Life and character of William Taylor Baker, president of the World's Columbian exposition and of the Chicago Board of trade

Front matter

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LIFE AND CHARACTER

Dedication

TO you, my little daughter Dorothy, your Daddy dedicates this book. I do so because your Grandpa loved you from the day you first came into the world on his birthday until the day he went out of it, and he loves you still. He loves you because you came down from him and are of him; — but he loves you most because it is you, just as he would a flower, because it is a flower — because it is pretty and sweet, God-given and inspiring.

Preface

"We should look at the lives of all as at a mirror, and take from others an example for ourselves." — Terrence.

THE idea of this book first came into my mind as a medium for giving to my children a picture of a character worthy of their emulation, by placing them in close touch with the life and character of a real person of their own blood, who had lived a wholesome, useful and honorable life, and had added more than one man's share to the world's work. By reading of my father's life, and letting him dwell in spirit with them, his* grandchildren and his posterity will find inspiration and encouragement for better and more useful living and for greater accomplishment, although his name would live without this book. This story I had thought to make up in a few typewritten copies for the restricted use related, but I soon found while gathering my data together, that many outside of kinship claimed the right to a copy, and hence the printed book.

The preparation of this biography during my spare moments of the last two years has been a most pleasant task although it has been fraught with difficulties and discouragement, owing to the fact that it is founded more upon the personal recollections of people than upon documentary evidence. The older generation from whom I might draw, has gone, or else its remnants are falling like autumnal leaves and have only hazy memories of the past. The newer generation knew him onlv in his later life and cannot tell of him as a young man or boy. No relatives except his children and a younger brother survive him. There are those still living in the three little New York villages, where I recently visited for the purposes of this biography, who lived there when he did as a boy before the villages grew too small for him, but they, naturally enough, with dulled memories, do not recollect much about him. There are others who were his playmates and associates, and a sweetheart or two who survive him and remember him well, and to these as well as to reminiscences by himself and such as I remember of his telling, I look largely for the story of his early life. To all those friends of my father and myself who have so kindly and earnestly assisted me in gathering the material for this biography, I extend my grateful appreciation.

In telling this story, I have tried to do so without any coloring or prejudice, so as to display my father in the light of cold facts as he was — no better and no worse, as he himself always wished to be considered. If, therefore, I have seemingly made a hero out of him where moderation would have done, I beg as my excuse that I had a father of whom I was justly proud and whom I loved without reserve — so that I saw him from a different viewpoint than others did — that's all.

CHARLES H. BAKER.

ioo Broadway, New York City.

January i, 1908.

Contents

Chapters Page

Author's Note 4

Dedication 5

Chapter I 1841-1855

NOTHING appears to be known of this particular Baker family prior to my grandfather, who was William Baker, born in Bradford, England, about 1799. In that country, he was a baker by trade as well as by name, and he had been a butcher too. He came to this country in 1838 and drifted to West Winfield, a small village of about one hundred and fifty people, in Herkimer County, New York. Here he made a pretence of earning a livelihood, by doing chores about the village, acting as porter and hostler to the village inn, and working upon the neighborhood farms. He is remembered as a man who was not always sober, which fact to some extent at least undermined his usefulness. Yet notwithstanding his shortcomings, he was in some respects, a remarkable character. He was a man of good address, and well groomed considering his circumstances. He was well versed in the current topics of the day and was considered an authority in the village upon political, scientific and social subjects pertaining to any part of the world that excited ordinary interest. He was a reader of many books and papers, chiefly historical, and so in a way was scholarly, deep and intellectual, although without the fundamental advantages of very much school education. He could talk and tell stories better than any one in the village, and so he was entertaining, not only because of a certain fluency of speech and pleasing diction, but because of a well developed sense of humor. But in this grandsire of mine, there was something lacking to make a complete man of him. He seemed not to be able to put out an anchor that would hold. In commercial and financial instinct he apparently was a void. He was not religious. He lacked the capacity to find profitable work or to do it well if he found it. The knack of getting on in the world was not his, and so he was unsettled and shiftless, obstinate in disposition, and not fixed in any purpose except to be agreeable around the village inn and drown his discontent in the flowing bowl. "A man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome ; Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; But in the course of one revolving moon, Was chymist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon."

