USA > Rhode Island > Memorial encyclopedia of the state of Rhode Island > Part 25
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Besides his important participation in this side of the community's life, Mi. Phillips was a leading spirit in many others, for his interests were too wide and his sympathies too human to permit him to confine himself to any one aspect of affairs, and the various things in which he took leading parts were so numerous and varied as to make it seem wonderful how he found time or energy to enable him to carry them on. He strove to keep out of politics as much as one so public-spirited and with so keen an interest in public affairs could manage to. Certainly he was no seeker for office, yet such was his popularity that he was four times consecutively elected to the East Providence Council, his term of service in this body extending from 1907 to 1911. He was strongly in favor of many reforms and was especially , anxious to clear up certain abuses of the liquor law then rampant. It was during his term of office that the so-called hotels of the east shore resort district were refused a renewal of their licenses and a Sunday liquor business that had flourished for years was ended. In the matter of his religious belief Mr. Phillips was a Methodist and a member of the Haven Methodist Epis- copal Church of East Providence. He was extremely interested in the work of that body and was very active himself therein, serving as a trustee of the church and on its official board and for five years as superintendent of the Sunday school. In club circles and in many of the fraternities he was also very conspicuous. He was a member of the Improved Order of Red Men, of the King Phillip Tribe, No. I, of Providence, holding the office of the great keeper of wampum of Rhode Island. He was also a member of the Providence Council, United Commercial Travellers, of which he was chair- man of the executive committee, and of the Grand Council of New England of the same order. He also belonged to Howard Lodge, Knights of Pythias, of East Providence, to the Order of the Gold Cross, was president of the East Providence Business Men's Association, a member of the Providence Economic Club and the Massasoit Club of East Providence. Another activity of Mr. Phillips was in connection with the fire department of the neighborhood and he was a member of the Watchemoket Fire Company of East Providence and of the East Providence Veteran Firemen's Association, and served the former in the capacity of clerk for a number of years.
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Charles Carnes Phillips
It was on May 22, 1889, at East Providence, that Mr. Phillips was united in marriage with Martha A. Simmons, of that place, a daughter of William H. and Martha C. (Cole) Simmons. Mr. and Mrs. Phillip's were the parents of three children: Henry Irving, Alice May and Charles C. Mr. and Mrs. Phillips were residents of East Providence all their married life and the latter, who survives her husband, still makes her home there.
Always extremely active in the affairs of his home town, Mr. Phillips was identified with the reform elements in politics at a time when the strife between these and the agents of corrupt politics was very intense. Himself a leader, he was often the center of some bitter contests, but always acquitted himself well and rarely came off second best. In all the relations of life his conduct was beyond reproach and his death was mourned throughout an unusually wide circle of friends and associates as a very real loss to the entire community.
Ferdinand Potter
S INCE ROBERT POTTER sailed from England in 1634 and with his associates gave to the settlement of Warwick in Rhode Island, the name which it still bears, there has never been a period in the history of the country at which the descendants have not been conspicuous in commerce and legislation, in literature, arts and learning, at the bar and on the bench, in the councils and ministrations of the church, and when their country needed them, upon the field of battle."
Warwick, Portsmouth and Providence were towns in which Potters early settled, and George Potter was admitted an inhabitant of the Island of Aquidneck in 1638. On maternal lines Ferdinand Potter descended from Roger Mowry, who was made a freeman of Plymouth Colony in 1631 and in 1636 was a member of the Salem Church. His son, John Mowry, was a resident of Providence, Rhode Island, where he was made a freeman in 1672. In 1666 he and Edward Inman bought two thousand acres of land, lying from Loquesit northward bordering partly on Pawtucket river.
Captain Mowry Potter, a descendant of the early Potter and Mowry pioneers, was a Revolutionary hero, numbered among the privateers who sailed from New England ports and did much damage to British commerce. He sailed on the privateer "Eagle" and performed many valorous deeds, including the capture of a rich British ship, which he brought to port as a prize. Later the brave captain himself was taken captive and until the close of the war was held a prisoner, part of his period of incarceration being spent on one of the Jersey prison ships. After the war he again resumed a peaceful seafaring life and was lost at sea. His wife, Lydia (Westcott) Potter, was a descendant of Stukeley Westcott, who was one of the twelve who had a deed from Roger Williams to land he had bought from the Indians and was one of the twelve original members of the First Baptist Church organized at Providence in 1639.
