CHAPTER I

Son of a Broom Maker

Frederic C. Dumaine was born into a working class Canadian family that had immigrated to the United States prior to his birth. His father died before F.C. reached his teen years.

 

The younger Dumaine went to work to help support his widowed mother. Beginning as an office boy he eventually became the chief executive officer of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, the worlds largest textile firm. It was in his original apprenticeship and his gradual assumption of increasing responsibility that Dumaine learned the creed of the "Boston Associates," who were various old New England families given credit for the orign and development of the industrialization of the American economy. This industrialization was accomplished through the construction of textile mills on the rivers throughout New England.

 

The "Boston Associates" creed exemplified the best of the profit system. They were investor managers who were not interested in the "quick buck." Rather, they invested for the long term. When they adapted the manufacturing system they had seen in Great Britain, they too measures to lessen the negative aspects of the factory life as it existed in England. When they built factories, they also built quality housing for their workers. They invested heavily in parks and other recreation enhancements for the towns and cities in which they located their factories.

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Some sixty years after being introduced to this method of investing F.C. would give his grandchildren the following lecture:

You take care of your assets and they will take care of you. Always remember that the most precious assets you have are the people who work for you.

Dumaine went on to become one of Boston's most noted businessmen of the late 19th century and first half of the 2Oth century. In due course, F.C. Dumaine's name would become associated with the Fore River Shipyard, the Waltham Watch Company, and the New Haven Railroad.

Dumaine, however, was more than merely a major player in the Boston business community. He served on corporate boards with J. Pierpont Morgan, dealt with Henry Ford and Charles Schwab on a first-name basis, was openly welcomed in the financial houses of New York, and was offered J.P. Morgan, Jr.'s interest in the House of Morgan when the younger Morgan died.

F.C. became the friend and confidant of several United States presidents and statesmen. In the gray years leading to World War II, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter referred to Dumaine as one of three individuals with the best understanding of world conditions. The other two were President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (popularly called FDR) and Great Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Of particular interest was Dumaine 's relationship with FDR during both the Great Depression and World War II. Once, when visiting Roosevelt, in an effort to give comfort to the president who was concerned with public opinion on his recent decisions, Dumaine quoted Abraham Lincoln:

If I were trying to read, much less answer all the attacks made on me, this shop might well be closed for any other business. I do the best I know how, the very best I can and mean to keep on doing it to the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me will not amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

The president liked the quotation and, upon returning to Boston, Dumaine had a copy framed and sent to FDR.

While the quotation was part of Dumaine's creed, it illustrates why any individuals in the past and present never gave Dumaine the credit deserved. Dumaine surely read and was told of the many criticisms of him, but he generally paid no heed. Instead, he simply did the best he could and let the record speak for itself.

During the 1922 strike at Amoskeag and the 1924 strike at Waltham Watch, both of which were in response to wage cuts, it was easy to label Dumaine the enemy of labor. Both cuts, however, were attempts to equalize the local labor costs with those found in other sections of the country. To provide employment in the long run, a firm's wage rate must be competitive. While Dumaine would have preferred to see wages in other mills and factories rise to the levels at Amoskeag and Waltham he had no control over those rates. The introduction of competitive rates / even if this meant a drop in the hourly wage / would ensure employment.

When the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company was forced to close in 1936, most people put the blame on Dumaine. A careful examination of the record vividly illustrates that Dumaine's devotion to his most precious assets, the workers, caused him to expand production and employment in New Hampshire in the early quarter of the century, at time when other firms were closing their mills and opening new factories in the South.

If Dumaine is to be criticized, it should not be for his lack of concern for his work force but for "dreaming the impossible dream," for trying to maintain employment for his workers when the more prudent course, as history has proved, would have been to move or close the enterprise.

The life of Frederic C. Dumaine should be mandatory reading for all current and future business people. Dumaine's life serves as a case study for today's executive in balancing a firm's fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders with its social responsibility to the labor force.

Until recently, there was little known about the ancestry of Frederic Christopher Dumaine. This is not as odd as it may seem. Frequently, the preference of many families emigrating from Canada to the United States in the middle of the 19th century was to alter their names. Even the correct spelling of Dumaine's father's name is uncertain. What Frederic Dumaine did know was that his father, Christopher Dumaine, was born on July 13, 1835, of French-Canadian parents in the Province of Quebec. He was one of three brothers. Apparently, Christopher was baptized a Catholic. F.C.'s mother, Cordelia Roberts, was also born in Canada in 1831. Her parents were Charles and Lucille Roberts. Cordelia attended the Congregational Church. At the age of sixteen, Cordelia Roberts married Barrett Stone. This marriage produced three daughters: Elizabeth, Relenia, and Georgia. Barrett Stone, Cordelia's first husband, died, leaving her with the three young children.

