Biographical sketches of representative citizens of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1901, Part 43

Author:
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: Boston, Graves & Steinbarger
Number of Pages: 924

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Lucy G. Hollis is the wife of W. F. Buck, of Melrose, and has three children - Mar- garet, Phyllis, and Hollis. Mrs. Eliza A. Hollis died at the age of twenty-four years; and Captain Hollis married for his second wife, in 1876, Miss Louise M. Carney, daugh- ter of Mark Carney, of Dresden, Me.

Captain Hollis is a member of the Kear- sarge Veteran Association and of Robert S. Bell Post, G. A. R., No. 40, of Malden. He was one of the original members of the G. A. R. with General Schenk. A man of education and possessed of powers of close observation, he has gained some fame as a lecturer and writer upon various topics. He is a very interested observer of the present struggle in South Africa, and few, if any, men in this country are better informed in regard to the causes of the war and the leading characteristics of the Boers and the nature of the country in which it is being carried on. The following extracts from a recent inter- view with him upon this subject, published in the Boston Globe, will doubtless be interest- ing to many, though the conflict should have terminated before this meets the eye of the reader of this volume: -

"In 1888 I was appointed United States

Consul at Cape Town by President Cleveland. I went by the way of London, and while there I got my first idea of the feeling of the British toward the Transvaal. They had given up that country by a previous treaty, and as gold had been found in Johannesburg they felt sore because they had given it up. This was very evident to me while I stayed in England, and I found the same spirit manifest almost every- where that I met Englishmen who knew the conditions in South Africa. When I got to Cape Town I began to hear a great deal about the gold being discovered near Johannesburg. There was a great rush there from the Colony, and every one thought it was going to be a 'poor man's diggings, ' -- in other words, allu- vial and placer mining. But when they got there they found that it was all quartz mining, and they began to make money, not out of legitimate mining, but out of the floating and manipulation of shares and paper stocks.

"The rush from Cape Town had been of the character which similar rushes have always been - adventurers and men of no responsibil- ity, men who thought that when they got to Johannesburg their 'luck' would turn, and they would get rich all of a sudden.

"In a few months this speculation in shares, of which the actual value did not any- where exist, had made things very bad in Johannesburg. Men like Barney Barnato went in there worth hardly a cent, and made money in fabulous sums. Then the crash came, and the banks in Cape Town, which had underwritten the schemes and financed them, went under one by one, and there were gloomy times there.

"All this time Rhodes had not done much about the gold scare, and had stayed quietly at Kimberley, where he was the head of the great diamond company; but after that he began to take interest in the great country north of Cape Colony, which included the wonderful tract of land between the Vaal and Zambesi Rivers.

"Mr. Hoffmeyer, who was the leader of the Dutch party at Cape Town, had let go the election for premier, which he might have had easily, and it was evidently on the represen- tations of Rhodes that he did it. Then

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Rhodes was elected premier, and began that wonderful series of operations which has pre- cipitated all the trouble since and now. Up to this time he had said nothing. He had been as inscrutable as the sphinx, and no one could tell what he had in mind. But then it became evident shortly that he had in mind the securing of the whole tract between the V'aal and the Zambesi for the use and owner- ship of England. He had organized the Brit- ish South African Company, and you remem- ber that he went to the foot of the throne itself to organize it. There were some dukes in it and a lot of the nobility. They had a charter which was almost as broad as the charter of the British East India Company. They could do practically anything they wanted to. They immediately began to buy up mineral rights from those who had pro- cured them from Lobengula and the other black chiefs. A friend of mine, a sports- man, had gotten from Lobengula some min- eral rights, probably for a handful of shot or something of that sort, mineral rights which he sold to this new company for two millions and a quarter.

"Rhodes made one bad mistake. He agreed to give Lobengula stands of arms, which was against the express and definite law of the colony, which forbade any one giving the natives arms. But Rhodes did this be- cause he had ends of his own to further, and he wished to show them that he did not mean to interfere in the least with the native life there.

