Otis Harvey Waldo

http://genealogytrails.com/wis/milwaukee/bios_s.htm

Otis Harvey Waldo

MILWAUKEE.

Source: The US Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men, Wisconsin Volume (1877); transcribed by Glenda Stevens

OTIS HARVEY WALDO was born in Prattsburgh, New York, April 1, 1822. His father, Otis Waldo, was one of eight children whose parents very early emigrated from Connecticut, and settled in Prattsburgh, where their children were brought up, and where most of them remained during their lives. Otis, the second son, grew to be an honest, industrious, strong-minded, clear-headed man. His occupation was that of farmer, his faith that of a Christian of the Old New England type. Two sons were born to the earnest Christian parents, the eldest of whom is the subject of this memoir.

Otis Harvey lived to the age of seventeen on his father’s farm, his time being divided between labor on the farm and in an old fashioned saw-mill, and attendance at the neighboring district school and academy. He very early showed a decided inclination for study, and for studies of the severer kind, the classics and mathematics. This tendency was perhaps intensified by the circumstances of his youth. His mother was for nearly all her life, after the birth of her children, an invalid, his father was a quiet and very sedate man, and his brother eight years his junior. Of course he had little companionship or amusement in his home, which he seldom left. To know, to understand, to do, to persevere, whatever the difficulties, thus became the characteristics of his youth, proving the boy father of the man.

Through their earnest desire to consecrate their son to the most useful life, it is probable, he was designed by his parents for the ministry, and hence every facility their circumstances allowed was afforded for his education, and he was prepared for college at the early age of seventeen. Previous to this, a circumstance of sufficient importance to have, in some serious manner, affected his character, occurred. Under powerful excitement from the preaching of the revivalist Boyle, at the susceptible age of eleven, he was persuaded that he had met with a change of heart, and was induced to unite with the Presbyterian church. Afterward, having abandoned the hope or belief that he had been the subject of a radical change, he requested to be allowed silently to withdraw from the communion of which he deemed himself an unworthy member. This, from the rules of the church, was denied him, and with no charge against him except that he conscientiously absented himself from the communion services of the church, he was publicly excommunicated on the first Sabbath of May, 1839. The same week he left home and entered Union College in the middle of the freshman year, for both the classical and the literary course. A class-mate writes of his college life: “He was an untiring student, correct in his deportment and in his morals, and was what we termed in college a max scholar in all respects during the whole of his course. His marks for scholarship, attendance and deportment were the highest then given in college. Mr. Waldo often talked with me in admiring terms of Dr. Nott, then the president of the college, and of Dr. Alonzo Potter, professor of moral philosophy and rhetoric.” Later friends know that he continued to admire these instructors of his youth, to whom he was doubtless indebted for some valuable and graceful modification of his earlier character.

During his last year in college the eyes of the zealous young student failed, and, unable to read himself, he learned his lessons from the reading of his room-mate. He graduated in both courses with honor in 1842, and returned to his father’s house an invalid, suffering much for two years from weak eyes and feeble health. During this time he did some light work on the farm and interested himself in organizing a literary society, which became quite noted; he was also very active, for so young a man, in the elections of 1844.

With the hope of benefit to his health, and of making a start in the world, in the fall of that year Mr. Waldo a second time left home. A gentleman, whose acquaintance he made on the way, induced him to go to Natchez, where he arrived well nigh destitute of funds. He soon became a member of the family of General John A. Quitman, on whose premises he taught a small school with much success, at the same time employing his leisure hours on reading law with General Quitman, and in “discussing with him, in the most thorough manner, not only the elementary principles of law, but also the principles of government.”

He was admitted to the bar in Natchez in the spring of 1849, and had many inducements set before him either to remain with General Quitman or open an office in New Orleans. Had it not been for slavery, to which he was conscientiously opposed, and whose evil fruits were the more apparent to him from his near observation of its workings, he would doubtless have heeded the southern call, but as it was, he took a map and studied the western States which he believed offered the best promises to an energetic and aspiring young man. He very soon decided upon Wisconsin, and at once came to Milwaukee, but before regarding himself settled made a tour of the State. From this he was satisfied, and returned to make Milwaukee his permanent home in the autumn of the same year which had witnessed his admission to the bar. He came a stranger, but his industry and ability soon brought him friends and clients.

In the spring of 1850 he married the daughter of the Hon. J. Van Valkenburgh, of Pontiac, Michigan, and henceforth labored with the clearly defined plan, first, of securing a competency which as a citizen and a man with a family he regarded a solemn obligation; second, in the struggle for this competency, and as a distinct aim, to secure the highest excellence in his profession. Beyond these immediate objects, he had high ambitions for place and power, that he might do more and better work for his country and is race. For seven years he went on prosperously, according to the programme marked out by himself. Then the financial crisis of 1857 threw him into serious embarrassment. With the aim already alluded to, he had bought ground on the principal street of the city, and commenced building a block of stores in the best manner. Real estate was solid and permanent; he had faith in it and in the future of Wisconsin and Milwaukee.