On May 14, 1858, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, Christopher Dumaine married the widow Cordelia, who had also emigrated from Canada. They were residing in Hadley, Massachusetts, when their only son, Frederic, was born. The uncertainty of the spelling of the name Dumaine comes from Frederic's birth certificate, which states in part: "I here certify that the birth of Charles Frederic Domain son of Christopher Domain and ___ Domain born at Hadley, on the 6th day of March, the year 1866," appears in the record for that year. The misspelling likely resulted from the difficulty the clerk had in spelling an unfamiliar French-Canadian name. Frederic Dumaine never bothered to correct the error in his name as recorded on the document.

Only recently, through the efforts of Richard L. Fortin, a genealogist in Manchester, New Hampshire, has Dumaine's ancestry been traced to the original immigration to Canada from France. Louis-Michael Maingot, F.C.'s great-great-grandfather, arrived in Quebec in the spring of 1755. He was a soldier assigned to the French Regiment from Guyenne. In 1760, after the fall of Montreal to the British, Louis-Michael was discharged from the service. It was during his military service that he acquired the "dit," or "also known as" "Dumaine." It was common practice for French soldiers to adopt a second surname, often to specify their geographic origin. Louis-Michael was thus identifying himself from the French Province of Maine.

Following his release from the army, Louis-Michael settled in Rouville County in the Province of Quebec, where he married Marie-Anne Fontaine. One of their grandchildren was Francis-Xavier Maingot-dit- Dumaine, F.C.'s grandfather. Francis-Xavier married Adeline Lescaolt. This marriage would produce two daughters (Philomena and Stephanie) and three sons (Joseph, Pierre, and Christopher, F.C.'s father).

Francis-Xavier did not live to old age. The grandfather of F.C. Dumaine became a casualty of the 1837-38 Rebellion. He was a member of the "Patriots," who rose up, under the leadership of Louis Joseph Papineau, against the perceived injustices of the British Government. Many French-Canadians associated with the rebellion fell away from the Catholic Church when the local bishops did not support their movement. On November 25, 1837, Francis-Xavier lost his life when the government forces attacked and destroyed the village of St. Charles. It appears unlikely that F.C. was ever aware of the role that his grandfather played in the rebellion.

Christopher Dumaine, F.C.'s father, was a broom maker by trade. In 1868, the family moved to Dedham, Massachusetts, where Christopher was employed as a foreman in David Baker's broom factory. They lived in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood. The only plumbing in the house was a cast-iron water pump in the kitchen sink.

One day when Fred was four years old and sunshine followed a shower the tot was allowed to go outside. It was warm. He was sent out in a new outfit. Horses were drawing loaded wagons on the dirt road in front of his house.

As children are wont to do, Dumaine moved close to the road just as a wagon wheel splashed through black mud. He was covered. Whether out of fear from the punishment that he anticipated from his mother for getting his new ouffit soiled or angry from the insult of being covered with the mud, he let out a series of curses. It was never explained exactly how the young Dumaine had come to learn such expressions. The commotion caused the driver to stop and return to assist young Fred, motivated first to be sure that the child was not hurt, then to see if he could assist in the cleanup. When the driver and other bystanders saw that Fred was not hurt, they chuckled in amusement over the sight. As might have been expected, their amusement made the lad angrier. In this early incident, Dumaine illustrated the gritty attitude that he would demonstrate throughout his life.

The broom factory must have paid good wages for the times, as Christopher Dumaine supported his wife, three stepdaughters, and son. By 1874, when Elizabeth and Relenia had married, Dumaine was able to send the third stepdaughter, Georgia, to secondary school at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

In addition to his job at the broom factory, Christopher Dumaine was also active in the community. He was a member of the local volunteer fire department. While his father's membership in Engine Company Hero Number One of the Upper Village brought Fred and his family great pride, it would also bring a great family tragedy that would force Fred to leave school to help support the family.

On the evening of January 7, 1878, when Fred was eleven years old, the local volunteers responded to a fire near Dedham Square. The temperature was below zero, making the fire difficult to fight. When Christopher returned home the following morning, he was soaking wet and direly chilled. Pneumonia quickly set in.

There was no real method of treatment for the illness. The only remedy of any type was to feed the patient alcohol. Doctors merely would monitor pneumonia cases to see what would come on the ninth day. If the patient lived that long and if the fever "broke," there was a chance for recovery.

Cordelia, sensing that her husband was near death, asked if Christopher wanted her to fetch the local priest. Christopher, who had not been an active member of the church for many years, responded: "No, I came this far alone. I guess I can go the rest of the way by myself." Whether Christopher's disassociation with the Catholic Church was a result of the French bishop's lack of moral support for his father's role in the Rebellion, his marriage to Cordelia, a Protestant, or simply a lack of interest, cannot be determined.

Young Fred assisted his mother in the nursing of his father. The elder Dumaine would sit in his armchair because he had difficulty breathing when lying flat in bed. On the eighth day, Christopher succumbed. Fred would always remember the way his father died. When Fred Dumaine was nearing his death some 73 years later, he asked to be helped to Christopher's chair, which he had kept. It was his desire to die in his father's chair.

Cordelia Dumaine went to work as a midwife and also took in washing. The family was forced to move into a smaller house. A few months later, young Fred, by then twelve years old, quit school to help support the household by working at a local dry goods store.

