USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts of today; a memorial of the state, historical and biographical, issued for the World's Columbian exposition at Chicago > Part 52
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Railroad, a director of the Parkhill Manufacturing Company, and is also interested in many other enter- prises of value to the city. No man in the city is more esteemed, honored or respected than Mr. Wallace, he being considered on all sides as a public benefactor. In every case where the honor, moral or material inter- ests of the city and its people are concerned, none is more active than he, and to his counsel, aid and judg- ment the city is deeply indebted. His beautiful gift to the city of a pub- lic library and art building, costing over eighty-four thousand dollars, is only one of the evidences of his gen- erosity and public- spirited nature. Al- though Mr. Wallace has held many offices of public trust, he has never been re- garded as an office seeker, and it was only after repeated requests that he al- lowed the use of his name. He was a selectman when Fitchburg was a town ; was a repre- sentative to the lower branch of the Massa- chusetts Legislature in 1873, and declined a re-election, much to the disappointment of his fellow-citizens ; he served three years on the Governor's Council and was member of the National House of Representatives in the session of 1889-90, being elected by an exceedingly flattering vote. Although he could have been returned the following session without a semblance of an effort, he declined a re-nomination. His benevolence has endeared him to the hearts of his fellow-citizens, who respect him for his integrity no less than they admire the marvellous success of his career as a public-spirited citizen.
RODNEY WALLACE.
412
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
A RTHUR H. LOWE, president of the Board of Trade, the reputation of which extends to nearly every State in the Union, is a typical Fitchburger, although born in the neighboring State of New Hampshire. He is a descendant of a family that made Ispwich, Mass., their home in colonial times. He was born in 1853, and is one of seventeen children, who at this time are all living, and went to Fitchburg when a mere child. His education was received in the public schools, and his first employer was his father, who then carried on a whole- sale meat and prod- uce business. In 1879, Mr. Lowe, in conjunction with John Parkhill and Thomas R. B. Dole, started the Parkhill Manufacturing Com- pany with thirty looms. To a con- siderable degree the success of this now vast plant is due to him, and the little mill of thirty looms has grown to be the third largest of its kind in the country, employing about eleven hundred hands, running about two thousand looms and paying out di- rectly and indirectly to employees more than ten thousand dollars a week. At various times during the past ten years the plant has been enlarged to meet the ever-increasing demand for the firm's goods, and the company now occupies over six acres of floor space. Mr. Lowe fills the position of treasurer and manager, having been elected in 1883. In 1885 he organized the Cleghorn Mills Company, and the building of the Cleghorn Mill has been the chief canse of the growth of the section of the city, which during the past six years has sprung up as if by the aid of a magician's
ARTHUR H. LOWE.
wand. Six years ago scarcely a house covered the ground now known as the Daniels District ; to-day there are over two hundred houses, a church, large school- house, three large factories and two more under course of erection. Another ornament to the same section of the city is the Onwell Mills, an industry which is in a con- siderable measure due to his efforts and enterprise. The Mitchell Mills, another prosperous and rapidly increasing concern, is largely owing to his interest and foresight. Chief among the industrial ornaments of the southern part of the city are the large and handsome car shops of the Fitchburg Railroad. These works were secured for this city in 1888, although several other places were making strenu- ous efforts to get the valuable prize for themselves. It is acknowledged on all sides that solely ow- ing to the admirable work of Mr. Lowe and Hon. Rodney Wallace this valuable acquisition to the city's commercial and business life is due. Mr. Lowe's public spirit and pride in his home are seen by the fact that he gave his time gratis and one hun- dred and ten acres of his and his brother's land for what they paid for it ten years previously, when it was cheap. He also purchased fifty acres more from a score of owners and turned it over to the railroad company without a dollar of reward. Mr. Lowe is a director in the Street Railway Company, and in the Fitchburg National Bank, and a trustee in the Fitchburg Savings Bank. He is also interested finan- cially in the Gas Company, the Fitchburg Steam Engine Company and the Grant Yarn Company.
413
FITCHBURG.
