Henry B. Metcalf

Who was Henry B. Metcalf?

Henry Brewer Metcalf was a noted prohibitionist in the United States, who was the Prohibition Party nominee for Vice President of the United States in 1900. Along with Presidential candidate John G. Woolley, the ticket garnered approximately 210,000 votes in the general election.

Born in Boston on 2 April 1829, Metcalf attended public schools in that city. When only 15, however, to aid his family’s finances, he was apprenticed to a dry goods importing and jobbing company in Boston. From the skills he learned in this business, Metcalf was a business leader for the remainder of his life. In 1856, he received an A.M., or Master of Arts, degree from Tufts College in Massachusetts. In 1867, he helped to form the Boston Button Company as the firm’s senior partner, and about 1874 he removed to Rhode Island where he established the Pawtucket Haircloth Company. He later formed the Campbell Machine Company in Boston, a concern which made the machinery to make shoes.

For the last 25+ years of his life, Metcalf was a Trustee of his alma mater, Tufts College. For many of these years, he also served as President of the Trustees of Tufts College.