USA > Maine > Men of progress; biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in and of the state of Maine > Part 49
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Harvard Law School in 1882-3-4, was admitted to the Bar of Maine in April of the latter year and to the United States Circuit Court in the following October. Mr. Richardson was not in active prac- tice until he went to Boston in February 1885, where he was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar and has since been established in general practice, now extensive and lucrative. His early boyhood, until the age of eleven, was spent in working on the farm summers and attending school winters. He then worked out on a farm until seventeen years of age, from which time he taught school until the fall of 76 in Baldwin. The four years following were passed in attendance at the Exeter Academy, in his vacations continuing farm work and teaching, to defray the expenses of his academic course. He also taught one or two terms of school after gradua- tion from Phillips Exeter Academy. He has been for the past twelve years connected with the even- ing schools of Boston, and for the last four or five years as Principal. Mr. Richardson was in 1881-2 a member of the Boards of Selectmen, Assessors and Overseers of the Poor in his native town, serving in his second year as Chairman of the three boards. In 1884, under Arthur'sadministration, he was solicited for the Assistant Consul-Generalship at Montreal. He was for two years, 1893-4, a member of the Mas- sachusetts Legislature, serving on the Committee on Mercantile Affairs, in the second year as Chairman, and while on that committee drafted the bill for putting wires underground in Boston. In politics Mr. Richardson is a Republican, and in 1896 was nominated without opposition as a Delegate from the Eleventh Massachusetts Congressional District to the National Convention at St. Louis which nom- inated Mckinley and Hobart. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, Knights of Pythias and Home Circle. He was married December 31, 1884, to Minnie Jane Bennett, of Boston ; they have three children : Zana Frances, Joseph Leland and John Samuel Richardson, Jr.
ROBERTS, JOHN ALFRED, of Norway, State Senator from Oxford County, was born in Gardiner, Kennebec county, Maine, September 10, 1852, son of John M. and Mary E. (Potter) Roberts. His father, who moved his family in 1852 to Andover, Oxford county, where he became a farmer, was a son of Simon Roberts, a carpenter by calling, whose carly home was in Waterboro, Maine. He acquired " his early education in the common schools of
Andover, fitted for college at the Oxford Normal Institute at South Paris, and graduated from Bow- doin College in the class of 1877. He read law in the office of Hon. M. T. Ludden at Lewiston and with C. E. Holt of Norway, and was admitted to the Oxford Bar in the fall of 1878. For several years he taught school, in the vacations of his college course and while pursuing his legal studies. He entered upon the practice of law at Mechanic Falls, Maine, in partnership with a college class- mate, W. C. Greene ; but a year's devotion to his profession convincing him that the sedentary nature of the occupation was detrimental to his health, he
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J. A. ROBERTS.
bought a farm in Norway, overlooking Norway Lake, and began farming. For ten years he took care of the farm and taught school, but in the fall of 1890 he became bookkeeper for the large manu- facturing and mercantile firm of C. B. Cummings & Sons, Norway, in which position he has continued to the present time. He still carries on the farm, making a special business of dairying and pickle manufacture. Mr. Roberts has held various muni- cipal offices in Norway, several times serving as Selectman and Superintendent of Schools, and has been President of the Board of Managers of the Norway Public Library since it was made a free library by the town. He was a Representative to
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the Maine Legislature from Norway in 1893-5, and in 1896 was elected State Senator from Oxford County for the biennial term of 1897-8. He has been President of the Oxford County Agricultural Society since 1893, and is prominently identified with the order of Patrons of Husbandry ; is serving his sixth term as Master of Norway Grange, is Master of Oxford County Pomona Grange, and was elected Overseer of the Maine State Grange in 1893, and re-elected in 1895. Mr. Roberts is allied with the Republican party in politics, and has always been actively interested in political matters. He was Arried August 24, 1881, to Carrie A. Pike, of Norway ; they have one child : Thaddeus Blaine Roberts, born November 20, 1884.
SANBORN, JUDSON TRUE, M. D., Waldoboro, was born in Etna, Penobscot county, Maine, June
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J. T. SANBORN.
