USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts of today; a memorial of the state, historical and biographical, issued for the World's Columbian exposition at Chicago > Part 26
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78
207
BOSTON.
IDENTIFIED for nearly half a century with the pub- lic life of New England, the veteran lawyer and statesman, Ambrose A. Ranney, has made a career that in its every phase and detail has been beyond danger of assailment. Only a summary of it is possible here. Ambrose Atwood Ranney, son of Waitstill R. and Phobe (Atwood) Ranney, was born in Townshend, Windham County, Vt., April 16, 1821. He prepared for college at the Townshend Academy, and was gradu- ated from Dartmouth College in the class of 1844. His life was spent on the home farm until he was nineteen years of age. His father was the leading phy- sician of his native place, and was for two years lieutenant- governor of Vermont. After graduation he studied law with Hon. Andrew Tracy, in Woodstock, Vt., and was admitted to the bar in Vermont in 1847. He imme- diately removed to Boston, and was ad. mitted to the Suffolk bar in June, 1848. Mr. Ranney was married Dec. 4, 1850, to Maria D., daughter of Addison and Maria (Ingals) Fletcher. Of this union were four chil- dren : Fletcher Ran- ney, Maria F., Helen M. and Alice Ranney (now Mrs. Thomas Allen). Mr. Ranney was city solicitor for Boston in 1855 and 1856; member of the House of Representatives in 1857, 1863 and 1864; elected to Congress in 1880, as a Republican from the third con- gressional district ; was twice re-elected, serving through the Forty-seventh, Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth con- gresses. He joined the Republican party at its organi- zation, and has ever since remained an active worker in
AMBROSE A. RANNEY.
its ranks. He served two terms in Congress on the Committee on Elections, investigating frauds and ren- dering valuable service in the interest of fair elections and the integrity of the ballot-box, dealing, as has been his wont at the bar, heavy blows in his condemnation of frauds and infringements of the rights of citizens. During the last term he was a member of the Judiciary Committee, and was appointed at the head of a special committee on the Republican side of the House to investigate the fa- mous Pan-Electric scheme, involving the reputation and conduct of high gov- ernmental officials and exciting great public interest. His services on this com- mittee are a matter of honorable record. His absorbing aim and ambition was, however, in the pro- fession of the law. In this, before enter- ing Congress, he had achieved eminent success. He had been only a few years at the bar when the office of city solicitor was con- ferred upon him, and his duties therein were discharged with entire satisfaction to all. He had little taste for politics, and political honors have at all times been thrust upon him, rather than sought for. But during his legislative service, both State and national, he won the respect and esteem of all parties, and impressed the public generally by his manly bearing, his fidelity to duty, and his ability as a lawyer and legislator. While his return to private life and his chosen profession has been more congenial to him, his loss to the public ser- vice was the cause of deep regret among all who know him and appreciate his merits.
208
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
C WEN A. GALVIN, lawyer, is well known in profes- sional and political circles in Boston, where he was born on June 21, 1852, being the son of Patrick and Mary (Hughes) Galvin. His early education was gained in the public schools of his native city, and deciding to take up the legal profession after his gradu- ation from the public schools, he entered the office of Hon. Charles F. Donnelly, and then the Boston Univer- sity Law School, and was graduated in 1876. He was admitted to the bar Feb. 29 of that year, and began the prac- tice of law in Boston in 1881, having in the meantime ac - quired in the office of Mr. Donnelly a varied experience in the intricacies of civil law and its applica- tion to complex cases. His interest in politics developed early, and he has been a counsellor in the Democratic party since the seventies. In 1879 he was made a member of the Democratic City Committee, and was re-elected in 1880, 1881 and 1882. In the two latter years he served as vice- president of that body, and has been a member several times since. In 1881 he was elected to the lower branch of the General Court, where in that term he served on the committees on education and consti- tutional amendments. After this one term in the House his constituents sent him, in 1882, to the State Senate, and in 1883 and 1884 he was handsomely re-elected. In 1884 he received the entire vote of the Democratic members for the position of president of the Senate. The important committees upon which he served in the Senate were those on liquor law, labor, education, judi-
ciary and election laws. He also served on a special committee appointed to visit penal and charitable insti- tutions, and on the report of this committee the reform- atory prison at Concord and the Homoeopathic Hospital for the Insane were established. By Hon. George M. Stearns, in July, 1886, he was appointed assistant United States district attorney, and when, in September, 1887, Mr. Stearns resigned the office, Mr. Galvin was appointed to succeed him, the appointment made during recess being afterwards con- firmed by the Senate. In this position Mr. Galvin was eminently successful, conduct- ing the affairs of the office with discretion and ability. He re- signed his office in October, 1889, the resignation not being accepted until May, 1890. In the Boston Democratic mayor- alty convention of 1889 Mr. Galvin was nominated for the office of mayor, but was defeated at the polls by Thomas N. Hart. In 1891 he was appointed by Governor William E. Russell to the Charles River Improvement Commission, and his associates on that board honored him by making him their chairman. Mr. Gal- vin is prominently identified with the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters, and in 1882-83 was high chief ranger for Massachusetts. He was re-elected in 1891 and 1892. In the latter year Mr. Galvin was a prominent candidate for mayor before the Democratic convention which nomi- nated Nathan Matthews, Jr. Mr. Galvin was married in Boston, July 3, 1879, to Jennie T., daughter of Timothy K. and Ellen (O'Driscoll) Sullivan. Their children are : Stephen P., Augustus H. and Frederick S. Galvin.
