USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > Men of progress; biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in the state of Rhode Island and Providence plantations > Part 9
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RICH, WILLIAM GREENMAN, attorney-at-law, was born in Medway, Mass., October 21, 1864, son of John Crane and Amelia (Greenman) Rich. His ancestors on both sides were English Puritans. He is descended from Thomas Rich, who came from the west of England in 1634, and settled at Truro, Cape Cod, Mass. A family bible brought over the water by this ancestor was printed in London in 1579, and has remained the property of the Rich family continuously ever since, and is now in a good state of preservation. His great-grandfather, Barn- abas Rich, was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, and the sword with which he fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill is now in the possession of the subject of this sketch. His grandfather, Ezekiel Rich, was a graduate of Brown University and of Andover Theological Seminary, a Congregational minister and educator. His father, John Crane Rich, was a school teacher. He received his early education at the public schools, and took a course at the high school in Blackstone, Mass., and also
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for one year in a private academy in Providence. He earned his own living and paid for his education without help since he was fourteen years of age. He adopted the law as a profession, and finished his preparatory studies in the office of Edwin Aldrich,
WM. G. RICH.
Esq., of Woonsocket. He then took a course at the Boston University and was admitted to the Rhode Island bar in February 1892. In February 1893 he purchased the entire law library of the late Judge Charles F. Ballou, which with his own addition now constitutes one of the best working law libraries in the state. He has devoted himself strictly to his profession, and now has a large practice, being counsel for several corporations and banks. He has taken no part in public life, believing it impossible to be a lawyer and a politician at the same time. He votes the Republican ticket straight, but takes no share in party management. He is a member of the Providence Press Club, and the Woonsocket Young Business Men's Club, which he helped to organize. He is not married.
READ, WALTER ALLEN, dealer in general mer- chandise, was born July 6, 1842, in Blackstone, Mass., the son of Thonias Jenks and Sarah (Burton) Read. His ancestors were English and emigrated
to Plymouth, Mass., about 1660. His great-grand- father, Oliver, settled at Mendon, Mass., about 1740. His grandfather, Ahab, was a Baptist clergy- man, and was settled at various places in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. His father was engaged in the tin business in Blackstone, Mass., until 1849, when he went to California, where he died in 1851. He received his early education in the public schools of Blackstone until eleven years of age. Soon after, with a younger sister, Minnie, he moved to Chepachet, R. I., where the opportunities for education were limited, and he had to depend mainly upon self-instruction. He was in the em- ; ploy of Otis Sayles & Son, manufacturers of cotton goods, until August 17, 1861, when he enlisted as private in Company D, Fourth R. I. Infantry, and was promoted to Second Lieutenant October 2, 1861, and presented with a sword by the citizens of Glocester. He was promoted to First Lieutenant November 20, 1861, and to Captain August 2, 1862. He took part with his regiment in the operations under General Burnside in North Carolina, in the
WALTER A. READ.
operations under General McClellan before Rich- mond, in General Pope's campaign, at Antietam, at Fredericksburg, and joined General Peck at Suffolk, when besieged by General Longstreet. He served under General Butler at Fortress Monroe until
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June 1864, and then joined the forces under General Grant operating against Richmond. He was in the battle of the Mine, when the regiment lost nearly half of its numbers. He was the senior Captain and commander of the regiment after the battle of the Mine until it was disbanded in Provi- dence, October 15, 1864. After the war he associated himself with Augustus F. Wade in the sale of general merchandise from 1865 to 1871, and has continued the business by himself since. He was Postmaster in Chepachet from June 1866 to 1885. He was appointed a commissioner of the State Board of Soldiers' Relief in 1885 and served until 1890, and was agent of the board until 1895. He was ap- pointed a member of the State Board of Charities and Correction in 1893 for the term of six years. He was Worshipful Master of Friendship Lodge, No. 7, A. F. & A. M., in 1888-89. No Republican organization existed in Glocester previous to 1881. He was Chairman of the Town Committee formed that year, and succeeded in polling thirty-six Republican votes out of a voting list of nearly six hundred and fifty. There was a decided gain from that time on, and in 1888 he was elected a Senator from Glocester by one majority, the first Senator ever elected in that town on a straight party issue. With the exception of the year 1892 he has held the position since. He served on the Finance Committee of the Senate in 1888 and 1889, and on the Judiciary Committee since. He has been Commander of Charles E. Guild Post, G. A. R., since its organization in 1891. He married, Septem- ber 19, 1866, Miss Charlotte Owen, daughter of Capt. George L. Owen, of Glocester ; they have one daughter : Maude Louise, born March 9, 1874.