4, 1851, son of Reuben and Ann Maria (Carter) Sanborn. The Sanborns are supposed to be of Scotch descent. His grandparents were Samuel Sanborn, farmer, a native of Prospect, Waldo county, Maine, and Mary Mudgett, born in Troy, Waldo county, Maine; and on the maternal side, Edward Carter, a Baptist minister, and Ruth Dyer, of Sedgwick, Hancock county, Maine. Samuel
Sanborn and his wife died in Etna, the former aged seventy-one and the latter seventy-two; his grand- father Carter and wife also died in Etna, aged respectively seventy-seven and ninety-three years. His father, Reuben Sanborn, who died in Etna, March 15, 1884, aged fifty-eight, was a farmer and lumberman, and was a Selectman of Etna for several years ; his wife is still living, in Etna, at the age of seventy. They were the parents of eight children : Judson True, the subject of this sketch ; Frank, died when three years of age ; Fred, died at the age of fifteen; Nettie E., married to Bert L. Stewart, and now living at Plymouth, Maine (no children) ; Jennie E. ; Alice L .; Lura M., married to H. H. Winslow, and residing in Worcester, Massa- chusetts (no children) ; and Joseph Warren San- born, a graduate of the Maine Central Institute at Pittsfield, and of the Maine Medical School at Bowdoin College in June 1894, now a practicing physician in Waldoboro, and unmarried. The two unmarried daughters, Jennie and Alice, live at home with the mother summers, spending their winters away. Judson T. Sanborn, the eldest of the family, lived on the home farm until he was six- teen, attending the village schools winters and occasionally for a summer terni. He then " worked out " on a farm for two years, following which period he attended the Etna High School and began to teach spring and winter terms of district schools, and also to work in the mills. He taught nearly twenty terms of school in all, and in the meantime fitted for college at Lincoln Academy in Newcastle, Maine. For one year he was Principal of the Damariscotta (Maine) High School, and in the same year was Supervisor of Schools of Damar- iscotta. In the winter of 1878-9 he began the study of medicine at Damariscotta with Drs. Moses Call and F. N. Huston as preceptors, also during that winter attending a course of lectures at the Maine Medical School (Bowdoin College) in Brunswick. For the two following years he pur- sued his medical studies in the Medical Depart- ment of the University of the City of New York, where he graduated in March 1881, having taken several special courses in addition to the regular course. Following graduation he at once estab- lished himself in his profession at Waldoboro, com- mencing practice May 19, 1881, where he has since continued. Dr. Sanborn finds recreation and relax- ation from professional cares in doing a little over- seeing of farm work, on a farm which he owns in Etna, and on which his mother resides; but his
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time and energies are chiefly occupied by the demands of his large and widely-extended practice. He is a member of the United States Pension Examining Board at Damariscotta, to which he was appointed under President Harrison's administra- tion, with Dr. A. R. G. Smith of North Whitefield and Dr. E. F. Stetson of Damariscotta as associates. In 1889 and 1893 he served as Supervisor of Schools, and in 1894-5 as Superintendent of Schools, in Waldoboro, which is one of the largest towns in the state, employing from forty to fifty teachers during the year. In politics he has been ..... ays a Republican, and has been for ten years and more a member of the Republican Town Com- mittee. He has been an active and influential member of the party, and at the state election in September 1894, when he was elected Representa- tive to the Maine Legislature, he helped materially to carry the town for Governor Cleaves and the county officers on the party ticket; Waldoboro, a Democratic stronghold, going Republican on that occasion for the first time in its history. Dr. San- born is a member of the Maine Medical Association, also of Germania Lodge of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Honor, in which he is a Past Dictator, and the Ancient Order United Workmen. He was married December 5, 1888, to Annie F. Castner, daughter of Daniel and Malinda Meserve Castner of Waldoboro, and sister of O. D. Castner, lawyer, of that place. Their only child, John True San- born, lived but four days. Mrs. Sanborn is of Ger- man descent. She was fitted for college at the Walloboro High School, graduated in ISSI from the Boston Conservatory of Music, and since gradu- ation has been much engaged as a church organist and teacher of music. They have a pleasant home in Waldoboro, and feel that they are enjoying life at its best.
SAWYER, GEORGE BLAGDEN, President of the Wisca-set Savings Bank, Wiscasset, was born in Henniker, Merrimac county, New Hampshire, Feb- ruary 28, 1834, son of Jacob and Laura (Bartlett) sawyer. His ancestry is English, and on the mater- nail -idle is traced back to Sir Adam Barttelot, who came to England with William the Conqueror, and appear to have been the ancestor of all the Bart- letto in England and America. His more immedi- ate ancestors on both sides came to America many years before the Revolution, and settled in Massa- chusetts ; and his later ancestors settled in Warner,
New Hampshire, prior to the Revolution, where they became prominent citizens and held important civil and military positions. (See " Biographical Sketches of the Bartlett Family," by Levi Bartlett, published in Lawrence, Massachusetts, '1876.) George B. Sawyer acquired his early education in the common schools, supplemented by a partial course at High School in Manchester, New Hamp- shire. His preliminary training for active life was received at employment in printing offices, post- office, stores and counting-rooms. Afterwards he studied law with Hon. John N. Goodwin of South Berwick, Maine, and was admitted to the Bar in
GEO. B. SAWYER.
