Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892, Part 51

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York, Blake
Number of Pages: 1790

USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892 > Part 51

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CIVIL LISTS .- From 1797 until the incorporation of Augusta city, in 1850, the following named citizens of the town were selectmen. The first year of each man's service is stated, and the total number of years he served, if more than one: 1797, Elias Craig, 4; Seth Williams, 15; Beriah Ingraham, 12; 1798, Henry Sewall, 2; Brian Fletcher, The- ophilus Hamlen; 1800, Benjamin Whitwell; 1802, William Robinson, 2; 1803, Joshua Gage, 7; Nathan Weston; 1805, John Eveleth; 1806, Lewis Hamlen, 12; 1811, Pitt Dillingham, 6; 1812, Church Williams, 10; 1817, John Davis, Joseph Chandler, Williams Emmons, 2; 1818, Daniel Stone, 3; 1821, Ephraim Dutton, 2; 1823, John Potter, 7, Na- thaniel Robinson, 9; 1828, Daniel Williams, 4, Cyrus Guild, 4; 1832, George W. Morton, 2, William Thomas, 2; 1833, John A. Pettingill, 6; 1834, William Dewey, 2, Charles Hamlen, 2, Elisha Barrows, 2: 1836, Watson F. Hallett, Charles Little; 1837, Rufus C. Vose, 2, Joseph W. Patterson, 4; 1838, Loring Cushing, 9; 1839, Artemas Kimball; 1840, Ezra I. Wall; 1841, Thomas Little, 3, Ephraim Ballard, 9; 1846, Joseph J. Eveleth; 1847, Robert A. Cony, 3; 1849, Ai Staples.

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

The successive Town Clerks of Augusta were: Henry Sewall, elected in 1797; Samuel Coleman, 1801; Henry Sewall, 1806: Jonathan Bond, 1815; Henry Sewall, 1818; Asaph R. Nichols, 1829; and Daniel Pike, from 1832 until the incorporation of the city.

Town Treasurers: William Howard, elected in 1797; Samuel How- ard, 1802; Peter T. Vose, 1803; James Child, 1811; William Dewey, 1824; John Potter, 1836; William K. Weston, 1838; Joseph J. Eveleth, 1839; John A. Pettingill, 1849.

CITY OFFICERS .- The successive Mayors elected have been: 1850, Alfred Redington; 1852, John A. Pettingill; 1854, Samuel Cony; 1855, J. W. Patterson; 1856, Albert G. Dole; 1857, James W. North; 1861, Sylvanus Caldwell; 1863, William T. Johnson; 1864, Sylvanus Caldwell; 1865, J. W. Patterson; 1866, Sylvanus Caldwell; 1867, J. W. Patterson; 1868, Daniel Williams; 1869, Samuel Titcomb; 1871, J. J. Eveleth; 1874, James W. North; 1875, Daniel A. Cony; 1876, Charles E. Nash; 1880, Peleg O. Vickery; 1883, A. W. Philbrook; 1884, Seth C. White- house; 1885, George E. Weeks; 1886, George E. Macomber; 1889, Samuel W. Lane; and since the spring election of 1891. John W. Chase .*

Presidents of the Council: James W. North was chosen in 1850; Samuel Titcomb, 1851; Edw. T. Ingraham, 1854 (James W. North after October); Samuel Titcomb, 1855; Melville W. Fuller, 1856 (Ai Staples after May); Samuel Titcomb, 1857; John H. Hartford, 1858; Edmund G. Doe, 1860; John G. Phinney, 1861 ; Gardiner C. Vose, 1862 ; John G. Phinney, 1864; James B. Hall, 1865; Joseph H. Manley, 1866; G. P. Cochrane, 1867; Ai Staples, 1868; George E. Weeks, 1869; James Bicknell, 1871; George S. Ballard, 1872; Charles E. Nash, 1873; George S. Ballard, 1874; P. C. Dolliver, 1875; Samuel L. Boardman, 1877; Henry G. Staples, 1886; Treby Johnson, 1887; James A. Jones, 1888 ; Leslie A. Dyer, 1889; Charles H. Blaisdell, since 1890.

