USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume II > Part 46
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cotton industry. Before his apprenticeship had ended he had resolved to emigrate to America, which seemed to him to present a greater field than England for the use of the new cotton machinery. At that time cotton manu- facturing in England was confined to a small section of Derbyshire, nor was it expected to increase rapidly in importance. Before the boy Slater entered to his apprenticeship, he asked Strutt if he considered it a permanent busi- ness, and the elder man replied : "It is not probable, Samuel, that it will always be as good as it is now, but I have no doubt it will always be a fair business if well managed."
The lad naturally accepted the prevailing opinion of the outlook in Eng- land, and eight years later when he read the advertisement of an American society, published in a Philadelphia newspaper, offering a reward for the invention of textile machinery to accomplish what Arkwright had done, he did not hesitate in his plan for crossing the ocean. The English government was guarding its industries with the most jealous care. The bitter sting of the recently ended Revolution rankled. No skilled mechanic was permitted to leave England for the New World. No machinery was shipped abroad. No person could take passage for the United States without submitting to a thorough search of person and belongings, and severe punishment awaited one who would attempt to smuggle knowledge of mechanisms or processes in any tangible form. So Samuel Slater kept his plans strictly to himself. Not even his mother and brothers learned of his intention until he was well at sea. He had neither drawing nor transcript model nor sample. He carried the precious knowledge in his head.
Reaching America, he became known to Moses Brown, that most enter- prising Quaker, founder of Brown University, and a man of most progressive ideas. The boy had written him, "I flatter myself I can give the greatest satisfaction in making machinery." He was invited to Providence, and Moses Brown showed him machines built in Pawtucket for his mill in that village. "These will not do," said the young Englishman. "They are good for nothing in their present condition, nor can they be made to answer." "Thee said," replied the elder man, "that thee could make machinery. Why not do it?" And Samuel Slater did, and with it equipped the first successful cotton mill in the United States. So successful, in fact, was the spinning machinery, that the thrifty owner regarding the output for the first year, commanded, "Thee must shut down thy wheels, Samuel, or thee will spin all my farms into cotton yarn." Some of this yarn sent to Strutt and Arkwright was pronounced as good as any of their own manufacture.
The problem of spinning cotton into yarn had been solved. But the power loom was yet to come into use, and weaving was still done by hand in the homes of the country people. This was a dominant reason for the selection
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of Webster, then a part of Oxford, as the site of a new mill, that a new and large area of farming country might be made available for cotton weaving as a home industry, the yarn coming from the Slater Mill.
In 1815, to meet an insistent demand, Samuel Slater erected at Webster the first woolen mill in America, for the manufacture of uniform cloth, and presently was making the cloth from which the uniforms of both United States Army and Navy were fashioned. Upon his death, ownership and man- agement passed on to his son, Horatio N. Slater, already a partner, who con- tinued his control of the business for forty-five years, until his retirement in 1888, in which long period it became one of the greatest textile manufactur- ing houses in the world.
Andrew O'Connor, Sculptor, 1874-Andrew O'Connor, sculptor of international fame, was born in Worcester, son of Andrew O'Connor, him- self a sculptor, with whom he studied from childhood. Many distinguished honors have come to the son, among them the second medal of the Paris Salon of 1906 and the first medal of 1928. He is a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. Much of his life has been spent abroad with a studio in Paris or in London. For some years he worked in a studio at Paxton, where he executed some of his best known works, including his famous equestrian Lafayette which stands in Baltimore.
Among his other best known works are the Central Porch, St. Barthol- mew's Church, New York; eleven marble statues for the Essex County- house, Newark, New Jersey ; bas-relief, library of J. Pierpont Morgan, New York; General Liscum Monument, Arlington Cemetery; General Thomas Monument, Tarrytown, New York; bronze statue General Lawton, Indian- apolis ; marble statue, General Lew Wallace, Capitol at Washington; and bronze statue of General Wallace at Crawfordsville, Indiana; monument to General John A. Johnson, St. Paul; original model, statue of Commodore Barry; original design, St. Bartholomew's doors and marble portrait of Edward Tuck, Luxembourg Museum, Paris; statue of Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois; Roosevelt Memorial, Glen View, Illinois ; bronze statue of Lafayette, Baltimore; statue of Lincoln, Royal Exchange, London; statue of Lincoln, Providence, Rhode Island; statue of Daniel O'Connell, Dublin, Ireland; and Mourning Woman, National Gallery, London.