OWEN A. GALVIN.
1
209
BOSTON.
THE largest playhouse in Boston, and for many years the largest in the country, is the Boston Theatre, whose business agent is Henry A. M'Glenen. For more than forty years Bostonians have known him only as " Harry M'Glenen," a name that is familiar to every play-goer and to every business man in the city. His circle of acquaintance is large, embracing most of the prominent and not a few of the humblest citizens of the city and of New England, and yet comparatively
few know much of his interesting his- tory, so quietly, so unostentatiously, and so modestly has he pursued his chosen pathway in life. Mr. M'Glenen was born in Baltimore, Md., Nov. 28, 1826. He 'attended the public schools, and at the age of twelve years entered a printing- office in his native city, and served an apprenticeship as a compositor. He was - afterward a student in St. Mary's College, Baltimore, where he worked in the print- ing-office established by the faculty. In 1845, without pre- meditation, and with no definite object in view, he started for Boston, and landed here with scanty bag- gage and a cash capi- tal of six cents. He obtained, in the composing-room of the Daily Advertiser, a regular situation, which he re- signed in 1846, to enlist in the Mexican War. While in Matamoras, Mr. M'Glenen worked on the American Flag, a semi-weekly newspaper published to enliven the tedium of camp life. Returning to Boston in 1848, he became, in 1850, a reporter on the Boston Herald. He then went to the Daily Mail, and after a year or two in other offices he took charge of the Times job office. He
HENRY A. M'GLENEN.
managed the business of Dan Rice's circus in Boston so successfully that it brought him much work from others. For two seasons he had charge of the business of the Marsh children at the Howard Athenaeum, after which he was connected with several companies. In 1857 he was presented with a handsome souvenir for the manner in which he managed a concert given by the band of the National Guard of New York, which was here on a visit. About this time the people's promenade con- certs, given at Music Hall, were very popular, and Mr. M'Glenen was inter- ested in them with Patrick S. Gilmore. When Wyzeman Marshall had leases of the Howard Athe- næum and the Bos- ton Theatre, Mr. M'Glenen looked after his interests, and later he did much work for Mr. Jarrett, who had the Boston. In 1866 Mr. M'Glenen gave up the printing busi- ness and took charge of the concert tour of Parepa Rosa. In 1867 he took the Mendelssohn Quin- tette Club on a West- ern tour, and in 1868 became business manager of Selwyn's Theatre, afterwards the Globe. In the the great Peace Jubi- lee of 1869 he had a leading part in the arrangements, and its success was in no small degree due to his efforts. In 1871 he became business agent of the Boston Thea- tre, the position which he still holds. He has had more benefits than almost any other man in the dramatic business, and every one of them has been a great musical or dramatic and social event of the year in which it has occurred. Mr. M'Glenen was married in 1849 to Miss Caroline M. Bruce, of Boston. They have two sons.
