Men of progress one thousand biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Part 17

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 17

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Darling was fitted for college at Nassau, and at Hudson, N. Y., and attended Williams College, where he was graduated in the class of 1859. He studied law with the late Hon. George F. Shepley, who at his death was judge of the United States Circuit Court for this District, and also with Doo- little, Davis, & Crittenden, of New York. He was admitted to the bar in New York City in April, 1861. He has practised in Boston for twenty-five years. He has been bail commissioner for Suffolk County for twenty years, and master in chancery for the same county eleven years. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Common Council and for the Legislature ; but, being a Democrat in a strong Republican ward, he has failed of elec- tion. He has, however, been elected to the School Committee, in which body he served twelve years through repeated elections, resigning in December, 1893, having still a year to serve. The only societies to which he belongs are the Kappa Alpha and the Phi Beta Kappa. Mr. Darling was married February 2, 1882, to Miss Georgie A. Smith, of Newmarket, N.H. They have had three children : Lucy, (born September 10, 1883, died May 24, 1889), Edwin Woodbridge, (born September 7, 1887), and Amy Elizabeth Darling (born March 9, 1889).

DEAN, JOSIAH STEVENS, member of the Suf- folk bar, was born in Boston, May 11, 1860, son of Benjamin and Mary Ann ( French) Dean. Ilis father is a prominent Boston lawyer, and was a member of the State Senate for three terms, and representative in the Forty-fifth Congress from a Boston district; and his mother was a daughter of the late Josiah B. French, mayor of Lowell, and president of the old Northern Rail- road of New Hampshire. He was educated in the Boston public schools and at the Massachu- setts Institute of Technology; and his legal studies were pursued at the Boston University Law School, the Harvard Law School, and in his father's office. He was admitted to the bar in 1885, and has since been engaged in general and miscellaneous practice in Boston. He was coun- sel with L. S. Dabney for the South Boston Rail- way Company previous to its consolidation with the West End Company. In 1893 he was nomi- nated by Democrats for register of probate and insolvency for Suffolk County, and carried Bos- ton, which has never been done before in a

1 25

MEN OF PROGRESS.

county contest against the incumbent, his defeat resulting through the votes of Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop. The previous year, and in 1891, he was a member of the Boston Common Council. He is now ( 1894) associate justice of the South Boston municipal court, appointed by Governor Russell in 1893. He is connected with a number of South Boston institutions, among them the South Boston Savings Bank, of which he was an incorporator, and the South Boston Citizen's As- sociation ; is a director of the Eastern Electric Light and Storage Battery Company, and of the

JOSIAH S. DEAN.

1). S. Quirk Company ; and a member of the Bos- ton Athletic Association, the Puritan Canoe Club, the Boston Bicycle Club (secretary of the latter), and of various other organizations. He was the first president of the Associated Cycling Clubs of Boston and vicinity. Mr. Dean was married August 2, 1888, at Bradford, England, to Miss May Lillian Smith, daughter of the late Professor Walter Smith, some time director of drawing in the Boston public schools, and the first director of the State Normal Art School. They have one child : Benjamin Dean.

DONAHOE, PATRICK, of Boston, founder and present owner of The Pilot, the earliest permanent

Catholic organ in New England, and founder of Donahoe's Magasine, is a native of Ireland, born in Munnery, parish of Kilmore, County Cavan, March 17, 1815. His father, Terence Donahoe, was a linen hand-weaver and farmer. His mother, Jane (Christy) Donahoe, was a native of the same place. He came to Boston in 1825, and after at- tending the old Adams School two or three years, supplementing the little schooling he had had in Ireland, at the age of fourteen was at work for himself, having obtained employment in the print- ing-office of the Columbian Centine/. He was the only Irish boy in a band of six in the office,-in fact, there were at that time but two Irish boys in all the printing-offices of the town; and he had a hard struggle and some battles, the feeling against his religion and race being strong in those days. But he managed thoroughly to learn the printer's trade, and to acquire much general knowledge. When the Centine/ was united with another paper and issued daily, he left it, disliking night and Sunday work, and obtained work in the office of The Jesuit, a little publication which had been started by Bishop Fenwick in 1832. The Jesuit was not a paying enterprise, and finally the bishop gave it to Mr. Donahoe and H. L. Devereux, a fellow-workman. They changed the name to The Literary and Catholic Sentinel, and worked dili- gently to advance it, but without profit. Then, in 1836, they began the publication of The Pilot in a small way, with a force, in addition to themselves, of two girls and a boy, Mr. Donahoe taking the entire responsibility. Mr. Devereux soon with- drew, and Mr. Donahoe bent all his energies to establish the paper on a firm foundation. He made a personal canvass, not only of the New England and the Middle States, but of the then Far West and the South. Before very long he had secured a national circulation, and had expanded his paper from a small four-page affair to a large and handsomely printed eight-page weekly. For many years it had the field almost to itself ; and it became not only a household word in the Irish Catholic homes scattered over the country, but an influential institution, being almost the only me- dium of Catholic news and instruction in the hun- dreds of new settlements where the visits of priests were necessarily infrequent. One of its most effective features was the department of news from Ireland, each week covering many columns. With The Pilot Mr. Donahoe prospered, and became the foremost man of his race in New