One of his children's and grandchildren's favorite stories of Fred prior to his landing the job at Amoskeag was when he was the proud owner of a mongrel Boston bull terrier, which he loved dearly. The dog went everywhere with him, following him to and from work.

To get to the general store where he worked, Fred and his dog had to pass the town bully's house, which was set back from the road. The bully was Fred's senior by 14 or 15 years and he owned a ferocious half-hound, half-collie, which was a noted fighter. The bully boasted his dog could lick any dog in town. Fred's Tiger had the reputation of being able to hold his own. One day the town bully and his dog met Fred and Tiger. The bully encouraged a fight. When it started, young Fred said, "I told you that you one day would see that my dog could and would lick your dog."

Tiger shook the 'bejabbers' out of his opponent. Fred gathered up his scattered belongings, and with triumphant Tiger at his heels, ran home while the bully unmercifully beat his dog with a stick.

A few days later the town bully, whose dog had recovered, waited for a chance to spot Tiger without his young master. A fight between the dogs ensued and, as an excuse to stop the fight, the town bully shot Tiger.

Fred reported the bully to the police and inquired as to how he could have him sued for killing his dog. He sued the bully, who contested, claiming that Dumaine should be fined for having had such a dog that was a fighting nuisance that attacked all the other dogs in town.

Fred was served notice to appear in the Dedham Court House. He had no money and did not want to ask anyone for help. Determined to vindicate his faithiul Tiger's good name, he hit upon a plan and boldly went to work doing extra errands to fund his idea. With his earnings, he took Tiger to a taxidermist and had him stuffed.

The day young Fred was called to court he went to the attic where he had hidden Tiger carefully in an old trunk. He wrapped the dog in newspaper tied together with string and carried his bundle to the Dedharn Court. He was ushered in by a policeman, who took him to the front of the courtroom. His case was just being called. Frightened but determined, Fred weathered the preliminaries and, wide-eyed, stood his ground.

After the complainant's version of Fred's ferocious, savage, attacking dog was heard by the court, the judge asked the defendant where his lawyer was. Fred said he couldn't afford one and preferred to argue his own cause. The judge asked, "How can you prove anything? Your dog is dead." Fred squared his shoulders, looked the judge in the eye, then asked if he could call two witnesses. With the judge's permission, Fred called for the town bully to bring his dog on a leash into the court. While the complainant was fetching his dog (he lived a block or so away), Fred lay his package on a wooden bench in the front of the courtroom and began to untie the strings and loosen the newspaper. Just as the bully returned with his ferocious dog, Fred opened the paper. The bully's dog took one look and savagely flew across the room, grabbing the stuffed Tiger, and shook the daylights out of it, causing a great commotion in ourt room. Fred dissolved into tears and rage at seeing his Tiger being savaged again. He pounded the bench and poured out his claim to the judge that his dog was not the aggressor. The judge found in Fred's favor and went on to encourage Fred to defend himself and stand up to injustices, but with some wisdom in gathering his facts for his testimony.

Young Fred profited by the advice. In later years, he studied law with his uncle-by-marriage, the prominent Boston lawyer Richard Olney, gaining a deep grasp of legal principles and procedures.

As an adult, Dumaine would become an avid diary keeper. At that time, he recorded in his diaries his activities following his father's death:

My father died the fourteenth of January and one or two months after I went to work for Henry Pettingall in a little dry goods store which he kept. After a year I left him because he would not give me more pay and, for the balance of the school term, went to school. During the summer, I got a job with a screen man named Pedrick, and in the fall went into McLaughlin's haberdashery where I stayed until the following spring when Mrs. Rodman got Steve Weld to find me a place in the city.

Stephen Weld, a former general in the Civil War, lived in Dedham and operated a cotton brokerage office in Boston. Weld knew of Dumaine from his sister-in-law, Harriet Rodman. Dumaine would supplement the family income by picking and selling blueberries. One of his best customers was Mrs. Rodman. Dumaine always remembered the kindness shown by her. In later years, he would name one of his daughters Harriet in her honor. He also handled Mrs. Rodman's estate following the death of her husband in 1910.

Apparently the meeting with the general occurred on an evening when Weld, returning home from Boston, came across Fred Dumaine, who was in the process of leaving home to find employment in the city.

Weld stopped, inquired where Dumaine was heading and offered assistance. He contacted T. Jefferson Coolidge, treasurer of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, Weld's best customer. Apparently Coolidge was looking for an office boy and, as a result of that chance meeting Dumaine was hired. Thus, in a boyhood that reads like a story from Horatio Alger, Jr. book, Frederic C. Dumaine began his career with Amoskeag Manufacturing Company.

