Abel Simonds passed away on April 22, 1875, at the age of 70. He died pleased in the knowledge that the business he started had grown from humble beginnings into a strong enterprise with a renowned reputation. He also took pleasure knowing that all eight of his sons at one time or another had worked in the family business. Forty-two years after it started, Simonds was going strong and growing rapidly.
Abel Simonds was born in Fitchburg in 1804 on an old homestead in the south part of Fitchburg. He endured a youth of hardship. From the ages of ten to thirteen he worked for an uncle in New Hampshire. Returning to Fitchburg, he apprenticed in a scythe-making shop for seven years without pay. His schooling was brief - six weeks each winter. But the lessons he learned from hard work he took to heart and carried with him for the rest of his life. When he finished his apprenticeship, he was awarded fifty dollars, which he would use to strike out on his own, heading first to Chelmsford for a few years before opening up his own shop in West Fitchburg.
In the book The City And The River, Doris Kirkpatrick writes "strong work habits became a part of Abel Simonds' nature and work his philosophy of life. Yet devotion to labor did not dull his cheerful and kindly temperament. As his scythe business with John Thurston Farwell prospered, he won friends as well as money, served the Calvinistic Congregational Church, held important town offices, and was a trustee of the Fitchburg Savings Bank." He was a true New England renaissance man!
Abel married John Thurston Farwell's sister Elizabeth. Two years after they were married, Elizabeth died, leaving Abel with an infant son Joseph. Soon after, Abel married Jane Todd of Rindge, New Hampshire, and he and Jane had ten more children, eight sons and two daughters (his son Charles died shortly after his first birthday). His sons George and Daniel were guiding lights for the business from the mid-1870's until Daniel died in 1913.
Upon Abel Simonds' death, the Fitchburg Daily Sentinel newspaper reported "Mr. Simonds was a man of quiet, sober, industrious habit." "He was a man of cheerful kindness." "He was a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good friend." And Abel would have been proud to know that people saw him in this way.