WHO WAS JAMES E.
HENRY?
Lincoln’s
history books do not
name J.E. Henry as the founder of
Lincoln. Properly speaking, this is
correct. (The town
was granted by
Benning Wentworth, New
Hampshire’s Royal Governor, in 1764.) But it’s certainly
correct to say that without J.E. Henry,
Lincoln would not be
what it is today.
When he,
his family, and employees arrived in 1892, the town we know today did not exist. Where today we have numerous
homes, a shopping center, condominiums,
hotels, and a prosperous ski area, in 1892 there was not much more
than trees. The town’s
population at the time was about . (It was 22 in 1790,
just a few years after it was founded.) The town, at that time,
existed along the road
through Franconia Notch.
When J.E. came
to town, he slept on the floor of the simple shelters he and his men
built, along with his men.
His wife and family stayed with the Pollard family, who at
that time, were accommodating travelers. A large, modern saw mill was
built, along with homes for the workers, a well stocked store, and,
as time went on, a school, a hospital, a jail, a post office, a
hotel, boarding houses, churches, and perhaps most importantly, he
built a logging railroad that would survive and operate for nearly a
half century. It had
more track than any of the other logging railroads, and ran longer
than any other. When he
died in 1912, he was a
wealthy man. When his
three sons, who were his partners, sold the company (and the town
which was owned by the company) in 1917, they received $3,000,000
(that’s equivalent to
about $45,000,000 in today’s economy).
James E.
Henry was born in 1831, in Lyman New Hampshire, not far from the
Connecticut River. He was the oldest of six
children, and they grew up on a farm nearby.
Farming
in the 1830s in Northern New Hampshire was
not an easy way of life and most farmers of that time did more than
just farm. Many worked
in the woods during the winters. There was little farm work
to do, and with the ground frozen, winter was the preferred time
of the year for logging
work. It’s quite
possible that J.E. had first hand experience working in the woods at
an early age. (Landaff,
the next town over, had at least 5 saw mills in 1850, Littleton had
several, and Bethlehem had 4.)
Henry’s
father died in 1845 and
support of the family became his responsibility. He farmed, drove
a freight wagon through Crawford Notch to
Portland, 110 miles
distant, and probably was cutting timber for sale to local
mills. Freighting was
also primarily a winter occupation. Frozen roads were more
easily used than the muddy roads prevalent at other times of
the year. In 1854, he married Eliza
Ann Ide of Waterford,
Vt. Their first child was born
in 1855, a girl, and there would eventually be five children. Three were sons who
worked in the family
business as they came of age.
In the
early years of married life, the Henry family moved several times,
but most always stayed
in the Connecticut River area, sometimes in
Vermont and sometimes
in New Hampshire. That Henry had
entrepreneurial drive
is clear. He invested,
with little success, in businesses outside his area of
expertise. Other
writers, state that he invested in the oil business, and later in a
wheat farm in
Minnesota. Family tradition, according
to these sources ( “J.E. Henry’s Logging Railroads” by Bill Gove,
“Logging railroads of the White Mountains”,
by C. Francis Belcher, and
Lincoln’s 1964
Bicentennial Town History) state that Henry had difficulty providing
for his family during the early years of his marriage. This may be true; or it may
be family tradition. He
obviously had the funds to try other investments, and clearly, when
these did not work out, he returned to the business he knew
well:
logging.
Correspondence and business records in the UPHS show that
James Henry was active in the lumber business, at least from 1872
on. It would appear
that Henry was cutting trees and hauling logs to local saw mills
where lumber was cut to his order. He was selling dimension
lumber to a number of customers in
Massachusetts
and elsewhere. An invoice from C.M. McCoy, (one of the mills that
cut lumber for Henry) shows that in Oct. 1872 Henry was shipping
lumber to
Massachusetts and
Rhode Island
customers. (An
intriguing, but thus far unexplained, entry on this invoice shows that on Dec. 13 Henry shipped
himself 11,500 feet of
“drest” pine boards in Holyoke,
Mass.) A July 9, 1873 invoice shows that he
had delivered to a customer in
Providence, Rhode
Island, 11,500 feet of pine boards
at a price of 23 cents a foot. The same invoice shows that
two days earlier, the same customer was billed for 8,000 feet of spruce at 15
cents a foot. The
records of these particular sales show that Henry sold on credit,
accepted notes in payment, and that he sometimes had difficulty
collecting. (1873 was
not a good year for American business, in general). An 1872 document shows that
Henry was selling horses.
