Alvah Crocker was a United States manufacturer and railroad promoter. He served in the Massachusetts General Court and was U. S. Representative from Massachusetts.
Background
Alvah Crocker was born on October 14, 1801 in Leominster, Massachusetts, the oldest son of Samuel and Comfort (Jones) Crocker. Both parents were intensely religious; they had been founders of the Baptist church in Leominster, and their seven sons were reared in the strictest traditions of New England Puritanism. As the family was large and the income small, Alvah was put to work in a paper-mill at the age of eight where he worked twelve hours daily at twenty-five cents a day.
Education
His schooling was scanty, but was supplemented by wide reading and by a short period at Groton Academy during his sixteenth year.
Career
Having given up hope of attending college, he went to work in 1820 in a paper-mill at Franklin, New Hampshire.
Removing to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in 1823, he worked for a while in the mill of General Leonard Burbank.
In 1826 he managed to borrow sufficient capital to start paper-manufacturing on his own account. His early years as a manufacturer were hard ones, but unfailing optimism and unremitting toil enabled him so to establish his factory that his business continued to grow even when his own energies were largely consumed in politics and railroad building.
Increasing pressure of other affairs led him in 1850 to take in Gardner S. Burbank as his partner, and to reorganize his paper-factory as Crocker, Burbank & Company. This firm expanded rapidly until it became one of the largest paper-manufacturing concerns in New England. In addition to manufacturing paper Crocker at one time owned a chain factory and a machine-shop (both destroyed by fire in 1849).
In 1847 he was prominent in establishing the Fitchburg Mutual Fire Insurance Company; he was on the first board of directors of the Rollstone Bank, and was a trustee of the Fitchburg Savings Bank from 1851 until his death.
His dreams, however, were more inclusive, and he labored for many years to open rail communication with Canada and the West.
Hardly had the last spike been driven in the Fitchburg Railroad before a charter was obtained for the Vermont & Massachusetts Railroad which Crocker, as president, built from Fitchburg to Brattleboro, Vermont, between 1845 and 1849.
In 1848 a bill to incorporate the Troy & Greenfield Railroad was passed. To build this railroad necessitated the tunneling of the Hoosac Mountains and a loan from the state to carry the work to completion.
During all of the early stages Crocker was the leader in the movement for the western connection, and when, in 1868, the state was forced to complete the work, he became commissioner in charge.
His interest in politics was life-long. He commenced as “hog-reeve” in 1830, became “tithing- man” in 1831, and after holding other local offices was elected to the General Court in 1836.
He served three times in the lower house and twice in the upper, his service covering the years 1837-38 and 1842-43. Upon the resignation from Congress of William B. Washburn to become governor of Massachusetts (1872).
Past seventy when he entered Congress, he refused to be a candidate a third time.
He served in Congress from January 2, 1872, until his death in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, December 26, 1874. He was interred in Laurel Hill Cemetery.
A devout Christian, and a vestry man of the Episcopal Church, he left a political and business reputation of the strictest honesty.
Membership
He was a member of the legislature and a leading member of the board of directors.
Personality
He was not only an indefatigable worker and a man of great earnestness of purpose, but a ready debater and excellent orator.
Connections
He was married three times: first, to Abigail Fox of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, on August 14, 1829; second, to Lucy A. Fay of Fitchburg, on April 9, 1851; and third, to Minerva Cushing, on October 20, 1872.