USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts of today; a memorial of the state, historical and biographical, issued for the World's Columbian exposition at Chicago > Part 38
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DUDLEY A. SARGENT.
and early developed strength and agility. He attended the public schools at Belfast. His career as an expo- nent of physical culture was probably decided by the breaking of a piece of apparatus in the local athletic club, for which he was expelled from the organiza- tion. Piqued, he bent all his energies on gymnastic practice and at a subsequent exhibition surpassed all the members of the club to which he had belonged. In 1869 he accepted the position of instructor of gym- nastics at Bowdoin, by which he earned money enough to fit himself to enter the freshman class in 1871. In this year he was given full charge of the depart- ment. In 1872 Dr. Sargent became di- rector of the Yale College Gymnasium, also continuing his connection with that of Bowdoin, from which college he graduated in 1875. He graduated from the Yale Medical School in 1878. It was while studying medicine at Yale that he developed his new system of physi- cal culture, which has now become almost universal. He sub- mitted his plan to the Vale faculty, but it was rejected, whereupon he re- signed, going to New York, where he took a special course of hygiene and medicine. He put his system into practice in the Fifth Avenue Gymnasium, and soon gained a wide reputation. In 1879 he accepted the position of assistant professor of physical training at Harvard College, and it was under his direction that the then new Hemenway Gymnasium was fitted up. Dr. Sargent has been a frequent contributor to the magazines and reviews.
303
CAMBRIDGE.
JOHN FISKE, historian and philosopher, was born J
in Hartford, Conn., March 30, 1843, the only child of Edmund Brewster Green, of Smyrna, Del., and Mary Fiske (Bound) Green, of Middleton, Conn. The father was an editor of newspapers, at different times, in Hart- ford, New York and Panama, where he died in 1852. His widow married Edwin W. Stoughton, of New York, in 1855. The son's name was originally Edmund Fiske Green. In 1855 he took the name of his maternal great - grandfather, John Fiske. He was graduated at Har- vard in 1863, and at the Law School in 1865, having been already admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1864, but he never practised the law. His career as an au- thor began in 1861, with an article on " Mr. Buckle's Falla- cies," in the " Na- tional Quarterly Review." Since that time he has been a frequent contribu- tor to British and American magazines. In 1869-71 he was university lecturer on philosophy at Har- vard, in 1870 in- structor in history there, and 1872-79 assistant librarian. He was elected to the Board of Over- seers twice, serving from 1879 to 1891. Since 1881 he has lectured annually on American history in Washington University, St. Louis, and since 1884 has held a professorship of American history in that institution, but continues to make his home in Cambridge. He lectured on American history at University College, London, in 1879, and at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1880. Since 1871 he has given many hundred lectures. The largest part of his life has been devoted to the study of history, but
JOHN FISKE.
at an early age inquiries into the nature of human prog- ress led him to a careful study of the doctrine of evolu- tion, and his first lectures on the subject brought him into prominence. In 1871 he made his remarkable discovery of the effects of the prolongation of infancy in bringing about the development of man from a lower creature. His conclusions were accepted by Darwin and Spencer. His published works are-" Tobacco and Alcohol" (New York, 1868) ; "Myths and Myth- makers" (Boston, 1872) ; "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Based on the Doc- trine of Evolution " (2 volumes, London, 1874), republished in Boston; "The Unseen World" (Boston, 1876); "Darwinism and Other Essays " (Lon- don, 1879), new and enlarged edition (Boston, 1885) ; "Excursions of an Evolutionist " ( Bos- ton, 1885) ; "The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of his Origin " (Bos- ton, 1884) ; "The Idea of God as Af- fected by Modern Knowledge " ( Bos- ton, 1885) ; " Amer- ican Political Ideas Viewed from the Standpoint of Uni- versal History" (New York, 1885) : "The Critical Period of American History " (Boston, 1889) ; "The Beginnings of New England " (Boston. 1889) ; "The Discovery of America, with Some Account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest " (2 vol- umes, Boston, 1892). The last-named is Mr. Fiske's most elaborate, and one of his most original works, including the results of investigations carried on for a quarter of a century. It is his habit to keep his books partly written and ripening for several years before publishing them.
