Higinbotham

was prized as having gained a second place in
more races than any other horse in America"
(Cheerful Yesterdays, p. 183). While still in
Newport he wrote and published his popular and
profitable textbook, Young Folks3 History of the
United States (1875), followed ten years later
by his Larger History of the United States
(1885). A bibliography of all his writings fills
twenty-six closely printed pages of the biography
by his widow. The chief books, not previously
mentioned in this article, are: Atlantic Essays
(1871), Life of Francis Higginson, First Min-
ister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1891);
Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson.(?
vols., 1900); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(1902), in the American Men of Letters series;
John Greenleaf Whittier (1902), in the English
Men of Letters series; Part of a Man's Life
(1905), Life and Times of Stephen Higginson
(1907), Carlyle's Laugh and Other Surprises
(1909). Magazine articles, many of which were
reprinted in these volumes, besides addresses and
pamphlets swell the bibliography to its great size.
Though Higginson's tall, slender figure and
sensitive features conveyed no marked sugges-
tion of the soldier, the title of colonel dung to
him through life. The uneventful career of a
writer in Cambridge, a term of service (1880-
81) in the Massachusetts legislature, a second
and third journey to Europe, where he met many
congenial spirits, the discovery and heralding of
Emily Dickinson and her poetry, a lively interest
in the past and present of his community, by sum-
mer residence stretched to include Dublin, N.
H., as well as Cambridge—with such concerns,
intellectual, social, civic, the years of nearly half
a century following the Civil War were happily
and gently filled. Two daughters were born of
his second marriage. Through the younger of
these his old age was brightened by grandchil-
dren. He had passed his eighty-seventh birth-
day when the labors of his active, well-stored
mind and faithful pen came to their end.

Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Hig-
ginson: The Story of his Life (1914), and Letters and
Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1921) are
the chief biographical sources. There is, moreover,
much of autobiographic interest and value in books of
his own that have been mentioned above,]

M.A.DeW.H.

HIGINBOTHAM, HARLOW NILES (Oct.
10, i838-Apr. 18, 1919), merchant, philanthro-
pist, was born on a farm near Joliet, 111., a son of
Henry Dumont and Rebecca (Wheeler) Higin-
botham. His parents, both of whom were of
New England descent, had come to Illinois from
Oneida County, N. Y., in 1834. The elder Higin-
botham bought land from the Government,

Higinbotham

farmed, and built lumber and grist mills. The
son got his schooling at Joliet, and at Lombard
College, Galesbtarg, working in the meantime on
the farm. At eighteen he took a course in a Chi-
cago business school, and later worked as a bank
clerk in Joliet and at Oconto, Wis. In 1860 he
became assistant bookkeeper in a Chicago dry-
goods house. When the Civil War began, young
Higinbotham left his desk and enlisted as a
private in what was known as the Mercantile
Battery, but was rejected because of uncertain
health. From 1862 to December 1864, however,
he served as chief clerk in the Quartermaster's
Corps and came back to Chicago in improved
health. He entered the house of Field, Palmer
& Leiter as bookkeeper, and within a few years
he was in charge of credits for the new firm of
Field, Leiter & Company. Soon he was known
throughout the Middle West as a credit expert.
In the great fire of 1871, Higinbotham's per-
sonal efforts saved much property for the firm,
and in 1879 ^e was made a partner. After the
house was reorganized in 1881 as Marshall Field
& Company, he continued for twenty years as
one of Field's associates.

The high rank that he had won among Chi-
cago leaders in both wholesale and retail trade,
as well as his interest in Chicago's progress,
made it natural that Higinbotham should have a
part in forming and promoting the plans for the
World's Columbian Exposition (later known as
the World's Fair) of 1893. He was one of the
directors from the beginning (April 1890), and
in October 1891 became chairman of the commit-
tee on ways and means. In the interest of the
fair he visited Europe, enlisting the help of in-
dividual exhibitors and governments. Finally, in
the most critical period of the enterprise, when
it faced actual failure, he took the presidency
and carried the heavy responsibilities of that po-
sition to a successful outcome.

Higinbotham remained with Marshall Field
until Dec. 31, 1900. From 1898 to 1909 he was
the head of the Field Museum of Natural His-
tory; he was also president of the Free Kinder-
garten Association. The institution to which he
gave most attention in the last decade of his life,
however, was the Chicago Home for Incurables,
with which from its foundation he had been of-
ficially connected. He was also an active sup-
porter of the Chicago Newsboys' and Bootblacks'
Association and the Municipal Tuberculosis
Sanitarium. His personal benefactions were
many. In 1906 he published The Making of a
Merchant. He was married in December 1865
to Rachael Davison of Joliet At his death, which
was the result of a street accident in New York

18