USA > Michigan > A history of the northern peninsula of Michigan and its people; its mining, lumber and agricultural industries, Volume III > Part 3
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of causes tending to advance the general welfare. He served for a number of years as a member of the board of education and within his incumbency of this position a number of the principal ward school buildings were erected. For a number of years he was a member of the board of public works and in 1902 he was chosen representative of Chippewa county in the state legislature, in which he served two terms, during which he did effective work in securing needed legisla- tion for his constituency and for the Upper Peninsula as a whole. He is vice-president of the Sault Ste. Marie Hospital and takes a deep interest in the affairs of this noble institution. In politics Mr. Adams is a stanch adherent of the Republican party and both he and his wife hold membership in the Methodist Episcopal church. He has been an extensive traveler and has found both recreation and satisfaction from his journeys in different sections of the world. In 1907, in com- pany with his wife, he made a trip and toured the Mediterranean and Europe, visiting the most important points of interest, and in 1909 he made an extended trip throughout the Southern States and Cuba, besides which he has visited the most diverse sections of the United States. In the Masonic fraternity the affiliations of Mr. Adams are here briefly noted,-Bethel Lodge, No. 358, Free & Accepted Masons; Sault Ste. Marie Chapter, No. 126, Royal Arch Masons; the Sault Ste. Marie Council, No. 69, Royal and Select Masters; Sault Ste. Marie Commandery, No. 45, Knights Templars; and Ahmed Temple, Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine in the city of Mar- quette. Mr. Adams has been actively identified with the real estate business since 1886 and has been one of the most extensive and success- ful representatives of this important line of enterprise in this section of the state. In this business he is now associated with his sons, George H. and John N.
On the 18th of June, 1877, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Adams to Miss Elizabeth N. Carr, who was born in Prince Edward county, Ontario, Canada, and who is a daughter of Rev. George and Mary (Gilpin) Carr, the former of whom was born in Yorkshire, Eng- land, and the latter in Cornwall. The father was a clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal church and was long engaged in the work of his church in the province of Ontario, where he continued to reside until his death and where his wife also lived until the close of her life. Of their seven children Mrs. Adams is the eldest. Concerning the children of Mr. and Mrs. Adams the following brief data are given,-George H., who is associated with his brother John in the insurance business, served as a member of the Thirty-fourth Michigan Volunteer Infantry in the Spanish-American war; Augusta A. is the widow of William F. Ferguson, to whom a memoir is dedicated in this work; John N. is associated with his father and brother in the real estate and insurance business and he likewise was a member of the Thirty-fourth Michigan Volunteer Infantry in the Spanish-American war; Gertrude E. is the wife of Dr. Harvey Miller, a representative physician and surgeon of Gladstone, Michigan; Clement L. is a mining engineer and is now re- siding in Houghton county, this state; and Lillian remains at the parental home.
CAPT. CHARLES D. MASON, a prominent citizen of Gladstone, assistant auditor of the Furnace department of the Cleveland Cliffs & Pioneer Iron Companies, was born in Chicago, Illinois, June 12. 1874, son of former Senator Richard Mason, mentioned at length elsewhere in this work. Captain Mason received his education in the public schools
Vol. III-2
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of Escanaba and the Michigan and Northwestern Universities, after which he became a captain on the lakes for eight years; he and his brother owned three tugs which they operated abont ten years. In 1902 Captain Mason became chief clerk for the company where he is now employed, and one year later became assistant auditor, which position he now holds. He is likewise interested in real estate in Gladstone, and actively interested in the progress and development of the city. Captain Mason is an enterprising, wide-awake business man, and has attained success through his industry and energy.
Politically Captain Mason is a strong Republican, and has served two terms as alderman, two terms as mayor of Gladstone, several terms as supervisor and as chairman of the board of supervisors; he is a public-spirited, useful citizen, and highly esteemed. He is a member of the chapter of the Masonic Order, Knights Templar, of the Knights of Pythias, being one of the Grand Lodge officers, and of Lodge, No. 354, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, of Escanaba, the Knights of the Maccabees and Eagles of Gladstone, and the Licensed Tug Men's Protective Association. IIe is a lieutenant in the Mich- igan Naval Brigade.