City Clerks : Daniel C. Stanwood, 1850; James A. Bicknell, 1855 ; Asaph R. Nichols, 1856; Edward Fenno, 1857; William Gaslin, jun., 1858; M. Cunningham, 1862 ; Charles E. Hayward, 1866; William P. Whitehouse, 1867; G. P. Cochrane, 1868; Joseph Noble, 1869 ; S. P. Plummer, 1870; L. H. Titcomb, 1871; R. W. Black, 1873; Richard W. Black, 1876; Henry F. Blanchard, 1877; W. W. Morse, 1878; H. F.

* John Wingate Chase is the son of Amos Chase, of Portland, a descendant of Lord Towneley, of England, whose son, Aquilla Chase, settled in Ports- mouth, N. H., where Rev. Stephen Chase, another descendant, afterward lived. Rev. Benjamin Tappan, of Manchester, Mass., was also in this line of descent. Mr. Chase came to Augusta in 1843, and became a printer in The Age office, of which he was the publisher in 1855-6. For the next twenty-five years he was a stove and tinware dealer, and was also a coal and grain dealer ten years. From 1885 to 1890 he was steward and treasurer of the Maine Insane Asylum, and mayor of Augusta in 1891-2. Mr. Chase in 1858 married Mary A., daughter of John Dorr, of Augusta. They have one child, Abbie W.

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Blanchard, 1879; Thomas J. Lynch, 1884; H. F. Blanchard, 1885; Frank E. Southard, 1887; C. Lincoln Tanner, 1892.

City Treasurers : John A. Pettingill, 1850; Watson F. Hallett, 1852; Moses E. Hamlen, 1854; Watson F. Hallett, 1855 ; Alonzo Gau- bert, 1856; Joseph W. Patterson, 1857; Thomas Little, 1862; John P. Deering, 1868; Thomas Little, 1869 ; J. S. Turner, 1875 ; Samuel W. Lane, 1876; Guy Turner, 1879; C. N. Hamlen, 1890.

The City Solicitors have been : James W. North, elected in 1850; Sewall Lancaster, 1852; Samuel Titcomb, 1853; Sewall Lancaster, 1854; Samuel Titcomb, 1855; Benjamin A. G. Fuller, 1856; Samuel Tit- comb, 1857; Joseph Baker, 1858; James W. North, 1861 ; Gardiner C. Vose, 1863; Hilton W. True, 1865; S. C. Harley, 1866; Joseph Baker, 1867; J. W. Bradbury, jun., 1868; W. P. Whitehouse, 1869 ; W. Scott Choate, 1874; W. P. Whitehouse, 1877 ; Eben F. Pillsbury, 1878 ; H. M. Heath, 1879; W. S. Choate, 1880 ; E. S. Fogg, 1884 ; W. S. Choate, 1885; Anson M. Goddard, since 1887.

PERSONAL PARAGRAPHS.

EDWARD CHARLES ALLEN,* publisher, was born in Readfield, Me., on the 12th day of June, 1849. His father, James Madison Allen, was a man of scholarly attainments ; his mother, a woman of great intelligence, energy of purpose and saintly character. From his parents he inherited his excellent qualities. His boyhood was spent on the farm. Before he was a year old his home became, by act of the legislature, a part of the town of Kennebec, and in 1854 the name was changed to Manchester; thus before he was five years of age, and without leaving his native hearth, he had been a resident of three towns. These early changes of his residence may have foreshadowed those changes in the publication of periodical literature which he subsequently inaugurated and pushed with such success that the city of Augusta, his adopted home, became one of the leading publishing centers of the country, and the name of E. C. Allen, familiar in every part of the United States and Canada; while his publications went to regular subscribers in every country of the world, where English-speaking people were to be found. He was educated in the common schools and at Kents Hill Seminary.

