Seth Whitmore Stockbridge

Seth W. Stockbridge (1825-1896)
Seth Whitmore Stockbridge was born on February 1, 1825 at Stockbridge Hill on Swan’s Island, Maine. Stockbridge was born into a prominent colonial family as a fifth great grandson of Captain Myles Standish and the grandson of Revolutionary War privateer Captain Benjamin Stockbridge.
In 1851, Seth Stockbridge married and moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts where he was employed as captain of a freighting schooner. By 1860, Stockbridge had entered in to the fish dealing business and his firm was credited as the first to pack and ship fresh fish on ice. In 1861, Stockbridge purchased the schooner Panther and built a wharf with his partner Willam Rackliffe on Rocky Neck in Gloucester. In 1868, Seth Stockbridge moved his business, Stockbridge & Company, to Gloucester’s busy inner harbor. Stockbridge’s company prospered and in 1875 he commissioned an 87 foot schooner the Seth Stockbridge. In 1879, Stockbridge & Company merged with several smaller firms to create the Atlantic Halibut Company and the Gloucester Fish Company. By the mid-1880s, the Atlantic Halibut Company had grown into Gloucester’s largest fish dealing firm with Seth Stockbridge as the company’s senior member and largest shareholder. By 1892, the Atlantic Halibut Company had emerged as the largest fish dealing firm in the United States shipping more than 5.5 million pounds of halibut each year while owning 37 vessels and wharves in both Gloucester and Tacoma, Washington.
Seth Stockbridge’s life was not without leisure. He developed a close friendship with John Greenleaf Whittier and they would vacation together at the Bear Camp River House in Ossipee, New Hampshire. Whittier would mention Stockbridge and family in his poems The Voyage of the Jettie and How They Climbed Chocorua. Both Stockbridge and Whittier were ardent supporters of the temperance movement and together they would attend sessions appealing legislation in front of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
In 1878, Seth Stockbridge purchased 47 acres in Rowley, Massachusetts and commissioned the construction of his summer home Planting Hill. The home was completed in 1879 and the Stockbridge family began to occupy it as their primary residence while Seth Stockbridge soon accumulated 178 acres of rolling country. The home was the most expensive in Rowley and became the gathering place for much of Rowley’s social and intellectual intercourse.
Seth Stockbridge gave much of his resources to philanthropic causes. He was a founding member of the East Gloucester Baptist Church, the Gloucester Y.M.C.A., and the Gloucester Fisherman’s Institute. Stockbridge was a member of the Temple of Honor, the Knights of Pythias, the American Legion of Honor, the Acacia Masonic Lodge, and the Essex Agricultural Society.
Seth Stockbridge died on December 29, 1896. His funeral was held at his Planting Hill estate with his family being joined by the region’s most notable members of society.

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