Cumberland County, Maine -- General Neal Dow ********************************************************************** USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb This copy contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: C. Wendland SilverDrusilla@aol.com Copyright © 2005 by C. Wendland Caitlin's Gold Award Project, Girl Scouts USA, Rio Grande Girl Scout Council, El Paso, Texas ********************************************************************** Biography General Neal Dow Biographical Review Cumberland County, Maine Boston Biographical Review Publishing Company 1896 Page 9-12 General Neal Dow, who is "greatest in great things," was born in Portland, Me., March 20, 1804. He is yet interested, active, and influential in his chosen field of philanthropic, reformatory labor. To be able to say that in the closing months of 1895 of one who was born when the century was but three years old; who was engaged in affairs before John Quincy Adams attained the Presidency; who in early manhood achieved success in business; who served his city and State in civil positions with distinction; who, after the age when men are exempt from such demands, gave three years to the military service of his country, commanding successively a regiment, a brigade, and a division, suffering meanwhile sickness in hospital and wounds in battle and subsequently confinement in military prisons; whose form has been familiar for more than the lifetime of a generation on platforms in over a score of States in this country; who has been a welcome speaker in the largest cities of the English-speaking world; who has reached the people through the press of three continents during all this time; and who even now looks forward to work to be done rather than back upon that accomplished -- is to prove that Neal Dow, of whom it is said, has won a place on the roll of the world's great and grand old men. The subject of this sketch is of English stock. His ancestry on both sides came to this country from England in the first half of the seventeenth century. His race has been a long-lived one, his family records showing many who lived beyond the allotted age of man. He is a lineal descendant of John Dow, who resided in Tylner, Norfolk County, England, dying there in 1561, whose grandson, Henry, was the first of the family to come to America, settling in Hampton Falls, N.H., in 1637. On the maternal side Neal Dow is descended from Christopher Hall, who was the earliest settler of the family in this country. His parents, Josiah and Dorcas (Allen) Dow, were members of the Society of Friends, as indeed were his ancestors on both sides for three generations. His mother died in 1851 at seventy-seven years of age, and his father in 1861 at ninety-five. Possessing by inheritance British pluck and Quaker patience and persistency, physical and mental vigor, Neal Dow was providentially prepared to be a leader in a great reform. His boyhood presaged the man. He was educated in the town schools and in the Portland Academy and at the Friends' Academy in New Bedford, Mass. In the latter school among others he had for a classmate the late Moses H. Grinnell, of New York; while in the Portland Academy among his school-fellows was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He was fitted for college; but, because of the prejudices which then generally prevailed among the Friends against it, his parents would not permit him to pursue a collegiate course of study. His love for reading was never abated, and books have been his closest companions through his life. He was far from a recluse, however, and in his youth entered with ardor into all the athletic sports of the period. Twice it has been his good fortune to turn his skill and strength as a swimmer to account in the saving of life. Neal Dow's attention was early given to business. His father, who bad been a teacher, established a tannery, building up a successful business, to which Neal succeeded. His intuitive judgment and flash-light perception unusually qualified him for affairs; and a comfortable competency, which he soon acquired, enabled him early to withdraw much of his attention from business pursuits to devote his time, at first largely and later almost wholly, to the cause that he early espoused. During his active business career his assistance and advice were sought in many enterprises which served to develop his city and State; and be was found in the directorate of banks, railroads, manufacturing and other business corporations. As was the case with most of the active young men of his time, he was connected with the volunteer fire company, rapidly rising to be its chief.. Under his charge the Portland Fire Department became famous for discipline and efficiency. It is undoubtedly true that the confidence and respect which he won in that capacity attached to him a corps of earnest, active young men who materially aided him in the contests in which he was afterward involved. His first temperance speech resulted from his connection with this department. He was twenty-three years of age and clerk of the Deluge Engine Company, which voted to furnish liquors on an anniversary occasion. Upon the declaration of the vote young Dow took the floor, and following his speech the company reversed the vote and established a precedent which it always