126

MEN OF PROGRESS.

England. About the year 1850 he established, in addition to his newspaper, a large bookselling and publishing house, whence the works of many no- table Irish and Irish-American authors were is- sued. Later he added a great emporium of church furniture, organs, etc., and still further enlarged his business with the establishment of a bank and a passenger and foreign exchange agency. From the wealth which he acquired he gave generously to Catholic charities, advanced Catholic institu. tions, aided Catholic churches, and helped many causes abroad as well as in his adopted country.

PATRICK DONAHOE.

In Boston he was one of the most efficient promo- ters of the House of the Angel Guardian and of the Working Boy's Home, was the founder of the Home for Destitute Catholic Children on Harri- son Avenue, and its first president; was one of the most prompt and generous of the contributors to the fund for the erection of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, and a liberal benefactor of the Carney Hospital; and among the foreign institu- tions which he generously aided were the Amer- ican College at Rome, and the Seminary at Mill Hill, England, for the training of priests for the col- ored missions. During the Civil War he actively interested himself in the organization of the Irish regiments ; was treasurer of the fund for the

equipment of the Irish Ninth, and when the regi- ment was starting for the front gave Colonel Cass $1,000 in gold pieces, one for each man in the ranks ; he assisted in the formation of the Twenty- eighth Massachusetts Regiment called the Fag-an- Bealagh (clear the way); in numerous practical ways aided the soldiers at Camp Cameron, Cam- bridge, during the early days of the war; contrib- uted liberally to sending supplies and voluntary nurses to the field hospitals of the Union army ; and gave one of his sons, Benedict J. Donahoe, to the naval service under Commodore Porter in the Mississippi fleet. A son-in-law and two nephews also joined the army, all of whom were killed in the struggle. He was also a member of a com- pany of fifty gentlemen who met on the Common to aid in supplying means to assist the Massachu- setts men in the field; and at another time he presided at a great mass meeting of many thou- sands on the Common to receive General Cor- coran of the New York Sixty-ninth Regiment. Early in life he had a short military career as a member of the "Mechanics' Rifle Company," and was in the ranks when his company with others performed guard and escort duty on the occasion of President Jackson's visit to Boston in June, 1833. In 1872, before the " Great Fire" in Bos- ton, Mr. Donahoe was counted the richest Cath- olic in New England, and in the first rank, both in means and influence, among the Catholics in America. The granite block on Franklin Street, in which The Pilot and his great publishing and other business were housed, was one of the fine business buildings of Boston. This went down in the "Great Fire "; and with it were destroyed The Pilot plant, stereotype plates, book stock, and other property, causing a total loss of $350,000. Owing to the failure of insurance companies as the result of the heavy losses by this fire, he lost the greater part of his insurance. He at once, however, resumed business, establishing himself on Washington Street, near Essex. Here he was burned out again in the destructive fire of May 30, 1873, in that neighborhood. After this fire he went to Cornhill to get out his paper, and here was for the third time burned out. Then he built a large building on Boylston Street, at a cost of over $100,000. In addition to these losses he lost fully $250,000 through indorsements for friends. The panic and depression following, the friends who had advanced money to him to sus- tain his business felt constrained to withdraw their

I27

MEN OF PROGRESS.

