USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts of today; a memorial of the state, historical and biographical, issued for the World's Columbian exposition at Chicago > Part 37
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IMBRIDGE
THE settlement of Cambridge in 1630, with the view of making it the seat of government of the Colony, after a thorough reconnoissance of Boston's surrounding wilds by Governor Winthrop and Lieutenant- Governor Dudley, marked an era in the life of the young community of Massachusetts Bay. Though the origina purpose of making it the capital town was not carried out, the place, as Newetowne, early became important. The governor set up the frame of a dwelling in 1631, where he had first tented on one of his explorations. Streets were regularly laid out, four in number at the start, and several houses were built, a small square being left for a market-place. In the fall of that year, however, for some unexplained reason, Winthrop removed his skeleton of a house to Boston, and there covered it in. Dudley and his family remained, and the next year partially inclosed the little village with a palisade to guard against Indian attacks. The settlement grew, and in 1632 was reinforced by a company of about a hundred from Braintree, England, organized by Rev. Thomas Hooker. In 1634 com- plaints of " overcrowding " were made, and in 1636 the disaffected ones, led by Hooker, emigrated to Connecticut with one hundred and sixty cattle. The same year, the Rev. Thomas Shepard arrived with a small company from England, and finding so many vacant houses, determined to join their interests with the remnant. The influence of Shepard was so great that in the same year the General Court agreed to give £400 toward a school or college, and the next year located it in Newetowne, subsequently naming it Harvard, and changing the town name to Cam- bridge. Rev. John Harvard of Charlestown was a graduate of Cambridge, England, and at his death left the embryo institution his library of three hundred volumes and a bequest of £800. Nathaniel Eaton was first in charge of the college, but it had no " president" until Henry Dunster was thus chosen in 1640. In 1639 Stephen Daye established the first printing-press in America, one of the adjuncts to the college, with which he had impor- tant dealings, as evidenced when he sued the president for a balance and lost his suit. These are the beginnings of Cambridge and Harvard ; they were practically a unit ; they are more distinct in their respective greatness now. To follow the course of either would take volumes, and volumes have already been written of them. Old Cambridge is full of colonial monuments. , Beside the Washington Elm, many of the imposing mansions deserted by the Tories on their departure, notably the Craigies, the Brattles and the Lees, are yet objects of interest to the visitor.
In its early history Cambridge embraced what is now comprised in Brighton, the Newtons, Waltham, Water- town, Belmont, Arlington, Lexington, Bedford, Medford and a part of Somerville. One by one these farming districts separated from the mother town, and are now important cities and towns. The Cambridge of to-day, a city of nearly eighty thousand inhabitants, is naturally divided into distinct sections, with Old Cambridge and Harvard University as the geographical and historical centre, surrounded by North Cambridge ( the old cattle market), East Cambridge (distinctively a manufacturing district, containing also the Middlesex Courts), and Cam- bridgeport (once a port of entry, now largely industrial). The lines of these sections, no longer than fifty years ago, were very positively marked by wide intervals of vacant land, now well built over in a residential way, so as almost to obliterate them, to the confusion of returning wanderers from home in their early days. These old intervals, particularly those between Old Cambridge and the Port are monopolized by the better class of homes for the leading merchants of Boston, and others seeking the advantages afforded by the University for the education of their growing families, improved travelling facilities between the two cities also being an attraction. The healthfulness of the city has always been proverbial.
Being the first town in the country where important book printing was undertaken, from that of Eliot's Indian Bible onward, Cambridge, with her University Press and Riverside Press, still retains the prestige in that respect, the first-named establishment having had at one time last year more than a hundred volumes in process. The carriage interest has for years been a prominent feature, from the construction of Holmes's ever-to-be-remem- bered " One Hoss Shay," to the modern American railroad car. The glass-making industry of East Cambridge has gone to the West, and has been supplanted by enormous meat-packing establishments. North Cambridge has been covered by modern dwellings. Bridge building and other iron work, with box and soap making. are conspicuous at the Port.
