USA > Vermont > Genealogical and family history of the state of Vermont; a record of the achievements of her people in the making of a commonwealth and the founding of a nation, Vol I > Part 22
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Horace Fairbanks was a man of finc and noble nature, of great dignity of presence and sweet- ness of character. He united breadth of view with firmness of personal convictions. The reso- luteness with which he held his matured opinions was graced with an unfailing courtesy and gen- tleness. To a native fineness of perception and taste he added the refinements of a generous cul- ture and familiarity with the world's best thought and art. The mark of. distinction was on all that he originated or did. His modest and beau- tiful home "Pinehurst," with its park-like sur- roundings, as well as the characteristic features and equipments of the Athenaeum and the North church embody and perpetuate much of his ripe thought and sentiment. He was large and no- ble in his liberality. "He was good for every mood. He carried the health of the mountain wind with him, whithersoever he went. He was the center of sacred friendships. He made the kingdom of God visible in this world by the nat- ural nobility of his nature, by inward goodness and faith." His sudden death in the prime of his usefulness was universally lamented.
He married, at Derry, New Hampshire, Aug- ust 9, 1849, Mary E., daughter of Captain James and Persie (Hemphill) Taylor. Children. Helen Taylor, born December 17, 1854, died March IS. 1864. Agnes, born August 12, 1860. married Ashton R. Willard, of Boston. September 19, 1886. Isabel, born November 6, 1881, married Albert L. Farwell, of St. Johnsbury, September, 1889, died July 2, 1891.
THADDEUS FAIRBANKS, mechanic, inventor
8
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and philanthropist, was born in Brimfield, Massa- clinsetts, January 17, 1796, and died in St. Johns- bury, Vermont, April 12, 1886. He was rather a Puritan than a Pilgrim ; men saw first strengthi of character and then warmth of feeling. When he was born the family was in rather straitened circumstances. It was slow work paying for the farm, though Joseph Fairbanks was a carpenter as well as farmer, the seasons were bad, crops failed, Mr. and Mrs. Paddock were sick much of the time and their expenses were heavy, and in the years when the boys should have gone to some academy there was no money to send them. Thaddeus in later years used to speak of how large the dollar seemed that must be paid for an arithmetic. And he was so slenderly organized and sick so much, that he was unable to always attend the poor common schools of the neighbor- hood. A nervous child, growing too fast to ever be strong, suffering in play with the rougher chil- dren, he spent his time with his mother and his gentle grandmother. He describes his bashful- ness and timidity, how much it cost him to do an errand and how he dared not begin to speak until he had thought through what he would say. So he acquired the silent, or slowly deliberate habits that clung to him through life, and the thoughtfulness that made men so constantly seek his advice, and in mastering his timidity he ex- hibited a true heroism. In some ways he was courageous enough. When he was five years old he was found running on the high plates of a building that his father was raising. His me- chanical tastes and inborn skill very early ap- peared as he began to use his father's tools, mak- ing articles convenient for the house, and keep- ing toy machinery at work by the brook behind the house. He inherited, and all his life culti- vated, the family tastes that made his father a carpenter, and that are indicated in the inven- tory of the estate of Jonathan the immigrant, who died in 1668 .- "In the workeing celler, Item, 2 vices and one turneing laeth and other Seuch things" and "In the hafe chamber, Ite, many Smalle tooles for turneing, and other the like work." and indicated as well in the conveniences of the old house.
