Dr. Edward P. Bagg, Jr. (1883-1969)

Edward P. Bagg Jr. was a renowned physician in the city of Holyoke. Of the Holyoke Public Library, he was director from 1933-1948 and president from 1948-1964. He was an integral part of the acquisition of Wistariahurst as a museum for the city in 1959. He was a talented artist, writer, and intellectual in business and social issues.

He was the son of Edward P. Bagg and Eliza Crane, and a descendent of John Bagg who settled in western Massachusetts in 1653. His father was the president and treasurer of the Parsons Paper Company and the Holyoke Silk Hosiery Company. His grandfather, Colonel Aaron Bagg was partner to Joseph C. Parsons in the founding of Parsons Paper Company in 1853. Bagg, Jr. attended Harvard Medical School until 1911 and for a year fulfilled an internship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston before setting up his successful pediatrics practice on Maple Street in Holyoke.

He married Marion Emma Sears in 1913 and had one daughter, Marjorie, and three sons, Laurence, Henry, and Edward III. He had three brothers, Aaron, John, and Robert. He was president of the Holyoke Society for the Care of Crippled Children and appointed by the Mayor as chairman of the Child Welfare Commission.

Edward W. Chapin (1840-1924)

His obituary published in the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram on May 6, 1924 described Edward Whitman Chapin as a “former presiding justice of the Holyoke Police Court, Holyoke’s First Solicitor, a former member of the State Legislature, and a man who held many offices of public and private trust….His associates in the legal profession today had high words of praise from him characterizing him as a man who could admirably blend mercy with justice and one who could always be considered a friend of the unfortunate.”

Chapin was born in Chicopee and was the son of Whitman Chapin and Theodocia McKinstry. He attended Williston Seminary and in 1863 graduated from Amherst College. He began his private practice in Holyoke after being admitted to the bar in December of 1865, and from 1878 to 1882 was a partner at the firm of William H. Brooks on Dwight Street. In 1877 the Governor of Massachusetts Alexander Hamilton Rice appointed Chapin as special justice to the Holyoke police court, and in 1890 succeeded to senior special justice. In 1898, following the passing of W.B.C. Pearsons, once Holyoke’s first Mayor, the state Governor Roger Wolcott appointed Chapin to standing justice. He served as Vice-President of the Holyoke Public Library and remained a trustee for many years.

Edward Chapin married Mary Beebe in May 1866. They had three daughters, Clara, Anna, and Alice. Anna married William F. Whiting in 1892, and Chapin’s one son, Arthur B. Chapin, was Mayor of the city from 1899 to 1904.

Florence Chadwick (1875-1955)

Florence Chadwick was the sister of Gertrude and William Chadwick, renowned artist, and daughter of the founder of Chadwick Plush Company, one of the city’s major textile outfits.

Miss Chadwick, never married, was born in England and her family moved to Holyoke in 1884. For many years she worked for the Holyoke League of Arts and Crafts. An excellent artist in her own right, a 1935 an exhibition of the Allied Artists of America in New York City included two of her bas-relief sculptures.

Cyrus L. Frink (1838-1900)

Cyrus Luther Frink was the son Cyrus Frink and Louisa Ely. The elder Frink, with Joseph C. Parsons, first saw the great potential of the city’s water power. They organized the original stock company to build, operate, and manage the first paper company in Holyoke, the Parsons Paper Company. The father also organized the rebuilding of the Baptist Church after a fire in 1863.

Frink, Jr. was a financier, and became Treasurer of Mt. Tom Paper Company in 1867. He also served as Treasurer for the Crown Mills Paper Company in the early 1880s. He and his wife Emily Parks, whom he married in June 1862, donated a stained glass window, in memory of Joseph Ely, to the church his father helped build. Frink and his wife did not have children. For 10 years Frink gave his time as the church clerk and also was the Sunday School Superintendent. Emily Frink added $1000 to the growing fund for the Home for the Aged People in 1883.

Gertrude Green (1876-1955)

Gertrude (Metcalf) Green was the only daughter of Joseph Metcalf, founder of the Farr Alpaca Company. In June of 1911 she wed Addison Loomis Green, successful attorney with a private practice in Holyoke beginning 1888 and soon after with People’s Savings Bank. Her wedding notice read that “the bride is one of the finest young women of the city, and that her marriage does not take her from Holyoke has been a cause of much rejoicing in many circles....She both writes and speaks with rare charm.”