Mr. Waldo borrowed considerable money at a high rate of interest to build the stores. The struggle to finish the work and pay his debts, although not the noblest of his life, yet shows very forcibly some of his best characteristics – integrity, courage, perseverance. Nothing of his plan and purpose would he yield; every dollar of his indebtedness would he pay, and that by his own honest exertions. Through the future he still saw financial victory, and though at the cost of retrenchment and unwearied labor for ten years, he bravely fought the battle, and won. Meantime he was gaining excellence, his other aim, and was proving himself one of the most public-spirited and useful citizens in his adopted city and State. Far and wide he was known as the well read, the clear-headed, sound-judging, industrious and persistent lawyer. The most difficult cases were confided to him, and seldom did he lose a case. A brother lawyer writes: “Shortly after Mr. Waldo’s coming here a great humbug spread over the land like a cloud, known as the ‘land limitation measure’; on that subject he made, I think his first speech, but it was a speech that electrified us all, and he actually burst the bubble so far as Milwaukee was concerned.” Another writes as follows: “He was always interested, and interested in an intelligent way, in public affairs.” A citizen writes thus: “There has been scarcely any prominent enterprise for the public good during the past twenty years which Mr. Waldo has not aided. After the break-down of 1858, when the credit of Milwaukee was all shattered and torn, he, in connection with James T. Brown, then mayor, acted as attorney for the city in adjusting our then pressing indebtedness. By representing to the creditors the true facts in the case, and what equity demanded on both sides, Mr. Waldo succeeded in adjusting that indebtedness on long bonds at four per cent per annum, and that wise adjustment was the foundation of the present good credit of Milwaukee.”

His labors in behalf of the Northern Railroad were marked by the same energy, good sense and practical foresight, and though not a capitalist himself, he succeeded in interesting others largely in that project, and it is no exaggeration to say that the construction of that important road was as much due to Otis H. Waldo as to any other man. But his life was really that of a lawyer, and we considered him, beyond a doubt, one of the greatest lawyers in the northwestern States.

In educational affairs he was always specially interested, and labored unweariedly for some of the schools of his own city.

As a politician, Mr. Waldo was first a whig. He was always opposed to slavery, yet never identified himself with the abolitionists, because he regarded them as extremists and men of one idea. Since its formation he has been identified with the republican party, and when the great rebellion came he was found decidedly and heroically on the side of the Union and freedom. His fortune, time, strength and talents were consecrated to his country. He penned some of the ablest papers upon the questions in dispute that exist in the literature of that stirring period. Among these may be mentioned a “Letter addressed to Governor Salomon on the Conduct of the War,” also several letters addressed to Senator Doolittle upon “equal suffrage,” and a speech, delivered at Burlington, entitled “The Legal Consequences of the Rebellion.”

Mr. Waldo was a student, a man of careful and wise discrimination, and thus intellectually and conscientiously tended to the wise middle course on most subjects. He possessed the excellences, and to some extent the severities, of the Puritans, and for these reasons was not qualified to be a popular man with the crowd, although he was always their staunchest friend.

He was, in the strictest sense, democratic in politics, a believer in universal education and universal suffrage, but his carefully drawn arguments and guarded statements, though lucid, were tedious to the many who jump at conclusions; his fairness and charity, even, wearied them, and so, though a general conviction of his intellectual and moral fitness and the obligations the community were under to him forced that community to regard his claim to public honors, yet he was not a successful candidate for office. Weaker and less honorable men were more successful; but a change was coming, for the people have grown weary of selfish greed and reckless extravagance and unfaithfulness, and doubtless, had Mr. Waldo’s life been spared, the honor which six years ago he sought – a seat in the United States senate – would have been his, and he would have been one of of the most capable and faithful members of that august body.

In private, Mr. Waldo’s life was spotless. He was devoted to his home and family, and interested in the education of his children as though these were his only obligation.

He was Congregational in his idea of church, as he was democratic in his idea of state, but never, after his youthful experience before recorded, united with the church; yet he through life reverent and earnest in his regard for the Christian religion.

Through manifold labor, manifold thought, manifold affections, the subject of this memoir, overtaxing his life force, passed the years 1873 and 1874 in great feebleness and weakness, yet, till overpowered, would not yield the struggle. Worn out in the prime of his life, he fell asleep October 30, 1874, in the fifty-third year of his age.

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Source: The Bench and Bar of Wisconsin History and Biography, by Parker McCobb Reed (1882); Transcribed for Genealogy Trails by Tammy Clark

O. H. Waldo, Milwaukee, was born in Prattsburgh, New York, April 1, 1822. His father was a farmer and until seventeen years of age Otis remained at home working hard with brain and hand. He entered Union College in 1839, and notwithstanding the fact that his sight failed him in the last years of his study he graduated in both the literary and classical courses with honor in 1842. Mr. Waldo's health was not good, and he left home for the more genial climate of the south, settling in Natchez, where he studied law with John A. Quitman, and was admitted to the bar in 1849 at that place. The young lawyer did not agree with the peculiar political ideas of the south, however; they were distasteful to his republicanism, even at this early day, and accordingly he decided to locate in the west, and came to Milwaukee in the autumn of 1849. In the spring of 1850 he married the daughter of J. Van Valkenburgh, of Pontiac, Michigan, and immediately commenced his career as one of the most thorough and conscientious lawyers who ever practiced in the courts of any state. He took an active interest in all public enterprises for over twenty years, and to his labors may be greatly traced the success of some of the railroad enterprises which are at the basis of the city's prosperity. To his efforts are largely due the construction of the Milwaukee & Northern Railroad.

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Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=89765379

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The town of Waldo, Wisconsin is named for him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo,_Wisconsin

"The village was originally established as Lyndon Station when the Milwaukee & Northern Railroad laid their tracks through in 1871. The village was plated in 1873 by N.C.Harmon on 80 acres of land that he and his son-in-law Eugene McIntyre had purchased from Abraham Lawson. When it was discovered that there already was an existing Lyndon Station elsewhere in Wisconsin, it was decided to rename the village after O.H.Waldo, a prominent Milwaukee attorney and then president of the railroad."