Men of progress one thousand biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Part 86

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 86

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CHARLES ENDICOTT.

of Canton, by which union was one son : Charles W Endicott. His second marriage was on Octo- ber 2. 1848. at Charlestown, N.H., to Miss Augusta G. Dinsmore. Their children are : Edward D. and Cynthia A. Endicott, the latter now wife of R. M. Field. of Boston.

FARNHAM, REV. LUTHER, of Boston, clergy- man, librarian, and author, is a native of New Hampshire, born in Concord, February 5, 1816, son of Ephraim and Sarah (Brown) Farnham. He is of English origin, his American ancestor having been Ralph Farnham, who sailed from Southampton, England, April 6, 1635, in the brig " James," and after a voyage of forty-eight days landed in Boston, June 6, 1635. He settled in North Andover, and to him were born five chil- dren. The father of Mr. Farnham had fifteen brothers and sisters, thirteen of whom were mar- ried. In his own family Mr. Farnham was the youngest of nine children. He was educated in common and private schools of Concord, at Kim- ball Union Academy, Meriden, N.H., and at

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Dartmouth College, graduating in 1837. After graduation he was for a year the principal of Limerick Academy in Maine, and for a time an assistant in Pembroke Academy, New Hampshire. Then he studied theology at the Andover Theolog- ical Seminary, and graduated there in 1841. The same year he was licensed to preach the gospel by the Hopkinton Association of New Hampshire. lle was ordained and installed as pastor of the Congregational church in Northfield, November 20, 1844. From 1847 to 1849 he was in charge of the First Congregational Church of Marshfield (where Daniel Webster was his parishioner), and

LUTHER FARNHAM.

later of the First Congregational Church of New Bedford. In other years he was in charge of the Congregational churches of Everett, Concord, West Gloucester, Magnolia, Manchester-by-the- Sea, and West Newbury. For briefer periods he ministered to Congregational churches in Plym- outh, Kingston, North Weymouth, Burlington, and several others in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. For a considerable time he was chaplain of the llouse of Correction in Boston, where on very stormy Sundays he had the largest congregation in the city, of eight hundred souls. From 1855 to 1861 he was one of the secretaries of the Southern Aid Society which aided missionaries in preaching

the gospel to the poor whites and the blacks in the South. He was a chief founder of the General Theological Library, and has been the only secre- tary and librarian from its formation in 1861 to the present time. During this long period he has never been absent from one of its meetings. In the early history of the New England Historic Genealogical Society he held the office of libra- rian of that institution for several years, and was most active in promoting its interests. Mr. Farnham has also for a long series of years con- tributed much to the periodical press, and has published several volumes. In his early life he prepared for Gleason's Pictorial Newspaper histor- ical and biographical sketches of the leading churches of Boston, together with their pastors, with accurate pictures for that period, which at- tracted wide attention. In 1855 he published a small volume entitled " A Glance at Private Libra- ries," the first work of the kind issued in this country. About that time a Thanksgiving sermon delivered by him in the First Congregational Church in West Newbury was published by re- quest. In 1876 he published a volume of the Documentary History of the General Theological Library, which was placed in the Centennial Ex- position in Philadelphia in 1876. The history of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society published in 188o was largely his work. Subsequently he wrote a history of the Handel and Haydn Society, not yet published. Another useful volume of his is the Documentary History and Proceedings of the General Theological Library for the past nine- teen years. He was the Boston correspondent for the New York Journal of Commerce from 1849 to 1861, and at an earlier date was assistant editor of the Christian Alliance of Boston. From 1848 to 1865 he published many editorial articles, let- ters, and other contributions in the Puritan Re- corder of Boston, the New York Observer, the Boston Post, Hunt's Magasine, and several other publications. He has raised in his lifetime at least $130,000 for religious and benevolent ob- jects, and has travelled no less than one hundred and fifty thousand miles in fulfilling engagements as a preacher and lecturer. Ile is a member of the new club, the "Sons of New Hampshire " ; of the Dartmouth Club of Boston, of which he was for several years first vice-president ; the Granite State Social Club, now its president ; the Dart- mouth College Alumni Association, the first of the kind in this country, which was established at

