Samuel Downer, Jr., 1807-1880

No. 10281 Samuel Downer, Jr.

William Dana Orcutt. Good Old Dorchester. (Cambridge, 1893), 443

A year later [therefore 1881] the town lost another valuable citizen in the death of Samuel Downer, the senior member of the firm of the Downer Oil Company, and the proprietor of Downer’s Landing. Mr. Downer was a Free-Soiler; and one of the most notable reunions which ever took place at Downer’s Landing was that of the Free-Soilers of 1848, held August 9, 1877. Here came Hon. Charles Francis Adams, Hon. E. Rockwood Hoar, Hon. George F. Hoar, Hon. Amos Tuck, and others and the Rev. James John G. Wittier wrote poems for the occasion. Mr. Downer continued the labors in the interest of horticulture which his father began, and the two accomplished much in beautifying the town, –the most notable work, perhaps, being the improvement of the Old Burying-Ground by Mr. Downer, Sr. Mr. Downer, Jr., was “a man of practical piety, of sterling sense, of fine business ability, and a benefactor to the community.”

Paul Lucier. Scientists & Swindlers. Consulting on Coal and Oil in America, 1820-1890. (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 150.

“In the Northeast, the Downer Company emerged as the market leader [of Kerosene]. Samuel Downer Jr. (1807-1881) had started in the whale oil business alongside his father in 1830. The Boston-based company called Samuel Downer and Son soon expanded by adding another partner, William R. Austin, as well as another line of products, lard oil. By the mid-1840s both senior members had retired, and Samuel Jr. ran the firm.”

Samuel Downer

DOWNER, Samuel, manufacturer, born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, 8 March 1807. He left school at the age of fourteen, and, after spending six years in a shipping house in Boston, was received into partnership by his father, a West India merchant. He afterward engaged in the manufacture of sperm oil and candles, and in 1854 directed a series of experiments in producing hydrocarbon oils by distillation from various substances. Prom a kind of bituminous coal known as Albertite he obtained what is now called kerosene. The demand for this oil increased rapidly, and it was obtained from the Albertite till the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1861. Another result of these experiments, made principally by Mr. Joshua Merrill, superintendent of the Downer works, was the discovery in 1869 of “mineral sperm oil,” and the company under Mr. Merrill’s patents manufactures these and other products of the distillation of crude petroleum.

David Robinson Downer. The Downers of America: With Genealogical Record. (Newark, 1900), 83-84.

#715 Samuel, of Boston and Dorchester (Eliphalet and w Mary G.), m. 4 June, 1806,k Catherine, dau of Cyrus Ayres, of Dorchester. Had

815 +Samuel, b 8 Mar, 1807; d at Dorchester, 20 Sept, 1881.*

*the name of Samuel Downer, of Boston, was identified with the development of one of the greatest industries of the century, and to him, as much as to any other one man, was due the rapid introduction of mineral oil illuminations; nor was he altogether a man of business. Like his father, he was public spirited and found time to interest himself in the affairs of his city and country. Among his intimate friends were Horace Mann, Charles Sumner, John P. Hale, Rev. Theodore Parker, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, his w Julia Howe, and others prominent in New England in his time. He was from the first actively identified with the Free soil party, which in 1848 was formed to resist the encroachments of slavery, being led thereto by the shameful treatment which William Lloyd Garrison and his friends received in Boston. He drew up the resolutions passed at the meeting in Dorchester which was called to choose delegates to the Buffalo convention, at which the party was formally organized, and at which Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams were nominated for President and Vice-President. In 1887 Mr. Downer conceived the idea of having a reunion of the old leaders who had lived to see the full fruition of their labors in freeing the nation from slavery, and in accordance therewith he sent out 220 invitations for a gathering to be held at his summer home at Downer’s Landing, Boston Harbor. Nearly all the invitations were accepted and the occasion proved of great interest. Mr. Downer presided at the dinner and delivered an address replete with interest to the student of history. Charles Francis Adams, E. Rockwood Hoar and others followed with characteristic speeches, and a telegram of greeting was received from the poet, John G. Whittier. A full report of the reunion has been published and copies are preserved by his family.

