USA > Maine > Genealogical and family history of the state of Maine, Volume I > Part 62
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(II) Leander Abner, youngest son of Abner and Frances (Thompson) Dow, was born in Baldwin in 1832, and died in May, 1895. He was a farmer for a number of years, and then moved to Gorham, Maine, where he conducted a meat market. He married Mary Ella Haven, of Hiram, Maine, daughter of Captain Haven, who was the father of three other children, namely : Abbie, married James Foss and had children : Clara, deceased; Eva, deceased ; Herbert, married Nettie Clark, of Hiram, Maine; Noah, married Nellie Lord, of Cor- nish, Maine. Annie, the only survivor, mar- ried Richard Haley; now living in Sebago, Maine; no children. Octavus, the only son, served in the civil war, was captured at Port Royal and died in Libby prison. Children of Mr. and Mrs. Dow: I. Phoebe, died in youth. 2. Hattie, married William A. Foss, of Ra- leigh, Massachusetts. 3. Nellie, married Fred C. Googins, manager of the Stockholm Lumber Company, of Stockholm, Maine. 4. Fred T., see forward. 5. Laura, mar- ried Lyman Perley, of Rowley, Massachu- setts.
(III) Fred T., the only son of Leander A. and Mary Ella (Haven) Dow, was born in Baldwin, July 23, 1867. He was instructed in the rudimentary branches in the local schools of Gorham, and graduated in the engineering department of the University of Maine in 1890. After graduation, he went with the
Orono Pulp and Paper Company to install their plant, subsequently going into a machine shop in Old Town, Maine. In 1891 he went to the West Indies to conduct a school for colored people after the plan of the Hampton Institute in Virginia, founded by philanthropic Englishmen of Birmingham. In 1892 he went with the General Electric Company of Lynn as a draughtsman. From here he went to the state of Washington as instructor in the Agricultural College and School of Science at Pullman. In 1896 he re-engaged with the Gen- eral Electric Company at Schenectady, New York, and was soon promoted to be foreman of the switchboard department, and managed the standardization of switchboards in the draughting department. While here he aided in designing about three thousand new panels and switchboards. He worked on the plan for an electro hydraulic and steam plant, the largest ever built, and numerous steam and electric plants. On account of poor health, he came to Bangor, Maine, in 1901, as a con- sulting and designing engineer. He designed and installed for F. W. Ayer, of Bangor, a log carrier three thousand feet long, between Chamberlain and Eagle lakes. This carrier has a capacity of a million feet of logs daily. In 1904 he made a survey of the Moosehead lake region for the Kennebec Water Power Company. He prepared and originated plans for the better utilization of the water power of the Penobscot river, between Bangor and Old Town. He is a Republican. He married Marion Antoinette, daughter of Captain George W. and Sarah (Treat) Reed, of North Bucksport, Maine, September 4, 1903, and they have: Ruth Haven, William Reed, James Treat and Isabelle Marion. Captain George W. Reed was killed by the British when they came up the Penobscot in 1812. The Reeds came from Maryland, and were a seafaring family.
DOW The following sketch deals with Henry Dow, of Watertown, Massa- chusetts, 1637, the earliest settler of the name in the New World, and a line of his descendants. The Dows from the earliest times have borne an enviable reputation for energy, probity, industry and patriotism, and have contributed much to the prosperity of the nation. Fifty-five enlistments in Massachu- setts regiments during the revolution are cred- ited to Dows. On account of the Dows of this line being Quakers in revolutionary times, none of them were then soldiers.
(I) John Dow, the earliest known progeni-
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tor of the family of Dow of which this article treats, born in Tyler, Norfolk county, Eng- land, in 1520, died in July, 1561, between the seventh of the month, the date of his will, and the twenty-third, when it was presented for probate. From that document it is in- ferred that he left three children: Thomas, John and Edith; and two brothers, William and Thomas.
(II) Thomas, eldest child of John Dow, of Tylner, was afterward of Runham in the same county. The name of his wife was Margaret. To Thomas and Margaret were born two sons, Henry and Christopher ; and two daugh- ters, one of whom married Stephen Farrar, and the other a man named March Christo- pher, and had nine children.