Captain Anson Potter, son of Captain Mowry and Lydia (Westcott) Potter, was also a sea captain, master of vessels sailing to Chinese and other foreign ports. He became a large owner of real estate in Providence, pos- sessing a large tract of what is now Greenwich street to Cranston street on Potter avenue, named in his honor. He also bore local fame as a poet and was a man of decided ability and genius. He died in 1866. His wife, Han- nah (Howard) Potter, was a daughter of Thomas Howard, a graduate of Brown University, who came to Providence from Hartford, Connecticut.
Ferdinand Potter, to whose memory this sketch is inscribed, was a son of Captain Anson and Hannah (Howard) Potter, and was born at the home of his parents on Westminster street, Providence, December 1I, 1812, died at his boyhood home, October 20, 1886. His life was spent in Providence where he was one of the early nurserymen, conducting a prosperous business of his own and managing several estates for others. He was a man of stud-
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Ferdinand Potter
ious habits and scientific tastes, a wide reader and generally well informed. He obtained a good education in Providence schools, and even in youth evidenced a strong liking for scientific literature, his tastes inclining to the natural sciences. He did not fancy a sailor's life even with the opportunities offered him by his seafaring and shipowning father, but chose instead to cultivate the lands his father owned. When a young man he started a nur- sery, becoming well known as a grower of ornamental fruit and shade trees. He introduced the horse chestnut to Providence lawns and streets, and for many years conducted a prosperous business. Finally his farm was needed for railroad purposes, being first purchased by the old Stonington Railroad, now the New York, New Haven & Hartford. After the sale of his nursery farin to the railroad company, Mr. Potter bought twenty acres, further from the city, and there continued in business for several years. In September, 1866, he sold that tract, the Grand Trunk Railroad now crossing it. Mr. Potter then moved to the old Captain Anson Potter home on Westminster street, Providence, where a month later he died.
During his later years Mr. Potter, in addition to the care of his own farm and business, managed several estates of which he had been made administrator. He possessed strong executive ability and each trust com- mitted to him was faithfully and ably executed. His quiet, studious tastes, his love of' home and family kept him from entering public life, and beyond exercising his rights and privileges as a citizen he took little part in political affairs. Upright, honorable and manly in all his dealings with his fellow- men, he won and held the esteem of all who knew him and passed from earthly scenes honored and respected.
Mr. Potter married (first) August 15, 1843, Mary Reid, whose ancestry was the same as that of Whitelaw Reid, the journalist and diplomat. She died July 8, 1859, leaving three children, all now deceased, namely: Ferdi- nand, Jr., a prominent lawyer of Providence; Marion and Anson Howard. Mr. Potter married (second) April 5, 1860, Helen McMillan, a cousin of his first wife, daughter of Hugh and Marion (Reid) McMillan, both of Scotch birth. After their marriage Hugh and Marion McMillan came to the United States in company with Mrs. McMillan's father, Crawford Reid, who intro- duced into the United States what we now know as "Coates' thread." Chil- dren born to Ferdinand and Helen ( McMillan) Potter: M. Helen, residing with her beloved mother at No. 19S Waterman street, Providence; Byron Thomas, married Helen Sheldon, who bore him nine children: Ruth S., Nicholas, Helen L., Madeline, Byron Thomas, deceased, Charles D., Byron Thomas, Jr., Marjorie Madeline and Robert Reid Potter.