In Worcester is the Spanish War memorial, a bronze statue of an Ameri- can soldier which stands in front of the Armory in the square where Salis- bury and Grove streets come together, and the bronze drinking fountain, the Boy and the Turtle, at Salem Square.
Frances Perkins, Sociologist and First Woman Member of Presi- dent's Cabinet, 1882-Frances Perkins (Mrs. Paul Wilson), sociologist, first woman member of the cabinet of the President of the United States,
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was born in Boston, but from infancy through her young womanhood was a resident of Worcester. She prepared for college in the Worcester schools and graduated from Mt. Holyoke in 1902. She pursued post-graduate courses in the University of Pennsylvania and at Columbia University, which conferred upon her the degree of Master of Arts.
Her first sociological experience was in her home city of Worcester. In 1910-12 she was executive secretary of the Consumers' League, New York ; in 1911, lecturer of sociology at Adelphia College; in 1912-17, executive sec- retary of the Committee on Safety, New York; and in this period conducted investigations for the New York State Factory Commission; in 1917-19 she was executive director of the New York Council of Organization for War Service; in the following two years was commissioner of the New York State Industrial Commission ; then for two years served as director of the Council on Immigrant Education ; was a member of the New York State Industrial Board from 1923, and its chairman from 1926 to 1929; and was commis- sioner of the New York State Industrial Commission until in 1933 she was named by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as his Secretary of Labor.
She is the author of Life Hazards from Fire in New York Factories, The Problem of Mercantile Fire Hasards, A Plan for Maternity Care, Women as Employers, and A Social Experiment under the Workmen's Com- pensation Jurisdiction.
Arthur Prentice Rugg, Chief Justice of the Massahusetts Supreme Court, 1862-Arthur P. Rugg was born in Sterling where his boyhood was passed on his father's farm. He graduated from Amherst College in 1883 and from the Boston University Law School in 1886, and was immedi- ately admitted to the bar. He established himself in Worcester, where he has ever since made his home. He became a law partner of the late John R. Thayer under the firm name of Thayer & Rugg, served as assistant district attorney and later as city solicitor. He was but forty-four years old when he was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and in 191I was made Chief Justice, which is not only the highest judicial office in Massachusetts, but is regarded as one of the highest in the country, so lofty has been the standard of this court from its inception, when Lemuel Shaw was its Chief Justice. Justice Rugg has written many opinions which are regarded by the bar as most valuable as well as scholarly interpretations of American law. The degree of Doctor of Laws has been conferred upon him by Harvard University, Boston University and Amherst and Williams col- leges. He is vice-president of the American Antiquarian Society and of the Colonial Sons of Massachusetts.
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Lucy Stone, Women's Suffrage Reformer, 1818-1893-Lucy Stone, as she was always known, even after her marriage to Henry B. Blackwell in 1855, was born in West Brookfield. She was of pioneer New England stock. Her grandfather, Colonel Thomas Stone, fought in the French and Indian War, was an officer in the patriot army of the Revolution, and in Shays' Rebellion in 1787 commanded a company of four hundred men.
From her girlhood Lucy Stone dedicated her life to the cause of woman's suffrage. It was with this end in view that she worked her way through Oberlin College in Ohio, graduating in 1847. That she might better interpret the Scriptures as bearing upon the subject of equal suffrage, she gave much of her college time to the mastery of Greek and Hebrew languages.
The first of her long series of lectures for her cause she delivered at Gardner, Massachusetts, soon after her graduation. In 1848 she lectured under the auspices of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, but always she took occasion to urge the rights of woman. She settled in New Jersey in 1857. From 1867 to 1882 she was a lecturer in the Woman's Suffrage Amend- ment campaign. She was a founder of the American Woman's Suffrage Association in 1869, was its president in 1872, and chairman of its executive committee from its establishment to 1889. In 1870-72 she was co-editor of the Woman's Journal, and was its editor-in-chief from 1872 until her death. Her husband, who had been a merchant in Cincinnati, and their daughter were associated with her in the publication. Her death occurred in Dor- chester, Massachusetts, where she had moved in 1869.
