USA > Maine > Men of progress; biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in and of the state of Maine > Part 40
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THOMAS E. BRASTOW.
years of age. Through her the son is also directly descended from John Alden and Myles Standish of the Mayflower company. Thomas E. Brastow received his early education in the public schools of Brewer, with an occasional term of private school, and about nine months a year of hard labor in the sawmill. Entering Williams College in 1856, he graduated from that institution in the class of 1861, whose thirty-fifth anniversary he recently attended. In 1864 he graduated at the Bangor Theological Seminary, and entered the Congrega- tional ministry, preaching in various places in the state of Maine. He was ordained and installed Pastor of the Congregational Church of Jackson and
Brooks, Waido county, October 11, 1865, continu- ing in that relation until dismissed by Council in 1869. For two years he was Acting Pastor in Orland, Penobscot county, and September 25, !872, was installed Pastor of the Congregational Church at Sherman Mills, Aroostook county, where he remained until December 1875. At that time the sickness and death of his father-in-law, William Carleton of Rockport, made it necessary for him to leave the ministry, and he succeeded to Mr. Carle- ton's business - the wholesale ice business, in con- nection with a general store. Mr. Brastow carried on this business under various firm styles until about 1888, when he became one of the proprietors of the Rockport Ice Company, having a large export trade in ice with Southern ports, in which he still continues. Mr. Brastow is a Republican in politics, but has had little to do with political affairs, and has held public office only for short terms as Supervisor of Schools and member of the Superintending School Committee. He was mar- ried September 26, 1865, te Frances Elizabeth Carleton, daughter of Deacon William Carleton of Rockport, who died July 15, 1867, leaving a daughter, Frances Carleton Brastow, born in Brooks, Maine, June 16, 1867. In 1869, January 20, he was again married, to Sarah Loring Carleton, a sister of his first wife ; they have a son : William Thomas Brastow, born in Rockport, September 15, 1874.
COUSENS, LYMAN M., of Milliken, Cousens & Short, wholesale drygoods, Portland, was born in Poland, Androscoggin county, Maine, January 10, 1840, son of William and Mary J. (Whitman) Cousens. His paternal grandfather, John Cousens, was one of the original settlers of Poland. His father, William Cousens, was a prominent merchant of that town, where he died in 1870. His mother died in 1846, and he was an only child. He was educated in the public schools of Poland and at Gorham (Maine) Academy, and upon leaving school entered upon a clerkship in a store at Minot Corner, near his native town, where he continued for four years. Then establishing a business of his own, he successfully conducted it for four years, when he became a member of the firm of Marr, True & Company, flour dealers in Portland. Sub- sequently he was for five years a partner in the firm of D. W. True & Company, and then the senior member of Cousens & Tomlinson for ten years, at
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the end of which time he formed his present con- nection, under the firm name of Milliken, Cousens & Short, carrying on an extensive drygoods jobbing business, handling the products of several mills for which they are agents, and dealing with the leading drygoods firms of the New England and other Eastern states. Mr. Cousens is actively and proni- inently connected with various financial enterprises and institutions in Portland, being President of the Maine Mutual Fire Insurance Company, a Director in the Portland National Bank, member of the Executive Committee of the Union Safety Deposit and Trust Company, President of the Dana Cotton Warp Mills, President of the Board of Trustees of