REEVES, DAVID WALLIS, musical composer and band-leader, Providence, was born in Owego, N. Y., son of Deacon Lorenzo and Maria (Clark) Reeves. His ancestry is thoroughly American. He received his early education in the public schools. He had a remarkable taste for music and acquired a knowledge of vocalization as a child, singing alto in a church choir. While a lad of fifteen he met Mr. Thomas Canham, a noted instructor of military bands, and by his advice he became second alto in the Owego band. Mr. Canham appreciated the remarkable musical genius of young Reeves and by the consent of the latter's
family he became an inmate of his house and sub- stantially apprenticed to him. Under Mr. Canham's instruction his ability developed so rapidly that before he was nineteen he became the leader of the Owego Band. Soon after he was engaged in the famous Dodworth's Band of New York, in which he played the cornet. He visited Europe and played as a cornet soloist in concerts in England, Ireland and Germany, with great success. Return- ing from Europe he enlisted a band for Baxter's Zouaves, but it was mustered out by order of the Government dismissing all military bands. He again joined Dodworth's Band, and was the first to
D. W. REEVES.
play Levy's " Whirlwind Polka " before Levy came to this country. He had learned the art of " triple- tongueing" in London, and was the first to intro- duce it in this country, becoming the first cornet soloist of Dodworth's Band. In 1866, he was in- duced to accept the leadership of the American Band of Providence, on the retirement of Joseph C. Greene, who had occupied that position for nearly forty years. He greatly improved, enlarged and strengthened the organization and imbued it with his own spirit and taste, until it came to be acknowledged as one of the finest bands in the country. From the date of his leadership it has been universally known as Reeves'American Band.
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MEN OF PROGRESS.
Besides his success as a leader, and as a cornet soloist, in which he has ranked with AArbuckle and Levy, he has devoted much time to musical com position. He has composed nearly a hundred mili tary marches, many of which have been very popular in this country and in Europe. Of his abilities as a military composer the American Mu sician said : " He is undoubtedly the foremost march writer of America, if not of the world." Reeves' marches are popular everywhere, not so much for their melodic pretensions as for their intense military spirit, rhythmic swing, fine contra- puntal treatment, and excellent instrumentation. His writings in their line are marvels of musicianly work, and have won the admiration of American march composers, whose great aim is to imitate them in style and treatment. March writing is abont the only branch of the art in which the United States excels. It does this mainly through the efforts of Mr. Reeves, whose style, full of vitality and martial spirit, marked a departure from European methods that other composers have not been slow to follow. The military march is a dis- tinct form in art, and America may honestly, in the person of one of her talented sons, lay claim to having brought it to perfection, if not creating it. He has also written the score of two operas, one of which, "The Ambassador's Daughter," was pro- duced at the Park Garden, Providence, following the water " Pinafore " given as a full-rigged ship, the idea originating with Mr. Reeves. After the death of P. S. Gilmore he received a unanimous call to become the leader of Gilmore's famous band, then numbering one hundred members, and accepted it. He conducted it successfully in several tours and important engagements, notably at the Chicago World's Fair, and the Minneapolis and Pittsburg expositions. At the urgent request of his fellow-citizens and members of the American Band he decided to resume his old position and his residence in Providence. His first appearance at a complimentary concert was the occasion of a very flattering popular demonstration. Governor Brown and staff appeared upon the stage and con- gratulatory addresses were given by the Governor and Adjutant-General Dyer. Since that time he has been actively engaged in his old position and laboring in the familiar branches of his profession as composer and leader. He married, September 30, 1871, Mrs. Sarah E. Blanding; they have two children, a son and daughter. The son, D. W. Reeves, Jr., is a student at Brown University.
