USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Littleton > History of Littleton, New Hampshire, Vol. II > Part 40
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MOSES A. Dow.
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the acquaintance of Mr. Dow at this time, relates that he met him one day in the street when he broached his scheme of start- ing the " Waverley Magazine " and asked Mr. Munroe's advice. " I told him," said Mr. Munroe, " it was as wild a project as was ever conceived : that there was no possibility of success in it. He said that was almost the universal opinion among those with whom he had advised and that no one had confidence enough in it to lend him the small sum of money with which he felt it necessary to start." No discouragements, however, were sufficient to banish the scheme from his mind, and he finally succeeded in procuring on credit the type and material and in securing from a friend a loan of $50 which furnished the capital for issuing the first number. Mr. Dow was a man of taste, and the new journal was in all mechanical respects a good-looking paper. He was his own editor, publisher, and printer. His methods were simple: he printed everything sent in ; prose and poetry, stories of love and adventure, and uncommon incidents in the lives of unknown people filled the handsome pages of the " Waverley Magazine." These came from all sorts and conditions of men and women who wrote not for profit but because they were anxious to try their unfledged wings and see their effusions in print. Very few possessed liter- ary merit, but it soon became apparent that there was room for the new venture and that a large and eager audience awaited its coming. To a friend he once said in explanation of the theory that governed his action, " I just print the pieces they send me. They like to see them in print, and their friends are interested in their appearance. . So they take the paper, and their friends take it too. I give them a good-looking paper, which people think more of than is generally supposed." So the gifts of "copy " helped to build up the circulation, and the " Waverley " soon became a busi- ness success of large proportions. A few years before the war it netted Mr. Dow $60,000 a year. To the same friend 1 he de- scribed his business as the smoothest and most satisfactory possible. " I have no subscribers and no exchanges," he said. " I would not exchange with the best newspaper in the land, for it would be of no use to me. I do not copy from other papers, - my matter is all original. As regards subscribers, I think my system is better. The news company takes my entire edition each week. It gives me a check for it, which I at once cash, and thus my accounts are settled every seven days, and I know just where I am." Dur- ing the war the paper had a large circulation in the army. It was read in camp and on the march ; had the favorite place in
1 George H. Munroe.
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many a soldier's knapsack, and enabled him to while away what would otherwise have been many a tedious hour.
Moses A. Dow was by no means a great man. He had, how- ever, the perceptive qualities of mind that are of kin to genius, which enabled him to recognize existing conditions, and the busi- ness talent to turn them to his financial advantage. In investing the large sums that came to him through his enterprise, he was often guided more by sentiment than by sound business prin- ciples. This sentiment was apt to cluster about localities en- deared to him by scenes and events connected with the early struggles of his youth. He never forgot Littleton, the place of his birth, nor Franconia, where he passed his boyhood years, nor Charlestown, Mass., where he lived while making efforts to estab- lish himself in business. When prosperity poured her bounties upon him, he invested large sums in real estate and improvements in Charlestown, where he had little expectation that he would receive an adequate return on the investment. He could afford to lose the investment, and preferred to take the chance rather than not to expend something to benefit that city. There was nothing sordid or selfish in his nature. He appears to have in- herited the family characteristics of a strong desire to be useful to others and a hopeful serenity under the burdens of adversity that enabled him to maintain his efforts for the accomplishment of the projects to which at different times he devoted his energies.
For the greater part of his life he was connected with the Universalist denomination, but in his last years was a believer in Spiritualism, and more than a generous contributor to various funds raised for the propagation of the cult of that sect. In gen- eral affairs he was esteemed among the most public-spirited resi- dents of his city, and gave liberally for every purpose likely to benefit the community.
He passed several summers in this town a few years before his death, and upon his return to his home at the close of his vacation in 1875 he wrote to Henry L. Thayer, expressing a desire to present to the town a clock for the High School building. His proposi- tion was accepted, and the fine clock that has since adorned the bell tower of that building is an appropriate memorial of a worthy son of the town. Mr. Dow founded at Franconia the academy which bears his name, and gave it a considerable endowment.
It has been said of Mr. Dow that he was a man of "hobbies." It is likely that the charge was true. Every man of singleness of purpose who aims to reach an ideal is equally open to this appella- tion. In his case the ideal was not of the highest, but the uses to
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DANIEL J. STRAIN.