Miss Stone, or Mrs. Blackwell, was one of the great exponents of the movement which long since, though not until long after her death, resulted in the enfranchisement of the American woman. She ranked at the very top among the leaders of the cause to which she devoted all her long life.
Stephen Salisbury, Ist, Pioneer Worcester Merchant, 1746-1829; Stephen Salisbury, 2d, Civic and Business Leader, 1798-1884; Stephen Salisbury, 3d, Worcester's Great Benefactor, Who Founded and Richly Endowed the Worcester Art Museum, 1835-1905-The house of Salisbury occupied a most conspicuous and valuable place in the life of Worcester, from the day the first Stephen Salisbury, shortly before the Revolution, arrived from Boston to establish himself as a merchant, until the death of the third Stephen, last of the line in 1905. The great fortune which father, son and grandson accumulated with the passage of years will live on through the generations for the good of the community, in the endowment funds of important insti- tutions, and notably that of the Worcester Art Museum. The beautiful building on Salisbury Street and the magnificent art collection contained therein, recognized as one of the finest in America, the people owe almost
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exclusively to the princely bequest of $3,000,000 now grown to almost twice that great sum, the income of which has been spent wisely and discriminat- ingly by the trustees whom the donor, Stephen Salisbury 3d, himself named, and their successors.
Worcester owes much more than the Art Museum to the last of the Salis- bury family. He gave the municipality the land which was developed as Institute Park. On it he erected the replica of the old Norse Tower at New- port, Rhode Island. It was characteristic of him that when Boston's famous Tremont House was razed he bought two of the pillars of its monumental portico, and had them erected as monoliths in the park, where they still stand. He built the tower on Bancroft Hill, reproduction of a medieval English castle, whose lofty, graceful mass masonry is a landmark not only for Worcester, but for wide reaches of the countryside of central Worcester County. His benefactions to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute were many, among them the great laboratory building which bears his name. He gave the money with which an addition to Worcester City Hospital was erected. His support of other institutions and of charities were many.
The first Stephen Salisbury was born in Boston, and soon after reaching his majority moved to Worcester to establish a branch of the mercantile busi- ness of Samuel and Stephen Salisbury, importers of West India and English goods. The town was small, but was the center of a prosperous farming region, and the venture was profitable. The young merchants built a man- sion at Lincoln Square, where it stood for more than a century and a half, until its site was needed for the Worcester Boys Club Building, and it was moved to the garden of the mansion of the second Stephen Salisbury, at Institute Road and Lancaster Street. In the days preceding the Revolution, Stephen Salisbury declared himself one of the patriotic party, in spite of the fact that most of the aristocratic families were openly and stubbornly for the King.
The second Stephen graduated from Harvard College, and studied law. His interests were many. He was a director of the Worcester Bank for fifty-two years and its president for the last thirty-nine of them, and was president of the Worcester County Institution for Savings for twenty-six years until he resigned the office. He was president of the American Anti- quarian Society from 1854 until his death thirty years later. He served as selectman, representative to the General Court, State Senator and Presiden- tial Elector. He was an overseer of Harvard College, and a trustee of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology, and for years treasurer of its funds. He was the first president of the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science, now the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He was a
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director of the Worcester & Nashua Railroad from its organization, and for two years was its president. He played a conspicuous part in the upbuilding of Worcester's manufacturing industries. He built for Ichabod Washburn the first wire mill on Grove Street, and later, as the business grew, added to it, thus establishing the nucleus of the great North Works of the American Steel & Wire Company as they are today. He encouraged the manufacture of agricultural instruments by building the Court Mills at Lincoln Square, and the factory of the Ames Plow Company on Prescott Street. Later he erected large industrial buildings for rental to manufacturers. We mention only a few of his, Mr. Salisbury's interests and activities, to illustrate what manner of citizen he was.
