History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Vol. I, Part 90

Author: L.H. Everts & Co
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts
Number of Pages: 700

USA > Massachusetts > History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Vol. I > Part 90

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Charles A. Braman, enl. July 31, 1862, 34th Inf., Co. D ; disch. Jan. 10, 1865, for disah, ; wounded in Louisiana.

Andrew J. Ferrell, Ist sergt., enl. Aug. 30, 1862, 37th Inf., Co. II ; disch. June 21, 1865.

Alpheus W. Parsons, sergt., enl. Aug. 30, 1862, 37th Inf., Co. HI ; disch. April 14, 1863, for disab.

Andrew J. Hill, corp. enl. Aug. 30, 1862, 37th Inf., Co. H; disch. June 21, 1865.

Marshall Blythe, enl. Ang. 30, 1862, 37th Inf., Co. H ; disch. June 21, 1865.

Henry B. Chapman, enl. Aug. 30, 1862, 37th Inf., Co. HI ; disch. Feb. 7, 1863, for disab .; died at Easthampton, Sept. 29, 1864.

Charles H. Clark, enl. Aug. 30, 1862, 37th Inf., Co. H ; trans. April 15, 1864, to Vet. Rus. Corps. David Fabey, enl. Aug. 30, 1862, 37th Inf., Co. IF; disch. June 21, 1865.

Henry Graves, Jr., enl. Aug. 30, 1862, 37th Inf., Co. H ; disch. June 21, 1865.

Daniel W. Kane, enl. Aog. 30, 1862, 37th Inf., Co. II; died Dec. 16, 1862, Stafford Court-House, Va., of typhoid fever, and was buried there. Gilbert Sandy, enl. Feb. 18, 1864, 57th Inf., Co. C; disch. Ang. 7, 1865, by order of War Depart- ment ; a prisoner at Andersonville nine or ten months; a hired recruit; name given because he suffered at Andersonville.

Henry Shattuck, enl. Aug. 25, 1863, 22d Inf., Co. H; killed June 18, 1864, at l'eterslmrg, Va.

Robert Risk, eul. Sept. 7, 1861, 24th Inf., Co. C; disch. Sept. 6, 1864.

Frank Lamar, enl. May 13, 1864, 19th Inf .; unas- signed recruit, and unaccounted for in adjt .- general's report of volunteers, 1868, vol. ii. page 329.

John O'Brien, enl. Aug. 12, 1862, 11th Inf., Co. H ; disch. July 14, 1865.

Henry L. Ferry, enl. June 21, 1861, 10th Inf., Co. I; disch. Nov. 14, 1862, for disab .; re-enl. in 31st and served through the time of the regt. Edwin Fahey, enl. Ang. 12, 1862, Ist Cav., Co. B; missed in action, May 10, 1864; prisoner nine months at Andersonville.

John Kinloch, enl. Ang. 12, 1862, 1st Cav., Co. F; disch, to re-enl., Feb. 17, 1864; taken prisoner twice, confined six months at Salisbury ; disch. June 17, 1865.

Asa D. Strong, enl. Sept. 19, 1861, Ist Cav., Co. F; trans., Feb. 18, 1864, fo Vet. Res. Corps.

John White, enl. July 28, 1863, 2d H. Art., Co. A ; died of yellow fever, Oct. 23, 1864, at Newbern, N. C.

Luther L. Wright, enl. Oct. 11, 1862, 52d M. V. M., Co. K; disch. April 30, 1863, for disab.

Patrick McNamee, enl. Feb. 18, 1864, 57th Inf., Co. E; trans. to Vet. Res. Corps.

Elmer J. Hardy, enl. March 10, 1864, 57th Inf., Co. I; died of wounds May 7, 1864; a recruit from abread; lost his life in service for the town.

Wm. II. Turner (Lyman's History). Ralph Burnett (Lyman's Ilistory).

James S. Tencellent, 10th Conn.

John Reagan, farrier, enl. Co. B, 3d N. Y. Cav .; disch. for disab, brought on by severe expos- nre, Sept. 30, 1862.

