Men of progress; biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in and of the state of Maine, Part 55

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 55


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several successive years, and in 1886 elected him its Commander. At a supper given February 25, 1886, by the Ladies' Relief Corps of Augusta to the comrades of Seth Williams Post, in behalf of the members of that post General Selden Connor pre- sented the new Department Commander with a rich and costly Grand Army badge. In his presen- tation speech, General Connor, among other eulo- gistic utterances, said :


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" You are, I am sure, well aware how loyally and zealously - with a whole heart and every energy - your comrades urged you at the recent Annual Encampment at Skowhegan for the high position you now hold. They were not moved to such action solely by their desire for your personal advance- ment, but by the worthier motive that they were thereby pro- moting the interests of the Order, and that they were offering the Department a chief who would bring tried ability and faithfulness to its service. The entire unanimity with which our choice was ratified by the Encampment was an occurrence almost, if not quite, without a precedent in our history. As an outward and visible token of our congratulations, and of our thorough confidence that in the conduct of your office you will amply justify the choice the Grand Army of Maine has made, Seth Williams Post has procured this golden badge of our Order, and of your rank, and begs you to accept it. It is because of your loyalty and true service that we bring this gift for your acceptance. Long may you wear it, and may it brighten with new honors in the coming years."


Mr. Lane is also a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. He has long been a zealous Mason, has attained to the Thirty-second degree of the Scottish Rites, holding many official positions in the different bodies, and has served several times as chief officer in the Lodge, Chapter, Council and Commandery. He has also filled the presiding chairs in Asylum Lodge and Jephtha Encampment, Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He was mar- ried October 9, 1865, to L' Nora Florentine Perry, daughter of Captain George W. Perry, a retired sea- captain of Augusta. They have no children.


PART V.


APPLETON, DANIEL FULLER, of the American Waltham Watch Company, and of the firm of Robbins & Appleton, New York and Boston, was born .. Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1826, son of General James and Sarah (Fuller) Appleton. His first American ancestor was Samuel Appleton, who came from England in 1635 and settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts, on land still in possession of the family, being now occupied by the subject of this sketch as a summer home. Samuel Appleton was the ancestor of all of the name in New England, among whom have been some that became distin- guished in the State of Maine, notably the Hon. John Appleton of Portland, Member of Congress and United States Minister to Russia ; Rev. Jesse Apple- ton, D. D., second President of Bowdoin College ; and Chief Justice Appleton of Bangor. General James Appleton, the father of our subject, removed from Marblehead to Portland in 1833. He became actively interested in politics, was several times the candidate for Governor of the old Liberty party, the forerunner of the Republican organization, and was a conspicuous advocate of Anti-Slavery and of Temp- erance. He was an especially determined advocate of Prohibition as applied to the liquor traffic, and was the first man anywhere to propose and propa- gate that principle - first by petition to the Legis- lature of Massachusetts in 1831, and afterwards, in 1837, by a report to the Maine Legislature, of which he was then a member. Daniel F. Appleton was educated in the public schools of Portland and, best of all, in his own home. His is the old story of a young man leaving home at .he age of twenty- one, with an ambition to do the best he could to rise in the world and make as much of fortune as the opportunities of the great city of New York would afford. Although he was without nioney and had no friends there who could assist him, he had not much trouble nor many difficulties in getting a start. After employment for a few months with a


concern that soon went out of business, he answered the advertisement for a clerk of Royal E. Robbins, an importer of watches, by whom his application was at once accepted. His connection with Mr. Robbins has continued from that day to the present time he having been admitted after a few years to


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D. F. APPLETON.


a partnership in the business, forming the firm of Robbins & Appleton, which firm in 1857 became the owners of the then young and small watch-works at Waltham, Massachusetts. The firm soon after organized and established the American Waltham Watch Company, which business they have con- ducted continuously ever since. To the advance- ment and success of that business Mr. Appleton has given his constant and active attention, and


