Men of progress; biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in and of the state of Maine, Part 46

Author: Herndon, Richard; McIntyre, Philip Willis, 1847- ed; Blanding, William F., joint ed
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Boston, New England magazine
Number of Pages: 1268

USA > Maine > Men of progress; biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in and of the state of Maine > Part 46

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of whom only one, General Charles Hamlin, sur- vives. In 1856 he was a second time married, to Ellen V. Emery, a sister of his first wife, by whom he had two children : Hannibal Emery Hamlin, of E'lsworth, Maine, and Frank Hamlin, of Chicago, both being lawyers. Charles Hamlin received his early education in Hampden, Bridgton and Bethel academies, graduated at Bowdoin College in 1857, and after reading law with his father was admitted to the Bar in October 1858, and entered upon the prac- tice of his profession in Orland, Hancock county. In the early period of the Civil War, before he entered the military service, he figured actively in recruiting for various regiments in Hancock county, obtaining commissions for officers in the First Maine Cavalry and as acting masters in the navy. In the summer of 1862 he assisted in raising the Eighteenth Maine Infantry, afterwards reorganized into the First Maine Heavy Artillery (second on the list of "Fox's Regimental Losses "), in which he was mustered as Major in August 1862. He served with this regiment in the defences of Wash- ington until May 1863, when he resigned to enter the field for a more active service, having been ap- pointed Assistant Adjutant-General upon the staff of Major-General Hiram G. Berry. General Berry was killed at the Battle of Chancellorsville, on the third of May, while commanding the Second Divi- sion (formerly Hooker's) of the Third Corps ; but Major Hamlin remained with this celebrated division until February 1864, when it was consolidated with the Second Corp., and participated in the Battle of Gettysburg and its subsequent campaigns, in- cluding Kelley's Ford, Locust Grove, Mine Run and other engagements. For his services on the field of Gettysburg he received the official thanks of Major-General Humphreys, commanding the divi- sion. In February 1864 he was assigned to duty with General A. P. Howe, Inspector of Artillery, and served at Harper's Ferry with that General dur- ing Early's raid in the following summer, relieving General Siegel. After the war closed he tendered his resignation, in September 1865, having been brevetted Brigadier General of Volunteers, and re- suimed the practice of law at Bangor, where he has since resided. General Hamlin has served as City Solicitor of Bangor, as Register in Bankruptcy, and is at present a United States Commissioner, and Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of Maine. He has compiled and published a work upon the " Insolvent Laws of Maine," and is also the author of a series of articles in the "Green

Bag," on " The Supreme Court of Maine," with biographical sketches of the justices. He repre- sented Bangor in the Maine Legislature in 1883 and 18S5, and in the latter term was Speaker of the House of Representatives of that body. General Hamlin has been prominent and active in the pro- motion and formation of loan and building associa- tions in Maine, and is the President of the Penobscot Loan and Building Association of Bangor, organized in July 1895. In 1887 be prepared and procured the passage of a bill by the Maine Legislature regu- lating these institutions, which is now the law in force. He was one of the founders and organizers

CHARLES HAMLIN.

of the Bangor Loan and Building Association, of which he has been its attorney, and which has been in successful operation for a dozen years, and has aided in promoting and organizing many other associations in the state. General Hamlin is a member of the Loyal Legion of the Maine Com- mandery, is President of the Eastern Maine Gen- eral Hospital at Bangor, and has been a Trustee of the Penobscot Savings Bank since its foundation. He has taken an active interest in the Waverly Woolen Company of Pittsfield. and the Old Town Woolen Company at Old Town, Maine. He is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Maine Gettysburg Commission, having presented to the

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Legislature the first memorial asking for funds from the state, with which Maine has already erected six- teen monuments on that memorable field. In poli- tics General Hamlin has always been a Republican. He was married November 28, 1860, to Sarah P. Thompson of Topsham, Maine. Their children are : Charles Eugene, journalist, of Brooklyn, New York; Addison, chemist, of Philadelphia, Pennsyl- vania ; Cyrus, physician, of Brooklyn, New York ; and Edwin Thompson Hamlin, student, of Bangor.

