History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Vol. II, Part 100

Author: L.H. Everts & Co
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts
Number of Pages: 896

USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Vol. II > Part 100

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The Republican came into existence as the doubtful venture of a man who had hitherto met with discouragement and failure in other places. In 1824, at the age of twenty-seven, Samuel Bowles suiled up from Hartford, bringing with him the first lever-press ever set up in Springfield and a young family to support by his exertions. At sixteen he had ap- prenticed himself to a printer, after serving his father a year in the store kept by him at llartford. Having acquired his trade, he had worked as a journeyman printer and foreman,

at times achieving proprietorship in a small way, both in Ilartford and New Haven. Business misfortunes, however, persistently pursued the young printer, largely owing, it is said, to the poor character of his associates. The Republican began life in the face of the discouraging circumstance that the Hampden Patriot, the only Whig paper of Springfield, had lately been discontinued for lack of patronage. The pa- per started out with a subscription-list of three hundred and fifty, and thenceforward it met with a steadily-increasing prosperity. In naming his journal The Republican the founder builded better than he knew ; for in place of the ephemeral significanee of the term at that carly period, it eventually grew to be the distinctive title of the long-lived and dominating party with whose best aims the paper has for more than twenty years been in sympathetic accord. In its very germ may be discovered some of the chief characteristics which have won for The Republican its peculiar influence and reputation as one of the foremost journals of the country. A disposition toward fair play and toleration in all the questions of the day, for instance, is perceptible from the first. The young editor announces in one of the earliest numbers of his paper that his columns are open to both sides for temperate and dignified political discussion ; while, turning from politics to religion, he assures the bitter controversialists of those days that The Republican will not be allowed to become the mouthpiece of any one sect for the attack of others. Mr. Bowles' antago- nism to the waning Federalists was, however, of a pronounced character, and found a somewhat amusing expression in the publication for several successive years, npon its anniversary, of the names of the members of the famous Hartford Con- vention, holding them up as "a beacon to the present and future generations, to remind them that the people frowned indignantly on a combination against the government in time of national calamity." Dr. J. G. Ilolland, who became con- nected with The Republican a year or two before the death of Mr. Bowles, at the age of fifty-four, thus fittingly and briefly touches upon the personality of the founder of The Republi- can in his " History of Western Massachusetts :"

" His parents were not rich iu worldly goods, and in some memoranda of his early life he has chronicled the fact that all he received of any importance from his father's estate was his gold watch and the family Bible. Iu the obituary notice of him from the pen of Hon. Wm. B. Calhoun, this fact is shaped into a beauti- ful tribute in the words, ' Few have been the men who have falleu in our way who have kept truer time, and have been more loyal to the Bilde than Samuel Bowles.' As one who kuew him well, and who in a brief business connection bad occasion to learu the principles which guided him, and the considerate kind- ness which actuated him, the writer would be ungrateful to refuse to record a tribute to the honor, candor, honesty, probity, and thorough Christian principle that characterized his daily walk. Of his ability let his success teil."

Meanwhile had been growing up the lad who was to give The Republican that impetus which acquired for it national fame. With no particular education save that afforded by " Master" Eaton's school, and that unconsciously imbibed in the atmosphere of his father's printing-office, the youth had already attracted attention while yet in his teens for the piquant quality of his occasional writing. On the 21st of March, 1844, the late Samuel Bowles, then arrived at the age of eighteen, persuaded his somewhat reluctant father, who felt strong doubts of the success of the enterprise, to start The Daily Republican.

The experiment of publishing a daily paper in Springfield thirty years ago was a hazardous one. No other town in Massachusetts outside of Boston had made the trial of a daily issue, and men of business who were consulted declared that the time had not arrived for such a paper in Springfield. But the sanguine younger Bowles was clear in the conviction that the time had already come, and the result justified his faith. " The first and second years of its existence," says Dr. Hol- land in his " History of Western Massachusetts," " the circula- tion was very small, but by economical management the pub- lisher, Mr. Bowles, sustained for the first year a loss of only $150 or $200. The circulation, if it increased slowly, still in-

861

IIISTORY OF HAMPDEN COUNTY.

creased steadily, until, at the end of the fourth year, its suh- scription list reached 800, with sufficient advertising patronage to insure its support and place it on a permanent footing. The Daily Republican was commenced as an evening paper, but it was changed to a morning paper on the 4th of Decem- ber, 1845. In April, 1846, it was enlarged to a sheet 21 by 28 inches (its original dimensions having been 172 inches by 24, with four columns to the page). Previous to that time its circulation had not exceeded 300. On the 1st of September, 1848 (the Springfield Evening Gazette having been merged with The Republican), the size of the paper was increased to 23 by 323 inches. Its regular circulation was then full 1000. On the 1st of July, 1851, the paper was again enlarged."