296
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
A LPHEUS B. ALGER, of Cambridge, was born in Lowell, Mass., Oct. 8, 1854, and attended the public schools of that city. He entered Harvard Col- lege in October, 1871, from which he graduated in the class of 1875. He then attended the Harvard Law School, and also studied with the late Judge Josiah G. Abbott, of Boston, being admitted to the bar in June, 1877. Since his admission he has practised his profes- sion in Cambridge and Boston. He early took an active part in the politics, and from 1878 to 1891 he was a mem- ber of the Demo- cratic City Commit- tee of Cambridge, occupying the posi- tion of chairman and secretary of that com- mittee during por- tions of that period. In 1884 he was elected alderman of the city of Cam- bridge, and the same year was chosen a member of the Dem- ocratic State Com- mittee, continuing a member of the latter until 1891, serving on the Finance and Ex- ecutive committees, and being secretary of the State Com- mittee for four years. The University City is never chary of be- stowing honors upon her deserving chil- dren, and, therefore, in 1886, made her progressive alderman a senator from the Third Middlesex Senatorial District, again returning him to the Senate in 1887, where he served on the following important committees : Mercantile Affairs, Public Service, Judiciary, Liquor Laws, and Bills in Third Reading, and on the committee representing the State of Massachusetts at the Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia in 1887. Although the youngest mem- ber of the Senate, he made an enviable record for him-
ALPHEUS B. ALGER.
self as the promoter of the interests of his city and State, and during his term of service he was recognized as one of the most earnest advocates of the cause of labor. He was chosen a delegate from the Eighth Congressional District of Massachusetts to the National Democratic Convention in 1888, and in 1890 was elected mayor of Cambridge, to which chief honor in the gift of his city he was unanimously re-elected in 1891. Socially, one of the most genial and companion- able of men, his suc- cess is as pronounced as has been his po- litical advancement, and he has been foremost in every movement and or- ganization for the advancement and mental betterment of his fellow-citizens. He is a member of 1 Amicable Lodge, F. and A. M., Cam- bridge Royal Arch Chapter, Boston Commandery ; Po- nemah Tribe, Im- proved Order of Red Men ; St. Omer Lodge, K. of P .; Aleppo Temple, Order of the Mystic Shrine ; and the Haymakers. In 1891 he was great sachem of the Im- proved Order of Red Men, and was a great representative of the order to the council held in Atlanta, Ga., in September, 1892. Mayor Alger is also a member of the Central Club, of Somerville ; Arlington Boat Club, of Arlington ; Newe- towne Club, of Cambridge, and Taylor Club, of Boston. He is treasurer and secretary of the Bay State Club, of Massachusetts ; was chairman of the Board of Harvard Bridge Commissioners in 1891 and 1892; and is a member of the Charles River Improvement Commission, established by act of Legislature of 1891.
297
CAMBRIDGE.
W TILLIAM AMOS BANCROFT was born in Gro- ton, Middlesex County, April 26, 1855. He was the son of Charles and Lydia Emeline (Spaulding) Bancroft. His grandfather, Dr. Amos Bancroft, was a physician well known throughout Middlesex County. A maternal great-grandfather, Henry Bass, was one of the Boston " tea party." His father was a farmer, and in farm work and country sports Bancroft laid the foundation of a vigorous constitution. He was pre- pared for college at the Lawrence Acad- emy in his native town, and at Phillips Exeter Academy. In 1874 he became a resident of Cam - bridge, entered Har- vard College and graduated in 1878. He studied at the Harvard Law School, was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1881, and began practice with his college classmate, Judge Edward F. Johnson, since mayor of Wo- burn. Froni child- hood he took an active part in athlet- ics, and became famous as the cap- tain and stroke oars- man of the Harvard crews of 1877, 1878 and 1879, whose victories were largely due to his manage- ment. Young Ban- croft joined the State Militia when a college freshman, as a private in Company B, Fifth Regiment of Infantry, and rose through the various grades till he became a company commander in 1879, and colonel of his regi- ment in 1882. Under his command, both company and regiment rose to the front rank of efficiency, and, in 1889, the regiment was detailed because of its high standing, as escort to the State delegation on the anni- versary of Washington's inauguration in New York.
