USA > Massachusetts > Biographical history of Massachussetts; biographies and autobiographies of the leading men in the state, 1911, vol 7 > Part 3
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Mr. Bartlett was interested in mining properties, railroads, real estate, and manufacturing industries. An illness in 1910 left Mr. Bartlett an invalid and since then he had not been active in business.
Mr. Bartlett was a member of the Somerset, Country, Union, Tavern, Exchange, University, and St. Botolph clubs of Boston ; the Country Club, Brookline; the Essex Country Club at Manchester; the Players' Club and the Jekyl Island Club, Harvard; the Uni- versity clubs of New York, and the Chicago Club of Chicago. He was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Mr. Bartlett was married in 1867 to Marianna Hubbard Slater of Norwich, Connecticut. She died a few years later, January 6, 1873, leaving two daughters, neither of whom is now living. They were Caroline and Elizabeth Bartlett.
Mr. Bartlett has left a record of character and usefulness to his generation that is an honor to his kindred, friends, and the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts.
Among the many tributes to his memory Ex-Governor John D. Long, his Harvard classmate, said: "A bright, buoyant, happy, generous spirit went out when Francis Bartlett died. For several years his delicate health has been a matter of anxiety to his friends. But his serenity and good cheer, his lively interest in literature, art, and the world at large, were undimmed. He had suffered great affliction in the sad loss of those near and dear to him, and his failing health and increasing withdrawal from the delightful ave- nues of life in which he had been so long a figure, were a severe test of his philosophy. But he bore all with the nobility of a large heart and mind.
FRANCIS BARTLETT
"Some of us recall him in his college days at Harvard, his hand- some face, his lustrous eyes, his cordial ways, his kindly bearing in every relation. He was full of music to his fingers' ends, which played the piano accompaniment to many a college song. Indeed, he was facile in musical composition and also in the making of verse to go with it. He was a leading spirit in the somewhat fa- mous Jacobite Club of his classmates.
"With maturing years he showed great interest in literature- Thomas Bailey Aldrich was a sympathetic friend-and still more in art. In the latter direction he visited all the great galleries of Europe. His private collection of masterpieces in his Beacon Street home filled his house. He was not only a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, but his marvellously great gift of a million and a half dollars to its funds marks him as one of the most liberal patrons of art. These tastes naturally brought him into a very large range of club life-not so much its material features as the associations of its musical, literary, and art culture. A man of wealth, he preserved all the simplicity and democratic flavor of his youth. Wealth brought to him not temptations but opportunities. In his habits, his associations, his private life, and his public interests he was without reproach and in his convictions without fear. Of a sprightly humor that gave sparkle to every group in which he sat, few men dwelt more in their thought on the serious problems of existence.
"He was a good citizen, always alive to the demands of good government and good politics. With all this he was also astute in the management of his fortune and of excellent business habit and judgment. Son of the most eminent lawyer of his time at the Suffolk Bar, he honored though he did not actively practice the profession of the law. It was in his personal relations, affections and charities, so many of which none knew but the recipient, that he was at his best-an ideal companion, friend, gentleman.
"Looking back so many years-more than threescore and ten- along the pathway of life, how bright the sunshine and flowers at the beginning, how ripe and mellow the later fruit, how soft the shadows at the close! There are hearts that gratefully remember his kindnesses of word and deed, that held him dear, and that cherish his memory."
