USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > Rural retrospect: a parallel history of Worcester and its Rural Cemetery > Part 9
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Located in Worcester was one of the largest and most successful contracting firms in the nation. There was hardly a state in the Union that did not have public buildings constructed by the well-known Norcross Brothers. An arbitrary choice from their long list of projects includes the Worcester City Hall, Albany City Hall, the Union Theo- logical Seminary in New York, buildings at Harvard, Yale and Ver- mont Universities, Marshall Field Building and Museum in Chicago, New York Life Insurance Company Building, Trinity Church in Boston, and the New York Public Library. In 1903 it was the Norcross Brothers who remodeled the White House in Washington.
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Two brothers, James A. and Orlando W., comprised the orig- inal firm. The palatial home of James was later converted into Fairlawn Hospital.
It was a day when Bigness was an objective, and a contagious one.
From an economic point of view this trend expressed itself in consolidations. The years from 1897 to 1904 constitute the most active period of business unification in the history of this country. At times, in the wake of the unscrupu- lous competition of the '70's and '80's, a corralling of resources had really been necessary for survival.
In Worcester this characteristic of the "turn of the century" brought several important consol- idations in banking and industry. In 1903 the Worcester Trust Com- pany absorbed five national banks and one safe deposit company, then in 1917 merged with the old Worcester National, the town's first bank. The swollen organization became known as Worcester Bank and Trust Company.
Ten envelope companies which had been developed from Russell Hawes' basic invention became constituent members of the United States Envelope Company in 1898.
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Main Street when Slater Building, Worces- ter's second modern office building, was being erected in 1907 by the Slater estate. Congressman Charles G. Washburn, who married the great-granddaughter of Samuel Slater, was one of the three trustees of the estate
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This corporation included three large Worcester firms-the business directly founded by Doctor Hawes; Logan, Swift, and Brigham En- velope Company; and Whitcomb Envelope Company.
When in 1899 America's steel and iron industries first felt the influ- ence of unification, Worcester's wire mills were not spared. In that year, the pioneering Washburn and Moen Company was purchased by American Steel and Wire. In turn, the latter became a part of the United States Steel Corporation in 1901. Philip Washburn Moen, son of Philip Louis, became vice president of the Worcester division. An article in The Iron Age of 1902 reported: "The general condition of the iron and steel business in Worcester is excellent. Everything is running full blast."
Crompton Loom and Knowles Loom were combined into one unit in 1897, making it the largest United States corporation in the business of manufacturing looms. In 1919 Norton Company merged its
Thomas B. Eaton President: 1912-1916
Waldo Lincoln President: 1917-1918
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abrasive manufacture with the machine production of Norton Grind- ing Company.
Before Norton Company's first president, Milton Prince Higgins, died in 1912, he also founded two other long-continuing companies- Worcester Pressed Steel Company and Riley Stoker Corporation. The first was organized in conjunction with his son, John Woodman Higgins, and the second with his son-in-law, R. Sanford Riley, an internationally-respected combustion engineer and inventor. Other notable new companies were the Morgan Construction Company (organized in 1891) which was making the fastest rolling mills in the world, and Heald Machine Company, which had existed for almost a hundred years in Barre before it moved to Worcester in 1903.
Worcester was more prosperous than it ever had been. So, too, was the nation. Thanks to the ironic compensations of two wars-the Spanish American War and World War I-the United States had
William Trowbridge Forbes President: 1918-1925
George T. Dewey President: 1925-1934
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progressed from its role as a debtor nation to the enviable position as the chief creditor government in the world.
The Spanish American War precipitated a policy of new Imperial- ism, leaving Porto Rico as a colony and Cuba as a protectorate of the United States. There soon followed the additional protectorates of Nicaragua, Haiti, and Santo Domingo, the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, the conquest of the Philippines, and the purchase of the Virgin
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View of corner of Salisbury Street and Park Avenue, long before it became one of the City's busiest intersections. Site of American Antiquarian Society is at upper left corner
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Islands. The Spanish American War also emphasized the need for the Panama Canal. This soon materialized, and with it, the Republic of Panama also under the protection of the United States.