F FITCHBURG has the distinction of possessing the only mill of its kind in the world. This is a mill started in 1886 for the purpose of manufacturing by a new and most ingenious process bicycle balls, screws, pedal pins, axles, and many other articles which require to be absolutely perfect to be of use. These articles are manufactured by a rolling process, the invention of George F. Simonds, the articles being moulded into various forms, while rotating on their axles between surfaces moving in opposite directions. The first use made of the machinery was the manufacture of spheres, armor- piercing projectiles and axles. At the same time the ma- chinery was being perfected by expen- sive experiments which threatened to exhaust the firm's re- sources. During the first few years of its existence, the strug- gle was hard and it is only within a compar- atively short period that it has reached a paying basis. The present general man- ager of this enterprise is George W. Wey- mouth, and to his able management during the past two years is due a great portion of the suc- cess of the under- taking. Mr. Weymouth is a native of West Amesbury, now Merrimac, and first went to Fitchburg in 1882. Having learned the carriage-making business, he natu- rally fell into the same line and opened a carriage repos- itory at No. 457 Main Street. He soon began to be recognized as a young man of more than average ability, and his fellow-citizens were not long in calling upon him to take a hand in public affairs. He was elected to the Common Council, and at the expiration of
his term was singled out for a place in the aldermanic chamber, which he, however, refused. His interest in the prosperity and development of his adopted city was not abating, however, and in 1890, when the Board of Trade was revived, Mr. Weymouth became one of its most active and enthusiastic workers. Shortly after, Mr. Weymouth, Hon. Rodney Wallace and D. M. Dillon, with the co-operation of E. M. Dickinson, sur- prised the whole State by inducing the Iver Johnson Company of Wor- cester to abandon their cramped quar- ters in that city and remove to Fitch- burg. The move was pronounced one of the most surprising and most skilfully managed of recent years, and resulted in Fitchburg re- ceiving an advertise- ment throughout New England that has brought several other important in- dustries within her gates, every one of which is doing a prosperous and in- creasing business. In less than ten years from coming to Fitchburg an entire stranger, Mr. Wey- mouth has become a director in the Fitch- burg National Bank, general manager of the now successful Simonds Rolling Mill Company, a director in the Wor- cester Society, of the Ætna Life Insurance Company, the Board of Trade, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Fitchburg Savings Bank. He was also one of the promoters of the Fitchburg & Leominster Street Railway and is a director of the corporation. Mr. Weymouth is also a stockholder in the Wachusett National Bank and the Fitchburg Gas Company. He is recognized as a successful business man.
GEORGE W. WEYMOUTH.
414
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
D AVID M. DILLON is a native of St. John, N. B., and has lived in the United States since 1859. He learned the boiler-making trade in his native city, and has been in that business all his life. Mr. Dillon made Fitchburg his home in 1870, moving there from Worcester, where he had been carrying on the boiler- making business about five years. In 1863 he entered the United States service, and for a year, during the war, was engaged repairing government transports at Port Royal. Mr. Dillon was the first man to succeed in making boilers of steel, which he ac- complished in 1874, although the idea was scorned by makers generally. The re - sult was that those who had scoffed at and ridiculed his idea as impracticable found themselves compelled to follow his lead in order to protect themselves and their trade. At the present time Mr. Dillon's works turn out boilers which find a market in every State in the Union, and are also exported to Mexico and South America. He was the first man to ship American boilers to Japan. Through his interest many orders have come to Fitch- burg and other cities. The increase of his business has necessitated the employment of more men each year, and several years ago he had to move into quarters specially prepared for his nse. While conducting a large and exacting business, Mr. Dillon has ever been alert to the public needs of his adopted home. Reluctantly he obeyed a call to take part in the deliberations of the city fathers, and almost in defiance of his will he was twice elected on the aldermanic board. His course in
that body was marked by its strict integrity, rigid ad- herence to law and conscientious and eminently able administration of aldermanic functions. His liberal yet strictly business-like course in every public matter made him one of the most popular aldermen the city ever had, and earned for him the respect and admiration of all, opponents included. As a prime mover and ener- getic worker in the Board of Trade, his work will never be forgotten. The numerous valuable business acquisi- tions and various moves of a progres- sive character, inau- gurated during the past two years, have found in him an ad- herent strong and efficient. His judg- ment and advice are sought by all his as- sociates in that body, and his determina- tion and devotion to every project having any prospect of rev- enue for the public finds him foremost in the ranks. To him in a very consid- erable amount is due the praise of adding to the city's indus- tries the Iver John- son Works, formerly of Worcester. Mr. Dillon is a strong ad- vocate of co-opera- tive banks, which have been a source of great advantage to the masses of the people in building and acquiring homes of their own. His plain and outspoken expressions of opinion stamp him as a man of much force of character and deter- mination of will. Mr. Dillon is a stockholder in all the recent new enterprises started in Fitchburg. His per- sistence in the face of apparently insurmountable obstacles, until he was enabled to give to the world the steel boiler, stamps him as a man of a strong mind, scientific in cast.