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MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
T THE name of Agassiz is synonymous with the ad- vanced knowledge of nature, zoological and geo- logical, in the United States. Alexander Agassiz, the only son of the late Louis Agassiz, the naturalist, by his first wife, was born in Neufchatel, Switzerland, Dec. 17, 1835. In 1846, his father, after a long career as a scientist and author in Europe, came to the United States at the suggestion of Humboldt, under the patron- age of the King of Prussia, and incidentally to deliver a series of lectures on " Comparative Em- bryology" at the 1 Lowell Institute, Bos- ton. His mission of research proved so successful and prom- ising for further knowledge, that he determined to make America his home, and accepted a pro- fessorship made for him in the Lawrence Scientific School, Cambridge, by its founder. Young Al- exander followed in 1849, his carly edu- cation completed. He prepared for Harvard, and gradu- ted in 1855. After a course of engineer- ing in the Scientific School, he received the degree of B. S., and took a course in chemistry ; then he taught in his father's school for young ladies. He assisted in the California coast survey in 1859, and collected specimens for the museum that the elder Agassiz had established at Cambridge, visiting on the same tour many of the mines. In 1860 he became assistant in the museum, taking charge in 1865, while his father was in Brazil. Coal mining in Pennsylvania also engaged his attention in 1865, and in the following year he made the Lake Superior copper mines his study. There, in 1869, he was made superintendent of the Calumet 1 i
ALEXANDER AGASSIZ.
and Hecla mines, and developed them until they became the most prolific ore bearers known. From the wealth they have brought him he has increased the capacity of the Agassiz Museum of Comparative Zoology, of which he is the head, more than threefold, at a monetary ex- pense to himself of more than $500,000, not to mention the years of personal care and oversight. He examined the museums of England, France, Germany, Italy and Scandinavia in 1869-70, and on the death of his father succeeded to his po- sition in 1874. He was director of the Anderson School of Natural History in 1873, and visited the western coast of South America in 1875, making notes of the copper mines of Peru and Chili, and a survey of Lake Titicaca, collecting for the Peabody Museum many an- tiquities. He assisted Sir Wyville Thomp- son, of Scotland, in arranging the collec- tions made by the "Challenger" ex- ploring expedition, a part of which he brought home, and he wrote one of its final reports. Deep- sca dredging was his winter occupation in 1876-81, in connec- tion with the United States coast survey, the steamer " Blake " having been tendered him by the government. Mr. Agassiz has been a fellow and over- seer of Harvard College, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His publications are chiefly on marine zoology. It is said of him that " he is the best authority in the world on certain forms of marine life." In the fall of 1892 he projected and entered upon an extended exploration of the West Indian waters.
305
CAMBRIDGE.
T O bear the distinction of having originated and built the first typical American railway passenger car is certainly a great honor. Charles Davenport is de- scended from Thomas Davenport, who came from Eng- land to Dorchester, Mass., before 1640. He was born in Newton Upper Falls, May 25, 1812, and was the seventh of a family of twelve children, four of whom lived to be more than eighty years old, and three of whom are now living. In 1828 he was apprenticed to George W. Randall, of Cambridgeport, to learn the wood-work of the coach and carriage-making trade. In 1832, be- fore he was twenty years old, Captain E. Kimball and he bought Mr. Randall out, and he started for himself with two journeymen and four apprentices. Cap- tain Kimball was the landlord of the Pearl Street Hotel, and, in connection with a livery stable, ran two or three coaches a day between Cam- bridge and Boston. He furnished the money. Mr. Daven- port thereafter built all the carriages of the establishment, and taking half the profits, he doubled the business the first year. Mr. Daven - port's business prospects were so good that Mr. Kimball advised him to buy out the blacksmith, painter, harness- maker and trimmer, who were in the same yard, and to combine all the business under his own direction. In 1833-34, the firm built a large number of all kinds of vehicles, including sleighs, and the first omnibus built in New England. In the fall of 1834 Mr. Davenport took the contract to build some four-wheel railway cars for the Boston & Worcester Road, to seat twenty-four people
CHARLES DAVENPORT.
