Oliver Ames, third son of Captain John and Susannah (Howard) Ames, was born in West Bridgewater April 11, 1779. For a number of years he was employed at Springfield in the manufacture of guns by his brother, David Ames, who was the first superintendent of the armory, appointed by President Washington; and as early as 1800 was engaged in the manufacture of shovels. In 1803 he married Susannah Angier, a descendant of President Urian Oakes of Harvard College, and the same year he removed to Easton where greater facilities were afforded for carrying on his business. At first his goods found an outlet to markets at Newport, Rhode Island, and at Boston; and a one-horse vehicle was sufficient for the transportation of the raw material to, and the manufactured goods from, his factory. He was a man who combined in himself rare executive ability and mechanical skill, and gradually built up a large and flourishing business. A great impetus was given to manufacturing during the last war with Great Britain, and Mr. Ames availed himself of every opportunity to enlarge his business. The one-horse method of transportation was soon supplanted by six-horse teams; and when, on his retirement from active business in 1844, the firm of Oliver Ames and Sons was formed, the business had grown to large dimensions. Honorable Oakes Ames, eldest son of Oliver and Susannah (Angier) Ames, was born in Easton, January 10, 1804; married November 29, 1827, Eveline Orville Gilmore; and entered heartily into the enterprises inaugurated by his father. Under his supervision the manufacture of shovels grew into giant proportions. A railroad, constructed to the very doors of the factories, furnished facilities for transporting to them yearly fifteen hundred tons of iron, two thousand tons of steel and five thousand tons of coal, and for carrying away from them more than one hundred and thirty thousand dozen shovels, in the manufacture of which employment had been given to five hundred workmen. The fame of the goods kept pace with the advance of civilization; and on every frontier, in all quarters of the globe, were found as instruments of progress the Ames shovels. It is not so much as the successful manufacturer, however, that Oakes Ames will be remembered, as the master mind through whose perseverance and indomitable energy, and in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, was forced to completion the pioneer railway across the Western Continent. He gained a deserved and enduring fame as the builder of the Union Pacific Railroad, and that magnificent work will ever stand as his proudest monument. During the former part of the war of the Rebellion he rendered important service to the Union cause by his shrewd and sagacious counsels in State affairs, and a little later for ten years represented the Second Massachusetts District in the National House of Representatives. He died May 8, 1873.