Theodore Barrows Stowell
HILE IT IS not possible to compare directly the various services wrought for the community by different types of men engaged in divergent kinds of work, while the benefits resulting from the achievements of the merchant and artist, for instance, are incommensurable terms and cannot be sub- mitted to the same standard of measure, yet it is possible by a sort of spiritual calculus to judge of the relative values of such elements and at least say of them that they are great or small in a general scale of magnitudes. And upon such a scale it is obvious that we must rank the work of the educator as very high, as possessing a very large value for the community of making a great contribution to the general sum of human happiness. In this comparison the achievement of a man such as the late Professor Theodore Barrows Stowell, of Providence, Rhode Island, deserves especial consideration and the more so that it partakes of the char- acters of more than one type of service and may be classified at one and the same time with the more practical and the more idealistic aspects of life. For Professor Stowell, in his long career as principal of the well-known Bryant & Stratton Business College of Providence, was an educator of marked ability and accomplishment, but an educator in those departments of knowledge that apply most immediately to that most imperative problem of existence, the problem of supporting life, both one's own and those of the people dependent upon his activities. That this is not merely the judgment of a few such as were in especial sympathy with his work, but the universal sentence of the community is readily seen in the character and sources of the various tributes to his memory upon the occasion of his death in Providence on May 29, 1916, in which that event is unanimously described as a severe loss to the city and State.
Theodore Barrows Stowell was born July 8, 1847, in the town of Mans- field Center, Tolland county, Connecticut, a son of Stephen Sumner and Cornelia Williams (Stebens) Stowell, old and highly respected residents of the place. The family is of English origin and its members have long shown the splendid enterprise and courage of the men who were responsible for the first settlement and phenomenal development of what is now the great republic of the West, these United States: Professor Stowell's father was engaged all his life in farming at Mansfield Center, and it was upon the home farm and in the healthful environment of farm life that the lad grew up. Early in his boyhood he displayed a strong taste and an unusual proficiency in all matters connected with scholarship and learning, combined with a practical bent that might have carried him to great heights in the world of business had he turned his attention and talents in that direction. His education, or the rudimentary portion of it, was received in the Woodstock Academy in the town of that name in Connecticut, but the whole of Profes- fessor Stowell's schooling might be described as concerned with only the rudimentary portion of his education, since he was a natural student who
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Cheobore Barrows Stowell
pursued knowledge all his life uninterruptedly, whose education only ended with his death. However, after graduating from the Woodstock Academy, he went to the Connecticut State Normal College at New Britain, his strong taste for teaching causing him to select this institution as the one where he could best fit himself for the work of his life. After completing the required course at the Normal College, where he showed himself to be a student of remarkable ability, Professor Stowell went to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he taught in a public school in the Toilsome Hill District and quickly established his reputation as one unusually weil qualified to handle youth- ful pupils in the difficult relations of master and instructor. This was in 1869 and he was engaged in that position only one year before he received an excellent offer from the Bristol Ferry School at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, which he accepted, remaining at that institution for two years. In 1863 the Bryant & Stratton Business College had been founded in Provi- dence by H. B. Bryant and H. D. Stratton of that city, and in the nine years between that date and 1872 had come to occupy an important place in the . educational life of the city. In the latter year Professor Stowell accepted an offer from it to join its staff of teachers and so began an association which was destined to continue the remainder of his natural life.
It was on January 1, 1871, that Mr. Stowell was united in marriage with Florence A. Taylor, a native of Plymouth, Connecticut, and a daughter of Charles L. and Ruth E. (Dailey) Taylor, residents of that charming old town. He was a machinist there and he and his wife were the parents of two children, Mrs. Stowell, and Lillian, who became the wife of Ferdinand Latus, of New Britain, and is now deceased. Professor Stowell thus brought a wife with him when he first came to Providence to take up his duties in connection with the Bryant & Stratton Business College, and this city re- mained their home until his death, while Mrs. Stowell still resides there at the present time. For six years Professor Stowell remained one of the teach- ing staff of this institution and then, in 1878, was chosen its president and it was in this capacity that the most characteristic work of his career was accomplished. He placed the curriculum of the school on an unusually high plane and raised its standards in every particular, making it a model for this type of institution throughout the country, while under his capable manage- ment its practical success was still further increased. The ownership of the institution passed into his hands in the same year and from that time to the present it has prospered greatly. Six months before his deatlı Professor Stowell's health became seriously impaired and during the school term of 1915-16 he was able only occasionally to leave his home and attend the school. It was then that negotiations were entered into with the Rhode Island Commercial School which resulted in the consolidation of the two institutions into one in the latter part of April, 1916. Of this combined school Professor Stowell was chosen president emeritus, but he lived to hold this title but one month. One of the indications of the place which Professor Stowell occupied in the educational world, and of the work that his school did under his direction, is the honor accorded him in the month of June, 1915, by Brown University, when it conferred upon him the honorary degree of Master of Arts.
