USA > Vermont > Washington County > Waterbury > History of Waterbury, Vermont, 1763-1915 > Part 13
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William Wirt Henry, son of James M. and Matilda (Gale) Henry, was born November 21, 1831, in Waterbury. His school training was confined to the district schools and one term in People's Academy of Morrisville. He was fired with the same ambition that sent so many Argonauts from New England to California in 1852. He returned to Waterbury in 1857 and joined his father and brother in business. He disposed of his interest in 1861, and promptly enlisted as a private in Company D, Second Vermont Volunteers. Soon he was promoted to a first lieutenancy and took part in the first battle of Bull Run. Mustered out on a surgeon's cer- tificate a few months afterwards, he returned to the service August 26, 1862, as major of the Tenth Infantry, Vermont Volunteers. His gallant and meritorious service advanced him rapidly to the grades of lieutenant-colonel, colonel and finally brevet brigadier-general. He commanded his regi- ment at the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna, Totopotomy Creek, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Cedar Creek, Virginia, and Monocacy; he was hit four times at Cedar Creek. Congress granted him a medal for gallantry at Cedar Creek.
While in California General Henry was appointed constable in White Oak township, Eldorado County, in 1856. He was chosen state senator from Washington County twice after the war, and once from Chittenden County in 1874. He was appointed United States marshal for the district of Vermont, during the administration of President Hayes; he retained this office for seven years. In 1887-1888 General Henry served as mayor of Burlington and was appointed immigrant in- spector in 1892.
General Henry was married August 5, 1857, to Mary Jane, daughter of Lyman and Mary Beebe. Five children were born to them: Bertram, Mary Matilda, Ferdinand Sherman, Katherine and Carrie Eliza. General Henry was married for the second time to Valera, daughter of Timothy J. and Susan (White) Heaton, December 3, 1872. Coming back to
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Waterbury after his military service and career, General Henry reentered the old firm which removed from Waterbury to Burlington. From the dissolution of this firm in 1870, sprung the firm of Henry, Johnson & Lord. General Henry was prominent in Masonic affairs and was a member of the Loyal Legion, the Society of the Army of the Potomac, and Knights of Pythias. He received his first degrees in Masonry in Aurora Lodge, Montpelier, in 1858; he was a charter member and past master of the lodge at Waterbury; also charter member of the Burlington Lodge. He was past grand master of the lodge of the I. O. O. F. and department com- mander of the G. A. R. of Vermont. General Henry was a resident of Burlington for many years.
General Henry's love for outdoor life and the vigorous sports of hunting and fishing was well known and shared among his intimates. He was one of the first to discover the possibilities of Cedar Beach as a camping ground and, with such kindred spirits as Senator Proctor, General Foster, General Wells, General James Peck of Montpelier, J. G. Reed and others, he developed the possibilities of the Quebec: wilderness as a fruitful fishing region for Vermonters. The St. Bernard Club which General Henry helped to found and of which he was honorary president was the outcome of his fishing excursions to those streams.
General Henry's career as United States Consul at Quebec called forth ungrudging praise and appreciation from our neighbors across the border. At the time of his resignation, the Quebec Chronicle had this to say editorially: "His twelve years' service has been marked by singular ability and energy, and by a tact and courtesy which have won golden opinions from all with whom he came into official contact. In his private capacity he has attracted the esteem and cordial good will of all who have had the pleasure of his acquaintance. Genial and unassuming, and of great kindliness of disposition, he has entered heartily into our private life, and has become one of ourselves. The government of the United States will lose a valuable servant here."
It was quite apparent during a brief visit to Waterbury in
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the spring of 1915 that General Henry's health was breaking rapidly. He was confined to his home in Burlington during the summer, suffering from jaundice, but cheerful and genial in his intercourse with old friends and acquaintances who called to see him. The end came at his home, 29 Wilson Street, Burlington, Tuesday, August 31, 1915. The funeral was held from St. Paul's Church, Thursday, September 2. Many friends from Waterbury were in attendance.
Of the five children of General W. W. Henry and Mary Jane (Beebe) Henry who died in 1871, Mary Matilda (Henry) Pease, wife of F. S. Pease of Burlington, alone survives. General Henry's second wife, Valera Y. (Heaton) Henry, whom he married in 1872, survives, together with an adopted daughter, Mrs. G. W. Benedict of Providence, Rhode Island.
