Augustus Sabin Chase (August 15, 1828 [1] —June 7, 1896) was an American industrialist of the Gilded Age. [2]
Augustus Sabin Chase (August 15, 1828 [1] —June 7, 1896) was an American industrialist of the Gilded Age. [2]
Augustus Sabin Chase was born in Pomfret, Connecticut, the only son of Capt. Seth Chase (1798-1893) and Eliza Hempstead (Dodge) Chase, who also had three daughters, Angeline, who died in infancy, Hannah Elizabeth ("Lizzie", who married Allen Aldrich and after his death married Seth Kimball) and Ellen Maria ("Maria", who never married). The family is descended on both sides from 17th-century English Colonial settlers. [3] He spent his youth on his father's farm, now called "Jericho", located in the Jericho school district of Pomfret, in the northeast corner of Connecticut. He attended the one room Jericho school and at age sixteen he attended Woodstock Academy. At age eighteen, he briefly taught in a country school in Brooklyn, Connecticut. The following year clerked in the Danielson Manufacturing Company store in Killingly.
He settled in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1850, to take a position in the Waterbury Savings Bank, [4] where he rapidly became cashier (1852) and eventually president (1864), a position which he retained for his lifetime. He developed interests in many of Waterbury's companies and obtained controlling shares in Waterbury Watch Company, the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company, and the Waterbury Buckle Company. [4] He later became president of these companies. He also founded the Waterbury National Bank. [4]
In 1876 he and a group of investors bought the assets of the bankrupt U.S. Button Company, forming the Waterbury Manufacturing Company, of which he was treasurer, then president. Waterbury Manufacturing became the core of the Chase Companies (1913) and later of Chase Brass and Copper Company (1936). [5]
When the Waterbury American was about to fold in 1868, he was one of the organizers of the American Printing Company, to continue the newspaper's publication and was its president from 1877. A lifelong Republican, he represented Waterbury in the Connecticut State Legislature, 1865. [6]
In the 1880s he purchased a house, "Rose Hill", on a hillside tract above Waterbury's main square. [7] He was one of the founders of the Waterbury Club and its first president. He was a trustee of St. Margaret's School and its first treasurer.
He was one of the original members of the Second Congregational Society, also of the Waterbury Hospital corporation. he was the first treasurer of the city of Waterbury and served on the city's school and water boards and the Board of Agents of the Silas Bronson Library.
On September 7, 1854, A.S. Chase married in Waterbury Martha Clark Starkweather (1830-1906), daughter of Dr. Rodney Starkweather and Jane (Starkweather) Starkweather of Chesterfield, Massachusetts. They had six children, of whom the three Yale-educated sons succeeded him in his manufacturing and other concerns. The eldest, Henry Sabin Chase (1855-1918), [8] graduated from Yale College in 1877 and managed the American Printing Company and was treasurer of the Waterbury Manufacturing Company and president of the combined Chase Companies. He married on April 4, 1889, Alice, daughter of Thomas Morton. Irving Hall Chase (1858-1951), (Yale 1880) was secretary of the Waterbury Clock Company. On February 28, 1889, he married Elizabeth Hosmer, daughter of the Hon. S.W. Kellogg. Frederick Starkweather Chase (1862-1947; Yale 1887) was president of the Waterbury Manufacturing Company. On February 17, 1890, he married Elsie, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Edmund Rowland. Elsie became an exceptional fine artist, whose paintings illustrated their youngest daughter Justine's book 'A World Remembered' in 1988.
The three daughters were Helen Elizabeth, Mary Eliza (Kimball), and Alice Martha (Streeter).
A.S. Chase died in Paris in April 1896, of a chronic kidney infection, while on tour with his daughter Alice. [4] He was interred at Riverside Cemetery, Waterbury. [9]
Pomfret is a town located in Windham County, Connecticut with a population of 4,266 according to the 2020 United States Census. The town is part of the Northeastern Connecticut Planning Region. The town was incorporated in 1713 and was named after Pontefract in West Yorkshire, England. The land on which Pomfret stands today was purchased from Native Americans in 1686 in a deal known as the "Mashmuket Purchase" or "Mashamoquet Purchase".
