USA > Wisconsin > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self-made men, Wisconsin volume > Part 52
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The subject of this sketch attended classical
schools from twelve to seventeen years of age at Farmington, Connecticut, and South Hadley, Mas- sachusetts, and then joined a civil engineer corps operating on the western division of the Erie canal enlargement, where he was engaged from 1838 to 1842. Two years later he came west, and during two years was engaged in prospecting and teaching, his school being at Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. In the autumn of 1846 he settled at Watertown, and sur-
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veyed lands in that vicinity and at points farther north. He laid out and constructed the plank road from Watertown to Milwaukee, and in 1851 went to Illinois and spent three years as a civil engineer on the Chicago branch of the Illinois Central railroad, erecting the first dwelling house at Champaign. Returning to Watertown, he assisted in constructing the Watertown and Madison railroad, and for a time acted in the capacity of city engineer, and in June, 1858, removed to Wausau.
Here Mr. Farnham engaged in real-estate opera- tions, and became a pioneer in banking in Mara- thon county, opening, at first, a State institution, called the Bank of the Interior. He put up, for banking purposes, the first solid brick building in Wausau. Latterly he has conducted a private bank, known all over the State and the Northwest as J. A. Farnham's banking house - a carefully managed and popular institution. Years ago Mr. Farnham, with ten thousand other good business men, had his financial reverses, but, nothing daunted, he has pushed forward, and latterly, with prudent manage- ment, has been quite prosperous. He attends very carefully to his private business and has rarely been turned aside from it.
In 1859 he accepted the office of county treasurer, to fill a vacancy, and held that position one year. The county is strongly democratic, and he has always been a republican, so that, were he an aspir- ant for office, his chances of success would be doubt-
ful. He is quite contented with success in private business life.
Mr. Farnham is a Royal Arch Mason, an Odd- Fellow and a Good Templar. He is a strong tem- perance man, and his heart is in sympathy with every canse tending to improve the morals of society.
He is a member of the Episcopal church at Wau- sau, and was for several years senior warden.
In 1864 he was married to Mrs. Emily S. John- son, of Jefferson, Wisconsin, daughter of the late William Sanborn, founder of that town.
Since seventeen years of age Mr. Farnham has been wholly dependent upon his own resources, having no capital other than a good education, a sound body and a resolute heart. He escaped the snares into which many young men fall, sought good company when it could be found, and in every way sought to build up a sound, true and healthful moral character. He has always been industrious and frugal, and his accumulations are the result of close application and wise management. His life is a fair illustration of what may be attained by upright, honorable and persevering effort.
Mr. Farnham's mother died about 1872, having attained the advanced age of ninety-eight years, and retaining her faculties till the last hour. She had fourteen grandchildren in the Union army, and two of whom were starved to death at Andersonville. The father of Mr. Farnham died in 1844, at Scipio, New York.
HON. CHARLES M. WEBB, GRAND RAPIDS.
C HARLES MORTON WEBB, a native of Tow- anda, Pennsylvania, was born on the 30th of December, 1833. His father, John L. Webb, was, in his later years, a merchant and prominent poli- tician, and, at the time of his death, which occurred in 1846, was a member of the Pennsylvania legis- lature. His mother's maiden name was Annis Ham- mond. She died about 1875. Charles closed his studies in school at the age of twelve years, and entered a printing office at Troy, Pennsylvania. Subsequently he worked at the printer's trade at Wellsboro, in the same State. In 1850 he entered the military academy, West Point, and there spent a year and a half. He worked in a printing office at Washington, District of Columbia, about three years,
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and in 1855 began the study of law with Ulysses Mercur, of Towanda, Pennsylvania, and was admit- ted to the bar, at the same place, in September, 1857. After spending a short time looking for an opening, he, in April 1858, settled at Grand Rapids, Wisconsin, at that time a village of eight hundred inhabitants. During the first year of his residence there he was elected district attorney, and held that position at the opening of the rebellion, in 1861. Resigning his office in September of that year he entered the army as first lieutenant of Company G, 12th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers, and after eight months' service resigned. Returning to Grand Rap- ids, he resumed his legal practice, and in 1864 was elected clerk of the board of supervisors, in which
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capacity he served during two terms. He was elected to the State senate in 1868, and was an influential member of that body during the two sessions. He has been United States district attor- ney for the western district of Wisconsin since the creation of that district in 1870.