each. They were the first ever designed with a passage- way running from end to end between the seats, all of previous construction having been in three compart- ments, half the passengers riding backwards. In 1836-37 he built for the Eastern Railroad twenty four-wheel cars with platforms and doors on the end, and a passageway through each car. A model of these cars was exhibited at the Mechanics Fair in 1837, also a model of the Dav- enport patent draw-spring and bumper, patented in 1835. Mr. Daven- port also patented a swing bolster to allow the truck of his long sixteen-wheel cars to move sidewise with- out swaying the body of the car. Upon these patents some $90,000 was paid in royalties. Their cars were the first that were provided with a ladies' saloon, toilet- room and wide turn- over backs to the seats. His succes - sive improvements brought him gold and silver medals from the Mechanics Fair. The firm names of Kimball & Daven- port, Davenport & Bridges, and Charles Davenport will long be remembered by old-time railroad men and travellers. Mr. Davenport was the first large car builder in the United States, and for twenty-two years his firm led the business in the country, having con- structed, between 1834 and 1856, some $3,000,000 worth of cars for more than fifty different roads, from Maine to Alabama, and in Cuba, and had two hundred men at work on cars. In 1844 Major Whistler wanted Mr. Dav- enport to go to Russia and take a contract to build the railroad cars for the St. Petersburg & Moscow Railroad. This flattering offer was declined on account of an
306
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
excess of work here, and for family reasons. This Rus- sian contract afterwards proved very profitable to those who accepted it. Through the suggestion of the late John E. Thayer, Mr. Davenport took from the Eastern Railroad in 1837 $10,000 in stock, as part payment for $200,000 worth of rolling-stock. This stock advancing ten or twelve per cent, he took $50,000 stock of the Fitchburg Railroad on $250,000 contracts. This also went up fifteen per cent above par. Had it sold for that amount below par, Mr. Davenport said it would have been better for the firm, for subsequently eight or ten other railroad companies induced the firm to take twenty to twenty-five per cent in stock as payments on large con- tracts for cars, and they lost more than $300,000 by a fall in value of the stock. No creditor, however, lost by their mistake. In 1849 Mr. Davenport lost all his property, but not his credit, so he went ahead again. Between 1850 and 1853 he built more than $800,000 worth of cars, agreeing with his new creditors in ad- vance to take the same kind of pay from him that he took from the railroads. He thus cleared $100,000. Those he dealt with declining to continue this arrange- ment, he sold out as soon as he could, preferring to live upon the interest of what he already possessed rather than to take any risk to gain more ..
But the building of railroad cars has not been the only achievement of Mr. Davenport. While he was filling a contract for Cuba, he visited Havana, and saw the small embankment on the bay there, where the people sat under the palms, enjoying the breezes from the bay. His mind wandered back to his home in Cambridge, and he saw the opportunity for a beautiful water park upon the Charles River Basin. Returning, he bought at different times three quarters of the marsh land in Cam- bridge between the West Boston and Brookline bridges for a water park. In 1868 he had his plans for the great improvement before the Legislative Commissioners, showing how the park woukl be if his idea was carried out, on both sides of the bay. This plan was practically adopted by the park commissioners and has been in the Boston City Hall for twenty years. The outcome of this is the beautiful beginning of Charlesbank now finished on the Boston side, between Leverett and Cambridge streets, and the rapid walling and filling of Mr. Daven- port's land on the Cambridge side, which he sokt to the Embankment Company, of which he is a director.
Mr. Davenport says that when the boulevards on both sides of the bay are completed, there will be reserved a beautiful inland sca of about five hundred acres, with a
delightful boulevard two hundred feet wide and more than five miles long around the bay, containing a hun- dred and ten acres, making, with the adjoining pleasure grounds, eight hundred acres, equal in area to New York Central Park. This will allow fine facilities for boating and other pleasant and healthful exercise and will make this bay the most beautiful water park in the world, and a cause of pride to all citizens. Instead of the bad odor from the unsightly flats, they will all be covered from three to ten feet at low tide. On pleasant days and evenings, this wide bay, the boulevards on both shores, and the wide bridge across the bay, -they being so ,central and accessible from all parts of the metropolis, - will draw many people in boats, carriages and on foot, and the park will equal in beauty and attraction any place of resort in Europe or America. The people will wonder why the embankment was not made years ago. Dr. H. I. Bowditch, Dr. O. W. Holmes and many other of the leading physicians have testified that the benefits to health which the citizens will receive from an embankment on this bay cannot be estimated in dollars and cents.
