History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 24

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed. cn
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1226

USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II > Part 24

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In 1838 he entered Jacob Robbins' apothecary shop in Lowell as clerk and student. By assiduous study during four years he not only made himself master of the business of an apothecary, but also made a special study of chemistry, and became a practical and analytical chemist. He devoted much time to the study of medicine, first under Dr. Samuel L. Dana, and afterwards under Dr. John W. Graves. His proficiency in medical science was recognized by eminent physicians, and the University of Pennsyl- vania gave him the degree of Doctor of Medicine.

In April, 1841, he purchased Mr. Robbins' apothe- cary shop for $2486.61, paying for it with money bor- rowed from his uncle, whom he repaid in full in three years. This was the nucleus of the vast establish- ment of the J. C. Ayer Company, of which an ac- count will be found elsewhere in this volume. There is scarcely a machine in the whole establishment which was not either invented or greatly improved by the mechanical genius of its founder. That genius also found expression in the invention of a rotary steam-engine, and a system of telegraphic notation, not inferior to the recording telegraph of Prof. Morse.

On the 14th of November, 1850, he married Miss Josephine Mellen Southwick, whose father, the Hon- orable Royal Southwick, was for many years a promi- nent woolen manufacturer, and political leader in Lowell. Soon after his marriage Mr. Ayer purchased from Colonel Jefferson Bancroft, the "Stone House " on Pawtucket Street, which has since become his- toric. Here he enshrined his household goods, and delighted to dispense a baronial hospitality.

The abuses which existed in the management of

1 By Hon. Charles Cowley, LL.D.

2 See Cook's "Genealogy of Families bearing the name Cooke or Cook."

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our manufacturing corporations became known to Mr. Ayer prior to the epoch of "hard times" of 1857. But the collapse of the Middlesex Company in Lowell, and of the Bay State Mills in Lawrence, which signalized that year, roused his ire and stimu- lated his energies to practical efforts for root-and- branch reforms. How these abuses arose he thus ex- plains in a pungent pamphlet :-

"These institutions were originally organized by a few men, who united their capital like co-partners, and obtained such charters as they desired from the State government. Under charters thus granted,- which were well suited to their early condition,-our manufacturing companies, so long as that condition continued, were well managed and very prosperous."

" But a generation has passed away. Time has changed the relations of owners and managers. The originators-large stock-holders, or principal owners, as they were called-of these institutions have died ; their estates have been distributed to their heirs, and sold out to the public. They subscribed for and held their stocks in lots ranging from $25,000 to $100,000 in a corporation. Now the average ownership is about three $1000 shares to one individual. The present stockholders, intead of having, as the original owners did, a personal and intimate acquaintance, rarely know each other at all. They are scattered all over New England, and even other States."

Under such circumstances, inviting the directors to re- elect themselves and to fill all the offices with their own friends, coteries were formed ; sons and nephews were provided with places paying them large salaries for small services. One man became a director of thirty companies, and president of nineteen; and this is but a single example of the manner in which the control of manufacturing corporations was monopo- lized by a few. An account of the successive legisla- tive acts mitigating and largely correcting these evils will be found in Cowley's "Reminiscences of James C. Ayer," etc., of which twenty pages are devoted to this subject.

Mr. Ayer soon found able allies in these efforts for corporation reform. Of course he also found able opponents, for the abuses were of long standing, and wealthy families owed all that they had or were thereto. A third class appeared, which he despised more than his extreme opponents, composed of men who " meant to serve the Lord, but to do it so diplomati- cally as not to offend the devil." These men favored Mr. Ayer's reform in the abstract, but affected to de- plore his methods as causing unnecessary irritation. They would rejoice to see the walls of Jericho blown down, but Joshua's ram's-horn was too harsh an in- strument. Why did he not try a silver trumpet, playing the gentlest of tunes? The contest was long and bitter, but it was won.

This battle for corporation reform was not his own battle merely. "It was the battle of the people-the battle of the widow, the orphan, the invalid, and ev-

ery small stock-holder-against a cotcrie that had captured their property and also their profits." Had his own gain alone been his object, he might have attained that cnd without making a single enemy, by keeping quiet until two or three of the corporations had been wrecked by their incompe- tent managers, and then buying the entire property of these corporations for a comparatively small sum. But he scorned the role of the wrecker and delighted in that of the reformer.

