Hon. Calvin Page Biography from History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire

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Surname: PAGE
Source:  History of Rockingham County, New Hampshire and Representative Citizens
          by Charles A. Hazlett, Richmond-Arnold Publishing Co., Chicago, Ill., 1915

page 748

HON. CALVIN PAGE, of Portsmouth, has been for a long time a
leader in the law, the business, the politics and the public affairs of New

(Pages 749 and 750 contained a portrait)

Page 751

Hampshire. His name and influence have been and are potent in banking,
insurance, railroad and other circles; and his home city has shown its apprecia-
tion of his wisdom, experience and public spirit by conferring upon him all
the more important honors and responsibilities within its gift. A lifelong
resident of New Hampshire and one of her most valuable citizens, his activ-
ities have been by no means confined to her limits, his professional and per-
sonal reputation, on the contrary, being as high in other states as in his own.
     Judge Page was born in North Hampton, Rockingham County, N. H.,
August 22, 1845, in the tenth generation from Robert Page of Ormsby,
County of Norfolk, England, whose son Robert, came from England and
settled in Hampton, New Hampshire, in 1639. Judge Page's ancestors in
succeeding generations were farmers and good citizens of Hampton and
North Hampton. His father, Captain Simon Dow Page of the state militia,
married Judith Rollins of London and to them one son and three daughters
were born.
     The son, Calvin, spent his boyhood on his father's farm, attended the
district schools in North Hampton and later was a student at the famous
Phillips Academy in Exeter, where he fitted for Harvard College. Entering
that institution in 1864 as a member of its sophomore class, he was soon com-
pelled by lack of funds to withdraw and returned to his father's house for a
winter and spring of farm work and wood chopping.
     In the following sununer, however, the way of his future career opened
before him and on July 19, 1865, he entered as a student the law office of the
late Hon. Albert R. Hatch in Portsmouth.
     Here Judge Page worked for his board as well as for his instruction in
legal lore by keeping his perceptor's books and making himself generally
useful about the office. He found time, however, for such application to his
studies as enabled him to pass the state bar examinations and to be admitted
to the bar of New Hampshire in 1868. Immediately he entered upon the
practice of his profession in Portsmouth and so has continued ever since.
He was president of the State Bar Association in 1904-5, and the annual
address to the members of the bar by him dwelt principally upon the illegiti-
mate use of the lobby in the legislature and the evil results of the then common
free pass system.
     As a lawyer Judge page was and is one of the most successful in the
state, his large and lucrative practice covering a wide range of territory,
clientage and character of cases. In 1910 the demands upon his time and
strength became so heavy and exhausting that he practically retired from
general practice, retaining, however, his more important connections, such as
the care and management of the great Frank Jones estate, of which he is an
executor and trustee. Those who remember how keen a judge of men
Mr. Jones was will appreciate the compliment to Judge Page implied in his
choice for these responsible and onerous positions.
     To give the reader an adequate idea as to how varied and important Judge
Page's relations to the world of business have been and are, it will be necessary
only to list some of his chief official positions, past and present, in this con-
nection, as follows: President of the New Hampshire National Bank of
Portsmouth; Portsmouth Trust and Guarantee Company; Granite State Fire
Insurance Company; Portsmouth Fire Association; Portsmouth Shoe Com-
pany; Suncook Waterworks Company; Eastman Freight Car Heater Com-
pany; Eastman Produce Company; Piscataqua Fire Insurance Company;
Manchester and Lawrence Railroad, and Laconia Car Company Works ;