He is now (1892) the senior colonel of the Massachu- setts Volunteer Militia. In 1885 Colonel Bancroft's executive talents attracted the attention of the directors of the Cambridge Railroad, and he was unanimously elected its superintendent, and later superintendent of the consolidated Cambridge and Charles River roads. Afterward he was appointed general roadmaster of the West End system. In the street railway business his powers as a manager were shown in the successful con- duct of the road, and in obtaining the good-will of the employees ; while his firmness, energy and organizing ability at the time of the strike in 1887, enabled the company to put every one of its twenty-two lines in full operation within fourteen days after the "tie-up." Col- onel Bancroft left the street railway in 1889, and returned to the practice of law in partnership with his college classmate, Warren K. Blodgett, Jr. The firm has offices in Boston and Cam - bridge. He was elected to the Cam- bridge Common Council in ISSI, and, in 1882, was elected to the Gen- eral Court. During his three years' service in the Legislature, he served on many important committees. In the fall of 1890 Colonel Bancroft was elected a member of the Cambridge Board of Aldermen. In 1891 he was re-elected, and was unanimously chosen president of the board. He married Mary Shaw, daugh- ter of Joseph and Catherine (Perry) Shaw, of Peabody, in 1879, and has three children, - Hugh, Guy and Catherine.
WILLIAM A. BANCROFT.
298
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
T' `HE growth of a community is largely due to its travelling facilities. This fact has been made very apparent in the increased population of Cambridge. To Thomas Stearns that city is indebted indirectly for its present high status, aside from its world-wide repu- tation as a university town. Mr. Stearns came to Cam- bridge in 1830, from Paris, Me., at the age of twenty- one years. He engaged in various pursuits for a few years, and bought a livery stable that had a large pat- ronage. There was but one stage line to Boston, making only two trips a day at twenty-five cents a fare. A popular driver on this line, Joseph K. Tarbox, though without means, sought to es- tablish a new line at a reduced rate. In this he was aided by Mr. Stearns and oth- ers, the facilities of the stable being ac- corded him. The traffic grew until Mr. Stearns was induced to join him. It was not long before the price of a passage was brought down to fifteen cents, and many Boston mer- chants were thus at- tracted to Cambridge as a place of resi- dence. The induce- ments to emigrate from the city were further increased by a concession of forty tickets for five dollars, and trips to intervals of only fifteen minutes. Stearns & Tarbox became very popular. Dwellings of the first class sprang up along and off the route. The prospects for further progress were so apparent that still greater inducements to settlement were determined upon. Quarterly rates were made for regular patrons at five dollars, entitling them to two fares a day, not including Sundays or theatre trips. The line at one
time had five hundred of these subscribers, and a com- putation of what they thus paid brought their fare to them at a little under six cents, the rate of tolls over West Boston bridge considered, the omnibus company paying for its conveyances and passengers at a shilling (163 cents) each way. The highest thus paid for bridge service in one month was $1,140. Finally the old and the new lines of omnibuses were consolidated, Abel Willard and Charles Kimball, of the original line, join- ing their interests, and Cambridge was favored with several routes under one management. These varied in rates, ac- cording to distance, from eight and ten cents to twenty cents, quarterly commuta- tions being propor- tionately low. In Jan- uary, 1856, this cor- poration, of which Mr. Stearns was the head and the treas- urer, disposed of its plant and interest to the Cambridge Street Railway Company, which has recently been absorbed by the West End Railway. In these years Cam- bridge has increased from six thousand to nearly eighty thou- sand inhabitants who pay uniform five-cent fares. The starting point of all this was the foresight and enterprise of Mr. Stearns and his co- adjutors. He has also borne an important part in de- veloping a township in Minnesota. He is descended from Isaac Stearns, who came to Salem from England in 1630. On the occasion of the funeral of Daniel Web- ster, he fitted out his largest omnibus, named for the statesman long before, with six big grays, and piloted the coach, full of prominent Cambridge men to Marsh- field, forty miles and return, the same day.
THOMAS STEARNS.
299
CAMBRIDGE.