Stephen Salisbury, 3d, followed closely in the footsteps of his father as an upbuilder of his native city. He graduated from Harvard, and traveled extensively in Europe, before beginning the study of the law which he pur- sued in the office of Dewey & Williams and at the Harvard Law School, where he received his degree of Bachelor of Laws. He was admitted to the bar in 1861.
In the winter of that year he passed six months in Yucatan as a guest of a Harvard classmate, David Casares, and became deeply interested in the Maya ruins, and in the descendants of the prehistoric race. In later years he revisited Yucatan, and traveled elsewhere in Mexico. He succeeded his father as president of the Worcester Bank and later was made president of the Worcester County Institution for Savings. He became president of the American Antiquarian Society in 1887, and held the office until his death. He was a member of various learned societies. He was a director of various railroads and other business enterprises. He was particularly interested in the development of the north end of Worcester. The farm bought by his grandfather included both sides of Salisbury Street, and part of this he developed as a high class residential neighborhood, and the broad area to the north abutting on Salisbury pond he gave as a park.
Mr. Salisbury's monument-one might call it the monument of the Salis- bury family-is the Worcester Art Museum. It was in 1896 that he gathered at his residence a group of men and women interested in art and told them he proposed to give the land and $100,000 for the establishment of a museum. Of the sum, $50,000 was to be the nucleus of a permanent fund, and $50,000 was to go toward the construction of a building. Nearly $50,000 was raised by public subscription, the work of building proceeded, and in May, 1898, the museum was thrown open to the public. Before his death Mr. Salisbury made other important contributions to the institution. Then, under his will, the museum came into the possession of the greater portion of the estate.
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Eli Thayer, Originator and Organizer of the Kansas Crusade, 1819- 1899-Eli Thayer was born in Mendon, attended the village school, and worked in his father's store and as a farm hand, until the opportunity came to continue his studies in Worcester. After a year he presented himself at Brown University and informed the authorities that he knew nothing of Latin or Greek, the fundamentals of admission in that day, but, if given the chance, would make up the conditions. He kept his word, and at the same time worked his way through college, laboring as a carpenter, wood-sawyer and gardener.
In 1847, after two years as a teacher at Worcester Academy he was made principal, and held the post for two years. He had conceived the plan of the establishment of a girl's school and college on a large scale and proceeded to build on Goat Hill, to the westward, of Worcester Main Street, a great stone building after the lines of a feudal castle, which stands today as it was when he opened it for the reception of pupils, and with the same name, the Oread. The institution was more or less of a success, but Mr. Thayer did not confine his activities to its direction. A consuming energy coupled with an alert and able mind led him into other fields. He held various city offices, served as representative in the State Legislature, was elected to Congress, and was a delegate from Oregon to Republican National Convention of 1860 which nominated Abraham Lincoln for President. He achieved some meas- ure of success as an inventor, and for a time engaged in the manufacture of a hydraulic elevator of his own design. But Mr. Thayer's undying fame rests upon his ardent and practical interest and participation in the cause of Anti- Slavery, and above all, his Emigrant Aid Company. He was in the inner councils of the great leaders-Horace Greeley, Charles Sumner, Charles Allen, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wilson and the others. The story of the furiously indignant reaction in the North to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise we have told in the chapter on the period immediately preceding the Civil War. Eli Thayer was the man who solved the problem of how to meet the South in the fight for or against slavery in the territories, the solu- tion of which was left to the wits of their people.
Mr. Thayer in his book, "The Kansas Crusade," tells of his inception of the idea of combatting the South through the medium of immigration, as follows: "During the winter of 1854 I was, for the second time, a repre- sentative from Worcester in the Legislature of Massachusetts. I had felt to some degree the general alarm in anticipation of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise but not the depression and despondency that so affected others who regarded the cause of liberty as hopelessly lost. As the winter wore away I began to have a conviction which came to be ever present, that some-
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thing must be done to end the domination of slavery. I felt a personal respon- sibility, and though I long struggled to evade the question, I found it to be impossible. I pondered upon it by day, and dreamed of it by night. By what plan could this great problem be solved? What force could be effec- tively opposed to the power that seemed to spread itself over the continent?
