ALFRED L. SOULE.

Started a wholesale paper company in Stoughton in 1916

Alfred L. Soule is a prominent representative of commercial activity in Stoughton, where he is engaged in the wholesale paper trade. He is a native son of the city in which he makes his home and here he has spent his entire life. He was born in November, 1880, of the marriage of John and Manatta (Cobbett) Soule, the former a native of Mansfield, Massachusetts, while the latter was born in Easton, Massachusetts. Mr. Soule was for many years engaged in clerking and later turned his attention to the manufacture of paper boxes, in which business he continued for a number of years. He located in Stoughton at a very early period in its development and in fact was reared and educated in the town, where he still resides. His wife passed away in June, 1898.

After acquiring a public school education Alfred L. Soule started upon his business career as an employe in the factory of the J. G. Phinney Counter Company, with which he remained for three years. He afterward occupied the position of shipper with the Stoughton Rubber Company for one year and later engaged in clerking for ten years but throughout the entire period was actuated by the laudable ambition of some day engaging in business on his own account. With that end in view he carefully saved his earnings and on the 1st of January, 1916, opened the wholesale paper house of which he is now the head. In the interim he has built up a business of gratifying proportions and is now enjoying a large and growing patronage, his trade coming from all the surrounding towns and also from various points in New Hampshire. Thoroughly reliable in his business methods and progressive in all that he does, he has gained a liberal patronage and his patrons are ever willing to speak a good word for him, recognizing in him a wide-awake, alert and enterprising business man and one of unquestionable reliability.

In October, 1902, Mr. Soule was united in marriage to Miss Grace M. Cutting, a daughter of Burton and Annie (Crofts) Cutting. The former was born in Berlin, Massachusetts, and the mother's birth occurred in Watertown, this state. Mr. Cutting was an expressman of Boston for twenty-five years and on the expiration of that period removed to Stoughton in 1898. Since that time he has been connected with the grain trade in Stoughton and he has now reached the age of seventy.

Mr. Soule and his wife are members of the Universalist church and fraternally he is connected with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in which he has filled all of the chairs in the local lodge, being the youngest past grand of the organization. He is also a member of Perseverance Lodge, No. 97, of the Order of Rebekah. His political endorsement is given to the republican party. He closely studies the vital questions and issues of the day and his position upon any important question is never an equivocal one. Mr. Soule deserves much credit for what he has accomplished in a business way. Starting out in life without financial assistance from anyone, he has made for himself a creditable place in commercial circles through the strength of his character, through his determined purpose and is creditable ambition. His advancement proves what can be accomplished through individual effort and his record also indicates the fact that success and an honored name may be won simultaneously.

Source: History of Norfolk County Massachusetts 1622-1918 (New York, S. J. Clark Publishing Co., 1918), 2:186-187.

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