Joseph Robinson Parrott of Oxford, Oxford Co, Maine Sprague's Journal of Maine History Vol. IV June, 1916 No. I pages 29-34 Joseph Robinson Parrott By Charles E. Waterman It is trite saying, that the best products of Maine are her men and women. Certain it is, they are to be found in every state of our Union, to say nothing of lands beyond d the seas, and many of them have won success in various walks of life. One of these, the subject of this sketch, Joseph Robinson Parrott, has had a prominent part in one of the greatest and most picturesque engineering feats of the age. In the western part of the state is an irregular parcel of land given to Alexander Shepard, Jr. of Newton, in early days when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was rich in land, but poor in purse, for making a map of the then District of Maine. It was called Shepardsfild Plantation. Mr. Shepard was, perhaps a better cartographer than colonizer, for he died insolvent. After his death quite a portion of the original grant was sold to Andrew Craigie, apothecary general of the Revolutionary War, whose home in Cambridge, the old Vassal house, is well known to tourists, as the headquarters of Washington during the siege of Boston, and later as the home of the poet Longfellow. He was an ambitious man and not only encouraged agriculture in his Maine domain but manufacturing. He dammed the outlet of Lake Thompson, put in grist and lumber mills, and had his dream of making woolen and cotton cloth. It is this connection that the subject of this sketch comes in. In 1792, Shepardfield Plantation was incorporated as the town of Hebron. In 1829, Hebron was divided, the western part becoming the town of Oxford. It was named in honor of the newly formed county in which it was situated, and which General David Learned, of Livermore, the first sheriff, christened after his old home in Massachusetts. Oxford contains the outlet of Lake Thompson and the village of Oxford, first known as Craigie's Mill, and where the woolen industry of the town is situated. Cloth-making began in Oxford as early as 1825, but was not in a prosperous condition continuously. Several of the mills burned and the personality of the firms operating them changed several times. About 1850, Joseph Robinson, a native of Hunslett, England, and expert dyer, took an interest in the business, and from that day to the present it prospered. Mr. Robinson had not only followed his trade in England before coming to America, but also in Germany. He had a large family of children, born in the several countries in which he had resided. It was his joke that he had Englishmen, Germans, and Americans in his family, to say nothing of one daughter who nationality he did not know, having been born on the high seas. His oldest daughter, Mary, married George J. Parrott, and overseer in his mills, and their eldest son Joseph, born October 30, 1858, is the subject of this sketch. Young Parrott's childhood was passed in the environment of a New England manufacturing village of half a century ago. He played about his grandfather's mill, and as a result of early investigation with machinery, carried one finger with the final phalange missing to the grave. He went to the village schools, The educational advantages were those of the "Little red schoolhouse" (It was a brick structure in Oxford). The curriculum consisted mostly of the three R's. Thoroughness was the prevailing note. Pupils could not help being thorough, for each term they began at the preface of their text-books and continued until the close of the term, the amount covered depending largely on the length of the term. There was no choice of subjects. It was the same thing over and over. Some excellent teachers occupied this little brick schoolhouse, and one of them was, perhaps, of greater assistance to rural schools in Maine, and to young Parrott, than any other man --Sidney Perham, one time governor of the state. The free high school law, whereby every little village can have its high school, was a pet scheme of his. Oxford was among the first towns to adopt the free high school system, and the first high school was opened in the fall of 1875. Mr. Parrott and the writer were among the students. The fathers and mothers of the town were some time in deciding what studies the new high school would teach. Some thought it was simply and extension of the common school system to which a pupil of any degree of proficiency might attend; and others that it should be devoted entirely to higher studies. Some thought it should be a fitting school for college, and others that its course of study should be wholly English. As there were but few pupils in town fitted to enter a high school of any sort, there was a compromise. Several classes of grammar grade were formed and those who desired to study anything higher were permitted to do so. It was several years before anything like regular courses of study were arranged or the terms of admission agreed upon. Teachers fitted for high school positions were not as numerous ten as now, and sometimes instructor outside the regular corps of teachers were employed for special studies. Dr. John Dearborn Holt was the first principal, and when the first class in Greek was formed, Rev. George A. Lockwood, pastor the Congregational Church in the village, was instructor. Dr. Holt, then a medical student, was an enthusiastic teacher, and greatly desired to send a class of boys from his school to college. Rev. Mr. Lockwood, was a scholarly man, a graduate of Yale University, and the influence of these two men inclined young Parrott toward a liberal education. Things did not run smoothly in the new school, however. Before establishment, it was decided to house it in a more pretentious building; but the choice of the site made trouble. There were several available lots, but each near resident preferred to have the building and its restless occupants somewhere else. The result was that the site finally chosen was seized in disregard to the wishes of the owner, Miss Frances Norton. It resulted in a law suit and victory for the owner. That broke up the school until the matter of school building could be adjusted. This interruption caused Parrott to continue his studies at Hebron Academy, at that time the natural school center for Oxford county. Later he went to Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, where he remained until he entered Yale University in 1881. Parrott attained a fair rank in college and took some part in athletics. He pulled an oar of the boat's crew in their annual regatta with Harvard on the Tames during this third year. Socially he was liked, and was a member of several college society at the university. It may be of interest to note that during the time he was at Yale, William H. Taft, future president of the United States, was a student, although not a member of Mr. Parrott's class. On graduating, he took up the study of law, remaining two years more in New Haven in the university law school. On receiving his degree of Bachelor of law, he was admitted to the bar of his native county in 1887, but had but one