C' HESTER WARD KINGSLEY, one of the most enterprising and public spirited citizens of Cambridge, was born in Brighton, June 9, 1824, his parents being Moses and Mary Kingsley. His initial education was obtained in his native town, where his father died when Chester was but four years old, and at the age of ten he was thrown upon his own resources. He made his way to Michigan, and passed five years in that then wild region. Returning to Brighton, he finished his school life in the grammar and high schools, and afterward learned the trade of a carpenter. This not proving con- genial to his temper- ament, he sought another occupation in applying for and accepting the posi- tion of messenger in the old bank of Brighton, where he remained as such two years. He was afterwards teller in the same bank three years. In 1851 he became cashier of the Cambridge Market Bank, remaining there five years ; 1856 he went into the wholesale provision business in Boston, and retired from that in 1865. Since then he has been inter- ested in, and treas- urer of, an anthra- cite coal company in Pennsylvania, and during the time was the president of the National Bank of Brighton, which was the successor to the old bank in which he began his business life. Mr. Kingsley was married in Boston by Rev. Dr. George W. Blagden, in May, 1846, to Mary Jane, the daughter of Daniel and Hannah Todd, of Brighton, and they have had seven children, four of whom are now living, - Ella Jane (Mrs. M. Clinton Bacon), Addie May (Mrs. D. Frank Ellis),
Luceba Dorr (Mrs. Parker F. Soule), and C. W. Kings- ley. Mr. Kingsley has been an alderman of Cam- bridge, a member of the School Board, a prominent member of the Cambridge Water Board since 1865, and president of the same for many years past. He was a member of the House of Representatives in 1882, 1883 and 1884, and senator from the Third Middlesex Dis- trict in 1888 and 1889. He was chairman of the com- mittee which reported and carried through the Legisla- ture the Metropolitan Sewerage Bill for the valleys of the Charles and Mystic rivers. He was a member of the Rapid Transit Commission of 1891 to recommend a sys- tem of rapid transit for Boston and the suburban districts. He is one of the trus- tees of the American Baptist Education Society, Colby Uni- versity, Newton The- ological Institution, Worcester Academy and the Massachu- setts Baptist State Convention. He was for three years pres- ident of the Ameri- can Baptist Home Missionary Society. He has been one of the executive com- mittee of the Amer- ican Baptist Mission- ary Union, and pres- ident of the Boston Baptist Social Union, and is a member of the Cambridge, Colonial and Massachusetts clubs. He is a life-long Pro- hibitionist and Republican. In recent years Mr. Kingsley has been very active in beautifying and enlarging North Cambridge, where he resides. Streets have been laid, trees planted, attractive dwellings of the higher grades built, sewers constructed, and everything possible has been done by him to enhance the importance and in- terests of the city.
CHESTER W. KINGSLEY.
300
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
O HARLES JOHN McINTIRE has been the city solicitor of the city of Cambridge since March 12, 1886. He is the only son of Ebenezer and Amelia Augustine (Landais) McIntire ; was born and has always lived at Cambridge. His paternal ancestors came to Salem from Argyll, in Scotland, about 1650. In 1733 they went to Charlton (formerly Oxford), in Worcester County, the birthplace of his father. His mother is the daughter of a French engineer officer, commissioned in the United States army on the recom- mendation of his uncle, Colonel Tou- sard, who came over with Lafayette and organized our artil- lery service under General Washington. She was born in Fort Moultrie, Charleston, South Carolina. Through her mother she is a lineal descen- dant of John Read, one of the leading lawyers of Boston in colonial days, and also of his son-in- law, Charles Morris, born in Boston, but who for many years was chief justice of Nova Scotia. While still a student, Mr. McIntire enlisted as a private in the Forty- fourth Massachusetts Regiment, and was with it in all its en- gagements during the Civil War, including the famous defence of the besieged town of Washington, N. C. He has since held many positions of trust, among which are terms in the Board of Aldermen, Common Council, School Board and the Legislature. He has been assistant district attorney ; assisted in framing the new city charter for Cambridge, and in revising the city ordinances ; and at the present time, by appointment of the governor, he is a member of the commission to revise and codify the election
laws. He was also one of the organizers of the Colo- nial Club, and is a member of the Cambridge and Newetowne clubs. Mr. McIntire is a convincing advo- cate and strong counsellor, and has attained success in competition with the eminent practitioners of the Massachusetts bar. A leading member of the bar of his county, whose constant presence in court makes him better qualified to form an opinion than almost any other, writes of him : " The honorable position attained by Mr. McIntire at the justly celebrated Middlesex bar is in itself all sufficient to lead to a just esti- mate of his legal abilities. The time has passed when men, by chance or fortui- tous circumstance, step to the front rank of the profession. Patient study and un- tiring devotion only lead to success. Mr. McIntire's success is nowhere better illus- trated than in his administration of the office of city solic- itor of Cambridge. He has been called upon to obtain varied and important legis- lation ; he has mas- tered the whole range of municipal law and become the safe ad- viser of the city's officials ; he has ex- ercised rare judg- ment in the settlement of claims, and prudently adjusted large suits incident upon the extension of the water works ; and when called into court he has managed his cases with tact and skill, and with a quiet dignity which can only be obtained by the consciousness of a thorough mastery of his case and of the law." Not only of all the intricacies of municipal law but of general law as well Mr. Melntire is considered a thorough master. His Boston office is in Pemberton Square.