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his suggestion ; and an honorary member of the Historical Society of Dallas, Tex., and of ser- eral other societies. He thought out the idea of the University Club, and at a later date pre- sented the plan to the Dartmouth Club, from whence grew the University Club of Boston. He earlier projected the Kimball Union Academy As- sociation of Boston, and was for a time its vice- president. Mr. Farnham's career has been most favorably influenced by his birthplace, on a beau- tiful spot on a high bluff above the picturesque Merrimac River, in the midst of a large farm, near the base of Rattlesnake Hill, famous for its gran- ite, and in one of the finest towns of New Eng- land, now a city of nearly twenty thousand inhabi- tants. llis early life was largely spent in the open air, upon the farm, in hunting, fishing, boat- ing on the Merrimac, swimming in its waters, and in walking a mile or two to school and to church. His career has also been influenced by a Christian home, by the academy, college, and theological seminary; but no single influence, he holds, has done so much for him as that of a good wife with whom he journeyed for many years. The minis- try to which his mother devoted him, and to which he gave himself, was evidently the right calling for him in the broad way in which he has followed it. As so intimately connected with the Theological Library for thirty-four years, he has come to know one denomination about as well as another, and thus to be tolerant ; and yet he holds his own religious convictions as strongly as ever. Other influences that have rendered his life happy and useful have been heredity, a good constitution, health, regular habits, temperance in all things, a pleasant home in his own house, agreeable com- pany, and especially that of books, and constant occupation in pursuits that he has loved. Mr. Farnham married June 23, 1845, in Northfield, Mrs. Eugenia Fay Alexander, daughter of Deacon Levi and Lucretia (Scott) Fay. They had one son, born in 1846 : Francis Edward Farnham.

FAY, JOHN SAWYER, of Marlborough, post- master, was born in Berlin, January 15, 1840, son of Samuel Chandler and Nancy (Warren) Fay. When he was about one year old, his par- ents moved to Marlborough, which town has been his home ever since. Ile is of the Fay family whose ancestry is thus traced by Hudson in the History of Marlborough : " John Fay was born

in England about 1648. He embarked on May 30, 1656, at Gravesend, on the ship . Speedwell,' Robert Lock, master. and arrived in Boston June 27, 1656. Among the passengers were Thomas Barnes, aged twenty years : Shadrock Hapgood, aged fourteen years ; Thomas Goodnow, aged sixteen years; and John Fay, aged eight years. They were bound for Sudbury, where some of them had relatives; and, considering the tender age of John Fay, we may naturally suppose the same was true of him. In 1669 he was in Marl- borough, where the births of his eight children were afterwards recorded. The records do not

JOHN S. FAY.

show whom he married for his first wife. The family were driven from Marlborough in 1675. during King Philip's War. They went to Water- town, where he buried his wife and one son. He married for his second wife Mrs. Susannah Morse. widow of Joseph Morse. She was a daughter of William Shattuck, of Watertown. After King Philip's War John Fay returned to Marlborough. where he died December 5, 1690." One of John Fay's sons was Gershom, born October 19, 1681. and died in 1720; one of Gershom's sons was Gershom, Jr., born in 1703, and died in 1784 : one of the latter's sons was Adam, born in 1736. died in IS10; one of Adam's sons was Baxter,

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born in 1775, died in 1854; and one of Baxter's sons is Samuel Chandler Fay, born in 1819, the father of John S. Fay. Mr. Fay was educated in the public schools of Marlborough and at a com- mercial college in Worcester. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted in Company F, Thir- teenth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, on July 16, 1861. He was on duty with his com- pany in all of its marches and battles until April 30, 1863, when, while in action near Fredericks- burg, Va., he received wounds from a rebel shell which necessitated the amputation of his right arm and leg. Before this occurred, he had been promoted to the rank of sergeant. While in the field hospital, on June 15, 1863, he was captured by the Confederates, and held prisoner until July 17, 1863. being confined in Libby Prison at Richmond. On being paroled, he was sent to the hospital at Annapolis, from which place he was discharged. He reached his home in Octo- ber of the same year, the most mutilated and crippled of all who survived of the eight hundred and thirty-one who enlisted for the war from the old town of Marlborough. In May. 1865, he was appointed postmaster of Marlborough by Presi- dent Johnson, and by successive appointments has held the office ever since, having received his ninth commission in January, 1895. The office, when he took charge of it, had just emerged from the fourth class, requiring but one clerk. Now it is a second-class office, employing seven letter carriers and four clerks. Mr. Fay was tax collector for the town of Marlborough in 1867 and 1868. He was a member of the committee chosen by the town to erect the sol- diers' monument. He is an active Grand Army man, and has held many positions in l'ost 43, which he helped to organize in January, 1868. He was elected junior vice-commander of the department of Massachusetts, Grand Army of the Republic, in 1874. He is also a prominent Odd Fellow and a member of Marlborough Lodge, No. 85. He has passed through all of the chairs of his lodge, and is now a member of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. For some years he has been a notary public. He has been closely identified with the Marlborough Co-oper- ative Bank from its organization, and is chairman of the security committee of its board of directors. He has been an active member of the Unitarian church for many years. He was married Novem- ber 20, 1869, to Miss Lizzie Ingalls, daughter of

James Monroe and Elizabeth (Pratt) Ingalls. They have one son : Frederic Harold Fay.