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which he applied much of the wealth its attainment brought to him in a large measure redeemed it from the level of the com- monplace. As a business man, as a citizen, and as a philanthro- pist, his conduct was that of one guided by the highest sense of honor and duty.
A son of Littleton whose life of nearly threescore and ten years was both honorable and useful was Edwin Azro Charlton. He was a grandson of the pioneer Robert Charlton, and possessed many of the intellectual traits of that sturdy citizen. While yet a lad his parents moved to Troy, Vt., a town on the Canadian line not far advanced in its settlement, where the youth was sur- rounded by many of the inconveniences of pioneer life. Of these hardships that of inadequate educational privileges was most felt by the family. The father, Walter Charlton, and the mother, Mindwell (Moulton) Charlton, had been noted teachers in their younger days, and they supplemented the slight advantages of the common schools by instructing their children at home. There came a time when the aspiring young man required other and more advanced instruction to enable him to pursue the educa- tional course he had planned for himself. That this purpose as well as that of their other children might be served, the family moved to Hanover, and subsequently to Claremont. It is a some- what trite expression to speak of the farmer's son who has acquired a liberal education as having obtained it under difficulties. As a rule he made his way by his own unaided efforts, working during the summer vacation, teaching in the winter and pursuing his studies every spare hour that furnished an opportunity. Such was the routine followed by Mr. Charlton. While residing in Jay, Vt., he had attended the academy at Lower Waterford, then taught by Harry Bingham.1 He pursued a course in the preparatory school at Hanover, and for a single term at Claremont Seminary. He graduated from Dartmouth College with the class of 1854, standing well in the class for scholarship, his record giving him a place in the first third, and entitling him to membership in the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
After his graduation he returned to Claremont and executed a purpose formed while in college, of writing a book descriptive of his native State. The work was entitled " New Hampshire As It Is," and had a successful sale. Though never passing beyond its first edition, it is still in demand.
1 At a quite recent date Mr. Charlton expressed the lasting obligation that he was under for the superior instruction which Harry Bingham gave in the Waterford school.
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Mr. Charlton then turned his attention to teaching, and was successively principal of the old Academy at Gilmanton and of the Union School at Lockport, N. Y., where he remained until 1861. He then went to Schenectady, N. Y., where he was preceptor of the Union School one year. In 1862 he returned to Gilmanton, and resumed his former position in the Academy for a year, - a position he resigned to assume the duties of superintendent of schools at Schenectady, where he remained five years. For the next two years he was superintendent of schools and principal of the High School at Auburn, N. Y. His health requiring a change of scene, in the fall of 1870 he became president of the first State Normal school of Wisconsin, at Platteville, where he remained eight years and where he closed a most successful career as a teacher, extend- ing over a period of thirty years.
He then purchased the " Brodhead Independent," a weekly paper published at Brodhead, Wis., which he continued to edit until his death in 1896. As a writer he was fluent but accurate, graceful yet forceful, with a tendency to be persuasive. He employed the weapons of truth and the logic of facts rather than those of sar- casm and assumptions that would not stand the scrutiny of close investigation. His career, if not brilliant, was eminently useful, and left an abiding impress upon thousands who honor his memory.
Daniel Josiah Strain, a Boston artist, distinguished as a por- trait painter, is a native of this town, a son of Daniel and Sally (Goddard) Strain. His father and an uncle, Edward, who was the father of Capt. Cornelius Strain, came from Ireland about 1835, and settled first in Bethlehem. Both brothers subsequently became residents of this town. Daniel J. worked for a time in the woollen factory, but his artistic tendencies were so strong that they controlled his choice of a career, and developed in the ulti- mate realization of his desire to become an artist. After a course of study he opened a studio in Portland, Me., in 1868, producing portraits in crayon of many prominent people in that and other cities of the State.
In 1872 he established a studio in Boston, Mass., and soon became noted for his ideal heads of children, which in photo- graphic reproductions became widely popular.
