JAMES BINGHAM, a retired manufacturer
residing at Pleasant Valley, in North Lyme, was born in Scotland, ten miles
from Edinburgh, April 16, 1815, son of Thomas and Main (Ketchem) Bingham.
His parents came to this country in 1825. They had a family of four daughters
and one son.
James Bingham at the age of ten years began
to learn the paper-maker's trade, which had been followed by his father
and by his maternal grandfather. He worked for sixteen years in the mills
at Pennycuick, in Scotland, making the finest of hand-made paper for bank
notes and other special purposes. He learned all parts of the business
thoroughly, becoming a most skilled workman. In 1845 he came to America,
bringing with him his wife and two children. For two years he lived in
Paterson, N.J., but subsequently removed to Waterford, Conn., in company
with his two brothers-in-law, the Robertsons, and started a paper-mill
for the manufacture of thin manilla paper, which was carried on most successfully
under the name of Robertson & Bingham, Mr. Bingham being the practical
man of the business. During the eighteen years of his stay in Waterford
they built up a plant worth some thirty thousand dollars to forty thousand
dollars. Mr. Bingham also helped in the financial department and with the
books. The firm made fine tissue papers for patterns, which was sold as
high as thirty cents per pound during the war. In prosperous times the
receipts were over one hundred thousand dollars a year. At the end of eighteen
years Mr. Bingham sold out his interest in Water-ford, and in 1862 built
a mill at Oakdale. This did not prove a very successful venture; and he
afterward gave it up, and started a mill in North Lyme. He came to his
present home from Montville seventeen years ago. Mr. Bingham's first wife,
Margaret Robertson, died in Waterford at the age of sixty years. Their
son Thomas died when about twenty-two and one-half years old. The living
children of this first union are: Joanna, wife of James Cochran, and mother
of five children, living in Tampa, Fla.; Catherine, who keeps house for
her brother James; and Edward, who lives in Waterford, and superintends
the two paper-mills for the Robertsons. The last-named is married, and
the father of two sons and a daughter. Mr. Bingham married for his second
wife Cynthia Ann Schofield, who was born in Waterford in 1819, not far
from the paper-mills. Her father was a manufacturer of woollen cloths.
In 1812, when about twenty-one years old, he invented a loom, and in it
made the first satinet, a suit of which, made by Mr. Schofield, was worn
by President Monroe, on his inauguration. Mr. Schofield died February 14,
1892, nearly one hundred and two years old. His father, John Schofield,
came to this country from England with his wife and six children. He was
a man of large business interests, started his first factory near Boston,
about 1793, and later owned four — in Westerly, Stillmanville, Montville,
and Waterford. Mrs. Bingham is the only survivor of three children. During
several years past Mr. Bingham has been partially deprived of the use of
his lower limbs, and can only walk with the aid of canes.
Biographical Review Volume
XXVI
Containing Life Sketches of Leading Citizens
of New London County Connecticut
Boston
Biographical Review Publishing Company
1898
pgs 465 - 466
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