Major Edwin Dillingham, second son of Honorable Paul and Julia (Carpenter) Dillingham, lives in the affectionate regard and the loving memory of those still with us who were wont to meet him in his daily avocations and intimate village life. He was born in Waterbury May 13, 1839. His early life was spent in and about his native town until he left to pursue his academic education in preparation for his ultimate study of law, his chosen profession. Before beginning his legal studies he, in common with many another young man in Waterbury, had the practical benefit of a business training in the "old corner store." Here he was accustomed to meet all sorts and conditions of people and it is related of him that he preserved the same courteous, chivalrous demeanor in dealing or speaking with some humble countrywoman as with the fashionable wives or daughters of the more fortunately circumstanced.
He studied law in the office of his brother-in-law, Honorable Matthew H. Carpenter, afterwards United States Senator from Wisconsin, beginning under his preceptorship in the Milwaukee office of the Senator in 1858. From this office Mr. Dillingham entered a law school in Poughkeepsie, New York, from which he was graduated with honor the following year. Supplementing these preliminary studies by a term of service in the law office of his father (Dillingham & Durant) in Water- bury, he was admitted to the Washington County bar in Sep-
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tember, 1860, and was then known to be the youngest though one of its most promising members. His all too brief period of practice was spent as a professional associate of his father. Not for long, however, was Edwin Dillingham destined to pursue the peaceful pursuits of congenial professional life. Like the loyal son of Waterbury he was, he made prompt and intelligent response to the President's call of July, 1862, for 300,000 troops.
His work as a recruiting officer in the western part of Wash- ington County bore fruit in the forming of Company B of the Tenth Regiment of Volunteers, of which he was elected captain. Not long after the Tenth had taken its place in active service, Captain Dillingham was detailed as assistant inspector-general on the staff of Brigadier-General Morris, commanding the First Brigade, Third Division, Third Army Corps, Army of the Potomac.
While serving as aide-de-camp to General Morris at the Battle of Locust Grove, November 27, 1863, and while carry- ing orders to his own regiment, his horse was shot under him and he was taken prisoner, marched to Richmond and shut up in Libby Prison. After four months of prison life, amid sur- roundings and in an atmosphere trying to the stoutest hearts and souls, he was paroled, exchanged and finally returned to his regiment. Soon he was placed in command of a battalion of exchanged prisoners and enlisted men to be restored to their respective commands at the front between the Rapidan and Petersburg. Having completed this task he reported for duty June 3, 1864, at Cold Harbor-the name fraught with such fatal significance to so many Waterbury homes. Here he found that Colonel Jewett had resigned and his townsman, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry, with Major Chandler, had been promoted to the first and second places in command, respec- tively. Both Colonel Henry and Major Chandler were dis- abled, the former by a wound received early in the campaign and the latter by illness. The command of the regiment then devolved on Captain Dillingham who held it until the return of Lieutenant-Colonel Chandler to duty and his own (Dilling- ham's) promotion to his majority. He accompanied his regi-
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ment as major successively to the James River, Bermuda Hundreds and (July 8, 1864) Frederic City, Maryland. At the Battle of Monocacy, fought on the 9th, Major Dillingham was second in command, with Lieutenant-Colonel Chandler detailed to command the skirmish line and Colonel Henry in command of the regiment.
The regiment was called upon to march about six hundred miles between July 21, 1864, and August 22, 1864. On the 2Ist, Major Dillingham was invested with full command of the regiment at Charlestown and remained in command until the day of Winchester or Opequon, September 19, 1864, when he led a regiment of about three hundred and fifty men (sadly reduced by a sick list of over three hundred) into action. At about noon, in the advance of the brigade and division to the assault, the troops were exposed to a raking fire of Braxton's Artillery. Here the intrepid major was struck by a solid shot which almost tore off his left leg. He was borne, bleeding, to the rear and died in three hours, not, however, before he had found strength and courage to say: "I am willing to give my life for my country and I am not afraid to die."