HAMLIN, HANNIBAL EMERY, of the law firm of Hale & Hamlin, Ellsworth, was born in Hampden, Penobscot county, Maine, August 22, 1858. He is

HANNIBAL E. HAMLIN.

a son of the late Hon. Hannibal Hamlin of Bangor, Vice-President of the United States during the Civil War period of 1861-5, and of Ellen V. (Emery) Hamlin, a daughter of Hon. Stephen Emery of Paris, Maine, prominent as a District Judge and as Attorney-General. Additional facts relating to his ancestry and family history are given in the preced- ing sketch of his elder brother, General Charles Hamlin of Bangor. He received his early education in the public schools of Bangor, prepared for college at Waterville ( Maine) Classical Institute, and grad- uated from Colby University, Waterville, in 1879.

Pursuing his professional studies at Columbia Law School in Washington and at the Boston University Law School, he graduated from the latter in 1882, and was admitted to the Bar in Waldo county. Maine, in January 1883. He at once commenced the practice of law in Ellsworth, entering the law firm of Hale & Emery, which then became Hale, Emery & Hamlin. In the fall of 1883 Mr. Emery retired from the firm and from the practice of law, having been appointed a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, since which time the firm business has been conducted under the name of Hale & Hamlin, with offices at Ellsworth and Bar Harbor. Mr. Hamlin's partner is the Hon. Eugene Hale, United States Senator from Maine. In politics Mr. Hamlin has always been a Republican. He was a member of the House of Representatives in the Maine Legislature in 1893 and 1895, and in the latter year served on the part of that body as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He is serving as Judge Advocate General on the staff of Governor Powers at the present time. He is a member and officer of various social clubs in Ells- worth, and is unmarried.

HANSON, EDGAR F., Mayor of Belfast 1895-6, was born in Lincoln, Penobscot county, Maine, March 11, 1853, son of Clark and Nancy J. (Hatch) Hanson. He received his early education in the common schools, and from early boyhood showed the energetic and pushing spirit that has marked his subsequent career. At the age of seventeen he left the home farm on which he was reared, and went to sea ; and for the next three years he followed the sea in summer and worked at pressing hay winters. At twenty-one he " married a wife," and with this inspiration to economy and thrift, added to his native industry and inborn ambition to get ahead in the world, by 1882 he had saved up two thousand dollars. With this capital he moved to Belfast and started a carriage-making business in a small way, in a shop which some of his rivals in trade designated as " Hanson's Barn." The young manufacturer fully comprehended thus early the se- cret of success in business, and possessed the genius of advertising to a degree that in those pioneer days in the development of the art was quite remarkable. In six years he built up a business of from thirty to forty thousand dollars yearly, an achievement accomplished by an intelligent and liberal use of

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printer's ink, backed by a reputation for good work and square dealing. In 1889 Mr. Hanson bought ~~ an interest in a proprietary medicine which under the name of Dana's Sarsaparilla, with a local repu- tation established, was struggling to profitably extend its sales in the general market. In 1890 he assumed the management of the business, which he built up to large proportions. He resigned from the management of the company after two years, and soon after organized the Nutriola Company, of He is also President of the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad Company, a Director of the People's National Bank of Belfast, a member of the Board of

E. F. HANSON

Trustees of the Belfast Public Trust Funds, and member of the Board of Trustees of Findlay College in Ohio, which last-named position he has filled by successive elections since 1892. Mr. Hanson was a member of the Belfast City Council in 1886-7, served on the Board of Aldermen in 1892-3, was in 1895 elected Mayor of the city by the largest majority ever given a candidate for that office in a hotly contested election, and in 1896 was renomi- nated by acclamation and unanimously re-elected. Politically Mr. Hanson is a Democrat. He is a member of Timothy Chase Lodge of Masons and

Silver Cross Lodge Knights of Pythias, also of Waldo Lodge and Penobscot Encampment of Odd Fel- lows, of Canton Pallas in the Patriarchs Militant of that order, and has served on the staff of Brigadier- General Small, Commander of the Patriarchs Mili- tant of Maine, with the rank of Major. Mr. Han- son has been twice married, first to Miss Flora E. Nickerson, January 10, 1874 ; and second, October 16, 1895, to Miss Georgia G. Lord. By his first wife he had four children : Lillian E., Elvin E.,

