Men of progress one thousand biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Part 13

Author: Herndon, Richard; Bacon, Edwin M. (Edwin Monroe), 1844-1916
Publication date: 1896
Publisher: Boston : New England Magazine
Number of Pages: 1036

USA > Massachusetts > Men of progress one thousand biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts > Part 13

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SHEPARD, JOHN, senior partner of the Boston dry-goods house of Shepard, Norwell & Co., is a native of Canton, son of John and Lucy (Hunt) Shepard, born March 26, 1834. He was edu-

JOHN SHEPARD.

cated in the public schools of Pawtucket, R.I., finishing in an evening school in Boston. When a lad of eleven, he began work here. His first place was in a drug store kept by J. W. Snow. Two years later he was employed in the dry- goods store of J. A. Jones, and at nineteen years

of age was in business for himself. He first es- tablished the firm of John Shepard & Co. (in 1853). Then in 1861, having bought out Bell, Thing & Co., at that time established on Tre- mont Row, the firm name was changed to Farley & Shepard. Under this title the business was continued until 1865, when the house of Shepard, Norwell & Co., on Winter Street, was founded. Its business rapidly developed and extended until it became one of the largest and most important of the retail dry-goods houses of the city. Mr. Shepard is also a director of the Lincoln Bank, of the Lamson Store Service Company, and of the Connecticut River Paper Company, and president of the Burnstein Electric Company. He is a member of the Boston Merchants' Association. He is an ardent lover of fast trotting horses, and has owned some of the most valuable equine stock in the country, in raising and driving fine horses finding relaxation from the exacting de- mands of the business of his house which he has brought to such a high standard of honorable prosperity. He was married in Boston on the Ist of January, 1856, to Miss Susan A. Bagley, daughter of Perkins H. and Charlotte (White) Bagley. They have had a son and a daughter : John, Jr. (married Flora E., daughter of General A. P. Martin, mayor of Boston in 1884), and Jessie Watson (now the wife of William G. Tit- comb, son of ex-Mayor Titcomb, of Newburyport). Mr. Shepard's winter residence is on Beacon Street, Boston ; and his summer seat is a pictur- esque estate known as " Edgewater," on Phillips Beach, Swampscott.

STEVENS, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, president of the New England Mutual Life Insurance Com- pany of Boston, is a native of Boston, born March 6, 1824, son of Benjamin and Matilda (Sprague) Stevens. He is a descendant on the maternal side of Samuel Sprague, one of the " Boston Tea Party," and through Joanna Thayer Sprague is directly descended from Peregrine White, the first white child born in the Massachu- setts Bay Colony. He was educated in the Bos- ton public schools, graduating from the English High School in 1838. From school he at once entered business life, and received a thorough mercantile training, covering a period of five years. Then he became attached to the United States frigate "Constitution," the famous "Old

MEN OF PROGRESS.

Ironsides," as clerk to her commander, Captain John Percival, well known in the old navy as " Mad Jack,"-a most fearless seaman and a

BENJ. F. STEVENS.

brave officer, -- in which he made a cruise around the world from 1843 to 1846. Retiring from this service and returning to Boston in April, 1847, he was elected secretary of the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company of Boston. Subsequently, in June. 1864, he was made vice- president of the company : and upon the resigna- tion of the Hon. Willard Phillips, its president, in November, 1865, was elected to that office, which position he has since held. His connec- tion with the insurance business has extended through forty-seven years ; and he is probably the oldest person holding office in that business to-day. He is a member of numerous local busi- ness organizations, and also of the Algonquin, the Union, the Boston Art, and the Athletic clubs. In politics he is Republican. He has served three terms in the Common Council of Boston, and has twice been unanimously elected president of the Merchants' Club. He has always taken great interest in colonial matters, and has written much on old Boston topics for the Saturday Even- ing Gazette. In 1847, and for a long time after, he was the literary and dramatic writer for the

old Boston Atlas, when that paper was under the control of William Schouler and Thomas M. Brewer. Mr. Stevens was married in 1850 to Miss Catherine, daughter of Ezra Lincoln, sister of the late Colonel Ezra Lincoln. He has one daughter (now Mrs. H. L. Jordan).

