by Laurel | November 3rd, 2014
23 June 1879
Charles McClallan
One of the long prominent and best esteemed citizens of Chicopee, Charles McClallan, died yesterday at his home there after an illness of not long duration, of disease of the heart being almost 76 years old. He was born in Lancaster, Worcester County, August 11, 1803, and at 17 started in life for himself, with no other capital than his own ingenious brain and vigorous spirit. He left his home and came to Springfield, then a town of no great importance. Here he began apprentice to Charles Stearns, a builder, who in that day and long after, did a large business as bricklayer. At the end of two years Mr. Stearns fave considerable jobs into his hands. Mr. McClallan was in charge of a building at Chicopee Falls when Boston capitalists were beginning their great operations with the water power of the Chicopee River, and they were so struck with the originality and force of his ideas and the readiness of his computations that they gave him the contract for building the first mill put up at Chicopee falls. From that he went on, and all the mills in Chicopee, the first dam on the river, and nearly everything of brick in that town, have been put up my Mr. McClallan His business rapidly grew and extended; and has included stone dams all over western Massachusetts; all the mills and the other work of the sort done by the old Hadley Falls Company (the predecessor of the Holyoke water-power company), among them the Lyman and Hampden mills in Holyoke and the Glasgow mills in South Hadley Falls, their blocks of tenements; while he and the firm of Charles McClellan & Son continuously have undertaken contracts all over the country, from Boston to Augusta, Georgia. The Hoosac Tunnel granite facades, and the “alphon” section of the Boston Water works are among their later operations. Mr. McClellan leaves one son W. C. McClellan, long his father’s partner and now his successor. Charles McClallan was a man of great quickness of perception and readiness of action and never allowed an opportunity to go by default. His work is the best testimony to his character; he was always unpretentious, genuine, honest and strong, and the man himself partook of these qualities, while he was personally genial ad interesting. He leaves an excellent record of his long and useful life.
Another interesting article on Charles McClallan.
Adapted from The Springfield Republican.
Image from Everts, History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, 1879.
