Horace Abbott

Background

Horace Abbott was born on July 29, 1806 in Sudbury, Massachusetts, United States, the fifth child of Alpheus and Lydia (Fay) Abbott. Horace was descended from George Abbott, who died in Rowley, Massachussets, 1647.

Education

Abbott's opportunities for book education were of the slightest, and at the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Westboro, Massachussets.

Career

Abbott spent two years as a journeyman and then set up for himself as a country blacksmith at Westboro.

In 1836, at the age of thirty, Horace and his equally capable brother, Edwin Augustus Abbott, moved to Baltimore. There he turned his attention to the manufacture of iron, secured the Canton Iron Works, then owned by Peter Cooper of New York, and for fourteen years specialized in the production of wrought-iron shafts, cranks, axles, and other necessities for steamboats and railroads. It was during this period that he forged the first large steamship shaft made in this country, a shaft designed for the Russian frigate Kamtschatka, built in New York for the Emperor Nicholas I. This and other manufacturing feats brought to his foundry well-deserved prestige.

In 1850 Abbott constructed a rolling-mill which was believed to be capable of turning out the largest rolled plate in the United States. A second rolling-mill of the same size and capacity as the first was erected in 1857, a third large mill in 1859, and a fourth in 1861. Abbott's rolling-mills proved of great value to the federal government during the Civil War. In them were made the armor plates for the Monitor and for nearly all of the vessels of the Monitor class built on the Atlantic coast. Ericsson when he designed the first monitor believed that it would be necessary to order the plates in Europe, and the ability of Abbott to produce them considerably speeded their completion. So essential was the service rendered by the Abbott mills that the employees were exempted from the draft, and Abbott himself was especially commended by Secretary of the Navy Welles for the rapidity of his execution of government orders.

At the conclusion of the war in 1865 a group of capitalists purchased the Canton Iron Works, organized a stock company under the corporate name of the Abbott Iron Company of Baltimore, and elected Horace Abbott president.

Abbott's interests, however, were not confined to iron manufacturing. He was a leader in the establishment of national banks in Baltimore, being one of the originators of the First National Bank, of which he was either a director or vice-president until his death, and a director of the Second National Bank. He was also a director of the Baltimore Copper Company and the Union Railroad of Baltimore.

He lived to be eighty-one years of age, but partial paralysis had incapacitated him for eight years before his final collapse at "Abbottsford, " his country seat on the outskirts of Baltimore.

Achievements

• Abbott established the Abbott Iron Company, which 1850 mill was largest iron mill in the United States at that time. He also was the founder of Baltimore's First National Bank, and a director of the Second National Bank of Baltimore and the Union Railroad of Baltimore.

Personality

Abbott was a man of distinguished presence and tireless industry.

Connections

Abbott had married in 1830 Charlotte Hapgood Cate, by whom he had seven children, only one of whom survived him.

Father:

Alpheus Abbott

Mother:

Lydia (Fay) Abbott

Spouse :

Charlotte Hapgood (Cate) Abbott

Brother:

Joel Abbott

Brother:

Benjamin Abbott

Brother:

Joel Gifford Abbott

Brother:

Edwin Augustus Abbott

Brother:

Ephraim Abbott

Sister:

Lucy Wellington

Sister:

Elizabeth Fay Abbott

References

• History of Baltimore City and County (Maryland): From the earliest period to the present day, including biographical sketches of their representative men
• Who was who in America. Historical volume 1607-1896. Revised Edition 1967. A Component Volume of Who's Who in American History.