In 1855, The Republican introduced the double sheet, print- ing its weekly and Saturday daily in this form, with single sheets on the other five days. Nine years later a second double sheet a week, on Wednesdays, was begun, though it did not become a permanency until 1865. During the following years one double sheet after another was added during the week, till on the 1st of April, 1871, it adopted that form as a permanency, fulfilling a prediction, which then seemed very wild, on the first appearance of the Saturday double sheet, that this would be the final regular form of the paper.

When The Daily Republican was started only the Western Railroad had reached Springfield, then a town of 11,000 in- habitants. A line of telegraph was opened about the same time, but its utility to the press was yet to be developed. It was all pioneer work. Says one whose memory goes back to the office routine of those times :

" Mr. Bowles slept on a sofa in the office, gathered and prepared the general and local news of the paper, marshaled the compositors at four o'clock every morning for the late copy, directed the make-up of the paper, took his turn at the wheel of the Adams press that worked it off, dispatched the town carriers and prepared the mail and railroad packages, and then went home to breakfast."

Hle plunged into the work with all the ardor of youth, the spur of natural talent, and the zeal of intense devotion to the new profession. This ceaseless, unsparing assiduity wrought its natural and customary effect. During his nineteenth year the over-worked, nervously-exhausted young man made a winter journey South for rest and recuperation, the first of a series of widely-extended travels which at subsequent intervals

varied and eased the activities of his journalistic career. The letters written from Georgia and Louisiana in the course of this first vacation were of a quality to make more apparent than ever the young man's genius for his chosen profession. At twenty-two years of age Mr. Bowles was married to Mary S. D. Schermerhorn, of Geneva, N. Y., a granddaughter of James S. Dwight, in former years a leading Springfield mer- chant.

In 1849, a year later, Mr. Bowles' first editorial assistant, Samuel Davis, having died, Dr. J. G. Holland hought a share in the paper, and became associate editor. The young doctor, growing impatient of the medical profession, started a liter- ary paper of his own in 1847, called the Bay State Weekly Courier, which he gave up, however, at the end of three months as altogether unprofitable. Afterward drifting South, he became superintendent of schools at Vicksburg, Miss. Op- portunely returning to Springfield on the very day of Mr. Davis' funeral, he immediately attracted the notice of Mr. Bowles, who shortly secured him as his assistant. Upon the death of his father, in 1851, the management of the paper came entirely into Mr. Bowles' hands. In 1853, Mr. Clark W. Bryan, a practical Berkshire printer, bought an interest in the establishment, and the business was thenceforth conducted under the firm-name of Samuel Bowles & Co. Mr. Bryan's attention shortly became entirely absorbed by the rapidly- increasing growth of the printing and publishing department connected with the paper, of which he retained charge until the division of the firm's business in 1872, when Mr. Bowles, retaining The Republican itself, sold out his other interests in

the concern to Messrs. Bryan and Tapley, a later partner, who purchased the Evening Union, and set up separately for themselves. Benjamin F. Bowles, who died in Paris, while. on a pleasure tour, in 1876, was also for a number of years associated with The Republican, relieving his older brother to a great extent of the details of the financial and business management.

In the matter of politics, by which every newspaper so largely lives and has its being, The Daily Republican presents a record embodying, perhaps, fewer mistakes and loftier pur- poses than most journals. It has from the start been in warm sympathy with the principles of the truest democracy, ever championing what it conceived to be for the best interests of the many ; often, especially in later years, ahead of public opinion, which it sought to lead to higher standards, and the first to break away from the trammels of mere partisanship and inaugurate a new era in progressive journalism.