Gertrude Green spent her youth working as a leader of the Girls’ Friendly Work at St. Paul’s Church, and later she was for many years a teacher of the boys’ Sunday School. As an adult her charitable nature led her to become an officer of the Visiting Nurses Association. Her daughter-in-law Constance Green was a history professor at Smith College and author of the locally renowned 1939 publication, Holyoke, Massachusetts: a Case History of the Industrial Revolution in America.

Sante Graziani (1920-2005)

Sante Graziani was a faculty member and graduate of the Yale School of Fine Arts in the 1940s. In 1948, the Trustees of the Joseph A. Skinner Memorial Art Trust commissioned the young artist to paint the historic wall murals forever preserved at the Holyoke Public Library. The Springfield Museum of Fine Arts also hired Graziani for mural work. His appointment to the Springfield project and his first-place finish in a nation-wide art competition sponsored by the Van Norman Tool Company inspired Holyoke to choose Graziani for the library’s murals.

From 1948 to 1953, Graziani labored over the large murals at his studio in New Haven, CT, with frequent visits and ideas from trustees. He was trained in the painting of the early Renaissance and his work on the library walls reflected this style. He taught at the Whitney School of Art in New Haven from 1950-1951, the School of the Worcester Art Museum from 1951-1981, and finally at Paier College of Art in Hamden, CT. Graziani’s work can be seen at the Worcester Science Museum, the Mayo Clinic, Battle of the Bulge Monument in Belgium, the Shubert Theater in New Haven, and the Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale, FL, where his son was minister. Graziani was quoted in the Springfield Union-News’ Holyoke magazine in December of 2000: “Those of us in art school were so influenced by the mural painters and that’s what I always wanted to be.”

James H. Newton (1832-1921)

The first Newton in Massachusetts, Richard, settled in Sudbury, MA in 1638. James H. Newton was born in Hubbardstown, MA in 1832 to James Newton and Esther Hale. His first wife in 1863 was Susan Wadsworth Taft who died in Holyoke in 1900. They had three sons, Edward, Frederick, and James, and a daughter Eliza. In 1904 Newton wed his second wife, Emily Norcross, who was a teacher at Smith College.

James H. Newton moved to Holyoke from Worcester in 1864. Although his professional training was in education, he and his two brothers organized and incorporated the Hampden Paper Company. He is credited with the incorporation, financing, construction, and management of seven great paper mills of this city, being a master planner and start-up extraordinaire. The Franklin Paper Company, the Albion Paper Company, the Newton Paper Company, the Wauregan Paper Company, the Norman Paper Mill, and the Chemical Paper Company all in part owed their origins to James Hale Newton. He also was responsible for the establishment of several Holyoke banks. He organized Mechanics’ Bank of which he was president for twelve years, People’s Savings Bank, National Bank of Springfield, and the Home National Bank of Holyoke where he served for thirty-two years as president.

Jessamine Bagg (1885-1935)

Jessamine (Phelps) Bagg was the second wife to Edward P. Bagg, Sr. and step-mother to Dr. Edward P. Bagg, Jr. She arrived in Holyoke with her parents in 1887, and graduated from Holyoke High School in 1907. She was active in both the First and Second Congregational Churches, leading the Sunday school lessons for latter until just a few months before her death in February of 1935. She was essential to the success of the Holyoke Music Club, volunteerism at Holyoke Hospital, and the Eunice Day Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution.

Her obituary in the Holyoke Daily Transcript reads the “countless personal services to so many individuals and her self-effacing cheer and friendliness to all will endear and perpetuate the memory of her personality.” She had two brothers, Charles A. and John P. Phelps as well as an aunt Harriet D. Phelps, the latter two being lifelong Holyoke residents.

John J. Lynch (1871-1947)

John J. Lynch was a principle in the Holyoke Public School system for 47 years. He was the son of Maurice Lynch and Mary Kennedy. His grandfather, Partick Lynch, left Kerry, Ireland for Holyoke in 1837, leaving his family behind. This was the same year his father was born. Patrick Lynch saught employment in the construction of the city’s first wooden dam. Maurice Lynch was contractor and mason years later in Holyoke, and the city commissioned him for all the brick work in City Hall. John J. Lynch during the late 1930s became president of the Lynch Brick Company.