"After much and very careful study, I concluded that if this work could be done at all, it must be done by an entirely new organization, depending for success upon methods never before applied. This was an organized immi- gration, guided and guarded by a responsible business company, whose capital should precede the emigrants, and prepare the way for them by such invest- ments as should be best calculated to secure their comfort and protection. This emigration must also be of a kind before unknown, since it must, in this case, be self-sacrificing and voluntary, whereas all historical migrations had been either forced or self-seeking. To present this new method of bringing two hostile civilizations face to face upon the disputed prairies of Kansas in such a way as to unite in its support the entire Northern people of whatever parties, was the work next to be done. On this appeal must depend the future of our country.
"Then arose the important question. Was it possible to create such an agency to save Kansas? I believed the time for such a noble and heroic development had come ; but could hope be inspired, and the pulsations of life be started beneath the ribs of death? The projected plan would call upon men to risk life and property in establishing freedom in Kansas. They would be called upon to pass over millions of acres of better land than any in the disputed territory was supposed to be, land in communities where peace and plenty were assured, to meet the revolver and the bowie-knife defending slavery and assailing freedom. Could such men be found, they would certainly prove themselves to be the very highest types of Christian manhood, much above all other emigrants. Could such men be found?"
We of today do not need to be told that they were found, and that to Eli Thayer is given the credit for their response and for the efficient organi- zation which transported them in a steady flow to the disputed settlements. Their votes brought Kansas into the Union a free State.
Isaiah Thomas, Patriot, Journalist, Author, Publisher, 1749-1831- Isaiah Thomas, founder of the Massachusetts Spy, organ of the Revolution- ary patriots, founder of the American Antiquarian Society, author and pub- lisher of many important books, was born in Boston. His father, Moses Thomas, who was at various times soldier, sailor, trader and farmer, died when he was hardly three years old, leaving a destitute widow and five small children. By keeping a small shop she was able to maintain the family. But
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Isaiah, incredible though it may seem, after a few weeks at school, was apprenticed at the age of six years to Zachariah Fowle, a printer of single sheets, small tracts and pamphlets, described as "eccentric, irritable, effemi- nate and better skilled in domestic cares than the mysteries of the printing house." It reflects little to his credit that the first attempt of the child work- man at setting type was a licentious ballad.
The little boy, who required the elevation of a high bench in order to reach the case of type, was deprived of everything in the way of schooling and skilled instruction in the none too simple printers' art. He was com- pelled to rely wholly on his own resources. A tattered dictionary and ink- stained Bible were the entire office library. Two or three books, purchased with the saving of trifling perquisites of his employment, and a few volumes borrowed from friends were added to his collection of literature. He pro- ceeded to make up the deficiencies of education by persevering study, unas- sisted, until he had mastered sufficiently the elementary branches. Further- more, he acquired that very difficult mode of expression, of putting thoughts directly into type without the assistance of writing. He developed executive ability, too, and actually assumed the responsibility of management of the small business.
The young Thomas cherished an ambition to go to London, there to per- fect himself in his trade. After eleven years of apprenticeship with the incompetent Fowle, he left his employ and started for England. But he got no further than Halifax, and there, by some chance, he entered the employ of Anthony Henry, publisher of the Halifax Gazette, the organ of the govern- ment. Henry was a good-humored man, and indolent, and was glad to let his willing assistant assume the management of the newspaper, though it was not long before he regretted what proved to have been a serious lapse of judgment.
The boy had taken with him from Boston a keen patriotic interest in the cause of the Colonists in their disagreements with the royal government. The stamp act had been passed and put into effect, and the young American patriot proceeded to prepare an attack upon it, and print it in the Gazette, which, as has been said, was the government newspaper. Henry, as proprie- tor, was cited before the authorities, and escaped punishment only on the ground that the obnoxious article was written and inserted by his journeyman without his knowledge. But the offense was repeated, and Thomas himself was ordered to appear before the secretary of the Province, who repri- manded him and threatened serious punishment were the offense repeated. Not long afterward, the Gazette received from England an entire year's stock of paper, each sheet stamped as required by the new excise. By night, the
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