Augustus M. Clapp, enl. nt the age of fifteen years and ten months in Co. K, 85th Ohio Cav., for three months; was also in Co. C, 88th Ohio; was engaged in the pursuit of Morgan's guer- rillas and in guarding rebel prisoners ; re-enl. in 3d Ohio Cav. He was in one engagement where, though unknown to him at the time, his oldest brother was among the rebel forces. He died in hospital at Nashville, TenD., of typhoid fever, March 9, 1863.

Dr. F. C. Greene, served with Mcclellan in the Peninsular campaign, and suffered severely in the swamps of Chickahominy.

Jobn G. Ilennessy, enl. 1864, 5th N. H.

Justin W. Chapin, belonged to a New York regt .; captured and confined at Andersonville seven months.

Thomas Connolly, enl. Aug. 27, 1862, Navy ; as-

signed to the " Monongahela," and served un- der Farragut.

John Quinn, enl. Aug. 27, 1862, Navy ; assigned to the " Tennessee."

John Denovan, enl. Aug. 27, 1862, Navy ; assigned to the " Patapsco."

Salmon H. Lyman, enl. 1861, Anderson Zouaves, N. Y., Co. A ; was in the battle of Williams- burg; seon after was taken sick, removed to New York, and died at Davis Island Hospital, Aug. 25, 1862. llis remains were Imried in Easthampton with military honors, Sept. 18, 1862.

Ro land S. Williston, sergt., enl. May 25, 1861, 211 Mass., Co. G ; died from wounds received at Cedar Mountain.

Charles Tencellent, enl. 1861, 7th Coup .; died of wounds received at Olustee, Fla.

Ilenry Lyman, enl. Ang. 1, 1862, 27th Regt., Co. A ; died Ang. 5, 1863 ; remains brought home for burial.

Gustavus W. Peabody, en1. 10th Regt., Co. I, June 21, 1861; served through his term; wounded at Salem Ileights; trans. March 15, 1864, to Vet. Res. Corps.

Edward II. Graves, enl. 10th Regt., June 21, 186] ; probably served out his term; pro. to q.m .- sergt., Oct., 1861.

Rufus Burl.

Daniel Gallagher, enl. in 9th Conn.

l'atrick Ryan, enl. in 9th Conn.

Alvan W. Clark, ent. Oct. 11, 1861, Ist Wis, Bat. L. Art .; disch. March 10, 1863.

Charles M. Rensselaer, enl. 54th Regt., Co. C; wounded in battle; taken prisoner; died at Andersonville, June 8, 1864, The only colored man who enlisted from Easthampton ; be de- sired to enlist at first, but was not allowed to; joined the army as soon as the government recrived colored men ; was n native of East- hampton.

Michael Fitzgerald, enl. 1864, 82d N. Y. ; wounded at Deep Bottom, Ang. 14, 1864; disch. Juno 15, 1865.

Ilugo Oberempt, enl. June 5, 1861, 5th Conn. Regt .; taken prisoner, confined a month at Belle Isle, exchanged, and had a long after-service under Banks, Hocker, and Sberman ; was wounded at Peach-Tree Creek ; disch. June, 1865. One of "Sherman's Bummers."

Franklin R. Heyt, enl. Oct. 10, 1861, Ist Mass. Cav., Co. F ; disch. Oct. 10, 1864.

James If. Newton, en1. Aug. 6, 1862, 1st Mass. Cav., Ce. G ; was in the service about two years. Alonzo S. King, enl. fall of 1862, Navy ; assigned to the " Henry Hudson," and served oue year upon the coast of Florida.

Wm. A. Bartlett, enl. Co. D, 37th Regt., Aug. 30, 1862 ( Westhampton); trans. to Vet. Res. Corps, Dec. 15, 1863.

Albert S. Gove, enl. spring of 1861, Anderson Zou- aves, N. Y .; served full term ; disch.

Richard Goodsell, eol. spring of 1861, Anderson Zonaves, N. Y .; served through ; disch.

John Tencellent, enl. in 55th Mass, and 7th Conn. Frank Thornton, enl. in 55th Mass.

John Howard, enl. in 55th Mass. Robert Fale, enl. in 15th Bat. - Могеу.