In contrast, World War I was not pursued for the acquisition of new land or new power. It was an idealistic war, fought with almost an evangelical devotion. Out of all its sordid loss of life and time came the one redeeming consolation that through the experience, the United States had gained its final independence. This country stood at last as a world power, an economic unit, with no dragging financial obliga- tions across the seas. During the War, Americans had learned how hard they could work and how much they could earn. From that knowledge they made blueprints for a fabulous future in which mechanization could be fully unleashed.
Coinciding with the years of World War I was the intense, initial development of the automobile industry. Henry Ford had startled the world first by saying that he thought it would be good to pay work- men at least five dollars a day. Critics countered with the sarcastic comment: "Yes, it would also be nice to have it warmer in the winter and colder in the summer." Mr. Ford carried out his intentions, to their surprise and to the consternation of competitors, then stated his dream of producing automobiles not one by one, but ten by ten, and even hundreds by hundreds. In late life he once reminisced: "I announced one morning that in the future we were going to build only one model, that the model was going to be Model T. I re- marked," he continued with tongue in cheek, "'Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.'" As time proved, his competitors approved of that policy for Ford. But it was from just such experiences that the ideas for mass production were formulated.
George Crompton was one of Worcester's most voluble exponents of the new motorized vehicles. In fact, the Crompton Motor Com- pany, organized in 1900, manufactured a steam gasoline automobile designed by him. George and Charles Dewey, grandsons of Judge Dewey, claimed the distinction of owning the City's first "hot rod," and
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out in the section of Worcester known as Barbers, George Jeppson's automobiles were the center of attention for many motor enthusiasts.
The new cars forced the organization of hundreds of component and related industries. They also created an obvious demand for new roads. In 1900 all of the hard-surfaced roads in the country wouldn't even have linked New York and Boston. Most of the old roads were of dirt or gravel, cobblestone or brick-cut with deep gashes by the many trolley tracks which criss-crossed through the city and country toward innumerable destinations. Worcester's street cars had been powered by horses until the year of 1893 when electricity took over the job. In 1887 the several railway companies in the City consolidated as the Worcester Consolidated Street Railway Company. Charles B. Pratt, former Mayor for three terms, served as its president for many years.
There were also many suburban trolley lines, one of them going the full distance to Boston. Another is remembered as the Dummy Line. Built in 1873-the first narrow-gauge line in Massachusetts-it ran from the Depot to the Lake in a trip that took a half-hour.
Gradually Worcester's streets were being paved, but not because of any pressure from the automobile owners. Goodness knows, with all their noise and commotion they were unpopular enough without pressing for undue advantages! It was the bicycle rider, surprisingly, who crusaded for smoother streets.
It was not until about 1905 that the first filling station was built in Worcester. Earlier, every automobile owner had had to be his own repair and maintenance man, as well as his own gasoline attendant. For a while this first station had a unique monopoly, but in a few years, like a rash, these stations broke out all over the City.
One thing certain, Worcester's new transportation methods did away forever with the curfew. Street lighting became a necessity for all streets, not just for the principal ones. In 1914 the City's street- lighting system was wholly effected, and pompously celebrated by a parade which included seventy mayors and ex-mayors from neighbor- ing cities and 400 automobile floats.
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This parade swept up Main Street and past the new City Hall. (It had had to be built to accommodate the enlarged City depart- ments.) Special guests at the ceremony in which this building had been dedicated in 1898 were almost one hundred men who were all over seventy years of age. These grey-haired patriarchs were the voters of 1848, the year in which Worcester had become a City. Calvin Foster alone survived to represent the first City Council. Burton W. Potter was the orator of the day. After innumerable preliminary speakers, he gave a speech that fills sixteen long pages of printed type. General Augustus B. R. Sprague, a hero of the Civil War, was the Mayor who officiated at the dedication service. For two years he had served as Mayor, after eighteen years during which he had introduced many long-lasting prison reforms in his office as Sheriff.
Mayors had come and gone, but in the City Hall one seemingly permanent official remained as Mayor's clerk. It was the same man for thirty years, through the terms of twelve Mayors-Charles H. Benchley, the father of the late humorist, Robert Benchley.