The Brimfield farm hardly afforded scope for the enterprise of Joseph Fairbanks and his sons ; Erastus followed his uncle Ephraim Paddock in-
to Caledoma county, Vermont, and in May, 1815, Joseph, after the death of Mr. and Mrs. Paddock, sold all his property, and, coming to Vermont, bought a water power on Sleeper's river in the southwest corner of the town of St. Johnsbury, where the Fairbanks Scale factory is located. There he and his son Thaddeus built a dam and a grist mill and sawmill, meeting the urgent need of the new country, the family meanwhile living, as pioneers do, in a rough board cabin. In a shop over the gristmill they also made carriages, and in 1892 a wagon was exhibited that had been used every year since the father of the owner bought it of Thaddeus Fairbanks in 1819. In the summer of 1818 Thaddeus Fairbanks built a good double house in which his parents lived the remainder of their lives, and to which, Jan- uary 17, 1820, he brought his bride, Lucy Peck Barker (born April 29, 1798, died December 29, 1866), whose father Barnabas was in the battle of Bunker Hill, also his father John was a lieutenant in the Revolutionary army. Lucy's mother Ruth, belonged to the honorable Peck family of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The attention of Thaddeus Fairbanks, whose mother's brothers, two of them, were iron-wor- ers, was directed to the iron mine of Franconia, New Hampshire, and in 1823, he built a small iron foundry near the sawmill, and the next year was joined by his brother Erastus, who gave up his store at Barnet, and, uniting his business ex- perience with the practical skill of Thaddeus, formed the firm of E. & T. Fairbanks. They began the manufacture of cast-iron stoves, pat- enting one which displaced the kitchen fireplaces, and in 1826 Thaddeus patented a cast-iron plough and introduced it against the prejudice of the farmers, who believed in the wooden plough with steel point, and said that his new kind "would break all to pieces." For stoves and ploughs he made the patterns largely with his own hands, moulded many of them, improved the blast furnace, and attended to the melting, mixing the iron, and studying how to make strong castings. In 1829-30 there was a great demand for hemp, all the farmers were raising it, and E. & T. Fair- banks built three of the grcat Haynes hemp- dressing machines, thirty-two feet long, with sixty-five pairs of fluted rollers geared together, between which the hemp straw was drawn. Mr.
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Fairbanks made the gear wheels, and a machine for fluting the rollers. In 1830 he patented a hemp-dresser, and was made manager of the St. Johnsbury Hemp Company. Buying the hemp straw which cost fifteen dollars a ton, it was important to weigh it more accurately than could be done by the rude lever hung from a high gal- lows frame, with chains taking hold of the axles of the cart. Mr. Fairbanks first balanced a platform on a single A-shaped lever, with de- vice to keep it from tipping, and then it occurred to him that by using two such levers the four cor- ners of the platform could be supported, one lever hung by its tip from the other at the center of the scale, and that other with a long arm reach- ing to the rod connecting with the scale beam. It is understood that various arrangements of compound levers had been previously pro- posed, but with Mr. Fairbanks this was an original invention, and the leading scale-maker of England, who had been previously making the giant Roman balances, like - great steel- yards, to weigh carts suspended by their axles, had heard of a platform scale, and he bought the right to patent Mr. Fair- banks' device in Great Britain, and he and his sons have built up a great business in this line. Mr. Fairbanks at once saw that the plan of the hemp scale could be adapted to other sizes for other uses, and designed store, platform and coun- ter scales, and later canal-boat and railway-track scales. Before his death nearly a thousand modi- fications were placed upon the market, ranging from the scale that would weigh one tenth of a grain to one that would accurately weigh five hundred tons.
In designing these he had nothing to guide him, everything must be original. He says, "I had to consider the strength of material, the shape that would secure the greatest strength with the least material, and the symmetry and beauty of outside appearance. These, especially the last, required a great amount of study. No one can be sure beforehand what the taste of the public will approve. That I succeeded in what I aimed at is shown by the fact that now after fifty years the scales are made after the same design, and other makers follow the same. My evenings, and sometimes nights, were spent in this study, for I must be at the shop all day. My habit was to
make the plans complete in my mind before com- mencing to put them on paper." This, which was written twenty-five years ago, is still true of the construction and style of the American scales. By his night work Mr. Fairbanks became no mean draftsman, and, having to build so much, first shops, and then tenement houses, churches, and academy buildings, he grew into an accom- plished architect as well, his taste being excel- lent, as many buildings in St. Johnsbury show.
His real strength of character is proved by the difficulties which he overcame in the growth of his business, a growth so rapid that it did not furnish capital for its own needs, in the lack of skilled workmen, he having to train all his men, and in the necessity of building his own machines for the scale work, some of these machines be- ing very ingenious, and requiring much more inventive ability than the scales themselves. The Fairbanks scale was not a pair of scales, shells, as in the even balance, but a scale (scala-ladder) named from the equal divisions of the scale beam which is a scale of equal parts.
It is interesting to note the effect of this in- vention upon the methods of doing business, and its influence, second only to the uses of steam and electricity. We hear no more of measured bushels, of gallons, of chaldrons, or of articles sold by count. Everything is weighed, and the scale holds the business world to accuracy and strict integrity, being an absolutely reliable arbi- ter between buyer and seller.