Mr. Davenport is the only surviving director of the Hancock Free Bridge Corporation, which made West Boston bridge free. He has been prominent in further- ing many of the interests of Boston and its environs, by taking hundreds of thousands of stock in the New England Railroad, and by his influence in the building of Harvard bridge, and the extension of Washington Street to Haymarket Square. He confidently predicts that a radius of ten miles from the State House will within forty years inclose a population of some 2,000,000. The population in said radius has doubled every twenty years since 1830.
Few men have enjoyed life better than Mr. Daven- port. He gave up his car business when he was forty- five, and has visited Europe three times, and travelled six thousand miles in visiting all the large cities and important and interesting places. He has also visited all the large cities this side of the Mississippi River between Halifax and New Orleans ; also all the summer resorts within five hundred miles of Boston. He has four sons, two daughters and fifteen grandchildren. His son, son-in-law and grandson graduated at Har- vard, and four grandsons are now fitting for Harvard.
The longevity of Mr. Davenport's family is shown in the fact that his grandparents and their six children lived to an average of eighty-one ycars. The oldest was ninety-three and the youngest seventy years.
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CAMBRIDGE.
A MONG the great educational advantages that have been introduced at Harvard University during the last quarter of a century is the establishment of the depart- ment of music. The study of musical theory, composi- tion, history and æsthetics thus found an equal place among the other humanities, and the example of Harvard has been emulated by our leading universities. We owe this step mainly to the zeal and ability of John Knowles Paine, who, in 1872, suggested that the study of har- mony should be made elective to the stu- dents. From this initiative step the higher study of music was gradually devel- oped at Harvard until it was recog- nized as one of the regular departments in which special honors are given. Mr. Paine was ap - pointed professor of music in 1876. He was born in Portland, Me., Jan. 9, 1837. He showed musical talent early in life, and first appeared in public as organist and pianist in 1856- 57. He visited Ger- many in 1858, where he studied under Haupt and others. After giving several organ concerts in Berlin he returned home in 1861. The following autumn he gave his first organ concerts in Boston, and was ac- knowledged as the first representative of the Bach school of organ playing. In 1862 he was called to Har- vard as organist and instructor. In 1867 he had the prestige of directing his Mass in D at the celebrated Sing-akademie of Berlin. In June, 1873, he conducted the first performance of his oratorio of "St. Peter." His first great success was the performance of his symphony in C minor, given by Theodore Thomas in the Boston
JOHN K. PAINE.
Music Hall, Jan. 6, 1876. Many of his orchestral works have since been made familiar to the American public by Thomas and others. He composed the "Centennial Hymn" of Whittier, sung with great enthusiasm at the opening of the exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Per- haps the climax of his popular achievement was the music of his " Œdipus Tyrannus " of Sophocles, as pro- duced in Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, in May, 1881. Mr. John Fiske, in Appleton's Cyclopædia, says of it : " The most complete resources of modern chorus and orchestra were brought to bear on the task of ren- dering the peculiar and subtle religious sentiment of the Greek tragic drama. The work is one of wonderful sublim- ity." It expressed the tragic pathos of the drama more potently than any other modern exam- ple. Among his other compositions are the cantata "Phœbus Arise" (1882); Keats' "Realm of Fancy" (1882); Milton's " Nativity " (Handel and Haydn Festival, 1883) : national cantata, " A Song of Promise " (Cincin- nati Festival, 1888) ; "Spring " symphony, symphonic poem to Shakespeare's "Tempest," " An Island Fantasy " for orchestra, overture to " As You Like It," and songs, motets, organ preludes, piano pieces, string quartet, piano trios, violin sonata, etc. His last work is the " Columbus March and Hymn," composed by official invitation for the opening ceremonies of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, October, 1892. Sev- eral of his orchestral works have been performed in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other foreign cities.
Worcester
T "THE city of Worcester is popularly known as "The Heart of the Commonwealth," a designation to which its situation in the State entitles it, and one which is still further borne out by the arterial ramifications of the railway lines which diverge from it.