To America's everlasting credit, during the years of its greatest growth came its greatest reforms. At no time in American history was there such a strong spirit of reform as from 1900 to 1915. The scope was wide. Reform was local and personal; it also even extended to the point where it became governmentally controlled. The economic structure of the nation had grown, like Topsy, without restriction or interruption. But from 1880 on, Government began to exert various disciplines. Control extended from transportation to public utilities, from foodstuffs to banking. In 1912 the Government even entered the express business when it announced its parcel post system. There were Acts enacted by Congress concerning wages, hours, women, children, safety, and health, and amendments to the Constitution giving us an income tax, popular election of senators, and prohibition. Hardly a phase of life was left untouched.
Many of the social reforms were initiated and supported by women. This represented a shift of interest from the time in the 1870's and 1880's when American women had herded into bands with the one
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The Salisbury Lot
objective of pursuing culture. The new emphasis rested on civic problems, an awareness of which had come when women had first entered the business world. This "going to work" enthusiasm approxi- mated a mass movement in the 1890's. By 1900 at least one quarter of the women in Worcester were working outside of their homes.
It was these women who after their enfranchisement in 1920 helped to effect 400 laws pertaining to social welfare.
Eminent and capable Worcester women in this period included Katharine Chapin Higgins, wife of Milton Prince Higgins. A pioneer in the organization known as the Parent-Teachers Association, she traveled extensively to all parts of the country, making innumerable speeches and organizing hundreds of branches for this association of parents and educators. Another prominent woman was the sister of
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Doctor Homer and Thomas Hovey Gage, Mabel C. Gage, who was commissioned by the U. S. Government to establish recreational cen- ters for the soldiers in World War I. The two Mrs. Gages were also notably active for many years in the promotion of various relief and charitable agencies.
It was at this time that the name of Alice Morse Earle (a Worcester woman) was familiar in many households. Her books were written with authentic New England backgrounds. Mary Coes, another Worcester native, was the distinguished Dean of Radcliffe College.
Worcester men serving in Congress during the years of historic reforms were Charles Grenfill Washburn (one of the seven sons of Charles Francis Washburn), John R. Thayer, and Rockwood Hoar. Although Mr. Thayer, an eminent lawyer, was a Democrat in a strongly-supported Republican area, he could always count on many Republican votes. One of the most popular men in Massachusetts and national life, he was twice re-elected to Congress before being succeeded by Rockwood Hoar, a Republican.
Mr. Hoar was notified of his nomination to Congress on the very day his father, George F. Hoar (a United States Senator for twenty- seven years), was buried in 1904. Rockwood Hoar lived to serve only one year, dying when fifty-one years of age at just the beginning of what promised to be an even more brilliant career.
In Worcester the concern for social reform expressed itself best in conjunction with the contagion of "Bigness." Eighteen charitable organizations were consolidated into one unit known as the Welfare Federation in 1920. Doctor Charles Lemuel Nichols, the noted physician and antiquarian, was its founder and president for many years.
Worcester's most significant cultural reform came in 1898 with the public opening of the Worcester Art Museum. Two years pre- viously its organization had been initiated by Stephen Salisbury III in a meeting at his home with forty guests. At that time he had an- nounced a donation of land and a gift of money to make possible its establishment.
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This Art Museum was a reflection of the nation-wide yearning for beauty-a tacit recognition that Art, too, must have its role. Even the building itself was a culmination of a reform that had been evolving in architectural realms. Community building had progressed from the Colonial, Greek Revival, to the Victorian and Picturesque eras. Now cities began to erect buildings for relationship to one another, with pattern and design. Sensitive architects created what they called an American Renaissance. They had suffered from the collapse of taste coincidental with the Industrial Revolution. Now they were deter- mined to pick up the pieces and put them together more artistically.
One of the forty persons at the meeting in which the Museum was incorporated was James P. Hamilton, who later was named one of the three executors of the Salisbury fortune, the largest estate ever to be probated in Worcester County. It was Mr. Hamilton who became president of the Worcester National Bank in 1905 when Stephen III died leaving no descendants but vast and generous benefactions as memorial to his name.
Worcester would never again be the same without a Salisbury.
