USA > New Hampshire > Sketches of successful New Hampshire men > Part 9
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HON. CHARLES M. MURPHY.
BY JOHN B. STEVENS, JR.
WE live in days when the success of men apparently born to lives of grind- ing toil is a pregnant sign of the times. Such opportunities are now open to him who has a good order of ability, with high health and spirits, who has all his wits about him, and feels the circulation of his blood and the motions of his heart, that the lack of early advantages forms no barrier to success. A striking illustration of the truth of these statements is exhibited in the following sketch.
CHARLES M. MURPHY, son of John and Mary M. (Meader ) Murphy, was born in Alton, Belknap county, N. H., November 3, 1835. In 1842 his parents moved to Barnstead, N. H., and settled upon the Tasker farm at the south end of the town. Here the child grew in stature, and filled out and braced his frame by hard manual labor.
Scanty record is left of these years of severe work and continuous struggle; but there is little doubt that the discipline developed an indomitable will and sturdy self-reliance- which alone enable poor men's children to grapple with the world -that under more favorable circumstances might never have shown their full capacity of force and tenacity.
Again, it is widely believed -and nowhere more strongly than in opulent cities and busy marts - that a boy is better bred on a farm, in close contact with the ground, than elsewhere. He is quite as likely to be generous, brave, humane honest, and straightforward, as his city-born contemporary; while, as to self-dependence, strength, and stamina, he ordinarily has a great advantage over his rival.
He attended the district school, during the winter terms, until of an age suit- able to leave the parental care, when he enjoyed for two terms the advantages of the academy at Norwich, Vt. At school it appears that he was diligent and ambitious, and, from his great physical strength and natural cheerfulness of tem- perament, very active in all athletic exercises. Then began the severe and practical duties of life; and, being the oldest of four boys, for some years he assisted his father in educating and advancing the interests of his brothers. John E. Murphy became a prominent dentist, practicing in Pittsfield, N. H., and Marblehead, Mass., and died at the early age of thirty-five. Frank Murphy, M. D., a graduate of Dartmouth College, practiced his profession in Strafford and Northwood; but died in the very flush and promise of life, at the age of twenty-nine. Albert Warren Murphy, D. D. S., a graduate of the Philadelphia Dental College, after one year's practice in Boston, removed, in 1872, to Paris, France, where his professional labors brought him both credit and profit. At the expiration of two years, an active interest in Spanish affairs and a desire to test the business advantages of the country led him to Spain. He soon settled in Madrid, and in 1879 was appointed dentist to the royal court.
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Relieved from his generous labors at home, the subject of our sketch was mar- ried, at the age of twenty-two, to Sabrina T. Clark, daughter of Isaac Clark, Esq., of Barnstead, N. H., and for six months tried independent farming; but, though fully aware what a life full of joy and beauty and inspiration is that of the country, and not destitute of a natural taste for rural pursuits, at the expiration of the time named he surrendered his acres to his father, and with less than one hundred and fifty dollars moved to Dover and began the study of dentistry with Dr. Jefferson Smith. To this business he brought the same will power and ability to prolong the hours of labor which marked his early life, and in two years was pronounced competent to practice in his new calling. Dr. Smith soon died, and the recently. emancipated student not only succeeded very largely to his practice, but enlarged and built upon it till a reputation and an income were secured which made travel and study easy and profitable. For eighteen years this patient, hopeful man labored and experimented, adding each season to his knowledge and skill, losing hardly a day except while studying for his degree at the Boston Dental College. In 1878, as the result of long and careful study of the business interests of the country, he withdrew entirely from his profession and embarked his all in the precarious occupation of a broker. Here his cool- ness, sagacity, and equableness of temper found their proper field, and such a measure of success has followed as falls to the lot of few men not bred from youth amid the fluctuations of the stock market. In his new occupation he is indefatigable in procuring information, and alike keen in discerning new traits in men and shrewd in contrasting them with those which are more common and better known.