He began his business career at the age of sixteen, as an advertiser of books and novelties. In 1868 he went to Augusta and engaged in the agency and canvassing business ; a believer in the judicious use of printer's ink, he advertised liberally, and soon had a large number of sub-agents in his employ. These he managed with consummate skill and to the mutual profit of all concerned. He conceived the idea of publishing an illustrated literary paper, and the then entirely novel plan of offering a premium to subscribers. His first venture was The

*By Samuel W. Lane, Esq., of Augusta.

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

People's Literary Companion, a large eight-page monthly sheet, which was first issued in 1869. In this paper he made his debut not only as a publisher, but as a writer of fiction. The enormous circulation at- tained by the paper and the popular favor with which his first novel, Lillian Ainsley, was received, attest to his success in both fields. He offered as a premium to subscribers, a fine steel engraving, and so rapid was the increase of circulation that it became necessary to en- grave several copies of the steel plate to supply the demand. The printing office in Augusta, which had contracted to do his press work, was shortly found inadequate to the task, and he opened a printing house of his own in 1870, in a rented building. His business soon outgrew these quarters, and in 1872, he erected the best appointed publishing house in Maine, and probably in New England, on the corner of Water and Winthrop streets, where the business has since been continued, enlarged and extended in 1880, by the erection of a six-story building on the opposite corner of Winthrop and Water streets, and extending through to Commercial street. This building he thoroughly equipped with every facility for printing books and periodicals. In 1872 he established in Augusta an electrotype foundry, which for twenty years was the only one east of Boston. In 1871 he established a branch house for art publishing in Portland, which attained a world-wide reputation for fine art publications, es- pecially in the line of steel engravings, and was the largest art pub- lishing establishment in the world.

He was fond of travel, but his trips abroad, which were frequent, were on matters of business, rarely, if ever, for pleasure; and he visited the storehouses of European art and literature to obtain the best treasures for his subscribers. His judgment was excellent and his selections always seemed to fill a popular demand. He was held in high esteem, and regarded as a public benefactor. He gave em- ployment to a large number of persons and was interested in many enterprises. To his publishing establishment the Augusta post office owes its rank as a "first-class " post office, and the city of Augusta is. indebted for its beautiful granite post office building, to the fact that his enormous transactions through the mails rendered it necessary .*

*He had sixteen large presses, manufactured for his business, in constant use, and at times running night and day, driven by a 100-horse power Corliss engine. He employed from 200 to 300 persons in his Augusta and Portland houses, and his monthly pay roll amounted to from $6,000 to $9,000, averaging for ten consecutive years $100,000 per year. His annual disbursements amounted to $900,000. His bills for engravings to illustrate his monthly periodicals amounted in one year to over $15,000. The popular favor which greeted his periodicals was marvellous; one of them, Our Home and Fireside Magazine, attained a circulation of 415,000 copies a month, to paid-in-advance subscribers, within ten months from its first issue. The combined circulation of his papers and magazines reached 1,200,000 copies a month. Fifty-five tons of white paper