CHARLES J. MCINTIRE.
301
CAMBRIDGE.
T HOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, author, was born in Cambridge, Dec. 22, 1823; was graduated at Harvard in 1841, and at the Harvard Divinity School in 1847, when he was ordained pastor of the First Congregational Society in Newburyport, Mass. He left this church on account of anti-slavery preaching in 1850, and in the same year was an unsuc- cessful Free-soil candidate for Congress. He was sub- sequently pastor of a free church in Worcester, Mass., from 1852 to 1858, when he left the ministry and devoted himself to literature. He had been active in the anti-slavery agitation of this period, and for his part in the attempted rescue of a fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, was indicted for murder with Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips and others, but was dis- charged owing to a flaw in the indict- ment. He also aided in the organi- zation of Free State forces in Kansas. He was appointed captain in the Fifty- first Massachusetts Regiment, Sept. 25, 1862, and in the following November was made colonel of the First South Carolina Volun - teers (afterwards called the Thirty-third United States Troops), the first regiment of freed slaves mustered into the national service. He took and held Jacksonville, Fla., but was wounded in South Carolina, in August, 1863, and in October, 1864, resigned on account of disability. He then engaged in literature at Newport, R. I., till 1878, and afterwards at Cambridge, where he has since resided. He is an earnest advocate of woman suffrage and of the higher education of both sexes. He
THOMAS W. HIGGINSON.
was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1880 and 1881, serving as chief-of-staff to the governor dur- ing the same time, and in 1881-83 was a member of the Board of Education. He has contributed largely to the leading American periodicals. He is the author of "Out-Door Papers" (1863) ; "Malbone, an Oldport Romance " (1869) ; " Army Life in a Black Regiment " (1870) ; French translation by Madame de Gasparin (1884); "Atlantic Essays" (1871); "Oldport Days " (1873); "Young Folks' History of the United States " (1875); French translation (1875); German translation (1876); Italian translation (1888) ; "Common Sense About Women" (1881); "Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli," " American Men of Letters" series (1884); " Larger History of the United States, to the Close of Jack- son's Administra- tion " (1885) ; "The Monarch of Dreams" (1886); "Hints on Writing and Speech- making" (1887); "Short Studies of American Authors" (1879) ; "Women and Men" (1888) ; "The Afternoon Landscape" (1889) ; "Life of Francis Higginson " ( IS91) ; " The New World and the New Book " (1892) ; "Concerning All of Us " (1892). He has also translated the "Complete Works of Epictetus" (1865), and edited the "Harvard Memorial Biogra- phies " (two volumes, 1865), and " Brief Biographies of European Statesmen " (four volumes, 1875-77). Several of his works have been reprinted in England. As a lecturer, Colonel Higginson has been extremely popular. He is a member of the Republican Club of Massachusetts.
302
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
D R. DUDLEY A. SARGENT, director of the Hem- enway Gymnasium at Harvard College, presi- dent of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, and chairman of the Advisory Council of the World's Fair Auxiliary Congress of Physical Culture, is entitled to the credit of having originated and introduced into Harvard College a sys- tem of physical culture based on therapeutic principles, which has been so successful that nearly all of the important colleges and private gymna- siums of the country have taken up the method. Dr. Sar- gent, believing that proper physical train- ing, together with logical attention to dietetics, bathing, sleep, clothing, etc., would not only make the weak strong, and the strong well, but would also attack in- cipient forms of dis- ease and fortify the system against the evil tendencies of our civilization, evolved a system of individualism in physical culture which had for its groundwork the ac- tual needs of each particular person. This was in contra- diction to the mili- tary or group method, whereby persons of unequal development and varying conditions of health were all given the same exercise, which resulted in abnormal development to some and injured others by over-exertion. To remedy this, Dr. Sargent, by a series of measurements and a study of the physique of the individual, prescribed a course of training to suit each case. Dr. Sargent was born in Belfast, Me., Sept. 28, 1849, of old Puritan stock, John Rogers being one of his ancestors. He was always fond of out-door sports,
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