DAVID L. DILLON.
415
FITCHBURG.
C HARLES C. STRATTON, of the Sentinel Printing Company, Fitchburg, is a son of the late Thomas Stratton, a leading farmer and citizen of Fairlee, Vt., who represented his native town in the State Legislature and held other positions of trust. Charles C. Stratton's early education was obtained at the district school of Fairlee, supplemented by a course at the academy at Thetford Hill. He remained at home until the fall of 1846, when he went to Haverhill, N. H., and entered the office of the Democratic Repub- lican, which was then published by the late Hon. John R. Re- ding. After com- pleting his regular apprenticeship at the printer's trade, he gave up his situation in Haverhill to accept one in Newbury, Vt., and workedfora time in the office of the Aurora of the Valley. Then he went to Boston and found employment in the Franklin Printing House, going from there to New York, where he worked in the office of the Methodist Book Concern. In September, 1854, he went to Fitchburg, and ever since then has been connected with the Sentinel office, with the ex- ception of a few months, when he was with the Second Massachusetts Cavalry, and in the Christian Commission at City Point, Va. In March, 1867, he purchased a half interest in the office, and a few years later he recognized and urged the importance of publishing a daily paper in Fitchburg. With this object in view the partnership with John E. Kellogg was formed in the spring of 1873, and the first number of the Daily Sentinel was issued on the 6th of the following May. Results prove that the
time had come for such a venture. The Weekly Sentinel in 1838 was four pages, 19 x 36, and in 1839 was enlarged to 20 x 38 ; in 1845, it was again enlarged to 24 x 34 ; in 1853, to twenty-eight columns, later to thirty- two columns, and in 1890 was changed from a blanket sheet of thirty-six columns to an eight-page sheet of forty-eight columns. The Daily Sentinel was started May 6, 1873, as a four-page sheet, 21 x 30 ; in October, 1881, it was enlarged to 23 X 35 ; in September, 1885, to 25 X 39 ; in Oc- tober, 1886, to 27 X 44, in July, 1890, to eight pages, double its size at the start ; and in Decem- ber, 1892, to an eight-page paper of seven columns each, printed on a perfect- ing press. The Sen- tinel has proved an important factor in the development of Fitchburg, and was never more prosper- ous than at the pres- ent time. The office is in one of the finest buildings in the city, and possesses excel- lent facilities for printing of all kinds. Mr. J. E. Kellogg is associated with Mr. Stratton in business, · and together they have made the Sen- tinel one of the vig- orous and influential papers of Central Massachusetts. They have been firm believers in the great possibilities of Fitchburg as a manufacturing centre, and have lent the weight of the Sentinel's influ- ence and large circulation to every movement that has had for its object the development of Fitchburg's resources. Hence the Sentinel, both daily and weekly. has grown with the growth and prospered with the pros- perity of the thriving inland city, with whose interests it is thoroughly identified.
CHARLES C. STRATTON.
MALDEN
M ALDEN in 1629 was a wilderness. Ralph Sprague and his brethren, who had recently landed at Salem, were the early pioneers. Its inhabitants were a remnant of the once powerful tribe of the Patuckets. In 1634 an allotment of land in parcels of five acres was made to new-comers, whose village belonged to Charlestown. In 1636 a commission set up boundaries, a part of which are still recognized. Settlers increased, and in 1640 a dam was built and a mill established. John Greenland took up his residence there, and Joseph Hills, who was a landholder in 1638, and his son-in-law, John Wayte, were leading men. In 1643 came William Sargeant, a " haberdasher" and a preacher, and for two hundred years his descendants possessed his lands. Settlers increased and pushed their way northward up the valley between Mount Prospect and the western hills. In 1640 the penny ferry was established across the Mystic River to Charlestown, and in 1653 a " new way " was laid out, and its wind- ings from Chelsea line to the Reading ponds may still be traced.
The town was incorporated in 1649. The first legislator was Joseph Hills, who had been speaker of the House of Deputies, and who had revised the Massachusetts laws. Mr. Hills came from Maldon, in Essex, Eng- land, and it is supposed that in compliment to him the town received its new name. For more than one hundred years, however, it has been spelled Malden. Joseph Hills was chosen its first deputy, and John Wayte was the first town clerk. Thomas Squire, William Brackenbury, John Upham, John Wayte and Thomas Caule were the first selectmen. Here began, for the inhabitants of Malden, the form of local self-government initiated in 1633 by the inhabitants of Charlestown, the parent town of the colony.