followed during its existence, and which soon became the rule throughout the Portland Fire Department Thus in 1827 the majestic moral victor was born. >From that time on his efforts at reform have been unremitting. In 1829, in an address before the Maine Charitable Mechanics' Association, he called attention to the subject; and in the same year he introduced in its meetings a proposition to abolish the custom then prevailing among employers of furnishing liquor to their workmen, and the ringing of the eleven and four o'clock town bell, with which up to that time for many years it had been customary to notify laborers that the usual hour for dram drinking had come. With such a beginning, encountering as he did almost single-handed and with marked success the social customs and prejudices of the day, it was inevitable that his field of labor should broaden; and after 1830 be sought every opportunity with pen and speech to awaken the public conscience and to impress upon his fellow-citizens a sense of their personal responsibility. He and his friend, the now venerable Hon. William W. Thomas, of this city, with a few of their associates, took the first steps in organizing the Young Men's Total Abstinence Society of Portland. He was also active at that early day in procuring the enforcement of the penal provisions of the then existing license legislation against the violators of those laws. It was at that time that the necessity of legislative suppression of the traffic forced itself upon his mind. Progress was slow. The road over which it was made was steep and rugged, involving the severing of social ties, the breaking of political connections, the sacrifice of time and money, of comfort and of pleasure. All this Neal Dow accepted without faltering. One of the first results of the agitation was the enactment of a law, practically the local option system prevalent in some States today, which permitted selectmen of towns and aldermen of cities to submit to the people the question whether licenses should be granted. In 1839, under its provisions, Mr. Dow appeared before the aldermen to oppose the granting of licenses. As a result the question was submitted to the people. The vote favored license by a considerable majority, but a year or two later the public expression was reversed by a large majority. In pursuing the work Mr. Dow, with others, took long tours into different parts of the State. Meetings for arousing public interest were held in school-houses, in town halls, where these existed, and in churches, and where, as was sometimes the case, none of these could be obtained, in private houses, or, when the weather would permit, out of doors, This was before the days of railroads; and Mr. Dow travelled with his own team, often accompanied by one or two or three others. Some of these tours involved two hundred miles of travel in open sleighs with the thermometer at times below zero. This method of agitation continued for a term of years extending from about 1835 to 1850. Meanwhile Mr. Dow had appeared at nearly every session of the legislature, advocating the enactment of a law prohibiting the liquor traffic, but with indifferent success. At first the result was a vote authorizing the petitioners to withdraw; then the measure would be passed in one house to be rejected in the other; the next year, perhaps, the latter branch would pass the bill and the former reject it; later still both houses approved the measure, leaving to the Governor the responsibility of vetoing it. In 1851 Neal Dow, who had been in politics a Whig, was nominated by that party as its candidate for Mayor of Portland. This nomination was brought about rather by the rank and file than by the party leaders, to many of whom the selection of Mr. Dow as a candidate was far from agreeable. A considerable number of what were at the time called "Liberal Whigs," under the guidance of some of the leaders of the party, bolted the nomination; but Mr. Dow was elected by a larger vote than had ever been given to a Whig candidate before. A few weeks after his election Mr. Dow again appeared before the legislature and advocated the prohibition of the liquor traffic. He had formerly appeared before that body simply as a private citizen: now he took with him whatever of weight and influence his official station could add to his character and ability as an individual. The legislature was Democratic in both branches, and some of the war horses of that party did not take kindly to a measure urged upon them by a representative Whig. An amusing but earnest speech made by a leading Democrat begged Democrats not to follow "this popinjay Whig, Lord Mayor of Portland." But the bill passed both branches of the legislature just as it was written by Mr. Dow. This was on May 31, 1851. On June 2 it was signed by Governor Hubbard, also a Democrat. It is safe to say that no measure of only local effect ever attracted wider attention than did that enactment, which earned world-wide celebrity as the "Maine Law." Similarly the fame of its author commenced its extension in constantly widening circles throughout the English-speaking world. Upon Mayor Dow fell the task of enforcing this new and startling measure in the largest city in the State. It demonstrated its efficiency under an earnest and impartial enforcement; and the