Lynch graduated from Holyoke High School in 1890 and attended Holy Cross College where he played baseball. In December of 1894 he became the principle of East Dwight Grammar School, and two years later transferred to West Street Junior where he remained for more than three decades. He was named the new principle at the opening of the H.B. Lawrence Junior High School in 1931. He served as president of Hampden County Teachers’ Association, the Western Massachusetts Grammar Masters’ Association, and Massachusetts Teachers’ Federation. Lynch was also a gifted writer and orator, and built strong music programs in the public schools. He was president of the Associated Charities of Holyoke, later known as the Family Welfare Society. The Board of the Holyoke Public Library repeatedly elected Lynch as president beginning in 1932. He also was one of the founders of the Holyoke Country Club.

John T. Lynch (1850-1915)

Prior to his service as Fire Chief, John T. Lynch was the renowned hero of the Precious Blood Church Fire. According to the Holyoke Transcript, May 1875, he “arrived at the scene of desolation when the fire was at its worst, rushed into the flames and smoke, and by his own efforts saved many people doomed to certain death. Words cannot express that praise he deserves.” Lynch single-handedly saved more than 20 people in Holyoke’s greatest disaster which killed nearly 100. His obituary on April 22, 1915 read, “He never asked a man to go where he did not lead the way.”

Joseph A. Skinner (1862-1946)

Joseph Allen Skinner was the son of William Skinner, Sr. and Sarah Elizabeth Allen. His father was the founder of Holyoke’s greatest silk manufacturer, William Skinner & Sons. The company and family moved to this city from Williamsburg in 1876. After attending Yale, Joseph Skinner joined the family enterprise as head of the manufacturing department, while his brother William, Jr., five years his senior, managed the sales department. Joseph participated in a variety of business ventures. He was chairman of the board of the Hadley Falls Trust Company, and once director of the both the Holyoke Water Power Company and the New England Telephone & Telegraph Company.

William S. Loomis (1840-1914)

The town of Holyoke was only a year old when the Loomis family moved here in 1851. His father, Elijah W. Loomis, owned and operated a variety and convenience store on High Street, while his mother, Janet Stiles Loomis, kept an oyster house and confectionary on the same block. The Loomis ancestry in this country traced back to Joseph Loomis, an emigrant from England 1639. He attended the Holyoke public school system, and graduated from Holyoke High School when it was still a single floor of Chapin’s Hall on the corner of Race and Dwight Street.

After returning from his service in the Civil War, Loomis bought his father’s store with his brother-in-law, Edgar J. Pomeroy. An interest in journalism led Loomis to become joint owner of the Holyoke Transcript in 1872 with E.L. Kirtland. The Transcript was then published weekly, and shortly after Loomis purchased Kirtland’s share of the company in 1875 it became the leading newspaper in the city. William G. Dwight became a partner in the company in 1882, and in October of the same year they published the first edition of the Daily Transcript. Loomis widened the newspaper’s scope and influence until he transferred his ownership share to Dwight in 1887. The foundational success and development Loomis contributed to the Holyoke Transcript made it the incredible historical resource it is today.

In 1888 Loomis bought the majority share of the Railway Company. He promptly extended the lines into Elmwood section of the city, and the company expanded every year of his ownership. In 1897, the state granted permission to build a resort destination at Little Mountain, later known as Mountain Park. Loomis planned and executed a zoo, observation towers, restaurants, merry-go-round, and the Mountain Park Casino which held musicals and operas. That same year the Holyoke Water Power offered to the library the land bound by Maple, Essex, Chestnut, and Cabot as a gift. Loomis served as the Chairman of a fundraising committee which raised $95,000 for a new library building. The construction of the main library building completed in 1901, and the dedication and opening occurred in January of 1902.

Loomis was also Vice President of Holyoke Savings Bank upon his death in July of 1914, and donated the land for the Loomis House. Frank Wilcox, Director of the Holyoke Public Library from 1900 to 1946, said the “greatest service was doubtless in connection with securing of the present building for the library….The building will always stand as a proud monument to the generosity...and [be] no less a memorial of the public spirit, unselfish labors and high interests” of William Stiles Loomis.