Of strong Whig proclivities in its earlier career, its young editor's receptive mind was readily open to the inspiration which created the Republican party. Indeed, he may he said to have presided at the great party's earliest cradling. This was in 1855, when Mr. Bowles, by virtue of his name heading the list calling a conference at Boston to break down Know- Nothing supremacy in Massachusetts, became the presiding officer of the convention which inaugurated the Republican party in this State. It was about the only time in his life that Mr. Bowles ever personally entered politics outside of his paper.

Down through the progress and triumph of the party, at the making of which its editor so conspicuously assisted, until the close of the war, The Republican was consistently partisan. There was little occasion for variance. With the era of South- ern reconstruction began its first marked divergence from the bitter narrowness of sentiment which characterized the domi- nant class of Republican politicians in their treatment of the South. The Republican was the first paper in the country to advocate universal suffrage, irrespective of race and color, while the breadth of its insight and magnanimity in treating the Southern question from the very first is displayed in this extract from a prospectus of the paper, written more than ten years ago, during the perturbed administration of President Johnson :

"And now we want that our representatives should be calm and generous in spirit, though firm and true in principle and purpose, in dealing alike with the President and the South, patient and indulgent in non-essentials, and ex- acting only for that which is necessary to insure a lasting peace to the nation and a true prosperity to the South. Thus only can the ascendency of the Repub- lican party be maintained, the perils of practical disunion, not yet over, be es- . caped, and the great principle of equal rights and fair play for all men secured. For this we are willing to labor and to wait, to yield prejudices and to bear with infirmities, to forgive enemies and to be misunderstood and misrepresented by friends."

The occasion for independence of party dictation grew steadily from this period on, till, in the Presidential contest of 1872, the paper severed all mere party connection and pro- nounced for Mr. Greeley as more nearly representing the re- form movements and principles of government which Mr. Bowles believed ought to prevail. By this divorce from the traditions of all previous journalism, The Republican pioneered the way to that rarer independence which, still more in the fu- ture than now, it may be conjectured, will Jend to the press of the country its truest and greatest power. In 1876, recognizing in President Hayes' fair professions of a liberal policy toward the South and of a reformed civil service the very things for which it had so long and earnestly striven, the paper again became a hearty supporter of the Republican nominee. The . Republican was among the first advocates of woman suffrage, subscribed to the doctrine of a gradual and judicious intro- duction of free trade as carly as the development of the country seemed to warrant such a policy, and has generally been char- acterized by broad and ripe views on questions of finance and political economy.

862

HISTORY OF THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

Mr. Bowles was par excellence the journalist. He pos- sessed the news instinct in the highest degree, and the ability of newspaper organization. He also had the special knack and inspiration of the educator, which found ample opportu- nity for exercise upon the scores of young men who within the past generation have begun their careers as journalists under his training. The office, indeed, acquired the reputa- tion of being a practical college of journalism, and nowhere else could the would-be editor so quickly and thoroughly ac- quire a varied knowledge of the profession. The paper has ever been fortunate, too, in attracting to its columns the bud- ding efforts of literary talent. It has introduced to the world not a few writers who have become widely famed. The most conspicuous of its literary protégés is Dr. Holland, who for six- teen years was associated with Mr. Bowles in the editing of the paper. With his connection began that marked literary career which has ever since been ably maintained, and has lent to The Republican one of its most attractive charms. Mary Clemmer wrote poetry and bright letters from New York for the paper while still a girl in her teens; Alice Cary contrib- uted a novel; energetic, piquant Kate Field wrote under the nom de plume of " Straws, Jr. ; " Miss Trafton, who has lately developed into one of the most brilliant story-writers of the conntry, made up her first book, " The American Girl Abroad," from her foreign letters to The Republican. Bret llarte ap- peared in its columns and received hearty appreciation long before he escaped his California environment and became known in the East ; Rose Terry, Norah Perry, and a host of minor magazinists and writers have at one time or another found in The Republican that recognition and encouragement so sweet to the beginner in literary composition. A few among the many editorial writers and outside contributors who have served to add character to the paper are Joseph E. Hood, who lent it for many years the grace of his wide and varied culture; Gen. Francis A. Walker, who left a tutorship at Easthampton to become an office editor ; Edward King, the versatile magazinist and correspondent, whose pen acquired its nimble grace in The Republican's service in Springfield and abroad while he was yet hardly more than a boy ; Charles H. Sweetzer, the founder of the New York Evening Mail ; W. S. Robinson, who, above the signature of " Warrington," for many years wrote so trenchantly of men and things from Bos- ton ; Frank B. Sanborn, who has lavished upon its pages, and still continues to, a wealth of the best literary criticism and the most accurate and interesting information upon the topics embraced under the comprehensive term of " social science ;"' George Walker, Prof. Perry, and David A. Wells.

