Salmon and Uncle Philander

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.