CAMP, DAVID NELSON, of New Britain, educator, banker, and author, was born October 3rd, 1820, in Durham, Middlesex County, on the farm of his father, Elah Camp, who was a teacher, farmer, justice of the peace, and deacon of the Congregational church. His ancestor, Nicholas Camp, came over from England in 1638, and the following year settled in Milford. On his mother’s side he is a descendant of Theophilus Eaton, the first governor of the New Haven Colony.

Brought up as a country boy, David Camp worked on his father's farm, and later was entrusted with the keeping of the accounts of expenditures and sales. He grew up under the watchful care of his mother, whose influence upon his moral and spiritual life was especially strong. She wished him to become a missionary, but ill health prevented his preparation for this calling. As a boy his chief pleasures were reading, fishing, and hunting. While working on the farm, he received private instruction, and, later, attended in turn Durham Academy, Meriden Academy, and the Hartford Grammar School. An illness, which left him nearly blind, prevented him from taking a college course; but in 1853 he was awarded the honorary' degree of Master of Arts by Yale University

Unable to become a missionary, Mr. Camp adopted teaching as a profession, and for forty years he remained an educator. For ten years he taught in the public schools in North Guilford, Branford, North Branford, and Meriden, and then in the Meriden Institute. When, in 1850, the State Normal School was established, he was appointed teacher of mathematics, moral philosophy, and geography. He was appointed associate principal in 1855, and in 1857 became its principal. Ill health forced him to resign after several years, and he went to Europe to visit educational institutions. While there he was appointed professor in the Maryland State College, which was just being reopened after the Civil War. Upon the establishment of the Bureau of Education at Washington, Mr. Camp was asked to enter its service with Dr. Henry Barnard, commissioner, which he did. In 1868 his father died and he returned to Connecticut, where he engaged in literary work for some years. Among the books he has written are "The Globe Manual," "Primary," "Intermediate," and "Higher" Geographies, "American Year Book and National Register," and the "History of New Britain, Farmington, and Berlin." He took up teaching again in the New Britain Seminary, but failing health compelled him to discontinue it in 1880. Since then he has been engaged in literary work and active business. He is president of the Adkins Printing Company, president of the Skinner Chuck Company, director and vice-president of the New Britain National Bank, and director of the Cooperative Savings Society.

In the political world Mr. Camp has been an active Republican, holding in turn the office of state superintendent of schools, alderman, mayor, member of the General Assembly, and chairman of the committee on education. For ten years he was president of the Connecticut Temperance Union, and for twenty-five years he has been auditor and chairman of the finance committee of the Missionary Society of Connecticut, and since 1900 its president. As an educator, he has held the office of secretary and president of the Connecticut Teachers' Association, and secretary of the National Educational Association, and for several years was president and is now vice-president of the New Britain Institute, and has been chairman of its library committee for fifty years.

In 1844 David N. Camp married Sarah Adaline Howd. He became the father of two children, one of whom is still living. In his own words, Mr. Camp's philosophy of life is: "Abstain from all intoxicants, have faith in God and man, and live to make others happy and the world better." His long career shows that he has followed these teachings. He has always been an advocate of temperance, and, as president of the Connecticut Temperance Society, he has for years done much to aid its cause. Unable to be a missionary, he has been active and helpful in church work and in the State Missionary Society. Forty years of his life have been spent in imparting knowledge to others, and this was in spite of the fact that his delicate health suffered in consequence. His name is found on the rolls of a dozen or more societies or organizations which have for their object something which tends toward the betterment of humanity. In his long life he has done much to win the respect and the gratitude of all those with whom he has come in contact.  Men of Mark Index

CHENEY, COL. LOUIS RICHMOND, treasurer of the Austin Organ Company, silk manufacturer, real estate man, and a military man of high rank, was born in the village so closely identified with his family—South Manchester, Hartford County, Connecticut, April 27th, 1859. His parents were George Wells Cheney and Harriet Kingsbury Richmond Cheney. His father was connected with the well known firm of Cheney Brothers, extensive manufacturers of silk goods, and was a man of activity and prominence in his town. He was justice of peace and chairman of the town committee and a most benevolent and useful citizen. Going farther back in the study of Colonel Cheney's ancestry we find such distinguished names as those of Elder Brewster, John Alden, Governor Thomas Prince, Governor Haines, and Governor Wyllis, names as prominent as the Cheneys are in the industrial life of the present day.