In 1865 Mr. Ayer secured from the United States three letters-patent for processes invented by him for the disintegration of rocks and ores, and the de- sulphurization of the same by the application of liquid and liquid-solutions to them while in a heated state. But as the Chemical Gold and Silver Ore Re- ducing Company had better facilities than himself for introducing these inventions and making them avail- able to the people, Mr. Ayer transferred all his rights therein to that company. Another enterprise in which he embarked, was that of supplying the people of Rochester, New York, with water. The perfect suc- cess of the Rochester Water Works demonstrates the soundness of Mr. Ayer's plan, notwithstanding the disastrous litigation which delayed it. Many and various enterprises occupied his attention-more than were ever known, except to his immediate associates.

The people of Middlesex and Essex Counties see before them daily one product of Mr. Ayer's mind,- the Lowell and Andover Railroad,-diminishing the cost of travel and transportation between Lowell and Boston. But the people of Michigan who enjoy the profits of the Portage Canal behold, in that canal and the railroad therewith connected, a far greater product of Mr. Ayer's mind-" a monument more en- during than bronze." The origin of the Lake Su- perior Ship Canal Railroad and Iron Company was as follows : In 1865-66 Congress granted to the State of Michigan four hundred thousand acres of mineral and pine lands, situated in the upper peninsula of that State, in aid of the construction of a ship-canal on the northern shore of Keweenaw Point, to open the navigation of Portage Lake and Portage River through to Lake Superior, and thus facilitate the nav- igation of the great lakes by allowing vessels to avoid Keweenaw Point, one of the most dangerous passages for vessels known to navigation. By opening a canal a mile and a half long, connection was made with the Portage River, affording a short cut across the point, lessening the distance that vessels had to make around the point by not less than one hundred and ten miles, besides affording an excellent harbor on the route from Duluth to Buffalo.

"This inestimable advantage to transportation through the lakes was secured, it may be said, wholly through the forethought of Mr. Ayer."

Attempts were made to induce Mr. Ayer to invest in the Panama Canal ; but a little examination satis- fied him that those who invested in that enterprise

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were ignorant of its magnitude, and would ultimately lose their investments. The excellent work of Dr. J. C. Rodrigues, the friend of Mr. Ayer, published in 1885, proves the soundness of this prediction that the plan of M. De Lesseps would fail.

Shortly after the capture of Port Royal and the Sea Islands by Admiral Dupont, in November, 1861, J. C. Aver and Company obtained four plantations on Hilton Head, one of the islands that bound that bay, and engaged in the cultivation of cotton by free black labor. The first experiments were unprofitable, but later experiments met with success. The enormous crops of cotton picked since the elevation of the slaves to the condition of hired servants, have dis- pelled all doubt that cotton can be cultivated with abundant success by free labor. Had John C. Cal- houn believed such crops possible without slavery, his grandson says, there would have been no war.

In 1872 the Congressional districts of Massachusetts were reconstructed. Lowell and Lawrence were placed in the Seventh District, and many citizens were found in both those cities, as well as in the contig- nous towns, who desired to elect Mr. Ayer to Congress. Another candidate, however, Judge E. R. Hoar, re- ceived the nomination of the Republican District Con- vention, and Mr. Ayer gave him a cordial support.

Judge Hoar's pretensions to superiority over others of the sons of men Mr. Aver never conceded ; but the judge had used no unfair means to obtain the nomination ; and though a man of many prejudices and overprone to vote with the contrary-minded, he had done nothing to provoke a "bolt." His career in Congress was not brilliantly successful, and in 1874 he wisely declined a re-nomination. It seemed to be generally understood that Mr. Ayer's time had come, and he received the Republican nomination, but was defeated. John K. Tarbox, the Democratic candidate, received 8979 votes ; Mr. Ayer, 7415; and Tarbox's plurality was 1564. Mr. Ayer had to en- counter, what no other Republican candidate for Congress had to encounter in that year, not only the Democratic candidate, Tarbox, but also an "Inde- pendent Republican candidate," so called, Judge Hoar, then sitting in Congress as a Republican and regularly elected as such. But it required more than that to defeat Mr. Ayer, though his health was at that time so broken that he was compelled to seek rest in Eu- rope, where he could do nothing for his own success.