Louise Dodd Towne (1875-1962)

Louise Dodd Towne was the wife of Joseph M. Towne, 35-year manager of the National Blank Book Company and a successful President of the outfit through the Great Depression. Her husband was the son Joseph W. Towne, one of the first associates of the National Blank Book Company with William Whiting. They married in February of 1913 and two sons, William and Robertson, both for a time employed in the family’s business in Chicago and New York, respectively.

Minnie Dwight (1873-1957)

On March 3, 1891 a young Minnie Ryan became a reporter and administrative assistant for the Holyoke Daily Transcript. Forty years later she was managing editor and publisher of the Holyoke Transcript and Telegram Publishing Company, Inc., and celebrated as the longest tenured female in the business. At first she wrote for the social and general news, but her skill quickly moved her to the editorial page. Her contributions to The Oracle section, and her renowned ‘Letters from Florida,’ were among the most anticipated columns for regular newspaper readers.

Minnie Ryan was the daughter of Patrick Ryan and Catherine Reilley, both natives of Ireland. She attended Hopkins Academy in Hadley and Mount Holyoke College after moving to this city. She married William G. Dwight in November of 1896. Both her daughters Helen and Laura, and her son William, attended Columbia School of Journalism and also worked for Holyoke’s greatest news outlet. In 1930, after her husband’s sudden death, she became the sole owner of the local newspaper.

From her very first year, Minnie Dwight committed her newspaper to the fight for women’s rights and suffrage, and herself to Massachusetts Republicanism. In 1913 the Holyoke Equal Suffrage League elected Minnie Dwight as Vice-President, and she served as President in subsequent years. The Suffrage League headquartered in the Holyoke Transcript building on High Street in 1915, the same year the legislature first placed the amendment to allow the female vote on the Massachusetts ballot. She was one of the founders of the local and county Women’s Club and Holyoke’s Community Chest.

Marion Hartog Towne (1904-1993)

Marion H. Towne was the wife of Richard P. Towne, once president of the National Blank Book and grandson to James W. Towne, one of the company’s first associates. She was President of the Junior Service Corps, predecessor of the Junior League of Holyoke, Inc., a sixty-five year local women’s community service organization. During the 1940s, she was President of the Children’s Aide Society and the Holyoke Hospital Aid Association.

Joseph C. Parsons (1814-1886)

Joseph Parsons organized the first paper company in Holyoke in 1853 with J.S. McElwain and Colonel Aaron Bagg of West Springfield. He was born in Northampton in 1816 to Justice Parsons and Lydia Clark. He was a descendent of the first Joseph Parsons who was witness to the 1636 transaction between the European colonists and Native Americans which gave William Pynchon what is now Springfield, Longmeadow, and Agawam. As a young man, Parsons worked for the E. Hunt & Co. drug store, but in 1834 entered into a partnership with Henry Sterns to manage his own pharmacy and grocery. After just five years Parsons sold his shares to buy a farm in Agawam, with the intention to grow mulberry trees to sustain silkworms. Although his Agawam property remained his home for decades, a blight on mulberry trees forced him to prematurely abandon his silk enterprise.

With $60,000 in start-up money, Parsons, Bagg, and McElwain started the Parsons Paper Company, building a mill close to the dam on the first level canal. Just three years later they expanded to a second mill on Sergeant Street. By 1880, the company recorded over a million dollars in profit. Joseph Parsons was quoted in the local paper industry publication, The Paper World, March 1880:

‘I propose to establish a mill that makes two tons of paper a day, and some of my friends think me crazy’…. If Mr. Parsons was crazy in 1853, he has certainly shown much method in his madness and has had many successful and distinguished followers in the insane walk in life – so much so indeed that twenty-eight paper-mills are now in operation…producing…nearly one hundred and fifty tons of paper per day.

Mary E. Preiss (1911-1981)

Mary E. Preiss was the Holyoke Public Library’s first female vice-president in 1964 and first female president from 1972 to1977. She served as an official for the public library for sixteen years, and as President of the Friends. For more than a decade she worked as a librarian for Mount Holyoke College.

She was born in Holyoke to Richard McCarthy and Catherine McGowan, along with her brother John F. McCarthy. Preiss was a product of Holyoke Public Schools and a lifelong resident. She married Walter Preiss with whom she had one son, Richard Porter Preiss.

Donald R. Taber (1902-2002)

Donald R. Taber was President and CEO of American Pad and Paper for nearly 40 years. His grandfather, Luther Taber came to Holyoke in 1847 and quickly became a well-known jeweler on High Street. Donald was the second son of Cyrus Taber and Anna Lowell. Cyrus was one of the founders of Hubbard and Taber, a printing company, which merged with American Pad and Paper in 1895.