Louis R. Cheney was brought up in the "ideal manufacturing town" of South Manchester, in an atmosphere of progress and industry that could not fail to engender ambition in a healthy, active boy like himself. He was chiefly interested in mechanics and horses and in reading the standard works of the time. Though it was not necessary for him to go to work until he had secured a good education he was taught to be useful and had certain duties to perform daily. He attended the private and public schools of his native town and then took the course at the Hartford Public High School, graduating in 1879. He then entered the family mills in South Manchester to learn the business of silk manufacturing. After three years in the home mills, he spent seven years in the Cheney factory in Hartford as superintendent and four years at the store in New York, during which period he had charge of the Philadelphia branch of the business from 1889 to 1893, when he returned to Hartford, which he has since made his home and the center of his chief business interests. Colonel Cheney, for such has been his rank in military service, was assistant quarter-master general of Connecticut in 1895 and 1896 on Governor Coffin's staff and, in 1898, was unanimously-elected commandant of the First Company Governor's Foot Guard, serving until 1903, when he went on the retired list on account of increasing business demands. He is a member of the Military Order of Foreign Wars, of the Society of Colonial Wars, and of the Sons of the American Revolution. He also belongs to many other societies besides these military and patriotic orders, and the enumeration of these social ties is a further proof of the breadth of his interests. He is a member and former president of the Hartford Club, a member and ex-secretary of the Republican Club of Hartford, a member of the Hartford Golf Club and the Farmington Country Club, of the Players Club of New York and the Princess Anne Club of Virginia. He is a trustee of the American School for the Deaf, a member of the executive committee of the Hartford Hospital, and a director of the Connecticut River Banking Company. He was an alderman of Hartford for two years and a member of the Board of Common Council for five years. He is also a member of the National Geographic Society and of the National Civil Service Reform League.

Mary A. Robinson, whom Colonel Cheney married on April 16th, 1890, is a great-great-granddaughter of Governor Trumbull. One child, a daughter, has been born of this marriage. Their home is at 40 Woodland Street, Hartford.

The words of a man who has earned so many high places and filled them with such marked capability should have great weight with those seeking a practical precept for their own course in life. Colonel Cheney says, "Be ambitious, industrious, and persistent and don't let the word 'failure' be known."  Men of Mark Index

CLARK, CHARLES HOPKINS --PERSONAL accomplishment is one measure of a man's life. The influencing of others to achievement is another, hardly secondary, and if in fact less appreciated it is because it is not always furnished by those influenced and is of itself more difficult of apprehension by the world at large. Both measures are invited by the life of Charles Hopkins Clark of Hartford. And one is as readily applied by the reviewer as the other, since the result of his endeavor with and through others is as clear to the public mind as is his one "life work," the editorship of the Hartford Courant. An editor of such a journal, through a considerable period of years, he naturally would have great influence in a wide circle of most intelligent readers; that is the function of every worthy editor, and that—the public has often learned—is what Mr. Clark prizes above all other honors. But there is another source and method of his influence, as of his achievement, and that is to be found in the versatility of his genius, his quick grasp of a situation in its entirety, his power of forecasting, his frankness and keenness as an adviser. The question put, the answer comes like a flash, sometimes convulsing one with its wit, but always unerringly straight to the point.

Men of such mold cannot be in constant agreement with all their fellows, nor yet at all times with the majority of those with whom they may most like to agree. But they conduct their contests in the open, and it is when both sides or all sides are contesting in the open, in politics, that such men become party counselors and leaders. They are the men who stand for action as against dark-room plotting, for having the public see everything that is done and how it is done, and then doing it, accepting all responsibility in their consciousness of above-board purpose.

If there is such a thing as the "old New England conscience," so often mentioned in literature, Mr. Clark should have it by inheritance, for his ancestors include Elder William Brewster, Benjamin Payne, Matthew Grant, John Hopkins, Nathaniel Whiting, John Dwight, John Bronson, William Clarke, John Strong, and Joseph Parsons. It is hardly necessary to mention the deeds of these builders of New England and American history; aside from their achievements it is to be noted that each was an exemplar of those sturdy qualities—"old New England conscience" or what you will—which so materially have advanced the nation and the race.