marked results of the law for good throughout the State not only firmly established the policy of prohibition in the convictions of the people of Maine, but aroused agitation in behalf of similar legislation in several of the States in this country and also in Great Britain. Mr. Dow's services upon the platform and through the press were widely sought; and, being relieved by a defeat at the polls in the spring of 1852 from the cares of the Mayoralty, he was able to respond to many of those invitations, and traveled extensively in the northern part of the Union, addressing by request the legislatures of several States. In 1855 he was again elected Mayor of Portland as the first candidate for that position of the Republican party, which was then just organized in Maine. He was unanimously elected as a Representative to the State legislature in 1858, and reelected in 1859. In 1857 he visited England and Scotland by invitation of the United Kingdom Alliance, and addressed audiences in all the larger cities. In the latter part of 1861, after the first flush of war enthusiasm had expended itself and enlistments were dull, Governor Washburn, of Maine, requested Mr. Dow to raise a regiment of volunteers; and about the same time the Secretary of War commissioned him to recruit a battery of artillery. He was made Colonel of the Thirteenth Maine Regiment, and was ordered to the Gulf Department under General Butler. On the way thither the steamer "Mississippi," in which was Colonel Dow with a portion of his regiment and a Massachusetts regiment also under his command, was wrecked off Frying Pan Shoals. The Occasion afforded an opportunity for the display of his wisdom and fortitude in trying circumstances. He was shortly after commissioned Brigadier-general by President Lincoln, and was in command at Fort St. Philip and also at Pensacola, Fla., and subsequently of the defenses of New Orleans to the north of the city. He participated with his brigade in the first assault upon Port Hudson, where he was wounded, and, while convalescing at a farm-house within the Federal lines, was captured by a party of Confederate cavalry. He was confined at Libby Prison, at Mobile, and again at Libby Prison, for some nine months, when he was exchanged for General Fitz Hugh Lee. Finding his health and strength impaired by the exposure of army life and the hardships of his imprisonment, he then resigned his commission, and upon the conclusion of peace returned with unflagging zeal to his labors for the promotion of temperance, in which he has ever since been engaged. >From the inception of the troubles incident to the election of President Lincoln, Mr. Dow was active with speech and pen in support of a policy which should at once preserve the Union and abolish slavery. At the suggestion of his friends in Great Britain, with a view to counteracting the machinations of the enemies of the Union there, he wrote many articles for publication in English journals; and, by tending to show that the war was precipitated upon the country in an effort to perpetuate and extend slavery, he was enabled to render good service to the cause of freedom. While he was connected with the army he devoted all his leisure to this work, with such result upon the public sentiment of Great Britain that he was formally thanked therefor by the Union Emancipation League of Great Britain and the United States Minister at the Court of St. James. On January 20, 1830, Mr. Dow married Maria Cornelia Durant Maynard, of Boston, a woman of culture and refinement. Mrs. Dow died on January 13, 1873. Of the ten children born of this marriage, but four are living-- Mrs. Louisa Dwight Benton, of Lancaster, N.H.; Emma Maynard Gould, of Boston, Mass.; Frederick Neal Dow, recently Collector of the Port of Portland; and Cornelia Maynard Dow, of Portland, who presides over her father's home. On March 20, 1894, Mr. Dow attained the age of ninety years. Anniversary celebrations were held all over this country, and two hundred in Great Britain, many in Australia, and several in other parts of the world, among them one in Jerusalem. Congratulatory messages letters and floral offerings, and formal addresses poured in upon him from all sides. The Old World and the New, and many foreign tongues, as well as his native language, contributed to the memorable occasion. The State Board of Trade, then in session in Portland, passed appropriate resolutions upon the occasion, congratulating General Dow upon his great services to the State, and appointed a committee to wait upon him and convey the good wishes and respect of its members. The city government of Portland did the same. The immense audience which filled the City Hall of Portland in the evening exchanged messages by cable with a great gathering in Free Trade Hall, Manchester, England. Among the distinguished speakers at the Portland celebration were Governor H. B. Cleaves and ex-Governor Selden Connor. A portrait of General Dow was presented, to be placed in the rotunda of the State capitol; and the Hon. James P. Baxter, Mayor of Portland, who presided, said :- "No son of Portland has thrown about it such a halo of wholesome light as the man whose ninetieth birthday we celebrate to-night, He sits here as an example for the old and young, and may the memory of this night long live with our people."