MITCHELL, ASAHEL W., prominent business and public man of North Woodbury, Litchfield County, Connecticut, former representative and State senator, and the holder of various town, county, and state offices, was born in Woodbury, Connecticut, October 16th, 1865. His parents were Asahel W. and Harriet Allen Mitchell. His father was a farmer and a prominent member of the Legislature for two terms.
According to Cothren's History of Ancient Woodbury and information in the possession of Minot Mitchell, Esq., of White Plains, New York, the Mitchells were originally from Scotland, but removed to Halifax, in Yorkshire, England, where they resided for three generations.
Mathew Mitchell, who is the ancestor of the family in this country, was born in 1590. He was a dissenter, and is represented to have been not only a very pious man but a man of considerable fortune. The dissenters from the Church of England being constantly persecuted and annoyed in their religious worship, he with many others of his persuasion determined to leave England; and on the twenty-third of May, 1635, they set sail from Bristol and arrived at Boston August 17th, the same year.
He and his family spent the winter at Charlestown and removed to Concord in the spring. The next summer he moved to Saybrook, Connecticut, and the following spring to Wethersfield. He died at Stamford, Connecticut, in 1645, at fifty-five years of age, leaving two sons, Rev. Jonathan and David.
Asahel W. Mitchell, the subject of this article, being of the ninth generation from Mathew, was brought up in the village of Woodbury and educated at the Parker Academy in his native town. His first business connections were with the Bradstreet Commercial Agency at New Haven, which he left to enter the office of the American Ring Company at Waterbury. In 1887 his health failed and he gave up his position in Waterbury and returned to Woodbury, where he has lived ever since and has been chiefly occupied in managing his father's affairs (since his death in 1888) and in the performance of public duties. He is superintendent of the Woodbury Water Company and is town clerk, having held the latter office since 1895. He has been justice of the peace for eleven years and in 1905 he was elected State comptroller. In 1897 he became State representative on the Republican ticket and during his term served on the Railroad Committee and acted as clerk of the county representatives' meeting. In 1899 he was elected State senator and during this term he was chairman of the committees on Education and Executive nominations and chairman of the county representatives' meeting. He has also been a town auditor for ten years.
Personally Mr. Mitchell is progressive and public-spirited, staunch in his political allegiance, which has always been with the Republican party, and in his religious belief, which connects him with the Congregational Church.
On the twenty-eighth day of May, 1901, he married Josephine M. Stanton, by whom he has had one child, Katharine Allen Mitchell. Men of Mark Index
POND, EDGAR LeROY, president of the Andrew Terry Company, of Terryville, Connecticut, manufacturers of malleable iron castings, was born in Plymouth, Connecticut, March 3rd, 1854. He is a descendant of Phineas Pond, who came from England to Branford, Connecticut, about 1735. Mr. Pond's father was Alexander Pond, a farmer, who served his townsmen as selectman and in other capacities and was known as a man of promptness in all his dealings. Mr. Pond's mother, whose maiden name was Lydia Gaylord, was a woman of forceful character and her influence was very strong on her son's moral and spiritual life.
Though he was a frail boy Edgar Pond spent an industrious boyhood, for he worked on the farm until he was fifteen years old and this labor implanted habits of industry. He attended the district school during its sessions and this was the extent of his education. The death of his mother had broken up the home and he availed himself of the first position open to him at the age of fifteen, which was a clerkship in the country store of W. H. Scott & Company in Terryville. He has been identified with the mercantile and manufacturing interests of Terryville ever since, and from his beginning at the bottom thirty-three years ago he has justly attained to the presidency of the Andrew Terry Company, which was started by the late Andrew Terry in 1847, and was the first malleable iron foundry in Connecticut. The company was incorporated about 1860. In 1886 Mr. Pond was chosen to represent his town in the State Legislature, and in 1901 he was elected State senator. He has held many local offices and has always been a consistent member of the Republican party. He is a member of the Congregational Church, of the Sons of the American Revolution, in which organization he is a member of the board of managers, and he has been state commander of the Order of the United American Mechanics. Fraternally he is a member of the order of F. and A. M., of the A. O. U. W., and 0. U. A. M. Golf is his favorite outdoor amusement.
On the sixth of November, 1878, Mr. Pond married Ella Antoinette Goodwin. Of the three children born to Mr. and Mrs. Pond two are now living, Edgar LeRoy Pond, Jr., born December 26th, 1883, a graduate of Yale in the class of 1904, now in Yale Law School, and Dwight Warren, born September 24th, 1889, now in high school. The family home is at Terryville.
Weighing his failures and successes in life, Mr. Pond says: "I have failed partly by lack of confidence in my own ability. I am sure that such success as I have had in life has been gained by carrying out to the best of my ability whatever responsibility was placed upon me, whether it was small or great. My advice to young men is, 'Whatever you attempt to do, do it.” Men of Mark Index
TAFT, HORACE DUTTON, educator and head master of the Taft School at Watertown, Litchfield County, Connecticut, was born in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, on December 28th, 1861. His earliest ancestor in this country was Robert Taft, who came from England and settled in Massachusetts about 1670. Mr. Taft's father, Alphonso Taft, a lawyer, was judge of the Superior Court in Cincinnati, Secretary of War, Attorney General, United States minister to Austria and to Russia. Mr. Taft's brother, William Howard Taft, former governor of the Philippine Islands, is now Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President Roosevelt.
Mr. Taft lived in Cincinnati until he was twenty-five years old. He prepared for college in the Woodward High School and then entered Yale College, where he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1883. He was a member of the Skull and Bones Society and of Psi Upsilon. After a year abroad he entered the Cincinnati Law School. He did not graduate, but was admitted to the bar before the end of his course. He practiced law for a year in partnership with his father, Alphonso Taft, and Henry N. Morris, under the firm name of Taft, Morris & Taft. In 1887, however, he abandoned the practice of the law and accepted an appointment as tutor in Latin in Yale University, his purpose being to enter upon educational work and eventually to establish a school. He held the tutorship for three years and in 1890 established a school at Pelham Manor, New York. In 1893 he moved the school to Watertown, Connecticut, where it now is. The school has prospered and has now more than a hundred pupils and is ranked as among the half-dozen leading preparatory schools in the East.
Though Mr. Taft was a Cleveland Democrat, he Joined the Republican party when Bryan came to the front. On the 29th of June, 1892, Mr. Taft married Winifred S. Thompson, of Niagara Falls, New York. Mr. Taft is a man of strong individuality and especially fitted by temperament and in disposition to develop and inspire the young schoolboy. Men of Mark Index
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