≥ 1Ò
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
FREDERICK AUGUSTUS GILBERT is one of the best-known and most successful managers of electric-lighting enterprises in the country. Early recognizing the future value and importance of electric lighting as a legitimate commercial industry, he has become largely interested in the ownership and identi- fied with the management of successful companies in New Haven and Bridgeport, Conn., Newport, R. I., Boston, Mass., and Portland, Me. He was born in Hamden, Conn., April 29, 1847. He lived on his father's farm until he was eleven years of age, when, with his fath- er's family, he re- moved to New Haven. He at- tended its common schools until he was fourteen years old, and then began his business career as a clerk in a local store. When nineteen years of age he had suc- ceeded in saving out of his small salary a sufficient amount to enable him to go to the oil regions of Pennsylvania, and engage in specula- tion in the oil and land leases. Having made a little money here, he returned to New Haven, and be- came a clerk in the house-decorating business. Just before he was twenty-one he bought out the proprietor, paying him, in part, with money bor- rowed for the purpose. He was successful in the prose- cution of this business and remained in it until 1886. Meantime, the business of commercial electric lighting had been started. A company was organized in New Haven in 1882, in which Mr. Gilbert became a stock- holder but not a director. In less than a year the com- pany had become hopelessly insolvent, and was sokl out
for a small amount over its indebtedness. The con- trolling interest in the company was purchased by Mr. Gilbert and a few friends, and he became the president of the corporation. Since then he has become con- nected, in the same way, with the electric-lighting industry in the other cities above named. In every case the companies had been losing money prior to his connection with them, and in every case he and his friends have put them upon a dividend-paying basis, at the same time en- larging their prop- erty and improving their service. In 1886 Mr. Gilbert secured the control of an electric-light- ing company in Bos- ton. Since then it has been consoli- dated with three other companies, under the name of the Boston Electric Light Company, which now does a flourishing business on a capital of up- wards of $1,300,000. Mr. Gilbert has al- ways been the presi- dent and general manager of this cor- poration, and devotes himself principally to its affairs. 'The com- bined capital of the electric-lighting en- terprises in which he is engaged is nearly $3,000,000. He is president of four companies and vice-president of one. In 1889 the principal electric-lighting and some of the gas companies of the State formed an association for defensive purposes, under the name of the Massachu- setts Electric Lighting Association, Mr. Gilbert being chosen president. He has since been twice re-elected, his special knowledge of the business proving of great value. Mr. Gilbert's family consists of a wife and three children. He resides in Brookline.
FREDERICK A. GILBERT.
.
2II
BOSTON.
C HARLES A. HOPKINS, who represents the Mu- tual Life Insurance Company of New York as its general agent, with headquarters in Boston, was born in Spencer, Tioga County, N. Y., Sept. 5, 1841, and is the son of Samuel A. and Helen (Carpenter) Hopkins. At an early age he removed with his parents to Jersey City, N. J., where he attended the famous Dickinson School. At the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion he was a clerk in a wholesale dry goods house in New York, occupying an excellent position and with bright pros- pects for the future. These he relin- quished to enter the Union service as a private in the Eighth New York Militia. Upon his return from three months' ser- vice, he was actively engaged in recruit- ing, and assisted in the organization of several regiments. In August, 1862, he became adjutant of the Thirteenth New Jersey, with which regiment he was identified until the close of the war, serving, however, for a large portion of the time, on the staff of the general com- manding the Twen- tieth Corps. He was brevetted major for distinguished ser- vices, was mustered out in June, 1865, and in July entered the home office of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York in a subordinate capacity. His attention to the details of the business, and his evident capacity for higher work, gained him rapid promotion, until he reached the post of cashier, which position he retained until 1875, when he was appointed general agent for Rhode Island, and removed to Providence. In this new position he was most successful. While in Rhode Island he represented
CHARLES A. HOPKINS.