This was a period like no other in Worcester history. In the fraternal years that preceded it, people had looked at each other in first appraisal. This time they had looked at themselves too. In neither case had the evaluation been too complimentary, but at least it had brought a resolve to make their bigger city a better city.
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Tradition-Heavy Years
CHAPTER X
IF ALL OTHER RECORDS OF WORCESTER were lost, and only those of Rural Cemetery and its trustees preserved, it still would be possible to reconstruct an astonishingly satisfactory history of the City.
In the direction of Cemetery affairs there has been almost a straight line of continuity from some of Worcester's earliest families. In the '70's and '80's there was a slight deviation in this respect, with trustee- ships spreading over a broader area. But it was a temporary tendency. Even the terms of office were temporary, lasting only briefly for a year, or possibly two or three.
In contrast, in the years edging 1900, fifteen trustees were elected whose terms averaged more than thirty years. It became customary for Death to be the only release from trusteeship of Rural Cemetery. Even then, Rural Cemetery inevitably claimed its men.
They were men with familiar names-names like Lincoln, Rice, Paine, Kinnicutt, and Curtis, representing families that had been part of the town from its beginning. Appropriately they were named the guardians of Worcester's past.
Waldo Lincoln, son of Daniel Waldo Lincoln and grandson of Governor Levi Lincoln, served for thirty-two years on Rural's Board. Like his two family predecessors, he was also a president. At the same time, Waldo Lincoln was president of the American Antiquarian Society, earning for it a tremendous nation-wide prestige during his twenty years of office. During this time the building on Salisbury Street, made possible by a bequest of Stephen Salisbury, was erected.
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Mr. Lincoln had married a daughter of Doctor George Chandler, and in his line of ancestry were the Waldo, Lincoln, Fiske, and Merrick families. With such a background, it's no wonder that he became interested in genealogy. From that interest developed the prodigious task of compiling the Waldo and Lincoln family histories, both valuable additions to genealogical lore.
Two other descendants of Rural presidents who became trustees were Chandler Bullock (grandson of Governor Alexander H. Bullock) and George T. Dewey (son of Judge Francis Henshaw Dewey). Mr. Bullock was named general counsel for the State Mutual Life Assurance Company shortly before becoming Rural's trustee. George Dewey, who made business and corporation law a specialty, was named Rural's president in 1925.
As did Waldo Lincoln and Edward Davis, Nathaniel Paine carried the traditional family line of office down from the original roster of 1838. Mr. Paine's father had been a cousin of Frederick William Paine, who was part of Rural's history for almost thirty years. Nathaniel Paine exhibited a surprising mixture of characteristics. Extremely methodical, as testified by his career as cashier of City Bank for forty- one years, he was also intensely interested in all things literary and artistic. Worcester folk had a way of combining these talents by naming him treasurer of numerous organizations-the Antiquarian Society, the Horticultural Society, and even Rural Cemetery. His long service at the bank was recognized by his election as president in 1898; then after the bank merger in 1903, he became a vice pres- ident of Worcester Trust Company. He was Rural's trustee for thirty-one years.
Another trustee, Lincoln Kinnicutt, was a nephew of Thomas Kinnicutt, the very same State Senator who originally named the Cemetery and pushed its bill of incorporation through the Legislature. Lincoln Kinnicutt, with Alexander De Witt as partner, for many years conducted Worcester's largest private banking and brokerage business.
Roger Freeman Upham, a descendant of one of Worcester's first proprietors, served twenty-six years for Rural. This term coincided
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in part with his forty-five years as officer-secretary, treasurer, and president-of Worcester Mutual Fire Insurance Company. Thomas B. Eaton, Rural's president succeeding Edward L. Davis who died in 1912, was the last male descendant of eight generations of New England Eatons. One of his ancestors had been Worcester's first lawyer. Active in banking circles, it was Mr. Eaton who was credited with the consolidation of several Worcester banks in 1903. Like Mr. Upham, he was Rural's trustee for twenty-six years.
Whether by design or coincidence, on Rural's Board were de- scendants of Worcester's two earliest families, Philip Curtis and William E. Rice-Curtis of the attempted settlement and Rice of the permanent settlement. Philip Curtis was first a vice president of Richardson Manufacturing Company, makers of agricultural ma- chinery, and later an officer of Baker Box Company. William E. Rice had already made industrial history in Worcester by his leader- ship in various wire-making concerns.