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it is a remarkable incident that he, with Mr. Robbins and his younger brother, Henry A. Rob- bins, have continued together in the same busi- ness actively for forty-nine years. It is to be noted that Mr. Appleton was content to begin and con- tinue in the business of a watchmaker, in which he was brought up in the store of his elder brother, James, in Portland ; and that he sought to enlarge and develop it until his concern became the greatest watchmakers in the world. Mr. Appleton, though he never sought office, has been at times active in the councils of the Republican party, to which he came by evolution from the old Liberty party. He was a member of the First National Convention of that party, held in Philadelphia in 1856, when 1 neral Fremont was nominated for the Presidency, and has ever since given his active and earnest sup .. port to the party. Of all the many New England boys who have come to New York to seek their fortune, and have contributed so much to the wel- fare and glory in many professions of that great city of their adoption, not many have attained a more prominent social position or a higher commercial standing than the subject of this sketch. He has been Vice-President of the Union League Club, a member of the Century, Metropolitan, Grolier and various other club organizations and associations, and served as President of the New England Society of the City of New York in 1878-9. Mr. Appleton has been twice married, first in 1853 to Julia Ran- dall, and second in 1889 to Susan Cowles. He has three sons and two daughters : Francis Randall, Randolph Morgan and James Waldingfield Apple- ton ; Mrs. Gerald Livingston Hoyt of New York, and Mrs. Charles S. Tuckerman of Boston.


BRAZIER, JOSEPH HARRISON, Merchant, Phila- delphia, was born in Portland, Maine, April 8, 1837, son of Daniel and Mary Little (Ingraham) Brazier. He is a grandson of Harrison Brazier, and on the maternal side, of Joseph Holt Ingraham. He was educated in the city schools of Portland, and at the early age of fifteen commenced business life with the well-known Portland heise of Lowell & Senter, jewelers. At the age of twenty-one he left his native city, and after remaining a year in Boston, he accepted a situation offered in the large and growing jewelry establishment of J. E. Caldwell & Company, Philadelphia, and has ever since re- mained with this house, of which he is now the oldest partner. On the first call for troops at the


opening of the Civil War, he enlisted in the Com- monwealth Artillery, and for three months was stationed at Fort Delaware. He also similarly re- sponded on the two calls made by the State . of Pennsylvania for volunteers to defend her borders from the raidis of Lee's army, the first of which re- sulted in the battle of Antietam, and that of the next year in the battle of Gettysburg. Mr. Brazier is a member of the Union League and Art clubs of Phil- adelphia, also of the Pennsylvania Historical Society and the Philobiblon club of that city. In politics he has been a Republican from the formation of the parry. Mr. Brazier is very much of a home man,


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JOSEPH H. BRAZIER.


and having been a collector of books all his life, finds great pleasure in his library, which is one of the largest and finest in Philadelphia. He was married September 10, 1866, to Ellen K. Bartol, of Philadelphia ; they have two children : Emma L. and Harry Bartol Brazier.


BAILEY, ISAAC HAZELTINE, Editor of the Shoe and Leather Reporter, New York, is a native of Yarmouth, Cumberland county, Maine. His father died when he was two years of age. His mother was one of those remarkable New England women who possess in a high degree what is familiarly


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known in the East as " faculty," and also a rare gentle- ness of nature. She was a lineal descendant, in the sixth generation, of John and Priscilla Alden of Plymouth Colony. She possessed much of the self- reliance of her progenitors, together with a sweet- ness of disposition which rendered her universally beloved. Left a widow at the age of thirty-eight, with slender mneans, she succeeded in bringing up her family of seven children until the youngest, the subject of this sketch, was eleven years old, at which time " the cruse of oil", gave out, and he was thrown upon his own resources. Since then he has supported himself without the help or influence of any one.


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ISAAC H. BAILEY.


In his youth he drifted to New York city and ob- tained a clerkship in a leather store. After serving ten years in this capacity he was admitted to a partnership in the firm of his employers, and con- tinued in the business for twenty years, retiring in 1873. In 1875 he purchased the Shoe and I.eather Reporter, a journal devoted to th. interests of the shoe and leather industries, and the only publication of its kind in existence at that time. It was founded in 1857, and had flourished for years, but was in decadence when he purchased it, which was at sheriff's sale. With his large acquaintance with the inen of the trade all over the country, he was able , almost immediately to place the paper on a paying