FLETCHER, HAROLD, of Boston, artist, was born in Haverhill, September 21, 1843, son of Ed- mund and Elizabeth Chandler (Plummer) Fletcher. He is descended from Robert Fletcher of York- shire County, England, and from Samuel Plummer of Woolwich, England, who came to this country in 1630 and 1633, respectively. Robert Fletcher settled in Concord, Mass. ; and his name appears often in its earliest records. His grant of land embraced what is now the city of Lowell and much of the town of Chelmsford. Part of this grant is still occupied by descendants, as it has been for one or two centuries. Harold Fletcher was educated in the schools of his native State. He was fitted for college, but did not enter, choos- ing an artistic career. In 1869 he went to Europe and studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, and at the Royal Academy, Munich. Since his return to Boston he has taught drawing and painting, has painted many portraits, and has

HAROLD FLETCHER.

also given much attention to the treatment and restoration of paintings, in which department of art he is widely known. His studio in the Law-

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rence Building, Boston, is always filled with valu- able paintings in all stages of restoration, and is a place of much interest to art lovers. Our principal picture-owners, colleges, and institutions are his patrons. He has always been a stanch Republi- can, and his first vote was cast for Lincoln. He is unmarried.

JAMES B. FORSYTH.

FORSYTH, JAMES BRANDER, of Boston, mer- chant, was born in Chelsea, October 6, 1856, son of George and Rebecca B. (Richardson) Forsyth. He was educated in the common and high schools of Chelsea. After leaving school, he engaged with his father in the furniture business, and con- tinued in this occupation for about a year. Then, in 1872, he took a place as errand boy with Wilder & Co., of Boston, at that time large whole- sale paper dealers, and remained with this firm nine years, receiving a thorough training and fill- ing in a satisfactory manner various positions of responsibility and trust. In November, 1881, having obtained a full knowledge of the paper and twine business, he formed with Edward H. Stone the firm of Stone & Forsyth to engage in the same business, leasing a small store on Federal Street. The business of the new firm so devel- oped that within a few years it became necessary to obtain larger quarters at No. 268 Devonshire

Street, and later a building was added at No. 5 and 7 Federal Court, still further to accommodate its increasing demands ; and it has now grown to be one of the largest in its line in the country. Mr. Forsyth has been secretary of the Boston Paper Trade Association since ISS8, and delegate from that body for six years to the Boston Asso- ciated Board of Trade. He is interested in ath- letics and yachting, and is an active member of the Boston Athletic Association, of the Hull and the Corinthian Yacht clubs, and of the Masti- gouche Fishing Club of Montreal. In politics he is a Republican, holding membership in the Re- publican Club of Massachusetts. He was married December 17, 1886, to Miss Ruth Ella Blanchard, of Chelsea. They have no children.

FRENCH, CHARLES LINDOL, M. D., of Clinton, is a native of Vermont, born in the town of Glover. February 24, 1845, son of Lindol and Nancy (McLellan) French. His grandparents re- moved from Keene, N.H., to Glover in 1804, which was thereafter the family home. He is of

C. L. FRENCH.

English ancestry. His education was acquired in district schools and at the Orleans Liberal Institute. He studied medicine first under the

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MEN OF PROGRESS.

tuition of Dr. F. W. Goodall, of Glover, afterward under Dr. Frank Bugbee, of Lancaster, N. H., and then at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia College, New York, where he graduated in March, 1869. Subsequently, in 1885, he took a post-graduate course at the Post Graduate Medical School in New York. He practiced in his native town from the time of his graduation until 1878, when he removed to Clinton, where he has been in active practice since. He is also on the staff of the Clinton Hospital. He has been a member of the Clinton Board of Health since its organization in 1885, and has served as its chairman and secretary. He was for some time president of the Orleans County (Vt.) Medical So- ciety, secretary for several years of the White Mountain Medical Society, an organization com- posed of a number of Vermont and New Hamp- shire societies, and is now a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Dr. French was married June 25, 1872, to Miss Nella Burleigh, of Concord, N.H. They have two children : Harold Lindol and Helen Elizabeth French.