SWIFT, HENRY WALTON, chairman of the State Board of Harbor and Land Commissioners. was born in New Bedford, December 17, 1849, son of William C. N. and Eliza N. (Perry) Swift. He is descended from William Swift, who came over from England in 1630, was in Watertown in 1634, and in 1637 moved to Sandwich; and, on his mother's side, from Edward Perry, of Sandwich, who married Mary Freeman, and died in 1695. Other ancestors on his mother's side were William Spooner, who died in 1684. and Walter Spooner. who was appointed chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas by Governor Hancock in 1781 ; Francis Sprague, who came over in the "Ann " in 1623; Samuel Sprague, who was born in 1665, and married Ruth Alden, grand-daughter of John

H. W. SWIFT.

Alden and Priscilla Mullens; and Arthur Hath- away, who was born in 1627, and married Sarah Cooke, grand-daughter of Francis Cooke, who came

MEN OF PROGRESS.

over in the " Mayflower." Henry W. attained his education at the Friends' Academy in New Bed- ford, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Harvard Col- lege. He was at Exeter two years, graduating in 1867 ; and he graduated from Harvard in 1871. Then he took the Harvard Law School course, graduating in 1874, and was admitted to the Suf- folk bar the same year. He has since practised his profession in Boston, his principal practice dealing with the law of corporations. He has been associated in a portion of his practice with Mr. Russell Gray. In politics Mr. Swift is a Democrat, and has taken a leading part in the Young Men's Democratic movements in the State. In 1882 he served in the lower house of the Leg- islature, and before that (in 1879 and 1880) was a member of the Boston Common Council, elected as a Democrat from the Republican Ward 9 ; and he has also been a member of the Boston School Board. He was appointed to the Board of Har- bor and Land Commissioners by Governor Rus- sell in 1891, and was soon after elected its chair- man. He is a member of the Union, Somerset, and Country clubs, and of the Young Men's Democratic Club of Massachusetts. Mr. Swift is unmarried.

TAYLOR, CHARLES HENRY, general manager and editor-in-chief of the Boston Globe, was born in Charlestown, July 14, 1846, son of John 1. and Abigail R. (Hapgood) Taylor. He was edu- cated in Charlestown public schools, and at the age of fifteen went to work, beginning in a Bos- ton general printing-office, where he learned the trade of a compositor on the Massachusetts Ploughman and the Christian Register, at that time "set up" in the establishment. A year later, when employed in the Traveller office, making himself useful in the press and mailing rooms, as well as the composition-room, he joined the Union army for the Civil War, enlisting in the Thirty- eighth Massachusetts Regiment, one of the young- est recruits in the army. He served in the field about a year and a half with General Banks's com- mand, until severely wounded in the memorable assault on Port Hudson, June 14, 1863. After three months in the army hospital at New Orleans, he was honorably discharged, and sent home ; and, as soon as able, he returned to work. Re-enter- ing the Traveller office, after some time spent in the composition-room, he was given a position as reporter for the paper ; and this was the starting-

point of his journalistic career. He soon made his mark as a quick and intelligent news-gatherer, and, mastering the art of shorthand writing, did much notable work as a stenographer. While connected with the Traveller, he also earned con- sidlerable reputation as a correspondent for out- of-town papers, his letters to the New York Tribune and the Cincinnati Times especially at- tracting attention. He remained with the Trar- eller till the opening of 1869, when he was made

private secretary to Governor William Claflin and a member of the governor's military staff with the rank of colonel, by which title he has since been popularly called, although he is properly " general" by virtue of appointment to the military staff of Governor William E. Russell in 1891. The position of governor's secretary he held for three years, and during this time he con- tinued work as a newspaper correspondent. In 1872 he made a little excursion into politics, and was that year elected to the lower house of the

CHARLES H. TAYLOR.

Legislature as a representative from Somerville, where he had established his residence. The following year he was re-elected, receiving, as on the first occasion, the unusual honor of being the unanimous choice of his fellow-citizens, regard- less of party lines. At the opening of the session

MEN OF PROGRESS.

of 1873 he was made clerk of the house, elected by a large majority over William S. Robinson, then the widely known Boston correspondent of the Springfield Republican over the signature of " Warrington," who had held the position for many years. In August the same year he was offered the position of manager of the Globe, then about seventeen months old, and struggling to obtain a foothold among the established Boston dailies. Accepting the offer, he relinquished his place at the State House, and devoted all his energies to the upbuilding of the enterprise. For some time it was conducted as a high-class inde- pendent paper, with a limited circulation ; but, upon the reorganization of the enterprise, in the spring of 1878, Colonel Taylor, then in full con- trol, took a bold new departure, bringing out the paper as a two-cent Democratic daily, with the higher priced Sunday issue, conducted on popular lines, appealing to the many instead of the few. Before very long prosperity came to the under- taking; and its development in many directions, under General Taylor's skilful conduct, was rapid. Among the novelties in Boston journalism which General Taylor has grafted to some extent upon it, through his paper, are to be reckoned the reg- ular illustration of news articles, political cartoons, serial stories, and "signed editorials." General Taylor belongs to a number of social organizations. among them the Algonquin and Press clubs of Boston. He was married February 7, 1866, to Miss Georgiana (). Davis, daughter of George W. Davis, of Charlestown. They have five children : Charles H., Jr. (now business manager of the Globe), William O., John I., Elizabeth, and Grace Lincoln Taylor. Since 1880 General Taylor has resided in Boston.

