Salmon Chase was the son of Ithamar
and Janette Chase. Although he was born in Cornish, his father left
Cornish to join a glass-making business in Keene. This business went
bankrupt, and Ithamar died soon after, leaving his wife Janette a
widow with eleven children to feed. She did the best she could, but
life was very difficult. She was determined to provide Salmon with
a good education, because she felt he was the smartest of all of her
children. As time went on, she found it harder and harder to feed and
educate her children, until finally she asked her brother-in-law
Bishop Philander Chase if he would educate Salmon and provide him
with food and board in exchange for his labor. Philander acquiesced,
and at age twelve, Salmon was sent to frontier Ohio to live with his
Uncle. This was a very difficult time in Uncle Philander's life as
well, and Salmon spent an unhappy year and a half with Uncle
Philander before he returned home to New Hampshire.
On his way home, Salmon couldn't help
but notice that his home state was going through hard times. The
economic downturn that had helped to cause Ithamar's downfall was
still being felt throughout New Hampshire, and more and more families
were leaving Northern New England to go west. In every town he passed
through, Salmon saw abandoned homes, farms and mills.
When he arrived home, his mother and
sisters greeted him with happy surprise and open arms. Life for them
was more difficult than ever because his mother had become almost
totally blind. Even so, she was still determined that her son would
continue his education. Through family connections, Salmon was given
an opportunity to teach school in a nearby town. Salmon had spent
most of his education in private tutoring or in boarding schools. He
had no idea how to run a multi-age classroom of both boys and girls.
Many of the students were older than he was, and he had very little
patience with them. The only ways of discipline he had learned were
the harsh methods he had experienced while he lived with Uncle
Philander. He certainly had never learned that praise or
encouragement would yield better results or less misery. As a result,
he used so much corporal punishment that the parents complained and
the school board fired him.
Once again, Salmon landed at home on
his mother's doorstep. This time, she sent him to live with his
favorite aunt, Rachel Denison, in South Royalton. At Aunt Rachel's,
at last, he enjoyed being part of a functional, loving family. While
he lived with the Denison's he studied at Royalton Academy under
Nathaniel Sprague. This was a final push of studying to prepare him
to apply to Dartmouth College in 1824.
All of his mother's efforts came to
fruition while Salmon was at Dartmouth. He excelled academically and
was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He had some good friends, and in fact,
one friendship was almost his undoing. In his biography of Salmon,
author John Niven tells the story. When one of his friends was
suspended, Salmon requested and was granted a meeting with the
President of the college, in order to argue his friend's innocence.
When the President of the college told Salmon that the college was a
better judge of a student's guilt or innocence than another student,
Salmon told him that he would have to leave college, if that was the
college's stance on the matter. The President asked him if he had
talked it over with his mother, and Salmon said he had not, and
requested leave to visit her to discuss the situation. The President
refused to grant him the leave, and Salmon said he would go anyway,
and then left. His mother was not very happy with him when he
arrived on her doorstep yet again. Niven neglects to tell us how
Salmon mended the fences between himself and the President of the
college, but he was readmitted and graduated with excellent grades.
After he graduated, Salmon decided
that he would seek his fortune in Washington, DC. He traveled to the
nation's capital, and sought a clerkship from his Uncle Dudley. This
is the Uncle Dudley who had raised so many other Chase cousins,
including Uncle Philander's own sons. Uncle Dudley gave Salmon a cool
reception, however, offering him the price of a spade and the advice
to earn a living by using it. Uncle Dudley said that he had procured
a clerkship for another nephew, and the clerkship proved “the boy's
undoing and he vowed he would never do this for a relative again.”
Salmon left his uncle and years later, thought back and decided that
this was the best thing his uncle could have done for him, because if
he had gotten that clerkship, he might have remained a clerk for his
whole life.
Salmon finally got a job teaching
again, this time more successfully than the first. When saved enough
money, he went to Cincinnati where he became a lawyer. As a lawyer,
he became interested in politics when he argued a few legal cases
regarding the rights of free Negroes. He was a leader in
the
anti-slavery movement as Governor of Ohio and as a Senator from Ohio.
During Abraham Lincoln's Presidency, he was the Secretary of the
Treasury. While he was the Treasure Secretary, he created a national
banking system. Under Salmon Chase, the government first issued paper
money, called “greenbacks”. Prior to the Civil War, the
government only issued gold and silver coins. The first 1$ bill had
Salmon's picture of it. One of these dollar bills can be found on
Ebay for sale for $1,150. Salmon's portrait is also on the highest denomination of American money, the $10,000 bill,
no longer in circulation.
