George Edward Comery

George Edward Comery (1891-1950)

 

The following biography was written by Robert Whitfield Comery shortly after the death of his father.

It was always George E. Comery’s express wish that he die at the desk he occupied as founder of the firm of Comery, Davison and Jacobson, accountants, of Providence, Rhode Island. A complex of physical ailments prevented his fulfilling this wish, but he came as close to it as could be when, with telephone in one hand and cigarette in the other, he sat painfully erect in bed and directed the business of his firm up to within an hour of his death. This was a final expression of the motives which underlay his whole career: a belief in the importance of the job that lay at hand and a determination to do it better than anyone else.

These traits, combined with enormous energy, made it possible for him to overcome, over a period of nearly forty years, an increasingly severe disability. From about the age of twenty until the time of his death he was afflicted with progressive muscular atrophy, which eventually confined him to a wheelchair. In spite of this (and against the advice of older men in the profession), he founded his accounting firm in 1921 and during the next twenty-nine years, by dint of great initiative, effort, and keen judgment, made it one of the most highly respected in the state of Rhode Island.

George Comery was born in Nutley, New Jersey, on September 27, 1891, the son of Lulu May (Dunnell) and William Comery. His father, who came from a family with a long tradition in the textile industry in Nottingham, England, was a manufacturer of hosiery. He worked his way up in the industry in mills in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut and finally settled in Central Falls, Rhode Island, where he did valuable work in the development of modern knitting machinery and eventually became head of the Pawtucket Hosiery Company. William Comery’s father, also William, had come to this country from Nottingham as cricket coach to the sons of President Martin Van Buren.*

Lulu May (Dunnell) Comery with one of
her great-grandchildren c 1948.

George Comery’s mother, Lulu May Dunnell, was the daughter of Charles H. and Emily (Noble) Dunnell, both of whom came of old Connecticut families. Charles was the son of Sylvester Dunnell; nephew of Rev. William N. Dunnelll, who was rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Henry Street, New York City, for about forty years; grandson of Elbridge Gerry Dunnelll; and great-grandson of Private Henry Dwinell (as the name was then spelled), who served with the Massachusetts Militia during the American Revolution.

After the family moved to Central Falls, George Comery attended the public schools. It was here that he first exhibited the qualities of self-reliance and independence of mind which, though they did not always endear him to his teachers, were to make him a widely admired and sometimes controversial leader in his profession. After graduating from Central Falls High School, he went to Bryant College (or Bryant and Stratton Business College, as it was then known) in Providence. Bryant, from which he graduated in 1911, was to remain one of his major interests for the rest of his life. He taught night classes there from 1918 to 1922 and later served as accountant and financial to the administration. When, in 1949, Bryant was re-organized as a non-proprietary institution, he was largely instrumental in bring about the change. From that time until his death he was a member of the college’s Board of Trustees.

For several years after 1911, Mr. Comery had a variety of office jobs around Providence. During this period he worked for George M. Rex and Company, Accountants, where he learned his profession and in 1917 earned his certificate as a public accountant. In 1921, with his lifelong friends and associates, Ernest H. Davison and Paul A. Jacobson, he founded the firm of Comery, Davison and Jacobson. Under his leadership the firm expanded rapidly, numbering among its regular clients several banks, tool companies, and textile manufacturers, including one of the manufacturers of cotton cloth in the world. 

As income tax laws became more complex during the years of the Depression and the Second World War, Mr. Comery devoted more and more of his attention to tax problems and became recognized as an expert in the field. The firm grew steadily in size and in recent years had added three partners. During these years Mr. Comery’s disability increased to the point where he could walk only with the greatest difficulty, but until the last few weeks of his life he always managed to arrive at his desk at quarter past eight in the morning.

George with his three children: (L-r) Mazelle, Robert and
Richard. Early 1920s in the Fitzwilliam, N.H., summerhouse of
his mother-in-law.