ROBINSON, ROWLAND RODMAN, physician and surgeon, was born in Wakefield, R. I., August 23, 1862, son of Benjamin Franklin and Caroline Elizabeth (Rodman) Robinson. He is descended from well- known and distinguished Rhode Island ancestry, which inchides five colonial governors - William Coddington, Nicholas Easton, Benedict Arnold, Peleg Sandford and John Coggeshall; and from three deputy-governors - John Greene, George Hazard and William Robinson. He is connected with the old and honored South County families of the Browns, Peckhams, Gardiners, Hazards, Car-
R. R. ROBINSON.
penters, Rodmans and others, and among his direct ancestors were Deputy-Governor William Robinson and Hon. Samuel Rodman. He received his early education in the public schools until the age of fifteen, and attended Captain Bucklyn's school at Mystic, Conn., for three years, and Gen. Russell's military school in New Haven for one year. He was a special student at Harvard College from 1881 to 1885, and attended the Harvard Medical School from 1885 to 1888, graduating with the degree of M. D. He was a student for two years, from 1888 to 1890, at the General Hospital in Vienna, Austria, attending clinics and studying medicine in all its branches, and for three months at the Rotunda Hos- pital, Dublin, where he paid special attention to midwifery. On his return to this country he estab-
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lished himself in the practice of medicine in his native town in 1890, where he has since remained. He has been Town Physician of South Kingston for three years. He was commissioned Captain of Com- pany F, First Regiment of Infantry, Rhode Island Militia, May 3, 1895. He has been a Trustee of the Rhode Island Institute for the Deaf since November 19, 1891. He is a member of the Rhode Island State Medical Society, of the Washington County Medical Society, of the Harvard Medical School Graduate Society, and of the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. In politics he is a Repub- lican. He is not married.
ROBERTS, JOHN HOPKINSON, manufacturing con- fectioner, Providence, was born in Somersworth, New Hampshire, April 5, 1840, son of James H. and Lydia (Hopkinson) Roberts. His ancestry is English. He was educated in the public schools, and after graduation pursued various avocations until the breaking out of the Rebellion, when he became of age, and enlisted, serving throughout the war. On his return from the army in 1866 he engaged in the
JOHN H. ROBERTS.
manufacturing confectionery business in Boston. In 1873 he sold out in Boston and removed to Providence, entering there into the same business,
the manufacture of confectionery, and continuing to the present time. He has established a business in this line of large proportions, now carried on under the name and style of The J. H. Roberts Company, incorporated 1895. Mr. Roberts is not a club or society man, his time outside of his family being mainly devoted to the interests of his large and con- stantly expanding business. He is a Democrat, but has never held political office. He was married, June 4, 1874, to Miss Harriet Littlefield, and this union has been blessed by seven children : Martha J., Joseph H, John H., Jr., Harriet, Alice D., Linda B. and Dorothy Roberts.
SMITH, FRANK BAILEY, physician and surgeon, Washington, was born in Columbus, Ga., January
F. B. SMITH.
3, 1848, son of Benonie and Mary Anna (Bailey) Smith. His grandparents were of English and Scotch ancestry of worthy lineage. Feeble health in early life prevented his attending school. Later how- ever he attended private schools, and still later, public schools, after which he took an academic course under the private instruction of Professor Hall. He studied medicine for three years with Dr. Wm. A. Lewis of Moosup, Conn., and one year with Dr. F. S. Abbott, a prominent surgeon of Nor-
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wich, Con. He then took a medical course at the University of Vermont, after which he graduated from the University of New York City in 1873. He is of the Baptist faith and a member of that church. He is an active temperance worker, and was an ardent advocate for constitutional prohibition in Rhode Island. He was formerly a Republican, but when the Republican Legislature and Republican party advocated and voted for the repeal of con- stitutional prohibition, he left their ranks and has been an carnest worker in the Prohibition party ever since, and is now a member of the Prohibition State Central Committee. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity and an active member of the Order of United American Mechanics. He is a strong woman suffragist, and a member of the state association championing the cause. He is also a member of the Women's Suffrage League of his own town. He is a member of the Rhode Island So- ciety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and one of the executive board. He is in fact a moral reformer in general. He is a member of the Rhode Island Medical Society and the American Medical Association. He began the practice of medicine in Greene, R. I. Six years later he married Miss Evangeline H., daughter of Dr. Allen Tillinghast, of Washington, R. I. After the death of the latter he succeeded him in practice at Washington, where he is still residing and doing a large and successful business. He has no children.