In 1864, Salmon resigned as Treasury
Secretary and became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He served as
Chief Justice until his death in 1873. One of his first duties in
this role was when he admitted the first African American attorney
who argued a case before the Supreme Court. Salmon also presided over
the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, the Vice President who succeeded
President Lincoln after Lincoln was assassinated.
The Chase National Bank , founded four
years after Salmon's death, in 1877, was named after Salmon,
memorializing his creation of American paper money. This bank became
Chase Manhattan Bank in 1955 and JPMorgan Chase in 2000.
Although the rest of the Chases may
have looked down on his father and his family, Salmon rose to a
pinnacle of success that surpassed even his illustrious relatives.
Although he was successful in the national political, legal and
financial world, Salmon was not really happy in his personal life. He
had few close friends, although the few friends he did have meant a
great deal to him throughout his life. He was never satisfied with
what he had accomplished, and spent most of his life trying to
maneuver his way to the presidency. His difficult childhood,
especially the time he spent with Uncle Philander, taught him never
to let his guard down and never to relax. He lost three wives at an
early age, continuing the sadness he learned at an early age when he
lost his father.
Chase had two daughters, Kate and
Nettie. Both grew up in boarding schools. As a young woman, Kate
played the role of Washington hostess for her father, reveling in the
socialite whirl of the nation's capital. She married Rhode Island
Senator William Sprague, who was a millionaire, but also an alcoholic
and not particularly a nice person. Then again, Kate was not known
for her sweet innocence, herself. Nettie married William Sprague
Hoyt, a wealthy banker and cousin of Kate's husband. Nettie was much
more shy and less ambitious than her sister. Apparently Nettie and
her husband had a happy marriage.
Two of Salmon's brothers, William and
Alexander, were unable to support their families, and were both
alcoholics. His sister Hannah married John Whipple. Abigail married
Dr. Isaac Colby, and died at age 38 after having lost three infant
children. Dudley died at age 20 in Kentucky. Janette seems not to
have married and died in Ohio at age 55. Janette married Josiah
Skinner, had four children, and died at age 55 in Ohio. Alice, one of
Salmon's favorite sisters, never married and died in Cincinnati when
she was in her early fifties. She helped take care of the girls after
Salmon's wives died. Edward married Mary Eliza Metcalf. He also died
in his early fifties, in Niagara, New York, and apparently did not
have children. Salmon's favorite sister, Helen, married Reverend
Henry Wallbridge, at the same time Salmon married his second wife,
Eliza, in a double wedding. Helen also died in her early fifties, but
did have children.
You would think that the other Chases
would have made a huge big deal out of their relation to Salmon.
There are plenty of places on the internet that mention that Dudley
Chase Jr, or Philander Chase are uncles of Secretary of the Treasure
Salmon Chase, but the Chases themselves constantly mention Bishop
Philander and pretty much snub Salmon. Even Philander himself, and
his granddaughter Laura Chase Smith, fail to mention their connection
to Salmon, even though Philander raised (using that term loosely)
Salmon for a while. Laura's book was published in the early 1900's,
giving her plenty of time to get used to the idea of having another
famous relative. If anything, you would have thought that she would
have given her grandfather some of the credit for having raised
Salmon. Maybe Salmon himself gave Philander a bit of bad press and
the family took that badly.
There are many biographies of Salmon.
The biography I took most of my information from is John Niven's
“Samuel Chase”.
Very late in the process of writing this post, I came across a better
one, actually a children's story, that is quite enjoyable to read and
contains a lot of personal information, written by a friend of
Salmon's. This book portrays Philander in a very unfavorable light,
and was written quite early on. This could be the reason the Chases
were so standoffish regarding Salmon. The book is called “The Ferry
Boy and the Financier” written by John Trowbridge in 1864. I highly
recommend this book for the story of Salmon's life as a childhood and
young adult.
This ends the story of the Chases of
Cornish, New Hampshire. Most of the Chases that moved to Bethel ended
up leaving Vermont for the West. Not many of the Chase family stayed
in the Upper Valley, although every time I see the last name “Chase”,
I wonder about their connection to the Chases of Cornish.
