43. Some other Conants: Hezekiah Conant (1827-1902)

 

Flags of Plymouth USA (left) and Plymouth UK

Look at a map of New England, and it’s no surprise to see how many names of American communities match those of English towns and cities, particularly those in the South West of England.

Statues of Ralegh in his home village of East Budleigh (left) and in the American city of Raleigh 

No surprise either, that East Budleigh’s best known historical figure gave his name to the city of Raleigh in North Carolina. 

Top: Ralegh's birthplace at Hayes Barton, just outside East Budleigh, in England's county of Devon. Below: The Cafe and Dessertery in Hayes Barton district, Raleigh NC 

What’s more surprising is to find that the city has a district called Budleigh, and another called Hayes Barton – named after the birthplace of Queen Elizabeth’s favourite courtier.

Arms of the Freemasons of Beverly, where Budleigh Lodge was instituted on 27 December 1920

Roger Conant is less well known than Raleigh, but it’s nice to find his birthplace remembered in the Massachusetts town of Beverly – where he died on 19 November 1679. Local Freemasons meet in Budleigh Lodge. The town also has a Budleigh Avenue. I wonder how many of its residents know why. 

Thanks to East Budleigh resident Ian Blackwell – who is writing a book about Roger Conant – I learnt about another Massachusetts town where Roger is remembered. This time it’s Dudley, in Worcester County, home in the 19^th century to one of his distinguished descendants, a wealthy industrialist and philanthropist.

 

 

A photo of Hezekiah Conant from the 1887 publication by Frederick Odell Conant 'A History and Genealogy of the Conant Family in England and America, Thirteen Generations, 1520-1887, containing also some genealogical notes on the Connet, Connett and Connit Families'

Hezekiah Conant was born in Dudley on 28 July 1827. The son of Hervey and Dolly (née Healey) Conant, he worked on his father’s farm during the summer, attending Nichols Academy in Dudley during the winter months. When he was 17 he left home to become an apprentice with the printing firm of Estey & Evans, publishers of the Worcester County Gazette, an anti-slavery weekly newspaper. Moving on to work in a machine shop, he found time to return to Nichols Academy to complete his education while studying mechanical engineering. 

His ambition to be an inventor was demonstrated around 1852, when he devised and patented a pair of lasting pincers, an essential tool for shoemakers and leather workers. His invention was not a financial success, but undaunted by the failure, he continued to acquire technical skills while working for engineering firms in Boston and Worcester.

Colt's Armory from an 1857 engraving viewed from the East. Original engraver unknown Image credit:  Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC; Wikipedia

Christian Sharps  Image credit: Findagrave.com

Hezekiah’s move to Colt’s firearms manufactory in Hartford, Connecticut saw him engaged in design work for Christian Sharps, inventor of the celebrated Sharps rifle. In 1856 he patented a more successful invention than the leatherworkers’ pincers: it consisted of a device known as a gas check which was used with ammunition for the Sharps rifle. 

A second project in the same year was completed for the textile engineering firm of Samuel Slater & Sons, based in Webster, Massachusetts. This was the design and construction of a machine for sewing the selvage on woollen cloth manufactured by the firm. 

Samuel Slater Image credit: National Biographical Publishing Company - The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Rhode Island (1881) - Wikipedia

Samuel Slater himself, the firm’s founder, was an English-born industrialist known as the ‘Father of the American Industrial Revolution’ - a phrase coined by President Andrew Jackson. 

However in his home town of Belper, Derbyshire, he was called ‘Slater the Traitor’ because he brought British textile technology to the United States, modifying it for use there. He had migrated to America at the age of 21, having apparently memorised textile factory machinery designs while working as an apprentice to the Derbyshire cotton spinner Jedediah Strutt. 

