Eralsey Clark Ferguson (1892-1967)

From the 1955 New Hampshire State Register and Manual.

   There were few men more prominent in New Hampshire politics in the 1950s than Eralsey Clark Ferguson, a Merrimack County resident who served eight years in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and two terms in the state senate, holding the position of Senate president in the 1957-58 session. Ferguson would go on to be a Republican candidate for Governor in 1958 and later served three years as chairman of the New Hampshire Milk Control Board. Truly a man of political distinction! A native of Michigan, Eralsey Clark Ferguson was born in Detroit on October 5, 1892, the son of John Gilbert and Mary (Clark) Ferguson.

  Relocating to New England with his family at a young age, Eralsey Ferguson would be a student in the Brookline, Massachusetts school system, and in the early 1910s enrolled at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Graduating in the class of 1916,  Ferguson was granted the opportunity to go overseas as an English and history teacher shortly after leaving Amherst, and for a period taught at the American Mission School in Madera, India. Following his return stateside, Ferguson removed to New York City to take work at the National City Bank, and after a brief period in their employ returned to Massachusetts, where he worked for a short time in the Bethlehem Shipbuilding yard in Squantum. Ferguson married in Newton, Massachusetts in October 1918 to Gertrude Zeiss (1894-1956), to whom he was wed for over thirty years. The couple would have two daughters, Elizabeth Clark (1919-1993) and Nancy. 

   Following a stint as a leather salesman in Boston, Eralsey Ferguson decided to go into business for himself, and in 1920 established a shoe shop in the city of Lynn. By 1924 he had relocated his shop to New Hampshire, and after "combining forces" with an existing shoe factory in Pittsfield sold his business prior to the stock market crash of 1929. After leaving that business, Ferguson took work as a bond salesman with the Chase Security Corp., and later the H.M Sawyer and Sons rainwear manufacturing company of Cambridge. He would purchase an interest in the last-named business and after selling out in 1941 returned with his family to Pittsfield, New Hampshire, where he had kept a home for a number of years prior. 

   After his return to Pittsfield Ferguson worked at farming and first entered the political life of that town in the early 1930s, winning election as a town selectman. He would serve in that capacity from 1933-35 and later was elected as Pittsfield's delegate to the New Hampshire Constitutional Convention that was to be held in May 1948. The 1948 election year proved to be an important year for Ferguson, and in that same year announced his candidacy for a seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. In November 1948 Ferguson and fellow Pittsfield Republican E. Harold Young defeated their Democratic opponents and in January 1949 took their seats.

  In addition to various committee assignments during his freshman year in the house, Ferguson was profiled in a substantial write up in the June 16, 1949 edition of the Nashua Telegraph, where he was interviewed about the inner workings of the legislature from the vantage point of a freshman representative. Amongst comments regarding committee work and certain representatives being "specialists in their field", Ferguson would relate that

"I entered this legislature as a freshman with some pre-conceived notions as to what I would find. I have been more than pleased as to what I have learned. The house is not run by a small clique. It is a body of rugged individuals with minds of their own who decide questions for the most part on their merits."

From the Nashua Telegraph, June 26, 1949.

   Ferguson would win a second term in the statehouse in November 1950 and during the 1951-53 session earned the nickname "Frugal Fergie" due to his opposition to a house resolution that aimed to "give legislators, governor, and council a daily newspaper of their choice at state expense of $2,900". Ferguson's efforts against the resolution eventually paid off, and the resolution wasn't passed. Following his successful campaign for a third house term in 1952, Ferguson announced his candidacy for the New Hampshire state senate in mid-1954, and in the September Republican primary won the election, defeating Andrew Nicoll by a vote of 1,717 to 1,096. On general election day in November, Ferguson won out at the polls, besting Democrat Edgar Bellerose by over 800 votes. 

