He is married to Caroline (Carrie) Spaulding Garlinghouse.
They got married
Child(ren):
Alfred Augustus Houghton (1851 - 1892)
Alfred Augustus Houghton
Born 6 Mar 1851 in Bolton,Worcester,Ma
ANCESTORS
Son of Amory Houghton Sr. and Sophronia Mann (Oakes) Houghton
Brother of Amory Houghton Jr.
Husband of Caroline Spaulding (Garlinghouse) Houghton â married 7 May 1877 in Buffalo, Erie, New York, United States
DESCENDANTS
Father of Katharine Martha (Houghton) Hepburn and Marion Jeanette (Houghton) Mason
Died 28 Oct 1892 in Hamburg,Erie,Ny
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Profile last modified 3 May 2021 | Created 24 Apr 2014
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Biography
"Alfred Houghton, was born in East Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 6, 1851. The Houghtons were of old New England stock. They became Capitalists in the glass making business during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. The Houghtons moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1864 where Alfred's father and older brothers established a glass making company.
Fred was a troubled child, moody and lethargic, sometimes hardly able to rouse himself from bed. He read books, studied philosophy, and played Schubert and Chopin on the violin. Alfred started undergraduate work at Harvard University (1969-70), leaving after his father's business failed. Later, he graduated from Columbia University. After receiving his law degree from Columbia in 1872, Alfred went to work for a division of the Corning Glass Company in Brooklyn founded by his family and became an attorney for the family firm. Alfred was soon fired by his older brother Amory Houghton, Jr. because of his tardiness. At that time, he lived on State Street in Brooklyn.
In 1872, Alfred married Olive Chestnutwood. In her letters, Olive documented her husband's peculiar obsessions and night time terrors. When Olive became pregnant and was experiencing a bout of the ague (cold, hot and sweating fits) in Brooklyn, she moved to Buffalo to be with her parents. Olive died in 1873 when the infant Mary was three months old. At age 22, Alfred moved to Buffalo to take care of his child. They lived with Alfred's in-laws, Levy and Mary Jones Chestnutwood on East Eagle Street for three years.
The early to mid 1870s was a period of great economic growth in Buffalo. John Linen, Frankie's husband, president of the large and successful Buffalo Scale Company hired Alfred Houghton to work with Levi Chestnutwood in managing the Buffalo Scale Company. Alfred Houghton prospered financially, rising to the position of secretary and then vice-president of the company. Alfred eventually became principal owner of the company, a member of Buffalo's industrial elite. During that period, Alfred's brother Amory, Jr. moved the Houghton family glass factory to Corning New York and renamed it the Corning Glass Works.
On May 7, 1877, Alfred Augustus Houghton married twenty year old Caroline Garlinghouse at the home of her widowed mother, Martha Anne Spaulding Garlinghouse (1818-1880). The brick house (built in the 1850s) is located at 216 Prospect Street, Buffalo, N.Y. The minister who performed the marriage was the Reverend L.B. Van Dyke, Rector of the St John's Grace Evangelical Church, Buffalo, New York. (Marriage records are at the St. John's Grace Evangelical Church.)
Following their marriage, Caroline and Alfred Houghton lived for a time with Martha Spaulding Garlinghouse in Buffalo. Alfred was working for the Buffalo Scale Company. After Martha's death they moved to 329 Prospect Street (house no longer there). They spent the winters in Buffalo, where they were members of the Buffalo industrial elite. (Information taken from a paper prepared by James Williams, 1993.)
The Houghtons also owned a seven acre summer home in Athol Springs, Hamburg, New York which overlooked Lake Erie. Alfred bought "the Farm" from Franklin Locke, a friend, a lawyer eight years older than Alfred. Franklin Locke had bought the Beach Estate on Lakeside Drive in Athol Springs and sold it in partitions. The Farm was located about 1-2 miles from Cloverbank where Alfred's sister Nellie Houghton Abbott lived during the summer with her husband George Abbott. Nellie was a favorite aunt of Edith, Katharine, and Marion Houghton. Harry, the coachman, took Alfred to the Athol Springs train station every morning and picked him up at night. The family swam in Lake Erie, rode horses on the beach, and picked wild strawberries in the fields. The girls had their own pony cart and the first bicycles at the lake.
"The Houghton children were exposed to the liberal beliefs of their parents that were contrary to the established mores of most of Victorian Buffalo." (Williams, 1993.) They did not attend church, as Alfred and Carrie were more interested in self exploration, following the ideas of the noted free thinker Robert Ingersoll who in the 1800's preached agnosticism and promoted controversial intellectual causes such as evolution.
On Friday, October 28, 1892, following several months of depression, Alfred Houghton committed suicide. He had been so troubled, that Carrie Houghton had sent him from the Farm to Corning to stay with his older brother Amory. On the afternoon of his death, Alfred's sister Nellie had taken him for a ride in her horse and buggy and dropped him off at Amory's massive stone house on Pine Street. Instead of going inside, Alfred walked down a path toward the railroad tracks near a lumber yard at the foot of Cedar Street and shot himself in the head with a gun that he must have been carrying with him all day.
Alfred is buried at Prospect Lawn Cemetery, Hamburg, New York (founded 1870) in a plot that he selected, under a stand of large trees. Erie County Surrogate's Court Probate records include Alfred Augustus Houghton's last will and testament dated July 11, 1885, a list of materials in file #10737, an estate inventory, Schedule D: Appraisers Schedule, and a petition for Probate of the will filed November 3, 1892." [1]
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