Very naturally the subject of our sketch took a lively interest in political affairs upon becoming of age. A strong and devoted Republican, in his adopted city his influence in local politics has been felt for years. He was a member of the state house of representatives in 1871 and 1873; attached to the staff of Gov. Straw ; appointed and confirmed as consul to Moscow - honor declined; a mem- ber of the Chicago convention in 1880, where he stoutly supported Blaine so long as a ray of hope remained; president of the Dover Five Cent Savings Bank -from a state of torpor and weakness it has grown under his guiding hand into activity and strength; elected mayor of the city of Dover in 1880, and recently chosen for another term; recipient of the honorary degree of A. B. from Lewis College in 1881. Through all his mature life, Col. Murphy has been a busy man.
But the energetic and successful are not exempt from the sorrows common to humanity. Three children, who, if spared, might put off to a distant day the weariness that inevitably comes with advancing years, died while young; and finally the partner of all his vicissitudes bade him a final adieu. His second wife, Mrs. Eliza T. Hanson, widow of the late John T. Hanson, of Dover, dispenses a gracious hospitality in the spacious and richly furnished Cushing- street mansion.
In closing we may add, Col. Murphy combines qualities which are generally found apart, -a love for work amounting to dedication, and a readiness to assist the unfortunate which seems ingrained His abode is full of cheerfulness. No one comes there who does not receive a hearty welcome; no one departs without feeling as if leaving a home.
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HENRY C. SHERBURNE.
HENRY CLAY SHERBURNE, son of Reuben B. and Sally (Rackleyft Staples) Sherburne, was born in Charlestown, Mass., December 9, 1830. His father was a native of Pelham and his mother of Newmarket ; so, although born outside the limits of the state, he is wholly of New Hampshire lineage. His early edu- cation, obtained in the public schools of Boston, terminated when he was fifteen years of age, at which time he entered the employ of Holbrook & Tappan, hard- ware dealers, in whose store he remained three years.
At the age of eighteen years he gained his first experience in railroad busi- ness, serving as a clerk in the freight department of the Boston & Lowell Railroad, under his father, who was agent of the upper roads doing business with that corporation. Accepting a clerkship in the office of the Concord Railroad, he removed to Concord in 1851. After a year's service with the Concord Rail- road, he entered the employ of the Concord & Claremont Railroad, where he remained until 1865, a period of thirteen years.
In July, 1865, after the adjournment of the legislature of that year, of which he was a member from ward five, Concord, he removed to Boston, entering into the business of railroad supplies in partnership with his brother, Charles W. Sherburne. He remained there until March, 1880, when he was elected presi- dent and a director of the Northern Railroad.
During his residence in Boston, in 1876, he was elected president of the New York & Boston Despatch Express Company, which position he still holds. In the summer of 1880 he was elected president and a director of the Concord & Claremont and Sullivan railroads, and subsequently a director of the Concord Railroad. In September, 1881, he was chosen general manager of the Boston, Lowell, and Concord railroads, under the business contracts between those roads. In 1878 he was sole trustee of the Hinkley Locomotive-Works, upon the failure of that company, and operated the works for about two years.
He is now a resident of ward four, Concord. He has a wife, and one son - Henry A. Sherburne, eleven years of age.
ZIMRI S. WALLINGFORD.
BY HON. JOSHUA G. HALL.
FAMOUS as the small farming towns of New Hampshire have been in pro- ducing men eminent in the learned professions, they have not been less prolific in furnishing young men who have achieved distinction and borne great sway in what are recognized as the more practical business pursuits. Inventors, con- structors, skilled artisans, the men who have taken the lead in developing our manufacturing interests and bringing toward perfection intricate processes, those who have increased the volume of trade at home and abroad, and have become merchant princes, have come, as a rule, from the plain farm-houses and common schools of our thousand hillsides. The stern virtues, the rigid frugality, and the unflagging industry always insisted on in the home life, supplemented by the lim- ited but intensely practical learning gained in the district school, have furnished successive generations of young men compact, firm, and robust in their whole make-up, strong of body, clear and vigorous of mind, the whole impress and mold of their moral natures in harmony with right doing. These men have been a permeating force for good through all classes of our population, and towers of strength in our national life. The life of the subject of this sketch is a well rounded example of such young men.
ZIMRI SCATES WALLINGFORD, the son of Samuel and Sallie (Wooster) Wallingford, was born in Milton, in the county of Strafford, October 7, 1816.