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Theobore Barrows Stowell
Professor Stowell was active in many departments of the community's life and was a leading force in many of the important movements undertaken for the common weal. In the matter of his religious belief he was a Congre- gationalist, both he and Mrs. Stowell attending the Beneficent Congre- gational Church of Providence. He was also prominent in many societies and clubs, many of them connected with his profession and the development of the city, among which should be mentioned the Barnard Club, the East- ern Commercial Teachers' Association and the Providence Chamber of Com- merce. He was also a member of the Congregational Club of Rhode Island, the Town Criers and the Rhode Island Rotary Club.
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WHarren Lincoln Pierce
T HERE can be no question as to the truth of the proposition that in the simple life incident to the occupations of the country the conditions are such a's to make for the complete, 1 0 well-rounded development of character in a degree scarcely to be found in any of the more complex environments of city life. Whether it is the superb physical basis induced by plenty of wholesome work and recreation in the open air, whether it is in the quality of the work itself which necessitates the utmost patience and self-control, or whether there is something in the intimate con- tact with the bare, unvarnished elemental facts of nature which tones the temperament and balances the judgment, it would, perhaps, be presump- tuous to decide. Perhaps it is a combination of all these, but certain it is that the men whose early training has been in these primitive industries display on the whole more than others those strong, basic virtues that we associate with the idea of manliness. The lives of such men as Warren Lincoln Pierce and his father, Robert Pierce, offer a pointed illustration of the truth of our proposition, men whose inherent strength, bred and fostered in the healthful atmosphere of New England and trained in the strengthen- ing school of open-air labor surely led them on to success in life and posi- tions of regard in the hearts of their fellow citizens. It is interesting to consider in this connection that since the dawn of western civilization there have been but three social developments on any large scale in which the rural population has held the reins of government, and that in each of these the same extraordinary energy and virtue has characterized the period. The first of these was the early Roman state before the degenerating influ- ences from the East had sapped the vital strength of the people and sup- planted the wholesome democracy with a tyranny which contained within itself the virus of decay. The second such epoch was that in which the Teutonic peoples first emerged from savagery and which found its highest expression in the splendid rural democracy of Scandinavia which finally succumbed to the arms of the fierce Harold Haafager, who in the ninth and tenth centuries enforced his rule upon an unwilling people and drove much of the best blood of the nation to seek refuge in foreign lands. The third example of the wholesome social state has appeared in our own America, and nowhere more characteristically than in New England, where the sturdy farmers, the herdsmen, the tillers of the soil and the men who gained their living in those hardy callings of the forest and sea, the lumber-jack, the sailor, stood in relation to the management of their own affairs much as the Romans did when Cincinnatus was called from the plow to take com- mand of his country's army with the absolute power of dictator, and when his office was successfully accomplished returned without regret to the plow once more. Here too in our own country was the same talent for conduct- ing great affairs coupled with the same simplicity of manners and ideals,
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Warren Lincoln Pierce
and here too the average man was interchangeably a worker with his hands and a law-giver. Of course this is merely the typical case, many had no ambition to take any part in the government, but it is truly illustrative of the fact that there existed no barrier between the lowest and the highest places in the community. Of this ability to rise in fortune and position, and of the aptness with which the sturdy men of the rural population in New England took advantage of their opportunities, we could have no better example than the lives of the two gentlemen already mentioned, especially that of the son, Warren Lincoln Pierce, whose death on June II, 1906, removed a prominent figure from the life of that community.