In 1671 the first public school was maintained at the charge of the town, and the town then embraced the new city of Everett and the town of Melrose. Malden shared in the gloom and insanity which spread the charge of witchcraft against some of its inhabitants, and there was much strife in the churches. It also shared in the sacrifices of the Revolutionary War. Slavery had existed in Malden in a patriarchal form.
In 1787 the bridge over the Mystic River was formally opened. In 1837 the population had increased to 2,300, and manufacturing was carried on to the extent of $350,000 per annum. At that time lines of omnibuses connected the town with Boston until 1845, when the Boston & Maine Railroad was opened up. In 1850 the population was 3,520, not including 1,260 souls who were set off the previous year with the town of Melrose.
The opening of the railroad and the cheapness of land gave birth to various enterprises, which were more or less successful. A tract of land on the west bank of the river and a tract of land on the highlands were laid out for building and business purposes, and great inducements were offered to purchasers. On a portion of this prop- erty has grown up the district of Edgeworth, where are now located the extensive factories of the Boston Rubber Shoe Company, Webster & Co.'s tanneries, and Vaughn's box factory. The products of these industries amount to more than $3,000,000 per year. The honor of Malden was upheld in the late Rebellion, the town sending six hundred men, who bore their part manfully in that terrible struggle for the maintenance of right. In 1877 a portion of Medford, comprising about two hundred acres of land with one hundred inhabitants, was annexed to Malden. Its greatest length from east to west is about three miles, and its average width about one and one-half miles. Malden has several lines of horse and electric railways and two steam railroads, with upwards of one hundred and fifty trains to and from Boston daily.
In 1861 the population was 5,865, and the valuation was $3,365,101. In 1870 Everett was set off, leaving Malden with 7,370 inhabitants and a valuation of $4,999,272. At the present time the valuation is nearly $20,- 000,000 and the population is over 30,000.
Malden has some of the finest schools and churches in New England, and it has a public library second to none in the State, which was the gift of Hon. Elisha S. Converse. A public hospital has also recently been built, and Mr. Converse generously gave the city the land and $20,000 for this project. Malden is a thriving and grow- ing city, and will soon have a population of 50,000.
417
MALDEN.
J AMES PIERCE, the mayor of Malden in 1892, was born in Medford, Jan. 20, 1837. In April of that year, when he was less than three months old, his parents moved to Woburn, where his boyhood was spent. At the age of sixteen he left home and went to Lowell to learn the retail dry goods business. On March 1, 1858, he left Lowell and came to Boston, where he became sales- man in a dry goods store on Tremont Row. At this time he took up his residence in Malden, and has re- sided there ever since. In 1861 he went into the retail dry goods business, having at one time three stores in Bos- ton, one in Lowell and one in Malden. In 1871 he sold out his dry goods busi- ness, and engaged in the manufacture of buff leather, and has continued in that business ever since, having at the present time one of the best tannery plants in the country, which he had built at Olean, N. Y. His Boston office is at No. 143 Suminer Street, cor- ner of South Street. Mr. Pierce has been highly respected by his fellow-citizens of Malden, both under a town and city gov- ernment. Under the town government he served on the Board of Selectmen, and was one of the road commissioners for five years. In 1876 he was elected one of the sinking-fund commissioners, which office he holds up to the present time. His fellow- citizens honored him in 1866 by sending him to the Legislature, and by re-electing him the following year. He was again elected to the Legislature in 1875. In 1870 and 1871 he was one of the senators from Middle- sex County, and he served on important committees.
He was afterwards appointed one of the inspectors of the State Prison for four years and nine months. Under the city form of government he was a councilman from Ward Five for the first nine years. He was the first president of the council, and of his nine years of ser- vice in that body he was president seven years. As president of the council he was zealously watchful of the finances of the city, and no man in Malden was so well posted on the finances of the city as Mr. Pierce, and the solid financial standing of the city at the present time is due in no small measure to his skill as a financier in the expenditures as well as in the making of appropriations. He is one of the direc- tors of the Boston Belting Company, and a director of the Freeman's National Bank of Boston, the National Bank of Boston, and of the First National Bank of Malden. For many years he has been connected with the Malden Savings Band as trustee and vice-president, and since 1887 has been its president. He has been a member of the Standing Com- mittee of the Baptist Church Society for several years, serving often as its chairman. At the present time he is chair- man of the Middlesex Republican Committee, and of the Sixth Middlesex District Senatorial Committee. Mr. Pierce is well known all over the Commonwealth as an honorable citizen and a man of the strictest integ- rity. The numerous positions of public trust that he has held, and his high standing in the manufacturing and financial circles of the Commonwealth, are striking evidences'of his ability.
