History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 193

Author: Williams, Chase & Co., Cleveland (Ohio)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams, Chase & Co.
Number of Pages: 1100

USA > Maine > Penobscot County > History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 193

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dumkeag. After graduating he established himself in Orono as a practitioner, and remained there two years, when he removed to Foxcroft, then in Penobscot, but now in Piscataquis county. Here he practiced success- fully for a somewhat longer period, but in 1849 he de- cided to remove to Bangor, where he had visited the hospitals for cholera patients the summer before, and on whose behalf he had volunteered his services. Here the entire remainder of his nearly half-century of professional life has been spent. He has had a very wide and varied general practice, performing not a few of the great opera- tions in surgery, in which his business has been large. He is now the oldest physician in Bangor in continuous professional life, and very likely in the Penobscot Valley, although not the senior of some in point of age. He is still in practice, though of late years he has restricted himself to counsel and calls by day, declining night ser- vice. He has always had a high place in the profession of the county, since his removal to Bangor, and was for a term or two President of the Penobscot Medical Asso- ciation. He has never, until last summer, when ill health compelled it, taken a vacation of any length, ex- cept occasional visits to Boston and to the hospitals of New York and Philadelphia.

Dr. Laughton was an old-time Whig in the days of Whiggery, but became an Abolitionist and then a Repub- lican upon the organization of that party. He was a member of the lower branch of the City Council from the First Ward in 1864-5 and 1865-6; but never was smitten with the mania for office-seeking, and had no ambition for public life. When Mr. Greeley was nomi- nated for President, he received the support of Dr. Laughton; and since that campaign the Doctor has not been conspicuously identified with any party. He is a member of the First Baptist church in Bangor, is a Royal Arch Mason, and was Past Grand of a Lodge of Odd Fellows in Foxcroft, which expired during his resi- dence there.

Dr. Laughton was married in 1835, January 27th, to Miss Mary Ann, daughter of Nathaniel and Matilda (Young) Parker, of Hampden, who is still living in a fairly hale old age. They have had four children --- Frances Parker, born January 15, 1836, in Orono, now wife of Benjamin H. Mace, Esq., of Bangor, County Attorney for Penobscot; Edward Sumner, born in Fox- croft the 18th of September, 1838, and now residing in Calais, Maine, where he has practiced dentistry for nearly twenty years; Henry Herbert, deceased; and Frederick Malvern, born May 3, 1844, who is the subject of a sketch below. Mrs. Mace, of this family, is well-known in the literary world, in which she has had a reputation for more than twenty years. One of her earlier poetic pieces has a very wide fame-"Only Waiting," which was published anonymously when she was but about sixteen years old. A more ambitious effort, which has been re- warded, not only by enduring popularity and fame, but by the honor of illustration in an elegant edition by Fredericks, is her poem of "Israfil," published in Har- per's Magazine for May, 1879. A great many other pieces, mostly in poetry, have been contributed to Lip-

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HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

pincott's, the Atlantic, and other magazines, and to the leading newspapers of Boston, some of which have won her many compliments from her compeers in the fields of literature, as well as from those who have been de- lighted by the sweet singer. A number of them are treasured permanently in the cyclopædias and compen- diums of literature which have been published in this country.

HON. FREDERICK M. LAUGHTON.

This gentleman, a prominent attorney in Bangor, and the only Mayor of the Democratic persuasion elected on a Democratic ticket the city has ever had, is a native of Foxcroft, Maine, born, as above stated, May 3, 1844, youngest child of Dr. Sumner and Mary A. (Parker) Laughton. He was five and one-half years old when his parents removed to Bangor, and took his first formal ed- ucation in the public schools of this city, going through the entire course of elementary study as then organized, and passing through the High School, whose curriculum he finished in 1860. His preparation for college had thus been completed; but the failure of his eyesight com- pelled him to rest from study for some years, and he finally determined to go on with readings in law instead of the classics. He began in the office of his brother-in- law, Benjamin H. Mace, Esq., in 1864, and remained therein until the fall of the next year, when he entered the Harvard Law School, from which he was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Laws, at the commence- ment of 1866. In the meantime, at the October term of court, 1865, he had been admitted to the Penobscot Bar, which enabled him to graduate at Harvard after but one year's residence. He returned to Bangor, and at once formed a partnership with his brother-in-law, under the firm name of Mace & Laughton, their office being in the same block (Wheelwright & Clark's) where Mr. Laughton now is. In 1871 this partnership dissolved, and each opened an office in another place for separate practice. Mr. Laughton went into the building then known as Bass's Block, where he remained about two years, or until the spacious and pleasant rooms he now occupies, and had long desired, became vacant, when he secured them, removed his office, and has since contin- uously remained there. October 1, 1880, he took into partnership Frank H. Clergue, Esq., who had been a student in his office, where Mr. Clergue's preliminary pro- fessional education had been taken altogether, after graduation at the State College. He had practiced for a year alone, with much success and popularity, before his partnership with Mr. Laughton. This firm is still maintained, under the name and style of Laughton & Clergue, which enjoys a large, varied, and successful practice.