  Taking his Senate seat in January 1955, Ferguson later won a second Senate term in 1956 and in that same year was elected by his fellow senators as Senate president, serving in that role until 1958. This term would also see Ferguson announce his candidacy for Governor of New Hampshire in May 1957, running on a "pro sales tax platform." In early 1958 he further detailed his platform, proposing:

• A two percent sales tax with liberal exemptions, to raise an estimated minimum of $10,000,000 
• Repeal of a $5 head tax
• Repeal of the tax on livestock
• Repeal of the stock in trade tax

From the Farmington News, May 2, 1957.

  Ferguson's gubernatorial aspirations were dashed in September 1958 when he lost out in the Republican primary, polling just 1,162 votes against winning candidate Wesley Powell's total of 39,761. Powell, in turn, would go on to win the governorship that November, and later served two terms, leaving office in 1963. 

  Following his defeat for Governor, Eralsey Ferguson served as chairman of the state Milk Control Board from 1959-1962 and ran for a fourth term in the New Hampshire legislature in 1960, but was defeated. He fared better in the 1962 election year and would hold his seat from 1963-65, afterward removing to Scottsdale, Arizona. Widowed in 1956, Ferguson remarried a year later to Madeline Dane (1901-1975), who would survive him upon his death, which occurred in Scottsdale on November 25, 1967. He was later cremated and returned to Pittsfield for burial at the Floral Park Cemetery.

From the Farmington News, November 30, 1967.

Grosvenor Austin Curtice (1842-1907), Grosvenor Downes McCubrey (1858-1950), Grosvenor McKinley Goad (1893-1968)

Grosvenor Curtice, from the Granite State Monthly, Volume 47.

    A member of both houses of the New Hampshire state legislature, lifelong Granite State native Grosvenor Austin Curtice was a well-known resident of Merrimack County, being a merchant and farmer in that area for many years. Born in the village of Lempster on March 31, 1842, Grosvenor A. Curtice was the son of Samuel and Leonora Sweatt Curtice. The Curtice family moved from Lempster to Windsor, New Hampshire when Grosvenor was three, and he continued to reside there until he relocated to the Merrimack County town of Contoocook in 1861. 

   In the year after his resettlement, Curtice enlisted for service in Co. D, Seventh New Hampshire Volunteers, and would serve with that regiment until the war's conclusion, having attained the rank of captain. He is also recorded as having "captured a rebel captain and several of his men" at Fort Fisher in North Carolina. 

   Following his return to Contoocook Curtice married in 1866 to Sara Augusta Johnson, who died three years following their marriage. He would marry his second wife Augusta Wilson (1849-1909) in 1876, their union lasting until Curtice's death in 1907. 

   In the years following his first marriage, Grosvenor Curtice established a reputation as one of Contoocook's prominent merchants. A member of the general merchandise firm of Curtice, Rand, and Co., Curtice also held several political offices in his adopted hometown. From 1867-68 he served as town clerk and from 1869-1871 was town treasurer, later being returned to the latter office to serve from 1874-1878. Curtice would also serve Contoocook as its postmaster, and in 1875 was elected to his first term in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

  In 1877 Curtice won a second term in the state house and three years later began a two-year term in the state Senate, defeating Democratic candidate Charles Amsden by a vote of 1,981 to 1,823. Taking his seat at the start of the 1881-83 term, Curtice held seats on the committees on Engrossed Bills, the Judiciary, and Military Affairs. At the conclusion of his Senate service, Curtice was selected to serve as a member of the Executive Council, being on the staff of then-Governor Samuel Whitney Hale.

  An active Mason and member of the Odd Fellows Lodge, Grosvenor Curtice returned to public life in 1906 when President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him as U.S. Pension Agent for the District of New Hampshire and Vermont. Curtice would hold that post until his death in Contoocook on September 29, 1907, at age 65.  His wife Augusta survived him by two years, dying on August 28, 1909. Both were interred at the Contoocook Village Cemetery.

A death notice for Curtice from the Los Angeles Herald, October 7, 1907.

Portrait from the Minnesota Legislative Manual, 1929-30.