" Meanwhile things in Johannesburg had been getting bad. The English with their national arrogance went up there and wanted all the rights and privileges of citizenship without any of the duties and responsibilities, among which was the defence of the country of which they were citizens, if the occasion demanded. This they did not want. They wanted a dual citizenship. They wanted to be citizens of the Transvaal and get all the gold they could; but, when they were needed for the defence of the country, they wanted to be citizens of England. They became very arrogant and almost unbearable in the town; and nights in the saloons and on the streets

one heard nothing but the declaration that England was a great nation, the national songs of England, and such speeches as 'Down with the Boers,' 'Down with the Dutch,' and all that sort of thing.

"I drew up for the Boer government a statement of what citizenship meant in this country, and laid it before them. But the English would have none of it. At that time the Boers said, 'All right, we will wait: they will perhaps come to it in time.' But they had no thought of going to war over it, or that England was really trying to get back what she relinquished in 1884 by the treaty, till the Jameson raid.

"Now this Jameson's raid was nothing but a move in a great game, and Rhodes was the head and front of the game. The men who went on that raid took their orders from him. and Jameson was simply his lieutenant and right-hand man. And when the Boers de- feated that raid Kruger did a great thing.

"He knew that England was noted for the justice with which she treated offenders. So he let these men go - these buccaneers of land, for they were nothing else. They made an attempt to take the Transvaal by force, and, when they were sent back to Eng- land and everywhere lionized, that settled things with the Boers. Then they knew that they must defend their own country. They began immediately to prepare for this war. They got in French and German and Russian army officers, and began to get in arms and stores, and to-day they are in a position that is nearly impregnable. They know what strategy is, and they have been proving it.

"It is a capitalistic war and one for gain. The burghers, on the other hand, have been fighting for their homes, and they will make the finest Republican stock the world ever saw. They are the mixture of the old French Huguenots, the English, and the Dutch, and it makes a finer stock than we have in some parts of this country.

"I expect to see a United States of South Africa if the Boers win, and I'll tell you that England is going to have a very hard time de- feating them. They are trained men, marks- men from their youth, every one of them;

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they are fearless horsemen, making a mobile army; they can endure when the Englishman will die; they can subsist on little or nothing in comparison with the English; they are not hampered with baggage trains, as each man is his own commissariat; and they know the country, which in some places which they hold is impassable. It is a queer country, something like our Western prairie lands, with great kopjes, or hills and mounds of stone, not in irregular shapes, but blocks piled up as regular and even as if they had been quarried from some great quarry. It is in these kopjes that the fighting goes on at times, and the side that holds them has a tremendous advantage. There can be no doubt but that supplies and ammunition are going constantly to the Boers through Delagoa Bay. I think the Boers have a good chance to win."

IP IDWARD FRANCIS PARKER, a well- known and much-respected citizen of Reading, is a lineal descendant of Deacon Thomas Parker, one of the earliest set- tlers of this ancient town, and a typical rep- resentative of the Parker, Bancroft, Richard- son, and other families of prominence in the early history of this part of Middlesex County. He was born March 14, 1827, in Reading, on what is now the "Town Farm," but which es- tate, it is said, was for two hundred years in possession of the Parker family.

The emigrant ancestor, Thomas Parker, came from England in 1635, was made a free- man in Lynn in 1637, and in 1638 removed to what was then Lynn Village, the plantation in 1644 being incorporated as the town of Read- ing. His homestead was in what is now Wakefield.

Mr. Parker's great - grandfather, Daniel Parker, Sr., born in 1752, was a son of Jona- than Parker, a grandson of Sergeant John Parker, and great-grandson of Deacon Thomas, above named. Daniel Parker, Jr., son of Daniel, Sr., succeeded to the ownership of the farm on which his grandfather Jonathan had lived, and was there engaged in tilling the soil during his entire life. His wife, whose

maiden name was Sally Richardson, bore him four sons and two daughters, namely : Jonathan ; Samuel; Daniel; Charles; Sally, who married Joseph Spokesfield; and Sarah, who died when four years old.

Samuel Parker, father of Edward Francis, was born on the old home farm, July 30, 1789, and died December 27, 1852. He devoted himself to farming with the exception of one year, when he was engaged in the hotel busi- ness in Dover, N. H. Honest and upright, he lived respected by all. He was not a public man, and never sought official honors.

He was twice married.

