Higgins

Academy, and although he was of quick and
alert intelligence, he manifested no special talent
for scholarship. His greatest desire as a youth
was to become a soldier and accordingly he was
sent to the Riverview Military Academy, Pough-
keepsie, N. Y., from which he was graduated in
1873. This experience apparently partly changed
his mind about a military career, for he next took
a course in a commercial college. He then turned
to travel, making extensive trips to various parts
of the United States. After a brief experience in
Denver and Chicago as sales' agent for an oil
company, he became, at the age of nineteen, a
partner in the mercantile firm of Wood, Thayer
& Company at Stanton, Mich. In 1879 he en-
tered into partnership with his father at Olean,
N. Y. Meanwhile he had made extensive timber
purchases in the West and it was to the manage-
ment of these properties, together with his pat-
rimony, that his energies as a business man were
mainly devoted. He kept the grocery business
which his father had started and introduced into
it in 1890 a profit-sharing scheme. By his thrift
and caution, he greatly augmented the estate
which he had inherited.

Higgins was a stanch Republican and early
showed an interest in public affairs. Drafted by
his party for state senator in 1893, he served
eight years (1894-1902) in that capacity. In
1902 he was unanimously nominated to the lieu-
tenant-governorship and was elected. In 1904,
despite the detractions and misrepresentations of
a bitter campaign, he was elected governor. Both
as chairman of the Senate committees on taxa-
tion and retrenchment, and finance, and then as
governor, he urged rigid economy in public ex-
penditures and resisted in every way wasteful
and unnecessary outlays. In his thirteen years
of service to the state he was responsible for tax
reforms which contributed to a lower tax rate,
for election reforms, and, above all, for the re-
vision of the state insurance law. "I am not
afraid of the censure of public opinion/' he once
said, "I shall be content if I satisfy my con-
science." Theodore Roosevelt testified that he
had "never had the good fortune to be thrown
with any public servant of higher integrity or of
greater administrative ability." In June 1878
he married Catherine Corrinne Noble of Sparta,
Wis. He had long been a sufferer from heart
trouble and died soon after his term of office as
governor had expired. He had declined a sec-
ond nomination.

[K. C. Higgins, Richard Higgins . . . and His De-
scendants (1918); memorial address of J. G, Schur-
man in Proc. of the Legislature of the State of N. Y.
Commemorative of the Life and Pub. Services of Frank
Wayland Higgins (1909); State of N. Y.: Pub. Papers

Higginson

of F. W. Higgins, Gov. (2 vols., 1906-07); C. Z. Lin-
coln, ed., State of N. Y.: Messages from the Govs.
(1909), X, 718-961; C. E. Fitch, ed., Official N. Y.
from Cleveland to Hughes (1911), vol. IV; D. S. Alex-
ander, Four Famous New Yorkers; the Political Ca-
reers of Cleveland, Platt, Hill and Roosevelt (1923);
Ray B, Smith, ed., Hist, of the State of N. Y., Political
and Governmental (1922), vol. IV; H. F, Gosnell, Boss
Platt and His AT. 7. Machine (1924); The Autobiog. of
Thos. Collier Platt (1910), ed. by L. J. Lang; N. Y.
Times, Sept 25, 1906, Feb. 13, 1907.] H.J.C

HIGGINSON, FRANCIS (is86-Aug. 6,
1630), clergyman, was the second of the nine
children of the Rev. John Higginson of Qay-
brooke, Leicestershire, England, and his wife
Elizabeth. He was probably born in 1586, since
he was baptized on Aug. 6 of that year (New-
England Historical and Genealogical Register,
April 1892, p. 118). In 1610 he received the de-
gree of B.A. from Jesus College, Cambridge,
and that of M.A. in 1613. He was ordained
deacon at Cawood Castle, Sept. 26, 1614, by the
Archbishop of York and by him was admitted
to the priesthood at Bishopthorpe, Dec. 8. The
archbishop conferred upon him the rectory of
Barton-in-Fabis, Nottinghamshire, but though
instituted, Apr. 20, 1615, he seems never to have
been inducted (ante, July 1898, p. 348). He set-
tled at Claybrooke, apparently as curate to his
father, and on Jan. 8, 1616, at St. Peter's, Not-
tingham, he was married to Anna Herbert
(Venn, post). In 1617 he became lecturer at St.
Nicholas, Leicester, where he soon won the high
esteem of the people. For some time he con-
formed to the practices of the Established
Church, but through acquaintance with Thomas
Hooker and other Puritans he was led to study
the questions which were troubling the Church,
and as a consequence he became a non-conform-
ist. He was obliged to relinquish his lectureship
but the people were eager for his ministrations
and, tolerated by the Bishop of Lincoln, to whose
diocese Leicester belonged, he continued them
as opportunities opened. Invited by the pro-
moters of the Massachusetts Bay Company to
go to New England, he accepted and with his
wife and eight children, one of whom died of
smallpox on the voyage, he set sail from Graves-
end, in the Talbot, on Apr. 25, 1629. The cele-
brated Generall Considerations for the Planta-
tion in New England, with an Answer to Several
Objections, which, on the authority of Thomas
Hutchinson, Higginson has been credited with
writing before he left England, seems to have
been the work of John Winthrop (Higginson,
post, pp« 38 ff.; Proceedings of the Massachu-
setts Historical Society, i ser,, VII, 1864, PP-
340-44). During the voyage he kept a journal,
to which he wrote a continuation after his ar-
rival in Naumkeag (Salem), which, without the

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