In 1898 Captain Mason married Grace D., daughter of John S. Craig, an old settler of Gladstone, mentioned at length elsewhere in this volume; to this union has been born one daughter, Ellen N.
ALEXANDER AGASSIZ .- From the testimony of Dr. Charles W. Eliot, former president of Harvard University, and of others who best knew the late Alexander Agassiz, the statement is well borne out by the facts of his life that few men of history have been so completely mas- ters of themselves-both of their weakness and power-as the great son of the great Louis Agassiz. He knew that his nature was that of a slumbering volcano, and that he might not injure his associates, or retard his own high purposes, he habitually banked his fires. Vibrat- ing with intellectual and physical life, as well as throbbing with deep- rooted affections, he was habitually reticent and calm. He was a Stanton in temper, with a Samson in control, and it is doubtless that this constant curb upon himself made it necessary for him to find an outlet in the tremendnous labors of mind and body which he so piti- lessly imposed upon himself.
The grandest results of Agassiz' life were the splendid broaden- ing and completion of his father's conception of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, and his scientific, industrial and socialogical development of the Calumet and Hecla copper mines. In these fields he gave an exhibition of vast business enterprises conducted scien- tifically, but on principles of the broadest humanity, and brought to the standard of practical success, that the wide-sweeping interests of science might also be advanced and an absorbing sense of filial love be satisfied. Agassiz' purposes were single and high, easily dis- cerned through all the complexity of his fine performances, and he pursned them with the spirit of a stoic and the veiled tenderness and modesty of a woman. In his person and his soul were combined a great executive, a great scholar, and a great, modest humanitarian; a Christ-like type of the rare man who is of the world, and yet above it by no posing or low ambition. But the depth and height of this remarkable character are best sketched by his appreciative, learned and venerable intimate, Dr. Charles W. Eliot ('53), president of Har- vard University for nearly forty years. The following sketch is as it appeared in "The Harvard Graduates' Magazine" for June, 1910:
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I first knew Alexander Agassiz * intimately in the spring of 1858, when he was bow oar and captain in the six-oared Harvard crew of that year, a crew in which I rowed at number three. Agassiz had graduated from Harvard College in 1855, and from the Lawrence Scientific School in 1857. He was then twenty-two and a half years old, and had been in this country nearly nine years. He was of me- dium height and light weight, but muscular and enduring, quick of eye and limb, ordinarily gentle, and reserved in speech and manner, and quiet even when stirred, but nevertheless capable of strong spas- modic effort and vivid outbursts of wrath or indignation. The Har- vard boat of that year carried no coxswain, and was steered by the bow oar by means of a yoke convenient to his feet. The bow oar had not only to pull his share and steer the boat so far as possible with his oar, but also to direct the general course of the boat, looking forward over his shoulder and aft down the medial line of the boat. Agassiz had, therefore, two distinct functions in the boat, a curious prophecy of the two different kinds of work he carried on simultaneously through all his mature life.
He was a successful student during his connection with Harvard College and the Lawrence Scientific School, although hampered by his habit of thinking in French, and stood 24th in the Class of 1855, which graduated 82 men. In 1855 to 1857 he devoted himself to en- gineering and zoology, and took his first degree in the Scientific School in those subjects. In 1857-58 he was again in the Scientific School studying chemistry; and in 1860 he entered the School for a third time and pursued studies in zoology and geology, taking a fresh degree of Bachelor of Science in those subjects in 1862. Being still not content with his attainments in zoology, he reentered the School as a student in 1862, and then pursued the subject of comparative zoology. He was led to these studies by natural taste and capacity, and by all the influences of his environment and his inheritances com- bined. For his mature projects and achievements he subsequently needed accurate knowledge in every one of these departments; and his case illustrates admirably the desirable connection between the intellectual labors of youth and those of the life-career. At that time the partial elective system introduced by President Quincy had been well nigh extinguished in Harvard College; and Agassiz was obliged to follow his natural bent by means of labors quite outside the pre- scribed college course. In the Scientific School he was, of course, free to devote himself to the subjects of his choice. During his first period of study in the Scientific School (1855-58) he taught mathe- matics and some science in his father's school for girls, which was conducted in Professor Agassiz's house at the corner of Broadway and Quincy Street, where Alexander Agassiz also lived. It was a somewhat embarrassing position for a handsome but rather shy young fellow who was decidedly susceptible to feminine charms; but he conducted himself with great prudence and dignity, and was not often obliged to call Mrs. Agassiz to his assistance in the schoolroom. His second period of connection with the Scientific School was after his marriage.