His first wife, Susan Bancroft, born 1797, was a daughter of Nehemiah and Susanna .(Beard) Bancroft, her paternal ancestors being among the early inhabitants of Reading. Lieutenant Thomas Bancroft, born in England about 1622, came to America prior to 1647, re- sided for a short time in Dedham, and thence came to Reading, where he bought land in the west part of the town. He was here in 1648, and one of the first church members. fle re- moved, subsequently, to that part of Lynn now known as Lynnfield. His wife was Elizabeth Metcalf. His son, Thomas, otherwise known as Captain Thomas Bancroft, served in King Philip's War. He married Sarah Pool, and settled in Reading. Deacon Thomas Ban- croft, son of Captain Thomas, married Mary Webster; and their son, Ensign Thomas Ban- croft, married Lydia Emory. Lieutenant Jo- seph Bancroft, son of Ensign Thomas and Lydia Bancroft, responded to the Lexington alarm, and served several years in the Amer- ican army during the Revolutionary War. His wife was Elizabeth Temple, and they were the parents of Nehemiah Bancroft, father of Mrs. Susan Bancroft Parker.

Samuel and Susan B. Parker were the par- ents of three children - Susan, Ed-

ward Francis, and - The mother died June 21, 1827, at the early age of thirty years; and Mr. Parker married for his second wife Harriet Bradbury Allen, of Billerica, Mass.

Edward F. Parker attended first the district schools of Reading, and completed his early education at Batchelder's Academy. He

Thomas r. Hart .

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.. ent a year in Dover, N. H., with his parents, returning when seventeen years old to the !um, on which he subsequently worked two In 1846 he entered the employ of Syl- 1. ster Harnden, a well-known manufacturer of ! !! niture, who had an extensive trade with the 4 th, going into the finishing department as . workman. He afterward became foreman of that department, and retained his connection with the factory for very nearly thirty years. la 1881, after a year or two of leisure, Mr. Father engaged in the real estate business, in which he is still interested to some extent, al- though his public duties absorb much of his time and attention. For seventeen years, from 18St till 1898, he was a member of the Read- ing; School Committee; in 1883 he was elected Town Treasurer, an office that he has since filled most acceptably; and for ten years he has served as Assessor. He has now the care of several estates on his hands, having charge of the renting or sale of them. He is a trus- tee, and one of the investing committee, of the Mechanies' Savings Bank ; a director and the treasurer of the Masonic Temple corpora- tion of Reading; and a director of the Samuel Pierce Organ Pipe Company, also of Read- ing. In politics he was formerly associated with the Whigs, but is now a stanch Repub- lican.

Mr. Parker married, November 11, 1852, Sarah Jane, daughter of Daniel Spaulding, of New Ipswich, N. H. She died August 19, 1867, leaving no children. Mr. Parker subse- quently married, September 2, 1869, Anna Frances, daughter of David A. Kendall, of New Boston, N. H., who died September 6, 1897. Four sons were the fruit of this union, namely: Arno H., born in June, 1870, who died at the age of fourteen years; Albin K., born in 1872; Frank, born in 1878, who lived but three years; and Edward Franeis, Jr., born in 1882, who was graduated from the Reading High School with the class of 1900. Albin K. Parker, the second son, was educated in the Reading schools, and is now a salesman in Boston, being with the firm of Bigelow & Douse, wholesale dealers in hardware. H married Hattie S. Temple, of Reading, and they have three children : Hubert, born Janu-

ary 8, 1896; Evelyn, born December 26, 1896; and Anna Frances, October 7, 1898.

ON. THOMAS NORTON HART, three times elected Mayor of Boston, now serving his third term in that office, has been a resident of the city considerably more than half a century, having come here a country lad of thirteen in 1842 for the same reason that Richard Whit- tington went to London - to seek his fortune.

Born in North Reading, January 20, 1829, son of Daniel and Margaret (Norton) Hart, he inherits the blood and traditions of long lines of Colonial ancestry, his remote progenitors including a number of early settlers of Essex and Middlesex Counties. His descent from Isaac Hart, who was an inhabitant of Lynn on the shore of Massachusetts Bay in 1640, and in 1688 was of Lynn End (now Lynnfield), is thus traced by a local genealogist : Isaac, ' Samuel,? John,3 John, Jr., 4 Daniel,5 Daniel,6 Thomas Norton7.