L. M. COUSENS.
Payson Memorial Church, and a Trustee of Ever- green Cemetery. He is also active and prominent in social circles. In politics Mr. Cousens is a Republican. He was married December 8, 1870, to Mary E. True, daughter of John and Mary (Abbott) True of Portland ; they have two children : William T. and Lyman A. Cousens ._
CHISHOLM, Hcon J., President and General Manager of the Portland & Rumford Falls Railroad, and identified with the management of some of the largest and most successful manufacturing industries
of Maine, was born at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada, May 2, 1847, son of .Alexander and Mary Chisholm. His parents were natives of Inverness, Scotland ; and his lineage is traced back without a break to the year 1300, when the Chisholm clan flourished at Strathglass, in the Scottish Highlands. Alexander Chisholm came to America in 1827, and located near Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. There the son Hugh, the subject of this sketch, lived until he attained the age of thirteen years. In May 1860 he secured a position at Toronto as newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railway. Here his inherent business talent at once asserted itself, and he soon saved enough money to buy his own stock in trade, assuming his own risks and taking the profits instead of the percentage usually allowed a news- boy. His first fifty dollars of surplus capital he expended for a course in the Bryant & Stratton Commercial College at Toronto, realizing that he needed a better education in commercial matters in order to cope successfully with others in the business world. Still attending to his newspaper route in the daytime, he pursued his studies at night until his course was finished. He continued his newspaper route between Toronto and Detroit for about a year, at the end of which time, in 1861, his business had so increased that he and his brothers went into partnership, establishing the firm of Chis- holm Brothers. During his period of active train service he formed the acquaintance of a newsboy contemporary whose route was between Detroit and Port Huron, who has since acquired world-wide fame - Thomas A. Edison. The Chisholm Brothers at once began to employ other boys, and soon had control of the business on nearly the whole system of the Grand Trunk Railway, running east as far as Portland. In 1866, six years after Hugh made his modest start, they had contracted to sell papers on trains from Chicago to Portland and Halifax, and on the steamboats, including the principal lines of travel in Northern New England, Northern New York and Canada, in all covering over five thousand miles. At this time they employed two hundred boys or more, with head office at Montreal and branches in various other cities. They inaugurated the use of uniforms by train employes, for at the time their newsboys adopted the now-familiar train- man's cap and gold buttons, not even the officials of the road had ever worn them. They were also the pioneers in the transportation publishing business, producing railway and tourists' guides, also books and albums descriptive of routes of travel. Becom-
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ing pleased with the city of Portland as a business point and place of residence, Mr. Chisholm estab- lished a branch office here, and since 1872 has made the city his home. In 1876, selling out his Cana- dian interests, he purchased the interest of his brothers in the New England States, and established a publishing business in Portland, making a specialty of fine lithograph work, in addition to continuing his routes of traffic on the trains. In this line he has produced over three hundred sets of picture albums, ranging in size from the smallest pamphlet to the beautiful quarto volumes descriptive of Picturesque Maine, and scenery along the princi- pal railroads of the United States, including the
HUGH J CHISHOLM.
Colorado Midland, Denver & Rio Grande, and vari- ous scenic representations of localities in the Rocky Mountain section. He has also published many beautiful works descriptive of cities of the United States, including the " White City " of the Chicago Exposition. Much of the engraving was done in Germany. He contracted with the leading rail- way news companies of the United States to handle his works exclusively, and they were sold by the hundred thousand. In 1880 Mr. Chisholm became interested in the wood-pulp industry. His first venture was in the manufacture of fibre-ware from the new product, by a process of which he was one of the patentees. He invested considerable money
in the enterprise, and was obliged to surmount many unlooked-for obstacles before success crowned his efforts , but after two years of hard work and a large moneyed outlay he brought the idea from nothing to a happy and profitable realization, and now fibre-ware tubs, pails, basins and other utensils are common articies of use throughout the country. The experimental plant was located at Portland, and the first permanent manufactory at Waterville .. The latter being lost by fire, Mr. Chisholm's com- pany with others established a factory in Windham, nsar Portland. After the new plant was running successfully and on a paying basis, he sold out his interests in order to devote more time to the man- ufacture of wood-pulp and paper, in which he had meanwhile become interested with his accustomed energy and earnestness. With others he had organized the Somerset Fibre Company, at Fair- field, Somerset county, on the Kennebec River, in- corporated with two hundred thousand dollars capital, and in which he is still a Director. In 1881 he established the Umbagog Pulp Company at Livermore Falls on the Androscoggin River, which has a present capital of over two hundred thousand dollars, and of which he has continuously been President and Manager. He is also the organizer, and from the start has been Treasurer, General Manager and chief owner, of the Otis Falls Pulp Company, whose present invested capital is seven hundred thousand dollars. The paper and pulp mill of this concern, also situated on the Andros- coggin, is one of the largest in the United States, having an output of about eighty tons of newspaper daily. In 1882, in company with Charles D. Brown of Boston, Mr. Chisholm began to buy, piece by piece, the property around Rumford Falls on the Androscoggin, and after a time acquired a large extent of territory, together with the river rights for six miles above. The locality was then in the midst of a forest-covered wilderness, where now stands the thriving manufacturing town of Rumford Falls. The evolution of the town was due to the business sagacity and far-seeing enterprise of Mr. Chisholm, who saw what could be done with the immense waterpower then running to waste, and had the courage to undertake its development, through the organization of the Rumford Falls Power Company, of which he became Treasurer and Manager. Pur- chasing the old and unfinished Rumford Falls & Buckfield Railroad, he organized a new corporation under the name of the Portland & Rumford Falls Railroad Company, of which he is President, Gen-