The elder man, Robert Pierce, was a native of Maine and for many years carried on successful farming operations in the neighborhood of Bangor. He was gifted with a remarkable ability, apparently native with him, of estimating quantities accurately with his eye and he utilized this power in measuring cut lumber in that great Maine trade. He could tell with amazing accuracy the amount of lumber contained in a lumber raft, for instance, by merely looking it over and this made him invaluable at once to those who bought and sold this commodity. His reputation in this direction rapidly spread and he eventually left his farm to take a position as a lumber surveyor, and in that capacity came to East Providence, Rhode Island, where his duties were concerned with the estimation of the lumber sent down the river in those days in the form of great rafts. The occupation was a remunerative one and Mr. Pierce turned to real estate as the best and safest means of investing his savings. He came in this way to be the owner of a very large amount of valuable property both in East Providence and the neighboring country side, where much fine farm land came into his possession. He spent the remainder of his life in East Providence and there eventually died. He was married to Delilah Hamlin, a daughter of the Rev. Eben Hamlin and a relative of the well-known figure in Maine political affairs, the Hon. Hannibal Hamlin. Her father, the Rev. Eben Hamlin, was one of those good and earnest preachers of the Baptist church which had not at that time become very well established in that part of the country so that they were obliged to use such buildings as they might secure for the assembling of their congregations and often, when no school house or even barn was at their disposal, had to resort to the open air and to preach in the fields and meadows. Such was the life of Eben Hamlin, who was one of the most respected and loved of these self-sacrificing men. Mr. and Mrs. Pierce were married in Maine and it was in that State, before the move to Rhode Island, that their children were born. Mrs. Pierce survived her husband for thirteen years, continuing to reside in East Providence during that time. To them five children were born as follows: Eben H., deceased; Robert, de- ceased; Eliza, who married Louis P. Walker, deceased, of East Providence, where she still continues to reside; Warren Lincoln, of whom further; and George, deceased, a veteran of the Civil War.
Warren Lincoln Pierce was born at Bangor, Maine, in 1837, and lived the first few years of his childhood upon his father's farm in that region. He was quite young, however, when his parents removed to Rhode Island
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Warren Lincoln Pierce
and it was in East Providence that most of his education was received at the local public schools, and with that place that the greater part of his youth- ful associations were formed. Upon completing his studies, in which he had already proved his great cleverness, the youth at once began to take part in active business, it being his ambition to make a name for himself in the business world. He was one of those men who seem to be equally well fitted for every kind of position that offers, willing to try them all and in all successful. The first position he secured was in the printing establishment of A. Crawford Green, of East Providence, where he learned in a surpris- ingly short time the details of that trade. His spirit was of a kind, however, that is restless under the direction of others and it was not long before he began a small business on his own account, driving into the city of Provi- dence with fruit for sale. Again he made a change and took up the carpen- ter's trade which he learned as easily as he had that of printing. He was employed on a number of important buildings because of his skill. among others the Calander Building, which was then in course of erection. His next venture was the one which claimed his attention during the remainder of his life and which he developed to such great proportions. It was about this time that what are popularly known as "soft drinks" were coming into very general use and Mr. Pierce, with his usual foresight and business acu- men, believed that a great opportunity lay in the future in the manufacture and sale of such beverages as root-beer, birch-beer, the various flavored sodas and the like. Accordingly he turned his energies into this channel, at first on a small scale, but afterwards on an ever increasing one. The result amply justified his expectations and the business, increasing in direct ratio with the ever-increasing demand for these drinks, soon grew to very great proportions. The plant where these articles were made was in East Providence and became one of the most important industries there, it being necessary to add to its capacity several times in order to keep pace with the demands of the trade. Mr. Pierce also added greatly to his transporta- tion facilities and kept a number of teams with which he delivered his goods all through that part of the State. This very successful enterprise was con- tinued by Mr. Pierce during the major portion of his life and he only retired from its management a few years before its close. In these long years of great business activity Mr. Pierce made a great name for himself in industrial and commercial circles throughout the region and was especially well known as one who always fulfilled his obligations, expressed and implied, as one who always put the best quality of materials into his products irrespective of its effect upon his profits. This reputation was of course one of the greatest factors in his success and was one more proof that success of a really perma- nent and secure kind must always be based on honesty and justice in one's dealing with his fellows.
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