Augustus Sabin Chase

Augustus Sabin Chase (August 15, 1828—June 7, 1896) was an American industrialist of the Gilded Age. Augustus Sabin Chase was born in Pomfret, Connecticut, the only son of Capt. Seth Chase (1798-1893) and Eliza Hempstead (Dodge) Chase, who also had three daughters, Angeline, who died in infancy, Hannah Elizabeth ("Lizzie", who married Allen Aldrich and after his death married Seth Kimball) and Ellen Maria ("Maria", who never married). The family is descended on both sides from 17th-century English Colonial settlers. He spent his youth on his father's farm, now called "Jericho", located in the Jericho school district of Pomfret, in the northeast corner of Connecticut. He attended the one room Jericho school and at age sixteen he attended Woodstock Academy. At age eighteen, he briefly taught in a country school in Brooklyn, Connecticut. The following year he clerked in the Danielson Manufacturing Company store in Killingly. He settled in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1850, to take a position in the Waterbury Savings Bank, where he rapidly became cashier (1852) and eventually president (1864), a position which he retained for his lifetime. He developed interests in many of Waterbury's companies. In 1876 he and a group of investors bought the assets of the bankrupt U.S. Button Company, forming the Waterbury Manufacturing Company, of which he was treasurer, then president. Waterbury Manufacturing became the core of the Chase Companies (1913) and later of Chase Brass and Copper Company (1936). He was also president of the Waterbury Watch Company, the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company, and the Waterbury Buckle Company. When the Waterbury American was about to fold in 1868, he was one of the organizers of the American Printing Company, to continue the newspaper's publication and was its president from 1877. A lifelong Republican, he represented Waterbury in the Connecticut State Legislature, 1865.