Throughout his career Mr. Comery was deeply concerned with improving the status and caliber of the accounting profession in Rhode Island. He joined the Rhode Island Society of Certified Public Accountants in 1922 and served as its president for the year beginning April 1927. He was a member of the Rhode Island State Board of Accountancy from 1923 to 1929, serving as secretary form 1923 to 1928 and as chairman for the year beginning February 1928. During his term as secretary he was instrumental in establishing the American Institute of Accountants’ examinations as the basis for certification of public accountancy candidates in Rhode Island. He also pioneered in limiting the term of membership on the State Board. In 1936 he became a member of the American Institute of Accountants.

An incorrigible optimist and restless enterpriser, Mr. Comery was fond of quoting the elder J.P. Morgan’s deathbed words to his son: “Never be a bear of the future of America.” This dictum became virtually an article of faith with him, and lived up to it even in the darkest days of the Depression. While many other businessmen saw nothing ahead but utter ruin and preached the sterile doctrine of retrenchment, he undertook new financial obligations and looked around for new ways to invest whatever money he had managed to salvage from the disaster of the early thirties. As a result, his business interests always extended well beyond his accounting firm. Chief among these was the Providence Engineering Works, which, with a group of associates, he bought and re-organized during the forties and of which he served as a director and secretary until his death.

As a lifelong fighter against odds, Mr. Comery had an instinctive sympathy for the underdog, particularly for the physically disabled underdog. This sympathy showed itself in the long list of charities to which he contributed regularly and which incuded Boys’ Town, the Omaha School for Boys, St. Andrew’s School, the Crawford Allen Children’s Hospital, the Shriners’ Hospital for Crippled Children, associations for the blind, and institutions for cancer and polio-myelitis research. In recent years he served as a director of Rhode Island Hospital, Butler Hospital and Roger Williams General Hospital.

Of necessity Mr. Comery’s leisure activities were somewhat restricted. However as a young man he joined the Masons, and though he was later inactive, he remained a member of Union Lodge in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Later he became a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Rhode Island Historical Society, and the Anawan Club of Rehoboth. At home he was an omnivorous reader and a lover of good music. In his later years he became interested in old glass and built up one of the finest collections of cruets and decanters in Rhode Island. Unlike many collectors, he often gave his better pieces to those who shared his admiration for them.

Mazelle Remington Slocum

On April 25, 1916, at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Central Falls, Rhode Island, he married Mazelle Remington Slocum, the daughter of Eason Lafayette and Edna Agnes (Remington) Slocum. Both of her parents were of Colonial Rhode Island families and numbered several Revolutionary soldiers among their ancestors, including Private Amos Sweet on the Slocum side and Colonel Hugh Cole, Colonel James Knight, Captain William Potter and Private Rufus Matteson on the Remington side. Mrs. Comery has been a member of Gaspee Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution for several years and is now first vice regent of the chapter. She is also a member of the Maternity Committee of the Roger Williams general Hospital and of the Church of the Redeemer, Episcopal, of Providence, Rhode Island.

Mr. and Mrs. Comery had three children: Mazelle Slocum, Robert Whitfield, and Richard Tomlin. Mazelle graduated from Radcliffe College in 1939, married John H. Ritter, attorney, of Cincinnati, and has three daughters. Robert graduated from Yale in 1940 and later received a master of arts degree from

Richard, George and Mazelle Comery, 1948.

Brown University, where he is now an instructor in the English Department. He married Dorothy Haslam of Providence and they have one daughter. Richard graduated from the Wharton School in the University of Pennsylvania in 1943 and is now a partner in the firm of Comery, Davison and Jacobosn. He married Jean Jeffers of Providence they have one daughter.

George Comery died in his fifty-ninth year on February 23, 1950 and is buried in Swan Point Cemetery, Providence. He is remembered not merely as a business leader of remarkable ability and imagination but as that somewhat rarer figure, an altogether successful personality. A memorial resolution of the Rhode Island Society of Accountants drawn up shortly after his death laid particular stress on his “rugged individualism and indomitable character,” and these are the qualities that stick in the minds of those who knew him.

Robert W. Comery, the author of this biography, eventually earned his Ph.D. from Brown and enjoyed a long career as an English professor at Rhode Island College. He and Dorothy had a second daughter in 1952. 

*This story was part of the family folklore for generations, but it appears to be untrue. When William emigrated the sons of Van Buren were grown men and highly successful.