History of Locke, (Cayuga County) New York United States of America

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Millard Fillmore, thirteenth president of the United States, was born in Locke township, Cayuga county, N.Y., Feb. 7, 1800; second son of Nathaniel and Phebe (Millard) Fillmore. His first American ancestor, John Fillmore, is designated in a conveyance of two acres of land, dated Nov. 24, 1704, as "mariner of Ipswich," Mass. His son, John, born in 1702, was also a sailor; he was on board the sloop Dolphin of Cape Ann, captured by the pirate Captain John Phillips and with three others of the crew did nine months' service on the pirate when they mutinied, killed the officers, won the ship and brought her into Boston harbor, May 3, 1724. The court approved the act and awarded to Fillmore the sword of the captain, which was thereafter kept in the family. John's son, Nathaniel, was a lieutenant in the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars. Nathaniel's son Nathaniel was born in Bennington. Vt., in 1771, and was married to Phebe Millard, the daughter of a clergyman. They migrated to the wilderness of New York in 1798 to take up a tract of military land, and built the log cabin in which Millard, the second son, was born. The title to the property proving defective, he removed to Sempronius, afterward Niles, Cayuga county, and took a perpetual lease of 130 acres of land covered with timber. As the boy grew up he worked on the farm nine months of each year and the remaining three months attended the primitive school of the neighborhood. Until he was nineteen years old the only books to which he had access were the Bible and a collection of hymns. When fourteen years old he was apprenticed on trial for a few months to a wool-carder and cloth-dresser at Sparta, N.Y., his father determining to give him a trade rather than have him adopt the hard life of the farmer. In the fulling mill he experienced all the ills that in those days fell to the lot of the apprentice in the power of an unjust master. He escaped corporal punishment on one occasion by defending his manhood with an uplifted axe, and on the day his time of apprenticeship ended he took his few belongings in a bundle and travelled on foot and alone one hundred miles to his home, the most of the distance through dense forests, following paths marked by blazed trees. In 1815 he was apprenticed to a Mr. Cheney, a wool-carder. He purchased a small English dictionary, his only text-book, and diligently studied it while at the carding machine. In 1819 he purchased one year of His time, and began to study law in the office of Judge Wood of Montville, N.Y., working in the office, garden and house to pay his board. He also taught school in the winter, studied and practised land surveying, and in 1823 was admitted to the court of common pleas as an attorney, before he had completed the prescribed law course. He began practice at East Aurora, N.Y., then the home of his parents. He was admitted as an attorney of the supreme court of the state in 1827 and as a counsellor in 1829. He removed to Buffalo, N.Y., in 1830 and practised law in partnership with Nathan K. Hall and Solomon G. Haven. They continued in business together until 1847 and were retained on most of the important causes that were tried in the Erie county courts. He was elected to the state assembly from Erie county in 1828-29-30 and 1831, and while in that body drafted and advocated the bill for the abolition of imprisonment for debt passed in 1831. He was a representative in the 23d congress, 1833-35, and in the 25th, 26th and 27th congresses, 1837-43, declining renomination in 1842. He was chairman of the ways and means committee in the 27th congress, the duties of that committee at that time including also those of the subsequently created committee on appropriations. He was largely responsible for the tariff bill of 1842, and aided Morse to get through congress his appropriation to build the first telegraph line. In the Whig national convention of 1844 he was a candidate for the vice presidential nomination and received the support of the delegates from several western states, besides his own delegation. At the election in November he was defeated in the gubernatorial contest by Silas Wright, and in 1847 he was elected comptroller of the state. In the Whig national convention of 1848 he was nominated for vice-president on the second ballot, Abbott Lawrence of Massachusetts leading on the first, when the southern states rallied to Fillmore. Gen. Zachary Taylor had been nominated for President, and at the succeeding election the ticket received 163 of the 290 electoral votes, and a plurality of 139,557 of the popular votes. Mr. Fillmore resigned as comptroller in February, 1849, and on March 4, 1850, was inaugurated Vice-President of the United States. As president of the senate he gave universal satisfaction and his impartial rulings were never questioned during the seven months of stormy debate over the "Omnibus bill" of Henry Clay. President Taylor died, July 9, 1850, and Mr. Fillmore was inaugurated President of the United States at noon, July 10, 1850, being sworn in before both