In addition, at this time, he was running a store, near
Fabyan’s, and several receipts exist that show he was selling flour
and other supplies. In
fact, a trade card advertising “Forest Flower” Cologne, states that
J.E. Henry was a dealer in “Dry Goods, Notions, Boots, Shoes,
Provisions, Groceries, Etc” from his store at Fabyans.
Prior to
owning his own mill, in 1874 Henry entered into a contract with Streeter and
Eaton, manufacturers of
bobbins and spools, in Franconia. Henry agreed to provide saw
mill equipment, including a 50” circular saw, belting etc. and
Streeter and Eaton agreed to cut logs Henry brought to the
mill. It appears that
this lasted about 1 year.
Examination of deeds from Grafton and Coos counties
seem to indicate that his first direct interest in a saw mill came
about when he purchased a half interest partnership from Charles Joy
in January of 1875. Joy
owned wood lands and a saw mill in Carroll, in the general area of
Fabyans, but this was probably not the location later to become
Zealand. Henry had partnerships
with several men over
the next few years and these partnerships had interests in at least
two saw mills, one of which was in Nash and Sawyer’s
Location.
The
deeds show that Henry did business as a partner in the following
firms: Joy and Henry;
Libbey, Joy,
Henry, and Baldwin;
Henry, Joy and Baldwin; and possibly as Henry, Joy and
Benton. Over a period
of years, each of these
partners was bought out, until by 1881, Henry owned 100% of his
business. The final
buy-out of A.T. Baldwin’s interest took place on July 4, 1881. There were also several
transactions with other men, with whom Henry had working
relationships,
primarily
Reuben Colburn
and R.D. Rounsevel. The
first mill that Henry had an interest in had been purchased by these two men from John Leavitt, in Carroll, c.1866, and
eventually sold to Charles Joy (or at least a part interest was sold
to Joy). Many of the
deeds show that partial interests were sold back and forth between
partners: perhaps a 1/3 interest, or a 1/6 interest, and sometimes
land was sold back to a previous owner with certain exceptions. The records are complicated
and incomplete. Records
of these partnerships exist only in the deeds recorded in Coos and
Grafton counties. No
records have yet come to light to shed light on the actual day to
day business affairs of these firms. A few freight records exist
for the shipping of lumber, charcoal, and manure. Charcoal was a major product
for Henry. There were
eventually 5 charcoal kilns at Zealand, and
there was a ready market for much of it, to local hotels. The 1880 Industrial Census
shows that the firm of Henry, Joy and Baldwin sold $75,000 worth of
charcoal and $25,000 worth of lumber. The photo, above, of the
Zealand kilns, has never before been available.
Some of
the surviving documents show that, as legend has stated, Henry was a
good businessman, concerned with cutting costs wherever
possible. One 1877 item
indicates that the “the best rate” that could be had for shipping
charcoal from Fabyans to
Worcester would be 4
cents a bushel. Another
indicates that low cost telegrams were being used that were not
double checked by Western Union. Apparently, settling for
this level of service reduced the cost by half.
By the
early 1880s Henry was
operating in Zealand and in business for
himself. In 1885, he
signed an agreement with the
Boston and
Lowell Rail
Road for track, switches and
other equipment and thus was born the
Zealand Valley Rail
Road. The initial agreement called
for track to be laid 2 ˝ miles into the woods from the
Zealand station of the Mt. Washington Branch
of the Boston,
Concord, and Montreal
Railroad. Over the next
few years, a village with homes, a store, a post office, and the
mill buildings, grew at this location and was home to many of the
300 or so employees working in the mill and the woods.