HARRIS, WILLIAM HUGH, M. D., Augusta was born in Appalachicola, Florida, August 7, 1861, son of Charles Miller and Isabella (Jewett) Harris. His father, Charles Miller Harris, was the son of James Moore and Margaret (Miller) Harris of York county, South Carolina, where he was born July 7, 1821. In 1828 his parents moved to Florida, which then was a territory, where he grew up and in early life held various offices under the territorial government. At the commencement of the Civil War he was com- missioned a Captain in the Confederate army, and served throughout the war. After the war he still retained his business and social connections in Florida, and died there in 1875. His wife, Isabella Jewett, was the daughter of Albert Gallatin and Hannah (Wilson) Jewett of Bangor, Maine, in which city she was born September 24, 1835. Albert G. Jewett, her father, was one of Maine's noted lawyers. In early life he was County AAttorney of Penobscot County, and in 1845 he was appointed Charge d' Affaires to Peru by President Polk. At the close of his term of office he sailed for Europe, where he remained for several years, educating his daughter, who is an accomplished linguist. Upon his return to America and to Maine, he established himself in the practice of his profession at Belfast, the early home of his wife, who was a daughter of Congress- man John Wilson of that city. Mr. Jewett was several times elected Mayor of Belfast, and was always a leading and honored citizen. His death occurred in April 1885. William H. Harris, the subject of this sketch, received his early education in the public schools of Brooklyn, New York, and at the High School in Belfast, Maine, where his mother at that time resided. In 1885, after several years spent in business in California, he decided to take up the study of medicine. Entering Dartmouth

which he became President and General Manager. Herbert F. and Mabel J. Hanson.

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Medical College, he studied there for a while and then went to the University of Vermont, from the Medical Department of which institution he gradu- ated in July 1888. In November of that year he established himself in the practice of medicine in

W. H. HARRIS.

the town of Dixfield, Oxford county, Maine. Here he built up a large practice, but left it in February 1891 to settle in the Capital of the State, where he has since practiced and resided. During the second year of his residence in Augusta, in October 1892, Dr. Harris was elected Superintendent of Public Schools, which position he held until a change occurred in the municipal administration. He is a member of the Medical Club of Augusta, the Ken- nebec County Medical Association, Maine Medical Association, Maine Academy of Medicine and Sci- ence, Kennebec Historical Society and the Abnaki (social) Club of Augusta, also of Bethlehem Masonic Lodge, the Knights Templar and several fraterna! orders. In politics Dr. Harris has always been a Republican, although brought up under the teachings and influence of Democratic forefathers. He was married in September 1887 to Martha Jewett North, daughter of Dr. Janies W. North of Augusta, who is the son of the late James W. North, author of the "History of Augusta." The fruit of this union is one son : James North Harris, born July 20, 1895.

HARRIS, NATHAN WILLARD, Ph. D., Mayor of Auburn, was born in Minot, Androscoggin county, "Maine, January 8, 1853, son of Dr. Nathan Coy and Harriet Ann Harris. He attended the public schools of Auburn, to which place his parents removed during his infancy, fitted for college at the old Lewiston Falls Academy in Auburn and the Maine State Seminary in Lewiston, and graduated front Bates College in the class of 1873. Subse- quently he took a two-years post-graduate course at Yale, receiving the decree of Ph. D. from that institution in 1875. He read law with Frye, Cotton & White in Lewiston, was admitted to the Andros- coggin Bar in January 1878, and after practicing his profession in Lewiston for about a year, moved to Auburn, where he has since practiced and resided. After his admission to the Bar he was for a time a student at the Boston University Law School. He was admitted to practice in the United States Supreme Court in March 1886. Mr. Harris has

NATHAN W. HARRIS.

served as Register of Probate for Androscoggin County, for two terms of four years each, and as City Solicitor of Auburn in 1890 and again in 1895. He was in the City Government of Auburn four years, 1880-3, serving as President of the Common Council in 18St and as Chairman of the Board of Aldermen in 1883, and in 1896 he was the Repub-

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lican candidate for Mayor, which office he now holds. Mr. Harris is actively interested in various local enterprises, and is officially connected with several business and educational institutions. He ; a Director and has for many years been Secretary and Treasurer of the Maine Benefit Life Association, is a member of the Board of Overseers and also of the Executive Board of Bates College, and is Treasurer and a Trustee of the Auburn Public Library. He is also President of the Asso- ciated Charities of Auburn, and has been President of the Maine Universalist Convention. Mr. Harris has been twice married ; his first wife, Manilla E. Smith of Ashland, New Hampshire, died in 18So, leaving one child, a daughter : Manilla E. Harris. In 1888 he married Edith S. Conant of Auburn, Maine, and by this marriage has one son : Nathan Conant Harris.

