Washington Frothingham’s useful life
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, 05-28-16
The Frothingham Free Library at 28 West Main Street in Fonda is named for a local man who was a writer and a minister.
A sign outside the library pays tribute to Reverend Washington Frothingham, who was born in 1822 in East Fonda and died at his home in Fonda in 1914 at age 92. He left money in his will to help establish a library, reading room and billiard room.
Frothingham had a “useful career,” according to stories about his death in numerous newspapers. Dubbed the dean of American journalism, he was a syndicated columnist, book author, historian, philanthropist and clergyman.
Frothingham’s family (he was the third of ten children) moved from Fonda to Johnstown when he was a young child. Frothingham’s mother was a niece of author Washington Irving and his father was a New York State judge. Frothingham wanted to be a writer but to please his father and help the family, he moved to New York City and worked in a Broadway store. Eventually he was part owner of a store.
At age 28, Frothingham felt called to the ministry. He sold his share of the business and studied at Princeton, developing public speaking skills. His first position was at a Presbyterian Church in Guilderland. He opened a Sunday school and preaching station at an Albany machine shop. That effort led to the founding of Albany’s former West End Presbyterian Church.
During the Civil War Frothingham was invited back to Fonda to restore the declining Reformed church. He succeeded, although his pro-Union political stance ran counter to the secessionist views of some church members. He was then called to serve the Tribes Hill Presbyterian Church where he was pastor until 1905.
In 1862 at age 40, Frothingham married Mary Middlemass, a native of Scotland who was a Sunday School teacher. They had no children.
In the 1860s Frothingham began writing columns on current events for newspapers throughout New York and Massachusetts including the New York Times, Troy Times and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. He used pen names, most notably “The Hermit of New York” in Troy and “Macaulay” in Rochester.
He was the author of several books including histories of Montgomery and Fulton counties. He was friendly with newspaper men and writers including Horace Greeley and William Cullen Bryant.
His writing kept him financially solvent as Frothingham was generous. He started a public bath in Fonda and a bowling alley. When his work made him a frequent train traveler, he distributed faith-based tracts to the passengers.
He held religious services at the Fonda jail. He told a reporter that he found a good number of prisoners who could sing many of the hymns from memory and sing them well.
After his first wife died, Frothingham married his wife’s nurse, Ella Leavitt of Tribes Hill, a school teacher and correspondent for the Recorder.
Late in life Frothingham had a cancer surgically removed at a hospital in Albany. The press reported he “rallied from the ether” and described him as the oldest patient at that point to be anesthetized and survive an operation. He lived another three years.
Frothingham died two weeks after suffering a paralyzing stroke. The funeral was held at Fonda Reformed Church and burial was at Caughnawaga Cemetery on Cemetery Road.
One of Frothingham’s nephews was Robert Frothingham, an author and advertising man who maintained a summer home near Northville. In the 1940s Robert Frothingham’s widow Minnie donated many items from her husband’s extensive collection of photographic slides and animal taxidermies to Amsterdam’s school museum, now the Walter Elwood Museum on Church Street in Amsterdam.
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