The business career of Samuel is of interest. When 21 years of age his father took him into the firm. In 1844 his father retired and he carried on alone the business of manufacturing sperm and whale oil, and sperm candles. About 1854 his attention was called to the hydro-carbon oils. He spent much time and money in inventions which were designed for refining these oils. Indifferent financial success attended his efforts until the discovery of the Pennsylvania and West Virginia oil wells furnished such an abundant supply of crude petroleum that he and his associates were able to place a refined illuminating oil in the market at such a low price that made it at once immensely popular. The price dropped from $1.15 per gallon, wholesale, to 25 cents retail. They soon had a monopoly of the business. It was soon determined to manufacture the oil at the source of supply, and in 1861 he organized the “Downer kerosene Oil” company of Boston, New York and Corry, of which he was elected the president. Going out to Pennsylvania, in company with W.H.L. Smith, he “roughed it” in the oil-producing regions for six years. Corry, a town founded and named by themselves, was chosen as the base of operations. The life and the excitement were congenial to the new president. The popular oil fever raged with extraordinary severity. The country was full of prospectors—strong, athletic, good-natured men—each of whom carried from one to fifty thousand dollars in his pockets. This money changed hands once a week or oftener. The proprietors were well armed with revolvers and bowie-knives and did not hesitate to use them as occasion required. Tramps were numerous and sometimes dangerous. Mr. Downer was an exception to the general rule. Is credit being good along the whole line of operations, he carried but little money and no weapons. He was, however, on one occasion mistakenly arrested as a deserter form the United States army by a Pittsburg police office, who was in quest of two runaways, one whom had just been taken. The other resembled Mr. Downer, whose personal appearance at the moment of arrest was not particularly prepossessing. He was in the third day of his journey from Oil city to Titusville. His clothing was soiled, and he had “curled up” under a tree and was fast asleep, when the officer awoke him and inquired If he had seen another man about there. The drowsy but curt reply was that he had not; whereupon the officer arrested him and he was not released until he had submitted his papers, pocketbook &c., to the officer’s inspection.

#815 Samuel, of Dorchester (Samuel), m 13 Oct, 1836, Nancy Melville, dau of Capt John DeWolf and g dau of Major Thomas Melville, of Rev. War fame.

Had

Samuel, b in Boston 28 Oct 1837; d. y., at Brighton, Mass.

Mary Catherine, b. at Boston 24 May, 1839; m 25 July, 1861, Malcolm Cuyler Greene. He b at Bellevue, O., 26 Apl, 1837. Lives at Dorchester …

Anne Cecilia, b. 6 Sept, 1841; d 9 Sept 1896 at Vitznow, Switzerland; m 4 sept, 1862 George C. de Marini …

Gertrude Melville, b 26 Sept 1844 m 26 May 1864, James D. Scudder of boston He b at Osterville, Mass, 10 Oct 1841; d at Hingham Mass., 11 May 1896 …

Marion Gardner, b 27 Mar 1848; m James B Littig, nf new York 25 May, 1871…

Hoarace Mann, b 28 May, 1850; d. y.

Alice D’wolf, b. 14 Aug,. 1852, m 16 Sept 1878, Alex Pope of Dorchester He b 25 Mr 1849. He is an artist of distinction and lives in Dorchester …

Mabel Richmond, b 21 May 1856; m 29 Nov, 1876 William Carroll Pope, of Dorchester, where was b 8 May 1847. He is cousin to alexander Pope above …

Downer, Samuel

Herbert Asbury. The Golden Flood: An Informal History of America’s First Oil Field. (New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1942)

[Edited]

page 32 Hundreds of laymen and scientists searched for that great desideratum of the nineteenth century—a safe, efficient, and reasonably priced illuminant. An artificial light that would dispel the gloom of darkness and permit Americans to work and play at night had become a necessity in every phase of the national life; it was needed in the trains that had begun to run at night, in the steamboats which crowded the rivers, in the horse-cars and stagecoaches, in the factories and the store, and above all in the home.

There were bountiful stocks of whale oil, but whale oil was unsatisfactory unless refined, and when refined, it was very expensive. High prices and scarcity of supply also prevented the widespread use of lard oil, produced principally by the meatpacking plants at Cincinnati.

There were many chemical “burning fluids” n the market, but most of them were expensive, and all were unsafe. The cheapest was camphene, composed of ether, alcohol, p. 33 and rectified oil of terpentine. It was also the most dangerous. The great majority of Americans lighted their homes and places of business with the humble tallow candle.

Many of the nineteenth-century experimenters who attempted to solve the world’s lighting and lubricating problems made exhaustive inquiries into the possibilities of coal tar and asphalt as sources of oil, procuring enormous supplies of the latter from the great asphalt lake on the island of Trinidad. The most successful producer of oil from these substances was the Downer Company, founded in the late 1830’s by Samuel L. Downer, son of a Boston merchant. For a decade and half Downer was engaged exclusively in the manufacture of candles, and of lard, whale, and sperm oil for lubricating purposes. About 1852 he acquired the rights to “Coup Oil,” a lubricator distilled by the chemist Luther Atwood from coal tar, which was extensively used by railroads and cotton mills for several years. On his return from England late in 1856, Atwood showed Downer some of the water-white illuminating oil which he had produced from James Young’s brown naphtha, but Downer refused to hear anything about it. “Illuminating oil doesn’t amount to anything,” he said. “You can never replace or displace the lard or whale-oil lamp; they are the articles for illuminating purposes.