HILL, HIRAM HOVEY, M. D., one of the most distinguished and eminent physicians and surgeons ever produced by the state of Maine, was born in Turner, Androscoggin county, Maine, April 30, ISto, and died at Augusta, December 2, 1890, in the fifty-fourth year of his continuous professional practice in that city. Doctor Hill was the seventh in the line of descent from Ralph Hill, who came to America from Billericay, England, in the year 1634 or 1635, was a Selectman of Woburn in 1649, and later one of the original settlers of Billerica, Mas- sachusetts. From Ralph Hill were descended Na- thaniel (2), born . England ; Joseph (3), born 1672 or 1673 ; Jolin (4). born 1716 ; Paul (5), born 1742 ; Nathaniel (6), born 17 -- , married Susanna Hovey ; and Hiram Hovey Hill (7), the subject of this sketch. As one scans the line of the Hill ancestry, he finds men and women of strong personality, integrity and common sense predominating as char- arters. Dr. Hill was born to the common heritage of the typical New England boy of two and a half gen- orations ago. He attended the district school and worked on the farm as soon as he was old enough, and received from the influence and environments of the small rural community the early preparatory training for his successful lifework. At the age of fifteen he went to live with Dr. Baldwin, the village doctor of Mount Vernon, and there he was ani- mated by a strong desire to become a doctor himself. But the goal of his ambition seemed hard to attain and the outlook might well have dismayed any heart less resolute than his own. Endowed with a

mind peculiarly active, inquiring and assimilative, he soon became familiar with the nature of all the medicines in the pharmacopoeia of his respected patron, Dr. Baldwin, whose saddle-bags it was his daily duty to fill. He lived with Dr. Baldwin about two years, and these were the pivotal years of his life, as his passion for the sciences of medicine and surgery which was then awakened never afterwards left him. For three or four years he lived with his grandfather John Hovey, and assisted him in the capacity of clerk in the Registry of Deeds for Ken- nebec county, writing a fair and excellent hand. While in this employment his mind, like his hands,

H. H. HILL.

was never idle and never drifted to frivolous sub- jects ; his spare time was occupied with reading the school books for the advanced grades of those days, . including Latin, and in. experimenting in chemistry and natural philosophy. Possessing as a natural gift great originality and mechanical ingenuity, he often busied himself in designing, and constructing with his own hands, machines and apparatus for various experiments in chemistry and electric sci- ence, and astronomical study. Some of the me- chanical inventions given to the world by him in early and later life have now become the valuable property of mankind. At about the age of twenty- one he succeeded in beginning systematically the

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study of medicine, which it had long been his desire to do. He studied for one year with Dr. Gage, then of Augusta ; the next year with Dr. Nourse of Hallowell, and the third with Dr. Hubbard of the same town, and then took two full courses of lectures at the Maine Medical School in Brunswick. In 1835 he went to Philadelphia and attended a course of lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, returning to Maine and graduating at Brunswick, June 15, 1836. He imme- diately opened an office as a practicing physician and surgeon at Augusta, the Capital of Maine, and there he passed the remainder of his life in the exercise of his skill and devotion in alleviating suffering and unselfishly striving to do good to his fellow-crea- tures. The honorary degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon him by Waterville College in 1855. Dr. Hill was one of nature's masterpieces - an honest man ; he lived universally esteemed, and died as widely lamented. His renown as a skilful physician and surgeon was wider than the bounds of his native state, and his treatment was sought by patients from far as well as from near. He was the nost familiarly known, of course, in his home city, which was proud to own him as her eminent citizen. At the completion of a half-century of his pro- fessional practice in Augusta, his medical associates in the county and state celebrated the event by a reception and banquet in his honor, on the fifteenth of June 1886. On this occasion Dr. Hill briefly responded to the sentiment of the evening - " Our Honored Guest" - in a characteristic and delight- ful autobiographical manner, bubbling with wit and humor, but .. o modestly withholding from pub- licity a vast multitude of facts in his fruitful and beneficent career that deserve permanent record. Dr. Hill never accepted public office ; his loyalty to his patients would not tolerate such interruption in his profession, however loud the call of his fellow- citizens might be. Politically he voted uniformly with the Democratic party. His only diversion outside of his profession was in the line of mechanics, in which he was sometimes personally interested as an inventor, but never at any pecun- iary profit to himself; others always reaped the harvest of his sowing in this direction. He was singularly indifferent to money-making; his fees as a physician, if carefully collected, would have made him wealthy. His habits and tastes and man- ners were of great simplicity. In the sick room he was as gentle and sympathetic as a chikl. He was intolerant of quacks and shams to the utmost degree, and never lacked language to express him-

self regarding them. After fifty years of profes- sional practice he said to his friends: "I have always done the best I could, never turning my back upon anybody, or anything that should be done ; have treated all classes of people alike, pro- fessionally, never doing by a patient as I would not be done by myself. I have always admired the advice of Polonius to Laertes, and when strictly followed, we shall not be likely to err in wrong doing :

"' This above all, - to thine own self be true; And it shall follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.'"

