528 RUSSELL. RUSSELL. Spanish language as well as the country, he was employed by the Panama R. R. and Pacific Mail S. S. Company, in their busi- ness with the Central American govern- ments. He returned to the United States and represented the Pacific Mail S. S. Company in their negotiations with the government of Nicaragua, at Washington in 1863, through the minister from Nicara- gua and Costa Rica. He then joined Ben- jamin Holliday in the Overland Mail, and the steamship lines from San Francisco to Oregon and Mexico. He retired from business in 1S6S, and has since devoted himself to country life and to study. Mr. Russell was elected secretary of the Massachusetts state board of agriculture in 1880, and re-elected for six consecutive years. His labor in this position was unre- mitting and enthusiastic, and, inspired by his zeal, the board of agriculture became a working force in the Commonwealth. His reports were called for from all parts of the civilized world. As a trustee of the Agricultural College, he kept its needs continually before the legislative com- mittees, and the growth in its usefulness and influence is due in no small measure to his labors. He was elected to Congress from the roth district of Massachusetts in 1886. Here he at once made a record for inde- pendent, thorough and conscientious work. As an orator, he always held the attention of the House. As a member, he contrib- uted his full share to the maintenance of that high standard of liberal, progressive and patriotic policy which has ever charac- terized the Massachusetts delegation in Congirss. Mr. Russell was married in Leicester, (where he now resides) March iS, 1856, to Caroline Nelson of that town. He has no children living. Mr. Russell has traveled extensively, and evidently with his eyes open, in all parts of the world, and has devoted much time to the collection of books and engrav- ings, his private library containing above eight thousand choice volumes. He is a member of the American Geo- graphical Society, the Century and Reform clubs of New York, and the Somerset anil Reform clubs of Boston. RUSSELL, William Augustus, son of William and Almira (Heath) Russell, was born in Wells River, Orange county, Vt., April 22, 1831. The Russell family is of pure English blood, and allied to a family honored in Anglo-Saxon history. Mr. Russell, while at his home in Frank- lin, N. H., to which town his father had re- moved, attended the public schools and the Franklin Academy, occupying his vaca- tions at work in the paper-mills of Pea- body & Daniels until the age of sixteen. He subsequently attended a private school in Lowell, which completed his early edu- cational training. In 1848 he commenced work in his father's paper mill, where he remained until 185 1. By diligence and foresight he at once established his reputation as a sue- " cessful manufacturer. Two years later the father and son formed a co-partnership and moved their works to Lawrence. The senior Mr. Russell's health soon failed, and he was compelled to retire from active business, leaving the entire interests in the hands of his son, who proved equal to the task, and began to meet the growing de- mands of the business by leasing, in 1856, two mills in Belfast, Me. In 1861 he pur- chased a mill in Lawrence of a firm that had failed in business, and later on two other mills fell into his hands, having previously been overtaken by misfortune. Mr. Russell was soon in the front rank of paper manufacturers of the country. Having found by costly experiments that wood-pulp was the fibre needed for improved machinery and rapid work, he established a wood-pulp mill in Franklin, N. H., in 1869, for the production of this new fibre. He succeeded in this where many had failed, and instituted an entirely new department of industrial art in this country. He began to convert the pro- duct of his pulp-mills into paper by the purchase, in 1879, of the Fisher & Aiken and Daniel mills, Franklin. He also erected one the same year in Bellows Falls, Yt. To carry out his scheme successfully, he was obliged to purchase the entire water- power here, build a new dam and enlarge the canal. Through his enterprise, this small town grew into one of the thrifty towns of the State, ranking third in valua- tion. Mr. Russell's principal works are here, and in Lawrence. He has also large inter- ests in other mills, at several points in Maine, and St. Anthony Falls, Minn. Politically, Mr. Russell began life a Whig. At the dissolution of that party he allied himself with the Republican party, and has unwaveringly supported it since. He uniformly declined to accept any pub- lic office until 1867, when he was elected alderman in the city of Lawrence. The following year he was chosen a member of