Mr. Laughton early swung away from the political faith of his father, and has been a consistent and un- swerving Democrat since his life as a full-fledged citizen began. He soon became well known in the party, though not attempting to make himself at all conspicuous in its counsels or campaigns, and was elected In 1868, when

but twenty-four years of age, a member of the Common Council from the First Ward of the city. He was re- turned the next year; and in March, 1875, after a some- what close and heated canvass and two trials at the polls, he was elected Mayor by a majority of about one hun- dred against a customary majority of the opposition of four to six hundred. He served his term without special incident, except the introduction of the water supply into the city, and retired at its close. He has since not been in public life apart from the regular course of his pro- fession, which brings him at times, as other lawyers, before the eye of the community.

Mr. Laughton is unconnected with any of the religious organizations. He is a member of the Order of Free and Accepted Masons, in which he is a Master Mason and a member of Rising Virtue Lodge, No. 10, in Ban- gor; is also an Odd Fellow, a Past Grand Master of the State, and two years a Representative from the Grand Lodge of Maine to the Grand Lodge of the United States; and a Knight of Pythias, in which order he is a Past Grand Chancellor of the State, and likewise Past Supreme Representative, an honor which entitles him to permanent membership in the Supreme Lodge of the World. These associations seem, for the present at least, quite to satisfy the social side of his nature, since he yet remains in the enjoyment of single blessedness.

CALVIN SEAVEY, M. D.

Dr. Calvin Seavey, the oldest practitioner by continu- ous service in Bangor or in Penobscot county, is himself a native of this region, born near the south border of Exeter, June 15, 1809. He was the seventh child and fourth son of the Rev. Reuben and Polly (Pease) Seavey, of that town for many years. The father was one of the earliest settlers in Exeter, only two whites having been chopping there in the woods before he entered. He was a Calvinistic Baptist minister and a farmer, preaching for a number of years in later life to the church at North Newport, where he was residing at the time of his death in the year_1829. The mother survived until 1872, when she departed this life at the advanced age of ninety-one. Her third child, Reuben, brother of Dr. Seavey, was the first-born of white parents in Exeter town. They had sixteen children-eight sons, and as many daughters- most of whom lived to maturity; and there was only one pair of twins among so numerous births.

Calvin's elementary education was received at the fireside until he was fifteen years old, when he began attending the common schools of the town in the winters, laboring diligently on the home farm and for hire elsewhere during the warmer seasons. He had not, until he was twenty-one years old, more than six weeks' schooling in any one year. The next day after he be- came of age he re-entered the town school, then taught by Miss Julia Barker, sister of the Hons. Lewis and Noah Barker, and in the fall attended another kept by E. F. Crane, Esq., who is still living in Kenduskeag. He began to get some reputation as a scholar, and was

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HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

