- HON. ALLEN P. LOVEJOY. The family of LOVEJOY has played no
unimportant part in
- making and modeling American history, and the eminent citizen
of Janesville above named is not one of its least distinguished
members. It is of English Puritan origin, and its members have
been for generations noted for that courage, love of liberty
and loyalty to conviction which made their pilgrim ancestors
bid adieu to their native shore, to found a new country on the
rock-bound coast and among the cloud-scraped hills of New England.
Elijah P. and Owen LOVEJOY, whose names are "familiar as
household words" in every home where human slavery is held
in detestation and abhorrence, were of the same stock as is Allen
P., and were educated in the same schools in the Pine Tree State.
- The earliest American progenitor of that branch of the LOVEJOYs
to which the Janesville family
- belongs was one John LOVEJOY, who came from England to the
New World about 1630, and was one of the earliest freeholders
in the Massachusetts Colony. His descendant, Hezekiah LOVEJOY,
removed to New Hampshire, and it was in that State that both
the father and grandfather of Allen P. LOVEJOY were born. The
grandfather, John LOVEJOY, was a farmer, was born in Amherst,
N.H., and reached the age of fourscore years. He was the father
of nine children, and his family were noted no less for longevity
than for industry and integrity, all the sons and daughters attaining
a ripe old age. John LOVEJOY married Martha ODELL, daughter of
William ODELL; she died in 1850, aged ninety-five years.
- Allen WING, our subject's maternal grandfather, born in Sandwich,
Mass., migrated to Maine in
- 1781, and died when eighty-three years of age. His English
progenitors emigrated from the mother country about 1636, and
settled near the site of the present city of Lynn, Mass. Mr.
WING was a man of considerable wealth, and a large land holder,
owning several farms and two sawmills. He was a man of public
spirit, a liberal friend of the church, and built a church which
he donated to the town.
- Nathan LOVEJOY, father of Allen P., was born in New Hampshire,
but removed to Maine while
- yet a young man, and it was there that he met and married
Temperance WING, daughter of Allen WING. He was a Restorationist
in religious faith, and she a Universalist, yet their differences
in creed did not disturb the harmony of their married life. He
passed away in 1867, at the age of eighty-one, four years after
she had entered into rest, in her seventy-sixth year. He led
the life of a farmer. His many virtues caused him to be held
in high esteem. His disposition was naturally retiring, almost
shrinking, yet at the solicitation of his fellow townsmen he
consented to fill various local offices, bring to the discharge
of these distasteful duties a quick intelligence, ready perception
and unswerving fidelity. Of his ten children - six sons and four
daughters - four are yet living: Nancy W., wife of John HUNT,
of Auburn, Maine; Nathan E., a resident of Columbus, Ohio; Allen
P., of Janesville; and Alden W., whose home is at Roxbury, Mass.,
a suburb of Boston.
- Allen P. LOVEJOY grew up on the paternal farm in Wayne, Maine,
where he was born March
- 20, 1825. His attendance at the district school was supplemented
by a brief course in the Wesleyan Seminary at Readfield. Being
naturally inclined to study, he proved himself an apt pupil,
easily outstripping his schoolmates in mathematics, for the mastery
of which he manifested a rare intuitive ability. For eight terms
he wielded the birch in country schools, his native ability,
sound mental equipment and inborn executive ability commanding
respect from parents and pupils alike. He learned the trade of
carpenter, but found little opportunity in his native State for
the exercise of his craft. Accordingly, before he had reached
the age of twenty-five, he resolved to seek a wider field, in
what was then rather indefinitely described as the "far
West." In 1850 he reached Wisconsin, arriving at Janesville
on foot, after a long walk from Milwaukee. He found work at his
trade, and it was not long before his mechanical skill, joined
to those qualities of thrift and perseverance which have characterized
him through life, enabled him to start in business for himself
as a contractor and builder. In 1859 he undertook a new venture,
opening in that year his first lumberyard. The issue of the undertaking
proved his business prescience, others being established in 1863,
1865, 1870 and 1874, and branches operated at Oregon, Brooklyn
and other points. In 1868, in company with Daniel W. BRADLEY,
Mr. LOVEJOY purchased several thousand acres of pine lands in
Michigan, in 1871 several thousand more, and later an addition
of many thousand acres, for the proper handling of the yields
of which our subject has been largely interested in three sawmills,
while he also owns a number of lumberyards. He is also interested
in other commercial enterprises, some of which are of considerable
magnitude. Among these is the Janesville Machining Co. (formerly
known as the HARRIS works), of which he has been president for
a quarter of a century. The concern has a working capital of
half a million dollars, employs 240 men, and conducts, in addition
to a foundry and general machine shop, a large, well-equipped
plant for the manufacture of agricultural implements. Mr. LOVEJOY
is also a stockholder in the Janesville Cotton Mill Co., and
has extensive holdings of real property in that city, as well
as in other localities in his adopted State, being one of the
heaviest tax-payers in Rock county.
- Mr. LOVEJOY's intellect is keen and farsighted, and his business
judgment rarely at fault. His
- habits are methodical and systematic, and his conclusions
are usually reached through a course of logical reasoning for
which his native aptitude for mathematics, perhaps, well qualifies
him. Facts and figures appeal to him quickly, while for theoretical
inferences he has little regard. Yet, practical man of affairs
as he is, his nature is gentle, genial and generous. Liberal
in his benefactions, he is charitable also to the frailties of
his fellows; and, while he has been wholly the architect of his
own fortune, he is entirely devoid of that imperative, self-assertive
spirit which too often mars the character of the self-made man.
His physique is well proportioned, and is indicative of great
strength, even at the age of seventy-five years. His frame is
tall and muscular, yet possesses that supllences and alert activity
of motion which come to men of his years only after a life of
abstemiousness. He is a Knight Templar Mason, and a member of
the Knights of Pythias. In his old home, in Maine, he was prominent
and influential in the councils of the Sons of Temperance. His
political creed is that of the Republican party, of which he
has been an active member since the date of its organization.
He has been repeatedly elected to offices of high trust and responsibility,
but in no position of either public or private life has he ever
been tried and found wanting. In 1869 he was a member of the
lower house of the Legislature, and served as State senator in
188789. In 1881 he was mayor of Janesville.
- On May 29, 1880, Mr. LOVEJOY was married to Miss Julia A.
STOW, a daughter of Henry
- and Susan (FOLLIETT) STOW. Four children have blessed their
marriage: Allen P., Henry S., Julia S., and Webster Ellis, of
whom the last named died in infancy. Mrs. LOVEJOY is a member
of the Baptist Church.
-
- Taken from "Commemorative Biographical Record of
the Counties of Rock, Green, Grant, Iowa and Lafayette Wisconsin"
(c)1901, pp. 36-38.
-
- Courtesy of Carol
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