In 1877 he decided to go abroad and perfect himself in all branches of art. He studied in Paris, under J. Lefebvre and G. Boulanger, from 1877 to 1884, spending his summers sketching in Holland, Belgium, and Spain, and exhibited pictures in the Salons of 1881, 1882, and 1883. His first Salon picture, " Les deux Amis," he etched and published. Upon his return to this
SAMUEL B. PAGE.
387
Men and Women of Prominence Abroad.
country he reopened his studio in Boston, and has since done much notable work in portraits and genre subjects.
Among his best-known portraits are those of Gen. N. P. Banks, which now hangs in the City Hall at Waltham; Gov. John B. Smith, ex-Senator E. H. Rollins, and Capt. George H. Perkins, U. S. N., all of which are in the collection in the State Capitol at Concord ; John G. Whittier, now in Danvers, Mass., and that of Harry Bingham, a gift of the artist to the Littleton Public Library. Mr. Strain is a member of the Boston Art Club, is prominently connected with the Masonic order, having been Wor- shipful Master of Winslow Lewis Lodge, of Boston, in 1893 and 1894, and is a member of the First Worshipful Masters' Associa- tion of Boston and a District Deputy Grand Master of the Boston District.
A native of Littleton who has not strayed far from the place of his birth is Samuel Berkley Page, of Haverhill, lawyer, politician, parliamentarian, a leader in many fraternal organizations and an orator with few equals in the State. He has for forty years been an active leader in political affairs, and has represented Warren, Concord, and Haverhill in the popular branch of the Legislature, where more than once he was the candidate of his party for speaker of that body. A generation ago, party lines were taut, and every inch of ground was contested. In the Legislature the political measures of the majority were opposed with as much vigor and determination, when defeat was inevitable, as they could have been had hope of success animated and urged on the forces of the minority. Then Samuel B. Page, with his knowledge of parliamentary law, his unsurpassed resources and endurance as a speaker, was the prince of obstructionists, and was at his best as a legislative power. In non-political questions, though a member of the minority, he was the actual leader of the House.
Mr. Page has been retained in several important criminal cases, notably that of Lapage tried in Concord, in which he appeared for the defence. He was formerly local counsel for the Boston and Maine Railroad at Woodsville. In recent years he has held positions in the Grand Lodge of Odd-Fellows and in that of the Knights of Pythias which have made heavy demands upon his time, and he has to that extent withdrawn from the practice of his profession.
It is, however, as a public speaker that Mr. Page is best known. He is a born orator. His vocabulary is without limit in the Eng- lish language; his diction is smooth, elegant, and notably appropri- ate to the thought it is designed to express. His knowledge of
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recent history and current events is ample and accurate, his voice full and resonant, and his delivery always rapid and energetic, and not infrequently his speeches are surcharged with well-pointed irony and well-directed invective. He never prepares formal written manuscript, and doubtless there is no contemporary public speaker in the State who has addressed one-tenth as many audi- ences as Mr. Page who has not left more of the forensic product in accessible form in writing or in print.
Fred Oliver Nourse, recently general traffic chief of the West- ern Union Telegraph Company, New York, was born at Littleton October 3, 1859. He entered the telegraph business as an op- erator for the Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railroad at Wing Road in 1876. After working in several smaller offices he went to Boston, Mass., for the Western Union in 1879. About two years later he was made night traffic chief, and in 1881 manager of the Cape Cod Cable office, which place he held until 1882, when the French Cable Company was forced to withdraw from the cable pool. Mr. Nourse then returned to Boston and was made assist- ant to the night manager. When the Baltimore and Ohio Tele- graph Company opened their office in Boston, Mr. Nourse resigned his position with the Western Union and entered that company's services as chief operator. In 1885 he went to New York, and in a little over a year's time he was detailed to the cable bureau at 195 Broadway, from which place he was promoted to the quad- ruplex department in 1887. From there he was transferred to the Eastern division as traffic chief. When the main office was burned in 1890, he was made general traffic chief, which position he retained until 1901. He is now in Florida, where he holds an important position.
