Charles A. Ranlett

Charles Augustus Ranlett was born in Augusta, Maine, on August 9, 1804, the son of Charles Ranlett, from Epping, New Hampshire, and Abigail Low of Gloucester. He went to sea and followed it for more than forty years, "a skillful sailor, soon rising to the rank of captain," and became widely known in commercial circles through the China trade. At the battle of Navarino in 1827 his ship was seized by the Turks and recaptured by the English, and in the Mexican War he was employed carrying troops and supplies from New Orleans to Vera Cruz.

His favorite ship was the clipper Surprise, built at East Boston in 1850 by Samuel Hall for A. A. Low and Brother of New York, which Hazen says made the shortest passage then on record from Shanghai to New York, eighty-two days. In 1850 his name came into the debates of the United States Senate: on September 11 Robert C. Winthrop read there a letter and statement of facts from Captain Ranlett protesting "the injustice of seizing free colored seamen in Charleston and other Southern ports." When the Civil War came he was active in raising volunteers and supporting the government.

On December 2, 1830 he married Minerva Esther Dodge, born in Charlestown in 1809, daughter of David Dodge, town clerk of Charlestown for twenty-eight years and its first city clerk. Their children, all born in Charlestown, included Charles Augustus Jr., a clipper captain in the China trade who married Isabella Faulkner, daughter of Luther W. Faulkner, in 1870 and died in 1874; David Dodge, a Harvard graduate, state auditor of New Hampshire and treasurer of the Central Vermont Railroad; Seth Alonzo, a soldier of the Army of the Potomac; and Horace Dodge, a merchant in Japan and later in San Francisco.

He made his home in South Billerica, on the Bedford road (now Concord Road), from 1862. His house at 287 Concord Road, shown on the 1853 map, was by tradition fitted inside like a ship; Hazen placed it opposite the site of Sergeant Ralph Hill's garrison house. In 1865, still of Charlestown, he and John H. Osgood of Chelsea bought from the heirs of James Marshall the old Hill farm of about seventy-five acres at 239 Concord Road, running down to the Concord River. Osgood sold his half to the Ranlett sons in 1879, and the land stayed with the trustee under Captain Ranlett's will until it was registered and cut into lots in 1910.

In his last years he threw himself into the Billerica and Bedford Railroad, a two-foot-gauge line, the first of its kind in the country. The company was organized on May 10, 1876 with Captain Ranlett as its president; ground was broken that September and the road opened in the autumn of 1877, with the locomotives "Ariel" and "Puck." Burdened by debt from the start, it went into bankruptcy; its equipment was sold in June 1878 and went to the Sandy River Railroad in Maine.

Captain Ranlett died in Billerica on April 17, 1878. Henry A. Hazen wrote in the introduction to his History of Billerica (1883) that the book "might have an appropriate dedication to the memory of Capt. Charles A. Ranlett, to whose historic interest much was due in the inception of the enterprise." His grandson, Colonel Charles A. Ranlett, later lived nearby at 305 Concord Road. The captain's house, placed on the town's inventory of historic properties, was found too far gone to save after a public hearing in 1994 and was razed.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 115: Charles Augustus Ranlett (birth, parents, sea career, the Surprise, Navarino, Mexican War)
2. Hazen, Genealogical Register p. 116: the 1850 Senate debate, Civil War, president of the Narrow Gauge Railroad, marriage and children
3. Hazen, History of Billerica p. 276: Billerica and Bedford Narrow-Gauge Railroad, organized 1876 with Capt. Ranlett as president
4. Hazen, History of Billerica, Introduction p. v: tribute to Capt. Charles A. Ranlett
5. Hazen, History of Billerica p. 113: Ralph Hill garrison "opposite the late Captain Ranlett's"
6. Wikipedia: Surprise (clipper), built 1850 by Samuel Hall for A. A. Low & Brother; Captain Ranlett in command
7. Report of the Historical Commission, 1993: the Captain Ranlett House, 287 Concord Road, added to the local inventory
8. Report of the Historical Commission, 1994: hearing on the Captain Charles Ranlett house; razed

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Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.