York county, Maine, in May IS59. In the same year he was admitted to the bar of the United States District Court, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and at a later date to the bar of the United States Court of Claims at Washington. After practicing law for a short time at Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, he removed, in the autumn of 1859, to Waldoboro, Maine, where he practiced in partnership with Ex- Governor Marble until April 1862, when he was appointed Clerk of Courts of Lincoln County, and moved to Wiscasset. He continued to hold that office by election and re-election until January 1878, when he resumed the practice of his profession at Wiscasset, in which he has continued to the present
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time. Mr. Sawyer was for several years a member of the Board of Selectmen of Wiscasset, was a member of the State Valuation Commission in 1881, and was Collector of Customs for the District of Wiscasset during the Presidential terms of Gar- field, Arthur and Harrison. He was one of the founders of the Wiscasset Savings Bank, established in 1866, of which institution he has been a Trustee ever since, and is now President. Mr. Sawyer's life has been a very busy one. He is Secretary and Treasurer of the Lincoln County Bar Association, and a member of the Maine State Bar Association. outside of his profession and his duties as bank president, he has always been actively interested in local public affairs and in the promotion of all en- terprises tending to the benefit and advancement of his community. He was for several years a Director and Clerk of the Wiscasset & Quebec Railroad Company, is Secretary of the Samoset Island Asso- ciation, and member of the Wiscasset Fire Society. In Masonry he is a member of Lincoln Lodge of Wiscasset, also of the Royal Arch Chapter and the Scottish Rite. He has also been much interested in horticulture, and was one of the originators, and for several years Secretary and Treasurer, of the Maine State Pomological Society, and a life member of the American Pomological Society. In politics Mr. Sawyer has been a Republican from the forma- tion of the party. He was married in May 1859, to Annie A. Lord, of South Berwick, Maine ; they have three children : Annie Laura, Edith Augusta and Helen Frances Sawyer.
WOOD, GEORGE FREDERIC, Cashier of the East- ern Massachusetts Agency of the Union Mutual Life Insurance Company, Boston, was born in Cam- den, Maine, July 30, 1846, son of Ephraim M. and Sophia N. (Hosmer) Wood. He is descended from William Wood, born 1582, who came from Matlock, Derbyshire, England, in 1638 and settled at Concord, Massachusetts, where he was one of the first assess- ors and filled other important town offices. Ephraim Wood, of the fifth generation from William, born in Concord, October 7, 1773, moved to Camden, Maine, in 1795. There his son Ephraim M., father of George Frederic, was born in 1818, and died in 1889. He was a man of strict integrity and sound judgment, careful, conscientious and reliable, and held in high respect and esteem by his fellow-citi- zens ; was thrice elected Representative to the State Legislature, was six times chosen Selectman (once
unanimous !; ), was for five successive years unani- mously elected Town Treasurer, and for sixteen years was Judge of Probate for his county. On the maternal side the subject of this sketch is descended trom James Hosmer, who came from Hockhurst, county of Kent, England, in April 1635, and settled in Concord. Massachusetts. Nathaniel Hosmer, Jr., his descendant in the fifth generation, supposed to have been born in Concord, the date of his birth being given as August 9, 1765, moved to Camden in 1785 or 1786, being one of the early settlers of the place and figuring prominently in its early history. His daughter Sophia N., Mr. Wocd's mother, died
GEO F. WOOD.
in 1865. George F. Wood received his early educa- tion in the public schools of his native town. Sub- sequently he pursued a three-months course of com- mercial training at the Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York, during the winter of 1864-5. Immediately upon graduation in the spring of 1865, he obtained a promising position in New York city, which he was compelled to abandon a year later, by reason of a dangerous illness, which confined him to the house for several months, and kept him from active work for the greater part of a year. After recovering he returned to New York and entered the employ of Raynolds, Pratt & Con- pany, a large paint and oil house in Fulton street.