Taber attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began to acquire works of art shortly after college, a collection he eventually donated to Holyoke Community College in 1992. In 1929 he married Ida Webber, who passed in 1981. He had two daughters, a son, and several grandchildren.

Thomas Rand (1776-1857)

Reverend Thomas Rand graduated from Brown University in 1803; that same year the First Baptist Church ordained him as Ireland Parish’s first minister and he married Salome Whipple in New Hampshire. They bore six sons and two daughters.

The “Lord’s Barn” was the first church for the Baptists, built in 1792 in Elmwood. Soon after, due to a lack of funds and dilapidated building, the Baptists and Congregationalists agreed to share a church which they moved northward to Northampton Street, just south of Hitchcock Street. Thomas Rand managed the pastoral duties for both groups for twenty-five years. In 1805 he organized a school in his home on Homestead Avenue, the “Baptist Seminary,” which provided young local students with opportunities for an advanced education. Tuition was 25 cents per week, which Rand waived for poorer families. In 1812 he raised enough money to construct a separate building adjoined to his home, where he conducted seminary classes for the entire length of his service to Ireland Parish. Many familiar Holyoke names attended Rand’s school, including Ely, Frink, Humeston, Pomeroy, Fairfield, Loomis, Morgan, and Street. His positive tutoring influenced generations of Holyoke citizens.

Under Rand’s leadership up to 1816, there were 63 members of the hybrid congregation. In 1816 however, 73 joined the church. In 1826 the Baptists built their second meeting house, the well-known white New England church. Thomas Rand preached the first sermon in that church, and his grandson Stephen B. Rand preached the last sermon in the building in 1880. Reverend Rand resigned to become pastor in New Salem, New Hampshire, but returned to Holyoke in 1853 for the Baptist Church’s 50^th anniversary celebration. He passed way in 1857 at the age of 81 and was buried in the Baptist cemetery in Elmwood.

William G. Dwight (1859-1930)

William George Dwight was the son of William Dwight Monk (later William Dwight) and Helen Clark. His father attended Berkshire Medical College in Pittsfield, and his mother graduated from Mount Holyoke Seminary in 1841. In 1881 William Dwight, Jr. received a Bachelor’s degree from Amherst College and relocated to Holyoke, Massachusetts the following year. After working as a correspondent for the Springfield newspapers, he joined William Loomis in 1882 at the Holyoke Transcript. The newspaper quickly expanded from a weekly to a daily, and in 1888 Loomis sold his shares to Dwight making him the majority owner. Dwight excelled as owner and editor, maintaining the Holyoke Transcript as the most popular publication in the city. He contributed to its success through the acquisition of the Holyoke Telegram in 1927.

Citizens aptly named William Dwight the “mayor-maker,” as his successful publication often led to the victory of political candidates, regardless of party affiliation. A 1916 American Historical Society publication wrote of Dwight: “It is gratifying to have a paper in the control of a man who is fully aware of the responsibilities of the press. There is no more potent influence in our civilization today, and it is now, as ever, the prime mover in progress and improvement.”

William Whiting (1841-1911)

William Whiting attended Holyoke Public Schools and his first job was as a bookkeeper for the Holyoke Paper Company in 1858. He was the son of Elizabeth and William B. Whiting, and his English ancestry was traced back to settlers of Lynn, MA in 1636.

William Whiting had a short stint as an agent for the Hampden Paper Company, but soon left to convert a wire mill into ‘Mill No. 1’ of Whiting Paper Company which at its height manufactured five tons of quality writing paper per day. 1877 Whiting commissioned the construction of the Windsor Hotel and Opera House on his Dwight Street property across the first level canal from his ‘Mill No. 2’ which churned out nearly seven tons of paper per day. At the young age of twenty-five, Whiting was the leading organizer and later president of the Holyoke Public Library Association. At the library building’s dedication in January of 1902 he said in his address:

There is richness of harmony and symmetry about the line of the building that draws the eye again and again inside and out and gives it character far above the ordinary. Its strength is in its symmetry and simplicity of line and at no part of the building is the ornamentation allowed to detract from the noble lines or call attention to itself to the exclusion of the harmonic proportions of the whole.