BIO: Henry C. Arnold; Ellicott, Chautauqua Co., New York

submitted November 1999 by Dee Pratt Davidson (jcricket@cecomet.net).

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The following is excerpted from The Early History, Town of Ellicott
Personal recollections of Dr. Gilbert W. Hazeltine, 1887


Henry C. ARNOLD
He entered the Hazeltine factory when a boy.  He soon evinced a great genius
as a portrait painter;  The white washed walls in all the rooms were soon
covered with portraits of the proprietors and principal operatives in the
factory.  An eminent portrait painter once said of him, " that he was the best
uneducated portrait painter he ever knew, and if he could spend a season or
two in Europe, he would become a prominent artist of that class in the US."

Poverty prevented the consummation  so much desired and produced in him a
misanthropy  which at times was pitiable.   Henry Arnold was a gentleman in
the true and highest meaning of the word, his whole life.

   He married to Eliza KNIGHT, the youngest daughter of Samuel Knight. He
followed portrait painting for a livelihood, and it afforded him barely
sufficient means to live in genteel poverty.  He had 4 children, but one now
living. He was an avid reader. During the latter years of his life, he was a
firm believer in the doctrines of the German Atheistical School, but it would
be nearer the truth to call him a Transcendentalist.  He certainly was an
Idealist. As he was on his death  bed, (Dr. Hazeltine) at his side, he stated
to him "I wish you to break the silence over my grave.  When my coffin is
placed in the ground, I wish you to come forward and tell all my old friends
how I stood.  I have tried to do my duty as a neighbor, and as a man, but I
could not believe different from what I have.  I die with the full belief that
death is the end of all things of life, of all thought, all pain and of all
pleasure." A few minutes later, he said, "I must say good-bye, I am going" and
very quickly he was gone.