Monadnock Moment No. 098

Multi Era 4 - 6: 1841 to 1896

Westmoreland's Governor Fuller

Four Cheshire County residents have been elected governor of New Hampshire and other natives of the area have gone on to serve as the state's chief executive. Local residents who have left the state and gone on to political prominence elsewhere, however, are often overlooked in local histories. One such Cheshire County native was Levi K. Fuller.

Fuller was born in the town of Westmoreland in February of 1841, the son of Washington and Lucinda Fuller. When young Fuller was four years of age his family moved across the Connecticut River to Vermont. He attended Brattleboro High School and the Roxbury Institute. Fuller apprenticed with a machinist in Boston and became a mechanical engineer.

He returned to Brattleboro and became mechanical engineer of the Estey Organ Company at the age of nineteen. Six years later he became superintendent of the firm, serving as patent expert and inventor. Fuller served as vice president of the Estey Company for twenty years, patented one hundred of his own inventions, and helped to build Estey into a major American corporation.

Fuller made his political contributions near the end of his life. He was elected as a Vermont state senator in 1880, lieutenant governor in 1886, and governor of Vermont in 1892.

Governor Levi Fuller, native of Westmoreland, passed away in Brattleboro in 1896 at the age of 55.