Mr. Clark's father was the Hon. Ezra Clark who, as president of the Board of Water Commissioners, did much toward establishing Hartford's splendid system of water supply, and who also served the First Connecticut District most acceptably as its representative in Congress. He was a merchant and a manufacturer. His wife was Mary Hopkins. The son, Charles Hopkins Clark, was born in Hartford, April 1st, 1848.

Nearly all Hartford youths preparing for college go to the Hartford Public High School; it was particularly fitting that Mr. Clark should receive the benefits of this institution, which was founded almost simultaneously with the founding of the town and in which his forbears had had a deep interest. Entering Yale in 1867, he found the companionship of men who were destined to take high place in the world's affairs; he formed acquaintances which have grown more precious as the years go by, and the faith his college mates had in him has been amply confirmed. He was a member of the senior society of Skull and Bones.

With the degree of M.A., in 1871, he began work at once on the staff of the Hartford Courant, the oldest newspaper of continuous existence in America. Charles Dudley Warner and Senator Joseph E. Hawley were part owners of the paper. After he had demonstrated his ability on the various "desks," he was made editor-in-chief and to-day is president of the Hartford Courant Company, General Arthur L. Goodrich and Frank E. Carey being associated with him in the business management. The story of the Courant in these later days has been the story of his life. Stalwart in its Republicanism, it is a journal rather than an organ and never hesitates to express its views frankly. Much of its power lies in the fact that these views are also the views, at once or ultimately, of that clientele of sturdy families in which the Courant has been held as next to the family Bible through generation after generation.

Prominent in the counsels of his party and throwing himself with all his inexhaustible energy into whatever he believes makes for the public good, city, state, or national, he has clung closely to his ideal of an editor—one who should stand for the people in his paper, but not in public offices. It was only by the persuasion of many that he could be prevailed upon to accept the non-partisan position of delegate to the Connecticut Constitutional Convention in 1901. Previous to that, his business acumen had been requisitioned by the State when the Tax Commission made its exhaustive investigation and published its valuable report. In private life, also, this acumen has been in demand as is evidenced by his directorship in the Collins Company, a most successful manufacturing concern with name known around the world, and in the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, one of the country's best institutions. In addition he is called upon to serve as treasurer of the Wadsworth Atheneum and Hartford Public Library and as vice-president of the American School for the Deaf at Hartford, and his advice is sought also in the management of other organizations which do much to promote the welfare of his community. During his extensive travels, including the expedition to the Philippines with Secretary Taft's party in 1905, his letters have furnished information in delightful form, and he often is called upon to give others the benefit of the material he has accumulated.

Mr. Clark's first wife was Ellen Root, whom he married in 1873. After her death, he married Matilda C. Root in 1899, and their residence is at 160 Garden Street. His son, Horace Bushnell Clark, also a graduate of Yale and on the Courant staff, and his daughter, Mary Hopkins Clark, live with them.

Reference has been made to the valuable influence Mr. Clark has exerted upon others. This must include also his influence upon young men trying to get a start in life, the assistance he has rendered without his left hand knowing it, and the wise counsel he has imparted.

In social life, no one more than he enjoys mingling with the "college boys," the business crowd," the "professional men"—all people who, like him, are keenly awake to the best the hour should furnish. He is a member of the University, Century, and Yale Clubs of New York, of the Hartford Club and of the Country Club of Farmington. A member of the Congregational Church, he attends the South Church, or, as it is familiarly called, "the Rev. Dr. E. P. Parker's Church."  Men of Mark Index

CLARK, WILLIAM BRADDOCK, president of the Etna (Fire) Insurance Company, is a man who stands well up in the front ranks of the workers in this country whose lives are an impelling force of good to others. His constant watchword through life has been "get to the head," and through his own individual efforts he stands to-day foremost in the profession with which he has been identified for nearly a half century.

Mr. Clark was born in Hartford, Connecticut, June 29th, 1841, He was the son of Abel N. Clark and Emily I. (Braddock) Clark. The family, several generations back, is of fine old English stock, but since the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620 it has been connected with the making and preservation of the institutions of this country. Late in the year 1635 John Clark, the first of the name in America, removed from his temporary home in Cambridge, Massachusetts (formerly Newton), to Hartford, in company with other settlers of the State. His name appears on the monument to Hartford's fathers which stands in the historic old Center burying ground. Through Matthew, John, and Abel Clark the family descended to Revolutionary times. Abel Clark was one of the signers of the famous document of September 3rd, 1775, agreeing to go to the relief of the besieged inhabitants of Boston. Another ancestor, his paternal grandfather, served in the War of 1812.