    Another "Grosvenor" who made his name known in politics was two-term Minnesota state senator Grosvenor Downes McCubrey. A native of Maine, McCubrey was born near the town of Calais on May 4, 1858. He attended school in the state of his birth and in 1882 relocated to Minnesota. Three years following his resettlement McCubrey relocated to Barnesville in Clay County, where he would reside for nearly twenty years.

  For many years following his removal to Barnesville McCubrey engaged in the insurance business and also operated a mercantile store. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he served in a number of local political offices. From 1889-1897 he served as U.S. Postmaster at Barnesville and following his relocation to Moorhead, Minnesota in 1901 served that city as its treasurer and justice of the peace. In 1901 he was elected as clerk of the district court at Moorhead and served twenty-four years in that office. 

   In November 1926 McCubrey was elected to represent Minnesota's 49th district in the state Senate and during his first term (1927-31) served on the following committees: Civil Administration, Crime and Crime Prevention, Municipal Affairs, Public Institutions and Buildings, the Soldiers Home, Temperance, and Towns and Counties. Reelected to the Senate in 1930, McCubrey served another four-year term and held seats on three new Senate committees, those being Civil Administration, and Finance and Reapportionment. He would also chair the committee on State and County Fairs.

   Little is known of McCubrey's life following his leaving the Senate in 1935. Beginning in 1940 he took office as Moorhead city justice and was still the incumbent in that office at the time of his death at age 92 on December 24, 1950.  He was later buried at the Barnesville City Cemetery in Barnesville, Minnesota. One should also note that McCubrey's first name is spelled either "Grosvenor" or "Grovenor", the former being listed in his obituary and the latter being engraved on his headstone.

McCubrey's obituary from 1950.

From the Richmond Times Dispatch, July 12, 1964.

  On January 6, 2023, another politically involved "Grosvenor" was discovered--Grosvenor McKinley Goad of Carroll County, Virginia. A three-time delegate to the Republican National Convention from Virginia, Goad was born in that state on August 13, 1893, the son of Dexter and Martha (Quesinberry) Goad. 

  Goad married Julia Ethel Faddis (1894-1992) in September 1917 and later had one daughter, Ethel Marie (1922-2014). A dentist in the town of Hillsville for many years, he was elected president of the Virginia State Dental Association in 1941 for a one-year term. Active in Republican politics in his state for decades, Goad served as chair of the fifth district finance committee and was elected as part of the Virginia delegation to the Republican National Convention in 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower was nominated for the presidency. He again served as a delegate to the 1960 convention held in Chicago, and in 1964 backed Barry Goldwater at that year's national convention in  California.

  Grosvenor M. Goad died in Virginia on November 2, 1968, aged 75, and was survived by his wife Julia. Both were interred at the North End Cemetery in Hillsville.

Orsino Augustine Jabez Vaughan (1819-1876), Orsino Ellick Jones (1829-1907)

    A newspaper publisher and state senator from New Hampshire, the plentifully named Orsino Augustine Jabez Vaughan was born on March 11, 1819, in Hanover, New Hampshire, one of fourteen children born to Silas and Polly Ingalls Vaughan. Little information could be found on Orsino's early life and schooling, except notice of his working in a wool mill where he learned the trade of dyer. Vaughan was admitted to the Connecticut state bar in 1846 and first entered into public office in 1851 when he was named as register of probate for Gilmanton County, serving until 1857. 
  Vaughan married in 1849 to Julia Cogswell of Gilmanton, who died three years following their marriage. In 1855 he remarried to Laconia resident Mary Elizabeth Parker, with whom he had six children, who are listed as follows: Grace Anna (birth date unknown), Walter P. (born 1856), William A. (1859-1866), Charles Woodward (born 1862), Mary Alice (born 1869), and Edward (1872-1879).
   In 1857 O.A.J. Vaughan relocated to Laconia, New Hampshire and eight years later was elected to the New Hampshire State Senate from Laconia, defeating Charles Hackett by a vote of 3,933 to 3, 593. Vaughan served one term (1866-68) and during his term took the reins as publisher and editor of the Laconia Democrat continuing in this position until his death. This term also saw Vaughan have an honorary degree conferred upon him from Dartmouth University. 
  A member of the New Hampshire State Democratic Committee during the 1860s and 70s, Vaughan was named as clerk of courts for Belknap County in 1874, and later took on an additional post as police justice for Laconia. He died in Laconia on April 30, 1876, aged 57, and was subsequently memorialized by the Bradford, Vermont Opinion as a "genial and social man in everyday life". Vaughan was survived by four children and his wife Mary and was interred at the Union Cemetery in Laconia.