Nicholas Wallington, who came, when a boy, in the ship " Confidence," of London, to Boston in the year 1638, settled in Newbury, Mass., where he mar- ried, August 30, 1654, Sarah, daughter of Henry and Bridget Travis, who was born in 1636. He was captured on a sea-voyage, and never returned; and his estate was settled in 1684. With his children (of whom he had eight), the sur- name became Wallingford.
John Wallingford, son of the emigrant Nicholas, born in 1659, married Mary, daughter of Judge John and Mary Tuttle, of Dover, N. H .; but he lived in that part of Rowley, Mass., now known as Bradford. He had seven children ; one of these was Hon. Thomas Wallingford, of that part of ancient Dover afterwards Somersworth, and now known as Rollinsford, who was one of the wealthiest and most eminent men of the province, associate justice of the supreme court from 1748 until his death, which took place at Portsmouth, August 4, 1771. The eldest son of John Wallingford, and grandson of the emigrant, was John Wallingford, born December 14, 1688, settled in Rochester, N. H., and became an extensive land-owner. His will, dated October 7, 1761, was proved January 17, 1762. His son, Peter Wallingford, who inherited the homestead and other land in Rochester (then including Milton), made his will April 18, 1771, which was proved August 24, 1773. His son, David Wallingford, settled upon the lands in Milton, then a wilderness. He died in 1815, being the father of Samuel Wallingford, who was father of Zimri S.
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ZIMRI S. WALLINGFORD.
Upon his mother's side, Mr. Wallingford is descended from Rev. William Worcester, the first minister of the church in Salisbury, Mass., and ancestor of the eminent New England family of that name or its equivalent, Wooster. Lydia Wooster, great-aunt of Mr. Wallingford, was the wife of Gen. John Sullivan of Durham, major-general in the army of the Revolution, and the first governor of the state of New Hampshire; she was mother of Hon. George Sullivan of Exeter, who was attorney-general of this state for thirty years.
In 1825 the father of Mr. Wallingford died, leaving his widow with four children, of which this son, then nine years of age, was the eldest. At the age of twelve he commenced learning the trade of a country blacksmith. When he had wrought for his master as his boyish strength would allow for two years, he determined not to be content with being simply a blacksmith, and entered the machine-shop of the Great Falls Manufacturing Company at Great Falls, N. H., and served a full apprenticeship at machine-building there, in Maryland, Virginia, and in the city of Philadelphia.
August 27, 1840, Mr. Wallingford married Alta L. G. Hilliard, daughter of Rev. Joseph Hilliard, pastor of the Congregational church in Berwick, Maine, from 1796 to 1827. Their children have been (1) John O. Wallingford, who was sergeant-major, and became lieutenant in the Fifteenth N. H. volunteers, in the war of the rebellion ; was severely wounded in the assault on Port Hudson ; and was afterwards captain in the Eighteenth N. H., an officer of great merit, whose death at his home in Dover, March 23, 1872, was the result of disease contracted in his war service. (2) Mary C., now wife of Sidney A. Phillips Esq., counselor-at-law in Framingham, Mass .; (3) Julia, residing with her parents.
In 1844, Mr. Wallingford entered the employ of the Cocheco Manufacturing Company, Dover, N. H., as master machine-builder, and remained in that capacity until 1849. During that period, Mr. Wallingford and a partner, by contract, con- structed new machinery, cards, looms, dressing-frames, and nearly everything necessary for the re-equipment of the mills. The then new and large mill at. Salmon Falls was also supplied with the new machinery necessary, in the same manner:
In 1849 he became superintendent of the company's mills, under the then agent, Captain Moses Paul, and upon the death of that gentleman, was, on the first day of August, 1860, appointed agent of the company. He has con- tinued to fill that office to the present time. Taking into account the great social and public influence, as well as the recognized ability with which his prede- cessor had for many years administered the affairs of the Cocheco company, the magnitude of its operations, the force and grasp of mind necessary to carry on its affairs successfully, it was evident to all familiar with the situation upon the death of Captain Paul, that no ordinary man could occupy the place with credit to himself, or to the respect of the public, or the satisfaction of the corporation.
