From an industrial, as well as a political standpoint, the town of Franklin has long occupied a prominent position in the state. Highly favored by nature with the facilities most conducive to the development of manufacturing industry, there has grown up within its limits, or been attracted thereto from other localities, a large class of citizens possessing the enterprise, energy, and sagacity requisite to the most advantageous use of those facilities. There are, indeed, few among our New England towns of corresponding size, which include among their inhabitants a larger number of active and successful business men, or whose progress has been signalized during the last quarter of a century by a more substantial industrial development. ALVAH W. SULLOWAY is one of the best-known, most practical, energetic, and public-spirited among the enterprising business men of this prosperous and progressive town. While the state of Massachusetts has drawn from our midst a large proportion of the men whose labors have brought the prosperity and distinction which that proud old commonwealth enjoys, she has given New Hampshire in return some of her own sons, whose efforts have contributed in no small degree to advance the honor and welfare of the state of their adoption. Among these is the subject of this sketch. Born in Framingham, Mass., Dec. 25, 1838, Mr. Sulloway is now in his forty-fourth year. He is the only son and eldest child of Israel W. and Adeline (Richardson) Sulloway, to whom three daughters were also born, two of whom are living, one unmarried, and the other the wife of Herbert Bailey, Esq., a prominent manufacturer of the town of Claremont. Israel W. Sulloway is a native of Boston, and sprang from revolutionary ancestry on both the paternal and the maternal side, his mother being a Woodbury of Salem, daughter of Capt. Israel Woodbury, who served in the patriot army throughout the war for independence. He engaged in manufacturing service in youth, and was for some time an overseer in the Saxonville woolen mill. When his son Alvah was about ten years of age, he removed to the town of Enfield in this state, where he engaged in the manufacture of yarn hosiery. Here he introduced the process of manufacturing the celebrated Shaker socks by machinery, being the first manufacturer to engage in the enterprise, where he established a prosperous business, which he carried on about sixteen years, when he sold out to his son-in-law, Mr. Bailey, and retired from active life, locating at Waltham, Mass., where he still resides. In his father's mill at Enfield, Alvah W. Sulloway gained that practical knowledge of the business in which he has since been engaged, which constituted the sure foundation of the success he has attained therein. He secured a good academical education at Canaan, Barre, Vt., and the Green Mountain Liberal Institute at South Woodstock; but spent a considerable portion of his time between the age of ten and twenty-one years in active labor