He has always acted with the republican party. On the 2d of January, 1857, he was married to
Miss Jane Pierce, of Smithfield, Pennsylvania, and by her has three children.
Mr. Webb is a close student, his studies being mainly in the line of his profession. He is a good court lawyer, but his strength is best shown before a jury, where he is logical, clear and very persuasive. He is one of the ablest lawyers in his part of the State, and is alive to all important local interests.
HON. HARRISON LUDINGTON,
MILWAUKEE.
H ARRISON LUDINGTON, governor of Wis- consin for the term commencing in January, 1876, was born in Putnam county, State of New York, on the 31st of July, 1812. Like many of our best and most eminent men, his early advantages were limited, and he received only the common- school education of the time. In November, 1838, he came to Milwaukee and commenced life for him- self, by engaging in the business of general merchan- dise, in which he successfully continued for a period of about thirteen years. In 1851 he commenced the manufacture of lumber, and is now one of the firm of Ludington, Wells and Van Schaick, well known as among the largest manufacturers of lumber in the West; the amount of lumber handled by this firm is over forty millions of feet annually.
In early life Mr. Ludington was a whig, but at the dissolution of that party he became a republican. Since his residence in Milwaukee he has been twice elected on the republican ticket to the office of alderman ; and although that city is almost uniform- ly democratic by very large majorities, he was elect- ed mayor of the city in 1871, and again in 1873, and still again in 1874; on each occasion in opposition to popular candidates of the opposing party, and on the last occasion for a full term of two years, to ex- pire in April, 1876. Mr. Ludington was not per- mitted, however, to serve the people of the city of his residence to the full extent of the last term for which he had been chosen. The repeated indorse- ments he had received from the strongly democratic city of milwaukee, and the broad reputation his local administration had acquired for efficiency, had unerringly indicated him as the most eligible man to head the republican State ticket, to unite the then divided strength of the republican party and restore to it its previous prestige and power in the State.
In this the leaders of that organization had not mis- calculated. At the republican State convention held at Madison for that year, Mr. Ludington was nominated for the high position of governor by ac- clamation, and in the succeeding month of Novem- ber he was elected to that office by the people, he being the only successful candidate on the ticket of his party. His exceptional success at this election was but a repetition of the remarkable fortune which had attended him as a candidate for public favor on all previous occasions, and was mainly due to similar causes,-the strong support of his fellow- citizens of the city in which he lives, the highest personal compliment which could have been ac- corded him. In obedience to the decrees of the people, Mr. Ludington accordingly resigned the office of mayor of that city on the ist of January, 1876, and proceeded to the State capital to assume the duties of governor of the State, which he has thus far discharged to the eminent satisfaction of all his political supporters, and personal friends. The secret of Gov. Ludington's wonderful personal and public success cannot be found in those qual- ities which ordinarily distinguish men of prominence in business or politics. He neither possesses nor professes to possess the adventitious arts on which men, and especially politicians, necessarily depend for personal advancement and popular favor. It is the palpable and emphatic absence of these obnox- ious qualities which most particularly distinguish his personal and public character, and which have most especially won for him popular confidence and support.