Fully conscious of the responsibility assumed, and full of the determination which an ardent nature is capable of, not only to maintain the reputation of his company but to extend its operations and raise the standard of its manufactured goods, it is not overstating the fact to say that in the last twenty years few manu- facturing companies have made greater strides in the extent of their works, in the quality of their goods, or their reputation in the great markets, than has the Cocheco under the management of Mr. Wallingford. Always strong finan- cially, its wheels have never, during that time, been idle in any season of panic or monetary depression. Honorable, and ever generous to all its employes, its machinery has never stopped for a day at the demand of any organized strike. The pride, as well as the main business interest of Dover, Mr. Wallingford
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has always made his company popular with the people; its word proverbially is as good as its bond. The importance of the work is seen in the fact that the mills were, when Mr. Wallingford took charge, of a so-called capacity of fifty- seven thousand spindles; it is now one hundred and twenty thousand; and the reputation of the goods is world-wide. Twelve hundred operatives are on the books of his charge.
To a stranger to the home life of Dover these results seem the great life-work of Mr. Wallingford ; but such an one, in making up his estimate, will fail to do justice to some of the elements of character which have, by skillful adaptation, contributed to so great success. To one so observing, the marked traits of the individual are lost sight of in the results of his career. To those only who are personally familiar with the individual are the real elements of success apparent. Of course, without the strong common sense and good judgment which we sum up as "business sagacity," Mr. Wallingford's successes would have been failures ; but, to one familiar with his daily life for a score of years, it is apparent that the crowning excellence of his life, and the power which has supplemented his mental force and rounded out his life, have been his stern moral sense.1
Perhaps the most noticeable trait in his character from childhood has been his love of justice and right, and his hatred of wrong and injustice in all its forms. Under such a man, no employe, no matter how humble his position, could be deprived of his just consideration; no interest of his corporation could be allowed to ask from the public authorities any indulgence or advantage not fairly to be accorded to the smallest tax-payer. Had he gone no farther than to insist on this exact counterpoise of right and interest, as between employer and employe, and betwen the interest represented by him and the public interest, his course would have stood out in marked contrast with the conduct of too many clothed with the brief authority of corporate power. Had this strict observance of the relative rights of all concerned been as nicely regarded by associated capi- tal generally as it has been by the Cocheco company under the management of Mr. Wallingford and his lamented predecessor, no " brotherhood" for the protection of labor, no " strikes" organized and pushed to bring too exacting employers to their senses and to an observance of the common rights of human- ity, would have had an existence, and none would have had occasion to view with jealous eye the apprehended encroachment of corporate power on private right. But while so insisting on justice in everything, no man has a kindlier vein of character, or a warmer sympathy for deserving objects of charity. Impulsive, naturally, no distressed individual or deserving cause appeals to him in vain, or long awaits the open hand of a cheerful giver.
To a man so endowed by nature, so grounded in right principles, and so delight- ing in the exercise of a warm christian charity, we may naturally expect the result that we see in this man's life, - success in his undertakings, the high regard of all who know him, and the kindliest relations between the community at large and the important private interests represented by him in his official capacity.
Fifty years ago, when the subject of this sketch, a mere child, was leaving his widowed mother's side to learn his trade, the public mind was just beginning to be aroused from its long lethargy to a consideration of the abolition of slavery in the United States. The sleep of men over the subject had been long, and their consciences seem hardly to have suffered a disturbing dream. Church as well as state was a participator in the system, and with unbecoming haste rose up to put beyond its fellowship and pale the first agitators of emancipation. Garrison had just been released, through the kindness of Arthur Tappan, from an imprison- ment of forty-nine days in Baltimore jail, for saying in a newspaper that the tak- ing of a cargo of negro slaves from Baltimore to New Orleans was an act of
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ZIMRI S. WALLINGFORD.
" domestic piracy," and was issuing the first number of the Liberator, taking for his motto, " My country is the world, my countrymen are all mankind; " and declaring, " I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, I will be heard."
