Wamsutta of New Bedford

By
Henry Beetle Hough

1946

CHAPTER I

Barnburners and Hunkers

CAP'N ABE Howland concluded his business in great waters while he was still on the lee side of middle age. He had sailed several voyages on a whaleship, latterly as master, and he had shown his skill and daring to the pirates of Madagascar while in command of an East Indiaman. And then the time had come for him to settle down in New Bedford and be a man of the people.

He was bluff, frank and free of speech. He was also, as his acquaintances observed, inordinately ambitious, a trait natural in a man who had scooped a hundred thousand dollars out of the ocean and was not aware of the limitations on human progress which were to come in with later generations. He wore a fringe of dark beard under his chin, and a lock or two of hair usually strayed over his high forehead. He could cut quite a figure when he had a mind to.

But Old Abe, as the boys of the fire department called him, was mainly interested in the companionship of riggers, coopers, caulkers, sailmakers, ship chandlers, and even of longshoremen if they were New Bedford people. The moneyed families of the town and alt the old merchants lived on the County Road, high on the crest of the hill which rose steeply from the harbor and the Acushnet River, but Abe had his house only three blocks from the water and meant to keep it there.

Hearing that his brother-in-law had taken an option on a County Road building site, Abe rushed around to remonstrate. Surely Henry wouldn't move into the thick of the hill crowd. Why, he would right away fail into extravagances of living, and his young and growing family would be perniciously affected, even to the extent of having their solid Quakerism contaminated by Unitarianism. Henry gave up the idea.

In due course, Abe Howland reorganized the town fire department, entertained Daniel Webster at his home, led in the formation of a couple of marine insurance companies, and got himself elected to the state legislature. By the year 1846 he was ready for a new enterprise, and the talk of a few of the people who hung around the insurance rooms was of a factory to make cotton duck or iron or both. The combination of ideas suggests that they were still thinking pretty strongly in terms of the whaling industry.

The project was talked over at Abe's house, and at the homes of his brothers-in-law, Henry Wood and Captain Joseph C. Delano. They couldn't see anything the matter with it, and early in 1846 they got up a paper for stock subscriptions, headed by Abe himself. When he next went to Boston to the legislature, Abe put through an act of incorporation, which still stands upon the record, and as no dead issue.

Captain Joseph Clement Delano

"An Act to Incorporate the Wamsutta Mills," it is entitled, and the text authorizes the forming of "a corporation by the name of the Wamsutta Mills for the purpose of manufacturing cotton, wool and iron in the town of New Bedford."

Captain Delano thought that Fish Island would be a good site for the factory, but that little offshore tract at the margin of New Bedford harbor was not to be so dignified. As a matter of fact, the question of a site began to seem premature. The paper for stock subscriptions was circulated, and it got up to almost $60,000, but there it stuck. For the most excellent of reasons, which will be recounted presently, the merchants of New Bedford kept their hands and their money in their pockets.

Abe fussed a good deal and concluded that there was more pigheadedness than progress in high places. He reaffirmed his estimate of the merchants who lived on the hill. One thing which helped defeat his enterprise, however, was severely actual. In February of 1846 a concern called the New Bedford Steam Mill Co. had been incorporated, and as the year wore on was getting ready to manufacture cotton cloth. It was natural for anyone to want to see how this scheme turned out before putting money into another.

A man like Abraham H. Howland would not give up easily, but he was at least on dead center when relief appeared in an unexpected direction. The year 1846 was one of those special years of destiny, and the lion. Joseph Grinnell, Member of Congress, known more familiarly as the Honorable Joe, was approached by a young man named Tom Bennett, who knew the cotton business. He knew cotton in the bale, as it came from the gin, and he knew cotton manufacturing. The Honorable Joe was impressed with young Bennett's figures and with the young man himself. He began to think about a cotton mill project such as Bennett proposed, and about the possibility of placing it in New Bedford.

Joseph Grinnell was an older man than Abe Howland, and if he was not the first citizen of New Bedford he was about to become 80. He had been born in 1788 in a small brick house near the waterfront of the old town, one of six sons of Captain Cornelius Grinnell, who was a Quaker, a whaling captain, and a salty character. Once, having incurred criticism by unloading a ship on the Sabbath, he had himself complained of, anticipating action by the Quaker Society, "and by that means saved half the expense." As the boys attained the age of twenty-one, Captain Grinnell gave each of them $500 to enable him to go forth and seek a fortune.

Thus in 1810 Joseph was in New York, entering business with his uncle, John H. Howland, under the style of Howland and Grinnell. The War of 1812 put the firm out of business, its ships sunk or plundered, and Joseph was not able to start up again until 1815. Then he went into partnership with his cousin, the eccentrically named Captain Preserved Fish, who was also an eccentric man. Cap'n Fish had New Bedford interests, but at a time of temper he sold them at a fraction of their value and cleared out.

The new firm prospered, and when Preserved Fish retired in 1825 Joseph took in his brothers, Henry and Moses. By 1829 he needed a change, and set out for Europe with his wife and his niece Cornelia, whom he had adopted. On returning from Europe he built a house in New Bedford, and no one thought it strange that he built it on top of the hill.