To this record may properly be added the follow- ing names, not belonging directly to Easthampton, -three sons of Josepli Alvoid, who removed to Bement, Ill., before the war :

Joseph C. Alvord, lieut., en1. 1861, 21st Ill. ; killed at the battle of Murfreesboro', Dec. 30, 1862. Oscar L. Alvord, en1. 54th Ill. ; taken sick in camp of typhoid fever; returned home, Unt died in a few days.

Ilarrison M. Alvord, enl. 73d 111 .; served through the wnr.

Ilenry I. Smith, son of Rev. Hervey Smith, of Easthampton ; in n printing-office in Georgia when the war broke ont. When ordered to leave the State or join the army, he went to North Carolina. Attempting to come North at a later period, he was captured, robbed,

Edmund A.Sawyer

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HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE COUNTY.

kept at Richmond and Andersonville twenty months or more, finally exchanged, and came home ; received an appointment in the provost marshal's office, New York; afterward eu- listed: drilled five months or more; thrown from his horse; injured; discharged. A career of patriotic suffering.

Gen. George C. Strong. He passed his early years with his uncle, A. L. Strong, of Easthampton ; was educated at Williston Seminary, admitted to West Point, and graduated there with high honors in 1857, taking the rank of commander of the battalion of cadets. His services in the war which followed so soon after his gradu-

ation were of a long and distinguished char- acter. Having passed through many dangers, heen promoted repeatedly, and honored with appointments of great responsibility, he fell at the head of his column mortally wounded in the attack upon Fort Wagner, and died July 30, 1863.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

HON. EDMUND HOUGHTON SAWYER,

son of Ezra Sawyer and Eliza Houghton, was born in New- ton, Mass., Nov. 16, 1821. His father was born in Sterling, Mass., July 22, 1794, and his mother in Lancaster, Mass., May 22, 1794. The rudiments of his education were obtained at the common schools in Lancaster, where his boyhood was passed, and he subsequently attended the Derby Academy at Hingham. His father discovered in young Sawyer those ele- ments which, if properly developed, would result in rendering him a thorough business-man, and in 1836 arranged for him to enter the large mercantile establishment of Abraham Holman, in Bolton, Mass., as a clerk. IIere he remained five years, and rose step by step from " boy-of-all-work" to the position of chief clerk of the establishment. At the age of twenty he left Bolton, and, after spending a few months in the vicinity of Boston, went to Brattleboro', Vt., and engaged with Wil- liston & Tyler in the wholesale hardware, drug, and grocery business, which he pursued with success for a period of eight years, when he was induced by the late Samuel Williston to join him in the manufacture and sale of woven elastic rubber goods in Easthampton.

In 1850 the Nashawannuck Manufacturing Company was in- corporated for the manufacture of clastic fabrics, with a cap- ital of $100,000, since increased to $300,000, and Mr. Sawyer has been a director, the treasurer, and general agent from its organization to the present time. These positions require his attention as superintendent of the manufacturing department in Easthampton and the selling department, with a store, in New York City.

In addition to his active management of the business of the Nashawannuck Company, he has been called to assist in various enterprises in and out of Easthampton, always discharging the duties of the various positions with great credit to himself and to the entire satisfaction of those in- terested. He is director in the Easthampton Rubber Thread Company; the Gas Company; director, president, and trens- urer of the Glendale Elastic Fabrics Company; director in the Williston Mills. In the latter company he was director, treasurer, and general agent from 1871 to 1875. He was called to these positions by Mr. Williston, who found that these mills, through the advice and management of others, were rapidly losing money, and in two years after Mr. Sawyer as- sumed the management they were rescued from disaster and placed upon a sound foundation.

At the death of Mr. Williston the will made Mr. Sawyer one of the executors, and being the only resident executor, except Mrs. Williston, whose age prevented her from active service, the labor of settling this vast estate of over $1,000,000 devolved mainly upon Mr. Sawyer, through whose manage- ment, aided by the wise counsel and sympathy of his other co-executors, M. F. Dickinson, Jr., Esq., of Boston, and A. L. Williston, Esq., of Northampton, the legacies and debts, save one, have been paid, and a handsome gain realized on the inventory as taken soon after his death.