presently invited to take the winter school in Carmel vil- lage. He taught it with a success that surprised him and his friends, and he was engaged for three consecu- tive terms, when he declined further engagement, and began the study of medicine. In the intervals of teach- ing the winter schools at Carmel he had studied during several terms at Foxcroft Academy, and by the fall of 1834, when he was twenty-five years of age, he had an excellent preparation for college. He decided, however, to commence professional study without further delay ; and the following spring he entered the office of Dr. Paul Ruggles, of Carmel, brother of his first wife. He was two years with Dr Ruggles, and then read for one year with Dr. Daniel McRuer, of Bangor, attending during the winters three courses of lectures at the Maine Med- ical College, at Brunswick, from which he was graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine May 18, 1837. The same spring he settled in Stetson, not three miles from his birthplace, for general practice, and remained sixteen years. He had a very extensive circuit of pro- fessional visiting in what was then a rather sparsely set- tled country, probably twenty-five miles from his resi- dence in each direction, and thus into Piscataquis, Som- erset, and Waldo counties, and often much further. His favorite practice was surgery, in which he achieved much success; and these facts led to his calls more frequently from a distance than came to some of the country phy- sicians. Notwithstanding his large and lucrative practice, Dr. Seavey decided to remove to a more congenial field in Bangor. He came to the city in May, 1853, and has since resided and practiced continuously here. He has retained his ancient enthusiasm for surgical practice, so important in a lumbering country, and has probably per- formed more operations in the same period than any other surgeon in Maine since Dr. Green died. He has had, moreover, the usual general practice of local physi- cians, but in a very large and successful degree. Al- though now seventy-two years old, he yet remains in the full exercise of his professional talents for the benefit of his suffering fellow-men. He is a member in good stand- ing in the Penobscot County Medical Society, the Maine Medical Society, and the American Medical As- sociation, before one or the other of which he has fre- quently read papers and engaged in discussions upon professional topics. He has steadily refused to accept official honors in any of these societies, having a decided dislike to conspicuity. In 1870 he delivered before the Maine Medical College a lecture on The Natural and Moral World and their Phenomena, which attracted much attention, and was printed in pamphlet form. He has several times been invited to address the Alumni Association of the Jefferson Medical College, at Phila- delphia, and accepted once, when he pronounced an in- teresting address upon the history of the College, with biographical sketches of a number of its professors. This effort won him much applause, and led to subse- quent invitations, which he declined. Dr. Seavey is him- self an alumnus of Jefferson, having spent parts of eight or ten winters in study and investigation there, and finally taking his examination and a second degree of M. D. in

1871, when he was sixty-two years old. For many years he has made a habit of taking a few weeks' vacation in January and February, not for touring and junketing, but for careful observation and study in the hospitals of New York and Philadelphia, particularly in the Bellevue Hospital in the former city, and at the Pennsylvania Hospital, of Philadelphia, with which the Jefferson Med- ical College is connected. He is not likely ever to feel too old to learn, and still keeps up his knowledge of Latın and other scholastic attainments, with much pleas- ure and profit. At the commencement of Bowdoin Col- lege in 1863, Dr. Seavey had conferred upon him, in recognition of his scholarship and professional success, the honorary degree of Master of Arts. He is the founder of the Seavey Anatomical Museum, in the Med- ical Department of that college (or the "Maine Medical School," his alma mater, to which he is still warmly at- tached. He gave this Museum $1,000 in gold, and has since added benefactions, with which his own valuable collection will presently be included. He also gave $500 to build the Memorial Hall upon the college grounds. He has ever taken just pride in the literary institutions of the State, and has given liberally to aid them, show- ing thus his faith by his works.

The doctor is a Republican in his political faith, but has had no ambition for leadership in the party, still less for office-seeking or office-holding. He is a member of the Independent Congregational (Unitarian) Society in Bangor, and has not cared to connect himself with any of the secret societies.

Dr. Seavey was first married in Carmel, October I, 1836, to Miss Ann W., daughter of the Rev. Paul and Mercy (Dexter) Ruggles, the first settlers of that town. He had by her two children-one son and one daughter -of whom the former only is living, Paul R. Seavey, Esq., of the Bangor Whig and Courier, and a well-known popular lecturer. Mrs. Seavey died six weeks after the birth of her daughter, her death occurring in November, 1838. The doctor was remarried December 24, 1839, his second wife being Miss Mary Ann, daughter of the late Henry Hill, Esq., of Exeter. He had five children of this marriage, in order as follow: Henry Hill, who became also an able physician, and at a very early age, being a demonstrator of anatomy at Michigan University when scarcely twenty years old, and subsequently Dem- onstrator at the Bellevue Hospital, and at the Maine Medical College four years, but dying when only thirty- four; Henrietta Ellen, who was born in April, 1847, and died in July, 1879; Jerome Harris, died at three years of age ; Jerome Aden, deceased at two years; and Cly- minia Spaulding, died at three years. The mother died in the year 1871; and the doctor was married for the third time in July, 1877, to Miss Emma, daughter of Warren Weston, Esq., of Brewer, who is his present wife. They have had one child, a son, named Calvin Gross Seavey, from his father and an excellent friend of his in Philadelphia, the celebrated surgeon, Dr. Samuel D. Gross. This son was born November 4, 1879, and died nine months afterwards, July 26, 1880.

