ROBERT MIDDLETON
Robert Middleton, president of the Globe Woolen Company, of Utica, is the third son in a family of eight children born to Robert and Marjory (Burnett) Middle- ton, both natives of Aberdeen,
Scotland, and was born in that university city on the 25th of May, 1825. His father, who was a manufacturer while in Scotland, came to America with his family in 1839 and settled in Middle Granville,
Washington county, N. Y., where he spent the remainder of his life as a farmer, dying in 1876, aged eighty-six years. His wife's death occurred in 1856 at the age of fifty-two. They were liberally
endowed with those Scotch characteristics of probity and respectability which invariably distinguish the race, and transmitted to their children those attributes of thrift and frugality that
enabled them to lead unusually successful lives.
The educational advantages which Robert Middleton enjoyed were confined to the common schools of Granville, N. Y., where he made the best of his opportunities until he reached the age of eighteen. He then spent six years in the employ of the Lowell Carpet Company, of Lowell, Mass., and the succeeding seven years as assistant superintendent of the mills of the Merrimac Woolen Company. In these capacities he acquired not only a wide practical experience, but found an occupation which he liked, and which was the foundation of the life-work in which he has been more than ordinarily successful. He familiarized himself with every detail incident to the manufacture of woolen fabrics and thoroughly learned each branch of the business. In April, 1857, he was invited to visit the Utica Woolen Mills with the view of accepting the agency of the same, and after a personal interview with the late Theodore S. Faxton, then president of the company, and an examination of the mill property, he was engaged as agent and superintendent and entered upon his duties as such upon the 10th of May, 1857. He has ever since been connected with this establishment, and to him is mainly due the success of the company. The Globe Mills, as they were then called, had been in existence for several years, as related in an earlier chapter of this volume, but as a business enterprise they had been unsuccessful. In 1854, just before the approach of the severest financial struggle the country has ever experienced, the company failed and the stockholders were assessed ninety-eight per cent. to pay outstanding debts, and the mill was sold at auction. On August 1, 1855, a new company was organized under the name of the Utica Woolen Mills. The panic of 1857 having been safely passed through a prosperous season began, and under the able management of its president and Robert Middleton as agent the mill gained large profits for its shareholders, paid the first dividend it had ever made, and established a repute for its fabrics that was second to none in the country. The capital, which had been $70,000 in the beginning, was in 1868 increased from the earnings to $3000,000; new buildings were erected and the old machinery wholly replaced; and the name was changed to the Globe Woolen Company.
Mr. Middleton's excellent practical qualifications and his natural executive ability ample scope for exercise, and he gave his best energies to the upbuilding of company. The product was greatly improved in quality under his skillful direction and other reforms were inaugurated which soon placed the concern on a : firm and permanent foundation. The product of the mills was formerly sold bycommission houses, but on January 1, 1864, a salesroom was established by the company in New York city and the entire product, amounting to $1,200,000, is sold from there. When Mr. Middleton assumed charge of the mills the output was not more than one-fifth the present quantity, while the quality of the goods manufactured has advanced still more rapidly, and at the present time cloths are made that are not excelled in the country. On September 6, 1871, the entire property of the company was destroyed by fire, but the mills were at once rebuilt and in 1888 a worsted mill was added to the plant. It is eminently proper to state that the stockholders of the company attribute a large share of the credit for the success of their mills to Mr. Middleton, who for nearly forty years has devoted his time, his great executive ability, and his best energies to their management. In 1868 his son, Walter D. Middleton, entered the offices of the company in a subordinate capacity, and has risen by various promotions to the superintendency, which position he now fills. On January 19, 1882, Mr. Middleton succeeded the late Theodore S. Faxton as president, which office he has since held, and during the remainder of the lifetime of Mr. Faxton he was Mr. Middleton's faithful friend and trusted adviser.
Outside of his regular business connections Mr. Middleton is a public spirited citizen. He possesses a large fund of general information, and has always willingly and liberally aided every movement for the good of the community. For many years he has been prominently connected with the local banking interests and with various private business undertakings, all of which are the gainers through his counsel and material participation. In politics he is a staunch Republican, but throughout life has held himself aloof from active work in political fields. He is a man of the strictest integrity, courteous, affable, and sympathetic, broad-minded, charitable, and keenly alive to the needs of the community. During his long and , successful career in the manufacture of woolen fabrics he has not only won the confidence and respect of his business associates but the esteem of all with whom he has come in contact, and especially of those in his employ, who owe him many a debt of gratitude for valuable counsel and advice. Mr. Middleton was married in 1849 to Miss Lucy Ann, daughter of Ira Cummings, of Greenfield, N. H. She died August 26, 1882, leaving four children: Walter D., superintendent of the Globe Woolen Company; Ella R., wife of Dr. James G. Hunt, one of the leading physicians and surgeons of Utica; Mary, wife of Frederick. Gebhard, of Jersey City, N. J.; and Florence, wife of Dr. Charles W, Pil- grim, superintendent of the State Hospital at Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
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