On the fourth of July, 1827, the Ohio canal was opened to lock seventeen, near Akron, and the canal commissioners, prominent among whom was his friend Alfred Kelley, were in need of a scrupulously honest man, and a good clerk, for the purpose of collecting tolls. They found all the necessary qualifications of integrity, assiduity, and accuracy in Mr. Beardsley, who was therefore appointed, the day not having arrived when qualification for office should be the last of recommendations. The collectorship may be said to have been Mr. Beardsley's profession. He spent in the office most of the period of active life, in twenty-three years, undisturbed by the changes of administration. To our ears this may sound incredible.
Mr. Beardsley's salary was at first three hundred dollars per annum, increasing to twelve hundred before the close of his services. He collected the sum of one million, three hundred and ninety-eight thousand, six hundred and forty-two dollars and sixty-eight cents. His accounts were models of nicety as well as accuracy, errors and discrepancies being equally unknown.
Being a gentleman of simple tastes and habits, with few wants, he has acquired a comfortable competence, without acquiring a thirst for gold, and without withholding his substance from charitable and public purposes. He is highly esteemed by all who know him, for a life-long consistency of character, and sterling qualities as a man and a friend. The writer occasionally sees him on our crowded streets, although quite feeble, with a mind perfectly serene, and well aware that his race is almost run. His record is worthy of emulation.
Thomas Augustus Walton.
When the genial countenance and kindly voice of T. A. Walton were missed from the customary gatherings of the river merchants, it was felt that something had been lost which not even a lucky speculation, or a good run of trade, could not restore. When the news of his sudden death, whilst on a foreign tour for the restoration of his health, was received, there was genuine sorrow among his old business associates, and poignant grief with many who had learned to look on him not merely as a successful merchant, but as a man of tender heart and open hand when suffering and distress appealed to him for sympathy and aid.
Mr. Walton was born in London, and to the last he looked with affection to the city of his birth. His education was gained at the City of London School. After leaving school he was brought up to mercantile pursuits, and in 1830, concluding that there was a better opening in that line in America, he came to this country, bringing with him a considerable amount of money. For a few years he remained in New York, loaning his capital, for which he always found ready customers, but unfortunately they were not all as ready to pay as to borrow. He lost large sums, and was driven to the conclusion that for a man of his openness of character and confiding honesty, New York was an unprofitable location. The representations of a friend, combined with dissatisfaction with his experience in the commercial metropolis, determined him to seek his fortune in the West. Evansburg, Ohio, had been represented to him as a desirable place in which to live, a thriving business point, and adjacent to good hunting ground. This combination of attractions determined him, and he set out for Evansburg with what remained of his capital.
But the attractions of Evansburg soon wearied him. Neither his social, commercial, nor sportsmanlike hopes were fulfilled by the facts, and Mr. Walton speedily turned his back on the place of so much promise and so little realization. Cleveland was the rising place of the West, and to Cleveland he came, and established himself, as was the custom with new comers of a commercial turn, in the produce and commission trade. Following the old maxim, he stuck to his business and his business stuck to him. The old frame warehouse in front of which he hung out his sign in 1838, was occupied by him for twenty-five years, until January, 1863, when he retired from active business and was succeeded in the same building by his nephew, Thomas Walton, who still retains the business and the old location.
Mr. Walton's nice sense of honor commended him to a large circle of customers in the interior and in Michigan, whilst nearly all the Canadian business with Cleveland passed through his hands. His Canadian customers relied implicitly on his word, and the fact that he always retained his old friends, and received constant accessions of new, sufficiently proved that their confidence was not misplaced.
In the Spring of 1863, soon after his retirement from business, he went to England with the intention of staying a year or two and then returning to enjoy the remainder of his life in ease in this country. Whilst in England he paid a visit to some friends in Southampton, and whilst taking a bath in a movable bathing-house on the beach, probably was seized with cramp and suffocated by water getting into his lungs. The news of his death caused a painful shock in business, social, and religious circles, where he had been so well known and so highly esteemed.
For a long term of years Mr. Walton was the presiding officer of the St. George's Society of Cleveland, and that benevolent institution owed its usefulness in great measure to his indefatigable zeal in the cause, and to his unstinted liberality. To the distressed of any nation he never turned a deaf ear, but to the needy and suffering of his native country he was ever liberal, and accompanied his unostentatious charities with kind words and manifestations of sincere interest that were frequently as beneficial to the recipient as the money itself. He was also a valued member of the Masonic Order.