basis. In 1882 he organized it into a stock com- pany and distributed forty two per cent of the shares among his employes. He has had supervision of its reading pages ever since. Mr. Bailey was Police Commissioner of New York for one year, 1859, by appointment of the Governor of the state, Edwin D. Morgan. In December 1874 he was appointed a Commissioner of Charities and Corrections, by the Mayor of the city, and continued in that office until May 1879. He was a Republican candidate for Congress in 1874, but was defeated, as were all the candidates of that party in New York city in that year, and as they were at most elections prior to 1894. He was elected a member of the New England Society in 1858, was chosen a Director in 1866, was Second Vice President in 1870 and 1871, First Vice-President in 1872-3, and President in 1874-5. Mr. Bailey has a wife, one son and one daughter. The daughter was married in 1876 to Lieutenant Charles S. Heintzelman, United States Army, only son of Major-General S. B. Heintzelman, of Washington, District of Columbia. Lieutenant Heintzelman died in Washington in February 1881, of malarial fever contracted while on duty in charge of the erection of a post at Fort Keogh, Montana. He left one son four years of age. The son, Stuart Heintzelman, is now a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point. He was ap- pointed by President Cleveland in 1895 and entered the institution on the 15th of June in that year.


BOWLES, FRANK HERBERT, of F. H. Bowles & Company, produce merchants, Boston, was born in Webster, Androscoggin county, Maine, October 7, 1856, son of William P. and Charlotte R. ( Haskell) Bowles. His early education was received at the " Little Blue " School for Boys in Farmington and the High School in Lewiston, Maine, and following his school attendance he worked for three years in the shoe manufactory of Gay, Dingley & Company, Auburn, Maine. For the next three and a half years he was with D. P. Dority & Company, prod- uce commission merchants, Boston, as bookkeeper and salesman. At the age of twenty-one he com- menced the butter, cheese and egg business on his own account, with a cash capital of forty-nine dol- lars and with no outside financial assistance. His first start was made in selling at wholesale from a team, and from this small beginning was developed the present extensive business of his firm. Every


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He is also a member of the Boston Athletic and the Roxbury clubs, in which last named organization he is a Director. In politics Mr. Bowles is a Re- publican. He was married May 1, 1884, to Grace L. Morrison, of Great Falls, New Hampshire ; they have one child : Lillian May Bowles, aged five years.


BEAL, NATHANIEL BUTLER, President of the Phillips National Bank, Phillips, was born in San- ford, York county, Maine, March 7, 1828, son of Sheldon Hobbs and Tabitha ( Butler) Beal. On the paternal side he is a grandson of Benjamin and Olive (Hobbs) Beal, and great-grandson of Zebulon


and Lucy ( Boston) Beal. His maternal grandpar- ents were Nathaniel and Tabitha (Joy) Butler. His father, who was a hard-working and successful farmer, moved in 1832 to the town of Avon, Frank- lin county, where Nathaniel worked on the home farm and attended winter terms of school until he was eighteen years old. He then " hired out " with a neighbor to take charge of his farm at ten dollars per month ; and a year later again hired out at twelve dollars a month, working at farming in the summer and in a custom gristmill in the winter. He continued at this business for three years, his wages during his minority being collected by his father. At the age of twenty-one he began to trade in neat cattle, a business in which he was very suc- cessful, and a few years later engaged in general trade in a country store in Phillips. Sound judg- ment, and a ready tact for doing business in an easy and genial manner, with habitual care in avoiding unpleasant personalities, soon made him one of the leading business men of North Franklin. But his hitherto active out-door life made the confinement of the store irksome, and began to impair his health ; hence he sold out and again went into the cattle business, driving stock to the Brighton (Massachu- setts) market. The experience of those years made him an excellent judge of live stock, and to-day his opinion of the quality and value of cattle is con- sidered inferior to that of no man in the county. From cattle to finance is a transition not so great as at first thought may appear; for the successful dealer in live stock must needs be an able financier. Upon the organization of the Union National Bank of Phillips in 1875, Mr. Beal was chosen its Presi- dent. In this relation he served for twenty years, and in all the time of his administration the bank never lost a cent through its investments or other- wise, except one small note too insignificant for special mention, a record in banking that is alinost, if not quite, without a parallel in the country, and one that speaks volumes for the President's financial abilities and keen business judgment. The Finan- cier, a journal devoted to banking and investments, published in New York, said of Mr. Beal, in 1886 : " The Phillips Savings Bank and the Union National Bank of Phillips owe their existence to Mr. Beal's energy and enterprise. It is needless to say that he has always been the friend of a sound currency. If he was not the leading spirit in starting the Sandy River Railroad, it was he who, at the critical period, when failure seemed to threaten the enterprise, led the way out to a grand success." The final success


