Submarinus Girard Norcross (1834-1888)

From the Conway Daily Sun, August 26, 2011.

  New Year's Eve is upon us, and, as per the custom first established in 2013, the year's final posting is dedicated to an especially odd-named political figure. With six previous installments of '" Strangest Name of the Year" to reflect on, this year's honoree, with his rather nautical-sounding first name, is more than worthy of that title: Submarinus Girard Norcross of Conway, New Hampshire! A native of Maine, Norcross was a clergyman who held pastorates in several states and for the last sixteen years of his life resided in Conway, New Hampshire, where he had a considerable impact through religious work and education. Despite not being a political office seeker, Norcross earns a place here on the site due to his service as a delegate from New Hampshire to the Republican National Convention of 1880.

   The eighth of nine children born to Leonard and Deborah (Nelson) Norcross, Submarinus Girard Norcross's birth occurred in Dixfield, Maine on January 21, 1834. When compared to other unusual 19th-century names featured here, the name Submarinus rests as a true U.F.O., and this bizarre first name may leave you with several questions, including "Why a first name that sounds like submarine?", "what possessed his parents to give him this name?", and "what did Norcross himself think of it?" 

  The answer behind Norcross's unwieldy first name can be found in his 1888 Poultney, Vermont Journal obituary. The father of our subject, Leonard Norcross (1798-1864), was a church deacon and inventor who in June 1834 received a patent for what would later be acknowledged as "the first fully enclosed diving suit." This inventive diving apparatus pioneered the use of elastic Indian rubber and was successfully tested without injury or fatality on the Webb River in Maine earlier in 1834. So proud was Leonard Norcross of his invention that he bestowed the name Submarinus upon his most recent child, with the Journal later relating that:

"He received his deep sounding name from the submarine dress which his father had patented the year of his son's birth."

   History doesn't record Norcross's own feelings in regards to his name, except note of his preferring to write his name as "S. Girard". The name's spelling is recorded as ending in both "-nus" and "-nas". Of these spellings, the former looks to be the correct one, as Norcross is recorded under that name by multiple sources, including the 1850 census, the 1889 General Conference of the Congregational Churches in Maine, and his 1888 Poultney Journal obituary.

  S. Girard Norcross obtained his early education at various academies in his native Maine, studying at Farmington, Bloomfield and Lewiston Falls. He briefly followed a teaching career at the last two academies and was called to the ministry in 1854 at age 20. After a two-year period of attending lectures at Harvard, Norcross returned to Maine and was licensed to preach in July 1858. Following graduation from the Bangor Theological Seminary in 1859, Norcross was ordained as a "colleague pastor" in South Bridgeton, where he remained until May 1861. On August 25, 1861, Norcross married Turner, Maine native Clara Elizabeth Cary (1836-1889), to whom he was wed until his death. The couple would remain childless. 

  After leaving his pastorate at South Bridgeton Norcross briefly resided in Florence, Alabama, where he held a pastorate in late 1861-62, and later returned to teaching, and from 1862-63 taught in Saxonville, Massachusetts. This was followed by a five year (1863-68) stint teaching at academies in Sewickley and Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, and in 1869 returned to the ministry when he accepted a pastorate in Caledonia County, Vermont.

  Norcross and his wife resided and worked in McIndoes Falls, Vermont until 1872, and in June of that year removed to Conway, New Hampshire, where he accepted the pastorate of that town's Congregationalist Church. He would hold the pastorate until his death and beginning in June 1873 held an additional pastorate in North Conway. Norcross's long pastorate saw him oversee multiple additions to the church at Conway, and through his "urgent recommendation", a second church was constructed and completed for Conway in 1886, the Second Congregational Church. Norcross and his wife also proved influential in local education, and in addition to his time as supervisor of schools for Conway taught school at both the Conway Academy and a school under their own supervision.

  In 1880 Norcross made his lone foray into politics when he was elected as an alternate delegate from Conway to that year's Republican National Convention that was to be held in Chicago. One of twenty members of the New Hampshire delegation, Norcross saw congressman James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur of New York nominated as the party standard-bearers.

From the 1880 Republican Convention proceedings.

  Following his service as a delegate, Norcross returned to his pastorate in Conway and in 1886 was a delegate from New Hampshire's Stafford Conference to the National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States held in Chicago. In 1887 he took ill and in February of that year retired from the pastorate of the Second Congregational Church in Conway. Through 1887-88 Norcross's health failed to improve and on September 16, 1888, he died of consumption in North Conway, aged 54. Clara Norcross survived her husband by less than a year, dying on June 16, 1889. Both were interred at the North Conway Cemetery under a headstone denoting both's devotion to "the cause of education in Conway."

From the Poultney, Vermont Journal, October 5, 1888.