Another reminder of Worcester's industrial pioneering was George Crompton, whose ancestors had developed the power loom in one of Worcester's first factories.
Financial solidity of Rural's affairs was represented by the Board membership of Myron Converse. His grandfather had settled on a Lincoln Street farm early in the nineteenth century, and there Myron Converse lived all of his life. When seventeen, he had answered an advertisement in the Spy for a job in the Five Cents Savings Bank. Although in 1927 he had been promoted to the presidency of the bank, succeeding Chandler Bullock, Myron Converse never forgot the thrill of that first job-polishing the doors of a new bank vault.
Business in those days was done so casually that six weeks passed before it even occurred to anyone that the new boy should be paid. But everyone, including the president, Elijah Stoddard, knew the young Converse lad was around. Mr. Stoddard could not always remember Myron's name, but he often asked for the "boy who could print." Myron Converse, it seems, was the only person in the bank who could type, and it was because of his skill that the first typewriter was bought for the bank.
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In addition to banking, to Rural Cemetery, and his farm on Lincoln Street-where for the children of Worcester there was always an open gate-Myron Converse concentrated chiefly on the welfare of the Horticultural Society. Largely because of Mr. Converse's leadership, this society's building was erected on Elm Street in 1923.
Rural's traditional "right of succession" was no better exemplified than in the case of Benjamin Thomas Hill. He inherited not only his father's prerogative as trustee but also his father's office as secretary and treasurer of the Cemetery. He served for twenty-seven years in this capacity and as a trustee. The "Benjamin Thomas" of his name had been given to him in deference to Judge Benjamin Franklin Thomas, Isaiah Thomas' grandson. One of Worcester's most colorful characters, Mr. Hill never married. Most of his free time was spent in collecting clippings and pictures pertaining to Worcester's history. He became quite famous for his hand-illuminated collections of antiquarian records.
There has scarcely been a time when there has not been a judge on Rural's Board. In these tradition-heavy years, Judge William Trow- bridge Forbes was the judicial representative. For seven years he was president, for fourteen years a trustee. His wife, the former Harriette Merrifield, was a daughter of the contractor who contributed so much to Worcester in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Mrs. Forbes became as well known and well loved for her work as an author as she later did for her distinctive role as the mother of Worces- ter's Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Esther Forbes.
Judge Forbes represents an unusual exception in Rural's history. He was buried in a family plot in another cemetery, not at Rural.
A canny choice for Rural trustee was James Draper. His Blooming- dale Nurseries were widely known in all parts of New England. For twenty-five years he was one of the most prominent members of the Worcester County Agricultural Society, a founder of the Massachusetts Fruit Growers' Association and a member of the Park Commission for the City of Worcester. He later extended his business to include the manufacture of drain and sewer pipe. With his unusually broad
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Corner of Grove and Salisbury Streets, where the Armory now stands. In this house Charles, the son of Anthony Chase, was born. Here also once lived the Rev. Aaron Bancroft and his family
knowledge of all things horticultural, Mr. Draper gave invaluable advice for Rural's landscape planning and planting.
Always in Rural's history there has been some one trustee who has taken an intense, personal interest in the Cemetery's supervision. First it had been Frederick William Paine, then it was John Lovell for twenty years, then Mr. Draper. In 1905 his fellow-trustees wisely named Mr. Draper manager, with the superintendent, William F. Bryant, reporting to him. This arrangement unfortunately did not last long, for Mr. Draper died in 1907.
There were several men who were a part of Rural's story who were not trustees. George E. Smith was one of them. For four years he was secretary and treasurer. Charles A. Chase, another, served as auditor of the Cemetery's financial affairs for almost twenty years. Mr. Chase was identified with all of Worcester's banking institutions, especially the Worcester County Institution for Savings of which he was officer and president for many years. A serious student, Mr. Chase contributed much of value to Worcester's historical resources. At one time he wrote a complete history of the City, and in 1904 he compiled the centennial book for the old Worcester Bank.
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