His inclination in 1857 was toward the occupation of a railroad engineer; but his father needed his aid as a collector and Museum as-
* Alexander Agassiz, the son of Louis and Cécile Braun Agassiz, was born at Neuchatel, Switzerland, Dec. 17, 1835. He died of heart disease, March 27, 1910, on the steamship Adriatic bound from Liverpool to New York-ED.
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sistant, and his advice in all pecuniary transactions; and he therefore obtained a situation on the United States Coast Survey, and in that capacity had many opportunities of collecting specimens for the Museum, on the Atlantic coast and also on the Pacific. He returned from California in 1860, and married Miss Anna Russell, one of the pupils in Professor Agassiz's school for girls, and a sister of the wife of his classmate and intimate friend, Theodore Lyman. The young married pair lived in Professor Agassiz's house; and Theodore Ly- man, who was much interested in natural history and the Museum, provided a small salary for Alexander Agassiz as assistant in the Museum, in order that he might pursue his studies in zoology and geology, and work on the Museum collections. This was the only in- stance in his whole career in which Agassiz received payment for scientific services. His scientific productiveness had already begun; but he found it well-nigh impossible to procure the publication of his papers with suitable illustrations. He had no money to pay for the lithographie reproductions of his own drawings. His education dur- ing his boyhood in Switzerland included an admirable training of eye and hand in drawing, received largely from his mother, Cécile Braun, who was herself an excellent natural history artist. It is remembered that as a young boy he drew butterflies and other natural history ob- jects with accuracy and enjoyment. He doubtless had a natural gift in this direction. and that inborn faculty was carefully cultivated; so that he became very skilful in all sorts of drawing which could illustrate his observations in the field or the laboratory. During his boyhood in Switzerland he acquired another difficult art, that of play- ing the violin with accuracy and verve; but this skill in music had no effect on his after-life. He did not care for music, and he objected to his teacher's method of enforcing attention and sustained effort by rapping Alexander's fingers. In June, 1849, the boy left Neucha- tel for Paris quite alone on his way to America, carrying in his hand, by advice of his careful relatives, his excellent violin in its case. When he passed the Swiss frontier, he descended from the train with his violin-case, put it down on the stone platform, jumped on it, mounted the train again, and left the wreck behind. Thereafter he had nothing to do with music. He would very rarely go to the opera, or to a concert, not even when his brother-in-law, Henry L. Higgin- son, organized and maintained the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which among its other duties gave every year a series of admirable concerts in Cambridge, within a few steps of Agassiz's house. At last when Mr. Higginson gave in Sanders Theater a superb concert in honor of Mrs. Louis Agassiz's eightieth birthday, Alexander Agassiz attended the concert, but solely, as he protested. to stand by his mother during a public ordeal which she somewhat dreaded, enjoyable as it proved to be. Here was an early illustration of the concentration of purpose and singleness of aim which characterized Agassiz's voluntary actions throughout life.
