Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men Part 37

From the beginning of his public life, Gov. Prescott has taken a deep interest in all that appertains to the welfare of his native state. For its inst.i.tutions of learning he has shown a high regard. His _alma mater_, Dartmouth College, is an object of solicitude, and no other son has done more for her in proportion to his means and influence. Many of the portraits of eminent graduates, presidents, and benefactors that now adorn the walls of the college, were procured through his thoughtful and persistent efforts. The portraits and marble busts that grace the hall in Phillips Academy, in Exeter, with one or two exceptions, were secured to it through his indefatigable zeal and wise action. This declaration will apply with equal truth to the collection of portraits by eminent artists in the state-house, and also the Historical Society at Concord.

His interest in the history of the state is very keen, and few of New Hamps.h.i.+re's sons have done more to vindicate the fame of her Revolutionary heroes, and secure for them and their state the credit withheld by partial or poorly informed historians.

Gov. Prescott has a fine presence. Erect of body, with broad ma.s.sive shoulders indicative of great physical strength; features regular, strongly marked and of kindly expression; agreeable manners, genial and open-hearted; outspoken at all times, but never censorious; hospitable, and considerate; a strict partisan, but never intrusive or arrogant; impatient of shams, but a firm friend of all philanthropic undertakings,--he has filled with credit to himself and l.u.s.ter to his state and country every place of honor and trust to which the favor and good judgment of his fellow-citizens have called him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: H W Blair]

HON. HENRY WILLIAM BLAIR.

Among the many strong and self-reliant men and women who went out from the old Scotch-Irish colony of Londonderry to establish homes in other sections of the state were the Livermores, Shepherds, c.o.xes, and Blairs, who were the first settlers in the Pemigewa.s.set valley, where they and their descendants have ever since exerted a controlling influence.

The Blairs located in Campton, where the father of New Hamps.h.i.+re's senator of that name was born and grew to manhood. He was an excellent scholar, a talented musician, an accomplished military officer, and a man of great bodily strength and agility who was a recognized leader in the town. His wife was Lois Baker, a descendant of the Bakers of Candia, a family noted in colonial and revolutionary times, and for many years one of the most respected and influential in Campton. She was a very fine singer, and was gifted with remarkable mental endowments and rare sweetness of disposition. Both Mr. and Mrs. Blair were teachers in their youth, but after their marriage located themselves upon a farm in their native town, where they lived happily until he was fatally injured by falling timbers, while engaged upon the frame of a building. He died December 8, 1836, leaving three children: a daughter, Hannah Palmer Blair, aged six years; a son, Moses Baker Blair, aged four years; and a son, HENRY WILLIAM BLAIR, aged two years. A fourth child, Lois Esther Blair, was born soon after his death. Of these, the oldest daughter died in 1843, and the oldest son, a young man of remarkable abilities, in 1857.

The death of Mr. Blair left his widow very poor, and finding it impossible to support the children in her old home she was obliged to separate them. The two eldest were "put out" to live in the families of neighboring farmers, while she kept with her the youngest son, Henry, and the infant daughter, until he was six years of age, when she arranged with Samuel Keniston, a leading citizen of Campton, to take him for one year, and, carrying the little girl with her, journeyed by stage to Lowell in quest of work in the factories there, by which she might obtain the means to support and educate her children. This venture was not a pecuniary success, as her small earnings were nearly all absorbed in necessary expenses; and in the summer of 1842 she returned to Campton, and soon after removed with the two young children to Plymouth, where for the next year she supported them by sewing.

At this time the boy Henry W., who was born December 6, 1834, was seven years of age, bright, active, and able to make himself useful on a farm; and he attracted the attention of Richard Bartlett, one of the prosperous farmers of Campton, who offered to take him and give him a home in his house, with what small educational advantages the district school afforded, in return for such services as a boy of his build and mettle could render. Thither he went in May, 1843, to begin to earn his own living, and for several years his home was with Mr. Bartlett, who treated him kindly and generously. In 1846 Mrs. Blair died, and from that time on the boy fought the battle of life aided only by such friends as he made for himself, and inspired by a purpose to show himself a worthy son of his n.o.ble parents, whose memory he has always reverently cherished. Writing of them many years after, when the people of New Hamps.h.i.+re had conferred upon him the highest honor in their gift, he said: "I owe very much to my parents, who, though poor, were among the best that a child ever had; and to them I have always applied Cowper's proud tribute to his own:--

'My boast is not that I deduce my birth From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth, But higher far my proud pretensions rise, The son of parents pa.s.sed into the skies.'"