The Slater Mill on the banks of the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, modeled after cotton spinning mills first established in England. Slater Mill is a designated US National Historic Landmark. Image credit:  Bestbudbrian  - Wikipedia

Slater designed the first textile mills in the US and later went into business for himself, founding a family enterprise with his sons, eventually owning thirteen spinning mills and developing tenant farms and company towns around his textile mills, such as Slatersville, Rhode Island. He was a key influence on Hezekiah Conant’s career direction, Slater’s British origins perhaps playing a part in developing Hezekiah’s interest in transatlantic business partnerships.

 

The Willimantic Linen Company’s Jillson Mills, where Hezekiah Conant was superintendent. Image credit: JJBers - Wikipedia

Conant’s next project, the design of an automatic machine for winding spool cotton, attracted the attention of the Willimantic Linen Company in 1858 and led to his position as its mechanical expert during a period in which he invented a ticketing machine for labelling spools of thread at the rate of 100 spools per minute.

 

Ferguslie thread mills, Paisley, Scotland, opened by James Coats in 1826. Image credit: Robert Sweeney - Wikipedia

In 1864 he travelled to Europe on behalf of the Willimantic Linen Company, visiting spinning firms including J.& P. Coats and that of the Clark family which had created the weaving and textile industries of Paisley, Scotland during the late 18th century. The Clark family had begun manufacturing in America that year as the Clark Thread Company, based in Newark, New Jersey.

Conant Thread Mills, Pawtucket, Rhode Island Image credit: Marcbela - Wikipedia

In 1868, having overseen the doubling of the Willimantic Linen Company’s capital and its production during his nine years of service, Hezekiah resigned and moved to Pawtucket, on Rhode Island. There he set up the Conant Thread Company, and soon entered into negotiations with J.& P. Coats to manufacture their products in America, making a second trip to England in May 1869.  The building of a new mill was completed by April of the following year. Further buildings were added, with much machinery imported from England, and by 1881 the Conant Thread Company’s plant was one of the largest and most successful in the USA.

 

Nichols College as it is today. Founded in 1815, it was originally known as Nichols Academy. Image credit: Kenneth C.Zirkel - Wikipedia

Increased business made Hezekiah Conant a very wealthy man, and he became one of the leading figures in Pawtucket’s commercial scene as well as one of the nation’s great philanthropists. The Nichols Academy in his home town of Dudley was one of the beneficiaries of his generosity. Its dilapidated buildings were refurbished and an observatory was set up, with telescopes and meteorological instruments imported from England. The Academy was also equipped with a reading room and a library containing over 2,000 volumes of literary and scientific work.

There is no record of Hezekiah’s visit to East Budleigh, birthplace of Roger Conant, during his visits to England. However he must certainly have been proud of his distinguished ancestor. Conant Hall and the Conant Library are among the buildings which make up the Academy, known today as Nichols College.

 

Budleigh Hall  Image credit: https://reslife.nichols.edu 

There is also a hall of residence named Budleigh Hall, with Budleigh’s name proudly displayed as part of the bulding’s distinctive classical architecture.  It’s located, as described in the College Catalog, ‘atop a small hill affectionately named “Budleigh Hill.”’ 

A 1912 postcard showing Budleigh Hall, later destroyed by fire

It’s worth noting that he chose Budleigh Hall as the name of the residence on Dudley Hill, now known as the historic heart of the town of Dudley, where he and his family spent the summer months. 

Image credit: Wikipedia

Today, Dudley Hill’s most architecturally substantial building is the brick-built Conant Memorial Church seen above. This was gifted by Hezekiah to the community of Dudley to replace  the old wooden Congregational Church, built in 1823 and destroyed in the disastrous fire which broke out on 3 June 1890. 

Two days after the event, Hezekiah expressed his sorrow at the news. ‘I felt sad when I heard of it, as if an old friend had departed this life, never more to be seen by us here,’ he wrote in a letter dated 5 June. He went on in the letter, offering to erect a new building with brick walls and a slate roof complete with ‘modern heating and ventilating appliances’. His only condition, apart from reserving a pew for himself and his heirs, was that he might put in a memorial window or tablet ‘to perpetuate the memory of my family and ancestors.’    

