Salmon Chase was born in Cornish, New
Hampshire, to Ithamar and Janette Chase. Ithamar was the son of
Dudley Chase, one of the founders of Cornish. Jannette was the
daughter of a wealthy innkeeper from Keene. Ithamar left Cornish when
Salmon was 8 years old, to seek his fortune in glasmaking. Due in
part to the end of the War of 1812, and in part to the economic panic
caused crop failure during 1816, the Year Without a Summer, Salmon
and his business partners lost everything in their glassmaking
venture.
The one part of the property Ithamar
had not lost from Janette's dowry was a nondescript farm at the
town's edge, so she moved there with her kids that autumn. Salmon
went to the neighborhood school there in Keene that year, but the
year after that he endured another upheaval when she sent him back
north to Windsor, where she thought the education would be better. Of
all of her children, Janette felt that Salmon was the smartest, most
gifted and should have the best education.
John Niven, author of Salmon Chase's
biography, says that Janette sent Salmon to “board and study”
with Josiah Dunham. He certainly did not attend Dunham's academy in
Windsor, which was for females. It does appear that Salmon embarked
on a rigorous course of education in Windsor. Josiah Dunham, in
addition to being an educator, was a farmer, politician, and
newspaper publisher. Before moving to Windsor, he had lived in
Hanover and had established Hanover's first bookstore.
While he lived with the Dunhams,
Salmon discovered a pile of the newpapers his teacher had published
several years before. As he sat down and read them, Salmon developed
an interest in politics that would become the bedrock of the rest of
his life. Josiah Dunham was an ardent Federalist, and his newspaper,
The Washingtonian,
championed his political leanings. (This is the same newspaper that
Simeon Ide worked at after he lost his apprenticeship due to the war.
See
http://connecticutrivervalley.blogspot.com/2012/11/republicans-federalists-and-war-of-1812.html
)
Although the timeframe in the next few years of Salmon's life is
unclear, Niven says that after studying with Dunham, Salmon returned
to Keene and spent a few years continuing his studies with Reverend
Zedekiah Barstow, an esteemed academic who was on the board of both
Kimball Academy and Dartmouth College. Janette certainly was
successful in her efforts to provide an excellent education for her
son.
Although he had received an excellent education, Salmon's young life
had been filled with inconsistency, upheaval, and hard labor. He had
been doing hard physical labor all of his young life. Although he
had worked hard in Cornish at a very young age, he had enjoyed the
status of being a Chase in Cornish. He was an outsider when he first
moved to Keene, and virtually a charity case in Windsor. Upon his
return to Keene from Windsor, the years he spent studying under
Reverend Barstow would be a time he looked back on fondly.
Those happy days came to an end in 1820, when Janette decided her
son should leave Keene yet again, and go to live with her
brother-in-law Philander Chase. Philander had just become the
Episcopal Bishop of Ohio and was head of a boys' school in
Worthington, Ohio. Worthington, Ohio was on the western frontier at
this time, and the population was too sparse to provide support to a
religious bishop and school teacher, so Philander also had a farm.
Janette's agreement with Philander was that Salmon would do farmwork
in exchange for room, board, and further education. He was twelve
years old at the time.
One wonders, “What was she thinking?” Philander had left his own
two older sons behind with Uncle Dudley in Randolph and did not
hesitate to take his ailing wife and newborn baby all the way from
Vermont to the Ohio wilderness. Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book
“Team of Rivals”, says that Janette could no longer make ends
meet and was forced to break up the family and send the children to
live with relatives. Doubtless it was very, very difficult to run a
farm without a husband to help. Yes, but, Philander seems like a
horrible choice. Why did she not send Salmon to Uncle Dudley? Maybe
Uncle Dudley had too many chldren living with him and had no room for
one more. I wonder if the rest of the family had shunned Ithamar and
his family, and Janette hesitated to ask for help from them.
Salmon's oldest brother Alexander, was 23 years old and a geologist.
