Henry Brewer Metcalf was born on April 2, 1829, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Caleb and Mary Metcalf. His father owned $9,000 of real estate by 1850. He grew up and attended school in Boston, and he began working at a dry goods company around 1844. He married Elizabeth Freeman on May 4, 1854, and they had at least two children: Carrie, born around 1856; and Arthur, born around 1857. They moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts around 1856, and he earned a living as a merchant. By 1860, he owned $5,000 of personal property. He supported the Whig Party until it collapsed in the 1850s, and he eventually joined the Republican Party.

 

He moved to Winchester, Massachusetts, around 1864, and he helped establish the Boston Button Company three years later. By 1870, he owned $16,600 of real estate and $3,675 of personal property, and he employed at least two Black domestic servants. He joined the Liberal Republican movement in 1872, and he supported Horace Greeley in that year’s presidential election. He moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, around 1872.

 

He was elected to the Rhode Island state senate in 1885, and he served for one term. He supported the Prohibition movement and served as president of the Rhode Island Temperance Union. He joined the Prohibition Party in the 1880s, and he served as the party’s gubernatorial candidate in 1893, 1894, and 1900. He was a delegate to the Prohibition National Convention in 1900, and he won the party’s vice presidential nomination in that year’s election. In the early 1900s, he joined the American Protective Tariff League of New York and the American Anti-Imperialist League. He died in Pawtucket on October 5, 1904, after suffering from a stroke.

 

Image: Henry B. Metcalf (courtesy Wikicommons)

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