the city of Providence in the State Legislature for two terms, and also served in the State militia as chief of staff and inspector, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In January, 1888, Colonel Hopkins was transferred to the Massachusetts agency, where the business of the company has been largely increased by his methods and energy. The insurance now carried by citizens of this State in this one company amounts to nearly $40,000,000, the annual premium collections on which exceed $1,500,000, or about double those of any other company. The business of the agency is conducted in handsome and extensive effices on the second floor of the company's own fire-proof building (recognized as one of the finest architec- tural ornaments of the city), at No. 95 Milk Street, Boston. Colonel Hopkins's success as a life in- surance manager is mainly owing to his thorough familiarity with the principles of the business, and to a close attention to its details. He is a director in the Mercantile Loan and Trust Company, a trustee of the North- field School for Girls, and of the Springfield Training School ; a director of the Boston Young Men's Christian Association, and treasurer of the Andover House Asso- ciation. Colonel Hopkins's wife was Sarah Louise Aus- tin, daughter of Walter Austin, of Catskill, N. Y. They have six children : Martha A., Louis L., Helen C., Grace, Walter A. and Louise. Their home is in Brookline, where Colonel Hopkins has recently erected, on Aspinwall Hill, one of the finest houses in the vicinity.
212
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
F REDERICK LOTHROP AMES, capitalist, rail- road builder and director, was born in Easton, Mass., on June 8, 1835, the son of Oliver and Sarah (Lothrop) Ames. At Concord he received his early education, and at Phillips Exeter he was fitted for col- lege. He was graduated from Harvard in 1854, before he was twenty years old. His tastes then were inclined to the law, but in deference to his father's desire he went into business. It was his father's wish that he start at the bottom of the ladder, and he at once became a a clerk in the great Ames works at North Easton. From grade to grade, as the rules of the es- tablishment required, he advanced, and after several years he was placed in charge of the ac- countant's depart- ment. Very early he showed a marked executive ability, and when, in 1863, he became a member of the firm he was an experienced business man. Until 1876 the firm name was Oliver Ames & Sons, but in that year it was reorganized as the Oliver Ames & Sons Corporation, with F. I .. Ames as treasurer, which is his present position. Early in his business career, Mr. Ames had become interested in railroads, and when a young man was a director in the Union Pacific, the Chicago & Northwestern, Missouri Pacific and Texas Pacific rail- roads. Gradually he diverted his attention from mer- chandise to railroads, and to-day he is officially con- nected with some seventy-five railroads, and is con- ceded to be one of the best-informed men on all matters pertaining to this branch of enterprise in the i
FREDERICK L. AMES.
1
country. To give a list of all the various corporations with which Mr. Ames is connected as president, vice- president or director, would occupy a large space. Many of the monetary institutions of Boston claim a part of his attention, and he is identified with several charitable institutions. He is also a member of the corporation of Harvard College. One of his diversions is that of horticulture, and in this he is remarkably skilled and well informed. His collection of orchids at his palatial North Easton home is the finest in the United States, and in his greenhouses Mr. Ames often spends hours watching the development of his ideas in the cultiva- tion of beautiful flowers. He is also a collector of rare china, paintings and tapestry, and pos- sesses some of the finest specimens of the handwork of the past. His hold- ings of real estate in the city of Boston are very large, and one of the notable buildings of the city is the Ames building, the tallest structure in New England, sit- uated at the corner of Washington and Court streets. This is a monument of size, strength and architectural beauty. His winter home is on Common- wealth Avenue, Boston, and his summer home at North Easton. In 1860 Mr. Ames was married to Rebecca Blair, daughter of James Blair of St. Louis, who origi- nally was a Virginian. They have five children : Helen Angier, wife of Robert C. Hooper ; Oliver, 2d, Mary Shreve, Lothrop and John Stanley. Mr. Ames is con- sidered one of the most skilful, as he is certainly one of the most successful, financiers in New England.
.
213
BOSTON.