The year 1874 was the year of "the great tidal wave," which overwhelmed the Republican party in many of its strongholds. It was the same year in which Samuel J. Tilden defeated John A. Dix as candidate for Governor of New York, and in which William Gaston defeated Thomas Talbot as candidate for Gov- ernor of Massachusetts.

It was because of the discredit into which the Re- publican party had fallen, not because of any per- sonal odium which attached to Mr. Ayer, nor because of any superior merit in Tarbox, that Mr. Ayer failed

to be elected. Ten years later, when James G. Blaine was defeated in the Presidential election of 1884, Sam- uel Hoar, Esq., son of Judge Hoar, was pleased to refer to the defeat of Mr. Ayer as having "compelled the future," and led to the defeat of Mr. Blaine!

But Mr. Hoar was mistaken alike as to the cause and the consequences of Mr. Ayer's defeat.

The cause which defeated Mr. Ayer was the same cause which, on the same day, in the same State, de- feated Mr. Frost in the Fourth District, Mr. Gooch in the Fifth, General Butler iu the Sixth, Mr. Williams in the Eighth, Mr. Stevens in the Tenth and Mr. Alex- ander in the Eleventh, by adverse majorities gener- ally greater than that of Mr. Ayer.

Had Mr. Ayer's health and life been spared, he would doubtless have been elected to Congress in 1876, and re-elected in 1878, and would have won honorable distinction there.

Liberal donations to meritorious public objects were given by Mr. Ayer. When the chime of bells was placad in St. Anne's Church, Lowell, in 1857, he and his brother, Frederick, made a gift to that church of the "F" bell. After Monument Square had been laid out as a public mall in 1866, Mr. Ayer, who had been traveling in Europe, made a gift to the city of the winged statute of Victory, which has ever since adorned that square. It was publicly dedicated July 4th, 1867.1

When the town of Ayer was incorporated, in 1871, and its citizens, with extraordinary unanimity, honored him by assuming his name, he made to that town the gift of its beautiful Town Hall.

The organization of the town took place March 6, 1871, and was followed by a public dinner, speeches in the afternoon, and a magnificent ball in the evening. Mr. Ayer made a very felicitous address. After ex- plaining the circumstances which created the necessity for proprietary medicines, and briefly referring to his own efforts to supply that necessity, he closed his ad- dress, saying : "Thus have I striven in my humble sphere to render some service to my fellow-men, and to deserve, among the afflicted and unfortunate, some regard for the name which your kind partiality hangs on these walls around me. Oppressed with the fear that I do not deserve the distinction you bestow, I pray God to make me worthier, and to smile upon you with His perpetual blessings."

Upon his return from his second tour in Europe, February 4, 1875, Mr. Ayer received a cordial " Wel- come Home" from more than two hundred of his friends at a public dinner at the Parker House in Boston. In replying to Mayor Jewett's address of welcome on this occasion, Mr. Ayer remarked, "Such

1 Mr. Ayer's letter of donation to Mayor Peahody appears in "Remi niscences of James C. Ayer and the Town of Ayer." The same volume contains Mr. Ayer's speech at the inauguration of the town. Persons applying to F. F. Ayer, Esq., for copies of these " Reminiscences " have been supplied hy him gratis. For J. C. Ayer's speech at the unveiling of the statue of Victory, see Cowley's " History of Lowell," page 210.

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a greeting as this, from such a gathering as this, is worth a dozen elections to Congress."

A month later, March 5, 1875, the President ap- proved an act passed by Congress, authorizing Lieu- tenant-Commander Frederick Pearson, a gallant offi- cer of the United States Navy, who afterwards mar- ried Mr. Ayer's only daughter, to "accept a decoration of Companion of the Military Division of the Order of the Bath, tendered to him by the Queen of Great Britain, as a testimonial of the appreciation of Her Majesty's government of the courage and conduct dis- played by said Lieutenant Pearson in the attack upon the Japanese forts by the combined fleets of Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States, in September, 1864, because of which said Pearson received the thanks of the British Admiral, the senior officer commanding."

Coming from long-lived ancestors, Mr. Ayer might have attained old age; but, like thousands of his con- temporaries, he overtasked his powers; and before he had completed his fifty-seventh year he felt the ap- proaches of paralysis, and was compelled to withdraw from every form of active work. The best medical advice was sought, but the progress of that fatal dis- ease was only retarded. The inevitable end came July 3, 1878, in his sixty-first year. An autopsy of the brain showed its weight to be fifty-three ounces, four or five more than the average.