GILBERT, LEWIS NEWTON, of Ware, woollen manufacturer, is a native of Connecticut, born in Pomfret, January 25, 1836, son of Joseph and Harriet (Williams) Gilbert. He is in the eighth generation in the line of John Gilbert, who came from Devonshire County, England, about 1630, and who was in Dorchester, Mass., January 18, 1635, made freeman of the Plymouth Colony in Decem- ber, 1638,-and elected deputy to the first general court assembled at Plymouth, June, 1639, from Cohannet (now Taunton). His education was acquired chiefly in the common schools of his native town till the autumn of 1849, when he went to Woodstock Academy, and later to an academy in Danielsonville, Conn. His training for active life was on his father's farm and in the business in which he is still engaged. The latter was begun in 1851, when at the age of fifteen he entered the counting-room of his uncle, the late Hon. George H. Gilbert, of Ware. Here he started as an office boy, and grew up with the busi- ness, working in and learning every detail of all the departments, till at the age of twenty-one he was given an interest in it. At that time the firm name of George H. Gilbert & Co. was taken, which held until 1868, when the firm was organ- ized as a corporation under the name of the

George H. Gilbert Manufacturing Company, with George H. as president and Lewis N. as treasurer. Upon the death of his uncle in 1869 Mr. Gilbert became president, which position he still holds. The company manufacture dress goods and Rannels; and its business has grown from four sets of machinery in 1851, when Mr. Gilbert entered the concern, to seven sets in 1857, when he be- came a partner, nineteen sets in 1868, and forty- seven sets at the present time. The capital stock of the company is now a million dollars. It em- ploys nine hundred and fifty persons, and manu- factures goods to the value of a million and a half

LEWIS N. GILBERT.

dollars per annum. In June, 1869, Mr. Gilbert was chosen a trustee of the Ware Savings Bank ; and in June, 1892, he was made its president, both of which offices he continues to hold. He has been and still is a director in other banks, manu- facturing corporations, and insurance companies. He has been one of the leading men of his town for years, and for the past fifteen years has served as moderator of its annual town meetings. In 1877 and 1878 he was a State senator, serving during his first term on the committees on public charitable institutions and on prisons, and the second term as chairman of the committee on manufactures, and a member of that on railroads.

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MEN OF PROGRESS.

He was for five years a member of the board of trustees of the State Primary School at Monson, three of which he was chairman of the board, ap- pointed first by Governor Washburn, and later by Governor Rice. In 1876 he was one of the board of managers for the State at the Centennial Ex- position in Philadelphia. In politics Mr. Gilbert is a Republican, and has served three years on the Republican State Central Committee. He was a delegate to the National Council of Congre- gational Churches held in Chicago in 1886, and has been chosen again a delegate to the above- named council to be held the present year (1895). lle belongs to the Masonic fraternity, member of Eden Lodge of Ware. He was married Decem- ber 21. 1864. to Miss Mary D. Lane, of Ware, daughter of the late Otis Lane, who for thirty years was treasurer of the Ware Savings Bank. They have no children.

GLEASON, CHARLES SHERMAN, M.D., of Ware- ham, is a native of Maine, born in the town of Oakland, February 8, 1865, son of Benjamin and Caroline V. (MeIntire) Gleason. He is a de- scendant of Thomas Gleason, who came from Eng- land to this country in 1760. His great-grand- father, Elijah Gleason, was born in Pomfret, Conn., in 1771. His grandfather, Bryant Gleason, a soldier of the War of 1812, was born in Water- ville, Me., in 1793; and his father, Benjamin Gleason, was born at Canaan, Me., March 8, 1828. Ile attended the district school until he reached the age of fourteen, when he entered the Oakland Iligh School, where he remained two years. He next received a commercial training at Oak Grove Seminary, Vassalborough, Me., then in 1884 en- tered the Maine Wesleyan Seminary at Readfield, Me .. and graduated there in 1888, and afterward took the regular course of the Boston University School of Medicine, receiving his degree in June, 1892. During the four years' course of the seminary he taught school several terms; and at other times he was farmer, mechanic, house painter, book agent, working at any occupation that he could find to earn money for his school expenses. He made his own way through the seminary and through the medical school, without financial aid from anybody. During the last two years at the Boston University he was resident physician at the Consumptives' Home in the Rox- bury District, Boston. Buying the business of