Among the ancestors he was evidently thinking principally of Roger Conant, for three years later, in 1893, he produced a souvenir booklet dedicated to the man whom he described as ‘the first Pilgrim Puritan and first Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony’.

The corner-stone of the new church was laid on 16 October 1890 in a ceremony at which Hezekiah gave an address remarkable for his frankness of feelings about religion. His distaste for the way in which it seemed to engender division was evident. ‘I feel that I have not wisdom enough to say what doctrine should be taught, or what forms or ceremonies practised,’ he told his audience. ‘Yet I must admit that I have listened to many and many a sermon, heard the eloquence of learned divines, have seen the religious ceremonies of civilized communities, and many times have tried to learn what was the direct and immediate effect, and must confess my inability to have clearly seen always a sanctifying result.’ He was, however, keen to emphasise that among the admirable elements of Christianity, as he saw it, was ‘a disposition to promote peace on earth and good-will among men.’

And yet, as he pointed out, based on his early memories of growing up in Dudley, the opposite had been the case. ‘Those who lived in this town a half-century ago can remember well the bitterness engendered here by different religious opinions prevailing; but in thinking over the matter, while I cannot say but what they were all sincere, yet there was an element of crudeness and barbarity in it, and I hope these conditions will never again recur.’

Reading Hezekiah’s words, I thought of the distaste that his ancestor Roger supposedly felt for the intolerance that he found among the separatist Plymouth Puritans.

For this 19^th century member of the Conant family, a modern industrialist and inventor who thrived on new ideas, the old ways in such matters as religion were to be rejected, he continued. ‘The day for dogmatic teaching has passed, I trust, and, so far as an intelligent congregation is concerned, has no more effect than the sound of whistling wind or howling storm. God has given us brains and books.’ 

Hezekiah had provided his community with a modern church and modern facilities, and clearly expected it to have a modern minister. ‘He should be a man of education and of a character that will command the respect of the community, and he should consider that the higher type of Christianity cannot flourish where ignorance prevails. Science and Christianity should go hand in hand.’

Wishful thinking perhaps?

This talented engineer had experimented for some years in the field of clock design, and, along with his designs for textile industrial machines, is also credited with the invention of what is known as an ‘Isochronal clock’, designed to be more accurate than a single-pendulum clock. 

The clock works designed by Hezekiah, still operating today in the tower of the Conant Memorial Church  Image credit: Chris Mayen

Among the modern innovations in the Conant Memorial Church for which Hezekiah was responsible was a clock designed by him and constructed by The E. Howard Watch and Clock Company of Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to its four dials, each of seven feet in diameter, it possessed two interacting mercury-filled pendulums.  

Hezekiah Conant's Four-Pendulum Clock  Image credit: www.liveauctioneers.com

Shown above is one of the rare examples of this type of clock, one of which was donated by Conant to the Nichols Academy. Standing 9 feet tall, with Corinthian-style columns and encased in mahogany, it was designed by Hezekiah and manufactured in 1888 by The E. Howard Watch and Clock Company, like that of the Conant Memorial Church. However, Hezekiah had had a first version of it constructed by Tiffany & Co in the previous year.

 

Louis Comfort Tiffany in 1908. Image credit: Wikipedia

It was Tiffany & Co which provided the glass for the memorial window of which Hezekiah had written in his letter of 5 June 1890.  Tiffany stained glass had become fashionable when the firm’s artistic director, Louis Comfort Tiffany, opened his glass and decorating firm in 1885, having undertaken projects such as the 1882 redecoration of the White House.

Image credit: Chris Mayen

The souvenir booklet includes a letter written by Hezekiah to the First Congregational Church and Society of Dudley following the completion of the building. A paragraph mentions the memorial window, seen above. It confirms that, like Budleigh artist John Washington’s recent painting ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’, the window showed the events of 1625 when Roger Conant intervened to prevent bloodshed in the confrontation between Myles Standish and West Country fishermen. Hezekiah’s letter gives us an insight into his feelings about his ancestor.  