SPRAGUE, ALBERT GALLATIN, M. D., President of the State Board of Health, was born in Provi- dence, November 22, 1836, son of Albert G. and Mary (Fiske) Sprague. His grandmother on the paternal side, Amy (Williams) Sprague, was de- scended in direct line from Roger Williams. He received his early education at Peirce Academy, Middleboro, Mass., and entered Jefferson Medical College at Philadelphia, graduating in 1859. He started the practice of medicine in Warwick, R. I., in 1866, and has since practised there to the present time. Dr. Sprague is President of the State Board of Health, of which he has been a member since its organization in 1878. He was a Representative to the General Assembly in 1886-87, and has been Health Officer of the town of Warwick since 1887. In the army he served as Assistant Surgeon in the Tenth and Seventh regiments Rhode Island Volun- teers, from May 1862 to the close of the war in 1865. He is a member of McGregor Post G. A. R.
of Phenix, R. L., also of the Warwick Club, the Providence Press Club and the Providence Athletic Association. In politics he is a Republican. Dr.
ALBERT G. SPRAGUE.
Sprague was married, November 22, 1859, to Miss Ellen T. Duncan of North Brookfield, Mass .; they had two children : Albert D. and Mary E. D. Sprague, both deceased.
SMITH, CHARLES SHERMAN, M. D., Providence, was born in Douglas, Mass., October 16, 1863, son of Dr. John Derby and Susan (Anthony) Smith. He comes of good medical ancestry. His grandfather, Dr. Nathan Smith, founded the Medical School of Dartmouth College, filled for nearly twenty years the chair of surgery in the Medical School of Yale College, and gave large aid as a lecturer in estab- lishing similar schools at Bowdoin College and at the University of Vermont. Nathan Smith was a farmer's son, and at sixteen shouldered a musket to protect Vermont homesteads from Indian attack during the Revolutionary war. At the close of that period he found a fitting mate in Sarah, daughter of General Jonathan Chase who fought with Stark at Bennington and drew up the terms of surren- der for Burgoyne after the battle of Saratoga, and granddaughter of Samuel Chase who joined the
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Continental army when near seventy years of age. Dr. Nathan Smith's practice extended throughout New England and Canada. He was the second American surgeon to perform ovariotomy, and his method was the one that is best approved at the present time. He had four sons, all of whom fol- lowed the profession of their father. Dr. David S. C. H. Smith was formerly a practising physician in Providence, and was an accomplished botanist and entomologist. Dr. Nathan R. Smith, of Baltimore, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in the University of Vermont at the youthful age of twenty-eight, was soon called to the chair of anatomy in Jefferson College, and later to the chair of surgery in the University of Maryland, where he remained until the ripe age of eighty. He counted among his early pupils, Drs. Gross and Atley. In lithotomy alone he performed successfully three hundred operations. His Baltimore students affectionately styled him the "Emperor of Surgeons," and his exhaustive treatise on the surgical anatomy of the arteries is of itself an enduring monument to his name. Dr. James M. Smith was a beloved and suc- cessful practitioner in Springfield, Mass., for nearly twenty years; he met his death in the Norwalk railway disaster, and was succeeded by his son, Dr. David P. Smith. Dr. John Derby Smith was a Yale graduate of 1832, and studied both theology and medicine ; he never engaged in private practice, but during the Rebellion served as surgeon at Fair- fax Seminary Hospital, and after the war, became surgeon in the navy. At the age of sixty-two he was placed upon the retired list, and spent the re- mainder of his days in private life at his country home in Bridgewater, Mass. Of Dr. Nathan Smith's fifteen grandsons, nine became physicians, of whom the older and more widely known are Dr. Nathan Smith Lincoln, of Washington, D. C .; Dr. Allan Smith of Baltimore, Md .; and the late Dr. David P. Smith, of Springfield, Mass., the latter occupying at his death the same chair of surgery that his grandfather had filled so many years before him. Of the third generation six have already been added to the medical profession. Dr. Charles Sherman Smith's mother came from a Rhode Island family even more numerously supplied with physicians than was his father's. The subject of this sketch is therefore, in three generations, one of twenty physicians on his father's side, some of whom were of national fame, and one of twenty-five on his mother's side. He acquired his early education in the dis- trict schools and at the Bridgewater High School,
He graduated from the Medical College of the University of New York in the spring of 1892, be- ing among the twenty selected for an honor list from a class numbering one hundred and sixty members. Following his graduation he stood first among nine in a competitive examination for the position of Interne at the Rhode Island Hospital, remained in that institution until May 1894, and three months later opened an office in Providence. An unusual amount and variety of surgical work has come to his hands during his three years' residence in that city, requiring and testing all the qualities of a true surgeon. As he has said, water will boil and