Aside from the persistent, exhaustive toils incident to the prosperous establishment and upbuilding of The Republican, the life of Samuel Bowles was comparatively little varied by notable events. The first and only diversion of his energies from The Republican itself was when, in 1857, Mr. Bowles, in connection with others, attempted to give Boston a live news- paper through The Traveller. After several months of adverse battling with associates who were either incapable or unwill- ing to help forward his ideals, he abandoned the experiment in disgust and returned to Springfield, to throw himself with renewed devotion into the accomplishment of his ambition of earning for The Republican recognition as the representative newspaper of New England. An episode which did much to bring the paper into national prominence was the unwarranted and vindictive arrest of Mr. Bowles at New York, in 1868, and his confinement in Ludlow Street jail, at the instigation of Jim Fisk, who was then roughly flourishing amidst his cor- ruptions. This was in consequence of the aggravating truth- fulness of a sketch of Fisk's early career appearing in The Republican; but " Prince Erie's" revenge served only to more quickly awaken the moral sense of the community to the utter reprehensibleness of his character and deeds. Some time after, and somewhat in the same connection, was the notable and

rather acrid controversy between Mr. Bowles and David Dud- ley Field, whose most profitable client Fisk was, concerning the responsibility of lawyers for the character of their clients or their causes, and in which Mr. Bowles urged a stricter ac- countability than Mr. Field was willing to concede. Three times since the Fisk affair The Republican has stood trial for libel, and in every case the moral vindication has been complete, and the right of newspapers to fulfill their high office as protectors of the welfare of the public made apparent.

Although Mr. Bowles never had the opportunity or inclina- tion to write books, three or four exceedingly interesting and salable ones were made up at intervals, mainly from his letters of American travel to The Republican. The first of these, " Across the Continent," was the fruit of a journey to Cali- fornia overland by stage in 1865, before the days of the Pacific Railroad, in company with Hon. Schuyler Colfax, Lieut .- Gov. Bross, and others. Another book, entitled " The Switzerland of America," vividly and picturesquely described a vacation tour among the mountains and peaks of Colorado during the summer of 1868. Still another book, "Our New West," was brought out under the auspices of a Hartford subscription pub- lishing house in 1869, and latest of all was the little brochure entitled " The Pacific Railroad-Open," composed of a series of articles contributed to The Atlantic Monthly, celebrating the completion of the great trans-continental railway. "Across the Continent" had a sale of 15,000 copies, " The Switzerland of America" 8000, and "Our New West" 28,000.

The remote portions of our national domains, so faithfully portrayed in these books, were then little written of or known in the East, and Mr. Bowles' efforts to enlighten the public concerning them proved valuable pioneer work. He visited both California and Colorado several times, and once pene- trated into Oregon and Washington Territory. Four times in his life Mr. Bowles went abroad, first in 1862, in com- pany with his brother, Benjamin, spending several months upon the Continent ; while other and briefer trips were made in 1870, 1871, and 1874. All these travels were pursued with the keenest relish, and made largely to subserve an educa- tional purpose. They led, besides, to acquaintance and friend- ship with many of the most distinguished men of all pursuits in this country, and with not a few in England. These asso- ciations kept him abreast of the highest and best thought of the time and inspired him to its worthiest expression.

The last of these many journeys for mingled recuperation and observation was made in the spring and early summer of 1877, and included a brief stay at Washington, during which Mr. Bowles made the acquaintance of President Hayes ; and afterward a run into the blne-grass region of Kentucky as the guest of Mr. Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier- Journal. But the trip had not that beneficial effect upon Mr. Bowles which had attended previous excursions of the kind. His nervous energies had become so prostrated by the over- arduous toils of thirty years and more that the capacity for elasticity had departed even when the grind of work was omitted. Thenceforward, through the summer and fall, the waning of the vital forces was slow, but marked and inexor- able. Apparently loath to recognize the fact, Mr. Bowles con- tinued as intent upon his labors for The Republican as ever. In addition to his journalistic burdens, he also devoted, dur- ing the last year of his life, no inconsiderable time and thought to aiding in the elaboration of the proposed new charter for the city of Springfield, and to promoting the suc- eess of the Union Relief Association,-a valuable local charity which he was largely interested in establishing. Even dur- ing the prolonged illness which led to his death Mr. Bowles was keenly alert to the varying phases of State and national polities, and dictated articles from his sick-bed, as well as scores of letters to his many friends. The immediate cause of his death-occurring Jan. 16, 1878-was several recurring strokes of paralysis. The remoter canse was the mental wear