Besides the scale, the cast-iron plough and the cast-iron stove, Mr. Fairbanks invented a re- frigerator in which the ice is placed above the articles to be cooled, upon which the cooled air, having deposited its tainted vapors, descends from the ice, and an effective circulation is kept up. He had no capital to invest in building re- frigerators, and gave away his patent which afterwards was valued at over a million of dol- lars, and, after a series of hard-fought patent suits, the evidence of the priority of his invention was declared to be "perfectly conclusive." This arrangement first proposed by him is now fol- lowed in all modern refrigerators, refrigerator cars, and in the great packing houses, and this invention, like that of the scale, the stove and the cast-iron plough, has proved revolutionary.
The Fairbanks scales have won the highest
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awards in ahnost mberless mechanical and ag- ricultural fairs and in all the world fair exposi- tions, receiving twenty awards by the judges at Chicago in 1803. Mr. Fairbanks also received the knightly decoration of the Order of Francis Joseph, and decorations from the King of Siam and the Bey of Tunis, for the scales are adapted to all standards of weight, and go to all count- tries.
Mr. Fairbanks felt most keenly the lack of educational opportunity, consequent upon ill health and poverty, and he was most intensely interested in providing for others. He and his son have made a liberal education possible for more than a hundred students in academies and colleges ; le endowed a professorship in Middle- bury College, where he was a trustee, gave lib- erally to many western colleges, and for St. Johnsbury Academy, which he and his brothers established in 1842, he provided, in buildings, for current expenses, and for invested fund, more than two hundred thousand dollars. He was also for many years the largest contributor to the work of the Vermont Domestic Mission- ary Society, and not less to the foreign work, and to other objects a liberal giver.
Mr. Fairbanks never had good health, but perhaps on this very account took such care of himself that few men have lived as long or ac- complished as much. With old age his eyes be- came dim, but his mind was always clear, and he received his thirty-fifth patent on his nineti- eth birthday. Although so taciturn, he was an attractive man, and made a strong impression on those who met him. A little child taken to church for the first time saw him come in and in an awed whisper asked, "Mama, is that Jesus?" He died April 12, 1886. On the day of his fun- eral all business was suspended, the public build- ings were draped in mourning, and hundreds came to look once more on his face, and joined the procession to his grave. A man of fine native gifts, of Christian faith, and of spiritual insight and force, Mr. Fairbanks was successful above most men in his chosen lines of work, and was useful wherever he was successful.
HENRY FAIRBANKS, manufacturer and inven- tor, St. Johnsbury, was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, May 6, 1830, the only son of Sir Thad-
deus, the famous inventor, and Lucy Peck ( Bar- ker) Fairbanks. The family, so widely known and highly honored in Vermont and other states, trace their descent from Jonathan Fairbanks, who emigrated to this country from Sowerby, York- shire, England, in 1633, and settled in Dedham, Massachusetts, where he built, in 1636, a house which is still standing. The line descends through Captain George, who died in 1682; Elie- zur, born 1655, who was selectman of Sherborn, Massachusetts; Captain Eleasur, born 1690, member of the general court; Deacon Ebenezer, born 1734; and Joseph, born 1763, to Thaddeus, who was born in Brimfield, Massachusetts, in 1796, and in 1815 came thence with his father to St. Johnsbury, then a new settlement, where they owned the falls of Sleeper's river, and did a thriv- ing business as millers and manufacturers of car- riages.
Henry Fairbanks received his early educa- tion at Lyndon Academy, for three terms; at Pinkerton Academy, Derry, New Hampshire, for a year, and in St. Johnsbury Academy, then newly established by his father and uncles. Here, 1842-7, he fitted for college under Principal J. K. Colby. But his mechanical tastes were strong in him, and he spent more time in the shops than in school. In 1848 he took passage, for his health, in a sailing vessel for Europe, where he spent nearly a year. Returning to Dartmouth College in the spring of 1850, he was graduated in 1853, ranking high, especially in mathematics and physics. From college he went to And- over Theological Seminary. In the spring of 1856 he again laid down his books, and in com- pany with Principal Taylor, of Phillips Andover Academy, went through Egypt, Palestine, Greece, Italy and Switzerland, where he made the ascent of Mont Blanc, then a rare feat. Returning, he re-entered the seminary and graduated in the class of 1857.