The Hon. Noah Barker, of Exeter, a lifelong friend of

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the Doctor, has kindly sent the compilers of this work an additional biographical sketch, from which we are able to make but the following extracts :

High upon the list of our "self-made men," who have arisen by their own untiring efforts from obscurity, penury and destitution, to the comforts and enjoyments of refined society, even to the highest distinc- tion in their professions, stands the honored name of Dr. Calvin Seavey.

"Is there for honest poverty

That hangs his head, and a' that ?"

If such there be, Dr. Seavey belongs not to that class of "fools" al- luded to by the "ploughman poet." Honest poverty he considers no disgrace to any man, and especially to him who has struggled through it and extricated himself from its pinching grip. Often has the writer of this sketch listened to the Doctor while, with tearful eyes and quiver- ing lips, he would speak of the poverty and wretchedness of the family during the early years of his childhood, and feelingly allude to the hard- ships and sufferings endured by his honored parents in procuring the bare necessities of life, and the means to keep the children from a state of actual starvation !

The doctor is now past seventy-two years of age, and is still vigorous and in perfect health. His professional business is very extensive, and at no time of his life has he had a more active practice than at present. He is now living happily in his old age with his present young, accom- plished, and much beloved companion.

In closing this brief sketch of Dr. Seavey, it may be proper to add that he is noted for his good old Saxon pluck, no less than for his kind-hearted generosity, seeming to admit the sentiment that --

" There is nothing on earth like ' true grit," It will raise up the feeble and clinical;

Take a man, as it were, from the pit, And uplift him to Fame's highest pinnacle.

So the Doctor ignores the word 'fail,' With an eye far above 'water-level,' And determines to ' weather the gale,' In defiance of Fate or the Devil !"

HON. NOAH WOODS

was born in Groton, Middlesex county, Massachusetts, September 26, 1811. His mother died in the autumn of 1816, leaving seven children, two of whom were younger than Noah; in consequence whereof, early in 1817, he was taken to Baldwin, Cumberland county, State of Maine, to live with an uncle, William Fitch, Esq., whose wife was his father's own sister. His uncle had a large farm, was also owner of timber-lands and saw-mills in his vicinity, and was engaged more or less in the lumber business. When very young, the services of Noah were called into requisition in taking care of stock, working on the farm, and as he grew older, in addition thereto, in assisting in all the varieties of lumbering operations from cutting, hauling, and driving logs to manufacturing them and taking care of and marketing the lumber. The mills were located on the Northwest River, in that part of Baldwin now in the town of Sebago, and before the days of the Cumberland & Oxford Canal the lumber from them was hauled to Sebago Lake, rafted, and taken across the lake to Chadbourne's Landing, in Standish- there taken out and hauled by ox-teams to Portland, about fifteen miles. In all the work incident to getting the lumber from the forest to Chadbourne's Landing he participated more or less. When the Cumberland & Oxford Canal was opened, his uncle was ready with his canal boat, and was amongst the very first in making the passage across Sebago Lake and through the new canal to Portland. Noah Woods was one of his crew on this

trip, a common sailor before the mast on the lake and behind the horse on the tow-path on the canal. In the course of his first season of the canal he made several trips on his uncle's boat, and won quite a reputation for himself as a boatman. In the spring of the next year, 1830, having become dissatisfied with his situation and prospects at his uncle's, and rather liking a boatman's life, he withdrew unceremoniously from his long-time home and associations, and hired out as a boatman with Luther Fitch, Esq., who had built a new boat and was just commencing business as a trader at Northwest River. This movement cut him off entirely from all the home he had, and during his engagement with Fitch the canal boat was his home. In the autumn of 1830 he went by invitation to live with his cousin, William Fitch, Jr., who resided in Sebago, very near his father's. Here he remained during the winter, taking care of the cattle and attending the district school. The term was short, and when it closed, by solicitation of many of his school- mates, he opened a private school, which was fairly well attended and was continued about six weeks. This was his first effort as a teacher, and his pupils pronounced it a success.