(III) Henry, eldest child of Thomas and Margaret Dow, lived at Runham, where he died in December, 1612, or January, 1613. He married Elizabeth , by whom he had Thomas, Henry, Edward, Mary, Frances, and William, all of whom must have been young when the father died.
(IV) Henry (2), second child of Henry ( I) and Elizabeth Dow, was born in Runham, about 1608. He married, February 1I, 1631, Joan, widow of Roger Nudd, of Ormsby, in the same county. Six years later he applied for permission to emigrate to America, was examined April II, 1637, and was granted license to depart to these shores, the docu- ment being entitled: "The examination of Henry Dowe, of Ormsby, in Noff, husband- man, aged 29 years, and Joane, his wife, aged 30 years, with four children, and one servant, Ann Maning, aged 17 years, are desirous to pass into New England, to inhabitt." They settled in Watertown, Massachusetts, where Henry Dow was admitted freeman, May 2, 1638. He removed to Hampton, New Hamp- shire, in the latter part of 1643 or early in 1644, having previously bought of John Saun- ders a dwelling house, and several tracts of land for a farm. This homestead remained in the possession of his lineal descendants till after the death of Olive Dow, of the sixth generation, daughter of John, in 1854, when it was sold and passed into other hands. Henry Dow was a man who possessed the qualities of leadership, as is shown by his official rec- ord. He was selectman in 1651 ; deputy from Hampton to the general court of Massachu- setts in 1655-56; and appointed with two others in 1658 to examine and record all land grants and highways. This last work was in- terrupted by his death, April 21, 1659. Joane, or Jane, Dow died and was buried in Water-
town, June 20, 1640. Henry married ( sec- ond) in 1641, Margaret Cole, of Dedham, Massachusetts, who was dismissed thence to Watertown church in 1643. She survived him and married (second) October 23, 1661, Richard Kimball, of Ipswich. The children of Henry Dow by his first wife were: Thom- as, Henry, an infant and Joseph; by the sec- ond wife: Daniel, Mary, Hannah, Thomas and Jeremiah.
(V) Sergeant Joseph, third son of Henry (2) and Joane or Jane Dow, was the first of the family born in this country, the place of his birth being Watertown, and the date March 20, 1639. He settled in that part of Hampton now known as Seabrook. He seems to have been active in the controversies grow- ing out of land claims under conflicting char- ters, having been appointed in behalf of the town to represent the inhabitants of Hamp- ton upon that subject before the royal council. He was also otherwise concerned in the pub- lic affairs of the little community in which he lived. Although like his older brother, "Captain" Henry Dow, Joseph was at one time connected with the military service of the colony. He later associated himself with the Friends or Quakers. He was then about thirty-four years old, and was among the earlier converts of the mission to this coun- try of George Fox, the founder of the sect. With that society this line of the family re- tained its connection through several genera- tions, or until it was severed by the withdraw- al of General Neal Dow. Joseph was one of those who suffered from the persecutions to which the Quakers of his day were subjected, but his persistency in demanding his rights not only led to his receiving some recompense for his injuries, but to the discomfiture of the governor of the province and the better treat- ment thereafter of the Quakers of the vicin- ity. In 1701 he was one of the trustees to whom the land was conveyed in behalf of "all those Christian people, called Quakers, living in Hampton, to seat a meeting-house there- on." Two years later, April 7, 1703, he died at the age of sixty-four years. He married, December 17, 1662, Mary, daughter of Will- iam and Mary ( Moulton) Sanborne, of Hamp- ton, and they had twelve children: Joseph, John, Mary, James, Hannah, Henry, Jeremiah, Josiah, Thomas, Charity, Samuel and Aaron.
(VI) Josiah, eighth child and sixth son of Sergeant Joseph and Mary (Sanborne) Dow, born in Hampton (Seabrook), July 2, 1679, died April 18, 1718, when only thirty-nine years old. He lived in that part of Seabrook
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called "New Boston." September 22, 1710, were published the intentions of marriage of Josiah Dow and Mary, daughter of James and Elizabeth Purington, of Salisbury, who were married November 7, 1710. She was a de- scendant of the third generation from Robert Purington, who was a landholder in Ports- mouth in 1640 and 1657. The children of this union were: Winthrop, Abraham (died young), Abraham, Elizabeth and Anna.