THORNDIKE, SAMUEL LOTHROP, member of the Suffolk bar, was born in Beverly, December 28, 1829, son of Albert and Joanna Batchelder (Lovett) Thorndike. His earliest ancestor in America was John Thorndike, of a Lincolnshire family, who came to New England in 1633, and in 1636 settled in that part of Salem which is now Beverly. His early education was ac- quired in the Beverly Academy and the Boston Latin School, where he was fitted for college. He entered Harvard in the class of 1852, gradu- ating in due course, and then attended the Har- vard Law School, from which he graduated in

1854. His law study was completed in the Bos- ton office of the late Sidney Bartlett, and he was admitted to the. Suffolk bar in 1855. For a while he was an assistant in the office of Rufus Choate ; and later, in 1861, he became a business associ- ate of William H. Gardiner, which relation con-

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S. LOTHROP THORNDIKE.

tinued until Mr. Gardiner's death, in 1882. He has been engaged mainly in trust and probate business, and the management of estates and corporations. He was register in bankruptcy under the United States law of 1867. He has been a director in many railroad and manufactur- ing companies and other corporations. He has always been much interested in musical matters, and has at various times been an officer of the Handel and Haydn Society, the Harvard Musi- cal Association, the Boston Music Hall, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Cecilia. He is one of the vice-presidents of the Union Club, a member also of the St. Botolph, Tavern, and Examiner clubs, a member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, president of the Old Cambridge Shakspere Association, trustee of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, and is connected with various Masonic bodies. In politics he is a Republican. His first vote was for the Whig party, but since 1856 he has regularly voted the

MEN OF PROGRESS.

Republican ticket. Mr. Thorndike was married November 2, 1859, to Miss Anna Lamb Wells, daughter of Chief Justice Daniel Wells. of the old Court of Common Pleas. They have two sons and one daughter: Albert (H.U. 1881), Sturgis Hooper (H.U. 1890). and Mary Duncan Thorn- dike.

TOPPAN, ROLAND WORTHINGTON, president of the Arkwright Mutual Fire Insurance Com- pany, was born in Newburyport, November 9, 1841, son of Edward and Susan L. (Smith) Top- pan. He is a lineal descendant of Abraham Top-

R. W. TOPPAN.

pan, the first of the name in America, who came from England, and settled in Newburyport in 1638. The Smiths from whom his mother de- scended settled in West Newbury about the same time. His education was acquired in the public schools of Newburyport. With the exception of about a year spent in the ice business in Havana, Cuba, his active business life has been devoted to the insurance business, both stock and mutual. He spent about six years in two of the largest agencies of stock insurance companies, and later was connected with the Boston Manufactures Mutual Fire Insurance Company for about fifteen years. In 1889 he was elected president of the

Mill Owners' Mutual Fire Insurance Company, and president of the Arkwright Mutual Fire In- surance Company in June, 1891, when the busi- ness of the Mill Owners' Company was consoli- dlated with that of the Arkwright, the name of the latter being retained. The Mill Owners' Com- pany ceased to do business, and was dissolved by the court. He has also been president of the Paper Mill Insurance Company since June, 1889. In politics he is an Independent. He has held no offices. civil, political, or social, and is not con- nected with any society or club, preferring to devote himself entirely to his business pursuits. He was married in October, 1870, to Miss Eliza- beth Lesley, daughter of Edward and Sarah (Frothingham) Lesley. They have one child : Roland Lesley Toppan. Mr. Toppan's present residence is in Malden.

UNDERWOOD, HERBERT SHAPLEIGH, manag- ing editor of the Boston Evening Record and the Daily Advertiser, is a native of New York, born in Fort Edward, June 5, 1861, son of Jarvis A. and Eunice K. (Shapleigh) Underwood. He is of the New York branch of Underwoods, which reach back to the second of the three brothers who came to America from England about the year 1650. On his mother's side he is also of English stock, both through the Shapleighs and Wentworths. He was prepared for college in the academy at Glens Falls, N. Y., to which place his father removed when he was ten years old, and was graduated from Williams in the class of 1883 with Phi Beta Kappa honors. In college he was first associate editor, then editor-in-chief, of the Argo, a bi-weekly, which stood in the first rank of college journalism when this form of literary effort was in what is generally termed its most brilliant period, writing much light verse and a number of satires on college life for that paper. Immediately after graduation, in July, 1883, he began work for the Amsterdam (N.V.) Democrat (Republican) in all the various directions that occupy a subordinate on a small local paper, and later became city editor. In December, 1884, he joined the staff of the Springfield Republican, and in that office did successively New England news editing, writing of special articles and of minor editorial comment. In January, 1886, he was sent to Boston, where he wrote the Republican's legisla- tive reports and Boston notes on State politics