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L'al Manager and principal owner, and built an extension at both ends, from Canton to Rumford Falls on the north, and from Mechanic Falls to Auburn on the south, putting in substantial steel bridges and heavy steel-rails throughout, and equip- ping the road with rolling stock of the first class. In the - meantime, the Rumford Falls waterpower was being developed by the building of dams and the construction of canals at different levels, until forty-two thousand horse-power was made available a power several times greater than that at Holyoke, the greatest paper-manufacturing city in the United States. Mr. Chisholm also interested capitalists to establish the Rumford Falls Paper Company, whose paper mill is one of the largest and most flourishing in the country, with connecting sulphide plant ; and the Rumford Falls Sulphide Company, of which he is Treasurer and Director, was likewise established through his instrumentality. He was influential in promoting and incorporating the Rumford Falis Woolen Company, the Rumford Falls Light and Water Company and the Rumford Falls Trust Company, in all of which he is a Director, and is one of the principal stockholders in the last-named institution. In his home city of Portland he is also a financial factor, being a Director in the Casco National Bank. Mr. Chisholm, although a busy man, as may well be imagined from this imperfect record of his business connections and achieve- ments, has found time to travel extensively in this country and abroad. He has recently returned from a European trip, and in the summer of 1894 he visited Scotland and erected a monument to the memory of his grandparents. He was married September 5, 1872, to Henrietta Mason, daughter of Edward Mason, an old and prominent citizen of Portland ; they have a son, Hugh, now ten years of age.
DECROW, WILLIAM EMERY, of Boston, General Manager of the Gamewell Fire Alarm Telegraph Company for the New England States, was born in Bangor, Maine, December 26, 1853, son of the late Inson Walter Decrow and of Rachel S. (Davis) Decrow. On his father's side he is a descendant . of Valentine Decrow, who came over in Puritan times and settled at Marshfield, Massachusetts, about 1660, and of the Pilgrim Rogers of the May- flower. On his mother's side he is descended from Edmund Farrington, who settled at Lynn, Massa- chusetts, in 1635, and from Lieutenant Vere Royse,
who received a large grant of land from Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire for meritorious ser- vice in the French and Indian War. William E. Decrow acquired his early education in the Bangor public schools. Soon after leaving the High School he became (in 1872) connected with the then just established newspaper, the Bangor Daily Commer- cial, as clerk. He developed into a reporter, and in 1874 succeededi to the City Editorship of the Commercial, and became regular correspondent of the Boston Herald, positions which he continued to hold, together with various city offices, until in 1876 he resigned in order to enter Yale University.
WILLIAM E. DECROW.
During his four years at Yale he was connected with the New Haven dailies in various capacities, was Financial Editor of the Yale Record, and in his Senior year was Treasurer and Manager of the Yale University Base Ball Club, which has become famous as the organization that inaugurated Yale's long series of victories in baseball, football and rowing. He graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the class of 18So. A few months after the completion of his college course he accepted a position on the Boston Globe, and on the election of General Butler to the Governorship of Massachu- setts, Mr. Decrow became political editor of the Globe and was given charge of the Globe Bureau at
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the State House. Early in the Presidential campaign of 1884 he was advanced to the position of chief editorial writer of the Globe. In the spring of 1887 a business opening appeared with the Game- well Fire Alarm Telegraph Company, and Mr. Decrow in the course of a few years became the company's General Manager for the New England
States. More than eight hundred of the principal cities and towns of the United States have been and are equipped with the fire and police signal systems of the corporation which Mr. Decrow represents, and its officers are very busy men ; yet he is never too busy to welcome any one from the State of Maine, to which he is ever fondly attached. Mr. Decrow held various city offices before he left Ban- gor, but has since that time sought no public position and has taken no active part in politics, outside of his editorial writings and in casting his vote at the polls. Very much inclined to independence in political action, he can hardly be classed as a party man. He is a member of various social organiza- tions, including the Psi Upsilon and Wolf's Head at New Haven, the Nayasset Club of Springfield and the Boston Press Club, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Y'ale Alumni Associ- ation of Boston. He is likewise interested in Free Masonry and is a member of Rising Virtue Lodge of Bangor, St. Paul's Chapter, DeMolay Command- ery Knights Templar, LaFayette Lodge of Perfec- tion, Giles F. Yates Council Princes of Jerusalem, Mount Olivet Chapter of Rose Croix and Massa- chusetts Consistory Thirty-second degree, Boston, and of Aleppo Temple, Mystic Shrine. Mr. Decrow was married January 7, 1875, to Lottie A. Emery of Lovell, Maine ; their children are : John Walter and Mary Wood Decrow.