After all, it were better, perhaps, to give here the words of one of Major Dillingham's comrades, who knew whereof he spoke, when he described the dead officer thus: "He was young, handsome, brilliant, brave amid trials, cheerful under dis- couragements, upright and with the kindness of heart which characterizes the true gentleman, combined with firmness and energy as a commander; respected by all his command and loved by all his companions." Major Dillingham's body was brought home for interment to the Waterbury cemetery, to which spot repaired members of the Tenth Regiment on the 4th of September, 1893, at their eighth annual reunion to pay appropriate honors to their dead comrades.
During the preparation of this compilation Doctor Henry Janes, Waterbury's foremost citizen, passed away June 10, 1915. Though not unexpected, the death of Doctor Henry Janes came as a shock to all ages and classes of his townspeople by whom he had always been venerated and beloved. The last of a distinguished family on both the maternal and pater-
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nal sides, his life has ever been one reflecting that family's best traditions. The love he bore his native town amounted almost to a passion and this devotion was returned in full measure by the people of Waterbury so that when the end came Thursday night June 10, 1915, after weeks of his rapidly waning vitality, the people's grief was in no sense mitigated by reason of its expectancy.
Henry Janes was born in Waterbury January 24, 1832, the son of Honorable Henry F. and Fanny (Butler) Janes. His father was an early resident in Waterbury, coming to the town in 1817; he was one of the two lawyers the town then boasted, the other being Judge Dan Carpenter. "Esquire" Janes served as state treasurer and was elected to fill the unexpired term of Benjamin F. Deming in Congress in 1834. Doctor Janes' mother was the daughter of Governor Ezra Butler, the second settler of Waterbury, the town builder, clergyman, judge, presidential elector, town representative, congressman and Chief Executive of Vermont.
Doctor Janes received his academic education at Morris- ville and St. Johnsbury Academies. He commenced his medical studies under Doctor J. B. Woodward in 1852 at Waterbury. He attended medical lectures at Woodstock College in 1852, and two years after at the College of Physi- cians and Surgeons in New York City where he was graduated an M. D. in 1855. He served there as an assistant physician and house physician in Bellevue Hospital for nearly one year. He removed to Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1856, and returned to Waterbury in 1857, where he soon acquired a large and lucrative practice.
In 1861 Doctor Janes entered the army, surgeon of the third Vermont Volunteers; he was commissioned surgeon of the United States Army in 1863. In 1865 he was brevetted lieutenant-colonel. By far the greater part of his military service was in hospital duty successively at Burkettsville, in the fall of 1862, where he was placed in charge; at Frederic, Maryland, in the winter and in charge of the hospitals of the Sixth Army Corps the following spring. In the summer and fall of 1863 he was in charge of the army hospitals in and about
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Gettysburg and the Letterman General Hospital, where 20,000 wounded soldiers from the field of Gettysburg were being cared for. Here he was afforded an opportunity of studying treatment of fracture and amputations. He spent the winter and spring of 1864 in the South Street General Hospital in Philadelphia. In the summer of 1864 he was in charge of the hospital steamer Maine. Going to the Sloan General Hospital at Montpelier in the autumn of 1864, he remained there until the close of the war. He left the army in 1866 and spent a short time in New York, studying injuries to the bones and brain. He returned to Waterbury in 1867 and resumed his practice there, which he interrupted long enough to enable him to travel abroad during a part of 1874. He published in the Transactions of the Vermont Medical Society, a paper on the treatment of gun-shot fracture, especially of the femur; in 1871, 1872 and 1873 various papers on some of the incidents following amputations; in 1874 other papers on amputations at the knee joint followed; in 1877 he wrote a paper on spinal hemiplegia.
Doctor Janes was a member of Washington County Medical Society, the American Medical Association, the Vermont State Medical Society, of which he was president in 1870 and whose representative he was at the meetings of the American Medical Association in 1860, 1866, 1871 and 1880. He was a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and an honor- ary member of the California State Medical Society. He served as consulting surgeon at the Mary Fletcher Hospital in Burlington, Heaton Hospital in Montpelier, surgeon-general of Vermont National Guard, chairman of Vermont State Board of Medical Censors, president of Vermont State Board of Medical Registration, trustee of the University of Vermont and president of the Board of Waterbury Village Trustees. He also served a term as a member of the Vermont Legislature in 1890. He was a member of Bellevue Alumni Association, the G. A. R., the Loyal Legion, and Sons of the American Revolution.