MEN OF PROGRESS.

until the end of that year's session of the Legis- lature in July. At that time he was selected by llon. William E. Barrett, who had become the managing editor of the Boston Advertiser and the Record, to cover the political news for those papers ; and with this work his service on them began. In December of the same year he was made Washington correspondent of the two papers ; and at the capital he was admitted to confidential relations by many leading men, espe- cially the New England senators and representa- tives. During the recess of Congress in 1887 he did a large range of special writing for both

HERBERT S. UNDERWOOD.

papers, in the home office originating and carry- ing out for several months the "Seen and Heard" column, which became a leading feature of the Record. In August, 1888, just after his return from the two national conventions, he was recalled to Boston ( Mr. Barrett having become publisher). and was made managing editor of both papers, which position he has held since. He is a mem- ber of the Republican, Episcopalian, and Univer- sity clubs, and was one of the "committee of eighteen " which organized the last named.

WARREN, WILLIAM FAIRFIELD, president of Boston University, Boston, born in Williamsburg

March 13, 1833, was the third son of Mather and Anne Miller ( Fairfield) Warren. As a direct descendant of the original immigrant, William Warren, of Roxbury, whose son married Su- sannab Mather, his genealogical line goes back to the beginning of New England history. Through his father's mother he is directly de- scended from Elder John White, the associate of Ilooker, and through his own mother from Captain Samuel Fairfield, of Connecticut. His father's father was Cotton Mather Warren. Bishop Henry White Warren is an older brother. William F. was graduated from Wesleyan Univer- sity in 1853. In 1855 and 1856 he was in charge of a church in Andover, and from 1856 to 1858 studied in Berlin, Halle, and Rome. He trav- elled in Greece, Egypt, Palestine, and other parts, residing in all over seven years abroad. In 1859-60 he was pastor of the Bromfield Street Methodist Episcopal Church, Boston ; from 1861 to 1866 was professor of systematic theology in the Missions-anstalt, Bremen, Germany ; from 1866 to 1873 professor of systematic theology in the Boston Theological Seminary, and acting president of the institution ; and in 1873, upon the foundation of Boston University, he was made its president, and professor of comparative his- tory of religion, comparative theology, and the philosophy of religion, which positions he has held from that time to the present. Among the more significant features of Dr. Warren's life- work thus far may be named: a new presentation of confessional theology to the theologians of Germany; the reorganization of the oldest theo- logical seminary of the Methodist Episcopal Church ; the organization of Boston University ; a reconstruction of ancient cosmology and mythi- cal geography, particularly the Homeric; the dis- covery, as many believe, of the cradle of the human race; and the promotion of international university co-operation in advancing the highest as well as the broadest educational ideals. Presi- dent Warren has been a copious writer, the titles of his publications filling nearly four octavo pages of the " Alumni Record " of his Alma Mater. In his earlier years he published miscellaneous trans- lations, poetic and other, from the Spanish, Ger- man, Dutch, and Latin languages. The last twenty-five years he has annually published one or more educational reports, in which the living issues of the day are more or less fully discussed. In the successive volumes of the " Boston Uni-

100

MEN OF PROGRESS.

versity Year Book " he has also printed not a few educational, scientific, and professional essays. At the same time he has contributed annually, more or less freely, to the scholarly periodical press. Six of his publications were written and printed in the German language. Of these the more important were: Anfangsgründe der Logik (1863); Einleitung in die systematische Theologie (1865); and Versuch einer neuen encyklopaedischen Einrichtung und Darstellung der theologischen Il'is- senschaften (1867). The following are some of his essays and addresses, with the year of their issue : "De Reprobatione " (1867) ; "Systems of

WM. F. WARREN.