assistance ; and then, in 1876, the climax was reached when his bank was obliged to suspend payment, the indebtedness to depositors being $73,000. Thereupon be placed everything he possessed at the disposal of his creditors ; but property having temporarily shrunk in value, and that which he held having been heavily mortgaged in the interest of his business, the estate could not be made to realize its real value. At this juncture Archbishop Williams came to his relief, purchasing three-fourths interest in The Pilot. John Boyle O'Reilly, whom Mr. Donahoe had some time before placed in editorial charge, pur- chased the remaining fourth, and took charge also of the entire business management of the paper ; and the bank depositors were ultimately paid off in yearly dividends. Mr. Donahoe, at the time of his embarrassment, sixty-three years of age, cheer- fully and hopefully took up the only part of his great business left to him, -- the passenger and foreign exchange agency,- and set about rebuild- ing his fortunes. In 1878 he began the publication of his monthly periodical, under the name of Don- ahoe's Magazine, and with his old-time energy per- sonally established its circulation, going over the same ground that he traversed in his young man- hood for The Pilot forty years before. Gradually his business developed, his magazine attained wide circulation and popularity, and within a com- paratively few years he found himself again in the enjoyment of a competence. In 1891, a few months after the death of Mr. O'Reilly, he was enabled to repurchase The Pilot, and at the age of seventy-six he resumed its conduct with all the ardor of youth, He at once enlarged the sheet, introduced new features, and his card to his pa- trons announced his policy to be "to keep The Pilot equal to the demands of its readers, and to maintain in the future the place which it has held for over half a century as the leading Irish-Amer- ican Catholic publication." Soon after his return to The Pilot he sold his magazine to a new com- pany. In 1893 Mr. Donahoe received from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, the distin- guished honor of the Lætare medal of solid gold, conferred annually upon a layman who has ren- dered signal service to the American Catholic public, and it was formally presented to him on St. Patrick's Day, that year, immediately after the meeting of the Charitable Irish Society in Boston, in the presence of a notable company. On this occasion the Very Rev. William Byrne, I). D.,

V.G., who had been deputed by Archbishop Will- iams to confer the medal, and the Rev. J. A. Zahm, C.S.C., vice-president of the University of Notre Dame, made highly complimentary ad- dresses, recalling Mr. Donahoe's conspicuous ser- vices in many fields, his liberal acts and charitable deeds, and pronouncing the honor most worthily bestowed, the vicar-general characterizing it as "the crowning honor of a well-spent life." Mr. Donahoe is the oldest living member of the Chari- table Irish Society, with which he has been identi- fied for upwards of half a century, and is con- nected with other benevolent organizations. For nine years he served as a member of the board of directors of city institutions, and was instrumental in securing the admittance of Catholic clergymen to these institutions, only Protestant chaplains before his appointment to the board being ap- pointed. Mr. Donahoe was first married Novem- ber 23, 1836, to Kate Griffin. By this union were four children : Mary E., Benedict J., Jerome, and Chrysostom l'. The last-named only is now liv- ing. The eldest, Mary E., married Patrick Hughes, of Toronto, and had six children, one of whom is now married, living in Seattle, Wash., and has one child, making Mr. Donahoe a great- grandfather. His first wife died November 15. 1852, aged thirty-six years. He married secondly at Littlestown, Penna., April 17, 1853, Annie E. Davis, daughter of Dr. and Mary E. Davis, of that town. Of this marriage were also four children : John Francis, Patrick M., Joseph V., and Gene- vieve E. Donahoe. All are still living; and all are married except the first, and have families. Three of his sons are with him in The Pilot office and in his other enterprises; and the other, J. Frank Don- ahoe, is organist of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, and prominent in Boston music circles.

DONOVAN, EDWARD JAMES, collector of inter- nal revenue for the district of Massachusetts, 1894, is a native of Boston, born March 15, 1864, son of Lawrence and Nancy Donovan. His father was for a quarter of a century one of the leading tobacconists of the city. He was edu- cated in the Boston public schools, graduating from the Phillips Grammar School in 1878, and afterwards attending the English High School. He began business life immediately after leaving school as a clerk in the wholesale millinery house of William H. Horton & Co., and afterwards was

128

MEN OF PROGRESS.

with the house of Brown, Durrell, & Co., with whom he remained till 1889. Political life early attracted him. and before he had reached his ma- jority he had become active in local politics. When twenty-two years of age, he was elected to the lower house of the Legislature, and the follow- ing year re-elected ; and then twice sent to the Senate (for 1889 and 1890) for the Third Suffolk District. In the years of his service in the House (1887 and 1888) he was the youngest member of that body ; and he has the distinction of being the youngest man ever elected to the Senate, being