JAMES PIERCE.
418
MASSACHUSETTS OF TO-DAY.
H ENRY WINN, who has just been elected mayor of the city of Malden at the age of fifty-four, was born in Whitingham, Vt., and was graduated at Yale in 1859. He studied law in the Harvard Law School and in the office of Attorney-General Foster, and was ad- mitted to the bar at the age of twenty-two. The next year he was assistant to the attorney-general, in whose absence he had entire charge of the business of the office, and the heads of the departments at the State House wrote to Charles Sumner : "His judgment and ability have been re- lied upon in the de- cision of such legal questions as have arisen in any of the departments." Gov- ernor Andrew wrote : " He has extremely well performed the duties of his office. At twenty-three he was made clerk of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate, and as such drafted bills passed by Congress." Mr. Sumner wrote of him, that he had per- formed his work ably and satisfacto- rily, and commended him to the regards of good men, and said : " I add my convic- tion that he will suc- ceed because he de- serves to succeed." While with the attorney-general he originated, at the request of a legislative committee, a new method of taxing savings banks, which was adopted and became the foundation of the present system of taxing corporations in Massachusetts. Mr. Winn left his office with a letter of the adjutant-general to raise a regiment in Western Massachusetts. This regiment be- came the Fifty-second Massachusetts Volunteers, and he served as major. When under fire at Port Hudson
his gallantry was conspicuous, and he was recommended for promotion by the generals of his brigade and divi- sion. After his service he did not resume his profession at once, but entered business, as he said, to make some money first and then practise. He succeeded, but lost it, while living in New York, through the wreck of a steamship he owned in the Caribbean. After returning to Massachusetts he served in the lower branch of the Legislature in 1877, receiving every vote but eight in his district. The next year he was elected to the State Senate, receiving the largest majority ever given a candidate for the office in the Frank- lin County District. While in the Senate he was chairman of every committee on which he served, and the bills drafted or reported by him in one of the sessions amounted to more than one seventh of the whole volume of laws. In 1887 he left Franklin County to practise his pro- fession in Boston, making his home in Malden in 1889. Dis- gusted with the use of money by public men to secure place, and the opposition of his party to his and other proposals, he has recently joined the People's party, with the hope of starting a reform party on economic lines, and was the candidate for gov- ernor in the campaign of 1892. His opinions on the subject of taxation carry great weight, and have been adopted in various laws of this and other States. Mr. Winn is noted as a profound and original thinker, and when aroused is a powerful public speaker. He has amply fulfilled the prediction made concerning him many years ago by Charles Suniner.
HENRY WINN.
419
MALDEN.
E LISHA SLADE CONVERSE, the third son of Elisha and Betsey (Wheaton) Converse, was born in Needham, Mass., July 28, 1820. When he was four years of age his parents removed to Woodstock, Conn. Spending his childhood there, under the wholesome restraint and kindly influences of New England rural life, he was trained in habits of industry and integrity, and in the essentials of an English education. In his thirteenth year he was sent to Boston, that he might have the advantage of its superior schools. He remained there until sixteen years of age when he returned home. During the next three years he learned the trade of a clothier, and when nineteen years old he engaged in that busi- ness on his own account in the village of Thompson, Conn., continuing there five years. In 1844 he again went to Boston, where he made a change to the whole- sale shoe and leather trade. The business was new to him, but he soon familiarized himself with all its details, and during his connection with it the reputation and success of the firm became well es- tablished. In 1847 he removed his place of residence to Stoneham, Mass., and in 1849 to Malden, where he has ever since resided. In 1853 he accepted the office of treasurer of the Malden Manufacturing Company. Early in 1855 this company's corporate name was changed to that of the Boston Rubber Shoe Company, when, by the earnest solicitation of the directors, he was induced to relinquish his previous business, and, in addition to the office of treasurer, to assume that of buying and selling agent. These offices
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