DRUMMOND, JOSIAH HAYDEN, Lawyer, Port- land, was born in Winslow, Kennebec county, Maine, August 30, 1827, son of Clark and Cynthia ( Blackwell) Drummond. He is a descendant of Alexander Drummond, one of a colony of Scotch- Irish Presbyterians who emigrated to Maine and settled near the mouth of the Kennebec River in 1729. In Georgetown - then including Bath, at that time a pioneer settlement - his great-grandfather, John Drummond, farmer and mariner, lived and died. His grandfather, the second John Drummond, was born and passed his childhood in Georgetown, but during his mature life was engaged in farming in
Winslow, where he married Damaris Hayden, whose father, Colonel Josiah Hayden, became a resident of Winslow in 1785, purchasing the farm adjoining the Drummond homestead. Colonel Hayden. for whom the subject of this sketch was named, was a man of prominence in business and town affairs, served as Major in the War of the Revolution and was afterwards a Colonel in the State Militia. Clark Drummond, father of our subject, born in Winslow, July 5, 1796, was a prosperous farmer, and an influential and esteemed citizen, holding a commission for many years as Justice of the Peace and serving in various town offices. He died in 1888, at the advanced age of ninety-two years and
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JOSIAH H. DRUMMOND.
two months. His wife was the daughter of Captain Mordecai Blackwell, who removed to Winslow from Sandwich, Massachusetts, shortly before her birth ; she was born in 1799, and died in 1868. They were the parents of eleven children, of whom eight are living : Josiah H., David H. and Charles L. Drummond being residents of Portland, and the others making their homes in Kennebec county. Josiah H. Drummond passed his boyhood on the home farm in Winslow, making the most of the limited educational advantages afforded by the dis- trict school, and later attending Vassalboro (Maine) Academy, where he distinguished himself in mathe- matics, mastering Colburn's Algebra when thirteen
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years old. Subsequently he was an assistant teacher in mathematics at the Academy. Entering Colby University, he graduated with honor in 1846, and three years later received the degree of A. M. from that institution. Following graduation he taught school for three years, as Principal of Vassalboro and China academies, in the meantime studying law with Boutelle & Noyes at Waterville. In 1850 he was admitted to the Bar at Augusta, and visiting the Pacific Coast in that year - the period of the exodus to the gold country from the Eastern states - he was admitted to the Bar of California. Re- turning to Waterville in IS51, he succeeded to the law firm of Boutelle & Noyes, his late preceptors, and rapidly rose to prominence in his profession and in public life. He continued to practice in Waterville until 1860, when a wider field induced him to remove to Portland, where he has since re- sided and practiced. Mr. Drummond has been City Solicitor of Portland for many years, and has served as Attorney-General of the State, also as attorney for a number of important corporations. In 1851 he was connected with the Androscoggin & Kennebec Railroad, and in 1864 became a Direc- tor of the Maine Central Railroad, with which the former was consolidated. In IS66 he was elected Clerk of the Maine Central, and upon the consoli- cation of the Portland & Kennebec Railroad with the Maine Central in IS71, in the effecting of which he took an active part, he resigned his Directorship, retaining his office as Clerk of the Maine Central
corporation. This position he still holds by virtue of successive annual re-elections, and as Chief Counsel has engaged in many legal contests be- fore the courts and in the State Legislature. In 1875 he was elected a Director of the Union Mutual Life Insurance Company, was active in its re-organization, and has since served as its General Counsel, shaping the legislation that was instrumental in the company's removal to Maine. He has also been a Director of the Union Safe Deposit and Trust Company since its organization. In political life Mr. Drummond has been active and conspicuous. Although affiliated with the Demo- cratic party by family tradition and early training, he left its ranks in 1855 on account of his antagonism to slavery, and the following year did efficient work in the interest of the new Republican organization, spending about eight weeks on the stump, and speaking twice and often three times a day. In 1857, while absent from home, he was nominated as Representative to the Legislature, without his con-