Mr. Sawyer was prominent and active in the organization of the First National Bank of Easthampton, and has been a director since its organization. He has also for many years been a director in the First National Bank of Northampton, and president and trustee of the Easthampton Savings-Bank.

He has been appointed and elected to, and now holds, positions as follows : trustee of Northampton Lunatic Hospital since 1864; trustee of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary since 1873 ; trustee of Williston Seminary since 1867; and is now treasuer of the same.

Mr. Sawyer has ever manifested a decided interest in the welfare of Easthampton, and was the original mover in the establishment of the Public Library Association, and has contributed more time and money to its maintenance than any other one person. He has always commanded the respect and esteem of the citizens of the town for which he has done so much, and has officiated as justice of the peace a long time, and notary public since 1864. In addition to the various town offices held by Mr. Sawyer, he was elected Representa- tive to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1866 from the First Ilampshire District, and Senator from Hampshire County in 1867 and 1868.

Politically, he is a Republican, and has been since the organization of that party,-never, however, a partisan, caring more for the triumph of right principles and the elec- tion of good men than for party or personal gain. He was active during the Rebellion, and gave largely in time and money toward the preservation of our free institutions. He was also one of the originators of and active in the movement that sent Hon. Julius II. Seelye, now president of Amherst College, to Congress.

The same activity manifests itself with Mr. Sawyer in re- ligious matters as in the management of his multifarious secular duties. He has been a member of the Payson Ortho- dox Congregational Church since its organization, and for the same time member of the choir, of which, a portion of the time, he has had charge. He has been deacon of the church a number of years, superintendent of the Sunday-school, etc. Amherst College, in 1878, bestowed upon him the degree of Master of Arts (A. M.). Ilis business relations have been of an extensive character, and he has twice visited Europe on business,-once in 1859, and again in 1861.

Mr. Sawyer has been twice married,-first to Mary A. Farnsworth, of Brattleboro', Oct. 4, 1848. She died May 3, 1851, leaving one son, Henry Ilovey, born Sept. 11, 1849. Ile is a graduate of Williston Seminary and Amherst Col lege, and is now in business with his father, as secretary of the Nashawannuck Manufacturing Company. Mr. Sawyer's second marriage occurred May 4, 1853, to Sarah J. Hinckley, of Norwich, N. Y. Their family consists of three children, viz., William Brewster, born Nov. 22, 1854; he is a graduate of Williston Seminary, Amherst College, and Harvard Medi- cal School ; Edward H. Hinckley, born Nov. 17, 1862, is now a student in Williston Seminary ; Mary, born Jan. 28, 1866, now attending the village school.

Mr. Sawyer is essentially a self-made man, and his life has been one of steady and active devotion to business. His great success bas been the natural result of his ability to examine and readily comprehend any subject presented to him, power to decide promptly, and courage to act with vigor and per- sistently in accordance with his convictions.

" Honor and fame from no condition rise ;

Act well your part, there all the honor lies."?

284

HISTORY OF THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

SAMUEL WILLISTON

was born in Easthampton, June 17, 1795. He was the son of Rev. Payson Williston, of Easthampton, who was the son of Rev. Noah Williston, of West Haven, Conn., who had four children,-two sons, both of whom were ministers, and two daughters, both of whom were ministers' wives. On his father's side he was own cousin to Rev. Richard Salter Storrs, D.D., of Braintree, and so akin, not only to the Willistons and Storrses, but to the Paysons, the Strongs, the Elys, and the other illustrious clergymen whose names Prof. Park has recently woven like a garland about the brow of the Brain- tree pastor. His mother, Mrs. Sarah Birdseye Williston, was also the daughter of a Connecticut clergyman, Rev. Nathan Birdseye, of Stratford.

His parents and grandparents were all remarkable for their longevity. His father lived to the age of ninety-three, and his father to the age of seventy-seven ; his mother to the age of eighty-two, and her father to his one hundred and third year.