(VII) Abraham, third son and child of Jo- siah and Mary (Purington) Dow, was born May 2, 1715, and was left fatherless before he was three years old. He, like his pro- genitors, was a farmer, but became quite prominent among the Friends as a preacher, and lived to be sixty-nine years old, dying in 1784. His will was proved February 18, 1784. He married Phebe, born June 19, 1715, daugh- ter of John and Abial (Marston) Green, of Hampton.
(VIII) Jedediah, second son of Abraham and Phebe (Green) Dow, born October 30, 1740, or 1741, died in Weare, New Hamp- shire, May 10, 1826, aged eighty-five. About 1772 he moved to Weare and settled on lot 35, range 5. There he built a log house in what was then a wilderness, where he cleared a farm. To the family vocation of farming, Jedediah added that of blacksmithing. He was in the vigor of manhood when the revolu- tionary war broke out. His life, with that of his father, who at the inception of that struggle was sixty years of age, covered more than a century of New England history, many incidents of which he related to his grandson, Neal Dow, and which the latter relates in his book, "Reminiscences of Neal Dow." One day Jedediah Dow was walking across a field when his dog seized his coat and began pull- ing him back in so strange and unaccountable a way that he yielded his will to that of his dog and returned to his home. In making that retreat he turned and saw an Indian with a gun, move from behind a rock by which he would have passed but for the strange conduct of his dog. He always afterward believed that the animal saved his life. One evening, when the shades of night were first closing around him, he was returning from the woods, walking with his head down, his ax under one arm, and his hands in the pockets of his coat. Suddenly his hat was snatched from his head, and he saw confronting him in the narrow path a huge bear, standing on his hind feet, displaying a wicked row of glittering teeth. Retreat was impossible, had he wished it, and there was nothing for it but to fight it out
with no quarter to either combatant. Mr. Dow was a powerful man, and an experienced woodman, skilled in the use of an ax, but his quick and powerful blows delivered by that formidable weapon were for a time parried by the bear. At last the edge of the axe dis- abled one of the brute's paws, and instantly another blow on the head brought him down. Afterwards the end was easy. The log cabin of Mr. Dow was succeeded by a large and excellent farm house where he spent the even- ing of his days in the family of his daughter Mary. This house was not far from the Quaker church where he worshiped. Near the site of the old church repose the remains of Mr. Dow and his wife, their graves marked only, as was customary with the early Friends, by simple mounds of unhewn stones. Mr. Dow was an industrious, prudent, God-fearing man, and a good citizen. He possessed the respect and confidence of his townsmen, who elected him to the office of selectman. The name of his first wife is not known; she was killed by lightning a few days after her mar- riage. He married (second) Dorcas Neal, born June 1, 1740, died May 18, 1810. Their children were: Mary, Josiah, Ruth, Dorcas, Abraham, Jedediah and Jonathan.
(IX) Josiah (2), eldest son and second child of Jedediah and Dorcas (Neal) Dow, was born in Seabrook, September 27, 1766, and was taken by his parents to Weare when he was about six years old. "There, sur- rounded by such influences as may be inferred from what has been written," writes his son, "he lived until he was twenty-four. He was about nine years old at the outbreak of the revolution, and to his last day remembered well the excitement attending many of the events of that war. A company of militia on its way to Boston, and which afterwards par- ticipated in the battle of Bunker Hill, camped near his father's house. Some of his rela- tives were among them, and they took from him the bullets he had been casting, together with the bullet-mold and what uncast lead he had. He never admitted to his son that he was intentionally furnishing ammunition for 'carnal warfare,' but Quaker and son of a Quaker, though he was, as a boy he regretted that he had not lost by the militia a sufficient number of bullets to serve his patriotic neigh- bors through the battle." In his earlier days game of many kinds abounded in the forests, among such being the wild turkey, to hunt which was his chief recreation. The son of a farmer on a backwoods farm, his early life was rude and laborious, but he had the requi-
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site courage and determination to improve his condition, and the opportunity offering, being fond of reading, he qualified himself to dis- charge all the duties of a good citizen with advantage to society and credit to himself. In stimmer he was an industrious worker on the farm of his father; in winter he taught a school, in which, however, were imparted only those branches that country boys and girls of that day were expected to acquire. In 1790, soon after attaining his majority, becoming satisfied that it would be wise for him to seek another field of employment, he left Weare and moved to Falmouth, Maine, a town then adjoining Portland, and of which the latter had been a part until set off in 1786. Here he lived for about five years in a house still standing