In 1865-66. his brother-in-law, Mr. Quincy A. Shaw, a principal owner in copper-mines of probable but unproved value at Calumet, Michigan, found himself nnable to organize and conduct with profit the mines in which he had a controlling interest. He interested Alexander Agassiz in the enterprise, and all Agassiz's keen powers of observation and all his knowledge of geology and engineering were soon applied to the practical problem of making a great mining prop- erty profitable, although he was in charge of the Museum for the year ending October 1, 1865, and also in 1866. For two years and a
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half, 1866-68, his whole strength was devoted to developing and superintending the Calumet and Hecla copper-mines at Lake Superior. One day near the beginning of 1866 I met Agassiz in the street in Boston, and he said to me to my great surprise,-I was a low-salaried but contented professor in the new Institute of Technology, -. Eliot, I am going to Calumet, Michigan, for some years as superintendent of the Calumet and Heela mines. I want to make money. It is im- possible to be a productive naturalist in this country without money. I am going to get some money first, if I can; and then I will be a naturalist. If I sneceed, I can then get my own papers and draw- ings printed, and help father in the Museum." This program, laid down when he was thirty years old, was perfectly carried out in the subsequent career of Alexander Agassiz. He went to Calumet at first alone, but later his wife and their two little boys lived there with him. It was a life of considerable hardship for all the family, for the town was a mere mining-camp, and there were no well-built houses in it. The winter temperatures were often very low, and the winds were high. It was impossible for the baby to creep about the floor, so wide were the cracks and so cold the wind that came through them; so that he had to spend most of his time on the bed. Vegetables were very scarce, and the canning industry was hardly developed. A visitor at the Agassiz home in Calumet remembers what a welcome delicacy a dish of watercress was, which the wife of an English miner had picked. The miners were of several races and religions, and many of them could speak no English. It was no small advantage to the young superintendent that he could speak both Freneh and German, not only freely, but with all the needed varieties of expressiveness. In this isolated place, far from any possible support from public authorities, and under the strain of intense financial anxiety, Agas- siz worked for two years before the organization was made effective and his plans for the development of the mine began to be carried out. His brother-in-law, Mr. Henry L. Higginson, has lately stated that "the first dividend came after five years of hard labor, during which period he often worked fourteen hours a day." He was then capable of a very unusual amount of physical and mental labor. He would spend the entire working-day going about the mines, inspect- ing, deciding, and inventing, and would tire out the hardy mining captains or foremen who accompanied him; and then after his late dinner he would sit down to make plans, study accounts, or calculate the cost of projected work all the evening. He retained this ex- traordinary industry and capacity to turn from one kind of work to another all through life. For many years he and I lived near each other on Quincy Street, and I would often go to his house about ten o'clock in the evening. He was generaly sitting at his desk hard at work, after having already spent an active day either at the Museum or at the office of the Calumet and Heela mines in Boston, or half the day at one place and half at the other. He was extraordinarily pa- tient of details in his own department and of routine work, even of manual work, if that were necessary for the advancement of his pro- jects or processes. Indeed he really enjoyed manual labor like doing up bundles, and packing specimens. Although he maintained all his life a very active correspondence, he wrote his letters with his own hand, unless he eould state the substance of a note or letter to his sec- retary, Miss Clark, and depend on her to express his meaning. He never learned to dictate letters or compositions of any sort except, of late years, a few business letters in his Boston office, so that every
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narrative or essay of any length cost him much time in the manual labor of writing. He thought in French quite as often as in English, a fact which undoubtedly made it difficult for him to learn to dictate.
In December, 1873, Louis Agassiz died, leaving the great Museum which he had planned and founded still in an inchoate state. A few days later Alexander Agassiz' young wife died suddenly of pneumonia, probably contracted at the deathbed of Louis Agassiz, leaving three young boys to the care of the desolate father and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, who was always called "mother" by Alexander Agassiz, and was now to prove herself a wise and tender grandmother to his children. He had become President of the Calumet and Hecla mine, and its real manager; but the mine was well organized and developed and highly profitable, and he could direct its affairs from a Boston office, although he made semi-annual trips to Calumet. He was therefore able to accept the office of Curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology shortly after the death of his father, and from that time till his own death he was really at the head of the Museum under three successive titles, although as time went on he procured the assistance of several competent and interested experts. In 1904 Samuel Henshaw was appointed Curator, an appointment which brought great relief to Agassiz.