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year's business since the start has shown a material increase over the previous year, even during the general business depression of the past three years, and their trade now amounts to over half a million dollars yearly. Mr. Bowles is a member and has served as a Director of the Boston, Produce Ex- change, Boston Chamber of Commerce and Boston Fruit and Produce Exchange, and is a Director of the Quincy Market Cold Storage Company. He is a member of various fraternal societies, including Columbia Lodge of Masons, Boston Commandery Knights Templar, Massachusetts Lodge of Odd Fellows, and Chickering Lodge Knights of Honor.


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and unprecedented prosperity of this narrow-gauge railroad which has so wonderfully developed the re- sources of North Franklin, are unquestionably due to Mr. Beal's level head and untiring energy of pur- pose. In the dark days of the undertaking, the days of " buying the iron," of "giving the Directer's note," and of " placing the bonds," it was Mr. Beal who, in the language quoted, " led the way out." Mr. Beal is at the present time serving as President of the Phillips National Bank. He is a Democrat in politics, and has several times been the choice of his party as candidate for Representative to the Legislature from his district, which however has


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N. B. BEAL.


always been overwhelmingly Republican. The gen- eral confidence and esteem of his community have been manifested by retaining him as one of the town's Selectmen most of the time for upwards of thirty years, also by the large number of marriages he has been called upon to solemnize, the many estates he has been asked to settle, and the numer- ous guardianships conferred upon him. He is act- ively interested in all matters pertaining to the public welfare, and is a liberal contributor to the support of the Free Baptist Church, of whose choir he has been a member for more than forty years. Mr. Beal was married April 8, 1849, to Mary Rob- bins, daughter of Oren and Mary Robbins of . Phillips; they have had three children : Fred


Marshall (deceased) ; Minnie G., now Mrs. J. Watson Smith of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Fred N. Beal, Superintendent of the Sandy River Railroad.


CHAPMAN, CHARLES JARVIS, Mayor of Portland ISS6-8, was born in Bethel, Oxford county, Maine, January 29, 1848, son of Robert A. and Frances (Carter) Chapman ; the former a native of Gilead, Maine, and the latter of Massachusetts. He re- ceived his early education in the public schools and at Gould's Academy in his native town, and gradu- ated from Bowdoin College with the degree of A. B. in 1868. In college he was an enthusiastic student, and in his Senior year he won first prize for excel- lence in English composition ; but close application to studies impaired his health, and following gradu- ation he sought recuperation in Minnesota, where he was employed by the Northern Pacific Railroad Company for two years, and during that time formed an acquaintance with many prominent rail- road men, which has since continued. Returning to Maine with improved health in the summer of 1870, he entered actively upon a business career as a member of the flour and grain commission house of Norton, Chapman & Company in Portland. Through all the successive changes in this promi- nent firm for twenty-five years Mr. Chapman re- mained until he became the senior and head, and in 1894 the business was incorporated under the name it had so long and honorably borne, with Mr. Chapman as Treasurer and Manager, and principal owner. The Norton-Chapman Company is recog- nized as the leading house in Maine in the flour and grain trade, and represents some of the largest and best known mills of the West, whose products stand high in public favor, notably the celebrated Pillsbury-Washburn Mills of Minneapolis. Possessed of an especial talent and equipment as a financier, Mr. Chapman has devoted a considerable part of his time and energies to the banking business in Portland. In 1890, in connection with his brothers, Cullen C. and Robert Chapman, he established the well-known and successful Chapman Banking Com- pany, which in 1893 was incorporated as the Chapman National Bank, of which he is Vice- President and one of the Board of Directors. He lias also found time to serve as Director and Man- ager in other business institutions and manufactur- ing corporations, and is President of the Portland Sprinkling Company and the Diamond Island Asso- ciation, Director of the Portland Mutual Fire Insur-