SIDNEY BARTLETT
S IDNEY BARTLETT was of the purest Pilgrim stock. He was descended from Robert Bartlett who, having arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the ship Ann in 1623, settled at Monument Pond and married Mary, the daughter of Richard Warren, a Mayflower passenger. His father, Zaccheus Bartlett, was a physician whose practice took him to the towns and villages about Plymouth, and the hamlets of Manomet, where he and four generations of his ancestors were born. The doctor married Han- nah Jackson, a woman of the finest qualities of intellect and char- acter, vigorous, and noted for her indomitable will. Their son Sidney was born at Plymouth, February 13, 1799. To his mother he owed his opportunity for a college and professional education. He fitted for Harvard at the public schools of Plymouth and took his degree of A.B. in the class of 1818, with Samuel Todd Adams, George Choate, Frederick A. Farley, Robert Treat Paine, George R. Noyes, George Osborne, George W. Otis, and others. While in college he belonged to the Harvard Washington Corps. After his graduation he taught school for a brief time in Scituate and read law for a year in the office of Nathaniel Morton Davis of Plymouth. During this year he served as a private in the Standish Guards, a military company organized in 1818. In September, 1820, he went to Boston and entered the office of Lemuel Shaw, who ten years later began his great career as Chief Justice of Massachusetts. In 1821 he was admitted to the Bar in the Court of Common Pleas, and became the partner of his instructor, who recognized his un- usual abilities. In March, 1824, he was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Judicial Court.
Sidney Bartlett by dint of untiring industry and intense appli- cation became the leader of the Boston Bar. His training was not originally particularly thorough and his rise was therefore not rapid. He was not admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States until 1854. He devoted himself with singular
SIDNEY BARTLETT
steadfastness to the practice of his profession. Though he might have been appointed to the bench, he refused all importunities. Indeed the only public office which he ever accepted was that of member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1851 and that of delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1853. He con- sidered that he was fulfilling his duty in devoting himself whole- heartedly to his profession. The concentration of such powers as he possessed could not fail to achieve success. There were shrewd and capable lawyers in his day, many who perhaps enjoyed greater advantages in legal training, but not one excelled him in placing before the Court in concise and convincing form the principles which he believed applicable to any case. Other men were more gifted with eloquence, but his matter-of-fact presentation of an argument won in the long run.
He acquired a reputation which far exceeded the boundaries of his own community and State and his practice became extremely lucrative. He was always ready to help along public causes or to relieve the wants of those less fortunate than himself, particularly those of his own profession who from misfortune beyond their power to prevent were in need. He continued in active practice until within a few days of the end of his long and useful life, with unabating ability and skill for the last time appearing to argue the cause of the daughter of an old friend who had been the leader of the South Carolina Bar.
He died March 6, 1889. A fortnight later a meeting of the members of the Suffolk Bar was held and resolutions were passed to commemorate the distinction of his seventy years' connection with that organization and "the spotless record of his high personal worth, his almost unparalleled professional ability and success." One of the paragraphs made this declaration :
"His learning was accurate and adequate, but his characteristic superiority consisted in his firm and comprehensive grasp of legal principles and in his ability to deal with them with unsurpassed facility and power. In all the high qualities essential to their thorough exposition and successful application-clear perception, searching analysis, inexorable logic, scientific precision of thought and statement, a terse and cogent style, and an unerring and imperturbable practical sagacity-he was without a superior, if not without a rival."
SIDNEY BARTLETT
The resolutions went on to expatiate on his consummate success as an adviser and administrator in the most important and intricate affairs of trust, his unfailing loyalty and fidelity to the Court, thus by his conspicuous example contributing in a high degree to the maintenance of the respect which the judiciary of Massachusetts had always received, to his cheerfulness and courage, his rectitude, honor and truth. The proceedings were dignified by eulogistic addresses by distinguished associates who spoke feelingly of his relations with the community in which he had so long stood-the Nestor of the Bar. William G. Russell among other personal recol- lections said :
"He was eminently social. He was fond of young people, of hearing their talk and learning of their doings and their ways. Simple in his tastes and almost abstemious in his habits, he enjoyed the higher pleasures of the table and wherever good talk was held he held his own with the best. His reading was by no means nar- row or confined to the volumes of the law; works of history, biog- raphy, memoirs, the novels of the day (and how large a portion of the whole range of fiction comes within his day) were his constant resource for relaxation. He was in mental constitution eminently just and true, fair minded, open minded, on any and all questions of politics, religion or casuistry ; on all the current questions of the day, as on all questions of the law, he was ready to hear both sides, and he justly recognized and weighed the force of either argument. He was capable of being convinced against his will by sound reason, a quality of the rarest sort."