on the banks of the Presumpscot river, about five miles from Portland, just be- yond the covered bridge on the Blackstrap road. He brought with him to his new home but little more than good health, a strong con- stitution, and those industrious habits and simple, frugal tastes which were the natural outgrowth of parental and other influences which surrounded him in the home of his boy- hood. But with what he had he engaged in carrying on in a small way, with a brother- in-law who had preceded him to Falmouth, the tanning business, his leisure time in win- ter being employed in teaching school. After living at Falmouth six years he married and moved to Portland, where he and his wife began housekeeping. He continued the tan- ning business and succeeded so well at it that four years after settling in Portland he built a more comfortable house than he had for- merly occupied, and there he and his wife passed the remainder of their lives. He re- tained his interest in the tanning business as long as he lived. In it he accumulated a com- petence sufficient for all his wants and tastes. His judgment in matters of business was sound, and often sought by his townsmen. He was for many years, from its incorporation in 1824, a director in the Merchants' Bank of Portland, resigning the position when the in- firmities of age made it impracticable for him to attend to its duties. He was also in the directorate of other business corporations. Necessarily somewhat isolated during the lat- ter part of his life, because of his age, he nevertheless retained his interest in current events until within a few weeks of his death. Put in possession of the facts bearing on any given business problem, he drew his conclu- sions from them clearly and with sound judg- ment almost to the last. He held some of-
fices, accepted from a sense of duty as burdens of which he should bear his part rather than from any desire for place or notoriety, to which he was always averse. He always took interest in political matters, voted at every presidential election, and, probably, at all others down to the first election of Lincoln. In his party affiliations he was in turn a Fed- cralist, National Republican, Whig, Free Soil- er and Republican. He was an carnest anti- slavery man and was actively interested in the "underground railroad," by means of which fugitive slaves, not a few of whom reached Portland in vessels from southern ports and otherwise, were taken to points where they were not likely to be captured. His home was always an asylum for such of them as needed food and temporary shelter while waiting to be escorted farther toward the north star of freedom. He was a well- read man, his favorite works being the Bible, Shakespeare, and Pope's Essay on Man. With these he was thoroughly familiar and always ready with apt quotations from either. He was clear, concise, and strong in conversation, and quick at repartee. He was a remarkably vigorous, active, and athletic man; and with his physical strength possessed also a strong will and great self-control. He died June I, 1861, at the age of ninety-four years and nine months. In all his life neither his personal character nor his business integrity was ever questioned by so much as a breath of suspi- cion. He has always possessed sound health, having scarcely a sick day in his whole life, but after he was eighty years of age he fell on the ice and broke his hip, and was con- fined for several months to his bed, and never so far recovered as to be able to walk with- out lameness, though long after this he was about, attending to ordinary affairs. No more loving father, no more upright and honorable man, or truer Christian and patriot ever lived. A Friend, descended from a long line of Friends, his life always conformed to their rules, which treat this world as a vestibule to a future life. He never for a moment wavered in his fidelity to truth, and the consistency of his life and conversation was entirely without stain.
He married, February 3, 1796, Dorcas Al- len, born in Falmouth, August 28, 1773, died in Portland, July 8, 1851, aged seventy-eight years. She was the sixth of the seven chil- dren of Isaac and Abigail (Hall) Allen, of Falmouth. (See Hall V.) Hatevil Hall, the bride's grandfather, then ninety-six years of age, was one of the signers of the marriage:
Neal Dow -tp
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certificate. She was of slight frame, and ap- parently not strong, but was blessed with good health until her last sickness. A few years before her death she met with an accident, resulting in a broken hip and other injuries, and she was thereafter a great sufferer, but she bore all with heroic fortitude and christian patience. She was for her time well educated, fond of reading, possessed of strong common sense and sound judgment. She was a trust- ing christian woman, self-reliant and deter- mined in all that she believed to be right, im- pressing her character upon those with whom she came in contact. For more than a half century she proved to her husband a faithful wife and helpmeet, a wise counsellor and trusted friend. Three children were born of this marriage: Emma, Neal, who receives extended mention below, and Harriet. Emma, born in 1800, married Neal D. Shaw, of Bar- ing, Maine, and died in 1851. Harriet, 1806, was an invalid from early life, and died in I869.