 

 

 

In 1951 Frederic C. Dumaine Sr. died and his oldest son Frederic C. Dumaine Jr., who was called 'Buck', became president of the railroad. The 1950s decade was a time of change and transition for the New Haven. Three different management teams purchased a variety of passenger and freight equipment from a number of different suppliers, causing supply and maintenance headaches and draining cash reserves. Some New Haven Railroad innovations of this era, such as the new parking lot passenger station established at Route 128 near Boston and the Rail Charge Card, were great successes. Other New Haven innovations such as the Mack FCD rail busses and Clejan piggyback flatcars, were great failures. The short-lived and controversial administration of president Patrick McGinnis, which commenced during April 1954 and was over in January 1956, put the New Haven through a comprehensive corporate image design project which gave the railroad a new 'NH' logo and red, white, and black corporate color scheme. The New Haven's president during the latter half of the 1950s, George Alpert, was an early champion of government subsidies for money-losing railroad passenger operations and purchased the unique dual-powered EMD FL-9 diesel-electric-electric locomotives.

 

Expensive hurricane and flood damage during 1954 and 1955, competition from government subsidized highways and airlines, high rates of taxation, enormous commuter service losses, and the out-migration of heavy industry from New England to the south and west caused the New Haven Railroad to go bankrupt again in 1961. After a decade of struggling along under trustees Richard Smith, William Kirk, and Harry Dorrigan, the New Haven Railroad was absorbed by the ill-fated Penn Central Transportation Company on January 1st, 1969.

 

Dumaine Farms Trust: A gift delayed, a promise deferred

 

STONEVILLE — When industrialist F.C. “Buck” Dumaine died 13 years ago, he left behind an estate worth millions, a record of high-wire capitalism chronicled in Time magazine, and one altruistic wish for the people of Rockingham County.

 

He wanted his land to become a model farm for all county residents to enjoy as a showcase for sustainable agriculture, environmental stewardship and wildlife conservation.

“I’m sure he just wanted to do something for the community and maintain the land in the most pristine way,” said Ruth Brooking of Wilmington, Del., daughter of the man who once ran Fieldcrest Mills.

But his gift of 1,370 acres — worth $2.1 million — is controlled by a private group that has made little headway realizing the late financier’s dreams on land that’s now tax-exempt.

The nonprofit Dumaine Farms Trust comprises mainly of current or former residents of the area with no family ties to Buck Dumaine, although two of his sons once were trustees. It’s not clear how they were jettisoned.

Meanwhile, operating largely out of public view, the trust has rebuffed several proposals from such reputable groups as the Dan River Basin Association seeking to put flesh on Dumaine’s vision.

And the trustees, who number about a dozen, enforce a no-trespassing rule that results in charges against people straying onto lands among the Piedmont’s most beautiful.

“Buck used to tell us, 'Anytime you want to go down there, that’s fine, just keep an eye out for anything that isn’t as it should be,’ ” said Dot Shively, who has lived next to Dumaine’s most scenic vista — Bent Farm — for 46 years.

“Now, if you’re caught there without a pass, you end up in court down in Wentworth.”

Trustees say too many people abused the privilege of unsupervised access. People who request permission are allowed to hunt or fish, but usually with a trustee tagging along, said trust chairman Scott Shoulars.

“People have done damage to the roads and left trash and debris,” said Shoulars, Rockingham’s former cooperative extension director. “Our biggest problem is trespassing. We have to take someone to court at least once a year.”

The textile magnate did not appreciate how much his dream would cost and left insufficient funds, Shoulars said. The trustees are all volunteers, doing what they can to tackle a tall order with little cash, he and other trustees say.

Love at first sight

The path toward today’s impasse began in the mid-1950s when Dumaine — scion of a wealthy family steeped in the New England textile industry — made a bold move.

The Bostonian engineered the purchase of Fieldcrest Mills from Chicago retailer Marshall Field & Co., including large-scale operations in Rockingham County and southern Virginia.

Managers in Eden wanted to impress the new Yankee owner. They knew how, after learning he loved to hunt quail with his prized side-by-side, 16-gauge Lefever shotgun.

“They set up some hunts while he was down here looking over the mills,” said Jay Adams, grandson of the late Jim Robertson, who was tapped to organize the excursions.

Robertson was an expert outdoorsman who pursued his passion in his free time from the mill, Adams said. One day, the two were hunting in a heavy snowstorm and they stumbled upon an abandoned cabin not far from Price Grange Road.

“They just waited it out in there, in this run-down, old cabin,” Adams said. “And Buck fell in love with the place.”

Dumaine soon owned the land and renovated the cabin, adding a kitchen and another room. And as Fieldcrest prospered, he became a regular visitor, arriving with his bird dogs and influential guests from all across the country, such as U.S. congressmen and senior executives of such industrial giants as Westinghouse Corp.

Dumaine bought more land near his cabin and in the Shiloh area to the south, farming in ways that created the best game-bird habitat. His local domain eventually spanned hundreds of acres along Belton and River roads, as well as Bent Farm, perched on a picturesque peninsula formed by a hairpin turn in the Dan River near Eagle Falls.

A character, nature lover

People remember Dumaine as a wealthy eccentric whose bird dogs sometimes were chauffeured from Boston to North Carolina in a limo, because flying didn’t agree with them.

But folks also recognized Buck Dumaine as someone with a common touch and a deep love for the land. “If you dropped a piece of paper, he’d take note of where and make you go back and pick it up. You didn’t litter around him,” said Barbara Davis, who lives in a house owned by the trust in exchange for tending some of its acreage.

