USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts of today; a memorial of the state, historical and biographical, issued for the World's Columbian exposition at Chicago > Part 34
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27I
BOSTON.
M ANAGER of the New England department of the New York Life Insurance Company, a position of great responsibility, Benjamin Shreve Calef has for years been prominent and influential in insurance cir- cles, and is recognized as having done much to elevate the standards and the methods of the business. He was born in Maine, but his parents moving to Salem, Mass., he was educated there, graduating from the English High School. He then went to New York City and commenced his business career as clerk in an im- porting house. At the breaking out of the war, in 1861, he enlisted in the Ninth Regiment, New York State Militia. This regiment, which was the first to go out from New York in response to the call for three years' troops, relieved the Seventh Regiment, which had gone out for ninety days. Later, having been promoted to major, he assisted in organ- izing the three regi- ments of the famous Berdan Sharpshoot- ers, and afterwards served on the staff of Major-General D. B. Birney, of the Third Army Corps. Major Calef was taken prisoner in the battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864, and was ex- changed in December of the same year. On returning home he received, in recognition of his services, an appointment from President Lincoln as captain and aide-de-camp of volunteers. His health having been much impaired by his imprisonment, he was unable to accept the appointment, and resigned from the army in 1865. In the autumn following the close of the war, Major Calef associated himself with one of the oldest
BENJAMIN S. CALEF.
importing firms in Boston, from which he retired soon after the great Boston fire of 1872. In 1873 he entered upon the business of life insurance with the United States Life Company. He subsequently was connected with the Mutual Life, and in 1879 entered the service of the New York Life Insurance Company in Boston, and was appointed manager of the New England branch of the company in 1880, which position he continues to hold. Major Calef was one of the organizers of the Boston Life Under- writers' Association, its first vice-presi- dent, and second president. He was also prominent in organizing the Na- tional Association of Life Underwriters in 1890, and was the first chairman of its executive committee, to which position he was again unani- mously elected at the annual convention in New York in 1892. Major Calef is a prominent figure in the business circles of Boston. He is a man of extended social relations, hav- ing held honorable positions in many of the leading clubs and public organizations of Boston. The pa- triotic spirit and te- nacity of purpose that has marked his career is an exemplification of the influence of hered- ity. His paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were officers in the army of the Revolution, and Robert Calef, of Boston, will be remembered as the successful antagonist of Cotton Mather, in the days of the Salem witchcraft delusion. Major Calef is a handsome, sol- dierly man, still in the prime of life. His demeanor is vigorous though courtly. Mr. Calef's residence is on Marlborough Street, Boston.
272
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
H UGH O'BRIEN has accomplished as much as any other living man for the cause of good municipal government in Boston. For four years, from 1885 to 1888, inclusive, he was mayor of the city, and his administrations were singularly able and free from blemish. The quality of the man and of his public service are evident from this extract from his inaugural address in 1886 : " If the mayor stops waste and extrava- gance he makes determined and unscrupulous enemies of men whose sole object is public plunder, and who do not hesitate to resort to any means to ac- complish their ends. Regardless of threats, regardless sometimes of adverse criticism from parties who do not understand the facts, I have given no quarter the past year to any who have abused the trusts confided to them, and with such an emphatic endorse- ment from my fel- low-citizens, I feel encouraged to go on with the work. Poli- tical tricksters, who have merely some selfish purpose to gratify, will receive no countenance from me, no matter what party they may be identified with for the time being. It is by yielding to these men, on account of the few votes that they control, that municipal governments in all the large cities of the country have become a synonym for waste and extravagance and corruption." And Mayor O'Brien was as good as his word. He was born in Ire- land, July 13, 1827. When he was five years of age his parents came to this country, and he received his educa- tion in the public schools of Boston, graduating from the grammar school that stood on Fort Hill. When in his
HUGH O'BRIEN.
