In 1855, Anson B. Morrill was elected Governor of Maine by a coalition of Free Soilers, Know Nothings, Temperance Whigs and disenchanted Democrats underlining the total chaos that Maine’s two-party system found itself in.
Included in Morrill’s support was that of the infant Republican Party which in a short time would absorb this coalition and dominate Maine politics for the next 100 years.
Franklin Muzzy, a wealthy partner in the Muzzy and Wing Iron Foundary of Bangor, was a classic example of the type of politician who made up this coalition. As such he is the Whig counterpart of Noah Prince.
Born in Spencer, Massachusetts on December 8, 1806, he found himself working in a Gardiner cotton factory at the age of seventeen.
Having an interest in things mechanical he saved enough from his meager wages to study drafting for a year at the Gardiner Lyceum.
From there he parlayed a few dollars and a lot of hard work into a very large fortune and no doubt supported Whig principles because of his interest in commerce and expansion.
A director of railroads, owner of insurance companies and by nineteenth century Maine standards an industrialist, he was a benefactor of educational and temperance causes.
A Representative for two years and a State Senator for three, he served in the Maine House in 1841 and 1842 and was elected President of the Senate in 1855, a year of great political turmoil in Maine.
Like so many others he became a Republican when the Whig Party became irrelevant, as the new party absorbed everything it stood for including support of the Maine Law.
A cautious and basically quiet man who lacked a great deal of formal education, Muzzy, nonetheless, was a man of strong convictions who exercised great influence in his time.
He died in November 1873, meriting a two column obituary in the Bangor Whig and Courier, not a common occurrence.