His no-frills personality made the biggest impression, said former neighbor Shively: “He’d as soon sit and eat a can of wienies with us as anything.”

He hosted a big barbecue each year for the entire Shiloh community. There was a dove hunt each fall. When the Eden YMCA needed money for a new wing, he was the big donor.

So it seemed perfectly fitting in the late 1970s when he announced the model farm as a gift to county residents.

“The trust will benefit the people of Rockingham County by contributing to the development of modern and successful family farms while, at the same time, preserving and improving the environment so that it may be enjoyed both for recreation and for its natural beauty,” the late Fieldcrest executive Rufus Beaver said at the time.

Lost in translation

But a lot changed before it came time for Buck Dumaine’s trustees to take charge in 1997.

What remained of Fieldcrest limped toward its death bed as the textile industry collapsed around it. So the trust lost a logical source of corporate funding for the plans.

And Dumaine did not die a fast death, but lingered for two years after being made a ward of the court because he was no longer mentally competent.

By then, the 94-year-old financier’s estate was in disarray, said his son Dudley Dumaine, one of three original members of the farm trust who no longer serves on it.

“Those who had to straighten out his mess had no choice but to scrap Buck’s hopes for the N.C. properties and (their) liabilities, as Buck would never see them again,” Dudley Dumaine said in an e-mail from his home in Kentucky.

Over the years, the roster of Dumaine Farms Trust included a mixture of local neighbors, former Fieldcrest executives and agricultural officials.

The group boasted one heavyweight in its ranks, former U.S. Rep. Richardson Preyer of Greensboro. But Preyer died in 2001, before he could have much impact.

“He was a very wealthy person who would have helped if we had come up with something,” said current trustee Howard Richardson, a former FBI official and retired Fieldcrest security chief.

A tall order, lawyers say

Lawyers have warned the trustees that to fulfill Dumaine’s bequest, every aspect of what they create must benefit the farmers Buck mentioned in the 1977 document that originated the trust, Richardson said.

“It’s difficult to take that much land and say, 'We can do such and such,’ then make it fit where it helps small farmers who have five or 10 acres,” said Richardson, who chaired the trustees at one point.

No proposal so far has passed that stiff test, he said. Trustees meet once a year in June and have fielded a variety of proposals since Dumaine’s death, including one for a nature center and shooting preserve with Remington Arms Co.

Seven years ago, local developer Peter Osborne proposed buying Bent Farm from the trustees for his own residence, a deal aimed at giving them enough money to plan an agricultural center and county park elsewhere the Dumaine property. He also offered help organizing a coalition to guide the project so it benefited both farmers and the larger public.

About the same time, the Dan River Basin Association suggested opening a center to teach and promote organic, sustainable farming on part of Bent Farm, with nature trails and boating access elsewhere.

It’s hard to believe DRBA’s proposal couldn’t pass muster, said Lindley Butler, who helped craft the nonprofit river group’s May 2003 plan.

“I really think we had a proposal that would have fulfilled what Buck Dumaine wanted to do,” said Butler, professor emeritus of history at Rockingham Community College.

Richardson said his recollection of DRBA’s plan is hazy, but he believes lawyers advised against it. Shoulars said he did not recall the group’s plan at all.

The trust also has talked with N.C. State and N.C. A&T universities about developing research projects or facilities on the land, but nothing has come of that yet, trustees said.

Ashes to hunting grounds

Meantime, the trust normally earns less than $25,000 a year, with its main revenue coming from leasing land to a Chatham, Va., dairy. Last year, the group started a $1,000 scholarship for one student each year from Rockingham County to attend N.C. State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Richardson said none of Dumaine’s descendants are on the board because Dudley Dumaine and his brother resigned some time ago.

That’s a possibility, Dudley Dumaine said, but he doesn’t remember resigning or ever receiving notice of any board meetings before that.

One thing Dudley Dumaine knows for sure: His father truly loved the land he bequeathed for the benefit of Rockingham County residents. In fact, Dudley Dumaine and his brother traveled all the way from Massachusetts after Buck died to spread their dad’s ashes there, near a favorite hunting spot.

It was what Buck’s will said to do.

 

Documents on Dumaine Farms

Sunday, March 28, 2010

(Updated 3:00 am)

This December 1977 document created the Dumaine Farms Trust to “benefit the general public and particularly the farmers and other people of Rockingham County, North Carolina.” At the outset, the group consisted of three trustees, including one of F.C. “Buck” Dumaine’s sons. The elder Dumaine died in March 1997 at the age of 94.

This document conveyed a large amount of land to the Dumaine Farms Trust in August 1996, about seven months before Buck Dumaine died. Dumaine had been declared a ward of the court a year earlier because he was no longer mentally competent. In this Guardian’s Deed, Buck Dumaine’s legal representative gave the acreage to the tax-exempt trust because the cost of maintaining the land was too costly for Dumaine’s estate. The first paragraph lists the trust’s membership at that time, including two of Dumaine’s sons.