Isaac Hart emigrated about 1637 in company with one Richard Carver from Scratby, near Yarmouth, England. He became a large landholder in Lynn, buying in 1660 two hundred aeres, and in 1673 five hundred. In 1647 he removed to Reading, making his home at first in the south part of the town (now Wakefield) and at a later period in the North Parish. In 1688, he, then a resident of Lynn End, subscribed ten pounds toward the build- ing of a new meeting-house in the First Parish of Reading, now Wakefield. His wife was Elizabeth Hutchinson. They had six chil- dren - Thomas, John, Samuel, Adam, Eliza- beth, and Deborah. Samuel, who is spoken of as a sea captain, married, tradition says, a niece of Governor Endicott. His son John, born in 1703, married Mehitable Endicott, daughter of Zerubbabel and Grace (Symonds) Endicott, and grand-daughter of Dr. Zerubba- bel Endicott, who was a son of Governor Endicott.

John Hart, Jr., born in 1733 in Lynnfield, Mass., where his father had settled, married, April 19, 1757, Lydia Curtis. Their son Daniel married December 13, 1792, Polly

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Tapley, of Lynnfield, and was the father of Daniel, Jr., who married Margaret Norton, these two being named above as the parents of Mayor IIart.

Margaret Norton was the daughter of Major John and Margaret (Bacheller) Norton, of Royalston, Mass. Major Norton was a soldier of the Revolution, and is said to have fought at Bunker Hill. He was of the Ipswich, Mass., family of Norton, and removed to Roy- alston from Reading. His wife was a daugh- ter of Major and Deacon John6 Bacheller, who was born in Haverhill, son of the Rev. Samuels Bacheller, the latter a native of Reading, of the fifth generation in descent from Joshua' Bacheller, who emigrated from Kent, England, and was an early settler at Ips- wich. John, 2 born in England, son of Joshua, 1 was the first of that name and race in Reading, where some of his descendants now live. Major John Bacheller, son of the Rev. Sam- uel, and father of the wife of Major Norton, married in 1766 Margaret Swain, daughter of Dr. Thomas and Hannah (Appleton) Swain, of Reading. Dr. Thomas Swain was the son of Dr. Lieutenant Benjamin Swain, and grand- son of Jeremiah Swain, Jr. (Doctor and Ma- jor), whose father, Jeremiah' Swain, was an inhabitant of Charlestown, Mass., in 1638. Hannah Appleton, wife of Dr. Thomas Swain, was a daughter of Oliver Appleton, of Ipswich, Mass. (See Batchelder-Bacheller Genealogy and Eaton's History of Reading. )

Major John Norton and his wife Margaret had seven children, six daughters and one son, among them being Margaret who married Daniel Hart; Clarissa, who married Dr. George Stone, of Lowell; Thomas Norton, of Portland, Me. ; and Mary, who married Oliver Swain, of North Reading. Daniel Hart died in 1855, his wife Margaret in 1867. They had three children: Thomas Norton; Eliza, now deceased, who married Captain J. W. Coburn, of Reading; and Daniel Augustus, who died.

Circumstances rendering it necessary that Thomas N. Hart should make his own way in the world, rise by his own exertions if he were to rise at all, and his native energy and his ambition prompting him to take an early start

in life, he came to Boston at the youthful age above noted, equipped with a district school education, and found employment in the dry- goods store of Wheelock, Pratt & Co. Two years later, in 1844, he became clerk in a hat storc. Diligent in business, he rose step by step, in 1855 becoming a partner of the firm of Philip A. Locke & Co., and in 1860 found- ing the firm of Hart, Taylor & Co., dealers in hats, caps, and furs. His partner was Fred- erick B. Taylor; and theirs was the largest house in its line of trade in New England. In 1878, having acquired a competency, Mr. Hart retired from mercantile business, and accepted the presidency of the Mount Vernon National Bank of Boston. His public life be- gan in 1879, when he served his first term as a member of the common council of the city of Boston. He served two additional terms as Councilman, 1880 and 1881, and three terms, 1882, 1885, and 1886, as Alderman. He was candidate for the office of Mayor in 1886, 1887, and 1888; elected Mayor in 1888 and 1889, and again for a term of two years in 1899. In 1888 he received the largest vote ever cast in the city for a Republican for that office, and in 1899 the largest vote ever cast for a Mayor of Boston. Appointed by Presi- dent Harrison Postmaster of Boston in 1891, he held that office, efficiently discharging its duties till June 30, 1893, three months after the inauguration of President Cleveland.