Doctor Janes was actively interested in the Congregational Church of Waterbury and for a long time took pride in personal
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efforts at maintaining good music there. His charming home in Waterbury was a delightful storehouse of many historical documents of peculiar interest to people of his native town. He was an affable host, an entertaining conversationalist, cheerful companion and staunch friend. His self-effacing modesty was so pronounced that the successive honors which came his way were only discovered by his friends when con- cealment was no longer possible. To a certain few of his life- long friends he would occasionally mention striking incidents of his military life such, for example, as his being present on the speaker's platform when Mr. Lincoln delivered his mem- orable address at Gettysburg.
Doctor Janes is survived by no near relatives. One cousin, George Butler, and his son, I. Butler, live at Battle Creek, Michigan. Other cousins are Mrs. Ella Roscoe, formerly of Wisconsin and Minnesota, who has made her home at Doctor Janes' residence for the past four years, and the Misses Thomas of Stowe. Mrs. Henry Janes, who was born Frances Bergin Hall, of Boston, Massachusetts, died in 1909.
On Sunday afternoon, June 13, brief but impressive funeral services were had in the old Congregational Meeting House. Rev. W. L. Boicourt spoke of the devotion of Doctor Janes to science and his long life of untiring professional and social endeavor. Senator W. P. Dillingham and ex-Governor Samuel Pingree each paid eloquent tributes to their departed friend, the former foreshadowing the generous intentions of Doctor Janes as to the town's participation in his estate.
Cold type never emphasizes its utter inadequacy so markedly as when its aid is sought to set forth the emotions of a common grief such as was felt in Waterbury and yet the reasons for this grief and sense of loss are not far to seek. The record a good man leaves in a community may be mute but it has an insistent eloquence that tongue or pen cannot compass.
From the remarks of ex-Governor Pingree and Senator W. P. Dillingham at Doctor Janes' funeral it was apparent that each speaker felt with their hearers; the words they chose instinctively brought them at one with all other friends of the man who had gone. Senator Dillingham's allusion to the
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practical form Doctor Janes' devotion to his townspeople might develop was afterwards illuminated by the splendid provision made in his last will and testament. After certain specific bequests to legatees named, Doctor Janes gave all his real estate, including the residence on Main Street, to the Waterbury Public Library Association, subject to a life interest in certain portions designated under certain conditions. He also named the Waterbury Public Library Association as residuary legatee. The gift to the Library Association, was, to use the language of the will, "in pursuance of a long-cher- ished desire to aid such association in its educational work and as a tribute to the memory of my wife, Frances B. (Hall) Janes, whose earnest interest in the maintenance of the library and whose educational influence in the community ceased only when she departed this life. And I have done this in the hope that eventually the entire premises devised to such asso- ciation may come under the wise management of its trustees and be so utilized as to promote a higher culture and an increas- ing intellectual and moral development among the people of Waterbury and adjacent towns for generations to come and that the scope of its work may be enriched and enlarged by gifts from other citizens." That latest evidence of devotion coming as it did made it appear as if the dead hand of the generous donor continued its lifelong accustomed deeds of well-doing.
It was the editor's never-to-be-forgotten privilege to see and talk with Doctor Janes in his home several times during May, 1915. Indeed, his kindly interest in this present undertaking was evinced in many ways. On one occasion he alluded feelingly to a poem from the collection of S. S. & H. C. Luce, already spoken of in these pages, and insisted upon rising from his place and getting the volume from the book case. The poem's title is "The Village Doctor," and was written in January, 1871, by Samuel Slayton Luce. The four last stanzas run:
Far up the winding mountain road, Through forest dark and blinding snow, He reached the desolate abode Of sickness, poverty and woe.
BLUSH HILL ROAD IN WINTER
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Long years have passed; yet oft I ask, As howls the tempest in its might, While sitting by the evening fire, "What faithful doctor rides tonight?"
Yes, faithful; though full well I know The world is sparing of its praise; And these self-sacrificing men But seldom tempt the poet's lays.
And yet, I trust, when at the last They leave the world of human strife, Like him "who loved his fellow men," Their names shall grace the "Book of Life."
It is as if the writer of the lines had prophetically epitomized the great life service of Doctor Janes to the community, no less than that of Doctor T. B. Downer of Waterbury Center, the particular person held in mind by the poet.