A son of the town who is little known to its residents, but whose achievements are of a high order, is Frank Hibbard Mason, of Akron, Ohio. He is a great-grandson of the Rev. David Good- all, and through him his connection with the town is doubly strong. He was born on the farm bordering Partridge Lake and Lyman line, December 29, 1850. In 1852 his parents moved to Island Pond, Vt., and from that place to St. Johnsbury in 1860, where for years the father, Jonathan Mason, was an engineer in the Fair- banks Scale Works. In 1872 the family went to the Pennsylvania Oil region. When Frank H. Mason reached his majority, he crossed the continent to California, where he found employment as an engineer in a quartz mill. An experience of two years of life in the Golden State satisfied his love of adventure, and he re- turned to Pennsylvania. There he engaged in the work of devel-
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FRED O. NOURSE.
389
Men and Women of Prominence Abroad.
oping oil wells, in which he met the usual fortunes of success and failure.
Wishing to engage in a business in which the element of doubt was not so pronounced as in that of prospecting, he sought em- ployment at the rubber works in Akron, Ohio. When his appli- cation was made for employment, he was asked what he could do, and his reply was " anything," and he was set to sorting rubber junk. This was literally beginning at the foot of the ladder, but he worked with a will that attracted the attention of an overseer, and he was rapidly promoted, passing in a brief period through the several grades of assistant foreman, foreman, assistant super- intendent, and superintendent, until he reached the topmost posi- tion in the manufacturing department, that of general manager.
When Mr. Mason was given employment, the B. F. Goodrich Company was a small concern employing but seventy-five or eighty persons. Its growth has been remarkable even for this age of expansion, its employees now numbering more than twenty-five hundred and the capital of the corporation is $3,000,000. It manufactures all kinds of mechanical rubber goods - everything, in fact, in the rubber line except boots and shoes - and is the most extensive producing company in its line in the United States and probably in the world.
In the development of this company Mr. Mason has been one of the chief instruments, and his rise from the position of a stationary engineer to that of a captain of industry indicates that fidelity, courage, industry, and ability are still the most valuable assets in the industrial market, and that opportunities for advance- ment have not yet been exhausted.
Mr. Mason married May Dexter, of Bangor, Me. They have two children.
He has within a recent period renewed his acquaintance with his native town, and is now each year a summer tourist among the hills and about the lakes which he first knew in his boyhood days.
There is an element of heroism in all genuine New England life.1 Every child born there comes into the world with an idea that God has something for him or her to do. If it is not an in- nate idea, parents or teachers or ministers succeed in awakening it. The heroism may be expended in the reduction to lines of beauty and meadows of productiveness of a rocky or swampy farm, or in the care of infirm parents or orphan children, or it
1 This sketch of Miss Rankin was written by her cousin the Rev. J. E. Rankin, D.D., LL.D.
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History of Littleton.
may be the silent heroism of converting a gnarly nature into one submissive to the law of love as it is in Christ Jesus.
Melinda Rankin, the first Protestant missionary to Mexico, was born in Littleton March 21, 1811. Her father was Gen. David Rankin, who owned mills there still called by his name, and her grandfather, James Rankin, the first of the name in New England, who came to this country from Glasgow with one daughter and seven sons, and settled first in Thornton and then in Littleton, the year the British blockaded Boston harbor, the vessel in which they came landing at Salem. The records of the town of Littleton show how large and important a place the family filled in its first settlement and civilization in both civil and religious spheres.
About 1840, Gen. David Rankin having lost his property, Melinda and her two sisters determined to go West and earn money by school teaching to rebuild his family fortunes. This they successfully accomplished, purchasing a farm and making his last days full of the rest and peace so befitting to old age. The other sisters were in due time favorably and happily married, while Melinda continued the work of teaching. When the Mexi- can war closed, she was in Mississippi. Such accounts of the be- nighted condition of Mexico came to her through returning officers and soldiers that she thought it her duty, single-handed and alone, to go to that country as a missionary. She was not a de- monstrative woman, but a woman of great determination and force of character. In her early girlhood she used to say to the wife of her cousin Rev. Andrew Rankin -my own honored and sainted mother - that she wished she had been a man, so she could preach the gospel as he did. And now it seemed to her prayerful and teachable spirit that perhaps God would open the way. She first made several unsuccessful appeals to missionary societies to see if they would not send her ; then, without any detailed plan, she determined to go herself.
