A history of Pawtucket would be incomplete without a sketch of the gentleman whose name appears above. Mr. Spencer was born in East Greenwich, R.I., September 23rd, 1803, and is the youngest son in a family of six children of Lawton and Martha Spencer. His mother was a daughter of Jonathan Niles, who was for many years high sheriff of Kent county. His father removed with his family to what is now Pawtucket in 1810. He only attended the common schools three weeks, and at the age of ten, his father being overseer in the Slater Mill, he commenced work in that mill, receiving one dollar and a quarter a week. This he followed until he was over 17 years of age, when he apprenticed himself to John Wood, of Pawtucket, to learn the tailoring trade. On arriving at manhood he commenced the merchant tailoring business himself, and was the second one in Rhode Island to open a custom tailor establishment. He followed this business till 1845, and he gained such a reputation among the Quakers of New England that he made garments for them all over that territory. During the crash of 1829-30 in Pawtucket he made his first purchase of real estate, and after relinquishing his business, he engaged largely in the purchase and sale of real estate and has owned at one time as high as 150 to 200 acres in the vicinity of Providence and Pawtucket. He owns today the old Slater Mill where he first worked as a child, besides other valuable property in Pawtucket, and is one of the largest tax payers in the city. He was one of the state commissioners on the erection of the bridge crossing the Blackstone River, and has been since the organization of the Providence & Worcester railroad one of its stockholders, also director, and is the only one living of the original board. Mr. Spencer is director in the Pawtucket Institution for Savings and was president of the North Providence Bank. He was a member of the constitutional convention in 1841. When the Pawtucket Free Library was a stock concern he donated to them the rent of the hall they occupied, they agreeing to make a free library of it. He married Susan, daughter of Job Carpenter, of Providence, and of his family of eight children five are living, viz.: Job Lawton, a manufacturer in Pawtucket; Amelia, wife of Erastus Sampson of Boston; Annie, Clara, wife of Frederic Burlingame of Pawtucket, and Frank Gideon, assistant superintendent of the Providence & Worcester Railroad.