Dr. George H. Earle. he entered upon the regular practice of medicine in Wareham on the Ist of October. 1892, and has been actively engaged from that time. Beginning life with no capital but his energy, he is to-day a leading citizen in the town where he resides. He is a thinker and a worker. Amid the pressing demands of the largest practice in his vicinity he finds time to en- rich his mind in his library, and to keep in touch with important problems of the hour. He is a member of the Massachusetts Homeopathic Med- ical Society, of the Massachusetts Surgical and Gynæcological Society, of the Boston Homo-

CHAS. S. GLEASON.

pathic Medical Society, of the Hahnemann Soci- ety, and of the New England Hahnemann Asso- ciation. In March, 1895, he was elected a mem- ber of the Board of Health of Wareham.

GOWING, HENRY AUGUSTUS, of Boston, was born in Weston, August 2, 1834; died in Boston, December 14, 1894. He was a son of John Hill and Sophia Viles (Bigelow) Gowing, and on both sides from early New England stock. He was in the seventh generation from Robert Gowing, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1618, and settled in Dedham, Mass., in 1638, who signed the call and

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attended the meeting at Dedham which estab- lished what is held to have been the first free school in America ; and on the maternal side he was the great-great-grandson of Josiah Bigelow, of Weston, lieutenant in Captain Whittemore's militia company of artillery, which marched from Weston to Concord, April 19, 1775. After com- pleting his studies, he entered the wholesale dry- goods business. lle was a partner in the firm of Dodge Brothers at the outbreak of the Civil War, and thereafter was for many years a well-known figure in the business life of Boston. The firm of Dodge Brothers did a large and successful busi-

HENRY A. GOWING.

ness during and after the war, until 1871, when the Messrs. Dodge retired, and were succeeded by the firm of Gowing & Grew. This firm became Gowing, Grew, & Co. and later Gowing, Sawyer, & Co., and so continues at present. Aside from his regular business, Mr. Gowing for many years administered important trusts for several large estates; and he was for a long time a director of the State National Bank of Boston, He was a steadfast Republican, voting for Fremont for President, and was always actively interested in the welfare of his party and in the questions of the day. He was a member of the Boston Art Club, of the Historic Genealogical

Society, and of the Sons of the Revolution. In all the relations of life he was true to every duty. A thorough Christian gentleman, those who knew him best knew his worth. He married September 8, 1859, Miss Clara Elizabeth Patch, daughter of Dr. Franklin F. Patch, and had two children : Mary S. and Franklin P. Gowing : and one grand- child : Cleves Gowing Richardson.

GRADY, THOMAS BENJAMIN JOSEPH LEVI, of Boston, discoverer of the science of speech, prin- eipal and founder of the Boston Stammerers' Institute and Training School, was born near Halifax, N.S., March 15, 1847, son of Captain John W. and Mary Ann (McCoy) Grady. He is a descendant of Major Thomas B. Grady of the " clan Grady " of the north of Ireland, men noted for large stature, great strength, and long lived. His mother was a daughter of the Rev. William McCoy, known as the "sweet singer" of Nova Scotia, revered and loved by all in the community in which he lived, a son of a minister of the same name, and descended from the " clan McCoy " of the Highlands of Scotland. Thomas B. J. L., like his progenitors, is over six feet in height, weighing nearly three hundred pounds, and is one of the largest and strongest men in Boston. He attrib- utes his strength to farm life and exercise when a boy, as well as being well born, with, as a birth- right, a good set of digestive organs. He was edu- cated in the public schools, and also, on account of deafness, by private tutors. His father being in early life a seafaring man, as were all of the latter's brothers, he was inelined to the sea, but, being too deaf to hear orders, was unable to follow it. Turning therefore to other pursuits, he was ambitious to study for the ministry. Meanwhile, in the course of his studies, discovering the "seience of speech," or why human beings talk, he reduced the science to practice, and has ever since been "unloosing the stammering tongue," becoming widely known as "the stammerer's friend." He established the Boston Stammerers' Institute and Training School in 1880. His hope and desire is to live long enough to found a free institute and training school for all poor boys and girls afflicted in speech who are unable to pay for their relief. The late Bishop Phillips Brooks was mueh interested in this matter ; and through his help and influence the project was almost estab- lished, the plans laid, the amount necessary

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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 86

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