William Barrett Washburn (January 31, 1820 – October 5, 1887) was an American businessman and politician from Massachusetts. Washburn served several terms in the United States House of Representatives (1863–71) and as the 28th Governor of Massachusetts from 1872 to 1874, when he won election to the United States Senate in a special election to succeed the recently deceased Charles Sumner. A moderate Republican, Washburn only partially supported the Radical Republican agenda during the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed. A Yale graduate, Washburn parlayed early business success in furniture manufacture into banking and railroads, based in the Connecticut River valley town of Greenfield. He was a major proponent of railroads in northern and western Massachusetts, sitting on the board of the Connecticut River Railroad for many years, and playing an oversight role in the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel. He has been described as a latter-day "Connecticut River God" because of his role as a leading regional businessman and politician. Early life William Barrett Washburn was born on January 31, 1820, in Winchendon, Massachusetts, to Asa and Phoebe (Whitney) Washburn. His father was a hat maker from a family with deep colonial roots; Emory Washburn, who was Governor of Massachusetts in 1854, was a distant cousin. Asa Washburn died in 1823. Washburn was educated in the academies at Hancock and Westminster, and then attended Yale College, graduating in 1844. He was a member of the Skull and Bones Society. He was employed as a store clerk from 1844 to 1847 in the business of his uncle in Orange. He established a chair factory in Erving, operating it from 1847 to 1857 and parlaying a $10,000 ($ in dollars) investment into a wood products business whose annual production exceeded $150,000 ($). In 1849 he cofounded the Franklin County Trust Company, on whose board he sat until 1858. He moved to Greenfield in 1857, where he was elected president of the Greenfield Bank (later the First National Bank), a post he would hold for the rest of his life. In 1847, Washburn married Hannah Sweetser of Athol; the couple had six children, with four surviving to adulthood. Political career Washburn won election to the Massachusetts Senate in 1850 and served two years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1853 to 1855. His elections to the state legislature were supported by proponents of the Hoosac Tunnel. In 1862