Until he was seventeen he worked hard upon a farm summers, and attended the district school winters, and in the autumns of 1851 and 1852 the Holmes Academy at Plymouth, of which Rev. James H. Shepard was princ.i.p.al. His earnings the following winter enabled him to still further gratify his longings for an education by going to the New Hamps.h.i.+re Conference Seminary for one term in the spring of 1853. As this exhausted his means, in the hope of obtaining more he worked for a mechanic one year, and was expecting soon to resume his studies, when his employer failed in business and he lost his wages. Before he could secure another situation he was prostrated by a severe illness, which left him broken in health, and compelled him, after a long struggle, to abandon his purpose of obtaining a collegiate training. The next three years he worked upon a farm, taught school in New Hamps.h.i.+re and Ma.s.sachusetts, tramped through this state selling books, and did whatever honest work his health would permit, in the hope of gaining strength and money enough to complete his academical course, studying, in the meantime, two terms at Northfield and one at Plymouth, when it became evident that his strength was unequal to the task he had set himself, and he yielded to the advice of Samuel A. Burns, an eminent scholar and teacher, who took a warm interest in him, and May 1, 1856, entered the office of William Leverett, an able Plymouth lawyer, as a student. Three years afterwards he was admitted to the bar, and, a.s.sociating himself with his instructor, began practice as the junior member of the firm of Leverett & Blair; and, devoting himself to his profession with the same industry, perseverance, and ability which enabled him to enter it, he soon gained an enviable reputation as a lawyer. The next year he was appointed solicitor of Grafton county, which was his first public office.

From the first, Mr. Blair was a thorough-going Republican. An instinctive hatred of slavery and all its attendant iniquities inspired him as a boy to look eagerly forward to the time when he could join in the warfare against it, and when he reached his majority he lost no occasion to declare by voice and vote his convictions upon the subject.

When the slaveholders raised the standard of revolt against the government, he had just begun to reap the fruits of his early struggles and see the realization of his boyish dreams of success in his profession; but every call for men served to render him uncomfortable at home, and while the Twelfth Regiment was being recruited he put away his books and briefs and tried to join it, but failed to pa.s.s the surgeon's examination. He then enlisted as a private in the Fifteenth Regiment, and was chosen captain of Company B. Before leaving the state he was commissioned major by Gov. Berry, in which capacity he went to Louisiana. Soon after his arrival there the disability of his superior officers left him in command of the regiment, and from that time the drill and discipline which made it one of the best in the service were his work. In the a.s.sault upon Port Hudson, in May, 1863, he was severely wounded by a minie-ball, in the right arm, and was carried to the hospital to recover; but, learning a few days later that another attack on that rebel stronghold was to be made, he insisted on disregarding the commands of the surgeons by joining his command, and, with his arm in a sling, led his men, who had the right of the column, in the ill-fated charge of June 14. Here he was shot again in the same arm by a bullet, which tore open the old wound; but he refused to leave his troops, and remained with them until he could take them from the field. About this time he was promoted to be lieutenant-colonel of the regiment, and, as such, brought it home when its term of service had expired. He reached Concord little more than a bodily wreck, and for some days his life hung by a thread; but careful nursing by his devoted wife and friends restored him to sufficient strength to warrant his removal to his old home on the banks of the Pemigewa.s.set.

A long season of suffering and disability from wounds and disease contracted in the army followed his return; but he gradually regained his health sufficiently to resume the practice of law at Plymouth, in which the court records show him to have been remarkably successful. He had a legal mind, had fitted himself for the bar with great thoroughness, prepared his cases carefully and patiently, and managed them skillfully, seldom failing to obtain a verdict. The Grafton-county bar was at that time noted for the ability and learning of its members, and he was rapidly working his way to a prominent place among them, when he turned aside to enter political life,--a step which many of the eminent men with whom he was a.s.sociated in the trial of causes regard even now as a great mistake, his brilliant success in the field of politics failing, in their estimation, to compensate for what he was capable of achieving in the law. For several years he practiced alone; but in 1878 formed a partners.h.i.+p with Alvin Burleigh, which continued until his election to the senate.