C. S. SMITH.
bichloride will destroy germs anywhere, and some of his best use of the surgeon's knife has been in the treatment of hernia and appendicitis in the midst of surroundings that might well dismay the looker on. Dr. Smith was so fortunate while In- terne as never to lose a typhoid patient, a result which he attributes largely to a discreet, and yet a more than usually persistent, treatment by the sponge. In devising ingenious appliances for the relief and cure of spinal and hip diseases he has brought into play inherited mechanical skill. He is an ardent believer in the possibility of arrest of lung disease in its earlier stages, and the sufferings of motherhood have led him to study closely how to reduce them to the greatest extent possible. Lately
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he has made a successful début as a laparotomist. He is intensely devoted to his profession, and waits patiently for the larger successes which come slowly but surely to those who set for themselves a high standard of professional and personal honor. Dr. Smith is a member of the Masonic fraternity, the Providence Medical Association and the Rhode Is- land Medical Society. He is unmarried.
STUDLEY, JOHN EDWARD, manager of real estate corporations, Providence, was born in Worcester,
JOHN E. STUDLEY.
Mass., November 13, 1852, son of John Moore and Julia Ann (Gill) Studley. The Studleys are an old English family found in Kent and Yorkshire, the seat of the family in the latter county being Studley Park. There were two families of this name in New England at an early date, one in Boston and one in Sandwich, Mass. The Providence Studleys de- scended from the Boston branch, and among their ancestors was Benjamin Studley who was a lieuten- ant in the Massachusetts troops during the war of the Revolution, and was a Selectman in Hanover, Mass., in 1778. The subject of this sketch received his early education in the public schools of Worces- ter, Mass., Brooklyn, N. Y., and Providence, R. I. He graduated from the high school in Providence,
May 5, 1869. His early training was all of a busi- ness character. Much of his spare time out of school was employed in a grocery store in the vicinity of his home, and later in vacations and on Saturdays he was employed in the store of Eddy & Studley. In September 1869 he was engaged as clerk in one of the freight offices of the New York, Providence & Boston Railroad. A few years later his employer accepted an important office with the Providence and New York Steamship Company, and at his request he accompanied him as a cashier, and later was appointed head clerk of the company. In 1877 he took the position of book-keeper and confidential · clerk of Amos D. Smith & Company, then a large cotton manufacturing firm operating the Franklin Manufacturing Company and the Providence Steam Mills. While in their employ he married the eldest daughter of William H. Low, a man who in his line of business of leasing and improving real estate had done much to build up the business centre of the city. In 1881 Mr. Low died suddenly and at the request of his heirs Mr. Studley resigned his position with Amos D. Smith & Company, and assumed the management of the estate of William H. Low. This management has been very successful and the estate has grown largely in value, so much so that it was deemed advisable to incorporate it. Consequently in 1889 The William H. Low Estate Company was chartered, and since then the business has been carried on under that name. At the present time he holds the office of President and Treasurer of the company. In 1895 the Studley Land Company was incorporated and he was chosen President and Treasurer ; a large business block was erected on Weybosset street known as the Studley Building. He is also President of the Weybosset Investment Company, and Director in the Providence Gas Com- pany, the Manufacturers' National Bank, the Atlantic National Bank and the Atlantic Mutual Fire Insur- ance Company of Providence. He has always been so deeply engaged in business that he has uniformly declined to accept public office, although for years solicited to do so, until 1894, when he accepted the nomination for Representative in the General Assem bly, to which he was elected, and re-elected the suc- ceeding year, serving on the Judiciary Committee. On his nomination the Providence Daily Journal said : "J. Edward Studley of Ward 9 is the strongest man on the ticket, and could have had the party nominee for Mayor long ago had he desired." In politics he is a Republican. He is a member of Adelphoi Lodge A. F. & A. M., in which he has held all the offices,
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