case at Paris, the shire town of Oxford County. In the fall following his admission to the bar, he entered the office of the late Honorable Charles F. Libby in Portland; but in a few months time he hung out his shingle in Jacksonville, Florida, where he found his life work. At the time of Mr. Parrott's settlement in Jacksonville, Florida was just awakening to modern life. A large part of the state was unsettled and given over to pine barrens and scrub palmetto hummocks. Most of the large cities we now know were unborn. Railroads were only penetrating the northern part of the state. The winter tourist was just invading the region around Jacksonville and St. Augustine, but they were of the kind to advertise the beauteous of climate and situation. Harriet Beecher Stowe had built a cottage among the pines and written a book describing the beauties of a winter near Ponce De Leon's fountain of youth. Those who were old, those who ill, and those whose blood the northern frosts and snows congealed should go the Florida, and in a short time an innumerable throng began to start each autumn for the land of flowers. Among the first clients of the law firm Mr. Parrott was connected with was the Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West Railroad Company, a John the Baptist railroad, their locomotives crying, or rather screeching, in the wilderness. A pioneer railroad, or a pioneer anything, does not have easy time. The penetrate a land where business is yet in embryo. The Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West Railroad was no exception and it was soon forced into receivers hands. Mr. Parrott was the receiver. He did his best to put the road on a paying basis, but it was a long time investment and it needed capital furnished by some one who had faith in the future of Florida. At about this time amid the winter birds of passage was General Henry M. Flagler, a man rich with the profits of Standard Oil but poor in health. He was anxious to exchange the dividends of that Croesus enterprise for health, and the sub-tropic sun and gulf breezes brought it. A land which restored health was worth cultivating. A man would give all he possessed for health, therefore exploitation must be profitable. Such must have been the thoughts which passed through General Flagler's brain, so he was ready to purchase this bankrupt railroad when approached by Mr. Parrott with a proposition to invest and assist in developing one of the best states in the Union. General Flagler was a host in himself. His bank account alone was sufficient to develop this land of sunshine, and his will was a good as his financial ability. Dreams floated through his brain, not only of railroads, but steamships, palatial hostelries and new cities. He needed a lieutenant, and he chose Mr. Parrott, who had already had some experience in taming the wilderness and making it blossom like the rose; so he left his Blackstone to grow dusty on the shelves to take up the more active life of hotel, railroad and steamship manager, colonizer and builder of cities. The first part of General Flagler's dream was easy of fulfillment, if provided with an ample pocketbook, but there comes an end to the dreams and it l ooked as if the end of Flagler's had come when the far point of the Florida Coast, where ocean and gulf clasp hands had been reached. But it did not appear so to General Flagler. His fancy skipped from key to key out into the blue gulf until Key West was reached. How the intervening space of water was filled with concrete archways is a tale that has been many times told, and each time the wonder grows. Tunneling mountains becomes commonplace beside this giant bridge, the supervision of which was the privilege of Mr. Parrott. Perhaps a summary of the construction of this road may be permissible here. It extends from Jacksonville to Key West. The entire distance is about 520 miles. The first 394 miles is along the east coast of Florida (hence the name, East Coast Railway), then it leaves the main land to skirt the line of keys extending to the southern terminal, a distance of 126 miles. Of this section, 74 miles is over land, 25 miles is through swamps, and 29 over water. Of the roadbed, 97 miles was grade over land, 23 miles embankment through water, and about six miles of concrete arch and steel span work. The material used was 176,900 cubic yards of crushed rock, 106,100 cubic yards of sand, 286,800 barrels of cement, 5,760 tons of reinforcing steel, and 612,000 lineal feet of piling. The average cost per mile for building this extension was $95,000. This dream was not the first of General Flagler's visions. It was the climax of a series of dreams. Materializing these visions took decided and untiring energy. So severe was the work that Mr. Parrott lost his health. He was much younger man than Flagler. The work was pushed strenuously that the older man might see the fulfillment of his dreams. He did see the fulfillment--the Promised Land-- but barely, and Mr. Parrott survived him only by a few months. During his active live, he took few vacations. Each autumn, he spent a few days in his boyhood home; but with failing health he was forced to take more frequent and longer breathing spells. It was a dream of his boyhood to visit the Old World, but the demands of his vocation were so strong, that it was put off until sickness made a change of environment advisable; but the pleasure of the trip was thereby greatly diminished. Lake Thompson was one of the attractions of his boyhood. He sailed its surface, swam in its depths, and camped on its islands. One of the latter--Megquier Island--he bought in his later years, connected it with neighboring islands and the main land by bridges and erected a beautiful summer home. This island comprising some fifty acres, was named after Edward Megquier, firs owner and also first settler in that part of Poland (in 1790) on a strip of highland adjacent to the lake opposite to the island, and now known as Megquier Hill. Tradition has it that it was cleared of the heavy forest which covered it in 1815, during the three years of famine which Maine suffered from extremely cold weather. It was planted to corn the next year and by reason of the vapor arising from the water, the crop was saved from frost and matured, the only corn to ripen in the vicinity. To this island he came each summer for the last year or two of his life, and it was here that he died, October 13, 1913, at an age of a few days less than 55 years. His body was carried to Florida for interment. He loved Oxford, but his life had been spent in Florida, and it is there he wished to rest finally. He was greatly missed there. No newspaper was too obscure not to contain an editorial or biographical notice of his passing, and the prominent ones devoted pages to his memory and accomplishments. His name was coupled with Flagler's. They were called the two great Floridians, although neither were a native of the state. Mr. Parrott married Helen Mercier, of New Haven, who survives him, and he had a daughter, Helen, who married Gordon R. 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