AUGUSTA. 453

He was the wealthiest man of Augusta and paid the largest per- sonal tax. He was the largest shareholder and a directer in the Ken- nebec Steamboat Company, a director in the Augusta National Bank, president and director of the Augusta Loan & Building Association from its organization in 1887, a director in the Cushnoc Fiber Com- were required each month to print his periodicals, and seven tons of paper a day were used in his two houses. In 1886 he had paid $3,000,000 for white paper, and up to 1891, nearly $5,000,000. In 1886, the first direct mail to Tasmania was sent out, and large quantities were sent to China, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the West Indies. He paid for postage on mail to foreign countries $200 per month. His annual payments of postage were very large, amounting in one year to over $144,000, and averaged $100,000 for ten years. He paid one three-hundredth part of the entire postal receipts of the United States. The weight of paper he sent through the mails in one year was over over 1,600 tons, which is the largest amount sent out in one year by any publishing house in America, according to the records of the post office department. His business was not confined to steel engravings and periodical literature. He was a patron of art, and the works of the best artists, he purchased and reproduced in engravings and lithographs. At one time he had employed in his work every lithographic press in Boston, be- sides others in New York, and he placed with the Riverside Press in 1888 the largest lithographic order ever given by any one at one time. He was a large publisher of standard books, of which may be mentioned the Revised Bible, the Parallel Bible, containing the King James version and the revised version in paral- lel columns. Several editions of this were published and quickly sold ; one edi- tion of the Bible consumed twenty-one tons of white paper in printing. The Universe was an admirable work of 761 pages and had a large sale. The History of Christianity, Lives of the Presidents, and Daughters of America, were interest- ing, attractive and successful books. The Life of James A. Garfield reached a sale of 150,000 copies. He brought out The Life of Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, and the Life of Grover Cleveland, which were largely circulated as political campaign books. The Life of James G. Blaine illustrates Mr. Allen's push and energy. Within thirty days of Mr. Blaine's nomination for the presidency, this book of 500 pages was placed in type, electrotyped, printed, bound, and placed in the hands of his agents for sale, the first book of the kind before the public. Of the life of Blaine 200,000 copies were sold. He thoroughly believed in adver- tising. Probably the largest single order ever placed with an advertising agent he placed in 1871, amounting to $36,000. He has paid $100,000 in one year for advertising, and his payments amounted to $75,000 a year on an average. He employed 50,000 agents and canvassers for his books and periodicals. His daily mail was very large; one day he received 12,000 letters. This was an exceptional case; his ordinary daily mail contained from from 1,500 to 2,200 letters. His receipts aggregated nearly a million dollars a year, and fractions of a dollar were largely sent in postage stamps, the only fractional currency available for a large class of people. He saw the need and the convenience to the public of fractional currency, and he petitioned congress to authorize such an issue of treasury notes. He advocated his views before a committee of Congress and in March, 1888, the measure received the approval of the house of representatives by a vote of 167 to 67. The bill was not reached in the senate before the adjournment of con- gress. He was an unyielding opponent of monopoly and refused to accept the terms of the "Envelope Trust," and had his envelopes manufactured by hand and imported from Germany after the organization of the "trust."

HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

pany, and for three years president of the Augusta Board of Trade, declining further election, and was a commissioner on the enlarge- ment of the Maine state house. He steadily declined political prefer- ment, but was a delegate to the democratic national convention at St. Louis in 1888. He was a most assiduous worker and personally directed his immense business and was familiar with all its details, even with those which of necessity were entrusted to others for execu- tion. He died at the Parker House, Boston, Mass., July 28, 1891. His death filled the whole community with genuine grief. On his twenty- fourth trip across the Atlantic, returning from Europe where he had been to escort his mother and sister, he contracted a cold on the steamer before arriving in New York; it increased in severity and on arrival in Boston developed into pneumonia, and without sufficient time to notify his family or friends, terminated fatally. His remains were laid at rest in Forest Grove Cemetery, August 9, 1891. His funeral was attended by a concourse of people, such as has never been accorded to the memory of any person in Kennebec county, or in the state. The various social and business associations with which he was connected adopted resolutions of respect to his memory, among which the preamble to the resolutions of the Augusta Board of Trade, presented by one who had known him personally, and had held inti- mate business relations with him for many years, may be a fitting close to this sketch, as follows:

"Standing in the shadow of a great public calamity, and in the gloom of personal bereavement, the Board of Trade offers this ex- pression of its deep feeling in the loss it has sustained in the death of its first president, Mr. E. C. Allen. His loss must be felt: can only be felt. Speech and language are but poverty. Memory is the golden thread linking all his gifts and excellencies of mind and heart to- gether. As an organizer of business, as an originator of methods, as a manager of large interests, as a developer of hidden forces, as a commander of capital and a leader of labor, he was without a peer. For twenty years a successful employer of labor, while he enjoyed the rewards of industry and secured to himself a considerable fortune, he steadily increased and never reduced under any conditions the wages of any employee. Original in his plans, they were laid with the utmost care, and always rapidly and successfully executed. His pride was his business and the city of Augusta. To Augusta, the building, now occupied by this Board was the offering of his youth; across the street uprears the teeming hive of industry, the fruit of his riper years; opposite behold the beautiful granite post office made possible by his genius; while on yonder hill the enlarged capitol stands secured to the future of Augusta, largely through his untiring efforts as president of the Board of Trade. While these are noble monuments to his worth. the steady employment given to labor and the numerous homes which have grown up under the influence of his energy, testify to the beneficence of his work. The people mourn him. 'How is the strong staff broken and the beautiful rod.'"