The agitation of the abolition of slavery, which was to end only with emanci- pation, had thus begun. The discussion found its way into the public prints, and among the thinking circles of all rural New England. The blacksmith's appren- tice read what the newspapers had to say, and listened to the neighborhood dis- cussions on the great question. His sense of justice and humanity was aroused, and he adopted the motto and declaration of purpose as announced by Garrison ; and from early youth till the time when Lincoln's proclamation assured the full success of the object aimed at, Mr. Wallingford was the earnest friend of the slave and the active promoter of all schemes looking to his emancipation. With Garrison, Phillips, Parker, Douglas, Rogers, and the other leading anti-slavery men, he was a hearty co-worker, and for years on terms of warm personal friendship.
During the winter of 1849-50, Hon. Jeremiah Clemens of Alabama made a speech in the United States senate, in which he claimed that northern mechanics and laborers stood upon a level with southern slaves, and that the lot of the latter was in fact envious when compared with that of the former classes. This speech at once called out from Hon. John P. Hale, then a member of the senate, a reply in keeping with the demands of the occasion and with the great powers of Mr.
Hale as an orator. Soon after, a meeting of the mechanics of Dover was held, at which Mr. Wallingford presided, and at which resolutions expressing the feelings of the meeting toward Mr. Clemens's speech were passed, and a copy furnished to that gentleman by Mr. Wallingford. Upon the receipt of these resolutions, Senator Clemens published in the New York Herald a letter addressed to Mr. Wallingford, propounding ten questions. These questions were framed, evidently, with the design, not so much of getting information about the actual condition of the workingmen of the free states as to draw from Mr. Wallingford some material that could be turned to the disadvantage of the system of free labor. Mr. Wal- lingford replied through the press, February 6, 1850, in a letter which at once answered the impulsive and haughty "owner of men," and triumphantly vindi- cated our system of free labor. For directness of reply, density, and clearness of style, few published letters have equaled it. It must have afforded Mr. Clemens material for reflection, and it is not known that he afterwards assailed the workingmen of the nation.
From the formation of the Republican party, Mr. Wallingford has been one of its active supporters. Though no man has been more decided in his political convictions, or more frank in giving expression to them, no one has been more tolerant of the opinions of others, or more scrupulous in his methods of political warfare. Despising the tricks of the mere partisan, and abhorring politics as a trade, he has always been content to rest the success of his party on an open, free discussion of the issues involved. Not deeming it consistent with his obligations to his company to spend his time in the public service, he has refused to accede to the repeated propositions of his political friends to support him for important official positions ; but he was a member of the constitutional convention of 1876, and presidential elector for 1876, casting his vote for Hayes and Wheeler. He is, and has been for years, president of the Savings Bank for the County of Straf- ford, a director of the Strafford National Bank, president of the Dover Library Association, and a director in the Dover & Winnipesaukee Railroad. In his religious belief Mr. Wallingford is a Unitarian, and an active member of the Unitarian society in Dover.
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GENERAL WALTER HARRIMAN.
BY REV. S. C. BEANE.
THE name of no New Hampshire man of the present generation is more broadly known than that of WALTER HARRIMAN. His distinguished services to the state, both in the legislature and in the executive chair; his honorable service as an officer of the Union army; the important trusts he has held at the hands of one and another of our national administrations ; and, not least, his bril- liant gifts as an orator, which have made him always welcome to the lyceum plat- form and have caused him to be widely and eagerly sought for in every important election campaign for many years, -combine to make him one of the most conspicuous men in our commonwealth.
The Harriman family is of English origin. Rev. Ezekiel Rogers, a man of eminence in the church, was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1590. He graduated at the University of Cambridge, in 1610. Becoming a dissenter from the Church of England, after twenty-five years of faithful service, his ministerial functions were suspended. He says of himself: "For refusing to read that accursed book that allowed sports on God's holy Sabbath, I was suspended, and by it and other sad signs driven, with many of my hearers, into New England." This stanch Puri- tan arrived on these shores in 1638. In his devoted flock there was an orphan lad, sixteen years of age, named Leonard Harriman, and from this youthful adven- turer the subject of our sketch descended, being of the seventh generation. Rogers selected for his colony an unoccupied tract of country between Salem and New- buryport, Mass., to which he gave the name of Rowley, that being the name of the parish in Yorkshire to which he had long ministered.
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