In 1866, Mr. Blair was elected a representative to the popular branch of the state legislature, and there began the political service which has since made him so widely known. The next year he was promoted to the state senate by the voters of the eleventh district, and in 1868 was re-elected. In 1872 the third district, composed of the counties of Coos, Grafton, Sullivan, and Ches.h.i.+re, elected a Democrat to congress; and in 1874 the Republicans, looking about for a candidate under whose lead they could redeem it, found him in Mr. Blair, whose reputation as a soldier, clean record as a citizen, personal popularity, and indefatigable industry and zeal dictated his enthusiastic nomination, and after an exciting campaign secured his election to the forty-fourth congress. In 1876 he was again elected, and in 1878 declined a renomination. The next summer the term of United States Senator Wadleigh expired, and Mr. Blair came forward as a candidate for the succession.

He was earnestly supported by the younger men of the party, by the temperance and soldier elements; and, though his compet.i.tors were the ablest men in the state, he bore away the great prize, and immediately entered upon the discharge of his duties at Was.h.i.+ngton, to which he has since devoted himself.

Mr. Blair's election to the national senate was largely due to the record he had made in the house, and to his remarkable faculty of winning and retaining the hearty friends.h.i.+p of nearly all with whom he had ever been a.s.sociated. From his youth up he had held radical views upon public questions; and the persistency and zeal with which he advanced and defended these under all circ.u.mstances convinced even his opponents of his entire sincerity, and bound to him his coworkers with locks of steel. Men liked him because he was cordial, frank, and earnest, and respected him because he had ability, industry, and courage; and so they rallied around him with a devotion and faith which overcame all opposition.

During the four years he represented the third district in the house, he served upon the committees on Railroads and Accounts, and several special committees. In the senate of the forty-sixth congress, upon the committees on Education and Labor, Agriculture, Transportation, Routes to the Seaboard, Election Frauds, Pensions, and Exodus of the Colored People: and in the present congress is chairman of the senate committee on Education and Labor, and a member of those on Pensions, Public Lands, Agriculture, and Woman Suffrage.

Soon after entering the house he introduced and advocated with great ability a proposition to amend the national const.i.tution so as to prohibit the manufacture or sale of distilled spirits in the United States after 1890, a measure which gave him a national reputation, and caused him to be recognized by the temperance people of the country as their leader and champion in the national capitol. The woman suffragists have also found in him a vigorous and unwearying defender; and his speeches in support of his bill to extend government aid to the common schools of the South are among the most carefully prepared and conclusive arguments on that subject. When the financial policy of the country became a subject of discussion, and many of its strongest minds were carried from their moorings by the Greenback cyclone, Senator Blair stood st.u.r.dily for an honest currency and strict honesty in dealing with the government creditors, and by his speeches in congress and on the stump contributed in no small degree to the triumph of those principles and the incidental success of the Republican party. The veteran soldier has always found in him a friend who lost no opportunity to speak and vote for the most liberal pension laws, and who never tired in responding to individual calls for a.s.sistance at the department. His other service as a senator has been most conspicuous in his speeches against the Texas Pacific Railroad Subsidies, upon Foreign Markets and Commerce, Election Frauds in the South, the Exodus of Colored People, the j.a.panese Indemnity Fund, the Public Land Bill, and the Commission of Inquiry into the Liquor Traffic; his eulogies upon Henry Wilson, Zachariah Chandler, and Evarts W. Farr; and his reports on numerous subjects which have claimed the attention of his committees. He is rarely absent from his seat, and when present never declines to vote.

His first term expires March 3, 1885.

From this brief sketch it will be seen that Mr. Blair owes his exceptional success in life to no extraneous or accidental aids. His parents were poor, and their untimely death deprived him of their counsel and example. His boyhood was a struggle with poverty, of which his youth was only a continuance. All he had, he earned. What he became, he made himself. As a man, he has shown great capacity for work and a disposition to do his best in every position. He is always intensely in earnest. He has indomitable perseverance and persistency, and never allows his abilities to rust in idleness. He is an outspoken and aggressive but practical reformer; a radical but sagacious Republican.

