Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men
knew. They were generally men of limited means, moderate ambitions, and
democratic instincts; and they established their shops and factories
without expectation that they were changing worthless plains and forests
into cities, or plain mechanics into millionaires. They aimed only to
create productive industries in which they and their few employes,
meeting on equal terms, could work together and win a fair reward for
their labor. But they were skillful workmen, good managers, courageous,
persistent, and equal to all their opportunities, and under their
inspiration and direction their enterprises have grown into great
proportions, which have made the fortunes of their owners, and called
into being communities that are models of the best that skill,
intelligence, and thrift can produce.
To this class of men belonged Kendall O. and James L. Peabody and
Jeremiah F. Daniell, who, fifty years ago, built a paper-mill in the
forest that then grew about the falls upon the Winnipesaukee, where the
wealthy, wide-awake, and beautiful village of Franklin Falls now stands.
The Peabodys, who were bakers by trade, built a small mill at this point
about the year 1828. In disposing of their production as bakers they
accumulated large quantities of cotton rags, and, as there was little
demand for these, they built a miniature paper-mill to convert them into
a more salable commodity. Their knowledge of the paper business was very
limited, their machinery of the most primitive kind, and their
experiment was not at first a success; but they were men not easily
turned from their purposes, and, feeling that what they lacked was a
practical paper-maker, one of them went to Massachusetts in search of
one. He found there Jeremiah F. Daniell, who at the age of thirty-five
had seen twenty-one years of service in a paper-mill, and knew the
business thoroughly. This young man had been trained in a hard school,
and was by education as well as by natural abilities well qualified to
prove an efficient helper to men, who, like the Peabodys, were trying to
establish a new enterprise in the face of many discouragements. He began
his apprenticeship when a boy of fourteen, and from that time until he
reached his majority most of his scanty earnings went to support a
widowed mother and orphaned brothers and sisters.
When he became of age, his entire property consisted of a suit of
clothes, and a five-dollar bill which proved to be counterfeit. With
these he started, carrying his shoes in his hand (as a matter of
economy), to obtain employment at his trade, which he found at
Pepperell. Here he remained several years, and during the time married
Sarah Reed, of Harvard, Mass., by whom he had two children, Warren F.,
the subject of this sketch, who was born June 26, 1826, and Mary, who
died in infancy. Subsequently he manufactured paper for himself in
Dorchester and Methuen, Mass., and in 1833 went West. Not finding a
promising opening, he returned to Massachusetts and was met by Mr.
Peabody, who arranged for him to go to Franklin and take charge of the
mill there, in which he was given an interest. This he did, and, when a
few months later his family joined him, the Daniell homestead was
permanently established at the head of the Merrimack. The first efforts
of the young manager were directed to supplying the mill with improved
machinery, a difficult task, as the owners had little money to spare,
and the nearest machine-shop in which an order for that class of
machinery could be filled was at South Windham, Conn., but, finally, two
eight-horse teams closed a three weeks' journey by landing in Franklin a
newly invented paper-machine, and the mill was ready to run in a few
months. Meantime, Mr. Daniell had purchased the interest of J. L.
Peabody, in the firm which thus became Peabody & Daniell. The machinery
was scarcely in position when a fire destroyed the factory and its
contents, leaving the owners, in the midst of the hard times of 1837,
bankrupt in nearly everything but courage, reputation, and a
determination to succeed, which enabled them, after many struggles, to
rebuild and proceed in a small way with their business. The erection of
the cotton-mills at Manchester soon after gave them an opportunity to
purchase large amounts of paper stock at low prices, and from that time
they were moderately prosperous.
The next year after the removal of Mr. Daniell from Massachusetts his
wife died, and a year later he married Annette Eastman, of Concord. His
son Warren was at that time a wide-awake boy, ten years old. He had
picked up a little book knowledge in the Massachusetts schools, and in
order that he might be further educated without much expense he was sent
to Concord, where he worked upon a farm for his board and clothes and
privilege of attending school a short time each winter, until he was
fourteen, when he was called home and entered the paper-mill as an
apprentice, to learn the business with which his name is now so
prominently identified. It was his purpose at a later period to attend
the academy at Tilton; but on the day on which the term began his father
was severely burned by an accident, and he was obliged to take his place
in the mill. No other time appeared when he could well be spared, and he
continued working there until he was twenty-five years of age, and was a
master of the trade in all its branches.