863

HISTORY OF HAMPDEN COUNTY.

and nervous exhaustion proceeding from more than thirty years of an over-eager, over-intense, over-worked life.

The informal memorial services in the Church of the Unity, several days after the funeral, were remarkable for the wealth of appreciative tribute spontaneously offered by many notable men with whom Mr. Bowles had been on terms of friendly intimacy during his life. Gen. Hawley, Dr. J. G. Holland, Francis Tiffany, Frank W. Bird, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Murat Halstead, Francis Wayland, Charles Dudley Warner, and George M. Stearns gave addresses ; and letters were read from Secretary Sehurz, Senator Dawes, Charles Francis Adams, Horace White, Gov. Hubbard, of Connecticut, and others; while among those present were Gov. Talbot, Gov. Rice, Gov. Jewell, Gen. F. A. Walker, Lieut .- Gov. Knight, President J. II. Seelye, David A. Wells, Clarence A. Seward, and Postmaster James, of New York. The press of the country also gave generous recognition of Mr. Bowles, lament- ing in his death the loss of the last great personal force in American journalism,-a man worthy to rank with Greeley of the Tribune, Raymond of the Times, and Bennett of the Herald.

The Republican has the reputation of being at the head of provincial journalism in the United States. Its achievement is unique in that, notwithstanding its publication in a small inland city, it has attained a circulation unequaled save in the largest cities, and there by comparatively few papers ; while the frequency and wideness with which its opinions are quoted in other journals are hardly matched by any other newspaper. In merely technical journalistic science, also, The Republican has long been a model which other newspapers have studied and followed. For systematic condensation of news and its best classification, for preserving the proportions of things,-jour- nalistie-perspective, so to speak,-and for typographical taste, it is unexcelled by any other daily newspaper. These qualities bid fair to be perpetuated in the future in undiminished degree by the men bred up through long and careful apprenticeship under Mr. Bowles' training. Indeed, saving the master-hand, The Republican was never more ably and thoroughly edited than at the present time.

DR. JOSIAHI GILBERT HOLLAND

was born in Belchertown, July 24, 1819. IFis father, Harri- son Holland, came from Petersham. His mother, Anna Gil- bert Holland, was born in Belchertown. Dr. Holland's grand- father, Luther Holland, of Petersham, was a soldier of the Revolution, and was present at the surrender of Burgoyne. He had three brothers,-Jonas, Park, and Ivory. His sons were Luther, Park, Harrison, and Sidney. The first three of these, with their uncle, Jonas, settled in Belchertown, and Sidney at North Adams. Luther Holland manufactured fire- engines. His son, Ashley Holland, resides at Greenfield. W. J. Holland, of Springfield, is a grandson of Jonas. Park Holland, brother of Jonas, settled in Maine, and was a prom- inent land surveyor in the employ of the State. One men- ber of the Holland family was for many years the treasurer of Union College, Schenectady, N. Y., and another was an officer in the war of 1812, and fought at Lundy's Lane. Harrison Holland had seven children, of whom Dr. Holland alone survives. One died in childhood, and is supposed to be the " Little Charlie" of Dr. Holland's poem, " Daniel Grey." Three daughters in the family died young. Two sons, Good- rich and James II., were, for many years before their death, well-known manufacturers of silk at Willimantic, Conn. Harrison Holland owned a carding-machine in the west part of Belchertown, and his dwelling was a small wood-colored house near the present station,-" Dwight," on the New Lon- don Northern Railroad. This was the birthplace of Dr. Holland. In 1822 his father removed to Ileath, and settled in what is now known as " Holland Dell." llere, on a small farm and in a shop for making " spokes" and " felloes," he sup-

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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. II, Part 100

Author: L.H. Everts & Co Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts Number of Pages: 896

Author: L.H. Everts & Co
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts
Number of Pages: 896