Mr. Clark's father, Abel N. Clark, was for many years editor and proprietor of the Hartford Courant, and was recognized as a man of great industry, intelligence, and fidelity, and his comparatively premature death was a keen loss, not only to his family, but to the State and city. The son, William B., inherited many of the estimable traits of the father and, being an indefatigable worker and organizer, he has more than doubled his ten talents.

His early education was acquired at the old North School in Hartford. This was supplemented by a year at the New Britain High School and a course at Gallup's "College Green" school in Trinity Street. As a boy Mr. Clark had rather a marked taste for mechanics, but as he lived in a literary, rather than a mechanical, atmosphere these tastes were never materially developed, and when he left school it was to enter his father's newspaper office. Showing no especial aptitude for this business, he decided, after a year's trial, that his father's profession need not necessarily become his own, and he severed his connection with the Courant. Mr. Clark then accepted a position in the office of the Phoenix Insurance Company, of Hartford, and entered on a business career, which has always gone steadily onward and upward. Here he continued in a subordinate position for six years. At the end of that time his unflagging interest and zeal for his work were recognized and he was elected to the secretary ship of the company, a high honor for a man in his twenty-third year. A little later, having been tendered the office of assistant secretary of the Etna Insurance Company, he left the Phoenix to enter a larger field of activity. He soon made himself a power in the new company by his splendid work, unfailing good nature, and courteous manners. In 1888, Mr. Clark was chosen by unanimous vote to fill the position of vice-president. His thirty years of training in all branches of the work was soon felt, and the fortunes of the company took an immediate leap forward. It was only a matter of time when a career so sparked by high ability, integrity, and judgment would be given the crowning honor. This came in 1892, on his unanimous election to the office of president of the Etna Insurance Company, oddly enough on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his connection with the company. Mr. Clark's course as president of this great organization is well known. He is extremely popular with the large number of agents which the company has in nearly every state in the Union, and his success, coming as it has from continual application to the details of his business and a resolution to let each promotion be only the means to gain another, has been of real encouragement and inspiration to them. While Mr. Clark is next to the youngest president among those of the various Hartford companies, he is the oldest fire underwriter in point of years of service in Hartford. He is now in his forty-ninth year of active work in the insurance business.

He married Caroline H. Robbins, daughter of Philemon E. Bobbins of Hartford, in May, 1863, who died in June, 1902. Five children were born to them, two sons and three daughters, but only the daughters have survived. Mr. Clark has traveled extensively in this country, but his tastes are domestic, he is essentially a home body, and the pleasures of his family circle have always been paramount to those of club life. He has a fine library in his beautiful home on Farmington Avenue, and is a close student of affairs of the day.

He is an active member of the Connecticut Historical Society and of the New England Society; a director of the Travelers Insurance Company, the City Bank, the First National Bank, the Fidelity Company, and several other organizations of the kind. He is a trustee of the Society for Savings, the Mechanics Savings Bank, and of the Holland Trust Company of New York City; he is one of the corporation of the Hartford Hospital and a trustee of the Retreat for the Insane. He was president of the National Board of Fire Underwriters for 1896 and 1897, but declined reelection after most urgent requests to serve again.

Mr. Clark served as an alderman from the old third ward from 1880 to 1882, and was chairman of the ordinance and printing committees. In 1882 he was appointed one of the board of water commissioners and served there for nine years, being re-appointed for two terms. In 1890 he was one of the famous committee on Outdoor Alms which brought about important reforms in city affairs.

With the same interest which he manifests in everything he undertakes Mr. Clark has gone into politics. He is a staunch Republican and a member of the Republican Club of Hartford. He was a member of the noted "Wide Awakes" and took an active interest in the doings of the organization in 1861, just before he attained his majority. He is treasurer of the civil organization of the "Wide Awakes" and paymaster on Major Rathbun's staff. He was one of the presidents and vice-presidents of the Veteran Corps of the Governor's Foot Guard, in which command his father was also much interested.

Mr. Clark is connected with the First Baptist Church, being a working member of the same, and is a generous supporter of all its benevolent and charitable works.

His recreation is taken out of doors, gaining the muscle power necessary for work in these times of competition. He is an enthusiastic oarsman and has been interested in rowing for many years, serving as one of the fleet captains of the old Hartford navy before the war. Most of his vacation hours are spent in this sport in his summer home near Fenwick.