— Dryden.

There lived in West Winfield, about this time, a sterling widow, Mrs. Williams, who as a maiden was Matilda Taylor, and she was born in Stonington, Connecticut, on the ioth of May, 1801. Her husband, Ralph Williams, had been a thrifty farmer, attending to his business and providing amply for his family. He died with but small estate after there had been three children. These children were:- — Samuel G.

Williams, who in his later life became Professor of Geology in Cornell University; Ralph B. Williams, who became Secretary of the Groton Bridge Company, of Groton, N. Y., and Minnie Williams, who became Mrs. Charles Perrigo, of Groton, N. Y. A small house was purchased with the diminutive fortune of her deceased husband and here the family lived as long as they remained in the village. Then it came about that Mrs. Williams married my grandfather William Baker, and to them came children in the following order, all born in her homestead: — Alfred Baker, William Taylor Baker, my father, Eliza Baker and George Henry Baker, the last named being the only one now living, and who is successfully engaged in the butcher's trade at Ithaca, N. Y.

What brought my grandparents together as a married pair is hardly decypherable at this late time. Perhaps he wanted shelter over his head which she was already able to provide. Perhaps she wanted someone to talk to or to help around the garden and house, or perhaps they loved each other, — who knows ? At any rate, they decided to live their lives together. Now, inasmuch as she was a deep dyed Methodist who believed devoutedly in hellfire and brimstone for those who wandered from the straight and narrow path and heaven for those who did not do so, she of course, believed in cold water in preference to alcohol, and so probably grew to have less esteem for her husband than she would have had, had he been as virtuous as she. She possessed the highest order of thrift, intelligence, nerve, good sense, morality and spirituality. She was what he was not. His intentions were good, but he failed to fulfill them. He only helped support his family, but that was not enough when the number of little hungry mouths was increasing every year. So she learned the trade of tailoress and worked early and late at such times as she could spare from her children, at making clothes by hand, for sewing machines were not thought of then.

Thus it was that my grandfather and grandmother got on together, like oil and water. So it was natural enough that they should go their own ways independently, he resigning her to the task of bringing up the children, and she resigning him to a job on a farm near Winfield, where he died January 4th, 1870. He was buried in the village cemetery, where his grandchildren have provided a suitable stone to mark his resting place.

Grandmother Baker lived to be eighty-one years old and died in Groton, N. Y., November 15th, 1882, where she had lived the latter part of her life. Her children claim that the good in them came from her, either by direct inheritance or by the training with which she followed it up. This undoubtedly is true to a large extent, and yet in my father's case, as I see him, he drew from both his parents, and as the composite of the best in them both, he developed into the really great man as we know him. But what great man ever lived who did not have a great mother ?

Not necessarily great in the glamour of world history, but grfcat in the undisclosed measure of us all as we finally appear before the last Tribunal. Is it not reasonable that it should be so, for who but the mother gives to the child directly that which was of herself? And so in recognition of this, and of my father's devotion to his mother, I place her as a character of the first order in this book which tells his story.

The situation in the Baker household as I have portrayed it, had its logical outcome, and so the family old and young, big and little, had to scatter and face the world upon their individual resources. Maybe this situation in life was a good thing for the subject of this sketch, as it put him on his mettle. But the embryo of greatness was in him anyway and would undoubtedly have developed in true Rooseveltian fashion even though the vicissitudes of life and poverty had not spurred him to his best efforts.

