Background
William Lewis Douglas was born on August 22, 1845 at Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of William and Mary C. (Vaughan) Douglas. His father died when the lad was only five.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
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William Lewis Douglas was born on August 22, 1845 at Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of William and Mary C. (Vaughan) Douglas. His father died when the lad was only five.
Douglas' only formal education was secured at brief, irregular intervals in the public schools.
In his career Douglas was a fine example of the poor orphan boy made successful and eminent almost entirely by his own industry and enterprise. At the age of seven he was bound out to his uncle, a shoemaker, and set to work pegging shoes when he was so small that he had to stand upon a box to reach the bench. His hours were long, and, besides his routine duties in the shop, he had to gather fuel for two fires. At fifteen he was a full-fledged journeyman shoemaker. He then entered a large cotton-mill at Plymouth, his daily wage being thirty-three cents. During a period when he was on crutches because of a broken leg, he hob bled to school two miles each way. After his recovery, he carried on his trade in Hopkinton, Mass. , and later in South Braintree, under Ansel Thayer, a famous bootmaker. At the age of nineteen, he enlisted (Feb. 26, 1864) in Company I, 58th Massachusetts Regiment, but he was wounded in the back at Cold Harbor later in that year and spent many months in army hospitals. Discharged at the close of the war, he went West, settling for a time in Black Hawk, Colorado, and later in Golden City in the same state, where he was for a time in the retail shoe trade. From 1870 to 1875 Douglas was a superintendent in the Porter & Southworth factory at North Bridgewater (now Brockton), Mass. In 1876, with a borrowed capital of $875, he began manufacturing for himself in a small room, 30 x 60 feet, with five employees and an output of forty-eight pairs of shoes a day. There were times when Douglas was his own buyer, cutter, and salesman, and even his own expressman, and he often worked eighteen and twenty hours at a stretch. In 1879 he moved into larger quarters, and two years later erected a large three- story factory on Pleasant St. In 1884 he took the unprecedented step of advertising his own shoes; and eventually his own portrait, his first trade-mark, was stamped on the soles of all his products. It was not long before his face, printed constantly in the newspapers to advertise Douglas shoes, became familiar to everybody who had eyes with which to see. In 1892, with the erection of a new and still larger factory at Montello Station, Brockton, the business was incorporated, with a capital of $2, 500, 000, and was soon employing 4, 000 operatives. In 1923, the year before his death, it was manufacturing pairs of shoes daily and controlling 117 retail stores scattered throughout the country.
Douglas entered political life in 1884 as a Democratic member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and in 1886 he sat for a term in the state Senate. He was a councilman of Brockton, and, in 1890, was chosen mayor of that city. He was a delegate to the National Democratic conventions of 1884, 1892, and 1896, and delegate-at-large in 1904. In the last-named year, he ran for governor, and was elected by a large majority, being, however, the only Democrat on the ticket to be successful. While he was in office (1905 - 06), the legislature was strongly Republican, and he had little influence on lawmaking. He declined to run for a second term. As governor, he refused to waste time by attending banquets or public functions not associated with his position, and he enjoyed the respect even of his political opponents.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Douglas was a man of simple and unostentatious tastes, who was never ashamed of his early poverty. He was never talkative, and believed in deeds rather than words. A liberal philanthropist, he gave a complete surgical building to the Brockton Hospital and established the Brockton Day Nursery. As an executive, he was fair and just, and was esteemed highly by labor-unions. His only real recreation was work, though he went South each year for a month in Florida, and he owned a summer home at Monument Beach overlooking Buzzard’s Bay.
On September 6, 1868 Douglas married N. Augusta Terry, at Plymouth.
After the death of his first wife, he married on April I0, 1913, Mrs. Alice (Kenniston) Moodie. She and two daughters survived him.
