(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
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Henry Haven was born on February 11, 1815, in Norwich, Connecticut, United States, the son of Philemon and Fanny (Manwaring) Caulkins Haven. He descended from Richard Haven, a resident of Lynn, Massachusetts. When he was four years old his father died, leaving his family of five in ragged poverty. Henry learned to sew, to cook, and to do the work on the little farm.
Henry obtained a meager education in the public schools. He attended Sunday-school assiduously and founded a juvenile society against swearing. These influences of his youth, a grim theology and grim poverty, moulded his entire life.
In 1830 the family moved to New London where Henry Haven was indentured to Thomas W. Williams, a wealthy ship-owner. Six years later he became a confidential clerk and at the age of twenty-three a partner in the firm of Haven & Smith, a company already successfully engaged in whaling and sealing. At this time the American whale fishery was enjoying its greatest prominence and extent. He prospered and scattered his ships over the Atlantic, the Pacific, and distant seas in search of profits. Sea-elephants from the Indian Ocean and guano from islands in the Western Pacific were among the sources of his wealth.
In 1867, while negotiations were in progress for the purchase of Alaska, Haven corresponded with Seward about the opening of the seal fisheries to Americans. When Alaska was ceded his vessels were sealing there before Californians had begun to realize the new opportunities. He was active in forming a company of Eastern and Western ship-owners which in August 1870 obtained a monopoly of the seal fisheries at St. Paul’s an St. George’s Islands. In 1852 he was elected mayor of New London and in the same year was elect to the state Assembly.
Haven’s success as a merchant was considerable, yet his success as a Sunday-school superintendent was greater. He became a Sunday-school teacher at the age of fifteen; six years later he went to combat the evils of rum, prostitution, and unbelief in the seaport town of Waterford. This struggle he continued until his death.
In 1869 he prepared for the New-England Historical and Genealogical Register (1869) a memoir of his half-sister, Frances Manwaring Caulkins (1795 - 1869), historian of Norwich and New London. He attended various meetings of religious groups abroad and had returned and resumed his usual duties when he died of heart failure.
Henry Haven was one of the first and principal contributors to the International Sunday-school Lessons. Many of his innovations are still employed in Sunday schools. He also was superintendent of the Sunday school of the Second Congregational Church in New London. To this task he brought a restless energy and a militant piety. With thoroughness and efficiency he reorganized it as he had reorganized banks and railroads.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Haven was the Republican candidate for governor in 1873. When he, with the entire ticket, was defeated he recollected that man’s judgment was but a little thing: and looked forward to his weighing in the Lord's balances.
Haven possessed indomitable energy, shrewdness and efficiency, the ability and the desire to drive hard bargains.
On February 23, 1840 Haven married Elizabeth Lucas Douglas.