William Taylor Baker was born in West Winfield, Herkimer County, New York, September nth, 1841, and he lived there until his fourteenth year. He was given his father's christian name and his mother's maiden name. Just what he was and what he did there until he was fourteen years old, I have been unable to discover much about, although I doubt not that as a baby he was one of the precocious kind, who sit up in their cradles to better view the surroundings, who try to invent improvements in their cradles, or trade them for something better or something more to eat, and who manage their mothers with an assumed authority which is seldom disputed. At least, I justify my theory upon the hypothesis that what he afterwards became, had its beginning in the cradle in his first year. He grew to be a freckled faced boy, lively and wide awake in every way and was the favorite brother of his older sister Minnie, who had much to do in helping their mother to bring him up. He was slight in build and not overly robust physically, although all people who dicuss him at that stage of his life, tell of his active and very earnest mind and his spirited and happy disposition. He was also a bad boy when he wanted to be but only to a degree made necessary by the fact that he was a boy. The Baptist Church stands next to his mother's house. It did then and it does now, although the little old wooden one has given place to a new one of brick. "Billy Baker" as they called him had grown rich enough in his own right and through his small earnings at odd times to own a powerful pistol. With this he shot holes through the walls of the church, and the bombardment caused the plaster to fall on the pulpit and in the pews, and prompted his mother to whip him until he was humble enough to beg forgiveness from the preacher. And then again at one time he issued a declaration of independence in favor of himself and against home and mother, and apprenticed himself out to be a carpenter until the time of his majority, which was only a dozen of years ahead. But he was not long at work in his chosen profession before he saw his father coming down the road in the distance

Cobble Stone School House, West Wtxfield.

wearing a stern look and a strap which meant a licking, so he deserted his new master and went back home by a round about way. He did not apprentice himself out again. It was natural enough that he should have gravitated to a carpenter's shop, for he was clever with his hands and could whittle skillfully with his jackknife, and do other things which he liked to do. He could build little railroads around in his mother's garden, shaping up the earth into miniature railroad grades, crossing little imaginary rivers on bridges and running his lines under the current bushes for forests and through tunnels under hand made mountains. Construction operations came natural to him at that time. So also was trading, and his jackknife was apt to be a better one than the one he traded off for it. Even when a grown man he liked to work with tools and study plans and watch construction, and this instinct, together with his liking and aptitude for business were the fundamental elements underlying his future career.

This same Billy Baker was good to his mother and sisters as were the other brothers. He helped his mother in the work about the place, and he did chores around the village; also such farm work as a boy could do, and there wasn't much about a farm a boy could not do or was not made to do in those days. He could tread hay, and guide the horse riding bareback in front of the plow or cultivator in the corn field, and he took the cow out in the morning and brought her back at night and milked her; and he didn't often aim at spots or flies on the wall with the thin white filaments, unless some one was around to be entertained thereby, for milk in those days was food, and it was not right to waste food while mother had to work.

My father often said he only had one year's schooling in his life, and this was at the little cobblestone district school house in West Winfield, which has since been torn down. I was fortunate, however, in being able to secure a picture of it as shown in this book. He stood at the head of the school and I suppose he learned all they had to teach him, for such schools in those days did not have much learning to dispense. And yet with this primitive and limited inoculation of erudition, see the manner of man he eventuated into finally ! Who would know in talking with him and listening to him as we saw him last, but what he had taken several degrees in some of the great universities? Where could be found a more cultured gentleman? Or one more impressive and scholarly? Notwithstanding however his restricted opportunities, he was very studious, and read books in his idle hours from the time he first learned to read, and particularly historical books. He was an authority upon the life of Napoleon Bonaparte and knew him through and through as a historical character, and he delivered lectures on the subject to the boys of the village. I suspect that he took his cue in life from Napoleon, for most boys usually set up in their minds a model to follow and he evidently chose Napoleon for his, and unconsciously took on many of his stronger attributes. He was a most ardent admirer of the great French hero, and proclaimed his genius and virtues upon every suitable occasion, condoning his shortcomings like a champion, and sympathizing with him in his reverses. A schoolmate of his remembers him saying — "How very unjust it is to Napoleon's memory for the people to consider the reverses and the record of his last years of life as the just measure of his whole career."

The brief schooling which Father got in West Winheld, inadequate as it was, had to be discontinued when the necessities of the family compelled him to do something to assist in his and their support ; therefore, when he was about fourteen years old, he went to work for Julius Bisby, who owned the country store in the village. His duties consisted in measuring out calico, beans, vinegar, tobacco, candy and other things to the villagers and farmers, and in helping to keep the books of the establishment, always first on the scene in the morning to open the store in order to sweep it out and get ready for business. This he did all day and every day, excepting Sundays, and he devoted himself largely to reading and studying in the evenings. The fact that his mother was an orthodox Christian who believed in heaven and hell and no middle situation for departed souls, scared him and the other children into keeping in the straight path. Under the threat of eternal damnation, she invoked their obedience to the ordinary and accepted code of morals, with the promise that such obedience would eventually make white winged angels of them; and they all looked forward to becoming angels. Father was not a churchman, due doubtless to the over drastic religious teachings of his mother with which he was not in accord, for although he was a Christian gentleman and reverently believed in God and the hereafter, he was inclined to be liberal in his views and to suffer himself to be guided by the teachings of his own conscience, rather than by the precepts and the strictures of an old fashioned and narrow school of religion.