He and a friend were headed west to join a government sponsored
expedition, and he could bring his 12 year old younger brother with
him for most of the way. Traveling to Ohio from New Hampshire meant
traveling over rough, almost nonexistent roads through hundreds of
square miles of undeveloped territory. The three boys started out in
April of 1920. During the trip, they saw Niagara Falls on their way
to Lake Erie and Cleveland.
Cleveland, Alexander and Salmon parted ways. They left Salmon with
a fellow New Englander, Judge Barber. Mr Barber promised to find a
way to get Salmon to Uncle Philander's house in Worthington, 125
miles away. A week later, Salmon hitched a ride with an Episcopal
priest headed to Medina – twenty-five miles closer. Uncle Philander
had organized an Episcopal convention in Worthington, and since there
was one road from Medina to Worthington, Salmon would probably
quickly get a ride the rest of the way. Sure enough, after a week,
three young Episcopal priests passed through Medina on their way to
the convention and agreed to take Salmon the rest of the way.
It was such rough going that it took them four days to go a hundred
miles. When they got to Worthington, Salmon met his uncle for the
first time. In his biography of Salmon, John Niven quotes Salmon's
description of his uncle. “Large and heavy as he was, He was
remarkably light and graceful in his movements, and when not ruffled
with opposition or displeasure, exceedingly agreeable, polished and
finished in his manner.” At the time, Philander was 44 years old
and in the prime of his life. He was ambitious, highly intelligent,
and tended to be mercurial and imperious. I'm sure the key words
there are “When not ruffled with oppposition or displeasure”.
Living in Uncle Philander's household was the most difficult place
Salmon lived before he reached adulthood. Philander had promised
Janette a home and an education for his nephew in return for physical
labor. John Niven says that the year and a half that Salmon spent at
Worthington was a period of “intense physical and intellectual
labor and emotional torment.” As the Episcopal Bishop in Ohio,
Philander was away from home a lot, and while he was gone, Salmon was
expected to excel at his schoolwork and take care of all the farm
chores, including milking the cows and bringing them back and forth
to pasture, taking the grain to the mill, keeping up with firewood,
and the seasonal chores of maple sugaring, plowing and planting, and
helping sheer the sheep and transporting the wool for processing.
Although this is a huge workload for a twelve or thirteen year old,
Uncle Philander would always return home and find fault with Salmon's
work, punishing him with a beating or some type of confinement or
isolation, accompanying the punishment with religious teaching. Doris
Kearns Goodwin, in her book “Team of Rivals” retells a story that
Salmon often told as an adult. One day Philander overheard Salmon
complain to a friend that his uncle was a tyrant. Philander forbade
anyone to talk to Salmon, and forbade Salmon himself to speak until
he apologized. Days later, Salmon finally apologized. Salmon ended
the story by saying. “I still almost wish I had not.”
When Philander moved his family to Cincinnati, Salmon went with them
and was the person primarily responsible for getting them there,
since Philander was ill at the time. When he was 15, Philander went
to England on a fundraising trip and Salmon was finally allowed to go
home to Keene. Philander gave him four dollars traveling money in
Albany. He walked 110 miles, and then spent the last of his money to
ride the last thirty miles. That thirty miles took three days. His
mother and sisters had no idea he was coming home and were overjoyed
to see him. Salmon had carried a peach with him all that way, to give
to his younger sister Helen, and as an adult, she remembered that it
was the first peach she had ever eaten.
Salmon learned a lot during his stay with Uncle Philander, both
good, and bad. Philander was careful to give him a good education,
and his exacting standards regarding Salmon's schoolwork paved the
way for his nephew's acceptance into Dartmouth College. Salmon was
always a very hard worker and always strove for excellence. However,
he had never had any leisure time almost since the day he was born,
and never really learned how to have a good time or enjoy the company
of other people. Salmon never lost the religious zeal he acquired as
a member of Bishop Chase's household. On the other hand, John Niven
explains that, “the devious means he adopted to escape his uncle's
severe discipline lead to a blending of morality and expediency that
became second nature.” He also developed an obsessive need to excel
and acquire social stature and importance, probably as a result of a
boyhood spent in poverty performing hard labor. It is also quite
possible that Salmon spent a lifetime trying to earn back the status
his father had lost in the disastrous move to Keene.