Algernon S. Bangs, born in 1837, and his brother, Josiah W. Bangs,

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born in 1830, compose the firm of Bangs Brothers. Their father, Josiah D. Bangs, who came in 1827 from Springfield, Mass., and was clerk for Major Pope, who was then building the arsenal in Augusta, mar- ried Paulina A., daughter of John Brooks. This, the only family of Bangs in Kennebec county, lived in Franklin county until 1849. J. D. Bangs died in New York, where he was for eleven years connected with the Tribune and other metropolitan papers.

Elisha Barrows once lived in Winthrop. His sons were: John, Elisha, jun., Micah and Greenleaf. Elisha, jun., born there in 1802, married Ann M. Clifford, of Sidney, in 1831, and died in Augusta in 1886. He had eight children, seven dying without issue. William E. Barrows, the only survivor of the eight, was born in 1841, married in 1876 Annie E. Clark, a former teacher in the Augusta schools, and has five children: William E., jun., Harris C., Eunice E., Annie A. and Frank E.

Greenleaf Barrows, above mentioned, was born in Winthrop in 1810. He married Lydia R. Robinson, of Vassalboro. Their children were: Benjamin F., William H., Greenleaf, David R., Martha C., Emma L., and Ida B. The third son, Greenleaf, born in 1842, is a farmer at Bolton Hill.

Chandler Beale, born in Sidney in 1816, came to Augusta in 1833, and for some years following worked as a journeyman house painter with his father, Japheth Beale. In the fall and winter of 1838 he as- sisted an elder brother in teaching school at Provincetown, Mass. A part of 1840-1 he worked at his trade in Charlestown, S. C. In 1865 he established himself in the paint and paper business in Water street, though earlier he had had an interest in a paint business with his father. The present firm of C. Beale & Co. was established in 1872. He married in 1843, Amanda A., daughter of the Hon. John Read, of Strong, Me. Their only son is Herbert L., one son and two daughters having died.

Major Thomas Beck, of Dover, N. H., came to Belgrade with his wife, Hannah Linnell, of Madison, Me., and thence to Augusta. Their sons were: Joseph, Captain Charles H. and Foxwill. Joseph Beck married Mary A., daughter of James Putnam, of Hallowell (who was lost at sea on the African coast in 1820), and has five sons living: Joseph T., Frank P., William F., George H. and James W. Beck, clothier, of Augusta, in the firm of Townsend & Beck.

Captain Charles H. Beck, a son of Major Thomas Beck, was born in 1803, and died in June, 1885. He was captain of the Harriet Ann, a river and coasting boat, about 1840, and commanded the steamer T. F. Seeker from 1857 to 1862, when his company sold it to the gov- ernment. He then built the Union, which he sold to the government about 1864, when he retired. He was married in 1860, to Sarah Dag-

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

gett, who survives him. Her father, Captain John Daggett, was an old whaleman of Martha's Vineyard.

JAMES G. BLAINE .*- We have been requested to contribute to this volume a sketch of a distinguished citizen of Kennebec. We claim no special aptness for biographical writing. To give in a few pages a correct view of a life so large, varied and eventful as that of James G. Blaine, is beyond our power. We are asked to confine our pen to a description of his private career, as it has been known to the citi- zens of this county, among whom he has had his home for so many years. To attempt to present his private and home life, leaving out his public doings and experience, would be like trying to put on paper the drama of Hamlet with Hamlet omitted. It were as impos- sible as for one to cultivate in a luxuriant garden without stirring the larger roots and the more prolific plants. For many years Mr. Blaine's life has been so continuously public as to have had little which could be called distinctively private. It has been open on all sides to the world. True, partisan prejudice has often obscured, or mystified, the real James G. Blaine, and another, largely fictitious, for years stood before a numerous portion of the public. But time has asserted its just prerogatives, and the man as he has been, and grown to be, is now generally understood by his countrymen. No classic statue in the city park is more open to observation, and there is no longer reason to be in doubt as to the place he deserves to occupy in popular, or critical, estimation. Yet, as far as possible, we will observe the measure placed before us-to confine our sketch to what his home neighbors know and think of him.