His opportunities for obtaining an education had been limited to an attendance from ten to twelve weeks in a year at a little backwoods country school. At his uncle's he had access to desirable, valuable books, and acquired a taste for reading, and during the winter evenings and whenever a spare moment could be found by daylight or pine-knot light, it was given, as a rule, to his books. In the spring of 1831 an effort was made by William Fitch, Jr., and others, to induce him to return to his uncle's, which would have been successful but for an invita- tion from Major Thomas Perly, of South Brighton (now Naples), to enter into his employment, and in the summer to take charge of a new canal boat then on the stocks. Major Perly was a wealthy man, and had an in- teresting and highly intelligent family about him, some of his children being very near the age of Noah, and he was not very long in deciding to take up his abode there. Until 1839 he had no other home. For four seasons in succession he managed the Major's canal boat acceptably to him, and in the autumn of 1832, having accumulated a little money, he entered the academy in North Bridg- ton, continuing there until the boating season opened in the spring of 1833. Again in the autumn of that year he returned to the academy, and in the winter of 1833-34 took the school in his old district in Sebago and boarded at his uncle's. The older pupils here were his former schoolmates and acquaintances, but his success as a teacher was marked, and the result was that for four more winters in succession he kept the school, and in the autumn of 1837 kept a ten-weeks' term of high school in the same house. His career as a boatman terminated in the autumn of 1834, and after that, when not engaged in teaching, his time was spent at the academy in North Bridgton until the spring of 1838. In the summer of 1836 he taught school in Machias, Maine, and in the autumn of that year was assistant teacher in Bethel Academy one term, and in the spring of 1837 was em-

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HISTORY OF PENOBSCOT COUNTY, MAINE.

ployed there again one term. In the spring of 1838 he entered the office of Charles Washburn, Esq., in Harri- son, Maine, as a law student, remaining there until au- tumn. The winter following he taught the district school in North Bridgton, and in April, 1839, entered the office of Hon. John S. Tenney, of Norridgewock, Somerset county, Maine, as a law student. In the spring of 1841 he was admitted to the Bar in that county, and at once opened an office as a practicing lawyer in Gardiner, Maine. In the autumn of the same year, having previ- ously become managing agent for the owners of a town- ship of timber land in the eastern part of the State, a partnership in the law business was arranged with Charles Danforth, Esq., now Judge Danforth, of the Supreme Judicial Court. The partnership continued most amica- bly until 1855, when, in consequence of an accumula- tion of business upon his hands outside of the profession, Mr. Woods withdrew.

In February, 1844, he was married to Miss Sarah W. Ballard, of Gardiner, who died in the spring of 1845. The first public office held by him after his establishment in Gardiner was that of Superintending School Commit- tee, to which he was elected in the spring of 1845, and to which he continued to be elected up to and including the spring of 1862. In October, 1846, he was married to Miss Harriette E. Blish, of Hallowell, Maine. The same year and in 1847 he represented the town in the Legislature. Gardiner became a city in 1850, and in that year he was a member of the Common Council, President of the Board, and also City Solicitor. In 1862 and 1863 he continued to be City Solicitor, and was also Chairman of the Board of Assessors and of the Board of Overseers of the Poor. In 1854he was elected Mayor, and by successive elections held that office up to and in- cluding 1858, and again in 1861 and 1862. From 1854 to 1863 he held the office of President of the Oakland Bank, and during much of the same period was Secre- tary and Treasurer of the Great Falls Paper Mill Com- pany. In 1861-62 and 1862-63. he was a member of the State Senate. In February, 1861, his wife died, and in December, 1862, he was married again to Mrs. Frances A. Blake, widow of the late William A. Blake, Esq., of Bangor, Maine; and in May, 1863, took up his residence in Bangor. Early in 1864 he was appointed by Mr. McCulloch Comptroller of the Currency and National Bank Examiner, and had assigned to him the States of Maine and New Hampshire. At the end of two years an Examiner for New Hampshire was ap- pointed in that State, but he retained the office and per- formed its duties in Maine until 1869, when, in conse- quence of the pressure of railroad work, he resigned. In April, 1865, he was appointed a Trustee of the State Re- form School, in which position he was retained eight years, and during the whole period was President of the Board. In March, 1864, he was elected Clerk and also Treasurer of the European & North American Company, and in the following July entered upon the duties attach- ing to said offices. This was the beginning of his career as a railroad man, having had up to that time no practi- cal knowledge of railroad matters. April 9, 1868, he

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History of Penobscot County, Maine; with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 193

Author: Williams, Chase & Co., Cleveland (Ohio) Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Williams, Chase & Co. Number of Pages: 1100

Author: Williams, Chase & Co., Cleveland (Ohio)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams, Chase & Co.
Number of Pages: 1100