William Lewis Douglas
William Douglas (August 22, 1845 – September 17, 1924) was a U.S.
political figure. He served as governor of Massachusetts from 1905
until 1906.
He was the son of William Douglas and Mary C.
(Vaughan) Douglas; he married, September 6, 1868, to N. Augusta
Terry.
There was little in the first thirty years of
William L. Douglas' life to suggest he was destined to be an
industrialist and Governor of Massachusetts. He was born in
Plymouth, Massachusetts the son of a sailor, who died when Douglas
was five. Mr. Douglas attended school intermittently and from the
age of seven worked for his uncle, a shoemaker. Douglas learned this
trade, working as a journeyman shoemaker until the Civil War. He
enlisted in the Massachusetts 58th regiment and was wounded at the
battle of Cold Harbor. He was discharged in 1865.
Douglas
pursued his fortune making and selling shoes in Colorado, but he
returned to Massachusetts in 1868. In 1876, he began the
W.L.
Douglas Shoe Company, which boomed becoming a major employer in
Brockton, Massachusetts. The factory was able to manufacture 20,000
pairs of shoes per day, which supplied W.L. Douglas Shoe Stores in
seventy-eight cities.
Douglas entered politics serving as a
member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives 1884-5 and in
the Massachusetts Senate in 1887. He was elected Mayor of Brockton
in 1890. Running as a Democrat in 1904, Douglas defeated incumbent
Governor John Lewis Bates.
In his first week as Governor,
Douglas faced a firestorm of protest from residents of Cape Cod
enraged by the Commonwealth's intention to establish a leper colony
in the small town of Brewster, Massachusetts. So many protesters
traveled from Cape Cod that the railroads had to add an extra train.
Douglas ended the plan, sold the Brewster property, and found a new
location on the Cape, at Penikese Island, which was the former site
of The Anderson School of Natural History, which Louis Agassiz
directed in the 1870s. Though protest was voiced, Douglas refused to
schedule public meetings on the topic, and the Commonwealth staffed
its first treatment program for leprosy under Douglas'
administration.
Governor Douglas also created the Douglas
Commission to determine how education could be reformed to better
prepare Massachusetts' work force. The commission recommended
increased industrial education opportunities, which paved the way
for industrial education programs in Massachusetts' public schools.
Douglas was stymied by a Republican majority in the legislature, and
returned to his business and private philanthropy.
Any contributions will be
gratefully accepted - a larger photograph would be welcome
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