JULIUS ATTWOOD
EAST HADDAM: Attorney-at-Law; President National Bank of New England
Julius Attwood was born at East Haddam, February 23, 1824, and has resided in that town continuously since his birth, except from the years 1847 to 1854. He was the fifth of the seven living children left by his father, who died in 1829, five of whom are still living. He was educated in the common schools of his native town until he was twelve years of age, after which time he was employed for five years in the coasting trade and in ferrying on the Connecticut river. Not being robust, he served a four-years apprenticeship at shoemaking, but did not continue that occupation after attaining his majority. During his leisure, while an apprentice, he studied by himself and fitted himself as a teacher, and for seven years be taught in the public and higher schools on Long Island and in Maryland. Returning to East Haddam in 1854, he commenced business in a "country store" and continued in trade until 1870, when after a course in reading law, he was duly admitted to the Middlesex county bar, and has followed the profession of law since that time. In 1856 he was elected justice of the peace, which office he has continuously held ever since; and for fourteen years of that time was trial justice of the town; also from 1866 was for nineteen years town clerk and registrar of East Haddam. Elected judge of probate for the district of East Haddam in 1859, he has held that position ever since - for thirty-two years - it being probably a longer continuous period than that held by any other judge in this state now living. In 1873 and 1874 he represented his town in the general assembly, but was defeated afterwards when nominated for the office of senator for the nineteenth senatorial district, by a small plurality, there being a local "panic" that year among the "pound fishermen" along the sound shore. Being again nominated to that office, he declined. In 1866 he served one year as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge, I. O. O. F., of Connecticut, and represented that body in the sovereign grand lodge during 1867 and 1868. For many years he has been connected with the National Bank of New England as a director, and has been its president since 1883. Visiting Europe in 1880, he traveled extensively in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, England, and Scotland. Politically, he has always been connected with the whig and republican parties. Though favoring Methodism in his youth, in his riper years he thought he could more honor the memory of its great founder by being received into the older church that John Wesley and his brother Charles never dared to forsake; and for forty-eight years he has been a communicant in the Episcopal church.
Mr. Attwood has twice married; first in 1852 to Sarah A. Gould of Stony Brook, Long Island, who died in 1860, leaving one son, Frederick J. Attwood, now a resident of Brooklyn, N.Y., who is also married and has four children. Second, in 1862, he married Catharine Palmer of East Haddam, who is still living and whose only child, Bertha Palmer Attwood, is now a student in the Yale Art School, New Haven.
Source: Illustrated Popular Biography of Connecticut - 1891, Compiled and Published by J. A. Spalding, Hartford Conn., Press of the Case, Lockwood and Brainard Company, 1891
Free Connecticut Genealogy Lookups
Connecticut Societies
Connecticut Surname Queries
Connecticut Genealogy Data Resources
|