Elias Merwin said: "In old age the best of him survived-his great faculties, his keen relish for legal investigations, his hopeful- ness-I had almost said his optimism-by which his sympathies were ever with the present and the future rather than the past; his noble presence, and the serene and placid temper, becoming only the more gentle and attractive with every advancing year-old age without querulousness or decrepitude and with more than its pro- verbial wisdom and dignity-attended by
'All which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends.'"
George S. Hale said : "He was delicately thoughtful and con- siderate of his inferiors in age and experience and imparted his
SIDNEY BARTLETT
store of wise counsel liberally. He was a comfortable adviser and a rock of support, giving strength, confidence and repose, and when he reached 'the monumental pomp of age' he bore himself with a mellow and gracious dignity, without assumption, distance, or irritability. Like Gorgias, he had nothing to charge against it, and in return it brightened, not clouded, his closing years."
Justice Holmes, representing the Bench, offered a reminiscence which perhaps more than anything else visualizes the importance which Sidney Bartlett embodied as a connecting link between his own day and the past. He cited a letter in which he said : "Dea- con Spooner died in 1818 aged ninety-four. I saw him and talked with him. He talked with Elder Faunce who talked with the Pil- grims and is said to have pointed out the rock." Justice Holmes went on to say: "He had that terse and polished subtlety of speech which was most familiar to the world where courtiers and men of fashion taught the littérateurs of a later age how to write. He had something of a half-hidden wit which men learned to prac- tice who lived about a court and had to speak in innuendo. He had much of the eighteenth-century definiteness of view which was such an aid to perfection of form. His manner was no less a study than his language. There was in it a dramatic intensity of interest which made him seem the youngest man in the room when he spoke. And yet you felt at the same time the presence of something older than the oldest-the detachment which came from ancient experi- ence and intellect undisturbed; the doubt which smiled at action without making it less ardent or sicklying o'er the native hue of resolution. His might was written in his face-that wonderful silver-crowned countenance, glittering yet serene, framed on slant- ing, deep-cut lines of power; the imperial face of one who had lived beyond surprises, not unlike that of the great Cæsar as Pontifex Maximus in ironic fulness of knowledge, such as still sometimes are produced in New England. It was enough to look upon him to know that you saw a man who had greatness in him."
Sidney Bartlett was married in October, 1828, to Caroline Louise, daughter of John and Mary (Tewkesbury) Pratt. He had four children, one of whom, Francis Bartlett, a man famous for his public spirit and generosity, survived him.
HENRY BARTLETT
H ENRY BARTLETT was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on the 29th of March, 1864. His father, Charles Edwin Adams Bartlett, a railway man, was born in 1836, died in 1900, was the son of John C. Bartlett, born 1809, died 1878. His mother was Harriet Maria Cooper, daughter of Isaac Cooper, born in England in 1807 and was brought to West Boylston, Massachu- setts, at the age of three years. He lived to the great age of ninety- five years, dying in 1902.
Henry Bartlett's education was unobstructed by the difficulties which so many boys encounter. Beginning with the public schools of Lowell, it was advanced by the Boston Latin School, and com- pleted by a course in Harvard University from which he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1885. His special tastes from childhood was for mechanics, so that his choice of a vocation was determined as much by his own proclivity as it was by the example and wish of his father and mother.
In the year following his graduation from Harvard young Bart- lett began his career by becoming an apprentice in the shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where he served three years. He then became assistant road foreman of engines on the Pittsburg, Middle and Maryland divisions of the Pennsyl- vania Railroad and filled those positions for two years. In 1891 he was appointed Assistant Superintendent of motive power for the same Railroad with his office in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Four years later he was called to be Superintendent of motive power for the Boston and Maine Railroad, and since January 1, 1907, he has been General Superintendent of the Mechanical Department of that road and Chief Mechanical Engineer.
Mr. Bartlett is a member of the Masonic fraternity. He is also a member of the Engineers' Club of Boston, the Harvard Club of Boston, the Oakley Country Club, the American Society of Mechan- ical Engineers, of which he was Chairman of the Boston section, and of the New England Railroad Club, of which he is Ex-President.
A Republican in politics, his religious affiliation is with the Uni- tarian Church. His favorite recreation is golf.