Though his early advantages were few, he has been a voracious reader and a close student, and does not lack for the help which familiarity with books gives. He is an easy writer and a fluent speaker. He is generous to a fault; and his most prominent weakness is a disposition to magnify his obligations to his friends.

Senator Blair married Eliza Nelson, the daughter of a Methodist clergyman, of Groton, and has one son,--Henry Patterson Blair,--aged fourteen years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: R A Maxsfield]

RUFUS A. MAXFIELD.

BY J. P.

RUFUS A. MAXFIELD was born in Nashua, N. H., on the fifth day of March, 1835. His father, Stephen C. Maxfield, was a native of Newbury, Vt., was married to Clarissa Staples, a native of Chichester. N. H., at Nashua N.

H., when the now populous city was but a small village. There were ten children born to them. Four died quite young; six are now living, viz.: the subject of this sketch; James G. Maxfield, M. D., surgeon at the National Home for disabled volunteer soldiers at Togus, Me.; J. P.

Maxfield, treasurer of the Hisc.o.x File Manufacturing Company, at West Chelmsford, Ma.s.s., who resides in Lowell, Ma.s.s.; Stephen W. Maxfield, a mechanic, now living in Nashua; Susan T. and Helen A.; the former married and resides in Wolfeborough, N. H., the latter in Lowell, Ma.s.s., with the widowed mother, who is still living at the ripe age of seventy years. Stephen C, the father, was employed for seventeen years by the Nashua Manufacturing Company, and was a faithful servant to his employers. He early became identified with the Methodist denomination, and was among the most zealous workers in building up the two societies in those early days. He died in Lowell. Ma.s.s., August 10, 1862, having lived a consistent Christian life, at the age of fifty-three years.

When Rufus was eight years old he was employed in the carding department of the Nashua company's mills during his school vacations. It was here that he was first taught the rudiments of cotton-manufacture. For awhile he worked as back boy in the mule-spinning department. In 1846 the family removed to Lowell, Ma.s.s. After attending school here for a short time he again went into the mill in the carding department on the Lawrence corporation. From here he was transferred to the mule-spinning department. In 1853 he left the mill temporarily to attend school at Northfield, N. H., where he remained two years, when he returned to the mill and to his mule-spinning. He pa.s.sed through the various grades until he reached the position of second overseer. He was married on the 10th of May, 1856, to Mary A. Spaulding, daughter of Joshua Spaulding, of Pepperell, Ma.s.s.

Soon after the breaking out of the war of the rebellion, the mills of Lowell suspended operations, and thousands were thrown out of employment, Mr. Maxfield among the rest. In 1863 he entered the employ of the Naumkeag Mill, at Salem, Ma.s.s., as second overseer under Charles D. McDuffie, Esq., who had charge of all the spinning in these mills.

Mr. McDuffie is now agent of the Manchester Mills, Manchester, N. H. Mr.

Maxfield remained in the employ of the Naumkeag Mill until the close of the war, when, the corporations in Lowell resuming operations, he was tendered the position of overseer of the mule-spinning in the hosiery-mill of the Lawrence Manufacturing Company, who were then starting. Here he remained until the spring of 1866, when he took charge of the mule-spinning in number five mill, then the largest mill owned by the Lawrence company. During the latter part of 1868 he had charge of all the spinning in this mill.

In 1869 he was appointed superintendent of Ida Hill Mill, Troy, N. Y.

Under adverse circ.u.mstances, with a mill cramped for power, and with old machinery very much out of repair, he was very successful, earning satisfactory profits for the owners. In the year 1872, the management of the Tremont and Suffolk Mills in Lowell, Ma.s.s., offered him the position of superintendent of their large mills, where, under Thomas S. Shaw, Esq., agent, he remained until 1875. During his connection with this company, the quality of the Canton flannels, which are a "specialty"

with these mills, was brought up to a standard that made them rank among the first in the market, commanding ready sales and good prices.