As a journeyman, his wages were one dollar and twenty-five cents per
day, a sum which he found sufficient to provide, in those days of
frugality, for all the needs of himself and his young wife and child. He
was, however, ambitious at some future time to have a mill of his own,
and with this object in view left Franklin and contracted with parties
at Waterville, Me., to erect and run for them a paper-mill at that
place. This occupied him for one year, when he took charge of another
mill at Pepperell, Mass., where he remained until 1854. In that year his
father bought out Mr. Peabody, and offered to sell him half the
establishment if he would return to Franklin, which he did. The firm was
then J. F. Daniell & Son, and for the next ten years the business
prospered under that name. In 1864 Warren bought his father's interest,
and was sole proprietor until 1870, when the mill property, which had
grown from modest beginnings to be one of the largest and best known
private manufacturing establishments in the state, was sold to a company
of Massachusetts capitalists who had organized as the Winnipiseogee
Paper Company. Mr. Daniell then become connected with a large
paper-house in Boston and removed to that city. He soon tired of life in
that crowded metropolis, and, returning to his old home, he purchased a
large interest in the company that had succeeded him there, and became
its resident agent and manager, which position he still occupies. This
company owns and operates at Franklin large paper-mills supplied with
the best machinery, employs three hundred men and women, and produces
nearly twenty tons of paper daily, and reflects, in its abounding
success, the sagacity, energy, and enterprise of the man who plans and
directs its operations, who, without the help of a liberal education or
wealthy friends, has won his way by hard and patient work to a first
place among the business men of New Hampshire.
Few men in our state have been so uniformly successful, and none in
compassing their own success have contributed more to that of others. In
climbing up, WARREN F. DANIELL has pulled no one down. The village of
three thousand busy, prosperous, and happy people is largely the
creation of the paper-mill, in which he has made his money, and its most
creditable characteristics are in no small degree the results of his
counsel and liberality. The business world acknowledges him as a man of
undoubted integrity, thoroughly responsible, and eminently successful.
His townsmen and fellow-citizens of New Hampshire know him as a genial,
unassuming man, whose good fellowship never tires, whose generosity is
inexhaustible, and as one who is never too busy with his own affairs to
lend a helping hand to any cause or person that deserves it; as a
citizen and friend and neighbor who has shown them how to get money
rapidly, and how to spend it freely, intelligently, and helpfully.
Mr. Daniell's first wife was Elizabeth D. Rundlett, of Stratham, N. H.
The marriage occurred in 1850, and Mrs. Daniell died while he was at
Pepperell, in 1854. He married Abbie A. Sanger, of Concord, in October,
1860, who presides over his elegant home, which is located near the
confluence of the Winnipesaukee and Pemigewasset rivers, and surrounded
by a broad intervale which liberal outlays have made one of the most
fertile and beautiful spots in the Merrimack valley. He has five boys:
Harry W., by his first wife; and Eugene S., Otis, Warren F., and Jerie
R., the fruit of his second marriage.
He is an enthusiastic farmer, and owns across the river from his home a
large and productive farm. He has long been the owner of the best herd
of Jersey cattle in the state; his stables always contain some of the
finest and fleetest horses; he admires a good dog, and is a skillful
breeder of swine and poultry. He has contributed much to the
introduction of improved stock, crops, and farm machinery in his
neighborhood; has been active and liberal in sustaining the state and
local agricultural societies, and in otherwise promoting the farming
interest.
In politics, Mr. Daniell is a Democrat; and such has been his popularity
among those who have known him best, that even when Franklin gave a
Republican majority of seventy-five he was several times elected to
represent it in the house, and subsequently was chosen a state senator
two years in succession in a district which no other Democrat could have
carried. He represented his party in the national convention of 1872,
and has always been one of its trusted counselors and most efficient
workers. That he would have been its candidate for governor and congress
but for his refusal to accept the position is generally known. During
the war he gave himself unreservedly to the cause of the Union as
represented by the "boys in blue," voting steadily to raise and equip
all the men who were needed, giving liberally of his means to provide
for them and their families, and supporting, by word and deed on all
occasions and in all places, the cause for which they fought.
JONATHAN SAWYER.
BY REV. GEO. B. SPALDING, D. D.
1. John Sawyer, a farmer in Lincolnshire, England, had three sons,
William, Edward, and Thomas, who emigrated to this country in 1636,
being passengers in a ship commanded by Capt. Parker. They probably
settled in Rowley, Mass.
2. Thomas Sawyer went to Lancaster, Mass., as early as 1647, when he was
twenty-four years of age. This section of the Nashaway valley,
comprising eighty square miles in extent, had been purchased in 1643 by
Thomas King, of Watertown, Mass., of Scholan, sachem of the Nashaway
Indians. Thomas Sawyer was one of the first six settlers. His name
appears in the petition made to the general court in 1653 for the
incorporation of the town of Lancaster. In 1647, the year of his
arrival, he married Mary Prescott. She was the daughter of John
Prescott, to whom belongs the honor of being the first permanent
inhabitant of Lancaster. The eminent historian, William H. Prescott,
traces his ancestral line to this John Prescott. There were born to
Thomas Sawyer and Mary Prescott eleven children. This family figures
largely in that most tragic page of the history of Lancaster which tells
of the massacres and captivities of its inhabitants, and the entire
destruction of the town itself by the Indians. On the land of Thomas
Sawyer stood the Sawyer garrison, into which were gathered the survivors