Compiled by Russell Bastedo
State Curator
1998

Onslow Stearns (1869-1871). Born Billerica (MA); railroad construction/management. In politics from 1862.

Onslow Stearns (1810-1878) received a common school education. From 1830 (age 20) he was in railroad construction, and later in railroad management. He began as a contractor (working with his brother) for construction work on the Chesapeake & Ohio [RR] Canal outside Washington, DC. Through the 1830s, Stearns contracted for construction of railroads in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. In 1837, Stearns returned to Massachusetts and from then on he held executive positions with railroads-the Nashua & Lowell RR, the Northern RR, the Old Colony & Newport RR, and the Concord RR.

Stearns had voted as a Whig, but he was a Republican by the time he got into NH politics (1862). Elected to the State Senate in 1862, he was President of the Senate in 1863/4 and active on committees dealing with railroads, military affairs, and elections. He was also a delegate to the 1864 Republican Party National Convention. He ran for the Republican nomination for governor in 1867, but lost (to Harriman). He won the nomination in 1869 and the governorship (Stearns 35,722 votes, Democrat J. Bedel 32,057 votes); a year later he was reelected.

Governor Stearns, like his predecessors of the Civil War years, worked frantically to reduce New Hampshire's post-war debts and instabilities. He reduced the state debt by nearly one third and state taxes by nearly one half during his years in office. He did not hesitate to make unpopular cuts, discontinuing (for example) the annual encampments of Civil War regiments (saving $10,000 per year according to an approving contemporary historian, Stackpole).

Stearns tried to put the state prison on a paying basis. He requested legislation to strengthen railroads, manufacturing and industry, in the hope these areas would create jobs. He established a Board of Agriculture while at the same time overseeing legislative ratification of the post-Civil War Fifteenth Amendment. [His upholding of all constitutional rights and protections for citizens did not extend to giving women the right to vote. Such proposals were dismissed, as was a Prohibitionist proposal to establish a state police.]

Location: State House, Second Floor
Portrait by Edgar Parker, 1863; Presented by Governor Stearns