Vaughan's obituary from the Bradford Vermont Opinion, May 6, 1876.

Portrait from Hatch's Illustrated History of Jamestown, Chautauqua County, New York, 1900.

   Another "Orsino" who made his name known in public life is Orsino Ellick Jones, who, as luck would have it, was a lifelong resident of my home county of Chautauqua, New York. A distinguished local figure who gained notoriety through business, civic affairs, and philanthropy, Jones's political claim to fame rests on his service as a Republican Presidential Elector for New York in 1880.

  The son of Chautauqua County pioneer Capt. Ellick Jones (1800-1866) and Louisa Walkup Jones, Orsino Ellick "Sine" Jones was born on November 8, 1829, in the town of Ellicott and married in the mid-1850s to Louise A. Howard (1832-1887). The couple would later have one son, Charles Howard Jones (1857-1905). 

    As a young man in Jamestown Orsino Jones became active in the village's volunteer fire department, eventually serving as its chief. By the 1870s he had established his name in Jamestown's business community, serving as President of the Jamestown Cane Seat Chair Company in 1872, being a founder of the Chautauqua Lake Railway, and was the director of the Jamestown Street Railway Company. Long active in Republican Party circles in Western New York, Jones was an alternate delegate to the 2nd Republican National Convention, which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency in 1860. A member of the Republican State Committee for four years, in 1880 Jones served as a Presidential Elector for New York. Described as being of the "Stalwart faction" of the Republican Party, Jones is mentioned in Volume 13 of the 1891 Chautauquan as being:

"Prominent in party politics. His hand was in every public movement of the city of Jamestown and the county of Chautauqua. He was a  hail-fellow-well-met-among men on 'Change, in social life and political movements. He was a Stalwart of the Stalwarts. He was General Grant's friend, whether he was coming to a Sunday school Assembly or camp meeting or to preside over the nation."

    Following his service as an elector Jones continued his interests in the growth of Jamestown, serving as a Civil Service Commissioner for the city, and in May of 1886 was selected as one of ten committee members who drew up the charter for the city of Jamestown. As a well-known man of means, Orsino Jones' name was connected to several charitable and philanthropic endeavors in Chautauqua County, including donating 67 acres of land on the border of Chautauqua Lake to be used as a park. Jones would later bequeath further property to the city of Jamestown in 1906 that would eventually become the home to the O.E. Jones Memorial Hospital (pictured below.) Erected at the cost of $100,000, the hospital's cornerstone was laid in 1909 (two years following Jones' death) and it still stands today, although it is now known as an extension of Jamestown's WCA Hospital. 

O.E. Jones General Hospital, a postcard circa 1915.

   After many years of being prominent in Jamestown public life, Orsino E. Jones died at age 77 on January 25, 1907. He had been predeceased by his wife Louisa in 1887 and son Charles in 1905, and all three are interred at the Lakeview Cemetery in Jamestown under an impressive grave marker (photographs below.) Jones was memorialized in Down's History of Chautauqua County as having been:

" A native son of Jamestown, and no man in the city had a wider experience or more varied life. He was a man of strong physique, regular, temperate habits and a tireless worker........He did much for the material advancement of Jamestown and gave liberally towards the public institutions and charities."

From the Westfield Republican, January 30, 1907.

Buried in the Jones plot are Orsino, his wife Louisa and their son Charles Howard.

Orsino Ellick Jones, 1829-1907.