Biography
James Goodwin Batterson was born on February 23, 1823, in Bloomfield, Connecticut. His parents were Simion and Melissa Batterson, while he had 11 other siblings. Due to circumstances from getting a college education, he taught himself, working as a printer by day, and studying the classics, sciences, and mathematics at night. Throughout most his life, Batterson found ways to be a perfectionist. He read law with Origin S. Seymour, Chief Justice of Connecticut, then did marble cutting with his father. In addition to that, he was a geologist, mineralogist, engineer, and he made sure that he familiarized himself with French, Italian, and Spanish. Spouse and father to Eunice E. Goodwin, James Batterson Jr. , Mary Elizabeth Batterson, and Clara Jeannette Batterson, he again did politics and became a businessman. This business, Travelers, was and is doing exceptionally well. Unfortunately, his death on September 18, 1901, kept him from doing any more activities. However, the Vice President, Sylvester C. Dunham, became President, carrying on his legacy with the Travelers Company.
Stone Contractor
During Batterson's life, he was a stone contractor, working for his father. He moved to New Preston, where his father created a marble stone yard known as Marble Valley. When he was twenty-three years old, he established a cemetery monument business in Hartford. From selling stone monuments, he also is a stone dealer and building contractor; if anything, he was an inventor. Out of the business, he created a lathe that made round and clean stone columns, which started opportunities for expansion throughout New England and the nation. But, he was mainly famous for the American School for the Deaf marble pedestal and obelisk and Forlorn soldier. After the end of the Civil War, Batterson created a brownstone statue as a way of remembering self-sacrifice and duty to the nation. A century later, there are stories of this statue being rejected due to the right foot mistakenly being thrust forward, opposite of the traditional parade-rest military pose. As a result, the statue has faced years of environmental degradation, losing its hands, rifle, bayonet, and a part of its face. However, interest in the soldier started again during Connecticut's sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War. In the Photo and Gallery page, you'll find the statue. Back to the topic, overall, Batterson left a variety of buildings, including the building of the State House in Hartford with a history that'll be treasured dearly to CT.
Businessman
As we all know, Batterson founded the Travelers Insurance Company in 1863, while the 1st written contract was approved on April 1, 1864. What you don't know is how much it affected not only Hartford but the nation in general. Within three years of the founding, the Life and Accident insurance was largely supplementary to each other. The company had in force more than 10,000,000$ of Life Insurance, with its policy contracts over 30,000,000$, making it one of few companies in 1906 that had an increase in amount of new business over previous years. Secondly, the original cash capitol was 250,000$. In 1921, it was increased from time to time to 1,000,000$. Even the assets of the company went from 300,000$ to over 53,400,000$. If that time gap was only 43 years, imagine how much money could be made now. Batterson being the pioneer of Accident insurance and President for 38 years changed this nation. Like I mentioned on the Travelers page, there's so many employers and propaganda uses for the company which helped to makes Travelers the way it is today.
Generally, Batterson's skills left a park that his sisters made called Batterson Park, Batterson Hall in UCONN, and granite quarries and stone cutting businesses in CT and RI. He also made the Congressional Library in Washington, D.C.