In 1891, on the 28th of October, he was joined in marriage to Miss Alice Maud Moulton, the daughter of O. H. and Miranda Moulton. Two children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Bartlett, only one of whom, Harriet M. Bartlett, survives.
Henry Bartlett's life witnesses to persistence and diligence in study, to ability and fidelity in positions of trust and responsibility, and to a healthy interest in human affairs.
Henry Bauten
5
Odim Al Bayley.
EDWIN ALLEN BAYLEY
E DWIN ALLEN BAYLEY, lawyer and legislator, was born in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts, July 30, 1862.
His father, Edwin Bayley (1820-1888), was a successful merchant, active, earnest, keen and frank; he was the great grand- son of Brigadier General Jacob Bayley (1726-1815), who served with distinction through the French and Indian War and the War of the Revolution and in 1762 founded the town of Newbury, Vermont, naming it after the place of his birth in Massachusetts. The record of General Bayley's public services, both in civil and military affairs, shows him to have been one of the leading citizens of Vermont throughout the eventful period preceding and following the estab- lishment of the new state government (1778).
His mother, Vesta (Capen) Bayley (1826-1915), was the daughter of General Aaron Capen (1796-1866) and Izannah (White) Capen. She was a woman of intellectual strength and firmness, whose influence upon him, mentally and morally, was very strong.
His paternal immigrant ancestor was John Bayly, who came from England in 1635 and settled in that part of Amesbury, Massachusetts, now called Salisbury Point.
His maternal immigrant ancestor was Barnard Capen, who came from England in 1630 and was one of the earliest settlers of Dor- chester, Massachusetts.
Edwin Allen Bayley at an early age removed with his parents to Newbury, Vermont, where his youth was spent. He was strong and energetic, keenly enjoying the usual out-of-door sports of a healthy, active country boy. After the public and private schools in New- bury he continued his education at St. Johnsbury (Vt.) Academy, from which he was graduated in 1881 with high rank and was one of the speakers at graduation. While at the Academy he was one of the editors of the "Academy Student," the school paper.
He entered Dartmouth College, where he pursued the Classical Course, and was graduated in the class of 1885, with the degree of
EDWIN ALLEN BAYLEY
A.B. During his college course he served as president and treasurer of his class, also as a director of the college athletic association. He was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity and of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and at commencement he delivered one of the two philosophical orations assigned for scholarship and ranking next to the salutatory.
After teaching a private school in Newbury for a short time, he accepted an advantageous offer to enter the mortgage loan business in Dakota. Although this experience showed that he had good busi- ness judgment and executive ability, he was not satisfied with the fu- ture of that business and decided to study law, toward which he found himself more and more strongly drawn. Accordingly in 1889 he entered the Law School of Boston University, completed its regular three-year course in two years, graduating in the class of 1891 with the degree of LL.B., "magna cum laude." During his course he served as president of his class.
He was admitted to the practice of law at the Suffolk (Massachu- setts) Bar in August, 1891, and in the United States Courts in 1898. In 1892 he and John H. Colby, one of his classmates at Dartmouth College, associated themselves together in the practice of their pro- fession in Boston, under the name of Colby and Bayley, an asso- ciation which continued until the death of Mr. Colby in 1909.
Mr. Bayley is a strong advocate, forceful, thorough and pains- taking, and has made a well-deserved success in the practice of his profession. His enthusiasm and energy are his marked character- istics. He has resided in Lexington, Massachusetts, since 1892, where he has taken a leading part in public affairs, serving as a member of the school committee, as a library trustee and for years as moderator of town meetings and general town counsel. He is counsel, clerk and a trustee of the North End Savings Bank of Boston, and is also one of the Trustees of St. Johnsbury Academy, where he fitted for college; he has served as president and secre- tary of the Bailey-Bayley Family Association and has added much to the value of the work of the Association by his genealogical research and writings; he has also served as President of the General Alumni Association of Dartmouth College; he has prepared and delivered several historical and Memorial Day addresses. He is a member of the Middlesex Bar Association, the Dartmouth College Club of Boston, the Boston City Club, the Republican Club of Massachusetts,
EDWIN ALLEN BAYLEY
the Middlesex Club, the Vermont Historical Society, the Lexington Historical Society, the Old Belfry Club of Lexington and an associate member of George G. Meade Post 119, G. A. R., of Lexington. His religious affiliations are with the Orthodox Congregational Church.