‘The memorial window, representing Roger Conant separating the combatants, is appropriate and not objectionable, it seems to me, and I prefer it to any picture of celestial beings. It represents an event in history, and it also shows a characteristic of that eminent person. I do not know that he was strictly a Puritan, yet he was a religious man, and a person who commanded the confidence and respect of the community in which he lived, and his character has no stain. And though he never was canonized by any ecclesiastical authority, yet when he prevented this quarrel he certainly was entitled to the reward promised by Christ himself, who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”  

Clearly, Hezekiah was pleased with the message of the memorial window. In his ‘Records of the Conant Family’ which was included in the souvenir booklet, he wrote that ‘the scene depicted by the painter shows Roger Conant’s influence for good among his fellow-colonists, as also his Christian forbearance and love of peace’. 

He went on to quote from John Wingate Thornton’s 1854 book The Landing at Cape Anne or The Charter of the first permanent colony on the territory of the Massachusetts Company: ‘Conant was moderate in his views, tolerant, mild and conciliatory, quiet and unobtrusive, ingenuous and unambitious, preferring the public good to his private interests; with the passive virtues he combined great moral courage and an indomitable will. His true courage and simplicity of heart and strength of principle eminently qualified him for the conflicts of those days of perils, deprivation, and trial.’

Sadly, the Peace Window, as it became known, is no more. On the evening of 8 June 1946 at around 9.00 pm, church organist Elizabeth Bateman had finished her practice for the next day’s service and was about to close the doors. Almost 56 years to the day, Dudley’s old wooden church building had suffered catastrophic destruction by fire. 

Hezekiah’s brick-built Conant Memorial Church was a solidly constructed edifice on which the finest craftsmen had worked, but it proved to be as vulnerable as its predecessor when assailed by nature at its most ferocious. A line of violent thunderstorms, accompanied by tornado-strength winds, had come up from the South West laying waste to everything in their path. Within a few seconds, a microburst – a localized column of sinking air or violent downdraft – had reduced much of the church to rubble. Elizabeth Bateman was flung down the church steps by the force of the storm; the doors that she had been trying to close had been torn apart. The Peace Window was shattered beyond repair.

Image credit: Chris Mayen

However, thanks to Ian Blackwell’s research and correspondence with Dudley church historian Tom Boyd, it is now known that this panel from the main window was recently found, stored in a barn near the church along with other items rescued after the 1946 storm. There are plans for the church to put it on display. 

While Hezekiah’s career prospered, he suffered misfortunes in his personal life.  On 4 October 1853, he married Sarah Williams Learned, the daughter of Colonel Morris and Elizabeth Learned, of Dudley. Tragically, she died two years later, on 17 July 1855, aged only 26. In November 1859, Hezekiah married her sister, Harriet Knight Learned. The couple had a son, Samuel, born on 9 December 1861, and a daughter, Edith, born on 19 September 1863.

Just over a year after Edith’s birth, Harriet died on 6 July 1864, aged 36. On 5 December 1865, Hezekiah married again. His third wife was Mary Eaton Knight, the 31-year-old daughter of Dr Samuel and Harriet Knight. 

Hezekiah Conant's  grave  Image credit: Findagrave.com

Hezekiah died aged 74 on 22 Jan 1902 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and is buried in Corbin Cemetery, Dudley MA

Image credit: Peter Bowler

East Budleigh’s local historians decided that a painting to honour Roger Conant would be better than a statue. Learning later of the existence of Dudley’s Conant Memorial Window, and of its sad end, was a welcome confirmation that we had made the right decision. 

We hope that the story behind John Washington’s ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’, pictured above, will encourage viewers to learn more about the man sometimes known as the first governor of Massachusetts. But perhaps, if they read it, they will also be inspired by this story of the life and achievements of one of his distinguished descendants.