(X) Neal, second child and only son of Tosiah and Dorcas ( Allen) Dow, was born in Portland, March 20, 1804. As soon as he was old enough he was sent to a "dame's" school, as a school taught by a woman was then called, and after attending three terms at schools of this class, he was promoted to a "master's" school. Subsequently he was taught in Master Taylor's private school, from which he was transferred to Portland Acad- emy, where among his fellow students were Henry W. Longfellow and his brother Ste- phen, Edward Preble, son of the famous com- modore, and William Brown, who became prominent in the south. At thirteen years of age, after being some time at the academy, he was sent to the Friends' Academy in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he attended some time, and then returned to Portland and again entered the academy, and after a year there, terminated his school life in 1820, when he was sixteen years of age. He much de- sired to go to college, for which he had fitted, but his parents so strongly opposed this idea on account of the bad influences he would be subjected to, and because they thought that a college education was a device of the adver- sary, that he had to abandon the project. Their objection, based probably on the latter reason, also prevented the gratification of his desire to study law. And so after a month or so of vacation, he went into his father's tan- nery to make himself generally useful in the business. At the same time, however, he de- termined to supplement his school acquire-
ments by a regular course of reading. This he was able to do and thus gratify his great fondness for books. He read the books in his father's library, borrowed from friends and spent his spare pocket money for books. Those he thus purchased were the foundation of a library which in his age compared fa- vorably in number, variety, and quality of contents with any of the private collections in Maine. The habit of reading thus begun con- tinued with him through life, and made him one of the best informed men in New Eng- land. Mr. Dow's earliest business venture upon his own account was in 1821, when at seventeen years of age, accompanied by his cousin, John Hodgdon, then twenty-one years old, he went to Oldtown over the established stage routes and then up the Penobscot and Mattawamkeag rivers by bateau into the wilds of Aroostook county, where they surveyed land that had been bought by members of the family in which Mr. Dow had a one-third in- terest purchased by his father for him. This was the first of numerous land transactions in which he was interested, many of them of considerable magnitude and profit. These lands, in the survey of which he spent some months, included, it seems, the present towns of Hodgdon and Linneus, in Aroostook county. After completing this work he traveled to Buffalo, then in the great "West," and to Montreal, New York city, and Philadelphia, making what at that time was considered a "grand tour," at the completion of which he returned to Portland, and was taken into the tanning business as a partner by his father. This co-partnership lasted until the death of the senior Dow in 1861. The style of the firm was Josiah Dow & Son, and in 1861, when Fred N. Dow, the grandson of the original proprietor of the business, was ad- mitted as a partner, the firm name remained the same. In 1874, owing to the illness of Fred N. Dow, upon whom the general care of the business had devolved for years, the business was closed, which by the use of in- tegrity, industry, economy, thrift and good judgment had been a paying one. At the time the business closed the firm name was the oldest in the city, the industry which it repre- sented having been carried on by some mem- ber of the family for more than seventy-five years, during which period it had successfully weathered every financial crisis, always pay- ing dollar for dollar. Besides the business of tanning Neal Dow had time, means and credit for outside matters of more or less local im- portance, and some of them proved profitable.
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When twenty-nine years of age he was made a bank director, and filled that position by suc- cessive elections for over forty years. For years he was trustee of a savings bank, and for a while president of the Portland Gas- light Company. He served also in the direc- torate of a railroad, manufacturing and other corporations. In the early days of the Maine Central Railroad Company, of which he was a director, he was actively interested in its promotion, pledging to the success of the en- terprise a large portion of the means and credit at his command. At its inception he was solicited to accept its superintendency, but did not feel inclined to tie himself so closely to business as such a position would demand, and declined the offer pressed upon him by his associate directors. He gradually relin- quished interest in business affairs, and retired from active connection with corporate man- agement as his time and thought became more and more engaged in the subject with which his name was so closely connected and to which he gave so much of time and strength. Indeed, after 1851, his attention was largely diverted from business, as he was absent from home much of the time subsequent to that date, including more than three years at dif- ferent times in Europe, and during the war for the Union. Hence his connection with gen- eral business was never after 1857 much more than nominal.
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