In early 2003, the nonprofit Dan River Basin Association was asked by the Dumaine Farms Trust to submit a plan that would meet Buck Dumaine’s goals for the land he left under the trust’s supervision. The river-conservation group envisioned a center that would teach and promote sustainable, organic farming on part of the scenic Bent Farm, along with hiking trails and boat access on other parts of the tract. The farm trust did not pursue the proposal, but never said why, several DRBA members said.

Also in 2003, Eden developer and contractor Peter Osborne hired professional consultants to prepare this map and plan for part of Buck Dumaine’s acreage, including an agricultural center, nature reserve and a county park with an equestrian center and other recreational facilities. The trust decided against his proposal, which included his purchase of the Bent Farm for personal use. “In my conversations with you over several years, we have discussed several ways the trust could accomplish its mission,” Osborne said in a cover letter to the Dumaine Farms Trust. “I believe that I sensed frustration that over the years basically there was little activity and no success toward the mission and goals of the trust.”

 

 

Staff writer Myla Barnhardt contributed to this story.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com

 

COMMENTS

Pack grad

March 28, 2010 - 11:12 pm EDT

Thanks to Taft Wireback for a very interesting and informative article about Buck Dumaine. As a long-time resident of Rockingham County and a former Fieldcrest employee, I appreciated this insight into someone who was held in such high esteem around the company, in the City of Eden and throughout the county.

This article answers questions more residents than just I have had, I am sure. Many of us have heard about some land Buck left for the benefit of Rockingham County but we never knew for sure if this was true. Now we know it is. We also understand the extent of Buck's generosity toward us as shown by the size of this gift and the charge given to those who agreed to administer Buck's wishes.

What this article also does is to raise a number of legitimate questions that need to be answered by the current Trustees of the Dumaine Farms Trust and by certain administrators in the Rockingham County government.

To the Trustees, I would first let you know that I have talked with county residents who have requested permission to hunt or fish on Buck's land and were denied this opportunity by you. Mr. Schoulars' statement regarding the granting of permission to hunt or fish is not close to what I have been told by those who were denied this privilege. I can't be the only person in Rockingham County to hold this belief. I fail to understand how leasing land to a dairy in Virginia fulfills the purpose of the Trust as stated in the Trust document, being to manage the property transferred to the trust "for the benefit of the general public and particularly the farmers and other people of Rockingham County, North Carolina." Surely there are Rockingham County farmers that would welcome an opportunity to lease this land. And since the purpose of the trust is to provide a benefit to Rockingham County farmers and other citizens, it would be nice if the Trust could present some sort of annual report to those it is supposed to benefit, citing what the Trust has done to further this purpose. For a tax-exempt organization established in 1977, providing one scholarship with a value of $1,000 doesn't seem like much of an effort. This lack of understanding about the Trust's accomplishments, if any, could be very easily corrected. By the way, it might be interesting to get a current legal opinion of what is permissible under the terms of the Trust, as the Trust document clearly contemplates that laws and regulations might change. If there are no funds available within the Trust to develop the property, does the word "abandon" in section 2 of the Trust document allow all or some of the property to be sold, with the proceeds from the sale being used for the stated purposes of the Trust?

To the elected officials of the County, perhaps you have some of the same questions I do about this property and how it is being used (or not) for the benefit of our citizens. I do not understand that just stating that a trust is a 501(c)(3) organization and is, therefore, tax exempt is enough. You actually have to walk the walk. You have to act like a tax-exempt organization and do things that allow you to be exempt. Otherwise we would all declare ourselves to be 501(c)(3) organizations and pay no tax. So, what is it about the Trust that makes it tax-exempt? And does this provide for non-payment of property taxes at a time when the county could surely use the additional revenue? Is the $25,000 annual rent taxable? And, if this property is to be used to benefit the county, was it considered as a possible site for the equestrian center? How much could that have saved? If the Trust's Trustees have rejected proposals by Pete Osborne and DRBA (and, possible others not mentioned) for ways to develop the property within the mandates of the Trust, are the Trustees meeting their fiduciary responsibility as managers of the property they were left to manage, not own. As our elected representatives, perhaps our County Commissioners will ask these questions and others they must have on our behalf.

Sadly the only reasonable conclusion I can draw from this article is that the legally-established wishes of a Yankee who came South to buy a mill and fell in love with Rockingham County and its citizens, as stated in the Dumaine Farms Trust document, are at best not being met and at worse being blatantly ignored. I will be personally outraged if it is shown that this is the case.

 

 

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POSTSCRIPT

On May 3, 1997, I attended a memorial service for Frederic C. "Buck" Dumaine, Jr. At that time, I delivered copies of my manuscript to Buck's three children, and I had the good fortune to talk with Dudley Dumaine, one of Buck's sons, for some time. While I did expect a note of appreciation for the copies of my manuscript, I was humbled to receive a letter from Dudley offering, on behalf of the third generation of Dumaines, to provide me with personal material, family members' recollections, and to fund the publication of this book. Dudley's letter in part stated:

Amoskeag's emotional historical distortions have contributed to the current discreditization of respect the American people have for the honorable driving forces that made America what it is. We also understand that we, the descendants of F.C. Dumaine, Sr., are subject to the same errors of oral history within ourselves, as did the labor force of Amoskeag, and for the same reason; lack of full information.