He was ordained in 1858, and took up work under the auspices of the Domestic Missionary Society in behalf of the weakest churches of Ver- mont, doing a work that resulted in bringing new life to many churches that were nearly ex- tinct, and in giving a permanent ministry to more- than twenty churches. Hoping for improvement of health, in 1860 Mr. Fairbanks accepted the
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chair of physics and later that of natural history in Dartmouth College, which he filled with suc- cess, till in 1869 he returned to St. Johnsbury. There he was perfecting various inventions, and preaching where there was no other supply, and doing much religious work. He was the first president, under its new constitution, of the con- vention of Congregational ministers and churches of Vermont, and later and until now president of the Vermont Domestic Missionary Society. For some years after 1875 the state convention of the Young Men's Christian Association car- ried on an evangelistic work in Vermont, result- ing in large additions to the churches, and Mr. Fairbanks was prominent in this work, after the first year having charge, and directing it as sec- retary. He has for twenty-five years been a corporate member of the American Board of Foreign Missions, has been a member of five of the national councils of Congregational churches, and was a delegate to the international council in London in 1891, in which year he traveled with his family in Europe, also to the international council in Boston in 1899. He has been since 1870 a trustee of Dartmouth Col- lege, and for many years president of the trustees of St. Johnsbury Academy.
Of late years Mr. Fairbanks has devoted him- self more to business, developing some of his in- ventions, for which he has received a score and a half of patents, and has given more and more attention to the extensive business of E. & T. Fairbanks & Company, of which corporation he is vice president.
Mr. Fairbanks married, in Hanover, New Hampshire, April 30, 1862, Annie S., daughter of Professor Daniel J., D. D. (of Dartmouth College), and Jane M. (Aiken) Noyes. She died September 1I, 1872; and May 5, 1874, he con- tracted a second marriage with Ruthy, a daugh- ter of Phineas and Jacintha (Barker) Page, of Newport, Vermont. The children of the first marriage are: Arthur, born in November, 1864; Robert Noyes, born in November, 1866; Lucy, born in October, 1868; Charlotte, born in De- cember, 1871. Of the second marriage, Albert Thaddeus, born in July, 1876, died in December, 1891 ; Marion, born in April, 1881 : Dorothy, born in March, 1887; Ruth Comfort Fairbanks, born in May, 1892, died in September, 1893.
JOSEPH PADDOCK FAIRBANKS.
Joseph P. Fairbanks was born November 26, 1806, died May 15, 1855. In November, 1828, after admission to the bar and a year's practice with his uncle Judge Ephraim Paddock, he opened a law office on St. Johnsbury Plain. The current of events, however, was opening for him a different course, and in 1833 he accepted the call of his older brothers to join them in the manufacture of the newly invented platform scales. To this enterprise he brought versatil- ity of mind and business abilities of the very first order. Much of the early success of E. & T. Fairbanks & Company was due to his sagacity, minute attention to details, facility in dealing with men and circumstances. His mind was alert, capacious, always hungry. While discharging his business duties expertly and successfully, he also prosecuted wide and exact studies in his- tory, literature, science and problems of social order.
On taking his seat at Montpelier in the legis- lature of 1845, it was evident to all that here was a man who carried the public welfare as a burden on his heart. His denunciation of slavery and of the Mexican war, his appeals for legislative action in the interest of temperance and of popu- lar education, commanded attention and assent. He did much in many ways to secure the final adoption of the prohibitory liquor law, and it was chiefly through his influence that the bill in- troduced by him "For the Improvement of Com- mon Schools" became a law. This however, was but the beginning of his laborious efforts to se- cure for the state of Vermont educational ideals and reforms. His voluminous correspondence with Ex-Gevernor Eaton, first superintendent of schools under the new law, reveals his watchful, eager anxiety for practical results, his energetic efforts to awaken and sustain public interest, his quiet way of making up deficits, his promotion of state and county educational associations and establishment of The Vermont School Journal. Partisan interests in the legislature of 1851 caused the School Act to be negatived-a heavy blow to its originator, who, looking on the state be- reft of a superintendent of schools, remarks: "I have so loved Vermont, and felt so proud of her reputation wherever I have traveled in other
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parts of the U'nion, that I can hardly endure the thought of her degredation." But the toils of these years were not without ultimate results, though he died without the sight thereof ; the ef- ficient system of public schools now in force owes more than most men know to the far-sighted plans and exacting labors of Joseph P. Fair- banks.