twelfth year he entered the office of the Boston Courier, to learn the printing trade. From the Courier office he went to the book and job office of Tuttle, Dennett & Chisholm, of which he became foreman at the age of fifteen. Several years later he founded the Shipping and Commercial List, of which he was long the editor and publisher. His public career began in 1875, when he was elected to the Board of Aldermen. He was re-elected . in 1876 and 1877; defeated in 1878; again elected in 1879, 1880, 1881, 1883, and was chair- man of the board during the last four years of his service. He was a friend of the laboring interest, securing the passage of an ordinance regu- lating payment to workingmen by con- tractors with the city. He urged the aboli- tion of the poll-tax as a prerequisite for voting, advocated the purchase of large areas for public parks, and was iden- tified with the work of securing the im- proved sewerage sys- tem and enlarging the water supply. He has held the office of treasurer and general manager of the Brush Electric Light Company, president of the Union Institution for Savings, treasurer of the Franklin Typographical Society for many years, trustee of the St. Vincent Orphan Asy- lum, and has long been a recognized authority on all matters relating to the trade and commerce of the city. He has always been a firm believer in the future growth of Boston, and as alderman and mayor, covering a period of eleven years of active service, was a prominent factor in carrying out many reforms that have placed Boston at the head of the municipal governments of the country.
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273
BOSTON.
C HARLES H. ANDREWS has for many years been a prominent figure in the journalistic circles of Boston, both as editor and as publisher. He was born in Boston, Jan. 29, 1834, the son of Justin and Tamar Andrews. After his graduation from the English High School of Boston he began his journalistic career in the office of the New York Pathfinder, a weekly journal, as assistant editor, being then only seventeen years of age. In April, 1852, he entered the service of the Boston Herald, and his con- nection with that paper is notable in many respects. On March 1, 1888, Mr. Andrews retired from active journalistic labors, after having been continuously in the service of the Herald for very nearly thirty-six years. During the greater part of this long term he was the news editor of the paper, and in all those years he lost in the aggregate less than one month's time from active duty. Any mention in detail of the ca- reer of Mr. Andrews must necessarily be also a mention of the Boston Herald, which for over half a cen- tury has been a rep- resentative, leading and influential news- paper. The Herald is one of the popular newspapers of Boston and of New England, its circulation is equalled by that of only one of the other eight dailies in the city, and its business patronage is extensive and profitable. The first issue of the Herald was in 1846, as an evening publication, " neutral in politics." It was small, of only four pages and twenty columns, and sold for one cent. In 1847 the American Eagle was absorbed, and ten years later the Daily Times. The success of the Herald
CHARLES H. ANDREWS.
was assured from the start. In its second year it was enlarged and it appeared morning, evening and weekly. In 1851 the weekly edition was suspended, and a few years later a Sunday edition started. In 1854 it was again enlarged, and in 1869 it came out in its present form, though of late years it has appeared on at least four or five days of the week as a ten or twelve-page paper, and on Sunday with from twenty-four to thirty- two pages. The Sunday edition of the Herald easily ranks with the very best publications of its kind. In 1869 the paper was pur- chased by R. M. Pulsifer & Co., the partners being R. M. Pulsifer, E. B. Has- kell and Charles H. Andrews. In 1888 the paper was put into the hands of a close corporation, the stockholders being the old proprietors, together with E. H. Woods, John H. Holmes and Fred E. Whiting. Of this corporation Mr. Andrews is now vice- president, and though he has relin- quished much of his active participation in the management of the paper, he main- tains a deep interest in it and its steady onward progress, and much of his attention is given to its service. Mr. Andrews' wife was Josephine Maralio, and they have four children, - Charles S., Edward J., Blanche and George H. Andrews. His residence is on Beacon Street. It is as a keen, practical steady and conservative journalist that Mr. Andrews ranks among his fellow-craftsmen, who admire him for his useful qualities and steadfast industry as much as they like him for the sociability that distinguishes the other side of his character.
