“CLARE CARLTON NORTH has gained some unique distinctions in insurance circles in Northern Ohio, not only as a high power salesman and efficient business getter, but as a lecturer in the general field of insurance salesmanship and also as a writer and publisher of some very valuable literature known to insurance men as ‘The Northern Method.’
Mr. North was born at Andover, Ohio, December 30, 1880. His father was Charles A. North… The mother of Mr. C.C. North was Hattie E. (Ware) North, a daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth Ware of Orwell, Ashtabula County…
Clare Carlton North acquired a liberal education and in 1903 graduated from that old and noted school of Western Reserve, Grand River Institute at Austinburg, Ohio. For two years he was a high school superintendent in Astabula, but in 1905 entered the field of life insurance as a salesman, and was successively special agent, general agent and then supervisor of agents for the Midland and Mutual Life Insurance Company of Columbus. Life insurance has represented to Mr. North not only a business but a profession, and out of his close and enthusiastic study has come the work of his later years as an author and originator of the North system of salesmanship, which is a profound analysis of every situation and condition bearing upon the relations between the salesman and the prospect. It has seemed that Mr. North has analyzed and put into plain reasoning every fact and condition knowledge of which opens a way for successful insurance salesmanship. In fact Mr. North has supplied practically everything to the life insurance salesman except those fundamental prerequisites of character, personality and industry which no system however elaborate can give. This ‘North Method of Life Insurance Salesmanship’ was copyrighted by Mr. North in 1917 and is published by ‘The House of North’ at Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. North prior to putting his knowledge into published form has lectured on the subject throughout the United States.
At his home Town of Madison in Lake County he has served as a member of the village school board. Mr. North’s Cleveland offices are in the Guardian Building. He is a republican, is a past master of Lake Shore Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons, is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, is a member of the county committee of the Lake County Y.M.C.A., and has filled that office since its organization. He has done much active work in the National Association of Life Underwriters. He was superintendent of Sunday school at the age of nineteen and has long been prominent in Sunday school and church of the Congregational denomination.
August 30, 1904, at Trumbull in Ashtabula County Mr. North married Edith B. Reigert, daughter of John M. and Annie Reigert. Mrs. North is a graduate of Geneva High School with the class of 1901. They have one son, John Carlton North, born June 2, 1911.”
Source: A History of Cleveland and Its Environs: Biography, Vol. II, by Elroy McKendree Avery, Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago and New York, 1918, page 205
