories, eighty-two of which were located in the central village. Besides, there were eighteen inner- sole and stiffening manufactories. in 1859 the num- ber of manufactories in the village was ninety. In 1860, the assessors returned ninety-eight shoe factor- ies, and two boot and shoe; of these, nine were at Ayer's village.

Not counting those carried in passenger trains, the books of the Boston and Maine show that in 1860 it carried 67,856 cases by freight train ; 93,856 cases was the estimate for the total shipment of that year, the value of which was estimated at $3,754,240. In 1875 there were not far from 150,000 cases. The arrest of trade and collapse of Southern credit, at the beginning of the war, prostrated many old manufac- turers.

The only general strike ever occurring here was in 1860, of about six hundred operators, but it did not continue long.

The first steam mill was built by David P. Harmon Boston and Maine Railroad.

After enterprising young men began to go West as jobbers of shoes, they speedily demanded to have their shoes sent to them in better shape-that is, sorted and sized-and that was a change in the mode of distribution which the Haverhill manufacturers had to learn and did learn.

As early as 1843, they made a speciality of slippers, mostly heelless and made by hand ; also, of pumps, very popular in the South. In 1855 fancy-colored shoes were in demand. From 1858 on, Haverhill has annually made millions of pairs of fancy heeled slip- pers, low-ent shoes and ladies' boots.

" Previous to 1857 the uppers were stitehed by hand-mostly by the wives and daughters of the country shoemakers-and at their homes. But in that year the Singer sewing-machine was introduced into Haverhill. The first cost four hundred dollars and was used in the shop of Moses How."

In 1859 came the Blake sewing-machine, improved by Mckay. " At last, ten machines were pronounced good and sent out. Nine of these were moderately

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successful, and of these nine, Mr. Moses Hlow, of Haverhill, had one, the first brought to this place."

Long before the introduction of machinery, Haver- hill was known almost exclusively by its light goods, women's shoes, and men's and women's slippers.

Jannary, 1887, there were one hundred and seventy shoe manufacturing houses in Haverhill.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 250

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