The Grinnell Mansion, ca. 1945

There it stands today, a pillared mansion of granite, austere but grand, solid and enduring, but with an indescribable grace of its own as it rises sheer from broad and level lawns. It could easily have been a palace, but it remained in every line and accent a Quaker mansion.

Joseph Grinnell

Joseph Grinnell was now that unique figure in any age, the man who has enough money for himself and is ready to think of doing solid things in the world. His means were estimated at $150,000, and he was entirely satisfied. He remained levelheaded, and his sense of reality was a central part of his character, but he never again cared about profit for the sake of profit.

In 1840 he had put through the New Bedford and Taunton Railroad against the opposition of the stagecoach people, and it was due to him that inhabitants of the town could come and go in the cars, instead of the old bellows-top chaises with yellow body and running parts which had carried their earlier generations. He also built two slips of live oak and locust, the Oneida for the China trade, and the George Washington for the packet trade from New York to Liverpool. More significantly, he served on the Governor's Council under several chief executives, and went to Congress. He had become the Honorable Joe, although some liked to refer to him as the Deacon.

Through his influence, Tom Bennett was shifted to the immediate practical problem of a New Bedford cotton mil, and Abe Howland willingly gave over the Wamsutta charter to this newer initiative. But Abe himself never took a share of stock. As one who remembered the two men said, he and the Deacon "did not play together very well."

This was an understatement. In two years a hot congressional campaign was on, and the man who had named and incorporated the Wamsutta Mills was running with fire, eloquence and fervor against the man who had made the Wamsutta Mils a reality. That election of 1848 was one to remember.

The Barnburners, who had split off from the Democrats and the Whigs, were named after the Dutch farmer who was willing to burn down his own barn to get rid of the rats. Roaring and stamping, they made their voices ring through the land, the radicals, the wild men, the inflammatory spirits. "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men," was their cry. "Congress can no more make a slave than it can make a king."

The Honorable Joe believed that too, but he was not willing to set fire to the barn, much less to the house itself. Quaker moderation and hatred of violence were strong in him, and he stuck to Whig principles and the straight Whig ticket. Abe Howland was different. He was the big gun of the Barnburners. Those who hated the Barnburners most were the Hunkers--they "hunkered for office"-and Abe's brother-in-law, Captain Delano, was an inveterate Hunker, conservative of conservatives.

When the votes were counted, the Honorable Joe had been returned to office handsomely, a result which had many indirect effects, one of them no doubt the momentum of the new Wamsutta Mils.

Abe Howland, however, was not without consolation. In the year of destiny, 1846, New Bedford had decided to become a city, and in 1847 the first mayoralty elections were held. The assumption was that the chairman of the selectmen, a citizen of propriety and standing, would take office, but suddenly the word was passed from the boys of Columbian Engine No. 5 on Purchase Street to those of Oregon No. 11 of Middle Street, "Old Abe wants it for himself, and it's up to us to get it for him."

Around the little department the news went, and Abe Howland was elected the first mayor of the city, then four times more, but never once to Congress. Soon he bought a house on the County Road almost across from the Grinnell mansion on the top of the hill, and his brother-in-law tackled him to find out what had happened.

"I tell you, Henry," he protested, "I didn't intend to do it, but the agents were forever keeping after me, and to get rid of them I finally made an offer so ridiculously cheap I was certain they wouldn't take it. They took it."

Whereas the Honorable Joe's granite house had four columns rising from porch to roof, Abe's mansion had six; and whereas the Honorable Joe's columns ended in severely simple capitals, Abe's ended in fairly lavish and admirable ornamentation. The truth was that at bottom both men were of the same breed, and though one was responsible only for the name and the charter, it was the breed which founded the Wamsutta Mills.

What Abe thought of the rise of the Wamsutta Mils was not recorded. As a matter of fact, the rise did not seem particularly certain for several years. What had happened was one of those Historic conjunctions of the right men and the right opportunity at the right time, but Tom Bennett's figures, very reliable, accurate figures as they were always found to be, slowed that the enterprise needed capital of $300,000. By the middle of 1847 only $157,900 had been found, and nobody but the Honorable Joe could lave dragged out that much. He had led off the list with $10,000 of his own, and now he said he would put in $2,100 more, and they would go ahead with $160,000. This was not an appealing idea, but it was better than allowing the project to drop.

Tom Bennett looked anxious. He knew that if he were to make cotton goods the way he hoped, there would have to be more money, and, with the merchants of the city generally unresponsive, it rather seemed as if the extra sums would have to come from the original subscribers. Perhaps he could imagine how they might holler.

Whaling vessel leaving New Bedford in the halcyon days

Meantime, that first venture, the New Bedford Steam Mill Co., had started operations on a small scale and was doing poorly. Samuel Rodman, who was chiefly concerned, wrote in his diary on April 16, 1847, "I saw Jos. Grinnell today, but le says he is pledged to another company for cotton manufacturing now getting up, 80 that I have no hope from this quarter."