Page 752

Member of the American Committee of Management of the Frank Jones
Brewing Company; director in the Upper Coos Railroad and in the Concord
and Portsmouth Railroad, etc.
     It is the solid success, the careful conservatism, the helpful upbuilding
characteristic of Calvin Page as a business man upon which his friends lay
equal stress with his brilliance as a lawyer, and his knowledge, experience and
ability in public affairs, in urging his choice to the office to which he now
aspires. Truly remarkable, in fact, is the ability with which throughout his
career Judge Page has driven the difficult triple hitch of law, business and
public service.
     Always a Democrat, Judge Page, as a stanch and uncompromising member
and leader of the minority party in the state, has been, up to this time, out
of the line of approach to the highest elective offices; but in his home town
his fellow citizens have been choosing him to office after office for two score
years, and President Cleveland in each of his two terms as chief executive of
the nation was prompt to recognize Judge Page by appointing him to the
important place of collector of internal revenue for the District of New
Hampshire, embracing the states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, a
position which he has thus filled for eight years.
     Twice, in 1884-1885 and again in 1899-1900, he has been Mayor Page
of Portsmouth. For more than thirty years a member of the board of educa-
tion and chairman of the high school committee, he has had great part in
making the schools of the city one of the chief sources of its just pride. He
has been city solicitor, judge of the municipal court, and member of the board
of water commissioners.
     In 1888 Judge Page was elected a delegate to the convention which
assembled in Concord, January 2, 1889, to propose amendments to the consti-
tution of the state. It was a notable gathering, with Charles H. Bell of
Exeter as its president and among its members such men as Isaac w. Smith,
James F. Briggs, Henry E. Bunlham, Charles H. Bartlett and David Cross
of Manchester, Benjamin A. Kimball and Joseph B. Walker of Concord,
John W. Sanborn of Wakefield, Frank N. Parsons, Isaac N. Blodgett and
Alvah W. Sulloway of Franklin, William S. Ladd of Lancaster, Robert M.
Wallace of Milford, Ellery A. Hibbard of Laconia, Ira Colby of Claremont
and Dexter Richards of Newport. Judge Page had a prominent part in the
work of convention, the principal results of which were the change in time
of legislative sessions from June to January and the comperisation of mem-
hers by a fixed salary instead of a per diem.
     He was himself one of the first to test the practical workings of these
changes, for in November, 1892, he was elected to the New Hampshire State
Senate of 1893 from the Twenty-fourth District and was the Democratic
candidate for president of the senate. At this important session Senator
Page served on the committees on judiciary, railroads, banks and finance,
being chairman of the last-named, and the worth of his work was remembered
through a decade, so that in 1902 he was elected from the same district to
take the same seat in the State Senate of 1903.
     At this session he introduced and advocated for the first time in our legis-
lature a bill for the election of United States senators by the people. Though
the measure was opposed by the Republican majority of the Senate and failed
to become a law then, Judge Page has lived to see it become the law not only
of this state, but of a large number of the states of the Union by the votes
of all parties. He also opposed the lobby and publicly called attention to its

Page 753

acts. Naturally he now asserts that he was first progressive legislator in
the state, being the first to publicly advocate and work for the things which
every political party has recently hastened to favor; and he declares that the
very men who then opposed him and his progressive measures are now the
loudest shouters for them, and are using his ideas and his proposed laws of
1903 as their own later inventions.
     Judge Page is a member of St. John's Lodge, F. & A. M., and of DeWitt
Clinton Commandery, K. T., of Portsmouth, being the oldest living past com-
mander of the latter body. He belongs to the Warwick Club, Portsmouth,
and to various other clubs, societies and associapons in his own city and else-
where. He is a Unitarian in religious belief.
     His spacious and hospitable residence is one of the finest in Portsmouth,
famous as a city of beautiful and historic homes, and its magnificent flower
garden is one of the show places of the region. Judge Page married, January
7, 1870, Arabella J. Moran. Their daughter, Agnes, married Colonel John H.
Bartlett of Portsmouth and they have a son, Calvin Page Bartlett, born
October 8, 1901.
     This sketch would not be complete did it not refer to Judge Page's part in
the famous Peace Conference of the delegates from Russia and Japan, brought
about in August, 1905, by the mediations of President Roosevelt-the most
famous gathering the world had ever known. For this mid-summer meeting
the President naturally sought a spot in our state where the cool breezes at
the mountains or the ocean would tend to calmness and comfort. The great
Hotel Wentworth at Newcastle was then a part of the estate of Frank Jones,
of which Judge Page was trustee. Under a clause in Mr. Jones's will giving
his trustees power to do anything with his estate that they thought he, him-
self, would do if living at the time, Judge Page, through the president and
Governor McLane, invited the peace delegates to the number of nearly one
hundred, including all their attaches, to live at the big hotel free of charge
so long as the conference should last; and the delegates and all their attend-
ants from both nations lived there for more than thirty days at a cost to the
Jones estate of over twenty-five thousand dollars. And as is well known, in
recognition of the hospitality of the Jones estate and its trustees, Japan and
Russia each gave to the state of New Hampshire ten thousand dollars, the
income of which is annually distributed among the charitable institutions of
the state.
     Judge Page's long and useful career, so fill with private enterprise and
public service, is now, as may be learned even from this brief outline, at the
height of its achievement. The solid success, personal, professional, political, 
won by this son of New Hampshire, is the more notable because it has come
through his own unaided efforts in the face of any obstacles and difficulties.
And appreciation by his fellows of what his efforts have meant to the com-
munity as well as to himself have taken other forms than the many already
mentioned, including, notably, the conferring own him of the honorary degree
of Master of Arts by Dartmouth College in 1902.
     Of brisk and vigorous, yet pleasing persomlity, widely experienced and
keenly observant, Judge Page is as delightful companion in social and private
life as he is a strong and influential figure in his public relations.