The directors of the Nashua Manufacturing Company, on the death of Oliver Hussey, Esq., in January, 1875, realizing the qualifications of Mr. Maxfield for such a position, appointed him agent of their large mills in Nashua, N. H. During Mr. Maxfield's administration to the present time, there have been extensive alterations and improvements in the direction of economy of manufacture and increased production, so that the reputation of the company that owned the model mills of New England has been maintained. Thus we find the boy who at eight years of age took his first lesson in cotton-manufacture, returning, after the lapse of thirty-two years, to the same mills as agent. Little did the youth dream what thirty-two years would bring to pa.s.s in his career.

Socially Mr. Maxfield is a very agreeable gentleman; and, while he has devoted his energies during all these years to his chosen calling, he has found time to connect himself by social ties to beneficiary organizations, thus lending his influence to the great work in which they are engaged. He was prominent for many years in the management of the affairs of Mechanics Lodge of Odd Fellows of Lowell, Ma.s.s., pa.s.sing through the various positions until now he is one of the "Past Grands"

of this lodge. He is also a member of Pentucket Lodge of Masons, Royal Arch Chapter, Ahasuerus Council, and Pilgrim Commandry of that city.

He is a regular attendant of the Methodist church, and is respected by the people of Nashua for his upright and honorable course of life. He is prompt to decide questions that come before him; but his decisions, though firm, are tempered with that affability of manner which relieves them of much of the harshness that many men manifest. May he be spared many years to pursue his favorite calling; and may the day be far distant when the Nashua Manufacturing Company shall lose his services, or the city of Nashua lose so worthy a citizen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Geo. B. Spalding]

GEORGE BURLEY SPALDING, D. D.

BY REV. A. H. QUINT. D. D.

GEORGE BURLEY SPALDING, the present pastor of the First church in Dover, was born in Montpelier, Vt., August 11, 1835, son of Dr. James Eliza (Reed) Spalding. The line of American descent on the paternal side as follows: Edward, of Chelmsford, Ma.s.s., immigrant; Benjamin, whose will was proved April 5, 1670; Edward, of Canterbury, Conn.; Ephraim, of Connecticut; Reuben, of Connecticut; Reuben, who married Jerusha Carpenter, and lived in Sharon, Vt.; Dr. James; and Rev. George Burley.

Deacon Reuben Spalding, grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was one of the early settlers of Vermont, whose life was not more remarkable for his toils, privations, and energy as a pioneer in a new country, than for his unbending Christian integrity. He entered Sharon in 1769, and lived on the same farm eighty years. He was a member of the church sixty-one years, and deacon forty-two years. He was distinguished for "the best qualities of the old New England Puritanism."

Dr. James Spalding was the third of twelve children, and for many years a successful pract.i.tioner of medicine in Montpelier, Vt., but especially eminent in surgery. He graduated at the Dartmouth Medical School at the age of twenty years. He was more than forty years a member of the Vermont Medical Society; its secretary over twenty years, its president in 1866, 1867, and 1868. "His life," says a printed sketch, "was that of the good Samaritan, a life of toil, prayer, and sympathy for others."

By the line of Reed, the family is of the same blood with Rev. Dr.

Gardiner Spring and Rev. Dr. Edwards A. Park. The grandmother of Dr.

George B. Spalding, and the grandfather of the late Senator Matthew H.

Carpenter, were sister and brother.

George Burley Spalding was the seventh of nine children. He fitted for college at the Was.h.i.+ngton County Academy, Montpelier, and graduated at the University of Vermont in 1856, being twenty-one years of age. He read law one year in Montpelier, with Hon. Charles W. Willard, and then went to Tallaha.s.see, Fla., where he read law another year with Judge W.

C. M. Davis. While in the South, he was a regular correspondent of the _New York Courier and Enquirer_, of which his brother, James Reed Spalding, was one of the editors. As such he attended the noted Southern commercial convention in Savannah, in 1858, where Yancey, Rhett, Barnwell, and DeBow poured out their hot invective. In the following year he mingled with the great southern leaders, on the eve of the great events which were soon to burst upon the country. Doubtless in his law study and in his intercourse with men in different phases of society, he acquired that practical acquaintance with human nature which makes available his instinctive and common-sense power of meeting all cla.s.ses of men.