Lonis Agassiz a year before his death had undertaken to establish a summer school for naturalists at Nantucket, but in the spring of 1873 had changed the site of the proposed school to Penikese Island in Buz- zard's Bay, because the owner of that island, Mr. John Anderson of New York, offered to give Mr. Agassiz the island and a considerable sum of money for buildings and equipment. The school was started there in 1873 with a good body of students, but under considerable difficulties because of the inaccessibility of the island. The students were nearly all teachers, both men and women, and its first season was remarkable because of the strong influence exerted by Mr. and Mrs. Louis Agassiz on a group of men and women many of whom later themselves reached posts of influence and honor. The death of Louis Agassiz imperiled the life of this summer school. Alexander Agassiz became Director of it for 1874; but his experience on the island convinced him that it would be impossible to maintain the school there without making large annual expenditures. These expenditures he did not think it wise to undertake himself, and he therefore took the responsibility of closing the school after the summer of 1874. In his scientific as in his business career he would abandon, or throw away without hesitation or remorse, any tool, machine, or specimen which did not serve its purpose, or which could be replaced by a better.
Agassiz's services to Harvard University were by no means confined to the Museum of Comparative Zoology. He was elected by the alumni a member of the Board of Overseers in 1873, and served on that Board till 1878, when he became a Fellow of the Corporation, a function he enjoyed but from which he withdrew in 1884. In 1885 he was re- elected to the Board of Overseers by the alumni-a reelection which gave him great pleasure-but again his term of service there was cut short, because he was for a second time chosen a member of the Cor- poration, where he served from 1886 to 1890, when he insisted upon retiring. Ile was an active friend and supporter of the Observatory, the Jefferson Physical Laboratory, the Botanical Museum, the Miner- alogical Cabinet, and the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology. To the Observatory and the Physical Laboratory he gave hearty support when on several occasions money was to be raised for these departments by subscription. To the museums he
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contributed many objects of interest collected by him on his frequent expeditions to remote parts of the world. When he built the north- west corner of the University Museum, which was a large extension of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, he provided in it laboratories and lecture-rooms for the departments of zoology, geology, and bot- any, adopting as part of the Museum's work provision for teaching both elementary and advanced natural history, in spite of his avowed lack of interest in elementary teaching. He maintained, therefore, all through his mature life the same large range of scientific interests which the studies of his youth foretold. By successive additions the University Museum came to contain collections and laboratories for fossil botany, phanerogamic and cryptogamie botany, and economic botany, the mineralogical cabinet and laboratories, and lastly, a geolog- ical museum and laboratories. Paleontology, however, remained con- nected as to its collections and laboratories with zoology, in accord- ance with the classification made by Louis Agassiz when his original Museum received the title of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. It was a great satisfaction to Alexander Agassiz that the geolog- ical section of the University Museum, which forms the southwestern corner of the entire building, was erected in 1900-01 by all three chil- dren of Louis Agassiz.
By the year 1900 Alexander Agassiz had spent on behalf of the Museum at least one million dollars from his private resources in enlargements of the building, in the purchase of collections, in col- lecting expeditions, in printing the bulletins and memoirs of the Mu- seum, and in salaries and running expenses. After the zoological lab- oratories were in full operation the President and Fellows made a moderate annual contribution to the cost of heating, lighting, and cleaning the building. The endowment of the Museum being alto- gether inadequate, Agassiz bore the expense not only of additions to the furniture and the collections, but also a large proportion of the ordinary expenses and salaries. He habitually said nothing whatever about all these gifts and charges, and it was only with considerable difficulty that a summarized account of his expenditures for the Mu- seum was obtained from him in 1898 for the records of the Corpo- ration.
Through all these years Agassiz was developing the Museum on the lines which his father laid down. Thus he maintained the original unit for rooms in the Museum, which was a peculiar one. In the new parts of the Museum, as in the old, the unit room was 40 feet long by 30 feet wide. In each room a partial second floor or gallery was pro- vided for the reception of cases, just as Lonis Agassiz had contrived. There were no departures from this rule except near entrances, where rooms of varying size were sometimes inevitable. He adhered to his father's method of dividing the areas of the Museum between the storage of collections provided for investigation by advanced students and the exhibition of selected specimens for the public. Both needs were recognized, but the preference was always given to provision for research. Over the interior quadrangle door in the northwestern corner of the Museum, which was built and furnished by Alexander Agassiz, there stands this inscription: LUDOVICI AGASSIZ PATRI FILIUS ALEXANDER. ..... MDCCCLXXX. That might be said of a great part of Alexander Agassiz's work for the Museum.
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