Ministerial Education " (1872); "The Christian Consciousness " (1872); "American Infidelity " (1874); "The Taxation of Colleges, Churches, and Hospitals : Tax Exemption the Road to Tax .\bo- lition " (1876); "The Gateways to the Learned Professions " (1877); " Review of Twenty Argu- ments employed in Opposition to the Opening of the Boston Latin School to Girls " (1877); "The Liberation of Learning in England" (1878); "Joint and Disjoint Education in the Public Schools " (1879); " Hopeful Symptoms in Medical Education " (1880); " New England Theology" (1881); "True Key to Ancient Cosmology and Mythical Geography " (1882); "Homer's Abode

of the Dead" (1883); "All Roads lead to Thule " (1886); " The Quest of the Perfect Re- ligion " (1887); " The True Celebration of the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Discovery of America by Columbus " (1888) ; " The Cry of the Soul: a Baccalaureate Address " (1888); "The Gates of Sunrise in Babylonian and Egyptian Mythology " (1889) ; " Phillips Brooks and Edu- cation " (1893) ; "Origin and Progress of Bos- ton University " (1893). His elaborate study of the pre-historic world, entitled " Paradise Found : the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole," published in 1885, quickly reached its eighth edition. A smaller book, entitled " In the Footsteps of Arminius, -- a Delightsome Pilgrim- age," was issued in 1888 ; another, " The Story of Gottlieb," a study of ideals, in 1891. President Warren married Miss Harriet C. Merrick, daughter of John M. and Mary J. Merrick, April 14, 1861. Their children are four: Mary Christine, Will- iam Marshall, Annie Merrick, and Winifred War- ren. For twenty years, until her widely lamented death, January 7, 1893, Mrs. Warren edited the Heathen Women's Friend, a missionary magazine for women, which had a wider circulation than any other of its class in the world. A part of the time she edited a German issue under the same name. In the founding and management of the Massachusetts Society for the University Educa- tion of Women she also bore a prominent part.

WELLS, SAMUEL, member of the Suffolk bar, and connected with scientific and philanthropic societies, is a native of Hallowell, Me., born Sep- tember 9, 1836. His father, Samuel Wells, was judge of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine from 1848 to 1852, and governor of that State in 1855 ; and his mother, Louisa Ann (Appleton) Wells, was a daughter of Dr. Moses Appleton, of Waterville, Me. He received his early education and training for college in a private school in Port- land, Me., kept by Mr. Forbush, and entered Har- vard College in the class of 1857, which included a number of young men who in after years became

leading members of the bar. After graduating he studied law in his father's office in Boston, and on the 18th of December, 1858, was admitted to the Suffolk bar. For about ten years he was associ- ated with his father in the practice of his profes- sion ; and then in 1871 he formed a partnership with the late Edward Bangs, under the name of

IOI

MEN OF PROGRESS.

Bangs & Wells, for the transaction of general law business. In his professional work in later years Mr. Wells has given more attention to the man- agement of trusts and corporations and office practice than to litigation. For many years also he has been connected as director and officer with various corporations, and is now second vice- president, counsel, and a director of the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, presi- dent of the State Street Exchange, and one of the trustees of the Boston Real Estate Trust. He has long been concerned in philanthropic work, and interested in reform movements, social and

SAMUEL WELLS.

political. He is a member of the general com- mittee of the Citizens' Association of Boston, a member of the Civil Service Reform Associa- tion and of the Tariff Reform League ; a vice- president of the Boston Society of Natural His- tory ; one of the trustees of the Boston Young Men's Christian Union, and of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union ; member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of the Bunker Hill Monument Asso- ciation, of the Boston Memorial Association, of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society, of the New England Historic Genealogical So- ciety, of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts,

and of the Bostonian Society. Among other or- ganizations to which he belongs are the Union, St. Botolph, Boston Art, Exchange, Unitarian, and Papyrus clubs of Boston, and the University Club of New York. He is prominent also in the Ma- sonic order, and from 1889 to 1892 was grand master of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. He has made a special study of the use of the mi- croscope, and was one of the first in this country to use that instrument in photography. He has made a large collection of the Diatomacea and the literature concerning that interesting group to which he has contributed occasional papers. Mr. Wells was married on June 11, 1863, to Miss Catherine Boott Gannett, daughter of Ezra Stiles Gannett, D.D., long pastor of the Arlington Street Church, formerly the Federal Street Church. They have three children: Stiles Gannett, now associated with his father in law practice : Sam- uel, Jr., now with the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company ; and Louisa Appleton Wells.

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Men of progress one thousand biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Part 13

Author: Herndon, Richard; Bacon, Edwin M. (Edwin Monroe), 1844-1916 Publication date: 1896 Publisher: Boston : New England Magazine Number of Pages: 1036

Author: Herndon, Richard; Bacon, Edwin M. (Edwin Monroe), 1844-1916
Publication date: 1896
Publisher: Boston : New England Magazine
Number of Pages: 1036