At his grave in the Lowell Cemetery the attention of the visitor will be arrested by the unique and im- pressive statue chosen by the widow and children of Mr. Ayer as a monument to his memory. It is the statue of a lion, of colossal size, cut in Sicilian marble by the famous English sculptor, A. Bruce Joy. The head of the lion rests upon his paws, and his face wears an expression so mournful aud so sad, that he has been called the Weeping Lion.

Soon after Mr. Ayer's death Judge Abbott wrote : " He possessed very great capacity, as his success in all his many and various enterprises and undertak- ings very clearly shows ; as that success depended en- tirely upon his own sagacity, foresight aud efforts, without help from others. I seldom, if ever, have known one with greater business capacity, or more foresight, judgment and sagacity upon all business questions he was called to act upon. He was a most remarkable instance of what can be done in this country by intelligence, industry and capacity. Alone and unaided, he was able to accomplish results most remarkable, and build up a fortune among the very largest in the country ; and this, too, by his regular business, without resort to the hazards and tempta- tions of speculation."

General Butler wrote: "Mr. Ayer's remarkable bnsiness ability, his untiring energy and devotion to his pursuits in life, hardly ever taking a vacation un- til failing health and age required it, may well be a subject for the contemplation of our young men who wish to succeed." The more so (we may add) because

in the various enterprises which Mr. Ayer set ou foot to enrich himself, he always sought to render some substantial service to the public, and never engaged in the spoliation of his fellow-men.

Mr. Ayer not only possessed great powers of mind, he also had the capacity to exert those powers in va- rious and diverse forms of action. Nor were his ex- traordinary intellectual powers applied to business alone, various and diverse as were the business enter- prises in which he engaged. His mind was equally acute, equally grasping, equally tenacious of its pur- poses, when applied to matters purely intellectual. He loved the physical sciences, especially chemistry. He was a good Greek and Latin scholar, as his notes on the margins of his copies of Greek and Latin au- thors abundantly attest. One of the authors contain- ing such marginalia is Lucretius, who is not included in the curriculum of any college. He wrote and spoke French with facility. He learned Portuguese after he was fifty years old, and read in the original the Lusiad of Camoens.

He was particularly fond of Horace, and loved to quote from his Epistles that famous line, " I, bone, quo virtus tua te vocat ; I pede fausto." ("Go, my dear fel- low, wherever your faculties direct; and success go with you.") To the last of his active life he loved to sit in his library and refresh his mind with its choicest treasures. For ephemeral literature he cared noth- ing; from boyhood to declining years his favorites were "the Immortals." He loved art in all its forms -music, painting, sculpture, architecture, oratory, poetry-and he loved the society of those who were adepts therein. At Munich he met Pilotti, whom he describes as "the Choate of artists-a skein of nerves, without a frame," and he endeavored to procure from Pilotti a copy of that immortal painting which adorns the Cologne Gallery-Galileo in Prison-intending it as a present to the city of Lowell for the City Hall. But for the premature eclipse of his faculties and his premature death, the Memorial Hall of Lowell would doubtless have been enriched with a copy, by Pilotti's own hand, of this renowned painting, so striking and impressive that when Mr. Ayer first saw it he said, " It took my breath away."

To a friend who asked him what he considered the principal cause of his success in life, Mr. Ayer re- plied : "First, my own good star; and secoud, always adhering to the rule, ' Undertake what you can accom- plish, and accomplish what you uudertake.'" If there was any one trait in his character more marked than any other, it was the quickness and the clear-sighted sagacity with which this self-centred mau discerued what he could accomplish; and such was the sound- ness of his judgment that in his larger undertakings he was scarcely ever known to make a mistake.

More than once, during the last sixteen years, have the men of Lowell sighed for a leader with the force of will, the organizing power and the genius of Mr. Ayer, as the Scots, in an agony of a need of general-

F. ayer

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ship, once cried, "O for an hour of Dundee!" When the generation which knew James C. Ayer has passed away, history will relate to the generations that are to come, what he was, and what he did, during his active life of forty years in Lowell.

FREDERICK AYER, the subject of this sketch, was born in Ledyard, Conn., December 8, 1822. He re- ceived his elementary education in the district schools of the town, afterwards pursuing his studies at Jewett City, Conn., and completing his course at a private school in Baldwinsville, N. Y.