His father's family consisted of six children, five of whom arrived at adult ages. Of his two brothers, one was Deacon J. P. Williston, of Northampton, the reformer and philan- thropist, whose humane and Christian charities, beginning at home, compassed the globe, dropping like the rain and distill- ing like the dew on the dry and thirsty land. The other, Deaeon N. B. Williston, president of a bank in Brattleboro', Vt., a man of like spirit with his brothers, is the only surviv- ing member of the family. Of his two sisters, one was the wife of J. D. Whitney, Esq., of Northampton, and the mother of the distinguished professor of that name ; the other was the mother of the late Mrs. Dr. Adams, of Boston.

Samuel, though the third child that was born to his parents, was the oldest son that grew up to manhood. The trials and triumphs of his education and his early business, and the story of his marriage, constitute a romanee in real life of rare in- terest and pathos. Ile began to go to school very young, and attended the district school in his native place, summer and winter, till he was ten years old; then in the winter only till he was sixteen, at which age his schooling, as it was called,- that is, his instruction in the common school, which then scarcely extended beyond reading, writing, and the rudiments of arithmetic,-ceased altogether. He began to work on a farm at the early age of ten, in the absence of his father on a mis- sionary tour of three months in the State of New York. This first work was done on the farm, and under the direction of a good deaeon in his father's church, Deaeon Solomon Lyman, whose memory he always hell in high esteem and veneration. After this he worked on a farm every summer till he was six- teen, sometimes on his father's, sometimes for some of his parishioners, and the last of these summers out of town in Westhampton, where his wages were seven dollars a month.

After he ceased going to school, he studied to some extent privately with his father, though only in the winter, for he was obliged to work in the summer. He loved study and longed for a liberal education. But he saw no way in which he could obtain the requisite means. Ile therefore went into a clothier's shop belonging to a brother-in-law in Rochester, Vt., where he labored the greater part of two winters, till he became master of the art to such an extent that he was in- trusted with the charge of the shop. Meanwhile, he lost no time, spent his evenings in reading, and made the most of all the means of self-education within his reach. Ilis desire for a better education being thus increased, on his return from Vermont, late in the winter of 1813-14, he entered Westfield Academy. But his funds were exhausted before he had com- pleted a single term, and he came home again to study with his father. Still encouraged by bis teachers and his parents, that where there was a will there was a way, and that some way would be found for him yet to go through college, he now began to study Latin, which he pursued first with his father

and then with Rev. Mr. Gould, of Southampton. In the summer of 1814, learning that there were funds at Andover for the aid of indigent students, and attraeted by the excellence of the institution, he went to Phillips Academy, then under the principal charge of Rev. John Adams, and enjoying the instructions also of Mr. Hawes, afterward Dr. Hawes, of the Centre Church in Hartford, Conn. He excelled in his studies. He went up at a step from the " Epitome of Sacred History," over the class in " Viri Roma, " to the class in "Selectæe a Sacris et Profanis, " and on examination at the close of his first term he was placed upon the foundation as a charity seholar. Now he had reached a point from which he thought he could see the goal of his ambition, a college education. Now he was satis- fied, and regarded his fortune as made, or at least quite secure. But severer trials awaited him. He had not been there a year when his eyesight failed him, and he was obliged to leave. For two years now, from the spring of 1815 to that of 1817, he vibrated between labor on the farm and a elerkship in a store, passing the larger part of the time in the store, but with intervals of two or three months on the farm, suffering all the while from weakness, inflammation, and incessant pain in the eyes, till at length he gave up all hope of being or doing any- thing that could satisfy his ambition. He made up his mind -this is the way in which he was in the habit of speaking of it-that he must be a farmer, and a poor man at that. These years, however, were by no means lost to him. In the store of Justin Ely, of West Springfield, and still more in the large wholesale establishment of Francis Child, of New York City, with whom he spent a year, he was acquiring that knowledge of men and things, and forming those ideas and habits of business, which were afterward to be of such essential service to him in the management of his own affairs. Moreover, it was during this period, under the discipline of repeated dis- appointments and sore trials, accompanied by the effectual teaching of the Holy Spirit, that he began life anew as a Christian, and after a severe inward struggle, which began soon after leaving Andover, and ended in submission and peace just before going to New York, he consecrated himself publicly to the service of God as a member of the Presbyterian church under the pastoral care of Rev. Dr. Spring.