EDWARD J. DONOVAN.

but twenty-four years of age when he entered it. In both branches he took a prominent part, serv- ing on important committees, among the number those on street railways, water supply, cities, mili- tary affairs, and liquor law, and had no superior as a ready debater. In 1892 he was appointed to the Boston Board of Health by Mayor Matthews for the term of three years, and was occupying this position when he received the appointment of internal revenue collector from President Cleve- land in January, 1894. Before he became a city official, he served on the Democratic State and City Committees, for three years first vice-presi- dent of the latter. At the State Democratic con- ventions of 1890 and 1891 he was selected for-

mally to second the nomination of Governor Rus- sell; and at the municipal convention in 1891 he placed Nathan Matthews, Jr., in nomination for mayor of Boston ; and in every campaign since 1888 he has been one of the Democratic party's most effective speakers on the stump. In the National Democratic Convention at Chicago, in 1892, he was delegate from Massachusetts. He is a member of the Young Men's Democratic Club of Massachusetts, and of the Hendricks ('lub of Boston, the presidency of which he has held since its formation in 1885. From the time of leaving the house of Brown, Durrell, & Co. till his ap- pointment to the Board of Health he was in the newspaper business, being manager and half- owner of the Boston Democrat. He was married June 1, 1891, to Miss Margaret MeGivney. They have two children : Frances and Edward J. Dono- van, Jr.

DYER, MICAN, JR., member of the Suffolk bar, is a native of Boston, born September 27, 1829. son of Micah and Sally ( Holbrook) Dyer. He is of English descent. He was educated in the Eliot School in Boston, where he received the Franklin medal, at Wilbraham Academy and Tilton Seminary, and graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1850. He entered the law office of Stephen G. Nash, judge of the Superior Court of Suffolk County, and soon after was admitted to the bar, and began practice. He early won a large clientage. In 1861 he was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the United States. He has had the management or been executor and trustee of a large number of estates, and the integrity of his administration has gained him high esteem. He was elected from Boston to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1854, and served two terms ( 1855 and 1856), the youngest member of the body. He was for several years a member of the Boston School Board and chairman of the Eliot School commit- tee. During the latter service be was hastily summoned one morning to quell a disturbance in the school occasioned by the refusal of four hun- dred Catholic boys to obey the rule which re- quired the recitation of the Lord's Prayer and the Decalogue. Not considering what church they might represent, but taking his stand on the ques- tion, " Is it a rule, and have they refused to obey it?" and finding the charge true, he promptly ex- pelled the whole four hundred. He left the de-

I29

MEN OF PROGRESS.

cision as to the injustice of the law or rule to those who had the power to annul it; yet he was severely criticised, and was made to suffer for this

MICAH DYER, Jr.

performance of his duty. The parents of the children, however, soon understood the situation ; and within two weeks almost every boy had ap- plied for readmission, promised to obey the rules, and had been received. Mr. Dyer was the first president of the Female Medical College in Bos- ton (established in 1855). That was in the days when the medical faculty did not approve of " women doctors," and explains why the di- plomas of the carly graduates bore the signature of an L.L. B. instead of an M.D). He is a member of the Boston Women's Charity Club, and one of the advisory board of the organization in the care of the Gifford fund donation to its hospital. Other organizations to which he belongs are the American Bible Society, of which he is a life member, the Massachusetts Temperance Alliance, the New England Conference Missionary Society, the Bostonian Society, Post 68 of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Eliot School Association

(president), and the Old School Boys' Associa- tion (president) ; and he was a member of the old Mercantile Library Association of Boston from 1849. He has been a Free Mason for forty

years, now belonging to the Boston Commandery, and has taken thirty-two degrees. He was also for many years an Odd Fellow in good standing. In politics he is a liberal Republican. He has clone much benevolent work in a quiet way, and unostentatiously has expended thousands of dol- lars in rendering life easier to the poor, the sick, and the unfortunate. Mr. Dyer was married in May, 1851, to Miss Julia A. Knowlton, of Man- chester, N.H. They have had two sons and one daughter. The daughter died in infancy. The sons are both residents of Boston : Dr. Willard K. Dyer, of Boylston Street, and Walter R. Dyer, who is associated with his father in business.