He is positive in his convictions, and earnest in expressing and executing them, and men are in- stinctively prone to discover in these facts the evi- dence of a personal honesty in which they can
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confide, and of a sincerity of purpose more praise- worthy and more trustworthy than the conventional professions of patriotism which distinguish ordinary candidates for public support, however gracefully promulgated; and, indeed, ought not the sad ex- perience of the past to teach the American people that the virtues of public wisdom and fidelity are quite as likely to be found in men of plain ex- terior and of unaffected manners, as beneath the cultivated disguise of the trained and polished pol- itician ? Whatever little of prejudice of feeling or error of judgment may be ascribed to Gov. Luding- ton, no one can justly charge him with any disposi- tion to dissemble in the expression of his opinions, or to hesitate in the execution of them. If blunt and bluff in manner, like a man uneducated to indirection, he is also blunt and bluff in action, like a man who continues indirection by instinct, and whose only purpose is to achieve the greatest results by the shortest and most practicable methods. It is this frank and practical quality of mind in Gov. Ludington which has always insured him so large a measure of personal success in his busi- ness relations, and it is the same quality of mind which has won for him so large a measure of the faith and confidence of the mass of the people, and especially of the poorer classes, of his own city and State. They trust him not so much for his capacity to rule political parties, and to solve difficult polit- ical problems, as for his incapacity to deal other- wise than plainly, frankly and in a practical way with all men and with all questions, without dis- semblance or equivocation. In his place as the chief executive officer of the State, he thus pos-
sesses a peculiar capacity for representing the people and for comprehending and executing their will, with a mind impulsively independent and contin- uously active, with a will of iron, with a physical constitution so instinct with energy and strength that it permits him no contentment in rest. His administration is likely to prove unusually efficient, economical and popular, and to furnish him the basis of a future influence and strength with the people to which he has not yet aspired, and of which the support of no political party alone could afford him a certain and reliable assurance.
The executive capacity which we have attributed to Gov. Ludington cannot be better illustrated than by a reference, in this place, to his prompt and benevolent action, while mayor of Milwaukee, in rendering aid to Chicago during the calamity of its great fire, and to the wonderful energy as well as the benevolent spirit with which, through his in- strumentality, relief was so promptly forwarded to the suffering people of that city. By means of his energetic action, the people of Milwaukee were not only enabled to furnish valuable aid in subjugating the destroying flames which enveloped that unfor- tunate city, but were also enabled to send succes- sive car-loads of clothing and provisions to the fly- ing population, even before the full extent of their calamity had been realized. Such was the prompti- tude of this action by Mayor Ludington, that it won for him a special acknowledgment of personal gratitude from the authorities of Chicago, and also the unanimous adoption of the complimentary res- olutions by the common council of the city of Mil- waukee.
N. H. WOOD,
. PORTAGE.
T "HE subject of this sketch was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, February 21, 1820. His fath- er's farm included Goshen mountain, third in height in Massachusetts, Monadanock and Greylock loom- ing up in the distance. A superior district school, from which, a few years before, Alvin Clark, the world-renowned astronomer and manufacturer of telescopes, had graduated, furnished his education. The generation of 1800 were upon the stage in his boyhood, of whom Mr. Wood, on a Fourth-of-July occasion in his native town, testified that for all the
sterling worth which makes men practicable and self-governing he had never found their superiors, either in the mass of population of other States or in the immigration from European countries, and a life of large observation, travel and intercourse with many people had enabled him to correctly judge.
His father, Nathan Wood, was born in Phillipston, Massachusetts. He was an orphan at twelve years of age, with only one brother, William, who was engaged in the South American trade, and died in
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London in 1820, with quite a fortune. The father immigrated to Ashfield in 1800, and married Lucy, daughter of Francis Rouney, fifth descendant of Thomas Rouney, who settled in Middletown, Con- necticut, 1869. He was a Scotchman, with all the independence of character peculiar to the race, and transmitted it to the entire Rouney posterity, as all of the name are traced by an untiring family biog- rapher to his loins. From the hopeful spirit of his mother the subject of this sketch inherited much. To his surroundings in boyhood, where industry and rigid economy were practiced, he attributes much. 'That iron age enabled him to practice all the self- denial and providential characteristics which were strongest in early manhood, and which he trusts still adhere to him. If any changes have taken place in New England since, they have not added to the desire of the population to own and trans- mit to posterity the soil, which desire alone enables a race of men to maintain their hold upon a coun- try where property is not entailed, and where "he that tills the soil must own the soil."