Y YEARS ago a Boston poet said of his native town : - " Her threefold hill shall be The home of art, the nurse of liberty,"
and more than any other living man he has helped to fulfil the prophecy. Oliver Wendell . Holmes is an essential part of Boston, like the crier who becomes so identified with the court that it seems as if Justice must change her quarters when he is gone. The Boston of Holmes, distinct as his own personality, is passing away with the gen- eration of a wit who made a jest that his State House was the hub of the solar sys- tem, and in his heart believed it. But Dr. Holmes does not live in the past. His youth was splendid, but his old age is glorious. He has lived with the century as it grew from the age of nine to ninety- three, and has held his own with it. He has grown in literary strength with years. And what a marvel- lous versatility of tal- ent ! By virtue of his apt response to the instant call, and of the wit, wisdom and conviction, and the scholarly polish that relegate his lightest productions to the select domain of art, he is the Dean of American " occasional " poets. A perfect phantasmagory of songs, odes and rhymed addresses ; poems on collegiate and civic occasions ; tributes to princes, embassies, generals, heroes ; welcomes to novelists and poets ; eulogies of the dead; verses inaugural and dedicatory ; stanzas read at literary breakfasts, New England dinners, muni- cipal and bucolic feasts ; odes natal, nuptial and mort- uary ; metrical delectations offered to his brothers of
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
the medical craft,-to which he is so loyal,-bristling with scorn of quackery and challenge to opposing sys- tems ; not only equal to all occasions, but growing better with their increase. A kind of special masterhood, an individuality, humor, touch, seems to have carried him through all this, and much more besides, and to have given him pre-eminence in a field the most arduous and least attractive to a poet. But Dr. Holmes is more than a poet, he is a philosopher, -a kind of attenuated Frank- lin, viewing men and things with less robustness, perhaps, but with keener dis- tinction and insight. Little is too high or too low for his perti- nent comment. His maxims, in his writ- ings and in his con- versation, are so fre- quent that it seems as if he had jotted them down from time to time, and here first brought them to application. They are apothegms of common life and ac- tion, often of mental experience, strung together by a device so original as to make his " Autocrat " a novelty in litera- ture. The last of that great constella- tion of writers who gave to America its first golden age of letters, Dr. Holmes, in his declining years, is in the serene enjoyment of the fruits of a life that has led most melodious days. His contemporaries are all gone, but his eldest son, an asso- ciate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, is one of the honored judges of the State. Dr. Holmes retired from general practice in 1849, and although holding his professorship at Harvard -he is now pro- fessor emeritus- he has of late years devoted himself wholly to the pursuit of letters.
214
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
A. SHUMAN, one of Boston's great merchants, was born in Prussia, May 31, 1839, and came to this country when but a child. The family settled in New- burg, N. Y., where young Shuman worked on a farm, when not at school, until he was thirteen years of age, when he went into a clothing store. When but sixteen years of age he started in the world to make a fortune, and went to Providence, R. I. Not satisfied with the scope afforded him in that city, he came to Roxbury. This was in 1859. He at once began a business on the cor- ner of Vernon and Washington streets. Mr. Shuman, though of foreign birth, is intensely American, and many institu - tions are remem- bered by him from time to time in a practical manner. The immense estab- lishment at the cor- ner of Washington and Summer streets, denominated the " Shuman Corner," is the result of his business energy. It exhibits an achieve- ment of no ordinary merit in the progress of mercantile im- provement. The combined space of eight floors occupies an area of over two acres, and comprises a mammoth empo- rium that has no superior in New England. With his employees no one is more popular than Mr. Shuman. He has arranged a system of purchasing homes for them, and no employer in Boston has bought so many homes for his help as he. He has loaned them money, charging no interest, and allowing them to pay back in small instalments. The appreciation of his many kindnesses has been manifested by his employees again and again in appropriate testimonials. As he has con-
A. SHUMAN.
ducted his own business with care, prudence and integ- rity, so has he conducted all offices of a public character which have been thrust upon him from time to tiine. Mr. Shuman was married, Nov. 3, 1861, to Miss Hetty Lang ; they have three sons and four daughters. The daughters are : Emma, married to August Weil, of Weil, Haskell & Co., New York; Bessie, married to Alexander Steinert, president of M. Steinert & Sons' Pianoforte Company ; Theresa and Lillian G. Shuman.
The sons are Ed- win A. and Sidney E., who are in the firm of A. Shuman & Co., and George H. Shuman. A Boston journal says of Mr. Shuman : " With the pluck that has throughout distin - guished him, a few years after settling here he opened a store, which has since developed to mammoth propor- tions on Washington Street, but he has never left Roxbury. He is proud of his residence there, and delights to think that he has done much to make it the credit- able place it is to-day. The business prem- ises in Boston are most colossal, but as large as they are, the firm is compelled to hire other buildings in the vicinity for the convenience of the help. Mr. Shuman is first vice-president of the Boston Merchants' Association, a leading member of the Board of Directors of the Manufacturers National Bank, and is president of the Board of Trustees of Boston's great City Hospital. Few public occasions of importance pass without the presence of Mr. Shuman, and his genial bearing makes him much sought after in social as well as commercial circles. He is essentially a self-made man."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.