In 1891,
J.E. Henry incorporated the Little River Railroad, presumably to cut
timber on land he owned just to the west of the
Zealand enterprise. Apparently he decided moving to Lincoln would be
more profitable, and so in 1892 he sold the Little River
holdings to George Van Dyke,
a major figure in the lumber industry with whom Henry had
many dealings. Part of
this transaction included leasing the Zealand
mills to Van Dyke. Van
Dyke rented track and equipment from the
Boston and Maine
Railroad and built the Little River Railroad. He most likely rented
the locomotive from Henry’s Zealand Valley Railroad. This railroad hauled logs
out of the Little River Valley. The log trains moved over
the 4 miles of B and M track, to the Zealand Mill, where the cutting
took place. This
arrangement worked until 1900, by which time Van Dyke had removed
all the worthwhile timber, and the
Boston and
Maine terminated their
agreement with Van Dyke
in 1900. (Not really
part of our story, but
Van Dyke sold the cut over land in 1910. Logging (but not using a
railroad) continued
under various ownerships until the land was finally acquired by the
Forest Service, partially in 1915, and fully in 1932 and is today
part of the White Mountain National Forest.)
In May
of 1890, J.E Henry transferred 1/3 ownership of all his
New Hampshire
properties (with minor exceptions) to each of his two oldest
sons, John and
George. The company was
now owned equally by the J.E. and his two sons. His youngest son, Charles,
would become part of the company later. In 1892 the move to
Lincoln was made, and
the rest, as they say, is history. The East Branch and Lincoln
Railroad was built to haul timber to the
Lincoln mills. It survived for over 50
years and was regarded in its day as one of the best built of the
logging railroads. The
railroad grading was superior, his track was heavier, and the old
railroad grades are still in use as hiking trails today. In 1902, the company started
to produce paper, and this eventually become the major product. A mill at
Livermore
Falls was used to grind
pulp and trains ran over
Boston and
Maine tracks between
Lincoln and that
mill. When the
company installed electric power in the mills, they also supplied
electricity to the entire town.
The two books mentioned
above, by Belcher and Gove, ably and in detail, chronicle the growth
of the business in
Lincoln.
James
Henry had other business interests along the way. Of local interest, he and
his son owned Thayer’s Hotel in
Littleton for a short
time. He leased it for
$1,000 to another to run in 1901. The deeds show he made
little money from the buying and selling of this property. He invested in wheat farming
in Minnesota. He invested in lumbering
properties in
California, and real
estate ventures in
Florida and
Georgia. He built a hotel in
Lincoln, and operated a
company store that supplied most of the everyday needs of people in
town. He built, and
rented to his workers, homes in
Lincoln. Souvenir post cards of
Lincoln exist that say
“Published by James E. Henry”. Both of his logging
railroads ran excursion trains into the woods for visitors.
James E.
Henry died in Lincoln in
1912. His three sons
continued to run the business, which by then included the paper
company, until they sold it to The Parker Young Company in 1917 for
$3,000,000.
History has not been kind to James Henry and his
sons. Aside from a
gravestone, the name Henry is nowhere to be found in
Lincoln. The sad remnants of the
paper mill will shortly become another large hotel. It won’t be long before
visitors to Lincoln
will have nothing to
remind them of what once was.
That’s unfortunate.
The Henry family built a large, successful business. Yes, it owned every building in the
town at one time but it provided good jobs to hundreds of
families for generations.
The Henry family made a lot of money in their day, but, in
the context of their time, they took care of their employees. At Thanksgiving time,
employees received turkeys.
Fifty cents a month deducted from employee paychecks paid for
health care at the Hospital the company built, from the doctor the
company paid. Henry’s
widow and oldest son, George, supported
Boston’s Morgan
Memorial. Eliza Henry
bought and donated to them a six story apartment building on
Yarmouth Street,
in Boston’s
Back Bay. George’s obituary states
that he donated generously to Morgan Memorial,
Tilton
Academy, Boston
University School of Theology, the
Methodist
Church, along with other
churches, and more.
Forestry, as a science, was
virtually unknown in the early years of the 20th century,
and the cutting methods used by the Henry family were strongly
criticized at the time-and since. As did most of his
contemporaries, Henry practiced clear cutting techniques. And the slash he left behind
burned in forest fires that left scars on the region for years. He was called a “woods
butcher” by his critics.
The popular outcry against his way of doing things eventually
helped secure passage of the Weeks Act, in 1911, and the subsequent
creation of the White
Mountain National
Forest.
James E.
Henry was a product of his times. He was born with little,
created much, and died knowing he could be proud of his family and
accomplishments.