The letter went on to state that this additional information was for my "...analysis, inclusion, modification and/or rejection."

Subsequently, Dudley Dumaine provided me with three basic categories of material; oral history, personal Dumaine files and galley proofs of a book-in-progress titled Dumaine of New Eng]and.1

In the 1950's, the Dumaine family had contracted with the late Dorothy G. Wayman, a retired Boston Globe reporter and biographer, to write a book based on Dumaine's diaries. Wayman was noted above as a potential author of the unpublished history of Amoskeag. After three years of work on the biography and for reasons unknown, the family decided against the publication.

I found little in the book relative to Amoskeag that I had not already discovered. There was, however, much written confirming my prior opinion on the measure of the man. Of particular interest to test my already decided conclusions about Dumaines' motivations is her review of F.C.'s actions in controlling Waltham Watch, a subject not covered in my book but in itself a fascinating study. At one point she writes:

Dumaine's human side appears in an incident in 1937, when a young man attempting to move a pan filled with gasohne was fatally burned. [Quoting his Diary she goes on to state]

Thursday, July 22, 1937: **** of the **** Insurance Company called to discuss the John Kempton case. I explained to him unless he was willing to pay the family $3,000, with $150 towards funeral expenses and the nurses bill, $256, in view of the great suffering and unusual circumstances, I could not recommend a settlement on no other basis and should insist the case be put up to the Industrial Accident Board.

He pointed out the question of willful negligence on the company's part might be raised if the question went before the Board and the watch company might he held for half the damages. I told him I cared nothing about that. If it could be shown willful negligence existed, the watch company should he penalized. I could see no other solution and did not care to horse-trade.2

In a second incident relating the time when Dumaine was retired from control of Waltham Watch she states:

On May 22, 1944, the Waltham News-Tribune printed a tribute to Dumaine and his record of achievement and also printed a long list of names of Waltham employees of twenty years' service or more, who had received unspecified bonuses. The public supposed that these have been paid by the company, as originally authorized hy vote of the directors and mentioned in Dumaine's diary. Actually because government consent could not he procured, in the end Dumaine footed the entire bill from his own pocket.3

Wayman concludes her chapter on Waitham Watch with the following comment.

It is obvious that the $125,000 of bread Dumaine cast upon the waters in 1923, at Waltham, twenty years later came back in the form of a loaf of about a million dollars in cash. A quarter of it he paid to the United States government in taxes, and one third he had donated in bonuses to the veteran watchmakers. Money, however, was not Dumaine's objective or the mainspring to his operations. . .

His satisfaction and his pride in the success of his endeavors at Waltham, as in Bay State Fishing Company or Fore River Ship and Engine Company or Agwilines, was to see the American economy and industry "workng right," clear of debt, giving employment to workers, prosperity to the community, a reasonable return on risk capital.4

One final point in the Wayman manuscript substantiated my assumptions of Dumaine's attitude in letting the record speak for itself relates to a conversation and subsequent correspondence between Dumain and F.D. Roosevelt. During the conversation with the president, Dumaine had quoted a saying of Abraham Lincoln's which Roosevelt had not heard. Upon returning to Boston, Dumaine had the quote printed, matted and framed and sent it to the president. The text and FDR's letter are on the following pages.

Lest the reader conclude that the book has been tainted by Dumaine's support in publication, let me emphatically state that all of the material that I have reviewed substantiated the conclusions reached in my research prior to the family's generous offer.

Because publication of the manuscript is funded by the Dumaine family, I have relinquished all rights to Saint Anselm College to permit all proceeds to establish a scholarship for descendants of Amoskeag employees who qualify to attend Saint Anselm College.

Arthur M. Kenison

October 1997

 

Frederic C. Dumaine: Office Boy to Tycoon by Arthur M. Kenison, Saint Anselm College (Manchester, N.H.) and N.H.) Saint Anselm College (Manchester (2000, Book, Illustrated)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City (Library of New England) [Paperback]

Tamara K. Hareven (Author), Randolph Langenbach

 

 

 

 

Dumaine's Amoskeag: Let the record speak [Hardcover] Arthur M Kenison (AUTHOR

 

 

 

 

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September 09, 1991

The Dumaine Legacy

By Marjorie Rosen

In a Privileged Family, An Unwelcome Heiress Proves That Blood Is Not Thicker Than Money

 

MY ADOPTIVE PARENTS ALWAYS TOLD me I was a chosen baby," says Elizabeth Ann Charney. Growing up in a redbrick row house full of love in a middle-class Brooklyn neighborhood, Betty Charney, now 35 and a public school teacher in Miramar, Fla., never gave a second thought to her natural parents or who they might be. Then in 1977, during her first pregnancy, she found herself worrying every time a doctor asked about her family history. "I had these questions," she recalls. "And I began to wonder, 'Who am I?' "

 

What began as a simple journey to find her roots has become a dizzying ride on the wheel of fortune. As it turned out, Charney's biological father was Pierre Dumaine, one of the heirs to a $200 million trust from a railroad and textile empire that includes Fieldcrest Cannon Inc., the towel manufacturers. Betty—divorced from Robert Charney since 1981 and sharing a modest house on a canal with sons A.J., 12, and Bobby Jr., 14, and her ex—mother-in-law, Katherine Cusato—now finds herself a Cinderella-in-waiting. There's only one catch: Her new family has so far resisted Charney's claim to her fairytale birthright.