sent or knowledge, and was elected. The follow- ing year he was re-elected, and chosen Speaker of the House, in which position he made a record of ability that has never been surpassed, and in the opinion of many never equalled, in the history of the state. In 1859 he was elected State Senator, but in March 1860, after serving through the session, resigned his seat to accept the Attorney-Generalship of the State, being sworn into the latter office the day the Legislature adjourned. In this office he served by virtue of three re-elections for four years, declining a re-nomination in 1864 in order to devote himself wholly to the work of his profession. After becoming a resident of Portland he was -in 1868 -- elected to the Legislature from that city, and as a matter of course was chosen Speaker of the House for his term, but declined re-election the following year. In 1864 he was a member of the National Republican Convention that renominated Lincoln, and he was also an active member of the conventions that nominated Hayes and Blaine. Since 1864 he has uniformly declined to be a candidate for public office, the demands of his profession absorbing the greater part of his time and attention. His name has been prominently mentioned in various conven- tions as the party candidate for Governor, at times when a nomination was equivalent to an election ; but he has declined these honors, as also that of a chair on the Supreme Bench of the State, which might have been his had he cared to take it. Mr. Drummond is also distinguished for his Masonic writings and for the eminent stations he has success- fully filled in the Masonic fraternity. After Thomas Smith Webb, who gave form to Masonry in this country, it is probable that no man has done more for the ancient craft than has the subject of this sketch. He joined Waterville Lodge in 1849, and was its Master in 1858-9. From 1860 to 1863 he was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Maine, was for two years at the head of the Grand Chapter and Grand Commandery of Maine, and for one year was at the head of the Grand Council of Maine. In 1871 he was elected to the chief position of the General Grand Chapter of the United States, and in 18So was Grand Master of the General Grand Coun- cil of the United States, holding each office for three years. He was Provincial Deputy Grand Master of the Royal Order of Scotland under the late Albert Pike, and since Mr. Pike's death has been Provincial Grand Master of that body. In 1859 and 1862 he received the degree of the Scottish Rite, and in the latter year the Thirty-third Degree was conferred
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upon him, making him an honorary member of the Supreme Council of the Northern Jurisdiction of the United States. He was immediately elected Lieu- tenant-Grand Commander, and was re-elected in 1863 and 1866. In 1867, upon the union of the Supreme Councils previously existing, he was elected Grand Commander of the United Supreme Council, the highest office within the gift of the fraternity. He was re-elected in 1870, 1873 and IS;6, but in 1879 declined further service. As Chairman of the Committee on Masonic Jurisprudence, in the grand bodies of Maine and in the national bodies, Mr. Drummond has done more than any other man to shape the policy of the order in the state and nation. In his own Grand Lodge he has for over thirty years performed the duty of reviewing the proceedings of the other Grand Lodges- over fifty in number - his report often comprising more than two hundred pages. He has also performed similar service for the Grand Chapter, Grand Council and Grand Commandery. In these reports various questions of Masonic law, usage, polity and duty are discussed, and the reviewers of other Grand Lodges concede to Mr. Drummond the first position as to ability and influence. He has filled various Masonic offices and performed numerous duties other than those enu- merated here, and his name is known and honored, and his acquaintance eagerly sought, by the members of the fraternity throughout Europe and America. Mr. Drummond is deeply interested in historical and genealogical research, and is well versed in general local and state as well as in Masonic history. He is a member of the Maine Historical Society, the Maine Genealogical Society, the Old Colony Society of Massachusetts and the New England Historic Genealogical Society of Boston. He was one of the founders, and is the present Registrar, of the Maine Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. He keeps alive his interest in, and retains connection with, his alma mater, Colby Uni- versity, which conferred upon him the degree of LL. D. in 1871, twenty-five years after graduation. He was the first President of the D. K. E. Society, at whose fiftieth anniversary he presided in July 1895. For many years he has been Vice-President of the University corporation and Chairman ex- officio of the Board of Trustees, his service as a member of the Board dating from 1857. Mr. Drummond was married December 10, 1850, to Elzada Rollins Bean, daughter of Benjamin Wadleigh and Lucetta ( Foster) Bean, born in Montville, Maine, March 2, 1829, but a resident of New York
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