However, Downer soon changed his mind. Less than a year later he was manufacturing an illumination oil from Trinidad asphalt, using a process devised by Luther Atwood and his brother William. But supplies of the raw material were uncertain, and in 1857 Downer erected a $150,000 plant at Boston, and a smaller on at Portland, Maine, and began manufacturing huge quantities of illuminating oil from a bituminous coal called albertite, found principally in Albert County, New Brunswick. P. 34 At first the Downer Company had considerable difficulty in disposing of the new illuminant, and on September 1, 1858, two hundred thousand gallons had accumulated in the company’s storage tanks; as the superintendent of the plant, Joshua Merrill, once put it: “Mr. Downer became somewhat apprehensive that he had overstepped the bounds of prudence.” But a sudden demand for the oil was created by the appearance of improved lamps in the market, and particularly by the introduction of the famous Vienna burner from Austria. Downer’s surplus stocks began to move late in October 1858, and by the first of the following year his tanks were empty and he was selling as much oil as he could produce.

The Downer Company was not the first to manufacture coal oil in this country, but it was the first to engage in the business on a large scale. The great success of its operatons resulted immediately in the erection of many new refineries, and by the middle of 1860 fifty-three were in operation.

page 35 A few employed methods of refining devised by Abraham Gesner, a Canadian chemist and geologist. He transferred the patent rights to the North American Kerosene Gaslight Company, which operated an oil and gas works on Newtown Creek, Long Island. Gesner had originally called his oil “keroselain,” from two Greek words meaning oil and wax, but when he obtained his patents he registered as a trademark the word “kerosene.” For several years only the North American Company and the Downer Company, to which Gesner had granted the right because of Luther Atwood’s association with Downer, were permitted to call their oil “kerosene.” In time, however, the word became the generic term for illuminating oils manufactured from both coal and petroleum.

The following is from the Dorchester section of The Rich Men of Massachusetts: Containing a Statement of the Reputed Wealth of about Fifteen Hundred Persons, with Brief Sketches of More than One Thousand Characters. By A. Forbes and J.W. Greene. (Boston: Published by W.V. Spencer, 1851

Worth: $100,000

Received something from his father to commence in the grocery business with, where he remained a short time, when he engaged in the oil trade, where he accumulated a fortune. Mr. Downer is kind and amiable in his intercourse with society, ardent and enthusiastic in the ultraisms of the day, an uncompromising Free-Soil Abolitionist, and believes Mr. Horace Mann to be an infallible oracle in everything that pertains to education or politics. The fugitive slave law he won’t go, anyhow. He is quite benevolent to the poor.

This book purports to include the names of men who were “very wealthy,” defined as a reputed net worth of at least $50,000.

The wealth of the 45 men listed for Dorchester ranges from $50,000 to $500,000 and is distributed as follows:

$50,000 15

$75,000 6

$100,000 14

$150,000 2

$200,000 6

$400,000 1

$500,000 1

The combined worth of all 45 totals $5,000,000

To get a sense of the meaning of this level of wealth, one could look at the life of Marshall P. Wilder on this website. His reputed worth as reported in this book was $100,000.

It is interesting that Dover, a town now considered wealthy, boasted not one entry in 1851, while Medway had one entry and Medfield two entries. Milton, a town next to Dorchester, had 10 men with a total net worth of $1,600,000. Cambridge had 37 men with a total worth of $5,200,000.

From the Introduction: Upon the announcement than an individual is in possession of a large fortune, we naturally inquire, “How did he come by it? Was it by inheritance, or marriage, or both? Or, was the present man of wealth once obliged to toil for his daily bread like the thousands who now marvel at his possessions? If his property came by his own exertions, what is the man? What are his strong traits of character? How did he manage? Did any one great circumstance, aside from his natural abilities, favor him? In what business did he grow rich? Has he done, or is he likely to do, much good in the world in consequence of his riches? These are the questions which naturally suggest themselves to us in reference to the wealthy of any place, and these are questions which we have attempted to answer in reference to a very large number of wealthy men in Massachusetts. Our leading object has been to furnish encouragement to the young, from the contemplation of success resulting from a s suitable combination of those sterling qualities, Perseverance, Energy, Carefulness, Economy, Integrity, Honesty. Another very prominent object with us has been, to excite in the minds of the wealthy, and of all who shall become such, greater attention to the importance of an enlarged system of Benevolence. …

Samuel Downer, Jr., 1807-1880

Samuel Downer

Submit a Comment Cancel reply