Through his whole life William Braddock Clark has been dominated by the resolution to achieve success through work. All that he has gained has been by honesty to himself and his employer. He is rounding out his life in a manner that should be a working example to every young man. Beginning at the lowest rung of the ladder he has gained the topmost, testing and being tested. Probably if his life were to be lived over again there would be found few things which could have been done more painstakingly or with more thought as to consequences. A man of real worth to community and country is Mr. Clark, the character of man who has vindicated the spirit of the handful of men from whom he came, who blazed the trail through the wilderness and opened up the promised land for us. He is essentially an American gentleman in all that the term implies.

On August 30th, 1905, Mr. Clark married Mrs. Rachel W. Ewing, at New Hartford, Connecticut.  Men of Mark Index

CUTLER, RALPH WILLIAM, president of the Hartford Trust Company and one of the most able and prominent bankers in Connecticut, was born in Newton, Massachusetts, February 21st, 1853, of a long line of distinguished ancestors, the first of whom to settle in America was James Cutler, who came from England to Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1634. James Cutler was assigned twenty-eight acres of land in the "First Great Divide" and later moved to Lexington, where the cellar of his house is still to be seen. His son, James Cutler (second), served in King Philip's War and was the father of Thomas Cutler, who purchased in 1750 in Warren, Massachusetts, a farm of three hundred acres, which is in the family today. Deacon Thomas Cutler, son of Thomas Cutler, was prominent in the history of Warren, Massachusetts, and his son, Ebenezer Cutler, was a lieutenant in the Revolution, Eben Cutler, Mr. Ralph Cutler's father, was a jeweler in Boston and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1865-6. He was a man of marked integrity, energy, and thrift. Mr. Cutler's mother, whose maiden name was Caroline Elizabeth Holman, was a descendant of Ensign John Holman, one of the original settlers of Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630, who came from England in the ship "Mary and John" and afterwards served as selectman, and as ensign in the Pequot War. He was a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston. Mr. Cutler is also able to trace his ancestry to Governor George Wyllys, Governor William Pynchon, Major William Whiting, Captain Daniel Clark, and the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, a pioneer settler of Ohio and the Western Reserve.

Ralph Cutler's boyhood was spent in the city of Boston and he received his education at the English High School, where he was graduated at the age of sixteen as a "Franklin Medal scholar." He was strong and athletic and was brought up on the principle that what was worth doing at all was worth doing well and he believes that his parents' confidence in his ability to succeed was the greatest inspiration of his life. He was as active mentally as he was physically and he has always enjoyed broad general reading as much as he has golf, tennis, rowing, and baseball, in which he has taken great interest and pleasure.

The first work which Mr. Cutler entered upon after leaving school was in the wholesale grocery business in Boston and his few years' experience in mercantile life was valuable for the knowledge of men and of business methods which he gained thereby. In 1880, when Mr. Cutler was twenty-seven years old, he came to Hartford to become treasurer of the Hartford Trust Company, thus entering upon the banking career which he has pursued ever since. In 1887 he was elected president of the company and became the youngest bank president in the State. He still holds this responsible position, for which his intimate knowledge of the details of banking, his clear judgment, and rare executive ability make him particularly well fitted.

In public affairs Mr. Cutler is as active and as prominent as he is in banking affairs. He is a Republican in political affiliations and in 1883-4 he was a member of the Court of Common Council. He was appointed fire commissioner in 1896 and served two terms of three years each. In 1905 he was appointed commissioner of the Board of Finance under the amended charter of the city of Hartford, and he has been treasurer of the Connecticut Humane Society since its organization in 1880. He is a member of the Society of Colonial Wars, was Gentleman of the Council at the organization of that society in 1893 and is now its treasurer. He is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, of the Twentieth Century Club, of the Hartford Club and of the Republican Club of Hartford. His religious views connect him with the Congregational Church.

On the sixth of January, 1880, Mr. Cutler was married to Grace Dennis, daughter of Rodney Dennis, a founder and former secretary of the Travelers Insurance Company. Three children, a son and two daughters, have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Cutler: Charlotte Elizabeth Cutler, born March 2nd, 1883, married November 22nd, 1905, to Joseph H. Woodward, Actuary of State of Connecticut; Ralph Dennis Cutler, born April 16th, 1885; Ruth Holman Cutler, born October 2nd, 1886.  Men of Mark Index

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