Hle also took the leading part in founding St. Johnsbury Academy in 1842, a school which from the first has ranked among the best in New Eng- land, and to which the Fairbanks Brothers ulti- mately contributed several hundred thousand dollars.
His activities for the public good took wide range. He had no liking for political office or popular fame, but in quiet ways he was con- tinuously influencing public opinion toward higher standards of life and character. He sent out hundreds of pages of letters and press arti- cles on almost every theme of current import- ance-such as farming and stock-raising, prac- tical science, meteorology, homelife, books and reading, religious and political issues, the Sab- bath, slavery, temperance, education, missions, benevolence. A good while before the publica- tion of Irving's "Life of Washington" he was urging that author to serve his countrymen by writing a history of the United States. In the columns of one of the Boston papers he advo- cated the establishment of a city public library two years before the corner stone of that insti- tution was laid.
These miscellaneous activities did not en- croach upon his business efficiency ; his work in the firm of which he was junior partner was con- sidered expert and invaluable; he was selected to be first president of the Passumpsic Bank ; many important and delicate trusts were com- mitted to him. He could stoutly maintain his personal convictions without ever alienating the love and confidence of those who differed from him. He served the church with ardent devo- tion. He was aboundingly and modestly benevo- lent, distributing multitudes of gifts anonymously and with a fine sense of adaptation ; his purse was open freely to every worthy cause; the larger part of his property was bequeathed to benevo- lent objects, religious and educational. He crowded a long life into a few years and died
as a consequence, prematurely, at the age of forty-eight. Ile married, in Derry, New Hamp- shire, June 11, 1835, Almira Taylor, daugh- ter of Captain James and Persis ( Hemphill) Taylor, and left two sons, Edward Taylor and William Paddock.
REV. EDWARD TAYLOR FAIRBANKS, D. D., St. Johnsbury, was born in that town, in Cale- donia county, May 12, 1836, son of Joseph P. and Almira (Taylor) Fairbanks; his ancestral history is given above. He was educated at St. Johnsbury Academy and Phillips Andover Academy, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale College in 1859, and took the theological course at Andover Seminary.
Mr. Fairbanks spent two and a half years abroad for study and travel in Europe and the east. He was ordained pastor of the First Con- gregational church of St. Johnsbury Center, Jan- uary 1, 1868. From January 30, 1874, to July 15, 1902, he was pastor of the South Congrega- tional church of St. Johnsbury, completing, with one exception, the longest continued active pas- torate of the Congregational order in the state during this period. He has a responsible part in the management of the St. Johnsbury Acad- emy, the Athenacum and the Museum, and is foremost in all movements looking toward the welfare of his native town. In 1893 the Univer- sity of Vermont conferred upon him the honor- ary degree of Doctor of Divinity.
He is the author of the history of the St. Johnsbury, also of "The Wrought Brim, twelve discourses given in the South Church."
He was married in Derry, New Hampshire, July 9, 1862, to Emma Cornelia, daughter of Guy C. and Sally M. Taplin, of Montpelier ; they have one child: Cornelia Taylor Fairbanks.
WILLIAM P. FAIRBANKS was born July 27, 1840 and died December 15, 1895. He inherited in a marked degree the business abilitites of his father Joseph P. Fairbanks. After graduation from St. Johnsbury Academy, he entered Dart- mouth College, but left before completing his course there, to engage in business. He spent some years in the office of E. & T. Fairbanks & Company, was admitted to partnership and on the incorporation of the company in 1874 he was appointed secretary and treasurer. He was also secretary and treasurer of the St. Johns-
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ST. JOHNSBURY ATHENEUM.
ART GALLERY OF ST. JOHNSBURY ATHENEUM. Interior
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bury & Lake Champlain Railroad Company, and held offices of trust in other corporations.
He represented his native town with ability in the legislature of 1884-1886. He was a mem- ber of Governor Pingree's staff. In 1888 he went to New York, accepting the position of secretary of "Fairbanks & Company" of that city, where he remained till his death, which oc- curred suddenly December 15, 1895.
William P. Fairbanks was a man of force and strong personality. He was sagacious, facile and exact in business, always moving with a sort of military precision toward his mark, fulfilling his duties with celerity, strictness and skill. He made strong friendships. Quiet in his tastes and ways, he was also strikingly in- dependent in thought and act ; spirited, generous and manly.
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