The march of events was rapid after the capitulation of General Lee in the historic McLean house at Appomattox Court House April 9, 1865. Coincidently with this decisive act the fierce and unnecessary Battle of Mobile was raging. Johnston surrendered April 26. President Lincoln made his last public address to a company gathered in the White House, Tuesday evening, April II. The tragic hap- penings at Washington of April 14 came with a benumbing shock to the whole country. When the news of President Lincoln's assassination reached Waterbury, Saturday, April 15, it found a community almost apathetic through the dull insistence of rapidly recurring bereavements in the war just ended. It is said by one recalling the incident that there was really more excitement over the killing of Colonel Ellsworth at Alexandria in 1861. It was as if the town had suffered so much that it received what came with a sort of despairing fatalism and sense of hopeless impotency, but this inability to give expression to a profound grief at the President's hideous murder did not argue that it was felt the less keenly.
But the war was over; the Vice-President had been installed in office and Waterbury, like all other towns, pulled herself together to take account of stock; to readjust herself to the
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immediate demands of peace; and to repair the indirect ravages caused by the war so far as possible. This meant a recogni- tion of certain grave conditions. The town was not growing by an encouraging ratio. Between the years 1860 and 1870, there was an increase of from 2,198 to 2,634-only 436 souls- whereas the population of the town in 1850 was 2,352. So work commenced.
Johnson's administration was regarded in Waterbury as a sort of judgment upon the Republican party for having taken even a loyal Democrat from the South so closely into the councils of the nation. The war governors of Vermont had all been uncompromising and unswerving in their sentiments of loyalty to the Union, but with them that meant something more than a hasty reconstruction policy that would unwisely put too much power into the hands of the so recently defeated South.
It was reasonably feared that the Democratic party's haste to restore all the states to their former status in the Union was ill-timed and badly advised. General amnesties were still regarded with suspicion in New England. Regulation by the Southern States of their several elective franchises seemed to the Northern Republican the height of folly, or worse. The unrestrained expressions of leading Democrats regarding "the debt of gratitude owing Andrew Johnson by the American people" found no answering chord in Vermont or Waterbury.
Yet all these pronouncements were found in the Democratic platform in 1868, so that, when the electors or Freemen of Waterbury were called upon to register their choice of electoral candidates in November, it was not at all surprising that they should have given the Ulysses S. Grant Republican electors 419 votes as against the Horatio Seymour Democratic electors' 99.
As may have been intimated before, Democrats were not numerous in Waterbury, at least they were not so many as to be taken by their political opponents as a matter of course. Among these was John Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery owned Duxbury as his birthplace and November 19, 1794, as the date of his birth. His father was Thomas Montgomery,
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also of Duxbury ; his mother was Lucy (Blanchard) Montgom- ery. John married Miss Tryphena Towle and settled on the homestead. He gave up Duxbury for Waterbury where he came to live on Perry Hill in 1836. From this farm site he moved again to a much larger place at the mouth of Cotton Brook on Waterbury River, where he passed the remainder of his days, dying May 7, 1887, at the advanced age of nearly ninety-two and one-half years. As the Nestor of his party in the community his judgment was respected and valued highly. His life-long record as a citizen and neighbor, how- ever, was far from being bound by party limitations. His retentive memory is said to have remained practically un- impaired at the close of his life. There were born to Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery, Lucy (Mrs. Samuel Lewis), John E., George R., who married Sylvia Farr, Mary A. (Mrs. Doctor Huse), Eliza (Mrs. Silas Perry), deceased, and Charles C., who married Carrie Lewis. Charles took over the farming operations on his father's estate but removed to Hadley, Massachusetts, where he died.
Another Democrat was Charles C. Robinson, son of Noah and Calista (Russell) Robinson, who was born in Stowe, No- vember 21, 1833. Mr. Robinson went through the usual routine of common schools and finished at the academy of Bakersfield. He married Mary Jane Prescott of Waterbury, February 18, 1864, and went to live at the Center on a farm. Mr. Robinson served his fellow citizens as selectman, overseer of the poor, and auditor. He was candidate for town repre- sentative and ran ahead of his ticket. Children of the mar- riage were Harvey P., Carrie E., Ethel C. and Charles C.
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