 

Relaxing amid the Chippendale splendor of his estate in Weston, Mass., Charney's birth uncle Frederic "Buck" Dumaine Jr., 88, is unbending. He and other recipients of the Dumaine trust don't deny that Charney is a blood relation. But he also insists that Frederic Dumaine Sr., the patriarch who died in 1951, expressly stated that only "legitimate" heirs were entitled to share his legacy. In the eyes of the family, Betty, born out of wedlock, is ineligible. So Buck grins and dismisses her lawyers, who have taken the case to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. "Let 'em be damned," he declares.

 

That's what the Dumaines said in 1955 when they discovered that Charney's parents, Pierre "Spike" Dumaine, then 43, and Evelyn Humphrey, also 43, a receptionist at the family's Boston-based headquarters, had fallen in love. After all, Spike was married, if unhappily, and was the father of two children. Evelyn was a twice-divorced mother of three. She soon left her job, and he was dropped from the trust. In 1956, Betty was born. She insists today that Pierre "stayed in his marriage because of his obligation as a father." Still, at about the same time that Evelyn surrendered her for adoption, Pierre's trust payments resumed.

 

By 1961, though, Pierre's marriage had collapsed; he and Evelyn married but had no more children. Betty was never forgotten. "My dad later told me that every year on my birthday, my mom became a recluse," Charney says. After her 21st, Betty asked her adoptive parents, John Scudder, a stockbroker turned schoolteacher, and his wife, Nelda, to contact the lawyer who'd originally arranged the adoption. He in turn notified the Dumaines, who then wrote to their long-lost daughter.

 

"Words can't explain how I felt," Charney says, recalling her first meeting with her birth parents. That was in 1978, in Birmingham, Ala., where she was living with her husband, a cafeteria manager. From the first, says Betty, she and the Dumaines found an easy closeness. And eight months later, Pierre and Evelyn threw a party for her at their home in Cumberland, Maine.

 

During that visit, Charney for the first time understood that her parents were wealthy. But not until after they died—Evelyn of heart failure in January 1987, Pierre of cancer seven months later—did she understand just how well-off they were. And just how much she believes she might inherit—$250,000 a year. "When you don't come from money, you can't comprehend it," she says.

 

Nor could she imagine that the other heirs, including half brother Peter, 53, and half sister Lael "Suzy," would want to exclude her from the inheritance. (Pierre specified in his will that he wanted Betty to be a beneficiary.) The battle began four months after her father's funeral when the trustees started legal proceedings to determine whether she was entitled to a share. All along, the family contention has been that Charney has no claim on the trust, though Pierre and Evelyn did eventually marry. Charney's attorney, Dort Bigg, insists that universal slate law legitimizes any child born out of wedlock when the parents legally wed and acknowledge the child. Charles DeGrandpre, attorney for Betty's half brother and half sister, disagrees. Adoptive children obtain all inheritance rights from their new parents, he says, and forfeit those of their natural parents. Which may be why Betty petitioned a New York circuit court in 1988 to annul her adoption. (The court has yet to act on her request.) Her adoptive parents made no objection. "Our relationship wasn't based on whether it was official, but on a lifetime of sharing," says John Scudder, 71, who, with his wife, Nelda, 70, took Charney in when she was 4 days old. "If this helps Betty, we'd do it."

 

The Dumaines insist that Frederic, a man obsessed with his strict moral code, didn't give a hoot about bloodlines, only about behavior. According to Charney's half brother, Peter, "My grandfather was so specific. He'd sit me on his knee and pound into my head that, if I ever got a woman pregnant and was not married, I'd be on my own. And my father told it to me too."

 

Taking the patriarch at his word, the New Hampshire Superior Court ruled in 1990 that the elder Dumaine's intent was to support only those heirs born "in wedlock." The decision, says Betty, "crushed me. I felt the judge was saying, 'You're not good enough to be one of them.' " She has appealed her case to the state supreme court, which could rule on it this fall. If she wins, Betty, who now makes $25,000 a year, hasn't the vaguest idea how she'd spend her new riches. But at least there would be plenty of money to send her sons to college.

 

And if fortune eludes her? "I'm proud of who I am," she says. "I always was, but now I know why. There's too much hate in this world, and you can concentrate on it, but I know my mother and father, and I know they loved me."

 

MARJORIE ROSEN

CINDY DAMPIER in Miramar, GAYLE VERNER in Boston, MARIA SPEIDEL in Brooklyn

 

Contributors:

Cindy Dampier,

Gayle Verner,

Maria Speidel