274
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
TO awake and find himself famous, to be suddenly classed among the leaders of thought who but the day before had never even heard his name, - that has been the fortune of Solomon Schindler, the celebrated Jewish rabbi of Boston, to whose utterances the public has listened so attentively during the last half dozen years. Solely by his intellectual power has he made a reputation that others have striven for a lifetime to gain, and Rabbi Schindler, the rationalist, the thinker, the student of sociolog- ical problems, is a figure in the circles of cultured Boston that is at once their ornament and their example. His ca- reer is tinged with romance, and warped, too, with vicissitudes that make the promi- nence of his present position the more emphatic by contrast. He was born at Neisse, in Silesia, in 1842. His father was an official of the local Jewish church, and his mother the daughter of a noted Talmud scholar of a neighboring town. He was destined for the rabbinical pro- fession, but the pe- culiar forces that were to shape the career of the youth were already at work in the liberalizing of the times. The more he studied the book of his ancestors the greater became his dis- belief in many of its teachings. "I cannot believe in our Bible," he said once, when only nine years old, "it does not seem reasonable to me." Nevertheless, at the age of thirteen, upon the death of his mother, he was sent to Breslan to continue his rabbinical studies. But he was learning against his natural tendencies, and soon gave up his studies. He entered business life, for which
SOLOMON SCHINDLER.
,
he was wholly unfitted by nature, and in which he did not succeed. Two or three years later he was admitted as a government protégé to a Catholic seminary at Ober- Glogau, and in two years finished the three years' course, passing his final examination as a teacher at Breslau. He was subsequently a private tutor in Westphalia and in Dortmund. He married, and, with the aid of his wife, established a boarding-school, which he managed suc- cessfully until 1871, when he offended the Government by a radical political speech and was com- pelled to flee from the country. With a wife and three chil- dren, but with neither money nor friends, he landed in New York in July, 1871. Accepting aid of no one, he became a pedler on the streets, and afterward suc- ceeded in obtaining work in a saw-mill. At last, when his af- fairs were at their lowest ebb, he was invited to take charge of a Jewish congre- gation just formed in Hoboken, N. J. His salary was only five hundred dollars a year, but he added to his income by teaching in a Ger- man-American acad- emy. In 1874 he was called to the pastorate of the Temple Adath Israel, in Boston, and has remained here ever since. His Friday evening lectures on " Messianic Expectations," which he delivered in 1887, brought him at once into public notice and established his reputa- tion as a vigorous and original thinker. His lectures have been continued since then, and by means of them he has contributed much to the religious and sociological literature of the day. Rabbi Schindler has been a mem- ber of the Boston School Committee for several years.
275
BOSTON.
TO the readers of Boston newspapers for the last fifty years the firm name of Samuel Hatch & Co. has been as familiar as a household word. There is probably no house in Boston that has been more closely identified with, and thoroughly acquainted with, the real estate interests of the city, or through which more transfers of houses and building lots have been made. Having been established in 1835, not many years after the incorporation of Boston as a city, the firm has seen the New England metropolis quadruple in size and popula- - tion, and has been one of the factors in its development. The firm was founded by Samuel Hatch, who was one of the pioneers in the auc- tion and commission business in New England, and for over half a century the house has main- tained its high repu- tation for reliability and enterprise. The present junior mem- ber of the firm, Mr. Edward Hatch, was born in Boston. His education was ob- tained at the public schools, which he left in 1859. Three years later he went to work in the auc- tion house of his uncle, Samuel Hatch, and, as employee or partner, has been with the firm ever since. The firm of Samuel Hatch & Co., at the time Mr. Edward Hatch became connected with it, was located at the corner of Water and Devonshire streets, where it remained until 1867. In that year the business was removed to No. 3 Morton Place, remaining at this stand until the great fire in November, 1872. Its office having been burned in that fire, the firm opened another in the Traveller Building at No. 9 Congress Street, and has continued
EDWARD HATCH,
there ever since. Mr. Edward Hatch was admitted to the firm in 1872, and for the last twenty years his name has been prominent in many of the heavy real estate transactions of the city, particularly in those of the South End and the Highlands. He conducts a general auctioneering business, selling houses, building lots, farms, and city and suburban property of all kinds. Besides doing a large business in real estate, the firm also sells household effects, furniture, stocks and mer- chandise of every description, giving especial attention to the sale of real es- tate and business chances. All sales entrusted to him are certain to be handled in the most judicious and satisfactory man- ner. Mr. Edward Hatch is one of the directors of the Real Estate Exchange and Auction Board, which was organized in 1889 for the pur- pose of furnishing information to real estate men, and to promote their gen- eral interests. It is modelled somewhat upon the plan of the New York Exchange, and is one of the most effective and successful organiza- tions of business men in New Eng- land. His duties as director of the exchange, added to the management of his own affairs, keep Mr. Hatch fully employed. Mr. Hatch is a member of a number of social organizations, including the Norfolk and Massachusetts Yacht clubs, the Mercantile Library Association and the Boston Athletic Association. He is also secretary of the Bunt- ing Club, and ex-treasurer of the Gardeners' and Flor- ists' Club. Mr. Hatch is extremely popular both in business and in social circles.