Dwight May Sabin was an American politician who served as U.S. Senator from Minnesota and in the Minnesota Legislature. He is known for the business ventures of Seymour, Sabin & Co. and the Northwestern Car Company, highly successful enterprises dependent on the highly profitable prison labor contracts he had negotiated with the Minnesota State Government in the 1870s. His election to federal office, in 1883, came following an infamous prolonged dead-lock in the Minnesota State Senate, during which incumbent Senator William Windom failed of re-election following "the worst campaign in the known history of the state."
Waterbury is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. Waterbury had a population of 114,403 as of the 2020 Census. The city is 33 miles (53 km) southwest of Hartford and 77 miles (124 km) northeast of New York City. Waterbury is the largest city in the Naugatuck Valley Planning Region and second-largest city in New Haven County.
Daniel Coit "D. C." Gilman was an American educator and academic. Gilman was instrumental in founding the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale College, and subsequently served as the second president of the University of California, Berkeley, as the first president of Johns Hopkins University, and as founding president of the Carnegie Institution.
Woodstock Academy (WA), founded in 1801, is a high school located in Woodstock, Connecticut, United States. The Academy, which describes itself as an independent school, serves residents from the Connecticut towns of Brooklyn, Canterbury, Eastford, Pomfret, Union, and Woodstock. The respective towns' taxpayers pay student tuition through municipal taxes, and therefore state agencies and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) categorize Woodstock as a public school. The school also accepts tuition-paying students from surrounding towns and states as day students, and students from around the country and the world as residential students.
Charles Winslow Burpee was an American newspaper editor.
George Griswold Haven Jr. was an American businessman.
George Peter Harlamon was an American municipal politician. A member of the Republican Party, Harlamon served as the mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut, from June 1968 to January 1970. Harlamon is noted for peacefully resolving race riots in Waterbury during the summer of 1969.
Richard Thomas Nolan was a canon of Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral in Hartford, Connecticut and a former college professor of philosophy and religious studies. He is the editor/coauthor of The Diaconate Now, and coauthor of Living Issues In Philosophy, Living Issues in Ethics, and Soul Mates: More than Partners. Nolan is also the editor of a non-commercial, educational website: philosophy-religion.org. His books have been translated into several languages, including Indonesian and Chinese.
Charles Augustus Templeton was an American politician and the 68th governor of the state of Connecticut.
Elliot Danforth was an American lawyer and politician.
The Mattatuck Museum is a cultural institution based in Waterbury, Connecticut, USA. The museum's displays include the history, industries and culture of Waterbury and the Central Naugatuck Valley area, and art, including works about the state's history, people and scenery, and works of artists from Connecticut. The museum also features a collection of 15,000 buttons from around the world.
James Leland Howard was an American businessman and politician who was the 63rd Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut from 1887 to 1889.
Chase Brass is a leading manufacturer of brass rod, ingot and engineered products in the U.S. Located in Montpelier, Ohio, Chase employs over 200 hourly employees who are represented by the United Steelworkers Union (USW) Local 7248, and 98 salaried employees.
Topsmead State Forest is a Connecticut state forest located in the town of Litchfield. It was formerly the summer residence of Edith Morton Chase, daughter of Henry Sabin Chase, first president of the Chase Brass and Copper Company. She left the house and its grounds to the state of Connecticut on her death in 1972. The estate house, built in 1929 to a design by Richard Henry Dana, is a fine example of a Tudor Revival country estate house, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Major Louis Ezekiel Stoddard was an American 10-goal handicap polo player. He participated in the 1913 and 1921 International Polo Cup. He was the chairman of the United States Polo Association from 1921 to 1936. He won the Junior Polo Championship, Senior Polo Championship, U.S. Open Polo Championship and the Monty Waterbury Cup twice each.
James Montaudevert Waterbury Sr. was an American businessman and industrialist. He was president of the New York Steel and Wire Company and the American Type Bar and Machine Company.
Homer Franklin Bassett was an American hymenopterist specializing in gall wasps. In addition, he was the librarian of Silas Bronson Library in Waterbury, Connecticut.
Riverside Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located at 496 Riverside Street in Waterbury, Connecticut on the western bank of the Naugatuck River.
Augustus Hannibal Burbank was a 19th-century American physician. He was also treasurer of Yarmouth Aqueduct Company and an early president of North Yarmouth Academy.