In the spring of 1817, at the age of twenty-two, he came back to his father and proposed to him to go into the farming business ; the father to furnish the farm and the capital, and the son to manage it and do the work. The father reluctantly consented, invested some four or five hundred dollars from his father's estate in the purchase of land, taking the deed of it in his own name, and then borrowed money for the purchase of more land and implements of husbandry. Thus unpromis- ing was the commencement of Mr. Williston's business life, without capital, almost without anything that he could call his own, and having run his father in debt for the very tools with which he was to do his work. He continued to follow farming as his business four years, enlarging the farm and extending the business, varying it also by raising sbeep and growing fine wool, till he became, for that place and those times, quite a large farmer and wool-grower. He worked on the farm himself, however, only in the summer. In the win- ter he betook himself to that unfailing resource of intelligent and aspiring youth of both sexes in Yankee land, teaching school.

In the spring of 1822 (May 27th) he was married to Miss Emily Graves, daughter of Elnathan Graves, a respectable farmer in moderate circumstances, in the neighboring town of Williamsburg.

Ile still taught one year, after being married, in the central distriet school in Easthampton, thus making five winters in all, besides the entire year of his teaching in Springfield. Meanwhile, the farming business went on, enlarging, as we have said, and on the whole prospering. But he was obliged to run in debt at the outset. This debt was still further in-

sel elliston

Horatio Gutes tonight

285

HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE COUNTY.

creased for the sake of enlarging the business. He had invested in land and sheep eighteen hundred dollars, most of which was borrowed capital. His first crop of wool was lost through the failure of the purchaser. Two or three hundred dollars a year was all that could be saved for repairing this loss and reducing this burden of indebtedness. Mrs. Williston has remarked that at this time it was a daily subject of prayer at the domestie altar that God would open to him ways and means by which he might obtain a competence for himself and family. And now, at length,-doubtless in answer to those very prayers, and as the result, too, of the severe disci- pline to which he had been subjected,-the way was to be opened. And the relief was to come through the wife whom God had given him to be not only his companion and help- meet in general, but his wise counselor and his good genius in that very thing which he had so often made a subject of special prayer. Mrs. Williston had never felt able to keep the help she needed in housekeeping, nor to give what she wished in aid of charitable objects. While looking about for relief and enlargement in these particulars, she found that her mother had been in the habit of making covered buttons for her own family, and a small surplus for sale to others. She took up the business at onee on a somewhat larger scale. The first package of buttons which she made she took to Mr. David Whitney, of Northampton (long the treasurer of the Hampshire County Missionary Society), as a contribution of the first-fruits to the cause of missions ; and President Hum- phrey, happening in about that time, became the first pur- chaser. Little did he or she think that there was the germ of Williston Seminary and Williston College.

The second package was sent to Arthur Tappan, of New York, who immediately contracted for twenty-five gross at two dollars a gross. Fifty dollars! Never in all their sub- sequent wealth did they feel so rich as when they received that order from the firm of Arthur Tappan. The first buttons Mrs. Williston made with her own hands. Then she employed other hands to work for her in the house. Next she began to give out buttons to be made in neighboring families. Mr. Williston soon perceived that here was a field of enterprise wider and more promising than farming, and that instead of making her time and toil merely subsidiary to his work, he might better make his minister to hers. It was in 1826, when he was already more than thirty years of age, that the begin- ning was made of this new undertaking. In 1827 he went to New York, found customers, received orders, and went back to extend liis business. Soon he went in like manner to Phila- delphia, Baltimore, and Boston, and established agencies in all the principal cities of the United States. The business grew rapidly, and it was only a short time before he had more than a thousand families at work making buttons for him, through all that circle of towns, thirty or forty miles in diameter, of which Easthampton was the centre. Auxiliary to the button business, he opened a store, and for a number of years carried on quite a large business, for the country, in the sale of dry goods, his first clerk being Mr. Knight, and Mrs. Williston his first bookkeeper.

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History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Vol. I, Part 90

Author: L.H. Everts & Co Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts Number of Pages: 700

Author: L.H. Everts & Co
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts
Number of Pages: 700