276
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
T "HE eloquent advocate, Thomas J. Gargan, is a true Bostonian, having been born in the New England metropolis Oct. 27, 1844. His parents, Patrick and Rose Gargan, were desirous of giving him a thorough education, and in addition to the excellent course obtained at the public schools, he received private instruction in literature and the classics at the hands of Rev. Peter Krose, S. J., by whom he was prepared for the Boston University Law School. He entered this institution, and in 1873 was graduated therefrom, receiving the degree of LL. B. He added to his legal equipment by a course of reading in the law office of Hon. Henry W. Paine. Mr. Gargan, while still in his teens, responded, in 1863, to the call of the Government for troops, and was mustered into the United States ser- vice with a commis- sion as second lieu- tenant. At the expiration of his term of service he was honorably dis- charged. During part of his career. Mr. Gargan followed commercial pursuits. At the age of twenty he had charge of the Boston house of the dry goods firm of Wilkinson, Stetson & Co., agents for A. & W. Sprague, and Hoyt, Sprague & Co. While devoted to his profes- sion and giving the major portion of his time to his large practice, Mr. Gargan takes a deep interest in all questions respecting the public welfare. During his active life he has held many positions of trust. In 1873 and 1874 he was president of the Charitable Irish Society. In 1868, 1870 and 1876 he served in the lower branch of the Massachusetts Legislature. Hc
THOMAS J. GARGAN
was a member of the Board of Overseers of the Poor in 1875, and in 1877-78 was chairman of the Board of License Commissioners of Boston. Mr. Gargan was a member of the Boston Board of Police in 1880 and 1881. His eloquence and patriotism, which are the heritage of his race, are frequently called into requisi- tion. He delivered the Fourth of July oration in Boston in 1885, and in the following year delivered the oration at the centennial of the Charitable Irish Society of Halifax, N. S. Mr. Gargan was married in Boston, in September, 1867, to Catharine L., daughter of Law- rence and Catharine McGrath. The death of this lady, which occurred in the year 1892, was the one irreparable misfortune that has cast a shadow upon the life of the bril- liant orator. Mr. Gargan has a beau- tiful summer resi- dence at Marble - head, where he lives during the genial months of the year. Mr. Gargan is an earnest student of political economy, and in his public life he has already made for himself an honorable record. He is an enthusiastic advocate of tariff re- form and a firm believer in clean political methods. His oratory is fervid and brilliant. Perhaps the great- est effort of his life was his powerful speech before the Charitable Irish Society at Halifax. Mr. Gargan's high standing at the Massachusetts bar and his excellent political record conspire to make him one of the most influential citizens in the Commonwealth. Having obtained an enviable position while in his prime, the future holds for him the promise of still greater renown.
277
BOSTON.
G EORGE W. GALVIN, M. D., founder and surgeon in charge of the Boston Emergency Hospital, was born in Somerville, Mass., May 4, 1854, and was educated in the public schools. He fitted himself for the study of medicine, and graduated from the Har- vard Medical School in 1876. In a competitive exami- nation for the position of assistant at the Massachusetts Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary, he received the appointment, and served four years at that institution. He began the prac- tice of medicine and surgery in the South Cove district in 1885, and was appointed surgeon for the Old Colony and New York & New England railroads, to take care of accident cases at their stations in Boston. Being the only surgeon in that district, nearly all the casualty work was referred to him. He established an accident room in the United States Hotel in 1889, and in one year eight hundred injured people were treated there. Rec- ognizing the great need of a hospital in that district, and de- siring the co-opera- ) tion of some of the younger members of the Massachusetts Medical Society, to which he belongs, he advocated, at a meeting of that organization, the immediate establishment of an emer- gency hospital in the business district. For some un- explained reason no action was taken by the committee appointed to investigate the matter. He consulted with the officers of the three southern railroads and of the West End Street Railway, personally interviewed nearly four hundred of the leading business men, and received substantial aid toward fitting up and equipping the new
GEORGE W. GALVIN.