Taking a steamer at Vicksburg, she went down the Mississippi, as little knowing where she went as did Abraham of old ; only, that God's voice was calling her to Mexico. This was in May, 1847. On the steamer was a gentleman seeking a lady teacher for the Female Academy at Huntsville, Tex. As she knew the unsettled condition of Mexico would preclude any immediate en- trance on that field, she accepted his position and remained there until 1852. Then she felt she must fulfil her earlier vow. She had determined on Brownsville, a town sixty miles up the Rio Grande and directly opposite Matamoras, Mexico, as her first
REV. JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN, D.D., LL.D.
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Men and Women of Prominence Abroad.
strategic point. There she began a school for Mexican girls, which immediately prospered, employing it, also, as a means of circulating the Bible in Mexico. Just at that juncture several priests and nuns from France appeared at Brownsville for the pur- pose of erecting a convent. Miss Rankin determined to visit the East and secure funds to build a building for her own uses. She felt that a Protestant seminary must be erected at that point. At New Orleans she was admonished that the undertaking was not becoming for a lady. This was in a business house. Another . gentleman in the same city, however, told her it was a woman's proper calling ; nothing more so. From New Orleans she went to Louisville, Ky., and from there to Philadelphia, where she obtained $500, and then went to Boston to secure a similar amount. This success made her confident the seminary would be built ; and so she continued till the needed amount was raised.
Fourteen months later, when Miss Rankin returned to Browns- ville, the convent had been erected, and many of her former scholars were in it. Nothing daunted, she contracted for her new seminary, and opened school in some hired rooms, where, at the end of the second month, all her old pupils were back, and several new ones also. She taught English, which the Mexican parents wanted their children to learn. In the "Foreign Christian Union " of 1855 Miss Rankin made an appeal for a colporteur. As no suitable person could be found, she put an assistant into her school, and began herself the work of colporteur and Bible reader, as the representative of that Union. Then commenced bitter persecution ; but the sudden death of the Father Superior, who had been the chief instigator, in a gale on the Gulf of Mexico put an end to it.
In 1857 came a revolution for religious freedom in Mexico, under Juarez, which succeeded. At that time there was a great demand for all Protestant books, which Miss Rankin was only too eager to supply. In 1859, during the prevalence of the yellow fever, Miss Rankin was attacked by the disease and kindly nursed by a Mexican woman, at the urgent request of her grandchildren, two of her pupils. Then the notorious Cortinas, with sixty Mexicans, made a raid on Brownsville, proclaiming death to all Americans. In 1860, at Miss Rankin's request, the American Bible Society appointed an agent for Mexico. In 1861 the first two converts from Romanism at Brownsville were received into a Protestant church. In September, 1862, Miss Rankin was com- manded by a Presbyterian minister to give up the keys of her seminary to him, because she "was not in sympathy with the
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Southern Confederacy, and was in communication with a country called the United States." Until she saw he intended to eject her by force, Miss Rankin remained, and then repaired across the river to Matamoras. She remained in that city teaching till 1863, when, owing to the disturbed state of civil affairs, she determined to get within the Federal lines, which she did at New Orleans. There she remained for the time. doing work in the hospitals, soliciting donations of delicacies from the citizens. This was before the work of the Christian Commission. These gifts Miss Rankin and her two nieces personally distributed. They found among the wounded one soldier from Littleton, her native town, - a great joy and surprise to them all.
In the autumn of 1863 Miss Rankin acted as superintendent of a colored Sunday-school in connection with a Presbyterian church of New Orleans ; and in November, when the troops of General Banks had taken Brownsville, she returned to her seminary, which was injured by explosions, the Confederates trying to burn up the town before evacuating. She expended $200 in repairs, and opened her school with sixty pupils. In 1865 Miss Rankin determined to make Monterey the headquarters of Protestant work for Mexico, and visited the United States to solicit funds. On her journey the stage company, of which she was one, was attacked by a band of robbers under Cortinas, who soon came personally and released them. At New York the American and Foreign Chris- tian Union approved of Miss Rankin's plans to erect a church and school building at Monterey, though they depended upon her to raise the money. This she did, securing $500 from T. N. Dale, Esq., of New York, $10,000 from E. D. Goodrich, Esq., whose heart and whose home were always afterward at Miss Rankin's command. Soon afterward the city of Mexico was occupied by an agent of the American and Foreign Christian Union.
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