Alvin Higgins (1813-1890)

He was born at Gray near Portland, Maine. While working as a store clerk in Portland, a friend taught him how to weave rag carpet on a hand loom. Once he had managed to save $200 he asked his brother Elias to borrow the same and to start manufacturing carpet with him in New York. In 1837, with one hand loom, they opened a retail store on Pearl Street. Gradually they grew until they were manufacturing ingrain carpet and built a large factory on 43rd Street, also securing a profitable government contract during the Civil War to supply blankets to the Union Army. They continued to expand until they made every kind of carpet from ingrain, body and tapestry Brussels to Wilton and velvet rugs. By the time the company was incorporated as E.S. Higgins & Co. it had a capital stock of $2-million. From a small and struggling two-man operation, it now owned factory buildings covering 72-city lots employing 2,000-operatives on an annual payroll of $750,000 with an output of 3.5-million yards of carpet.

He amassed a fortune, but ventures led him into speculation and finally into dissipation, which led to friction with his brothers and he retired from the firm. He had owned what was billed as "the most magnificent mansion in Manhattanville" before buying Hunter's Island Mansion where, "his gardens, parks, lodges, stables and equipages were of the finest and it was his greatest pleasure to entertain his relatives and friends here". In 1878, he became so heavily involved in real estate that he had to make an assignment and lost his entire fortune of about $2-million and after that retired to live in a house provided for him by his more savvy brother, Elias S. Higgins. In 1841, he married Hannah Johnson of Portsmouth, N.H., and they had a son and a daughter who both died in early childhood.