From 1838 till 1844, when he married Harriet J. Luke, of Hamilton, New York, and opened a store in Little Falls, New York, Mr. Wood was a whole- sale peddler, supplying the stores with small wares. His route was from Troy, New York, via Syracuse, to Watertown, generally journeying through the Mohawk valley westward, and returning through Courtland, Madison, and the counties along the Cherry valley turnpike. He here made the ac- quaintance of every business man, and a large por- tion of the population, a school for the study of human nature, which has really aggravated his thirst for studying physiognomy, vainly or meritoriously believing that his perceptions of character at sight would not only enable him to give wise counsels in selecting government officials, but that his estimate of the inhabitants of the various countries of the world, their ability to progress or their lack of prac- ticability and capacity for advancement and self- government, would be valuable in settling human problems of national destiny and providential fore- ordination. Those six years of schooling by free intercourse with the world he has ever reflected upon with pleasure, for while they never contami- nated his morals nor influenced his appetites, they have enabled him to give counsel and encourage- ment to the young and to discover merit by intui- tion in others, as well as to read their weaknesses and follies as from an open book.
In 1848 Mr. Wood visited Wisconsin, and with a bundle of land warrants located lands about Portage City, then Fort Winnebago. His estimate of the value of lands was the estimate of a dairyman and stockraiser, consequently land subject to overflow along the Fox and Wisconsin rivers were chosen. It seems that Providence designed that he should be schooled in adversity, and learn by paying taxes upon unproductive lands for thirty years that good government is always an economical government. Perhaps he has reflected more upon the subject of taxation, and the willingness of various races to pay taxes and the unwillingness of other nation- alities to be heavily taxed, than any other man of his time. In the spring of 1849 he shipped a considerable stock of goods to Chicago as a ven- ture. He arrived there about June 1, with the cholera raging and the population very quiet. Most of his merchandise arrived in a single vessel, a per- fect avalanche of goods, which obstructed the side- walk, resulting in a fine imposed by a petty magis- trate, complaint having been made by a jealous competitor in trade. The fine was placarded on the door, and brought him both sympathy and notoriety. Having only two younger brothers with him, and disliking to employ those who would offer services most readily, he adopted from necessity the novel plan of handing out goods to the customer who first reached up his money. The plan took like 'wild fire, and in this manner he disposed of his whole stock of general dry goods, fancy goods, and many articles in the grocery line, which included one hundred chests of tea and three hundred boxes of raisins. The next arrival brought an immense stock of books, stationery and engravings, bought at the New York trade sales, obliging him to close his store for three days to examine. The opening hour of ten o'clock, which had been placarded, brought a throng of people which filled both side- walk and street for a block. The openings of the counters were barricaded, and the merchandise placed beyond reach. "On opening the doors the rush of the crowd was like a stampede of 'Texan steers'; jumping upon the counters we commenced handing out books to the first man who got the money up. Lawyers and business men came in by scores; book after book accumulated in their arms, till loaded they would journey home, to return again. A clearance of the room for dinner was facilitated by the sale of thirty medium-sized mirrors, which reflected the suggestion of the propriety of improv-
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ing the appearance by journeying home for ablu- tions and dinner. The afternoon so far exceeded the morning that we lost all knowledge of time, for- got our tea, sold thicker and faster, till we observed the room was thinning. They were easily dismissed. It was past eleven o'clock. We had sold that day stationery in small parcels and books in single vol- umes mostly, fourteen hundred and sixty-one dol- lars, a feat which retailers of books and stationery, the slowest of all merchandise, will appreciate." The stock was soon exhausted, and Mr. Wood must replenish at the seaboard. No one could keep up the system he had introduced, nor did he ever attempt it himself again. He sent to Little Falls for George S. and Chauncy T. Bowen, aged sixteen and eighteen years. They succeeded him in 1853, and as the firm of Bowen and Brothers were for many years one of the leading wholesale firms of Chicago, and known throughout the United States. They are both to-day eminent men, Chauncy T. Bowen being one of the city fathers of Chicago, and intrusted with its financial arrangements. George S. Bowen is the celebrated dairyman and railroad president, of Elgin, Illinois. Their wisdom and ability have increased with years, but they were "beautiful in their youth "- so thought Mr. Wood when C. T. Bowen, at sixteen, took his books in charge. In a week he knew the cost and price of every article in the store; in three weeks he knew the amount of credit each customer was entitled to, and in a month he was authority on the amount of credit every Jew in the clothing trade in Chicago might have, and the management of collections, and so wisely and well did he do all these things that he maintained his position. Mr. Wood never had the least idea of failing in business. His bark was always near shore. He would never owe or suffer
others to owe him more than he was worth. With his caution, he would never enter the lists for a large and hazardous wholesale trade. The miasma of Chicago in those day's was disagreeable to him. He determined upon the economical life of a tax-payer upon unproductive property in Wisconsin. Perhaps thirty years of this experience has tried his ever hopeful nature, but the future of Portage City is assured, and his last days may brighten.