My father as a boy, and in fact throughout his development, looked like his father, but his temperament, disposition and character have been drawn more largely from his estimable mother. I did not learn that he was athletic in the way that country boys are apt to be, or that he had had recorded to his credit any victories in pugilistic encounters with the village boys. His fighting tendencies seem to have been developed more in a mental capacity than physical, and every one with whom he came in contact in matters of debate or clash of wits got worsted. Such encounters he seemed to have sought, as. being much to his liking. He evidently had, however, a pair of fine arms, for they tell of his liking to roll up his sleeves and display their good form and grace with their muscles in tension, and this show of physical excellence seems to be about the only demonstration which he was in the habit of making.

Matilda Taylor Baker — Aged 70. mother of wm. t. baker.

Wm. T. Baker 1849— Aged 8.

HIS BROTHER AND SISTER ON EITHER SIDE.

The year of service in the country store paid him well in experience but little in money. How well this particular first business engagement in his life paid him, I was unable to ascertain from his contemporaries now living, although I was more successful in the two succeeding villages to which he migrated later. He probably did not earn over a dollar a week. He slept under the counter in the store, not only for the purpose of being the first on hand in the morning, in order to clear the decks for business, but as a sort of watch dog of the supplies which were kept in the store. In fact, it was common in those days to shut a dog up in a store at night with liberty to roam about and attack intruders, or else to have a boy sleep there to perform the same duty, for it was common for thieves to attempt to pillage such places, in order to supply their needs without rendering the usual equivalent therefor.

His mother, as I have stated, was industrious from morning, to night in the care of her children and in the doing of tailoring work for their support, while their father spent much of his time as an idle ornament about the place, or the village rendezvous. She worked after the sun set in order to accomplish more, and these late hours had to be illuminated by the light of tallow dips or candles, which were in vogue before the invention of kerosene oil. Then came the camphine lamps, no larger nor no better than the tallow dip, and finally in the evolution of artificial illumination as the country grew, kerosene oil and lamps to use it came into practice. Father, ever devoted to his mother, and solicitous for her welfare, immediately bought from his savings a primitive kerosene lamp, to conserve his mother's eyes ; — and for the purpose of operating it, he supplied her with a gallon of kerosene oil, which bore a red color in those days, and which cost him $1.25.

The village of West Winfield is sixteen miles south of Utica, which was the nearest railway station at that time (1855) and accessible by a stage running daily. The village contained a bank, a weekly paper, a Methodist and a Baptist church, a tannery and two grist mills. The fifty years since then has not any more than doubled its population. There are now about four or five hundred people there and in that vicinity. Father never went back to his native village after he left it as a boy, and I often wonder that neither sentiment nor curiosity ever impelled him to do so. I went there last summer and tramped over every inch of ground that he did. All I needed to do was to roll back half a century of years and imagine that I was the real and original Billy. It thrilled me to do so. It filled me with unspeakable joy just to sleep one night as I did there in the same night stillness, to be lulled to my dreams by the same cricket and katydid, to see the same houses and the same trees — now more stately with age, to stand by the same mill pond where he went swimming and fishing, to see the same pretty girls flirting and gossiping with the same ruddy boys, to tramp on the same dusty road and to gaze at the same beautiful hills and valleys. Yes, all just the same as when he was there, only, with fresh crickets, katydids and girls to take the place of those which had gone down the corridors of time. I knocked at the door of the very house in which he was born; — little, humble, and old it is. I told them who I was and that I had come after fifty years to see the place where he had been. They respected my errand and allowed me to go all through it, in every nook and corner, — apologizing for appearances, as they said they had not expected visitors ; — up the creaky stairs with the same thin and rickety railing, and in the little room, the very identical little room, where he came into being. In my imagination, I could hear the baby cry and could see its mother's look of tender love and pride for the new come joy. And then I left, and as I went off down the street, I looked back again and again where little Billy had been, and wondered if he from the Great Beyond could then see me and feel my great love for him as I stood there transfixed in the contemplation of the spirits of the past, and feeling for the moment that I too was a little boy myself, waiting — waiting for him to come out who never could come again.