In politics he has always been a Republican, and in 1909, and again in 1910 when he was re-elected without an opposing vote, he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where his courage, sound judgment and ability as a speaker and debater won for him a place among the ablest members of that body. He drafted and urged the passage of the first bill for a tunnel connect- ing the North and South Railway Stations in Boston. To him more than to any one else is due the credit of the enactment of the law known as the "Safe and Sane Fourth of July" bill, which ended the manufacture and sale in Massachusetts of death-dealing firecrackers and bombs; and in recognition of his leadership in this matter he was presented by Governor Eben S. Draper with one of the pens with which the bill was signed. Asa member of the Committee on Railroads he was a close student of all railroad transportation questions affecting the interests of the Commonwealth, and his speeches on this subject were among the ablest heard in years on Beacon Hill. The following are some of the current newspaper estimates of his work as a legislator.
"Bayley is a constructive legislator of great ability and of ines- timable value to the state and to his district."
"He is of a class of men rarely found, unfortunately, willing to give their time and their splendid talents to the service of their fellows in public service."
"Bayley is one of the leaders in the House, one of its best orators."
"He has shown himself one of the ablest and most fearless and aggressive legislators that has sat in either branch of the Massachu- setts Legislature for many years; he, like all strong men, possesses deep convictions, and one is sure to admire and respect him."
"Representative Bayley has won for himself an enviable reputa- tion as one of the really powerful men in the affairs of state legis- lation."
One of his fellow-members, for years a leader in the House, who was Mr. Bayley's strongest opponent on railroad matters, wrote him saying: "I have seen no abler debater than you in the Massachu- setts House."
EDWIN ALLEN BAYLEY
During Mr. Bayley's first legislative term the Massachusetts State Board of Insanity contracted for land near Lexington Center, on which to erect an asylum; Mr. Bayley aroused the citizens to an appreciation of the disadvantage of such a location and led in the efforts which prevented its fulfillment, and for this important service he received a public vote of thanks in town meeting.
After the close of his second term, Mr. Bayley was urged to remain in politics and run for Congress from his district. He decided, however, to be a candidate for the State Senate. He won the nomi- nation overwhelmingly, after a warmly contested campaign; but at the election he was defeated by the Democratic landslide of 1910, which overtook so many Republican candidates, including the Governor.
In connection with the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the settlement of the town of Newbury, Vermont, in August, 1912, Mr. Bayley planned and secured the erection of a large and impres- sive granite monument, suitably inscribed and prominently located on the village common, to commemorate the life and public services of his distinguished ancestor, General Jacob Bayley, above mentioned, who was the founder of the town. The monument was dedicated as a part of the anniversary exercises and Mr. Bayley delivered the dedicatory address.
On June 15, 1892, he was married to Lucia A., daughter of Dr. Eustace V. and Emily (Tenney) Watkins, of Newbury, Vermont, a granddaughter of Miner and Anna (Barr) Watkins and of Dr. Ira and Sophe (Hazen) Tenney, a descendant of Thomas Tenney, who came from England to Massachusetts in 1638. One daughter has been born to them, Marian Vesta.
Mr. Bayley has for many years been a great admirer of Daniel Webster, maintaining that no other one American has stood pre- eminent as a lawyer, an orator and a statesman; and it has been one of his pastimes to collect pictures of Webster, and today he has the largest collection of Websteriana pictures ever gathered together; his offices are, in fact, a Webster picture gallery.
Mr. Bayley believes that while success may often depend upon fortunate circumstances, yet the best preparation for taking advan- tage of opportunities is (1) as broad and thorough an education as possible, (2) a determination to be honest and fair with one's self and others, (3) a purpose to do one's best earnestly and enthusias- tically and (4) a willingness to work and not shirk.
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