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Resigning this position in April 1868, he started, in company with another young man in the employ of the same firm, for Boise City, Idaho, at that time beyond railroad communication and considered to be in the Far West. Before reaching his destination, and while visiting relatives in Illinois, the condition of his health, resulting from his illness of the year previous, became such that he was induced by medical advice to reluctantly give up his intention of making a home in the West, and return to the East. In July 1869 he entered the employ of the Eastern Express Company as Messenger on the sanford Line of steamers running between Boston and Bangor. The next spring he transferred his services to the steamship company, as Freight Clerk, and in the fall of 1871 was promoted to Purser. This office he held for sixteen years, during which time he was in service on the different steamers of the line, including the Cambridge, Ka- tahdin and Penobscot. In April 1886 he was tendered the position of Cashier of the Eastern Massachusetts Agency of the Union Mutual Life In- surance Company of Portland, Maine, which he ac. cepted and still holds. Throughout all of his busi- ness career Mr. Wood has occupied positions of trust, and of financial responsibility. In September 1894 he was chosen Auditor of the First Baptist Church of Newton, Massachusetts, of which he is a member, and has been twice re-elected. He belongs to the Odd Fellows fraternity, being a member of Oriental Lodge, of Bangor. In politics he is a Re- publican, but has never sought political preferment. He was married January 21, 1874, at Camden, Maine, to Jeannie E. Butler, daughter of Reverend Nathaniel Butler, then of Bangor. They have had three children : Frederic T., George Ephraim (died in infancy) and Ernest H. Wood. Mrs. Wood died March 15, 1891, at Newton Centre, Massachusetts, where Mr. Wood now resides.
YOUNG, ALMON, of A. & P. B. Young, manu- facturers, lumber operators and country merchants, Hiram, was born in Limington, York county, Maine, December 10, 1831, son of Daniel and Annie (Babb) Young. His grandfather David Young came to Limington in 1776 from Wells, Maine, and married Betsey Small, a daughter of Francis Small of Lim- ington. His maternal grandparents were Peter Babb, born in Westbrook, Maine, who was a Revo- lutionary soldier, enlisting at the age of seventeen ; and Thankful Bangs, a native of Buxton, Maine.
His father was a practical and energetic farmer and lumberman, and Almon's youth was spent in working with him on the farm, in the woods and on the river, his educational advantages in the meantime being confined to a limited attendance at the common schools. At the age of eighteen he began working out, in the woods and on the river, and at twenty he left his father's home and went to the state of Penn- sylvania, where he worked at lumbering on the East Branch of the Susquehanna for two years. Return- ing to his native state at the age of twenty-two, he took small jobs of lumbering in which he was fairly successful, and in the fall of 1855, in company with his brother Peter, bought out a small store in Sebago,
ALMON YOUNG.
Maine, and began trading under the firm name of A. & P. B. Young, also continuing lumbering opera- tions on a small scale, with a combined capital of three hundred dollars. The partnership relations thus established between the brothers have ever since continued unbroken. After three years of modest prosperity they were burned out, with a loss of fifteen hundred dollars, and no insurance. They resumed the business in Sebago, however, but sold out in the spring of 1867. In the meantime ( 1866) they had bought at auction the estate of the late Deacon Mitchell at the mouth of Muddy River, on the shore of Sebago Lake, where, in connection with lumbering, they operated a canal boat on the
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Oxford & Cumberland Canal, making a financial success of the enterprise In the summer of 1867 they purchased a tract of timberland comprising a thousand acres in the town of Gorham, New Hamp- shire, on the Androscoggin River. In the following December they bought a store and dwelling in Hiram, Oxford county, and engaged quite exten- sively in the manufacture of clothing for Boston parties, also operating winters upon their tract of land in Gorham. In February 1872 they bought the saw-mill at Hiram, and entered largely into the manufacture of casks, in shook form, also heads and boxes, for export to Cuba. In the winter of 1873 a company composed of A. & P. B. Young, James M. Young and Charles Rankin was organized to carry on a lumbering enterprise at Bartlett, New Hampshire, which operated there for seven winters, employing forty men, thirty oxen and sixty horses, and putting into Saco River three millions of timber a year, making a success financially. In 1874 the Messrs. Young purchased a tract of land at East Baldwin, of the Isaac Dyer estate, comprising six- teen hundred acres, including a millsite and mill thereon, where they have continued in the manufac- turing business to the present time, cutting from eight hundred to twenty-five hundred cords of oak, birch and poplar wood yearly. In 1880 they added to the Baldwin purchase twelve hundred acres of timberland in the town of Standish, of the Aaron McKenney estate, and a little later, six hundred acres of the late Abram Came property adjoining the Isaac Dyer estate. In the following year they purchased a timber lot in Hiram known as the Usher tract, and also bought the township of Byron in Oxford county, in company with David Hastings of Fryeburg, Eben Nutter of Cape Elizabeth, David Hammond of Bethel and Charles Rankin of Hiram. Upon the latter tract they operated extensively for two years ; but finding Swift River, on which they were dependent for getting the logs to market, an uncertain stream for driving, they sold out at the first opportunity. About this time, 1882, by the failure of J. Winslow Jones of Portland, they became interested and started in the corn-packing business, which they have ever since continued. The firm of A. & P. B. Young still have the mill and twenty-two hundred acres of land in Baldwin, together with seven hundred acres in Sebago, and five hundred acres each in the towns of Hiram and Denmark. They have always owned everything in common, and in the more than forty years of their business part- nership never had any serious diferences with each
other, or a suit at law with outside parties. Mr. Young's business abilities and personal qualities of citizenship have led him into prominence in public affairs, and he has been called upon to fill various town and other offices. His first office was that of Constable and Collector in Sebago, to which he was appointed in March 1854. In 1862 he was elected as one of the Selectmen of Sebago, was Chairman of the Board in 1866, and in 1865 repre- sented that town in the State Legislature. In Hiram he has served as Chairman of the Board of Selectmen for the years 1873-4, 1886-7 and 1894-6. At the present time he is a Representative from Hiramı in the Maine Legislature, elected September 14, 1896. In politics Mr. Young has always been an active Republican. He was married November 13, 1860, to Mary M. Fitch, youngest daughter of William Fitch of Sebago ; of nine children born to them, only three survive : Fannie M., now Mrs. G. W. Clifford of Hiram, Daisy M. and Harry P. Young.