In this Store My Father Worked as a Boy, at Groton, N. Y

Village Hotel, Groton, N. Y. where the dances were held.

Chapter II AS A YOUTH IN GROTON AND McLEAN 1855-1861

WITH his education apparently completed at the age of thirteen and having completed a preliminary business career of one year as related at the age of fourteen, Father grew too big for West Winfield and resolved to seek a larger and more inviting field. The vilage of Groton, Tompkins County, New York, of about four or five hundred people, and ninety miles from Winfield to the southwest, was the place which attracted him ; probably for the reason that he had a better opportunity, but undoubtedly for the principal reason that his older brother, Professor Williams, was in that village teaching the only school in the place, namely the Groton Academy. Thither he went without his mother, and because of his brother's connection with the school he was able to get free the schooling, which otherwise would have cost him $21.00 per year. In the same school his brother Ralph was janitor and his sister Minnie was also a student, so that the family as a whole were an important factor in educational matters in Groton. There were no railroads running to Groton nor within fifty miles of it, so Father may have tramped it in reaching there, or staged it, or got a lift in some farmer's wagon. The village had a machine shop and foundry, and having more stores and houses, was more pretentious generally than West Winneld.

Father went to work as clerk for Styles Berry, who ran a general store in Groton, and served for a period of six months. Some say that Berry was the meanest man in Groton village and much too close with his money, and consequently Father was under much restraint, and the liberties usually allowed to a growing boy were well curtailed. He slept under Mr. Berry's counter at night, dreaming of what a mean employer he had and how unpromising his prospects seemed to be. Berry was or pretended to be religious, and went early to Church on Sunday, looking sanctimonious and good, while in the week days under the cloak of piety, he would wonder how he could squeeze his neighbors just a little harder or get a little more work out of Billy, his clerk-bookkeeper- janitor- watchdog combination. From Berry's, Father went to work for Hyland K. Clark and took his meals at Mr. Clark's house, but slept at the store as usual. Just how and when he worked in any schooling during his life in Groton in 1855 and 1856, is hard to imagine, but he did get some by getting out of store duty during the hours when business was slack.

Mr. Clark took more of an interest in Father's welfare because he was a better constructed man than was Styles, and also because his sister married Professor Williams who was Father's half brother. The echoes of Father's life in Groton village still sounding, indicate that he was a happy young man and took things philosophically as they came along, enjoying life as best he could, but ever restless and ambitious to better his condition in a material way. Grotonites speak of him as nice looking. He was jolly, full of fun, a good scholar, very cheerful, apt at learning, and was the most popular young man in the village with the girls, and therefore a society leader. He loved to coast down the Groton hills in winter time, and was captain and pilot of a big bob sled called "Brimstone" which would carry twelve boys at one time at a terrific rate of speed. They had a dancing school which met every week in the village hotel, which was then called the Groton House, but which is now the Hotel Goodyear. The dances were held in the parlor of this hotel and for the small price which it cost every boy to belong, he was privileged and expected to bring his "steady," as one's sweetheart was then styled, and he was also privileged to bring as many more girls as he chose, not exceeding eight in number, and these extra girls were called "fillers." It is remembered that Father, as being the most popular young man in the village and perhaps the most patriotic, was wont to exercise his fullest privileges in this way, much to the joy and appreciation of the wallflower "fillers" in a village which seemed to teem with many more girls than boys. His particular fancy or steady, lived in a house which still exists in Groton and which I forbore to take a photograph of or to reminisce further about, because the lady still lives and would likely prefer to let the matter rest in the obscure past. She was "Esteline" to him, which name is long enough for this book, and for the lady too, who might object to seeing the rest of it in print, besides she has changed the rest of it since then.