My Genealogy Hound

EZRA THOMAS SAWYER, a prominent citizen of Easthampton, where he is engaged in the manufacture of rubber thread, is a scion of an old family, members of which figured prominently in some of the early Massachusetts settlements. The first ancestor of the family in this country was Thomas Sawyer, who was born in 1615, and in 1635 came from Lincolnshire, England, and settled in Charlestown, Mass. In 1647 he married Mary Prescott, daughter of John Prescott, and in 1653 removed to Lancaster, Mass., where his wife’s father was one of the first settlers. He became a prominent man in that place, and was appointed by the General Court in 1657 as one of the commissioners “to govern the people.” One of the five fortified houses in Lancaster belonged to him, and though several times assaulted by the Indians it was never captured. He died September 12, 1706, aged ninety-one years. His family consisted of nine children, whose names and dates of birth were as follows: Thomas, July, 1649; Ephraim, January, 1651; Mary, January, 1653; Elizabeth, January, 1654; Joshua, March, 1655; James, March, 1657; Caleb, April, 1659; John, April, 1661; Nathaniel, November, 1670. Colonel William Prescott, of Bunker Hill fame, was a lineal descendant of John Prescott, of Lancaster. Thomas Sawyer was married again in 1672.

Thomas Sawyer, second, was a man well versed in mechanics and of an inventive turn of mind. He was taken captive by Indians in 1705, together with his son Elias and another companion, and carried to Canada. After reaching Montreal he made a bargain with the Indians, offering to build a mill on the Chambly River on condition that he and his fellow-captives should be released; but the Indians proved treacherous and bound him to a stake with a view to immediate execution. He was saved, however, by the intervention of a friar, who, claiming to hold the keys of purgatory, threatened to unlock the gates and thrust them in if they persisted in their plans. It took Mr. Sawyer a year to complete the mill; and his son Elias was detained for a time longer, and employed to teach the Indians the art of sawing. Since the time of Thomas the name of Sawyer has been associated with mills in every generation.

The family showed a martial spirit in the French and Indian War and during the Revolutionary struggle. Ephraim Sawyer, great-grandson of the first Thomas Sawyer mentioned above, and born in Lancaster, Mass., in 1719, was chosen one of the first “permanent commissioners of correspondance,” September 5, 1774, and was one of a special commission of three to whom taxes were paid. He was also one of the “commissioners of correspondance of nine,” called March 6, 1776, this being the last occasion when the Selectmen based their action upon the authority of the king. He served under King George as Lieutenant in the French and Indian War, and years later, at the battle of Lexington, was a Major in Colonel John Whitcomb’s regiment of minute-men. He also fought in the same regiment at the battle of Bunker Hill. This regiment also took part in the siege of Boston and the battles of Long Island, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown. At Dobbs Ferry, Major Sawyer led his regiment as Lieutenant Colonel, and later was present at the battle of Saratoga, when Burgoyne surrendered. His five sons, James (who was but fourteen years old at the battle of Bunker Hill), Ephraim, John, Josiah, and Peter, also fought through the war. The name of another member of the family, Ezra Sawyer, appears, with rank of private, on the Lexington alarm roll of Captain Samuel Sawyer’s company. Colonel John Whitcomb’s regiment, his military record being on file in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Ezra Thomas Sawyer, the special subject of this sketch, is descended from Thomas Sawyer, second, and is the son of Ezra and Eliza (Houghton) Sawyer, and grandson of a later Thomas Sawyer, who was a prosperous farmer of Sterling, Mass. He was born in Lancaster, Mass., January 4, 1829, and received his education in the public schools of his native town. At the age of sixteen years he began to learn the machinist’s trade with Otis Tufts, then located on Bromfield Street, Boston, and remained with him four years. At the age of twenty he was employed to run a locomotive on the Worcester & Nashua Railroad, then just completed, and for a period of seven years served as locomotive engineer on that road and on the Erie and Hudson River Railroads. After leaving the railroad service he was employed for one year in the engineer’s department of the Brooklyn navy yard, and then received an appointment as engineer on board the Vanderbilt steamer “Ariel,” running between New York and Bremerhafen. After two years in that ship he came to Easthampton, Mass., and as a machinist entered the employ of his brother, Edmund H. Sawyer, who was there located as treasurer and agent of the Nashawannuck Manufacturing Company.

In 1861, the Goodyear Elastic Fabric Company, now known as the Glendale Company, was organized in Easthampton; and Mr. Sawyer was appointed superintendent and general agent. He remained in that position until 1873, and was then made treasurer of the Easthampton Rubber Thread Company, acting in that capacity until 1891. In the latter year he was made president and general manager, and has so continued up to the present time. During his administration of the affairs of the company, covering a period of twenty years, it has been in a flourishing condition. The present company was organized in 1864, and has now a capital of four hundred thousand dollars. Aside from the offices which he holds in this company, he is a Director in the First National Bank of Easthampton and in the Nashawannuck and Glendale Companies, and is President of the Easthampton Gas Company.

Mr. Sawyer has been twice married — first in 1853, in Lancaster, to Caroline Woodbury, daughter of Moses Howe, of Bolton, Mass.; and second in 1884, in Toledo, Ohio, to Mrs. Mary E. (Montsarratt) Braisted, of Louisville, Ky. A son of Mr. Sawyer, Frank Ezra Sawyer, was graduated at the Annapolis Naval Academy, and is now a Lieutenant on board the United States man-of-war, “Philadelphia.”

An excellent likeness of Mr. Ezra Thomas Sawyer may be seen on a preceding page. The incidents in his life, briefly narrated in this sketch, sufficiently indicate his character. With an early education limited to the common schools, nothing but a natural faculty inherited from a line of energetic and capable ancestors, the fullest improvement of every opportunity for advancement, a determination to perform thoroughly every duty within the present sphere of action, an avoidance of all those distracting allurements which in politics and speculation are the shoals and rocks wrecking so many of our business men, and withal an integrity above suspicion, could have borne him along from the machinist’s bench in Boston through all the stages of his career to the responsible post he now occupies with profit and honor to himself and with remunerative returns to those whose trust he administers. With abundant means, a handsome estate, a house to which taste and refinement have contributed their share of grace, and a home to which the happiest domestic relations lend their charm, Mr. Sawyer is enjoying the later years of his life in well-deserved ease and content.