It is fitting to say that he was from a gifted and worthy ancestry. His grandfather, Ephraim Blaine, held the position of commissionary general of the revolutionary army, from 1778 to 1783, and during the terrible winter at Valley Forge, Washington attributed the salvation of the patriotic army from starvation largely to the earnest and sacri- ficing efforts of Commissionary Blaine. The high estimation in which Ephraim Blaine was held by Washington and his immediate military associates, is well attested by private and official papers still in the pos- session of his descendants. When the Whiskey Insurrection convulsed Western Pennsylvania in 1793, President Washington and his distin- guished secretaries, Hamilton and Knox, on their way to repress the revolt, halted for days at Middlesex, as the guests of Ephraim Blaine, and there hearing of the dispersion of the insurgents, returned to Philadelphia. At the close of the war this tried associate of the Father of his Country settled at Carlisle, Cumberland valley, where he died in 1804. His son, Ephraim Lyon Blaine, in 1818 settled in West Brownsville, in the center of a large tract of land, which in

* By his townsman and former business partner, Hon. John L. Stevens, United States Minister Resident, Honolulu, Hawaii .- April, 1892.

Lunes Or Raine

OPYRIGHTED BY J G. BLAINE, 1584.

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more recent years has become highly valuable. A part of this terri- tory became the property of his son, James G., by purchase, after he had become a citizen of Kennebec, as early as 1858, his foresight and business judgment leading him to believe that it would ultimately prove to be of great value for its coal, which hope has been more than realized. Ephraim Lyon Blaine is reputed to have been a great favorite among his fellow citizens, and one of the most accomplished and intelligent men in western Pennsylvania. He had great tact in winning the attachment of all classes of society in which he moved. His choice for life companion was Maria Gillespie, from a family of prominence and standing, in Fayette county, western Pennsylvania. Authentic repute asserts her to have been a person of marked intelli- gence and spirit, of sincere piety, who possessed strong religious con- victions, and in life and conversation proved herself a true Christian woman, of strong character. Of Scotch-Irish ancestry, so intellectu- ally and morally healthful and vigorous, James G. Blaine was born January 31, 1830, in West Brownsville, in the county of Washington, and thus it is obvious why Pennsylvanians insist that the man who has so distinguished himself should justly be regarded as their son.

His father being in the receipt of means to give proper education to the promising boy, James G. received from him his early lessons, which were supplemented by study under the direction of his mother and the teacher of the village school. Some of his time preparatory to his admission to college was passed at the house of his uncle, Thomas Ewing, once a distinguished United States senator from Ohio, and subsequently secretary of the United States treasury. Probably it was at the home of the Ewings that young Blaine first got the taste of politics. In 1843 he entered Washington College, situate not distant from the town of his birth, from which he gradu- ated in 1847. His four years of college studies were marked by an earnest determination to make the best use of his opportunities for culture, and he was a great favorite with his teachers and fellow- students. His frank and genial presence, his manly bearing, his spontaneous humor and ready conversation, could not fail to make him popular with those with whom his college life brought him in contact. He excelled as a student in mathematics, in the English branches, and in the ancient classics. He was fond of argument, of the tough problems of logic, and excelled in his mathematical recita- tions. He showed the possession of a remarkable memory, especially of controlling facts and principles. William Ralston Balch, a well- informed Philadelphia writer, giving account of young Blaine's col- lege days, says:

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Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892, Part 51

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York, Blake Number of Pages: 1790

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York, Blake
Number of Pages: 1790