Mr. Wood is no agrarian, but has positive views of all questions agitated -is really in advance of most reforms, as his forecast is powerful, and his desire to prevent evils and calamities somewhat providential. Interviewers might have been posted up six years ago upon the financial and currency questions of to-day ; also upon the alarming feature of Asiatic immigration, which is to be a vital ques- tion, and that soon. His opinions of the necessity of limiting taxation by providing in the constitutions of States, and the charters of cities, and organiza- tions of corporations, etc., for all the necessities of the body politic to be supplied by taxation, and after such ample provisions by general laws to take from the mobs of cities the power to further tax and appropriate moneys. He holds that all men, and women, too, should vote for public offices upon the principle that they would desire good men in power ; but as we do not permit our private purses to be controlled by the thriftless, the idle and the vicious, so the popular purse should not be reached, directly or indirectly, by such people or their representa- tives. But Mr. Wood is so mixed up with all the interests of the city of Portage, and the community about it, that they are likely at least to hear from him early and often upon these and many other subjects, which the limits of these pages do not permit the mention of.
RUFUS P. MANSON,
WAUSAU.
F EW men in Marathon county, Wisconsin, have. been more honored with public trusts by their fellow-citizens than Rufus P. Manson, and no one has more conscientiously and faithfully discharged his duties. A native of New Hampshire, he is the son of Mark Manson, a farmer, and Zoa (Pinkham) Manson, and was born at Eaton, Carroll county, . February 15, 1830. His parents moved to the town
of Jackson, New Hampshire, when Rufus was about a year old. During his early life, until he attained his majority, he was engaged in farm work and en- joyed ordinary common-school privileges, and at- tended two terms at the South Conway Academy. In 1851, having decided to try his fortune in the growing West, he sought the wilds of Wisconsin ; he worked in a saw-mill one season at Jenny, eighteen
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miles above Wausau, on the Wisconsin river, and the next year settled at Wausau, the county seat, his present home. Here he engaged in the lumber trade, and has steadily pursued the same business, when not holding office. He is now (1877) of the firm of Manson and Co., extensive dealers, both in lumber and merchandise.
In the autumn of 1858 Mr. Manson was elected clerk of the court and of the board of supervisors, and served three terms of two years each. He was a member of the board of supervisors several years, of the board of education four years, a member of the lower house of the legislature in 1871, and sheriff of his county in 1875 and 1876.
Mr. Manson aided in organizing the Masonic lodge in Wausau, and is a Knight Templar.
His religious sentiments are liberal. In politics he is a democrat.
Mr. Manson was married to Miss Catherine Nicoll, of Drummond, Canada, November 13, 1854. They
have had eleven children, nine of whom are now living.
Since settling in Wausau, Mr. Manson has made its interests and those of the county his own; he has been prominent in all movements tending to develop the wealth of the country, or to enhance the material or educational interests of the city. He spent much time and money in getting the Wiscon- sin Valley railroad completed to Wausau, and is now, with scores of other enterprising men, reaping the rich reward of energies well expended and capi- tal well invested. When he settled in Wausau the place did not contain twenty families; now it is a city of four thousand inhabitants, with stately brick blocks for commercial purposes, half a dozen churches, and excellent school accommodations for seven hundred pupils. Wausau is one of the best business points, and one of the largest towns on the Upper Wisconsin, and owes its growth and prosper- ity mainly to a few such men as Rufus P. Manson.
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