houses of congress assembled in the ball of representatives, by Chief Justice Crouch of the circuit court of the District of Columbia. The official family of President Taylor promptly resigned, and President Fillmore made Daniel Webster of Massachusetts secretary of state; Thomas Corwin of Ohio secretary of the treasury; William A. Graham of North Carolina secretary of the navy; Charles M. Conrad of Louisiana secretary of war; James A. Pierce of Maryland secretary of the interior; John J. Crittenden of Kentucky attorney-general; and Nathan K. Hall of New York postmaster-general. Changes occurred in his cabinet Secretary Pierce being succeeded by Thomas M. T. McKennan of Pennsylvania to the interior department, and he in turn by Alexander H. H. Stuart of Virginia in 1850; Daniel Webster died Oct. 24, 1852, and Edward Everett of Massachusetts succeeded him as secretary of state; William A. Graham [p.89] resigned the portfolio of the navy the same year to accept the nomination of vice-president on the Whig national ticket with Gen. Winfield Scott as President, and John P. Kennedy of Maryland succeeded to the navy department; and Post-master-General Hall resigned in 1852 to accept the judgeship of the U.S. court for the northern district of New York, and was succeeded in the post-office department by Samuel D. Hubbard of Connecticut. President Fillmore defended New Mexico from invasion by promptly sending a military force to the Mexican border. Before signing the compromise measures passed by congress, including the fugitive slave act, he submitted them to the attorney-general to determine their constitutionality, and to his entire cabinet for unanimous approval, notwithstanding which caution he was afterward severely criticised for his act, and his administration failed to receive the support of a large portion of his party in the north. The majority in both houses of congress being opposed to him, his recommendations received scant attention and many of them failed of adoption. In spite of this opposition he gave to the country cheaper postage, an enlarged and beautified national capitol and the benefit of a new market with Japan. In dealing with foreign powers he maintained the principle of non-intervention, applying it equally to Cuba and Hungary without obtaining disfavor with the struggling peoples anxious to throw off the yokes of Spain and Austria. In his last message to congress Dec. 6, 1852, he regarded the advice of his cabinet by suppressing the portion in which he recommended a scheme of gradual emancipation, African colonization and full compensation to owners of slaves, the members of his cabinet fearing that such recommendations would precipitate civil war. He retired from the presidency March 4, 1853, leaving the country at peace with all other nations and prosperous in all lines of trade and commerce. The Whig national convention of 1852 approved the policy of his administration by a vote of 227 against 60, and he was a candidate for nomination as President, but when the ballot was taken he received only twenty votes from the free states. He was nominated by the American party for President in 1856 while he was absent in Europe, but the canvass as it proceeded narrowed down to a contest between the Democratic and Republican parties, and the respective friends of each party, seeing no hope of electing Mr. Fillmore, divided their electoral vote, Maryland alone remaining loyal by giving him its eight electoral votes. He received however 21.57 per cent of the popular vote, Fr?mont receiving 33.09 per cent, and Buchanan 45.34 per cent, his exact vote being 874,538 against 1,341,264 for Fr?mont and 1,838,169 for Buchanan. He was married Feb. 5, 1826, to Abigail, daughter of the Rev. Lemuel Powers. She was born March 13, 1798, and died March 23, 1853. Their only daughter, Mary Abigail, born March 27, 1830, died July 26, 1854; and their only son, Millard Powers, born April 25, 1828, became a lawyer, was clerk of the U.S. court in Buffalo and died there, Nov. 15, 1859. Mr. Fillmore visited Europe in 1855 and was the recipient of attention from the queen, the British cabinet, Napoleon III. and the pope of Rome. He declined the proffered degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford. He established the Buffalo historical society and was chancellor of the University of Buffalo; member of the Buffalo historical society, and corresponding honorary member of the New England historic, genealogical society, and was prominent in all public functions of that city. He received the honorary degree of LL. D. from Hobart college in 1850. He was married in 1866 to Mrs. Caroline (Carmichael) McIntosh, widow of Ezekiel C. McIntosh of Albany, and daughter of Charles and Tempe Wickham (Blackly) Carmichael of Morristown, N.J., and with her visited Europe. After his return he passed his life in retirement at his home in Buffalo. Mrs. Fillmore died in Buffalo, N.Y., Aug. 11, 1881. See Irving Chamberlain's Biography of Millard Fillmore (1856). He died in Buffalo, N.Y., March 8, 1874.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Locke, (Cayuga County) New York

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