Childhood of Salmon Chase

I can't leave the Chase family without writing about Salmon Chase. It is his house out in Cornish that has the historical marker in front and is known as the “Chase House”. Salmon Chase was an Ohio governor, US Senator from Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury under Abraham Lincoln, and the Chief Justice of the United States from 1864 until his death in 1873. In terms of the house, it really has little historical significance. Salmon Chase was born there in 1808, but his family left Cornish when he was quite young. However, it is the only residence still in existence that has any association with Salmon Chase.

Salmon Chase was Dudley and Alyce Chase's grandson. Their second child, Ithamar, was his father. Ithamar married Janette Ralston of Keene. In the History of Keene, Simon Goodell Griffin describes the Ralston family as one of Keene's wealthier families. Mrs Ralston, also named Janette, came from a wealthy family in Scotland. She married her husband, not from a wealthy family, at age 18 against her family's wishes. They came to America in 1773 and to Keene in 1775 “with a stocking full of gold”. They owned a tavern, several farms, and a distillery. They were the largest taxpayers in town for many years, and Ralston Street in Keene is named after them. Janet's sister also married a Chase, Jonathan Jr, General Jonathan Chase's son.

Although it's probably not accurate to say that Ithamar was the black sheep of Dudley and Alyce's children, in a family of very high achievers, he definitely was not one. John Niven, the author of an autobiography of Salmon Chase states, “Chase's father, Ithamar, seems to have been a less driven person than his brothers.” Ithamar did not go to Dartmouth like his brothers, but was content to stay and farm in Cornish. His farm was productive enough to feed his family of eleven children and produce enough surplus to pay for the building of a large and stately house. Although the house was quite impressively large, it may not have been as cozy and comfortable as some of his sisters' more modest houses in Bethel. Niven states in his book that the house was drafty and heated only by one inefficient fireplace, which was used for cooking along with a dutch oven and a bake kettle. The family had enough to eat, but all of the children had to help on the farm as soon as they were old enough, and life was difficult.

It looked like Ithamar would be the one Chase son to stay in Cornish and farm, but in 1815, Ithamar heard that glass making was becoming a profitable new enterprise. Because of the war with Britain, Americans were unable to import glass from the English, and were establishing their own glassmaking businesses to make American glass. He sold his land and house in Cornish and moved to Keene to join two other men who were starting a business in glassmaking there. As soon as he had moved to Keene and the family was settled into a house his father-in-law owned, the second war with Britain ended and cheap glass again flooded the American market. To make matters worse, the next year saw a severe worldwide weather disruption caused by a volcano eruption in Indonesia. In northern North America, it snowed every month, even in the summer months. Crops everywhere failed. (The year without a summer also affected Simeon Ide – see my blog entry for December 9, 2012: http://connecticutrivervalley.blogspot.com/2012/12/simeon-finds-true-love.html ) The crop failures triggered a serious economic downturn. People in New England could barely afford the basics of life, and certainly had no money for luxuries like American made glass.

The business Ithamar had so recently joined went bankrupt. He had invested the money from the sale of the Cornish farm, and also had lost some property Mr. Ralston had deeded to him and Janet when they were married. This kind of thing did not happen in the Chase family. Ithamar was devastated, financially, and spiritually. In August of 1817, he had a massive stroke and died at age 53, leaving Janette a widow at age 42 and responsible for the support of eight children. Salmon was 9 years old.

Photo from Wikipedia taken by Jerrye and Roy Klotz, MD