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<em>Albert Bernard Donworth</em> was born in Machias, Maine, on April 11, 1867, the youngest son of Patrick Enright Donworth and Mary Baker Donworth. His earliest ancestor in America, Richard Baker, came to New England in 1635 and settled at Dorchester, now a part of Boston. Both of Donworth’s Mother’s grandfathers served in the Revolutionary War. It was a donation from a cousin of his Mother, Georgae Fisher Baker, President of the First National Bank of New York, which enabled Harvard College to establish its Graduate School of Business Administration.</p>
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Donworth’s Father was a successful lumber merchant, owning his own timberlands and his own mill, and exporting the finished product to the West Indies and to the Azores in his own ships out of the port ot Machias.</p>
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Donworth attended the public schools of Machias, where he graduated from the high school at the age of seventeen. After teaching one year in the public schools, and attending one year at a preparatory school for college, he entered Bowdoin College in September 1886. While there he took a competitive examination for an appointment to West Point, which he won, and in June 1887 he entered the U.S. Military Academy, graduating in June 1891. Assigned as a second lieutenant to the 14th Infantry, he joined that regiment at Vancouver Barracks, Washington, upon the termination of his graduation leave on September 30, 1891.</p>
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As a young officer Donworth participated in the usual garrison duties of guard duty, drills, parades, court-martial duty, lyceum courses and practice marches, plus such incidents as the labor troubles in the Couer d’Alene mines in Idaho. At a large post like Vancouver Barracks, where there was also the Headquarters of the Department of the Columbia, plus the attractive city of Portland across the river, there was naturally much social activity. This Donworth enjoyed in the quiet, unobtrusive and moderate way in which he entered upon other lines of endeavor. A friend writes of him that he did not go in for athletics; that he was a studious type; that he never obtruded his opinions; that he was a better listener than a declaimer; that everyone liked “A.B.”, but that he was too reserved by nature to make very intimate friends; he had a high sense of responsibility and all of his duties were performed with conscientious loyalty.</p>
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Came the Spanish-American War, and with it Donworth’s promotion to First Lieutenant. While at home in Machias on leave following the hostilities, Donworth made the decision to become an attorney-at-law, and he resigned from the military service as of September 9, 1899.</p>
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He was admitted to the bar in Maine in 1900, and later to that of Massachusetts. He practiced law in Aroostook County, Maine, for thirty-five years before retiring. During most of this time he served as legal counsel for the American Agricultural Chemical Company. He was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States on March 23, 1932, and in July 1932, he was delegate from Maine to the International Congress of Comparative Law held at the Hague. During his years of practice at Caribou, Maine, he served as trustee of the Public Library, town counsel, chairman of the town Board of Health, and chairman of the Republican District Committee for the Third Congressional District of Maine. He specialized in commercial and corporation law, and was the local representative for the principal commercial law associations of the country. In December 1906, he argued the Taylor Tax Case and the judgment for his client settled the law of the State of Maine regarding taxing money at interest. Numerous services on local boards marked him as an enthusiastic and public-spirited member of the community in which he resided, giving generously of his time and abilities for the benefit of his fellow citizens. From 1938 on he was Judge Advocate of the United Spanish War Veterans, Department of Maine.</p>
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Donworth was married to Marian Louise MacIntyre, of Houlton, Maine, on July 19, 1905. Their only child, Mr. John Scott Donworth, born December 19, 1909, resides in New Haven.</p>
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After Donworth’s retirement from active practice, he and Mrs. Donworth travelled extensively, visiting Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland in 1934, the Carribean countries in 1935, and in 1937 he travelled through the Panama Canal and visited a number of South American countries, including the passage of the Straits of Magellan. After the Second World War, Mr. and Mrs. Donworth moved to New Haven, where Mrs. Donworth departed this life on March 11, 1951. Donworth then moved to the Graduates Club in that city, where he resided until his death on February 27, 1955.</p>
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Donworth made a number of ventures into the realm of authorship. While still a second lieutenant at Vancouver Barracks he wrote an article on “Gymnasium Training in the Army”; in the American Legal News, 1908, he wrote of the “Benefits of the Commercial Law Leagues”; and in more recent years he wrote “Why Columbus Sailed”, and a volume on “Gravitation” in 1954.</p>
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Among some notes of recollections left by Donworth is a description of the visit to West Point in the winter of 1888 of the Irving and Terry company then playing in New York. Too long to reproduce here, it tells of the memorable occasion when the entire English troup played the Merchant of Venice in an improvised theater in the mess hall. Their reception by the officers and the Corps was so enthusiastic, that in his closing remarks Henry Irving remarked: “The joy bells are ringing in London tonight, as it is the first time the English have taken West Point”. Donworth also mentioned a visit of the Corps to New York in 1889 for the celebration of the Centennial of Washington’s inauguration in 1789. As the Corps stood rigidly at the “present” near Madison Square, ex-President Cleveland and General Sherman passed on the way to the reviewing stand. The Corps was much pleased when General Sherman waved his arm to us and cried: “Those are my boys”!</p>
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<em>—L. S. S.</em></p>
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