Mr. Ayer's first business employment was as clerk in the general country store of John T. Tomlinson & Co., Baldwinsville, N. Y. From this place he went to Syracuse to take general charge of a store belong- ing to the same firm. After being at the head of that establishment for three years, a portion of the time as partner, the partnership beginning when Mr. Ayer was twenty years of age, he formed a partnership with Hon. Dennis McCarthy, who for two terms was the Republican representative to Congress from that district. This firm was under the name of McCarthy & Aver, and continued about eleven years. The house thus established is still doing business under the name of D. McCarthy, Sons & Co., and is one of the largest and most successful dry-goods houses in Central New York.

Mr. Ayer relinquished his interest in the above- named firm in the spring of 1855, for the purpose of joining his brother, Dr. James C. Ayer, the formula- tor of "Ayer's Proprietary Medicines," the firm tak- ing the name of J. C. Aver & Co. This firm con- tinued in active business until 1877, when it was in- corporated under the name and style of " J. C. Ayer Company." At this time Frederick Ayer was elected its treasurer, an office which he still hoids.

During his administration of the affairs of this company its business has much more than doubled, and is now extended over the entire habitable globe.

In addition to the above, Mr. Ayer has been a di- rector in the Old Lowell National Bank, and is now vice-president of the Central Savings Bank. He has also been a director of the New England Telephone Company since its organization. He was on the Board of Aldermen in 1871, and distinguished himself as chairman of the Board of Health, in controlling the small-pox contagion which was then raging in the city. His sharp criticism of the inefficiency of the Board of Health then in office was the occasion of the res- ignation of all its members. A new board was chosen and Mr. Ayer placed at its head. At this time the disease had been extending and increasing for eight months. Through his prompt and vigorous action, and with an efficient corps of physicians and city officials thoroughly organized, the disease was in six weeks wholly eradicated from the city. The whole number of cases, according to the report of the city physician, was 567, and the number of deaths 177.

In 1871 James C. and Frederick Ayer purchased a

controlling interest in the stock of the Tremont Mills and the Suffolk Manufacturing Company, which were standing idle and in a bankrupt condition, and effected the consolidation of the two companies under the name of the Tremont and Suffolk Mills. This Corporation, of which Mr. Ayer is still a director, is one of the most successful of the cotton-mills of New England.

In the construction of the Lowell and Andover Railroad Mr. Ayer took an active and important part, first as a director and soon after as president of the road. The latter office he still holds.

Mr. Ayer was at one time president of the Portage Lake Canal, running from Portage Lake to Keweenaw Bay, in Michigan, and he has now been for many years its treasurer. He is also a director of the Lake Superior Ship Canal, Railway and Iron Company, of which he was for several years botli secretary and treasurer. The capital of this company is $4,000,000.

In June, 1885, Mr. Ayer purchased, at auction, the entire property of the Washington Mills, Lawrence, Mass., and reorganized the Corporation under the name of the Washington Mills Company, of which for one year he was president, and has since been its treasurer.

Mr. Ayer's first marriage was in December, 1858, at Syracuse, N. Y., to Miss Cornelia Wheaton, by whom he had four children. His second marriage took place in July, 1884, to Miss Ellen B. Banning, at St. Paul, Minnesota, by whom he has two children.

Mr. Ayer is a man of remarkable administrative and executive ability, and of great skill and tact as an organizer and manager in business enterprises. These qualities, together with his indomitable will and courage, place him in the front rank of the business men of New England.

FREDERICK FANNING AYER1 was born in Lowell, September 12, 1851. His father was James Cook Ayer, whose life, in its broad outlines, has been traced in previous pages of this work. His mother, Mrs. Josephine Mellen Ayer, is the daughter of Royal and Direxa (Claflin) Southwick. Through her he inherits the blood of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, members of the Society of Friends, who suffered per- secution for their religious principles in Colonial Bos- ton, and whose heroic endurance has been immortal- ized in one of the poems of Whittier. Mr. Ayer is also related through his mother to the great commer- cial house of Horace B. Claflin and Company, of New York; her mother and the founders of that house being alike children of Major John Claflin, of Mil- ford, Massachusetts.

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 24

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed. cn Publication date: 1890 Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1226

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed. cn
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1226