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ance Company and the Maine Auxiliary Fire Alarm Company, an officer of the Portland Board of Trade, was for several years a Director of the Portland & Ogdensburg Railroad, and is connected officially and otherwise with various other business and finan- cial enterprises. He was for years a Trustee of the Portland Public Library , and a member of the School Committee, but resigned these offices ior want of time to give their duties such attention as he felt they required. An ardent Republican in politics, Mr. Chapman was a member of the Com- mon Council of Portland from 1877 to 1879, serving as President of that body in the latter year ; and at


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CHAS. J. CHAPMAN.


the time the Portland & Rochester Railroad was sold by the city, by preventing undue haste he brought to the city treasury seventy-five thousand dollars more than it would otherwise have realized. In 1880 and 1881 he served on the Board of Alder- men, during his second year as Chairman. In 1886 he was elected Mayor of the city, and was twice re- elected by increasing majorities, his administration covering three years. The extensive Back Bay improvements of Portland date from that period ; and also the lease of the Portland & Ogdensburg Railroad to the Maine Central, which has resulted not only in making remunerative the city's invest- ment in the former road, but also in securing per-


manantly to Portiand the especial advantages for which the Portland & Ogdensburg was constructed. During his Mayoralty the city built the new reservoir on Munjoy Hill; the new Public Library Building, the munificent gift of Hon. J. P. Baxter, was ac- cepted by the city, Mayor Chapman making a graceful and appropriate speech on the occasion ; and the Longfellow statue was presented to the city by the Longfellow Association, by whom . it was erected in memory of the gifted poet and former Portland resident. The brilliant celebration of Portland's Centennial was inaugurated and carried to a successful consummation largely through Mayor Chapman's influence and untiring efforts, and he was one of the State Commissioners to the celebra- tion of the National Centennial in New York city in 1888. Also in 1888 he served as alternate Delegate at Large to the Republican National Convention at Chicago, which nominated President Harrison. Mr. Chapman is an active member of many social, literary and political organizations, including the Portland, Bowdoin, Athletic and Medical Science clubs, and has been prominently identified with the first two named from their formation. Among the foremost in appreciating the great beauty and value of Casco Bay as a summer resort, he has done much to promote the development of Diamond Island, on whose highest point he erected in 1892 a handsome summer residence, "The Towers," and also aided largely in the reconstruction and main- tenance of the new Ottawa House, a large and fine summer hotel on Cushing's Island. Mr. Chapman was married September 15, 1875, to Anna Dow Hinds, daughter of Benjamin F. Hinds of Portland. They have five children : Marion Carter; a student at Smith College ; Robert Franklin, in Bowdoin College, class of 1900; Charles Jarvis, Jr., in the Portland High School, and Philip Freeland and Harrison Carter Chapman, both in attendance at the public schools.


COTHREN, NATHANIEL, Lawyer, Brooklyn, New York, was born in Farmington, Maine, June 21, 1825, son of William and Hannah (Cooper) Coth- ren. He is a grandson of William Cochrane, and great-grandson of William Cothrane. His great- great-grandfather, of the same name as the last, lived in Paisley, Scotland ; his great-grandfather in Plymouth, England, and his grandfather in Massa- chusetts and Maine. His father had his name changed as above. He received his early educa-


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tion in the public schools and at Farmington Acade.ny, graduated from Bowdoin College in the class of 1849, taught school for a few years, and in December 1856 was admitted to the New York Bar. In January 1850 he formed a partnership for general law practice with Dexter A. Hawkins, How deceased, which continued for twenty years. Mr. Cothren has led a quiet, uneventful, but very busy life - first a farmer's boy, then a school teacher, and finally a lawyer - the greater part of which has been devoted to the practice of his profession. He has served as a member of the Brooklyn Board of Education, to which he was appointed July 1, 1884, by Mayor Low. He is a member of the New York


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NATHANIEL COTHREN.


State Bar Association, to which he was elected in September 1889, also a member of the Sons of the Revolution, and of Lafayette Post Grand Army of the Republic. In politics he has been a Republi- can from the formation of the party; in other words, he is a charter member. He was married April 2, 1854, to Elizabeth W. Corliss, of Long Branch, New Jersey. They have had but one child : Frank H. Cothren, now associated with his father in the law business.




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