annex of the United States Hotel for hospital purposes. In 1892, it was incorporated as a public charitable insti- tution, under the name of the Boston Emergency Hos- pital. It was a success from the outset, in the first eighteen months of its existence seven thousand injured people receiving treatment, twenty thousand dressings being made, and only fifty cases being referred to other hospitals. To-day it is admitted by those familiar with the subject that the district covered by this hospital has the best ambulance service of any city in the Union. Not over five or six minutes is consumed in reach- ing the desired des- tination, and the ambulance is never allowed to leave the hospital without a surgeon and assistant who are equipped to act on the spot. It is the only hos- pital to respond to calls, and there is not a moment's de- lay when the patient arrives at the hos- pital for treatment. In December, 1892, the hospital had out- grown its accommo- dations, and the whole building was leased for five years, at the expiration of which it is hoped that the treasury will have enough money to build and own its property. In 1888, Dr. Galvin published " Personal Impressions of the Hot Springs, Arkansas, with report of a case " ; and in 1889, "The Value of Local Treat- ment of Pulmonary Diseases by Inhalation of Anti- septic Vapors." He is a son of John Galvin, superin- tendent of Long and Rainsford islands, and a brother of City Clerk John M. Galvin, and a twin brother of Thomas F. Galvin, the florist. Dr. Galvin's career of usefulness has only just begun.
278
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
G EORGE MANN FISKE, a son of George Fiske, a prominent citizen of Medfield, Mass., was born in that town in 1842, receiving his education there. In 1862, enlisting in the Forty-second Regiment, Mas- sachusetts Volunteers, he served one year under General Banks, in the Department of the Gulf. For several years after the close of the war he was engaged in farm- ing at Medfield, and in 1871, coming to Boston, became connected with Messrs. James Edmond & Co., manu- facturers of fire brick and importers of sewer pipe, etc. He entered at once into a practical study of 1 the business, and in 1877 the firm of Fiske & Colman was formed. In 1880 Mr. Fiske merged his bus- iness with that of the Boston Fire Brick Company, owners of the wharf and factory formerly occupied by Messrs. James Ed- mond & Co., and, becoming a stock- holder and director therein, assumed the management of the whole concern. The Boston Terra Cotta Company was formed in 1881, the stock- holders being practi- cally the same as in the Boston Fire Brick Company, and of that also Mr. Fiske be- came treasurer and manager. Putting his whole energy into the manufac- turing department, he has taken a leading part in the development of clay building material in this country, and has secured several United States and British patents on new and unique forms of brick and terra- cotta work. The two factories, one located on Federal Street, Bos- ton, and the other on K Street, South Boston, employ about two hundred and fifty men, and produce large amounts of architectural terra cotta and specialties in
GEORGE M. FISKE.
building brick. Mr. Fiske is also a pioneer in the suc- cessful production of constructive faience for interior and exterior work. This department was entered upon in 1890, and among the notable pieces of work already executed may be mentioned the corridor of "The Charlesgate," on Beacon Street, Boston, and the wait- ing-room in the Philadelphia & Reading terminal station in Philadelphia. The firm of Messrs. Fiske, Homes & Co. have prepared a fine exhibit for the World's Fair, which will show to what a degree of per- fection their produc- tions have been brought. Mr. Fiske is widely known and recognized as a leader and authority in his line of business, and his success is due to his thorough mastery of all the details of his calling, his broad, progressive ideas and his fertility in antici- pating the public re- quirements. Amid his multitudinous cares, Mr. Fiske finds time to take an active part in civil affairs, having served in the city government of Newton, where he owns one of the finest residences of the "Garden City," and in other posi- tions of trust and of honor. He married, in 1864, Sarah W. Wilder, daughter of Silas W. and Caroline E. Wilder. Their children are J. P. B. Fiske, a prominent electrical engineer, and Amy Plympton Fiske. Mr. Fiske is past commander of Moses Ellis Post, Grand Army of the Republic, of Medfield, and a prominent member of Charles Ward Post, of Newton. He has frequently delivered most eloquent Memorial Day addresses to the people in the different towns and cities of the State, and is very popular with the veterans.
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