EMERY, THOMAS JEFFERSON, member of the Suffolk bar, is a native of Maine, born in Poland, December 26, 1845, son of Hiram and Margaret (Young) Emery. He is of English ancestry, a direct descendant on the paternal side of An- thony and Frances Emery, who came to Boston June 3, 1635, from Romsey, England, and subse- quently settled in Kittery, Me. His early educa-

THOMAS J. EMERY.

tion was acquired in the public schools of North Falmouth, Me., and at Westbrook Seminary, Deering, Me., where he was fitted for college ;

1 30

MEN OF PROGRESS.

and his collegiate training was at Bowdoin, from which he was graduated in the class of 1868. For the first six or eight years after graduation he was engaged in school-teaching, beginning in public schools in Maine, and then becoming the first principal of the Greely Institute of Cumber- land, Me. From 1870-71 he was principal of the famous Derby Academy of Hingham, Mass., and later taught several years in the English High School of Boston. He studied law in the Boston University Law School, and upon his graduation therefrom, in 1877, was admitted to the bar of Suffolk County. He has since prac- tised in Boston, giving attention especially to probate and commercial law. In politics he is Republican. He has served three terms in the Boston Common Council (1881-82-83) as a repre- sentative of Ward Eighteen, and four years in the School Committee (1889-90-91 and 1893). During his service in the latter board he was chairman of the committees on high schools, rules and regulations, and evening schools, besides serving on other committees. He was especially interested in the high and evening school work. He is a member of the Boston Bar Association, of the Boston Commandery, of Knights Templar, and of Massachusetts Consistory. He is un- married.

FALLON, JOSEPH DANIEL., justice of the Mu- nicipal Court, South Boston District, is a native of Ireland, born in the village of Doniry, County Galway, December 25, 1837, son of Daniel and Julia (Coen) Fallon. He was reared on a farm, and attended the national and private schools in the neighborhood of his home. At the age of fourteen he came to this country, most of the family having preceded him; and shortly after his arrival (in 1852) he entered the college of the Holy Cross at Worcester. He was graduated with distinction in the class of 1858, and received his degree of A.B. from Georgetown College, Holy Cross not then being a chartered institu- tion. After leaving college he taught school for awhile, first in Woonsocket, R.I., and subse- quently in Salem and in Boston. While in Salem he began the study of law in the office of the late Judge Perkins, and in 1865 was admitted to the bar. Opening his office in Boston, in course of time he entered upon a large and lucrative prac- tice, and, as executor and trustee, undertook the care of numerous important interests. For many

years he has been the legal adviser of clergymen and corporations in various parts of the Common- wealth. When the South Boston court was es-

JOSEPH D. FALLON.

tablished, in 1874, he was appointed by Governor Talbot the first special justice; and upon the death of Judge Burbank, in 1893, he was made justice of the court. While serving as special justice, he held court for long periods during the absences of Judge Burbank, occasioned, in large part, by failing health, and upon him, in fact, de- volved the most difficult part of the work of the court since its establishment ; for every important new law went into operation when he was occupy- ing the bench. For nearly twenty years he was a member of the Boston School Committee, first elected to the board in 1864. During this long service he was in accord with the broadest men among his associates, supporting and advocating every advance made or proposed in the adminis- tration of the schools and for the improvement of the system, notably prominent in the movements for the addition, to the system, of manual training, sewing, and the kindergarten. Judge Fallon has for several years been one of the examiners for the State Civil Service Commission. Since 1877 he has been vice-president of the Union Savings Bank, and its counsel for the past four years.

13!

MEN OF PROGRESS.

In politics he is a Democrat. He was married August 9. 1872, to Miss Sarah E. Daley. They have four children : Euphemia M., Catherine M., Josephine S., and Joseph D. Fallon.

FLOWER, BENJAMIN ORANGE, of Boston, cd- itor of the frena, is a native of Illinois, born in Albion, October 19. 1859, son of Alfred and Elizabeth (Orange) Flower. He was educated by private tutors at his home, in the public schools of Evansville, Ind., the family having moved to this place when he was a boy, and at the Ken- tucky University. It was his first intention to fol- low the profession of his father and eldest brother, the Rev. George E. Flower, and enter the minis- try: but. experiencing a change of religious views, he resolved to pursue the profession of journal- ism. Thereupon he undertook the editorship of the American Sentinel, a weekly society and liter- ary journal published in his native town. In this work, however, he was engaged but a short time, in 1881 removing to Philadelphia, where he be- came associated with his brother. Dr. Richard C.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Men of progress one thousand biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Part 17

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