The city presents many of the usual features of a New England municipality, but with the sturdy conserva- tism of the native New Englander it still preserves numerous characteristics of the primitive Yankee village from which it has grown to its present size and importance. Its principal street is still called Main Street, and until very recently was adorned throughout its length by rows of stately elms. Fifteen minutes' walk, or a brief ride in almost any direction, brings one into the country, for included within the thirty-six square miles of its territory are very numerous farms in a high state of cultivation, and contributing annually a large sum, in the value of their products, to the aggregate productions of the city.
The population of Worcester in 1890 was 84,655, and various local statistics show that it must be now, in 1892, over 92,000. It is the second city in the Commonwealth, and the third in New England. This population includes members of almost every civilized race. The varied character of Worcester's industries has made it the attraction for all kinds and conditions of men, and it speaks well for the adaptive character of these immigrants that they have been wrought into the homogeneous, law-abiding population which the city possesses.
The secret is to be found in industry, and one element, and an important one, in the success of Worcester's industries is their variety. Unlike many New England manufacturing cities, Worcester is dependent on no one occupation. It produces everything from a paper doll to a power loom. With the exception of paper, there is not a staple product of manufacture in New England that has not its representative in this thriving city. The result is greater financial security for both manufacturer and workman, a greater number of homes owned by the laborer, larger deposits in the savings banks, and, finally, a freedom from labor troubles of a serious character with ensuing losses on all sides. The largest single industry is wire making, in which over four thousand men are employed by the Washburn & Moen Manufacturing Company. Then follow in importance the Crompton and the Knowles Loom Works, fifteen factories engaged in the manufacture of shoes, a greater number of woollen mills, two large carpet mills, and then the hundreds of machine shops turning out daily every variety of machine which ingenuity can invent, or a want demand. More patents are annually issued to residents of Worcester County than to inhabitants of any other county in the Union.
Most of these industries have grown from small beginnings. A feature of the city industrially has always been its supply of rooms with power, for rent on easy terms. Many a prosperous concern dates its success from the start in a small way, made with a few feet of floor surface and power supplied by the landlord.
Then Worcester is a railroad centre. It is reached by rail direct from Boston, Providence, Norwich, Nashua and Springfield, and has good train service in every direction, over seventy trains running out of the city daily. Its street railways have recently been extended to the suburbs north, south and east, and the work of substituting electricity for horse power is now going on. It has a magnificent system of water supply, equal to all demands for many years to come. Water is used very freely in manufacturing, and its use is encouraged by the low rate of fifteen cents per one thousand gallons.
Worcester has eight national banks, with a combined capital of $2,450,000. Its savings banks have deposits amounting to $26,642,000.
The city is favored in its educational institutions. It has an excellent system of public schools, a State Normal School, and Worcester Academy, in the elementary grades, while in the collegiate rank are the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the College of the Holy Cross, with Clark University, which because of its unique character is a class by itself. The libraries of the city comprise over 300,000 volumes.
The public parks comprise over three hundred and sixty acres, and Lake Quinsigamond, only two miles away, furnishes a beautiful water park.
309
WORCESTER.
F RANCIS A. HARRINGTON was born in Worcester, Nov. 17, 1846. His ancestors were of sturdy old New England stock -farmers, nearly all of them, and Francis began life in this same ancient and honorable profession. One of his ancestors, his maternal grand- father, was one of that determined band who showed King George III. that tea and salt water would mix by dumping into Boston harbor the shiploads a confiding British ministry had dispatched to the colonial town. The father of the subject of this sketch was Daniel Harring- ton, farmer, militia captain, common councilman and al- derman. Francis worked on the pater- nal farm, and at- tended the public schools of Worcester, supplementing them with a course in the Worcester Academy and at a business college. When he was twenty-five years of age he entered the livery stable business, and in company with his brother still contin- ues in it, having now one of the largest stables in the city. Mr. Harrington is a man of great mod- esty, seeking only to do his best in what- ever he undertakes, and avoiding all pub- licity. What he has made of himself has been done by hard work and persistent attention to the task in hand. He is a church member and a firm believer in the prin- ciples of temperance. Mr. Harrington's public career began in 1886, when he was selected as the representa- tive of Ward Three in the Board of Aldermen. He continued in the board for three years, the latter portion of the time as president. He served on the committees on Claims, Sewers, Military, Charities and Sewer Assess-
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