YOUNG, PETER BABB, of A. & P. B. Young, manufacturers, lumber operators and country mer- chants, Hiram, was born in Sebago, Cumberland county, Maine, October 18, 1833, son of Daniel and Annie (Babb) Young. His paternal grandparents were David and Betsey (Small) Young, who reared a family of ten children ; his grandfather was a na- tive of Wells, Maine, whence he came to Limington, York county ; he lived and died at Limington, and his grandmother was a daughter of Francis Small of Limington. On the maternal side he is a grandson of Peter Babb of Buxton, Maine, for whom he was named, and his wife Thankful Bangs, who were the parents of eleven children that all lived to grow up. Peter Babb was a soldier of the Revolution. The subject of this sketch was the sixth in a family of twelve children - eight girls and four boys - all of whom grew to manhood or womanhood. His early education was limited to that of the common schools, supplemented by three terms at Bridgton (Maine) Academy. His early life was spent on the home farm and in the lumber woods until he was twenty-two years old, attending the district school winters, and in the last three years of this period teaching winter terms of school. At the age of twenty-two, November 12, 1855, he joined his elder brother Almon in buying the small country store at Sebago Centre, two miles from his father's farm, and commenced trading and the lumber business, under the firm name of A. & P. B. Young. This business
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they continued until April 1867, when they sold out their stand, consisting of store, house, stable and mill, all of which they had themselves built. There being no. rents available in that place, they bought out the hotel at East Baldwin, six miles from Sebago, and ran it through the summer and fall. In the following December they bought a store and house at East Hiram, and engaged in the manu- facture of clothing in connection with running the store. This same fall the brothers purchased a thousand-acre tract of timberland at Gorham, New Hampshire, upon which they proceeded to operate ex.ensively, Almon attending to the lumbering, and Peter to the store and clothing business. The firm continued in trade at East Hiram until January 1871, when they sold the business and also the lands at Gorham. In the meantime they had built an- other store at Sebago Centre, which they were renting, and in February following they bought the stock of goods in it and ran the business in connec- tion with their clothing manufacturing until January 1872, when they again sold out and moved to Hiram, on the place where Almon now lives, and which he purchased in December IS71. In February 1872 they bought the mills at East Hiram, and in the succeeding June moved their clothing business into a new building which they erected, thereafter man- ufacturing in the shop, keeping from fifteen to twenty-five girls employed. In December 1874 they bought the Isaac Dyer mills and sixteen hundred acres of timberland surrounding them, at East Baldwin. Six years later they added to this tract by the purchase of twelve hundred acres practically adjoining, and the following year, ISSI, still further increased their holdings by the addition of six hundred acres. From this tract they cleared the timber from the twelve-hundred acre lot and sold the land, still owning the twenty-two hundred acres and the mill. From 18;3 to 18So they bought stumpage and carried on lumbering operations on the East Branch of the Saco, at Lower Bartlett. In 1879 they bought six hundred acres in Conway, adjoining Fryeburg, and operated there for three years, putting their timber into the Saco River. In August 188t they bought an interest in three thou- sand acres in the town of Byron, Oxford county, where they managed an operation for two years, landing their logs on Swift River and driving them into the Androscoggin. In ISS2 the firm contracted to grade the Bridgton & Saco River Railroad, com- mencing the work July 14. and finishing in January 1883 - a sixty-thousand dollar job. In 1883 they
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