These favorite lines of Dr. Hill - often repeated in his later years in the presence of his intimate friends - may be considered as expressing the substance of his religious creed. Though he was not what is conventionally termed pious, yet like all great natures, he was in fact intensely religious in the highest sense. To him the Author of the Universe was too august and sacred to be measured by finite men and ecclesiastical instruments. To his Maker and to all human things that are noble, good and pure, his reverence was boundless. The golden rule was his unconscious practice. Dr. Hill was twice married : first, about the year 1837, to Miss Sarah Ann Carpenter, who died about the year 1864. His second marriage was June 5, 1870, to Miss Clara L. Dalton, who is now ( 1896) living ; she was the daughter of P. A. Dalton of Unity, Maine, afterwards of Norridgewock, and later of Exeter, where lie died.

HILL, MELVIN JOSEPH, Master in the English High School, Boston, was born in Biddeford, Maine, July 7, 1843, son of Joseph S. Hill, a native of Chatham, New Hampshire, and Nancy (Hill) Hill, whose birthplace was Limerick, Maine. His · parents, before marriage, were both teachers. After marriage they made their home in Biddeford, where, on Spring's Island, Mr. Hill, with a brother, carried on a successful business in the manufacture of woolen goods. Mr. Hill died at the age of thirty-six, leav- ing three children : Frank A., now Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, a sketch of whose life may be found elsewhere in this work ; Melvin Joseph, the subject of this biography ; and Harriet Jane, who died at the age of twenty-five, a young woman of rare beauty of mind and brilliancy of promise. The paternal ancestry is traced back

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to Peter Hill, planter, who came from Plymouth, England, in 1633, with Captain John Winter, an agent of Trelawney, who was at that time Mayor of Plymouth. Peter Hill settled on Richmond Island, belonging to Cape Elizabeth : in 1644, he leased land at Winter Harbor (Biddeford Pool), and in 164S he was a member of the Court of Lygonia ; he died in 1697. The descendants of Peter Hill are now widely scattered ; many of them became prominent in the annals of Saco and Biddeford. Melvin Joseph Hill graduated from the Biddeford High School in 1860, entered Bowdoin College in 1861, and graduated in 1865, ranking number three in his class. He took part in two prize declama- tions during his Freshman and Sophomore years, was awarded the second prize for English composition during his Junior year, gave an oration at Com- mencement, and was elected to membership in the Phi Beta Kappa. In the exercises for the degree of .A. M. at the Commencement of 1868, he gave the Latin valedictory. To earn money for his col- lege expenses, he taught school during the long win- ter vacations then in vogue. During his Sophomore year he taught two terms in district number one in Biddeford, boarding at home and walking the dis- tance of four miles twice a day, often breaking out the winter roads, but never losing a day or a minute. During his Junior vacation he taught in Yarmouth- port, and during his Senior vacation in Limington Academy. After graduation he was for a short time bookkeeper and salesman for a business house in Lewiston, Maine. Then he became Principal of the Alfred (Maine) High School, where he served one year ; of the ~ Blackstone (Massachusetts) High School, where he served two years; and of the Wakefield (Massachusetts) High School, where he continued in service for ten years, from 1869 to 1579, and in which town he still has his residence. In 18So he took charge of the mathematical depart- ment of Bryant & Stratton's Commercial School in Boston, resigning in 1884 to become a Junior Mas- ter of the English High School in the same city. In 1896 he became a Master in this school, in ac- cordance with the Boston rules for advancement. Mr. Hill was Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Wakefield Town Library four years, 1870-4, and has served as an assessor of the Wakefield Congre- rational Parish for three years, as acting Treasurer ot the Wakefield Congregational Church for seven year-, and as Secretary and Treasurer of the Wake- fehl school Committee for six years. He is still a member of the School Committee (elected in 1832),

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Men of progress; biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in and of the state of Maine, Part 46

Author: Herndon, Richard; McIntyre, Philip Willis, 1847- ed; Blanding, William F., joint ed Publication date: 1897 Publisher: Boston, New England magazine Number of Pages: 1268

Author: Herndon, Richard; McIntyre, Philip Willis, 1847- ed; Blanding, William F., joint ed
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Boston, New England magazine
Number of Pages: 1268