His third election as Mayor of Boston is brave evidence of the fulfilment during two previous terms of service of his pledge to "administer its affairs faithfully, honestly, according to law and for the benefit of the whole people, without discrimination on ac- count of creed or color, nativity cr party," and convincing proof of the esteem and confi- dence of his fellow-citizens, especially of those who respect the old-fashioned virtues of hon- esty and judicious economy, and favor a pay- as-you-go policy for municipal cities as well as for individuals.

Mr. Hart and Miss Elizabeth Snow, of Bowdoinham, Me., daughter of John and Elizabeth (Ridley) Snow, were married in 1850. They have one child, a daughter, Abbie Snow Hart, wife of C. W. Ernst.

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Mayor Hart is a Unitarian, and has served as treasurer of the American Unitarian Asso- ciation, of which he is a life member. Dur- ing the pastorate of the Rev. Minot J. Savage, he was connected with the Church of the U'nity in this city, and was one of its officials. Since then he has joined the Arlington Street Church. He is a member of the Unitarian and the Algonquin Clubs of Boston and of the Hull Yacht Club. His city house is on Commonwealth Avenue, and his summer home in Swampscott.

HARLES EDWIN MILES, M. D., the oldest physician. in Roxbury in point of service, was born in Stow, Mass., December 31, 1830, son of Charles and Sophia J. (Brown) Miles. His father was born in Gardner, Mass., September 28, ISO1, and his mother was born in Marl- boro, March 14, 1808. His grandfather, Oliver Miles, was born September 14, 1772, in Concord, Mass; and his great-grandfather, also named Oliver, was born in the same town, September 11, 1738.

Dr. Miles is a lineal descendant, in the seventh generation, of John Miles, an English- man by birth, who was residing in Concord as early as 1637, was made a freeman December 13, 1638, and his descendants have continu- ously resided in that town until the present time. His death occurred in 1693. This pioneer ancestor was a blacksmith and a farmer. He was one of the largest landed proprietors of Concord at that time, owning four hundred and fifty-nine acres; and his es- tate was appraised at sixteen hundred pounds sterling. His homestead was located three- quarters of a mile west of the Concord meet- ing-house on the road to Groton. John Miles married for his second wife Susanna, widow of John Rediat, Jr., April 10, 1679. They had three children - John, Samuel, and Sarah. John Miles, Jr., who was born in Concord, May 20, 1680, occupied the homestead, and at his death left an estate valued at seventeen hundred and eight pounds, showing him to have been a wealthy man for those days. He

married Mary Prescott, of Concord, and was the father of six children.

His son, John, third, who was born Decem- ber 24, 1702, married Elizabeth Brooks, of Concord, and settled on a farm in the southern part of the town of Concord, known as Nice Acre Corner. Another son, Jonathan Miles, was graduated from Harvard in 1727. Charles Miles, who was born June 28, 1727, and was a son of Samuel, above named, commanded 2 company at the Concord fight, to which, he said, he "went with the same seriousness as it he were going to the house of God." He died November 2, 1790. John Miles, fourth, who was born in Concord, in 1727, eldest son of the third John and his wife Elizabeth, and who settled in Westminster, Mass., also commanded a company which responded to the Lexington alarm, April 19, 1775, and afterward served under Washington at Dorchester Heights. He died April 30, 1808; and his wife, formerly the Widow Warren, whose maiden name was Martha Russell, died November 26 of the same year. Abel Miles, third son of John and Eliz- abeth, was born in Concord in 1733. and live: in that town.

Oliver Miles, Sr., the great-grandfather above named, fourth son of John and Elizabeth (Brooks) Miles, was captured by the Indians at Fort William Henry during the French War, but made his escape, and served in the struggle for American Independence. He lived to be ninety years old, his death occur- ring November 23, 1828. His wife, Martha Stone, of Framingham, died February IL, 1813. Their children were: Joseph, Oliver, John, Martha, and Lydia.

Oliver Miles, Jr., grandfather of Dr. Miles. learned the cabinet-maker's trade, and, settling in Gardner, Mass., resided there until 180 ;. when he moved to Stow, where he followed his trade in connection with farming. He owned the only chaise in the town of Gardner, and is said to have been the first man in America to construct a French bedstead. He was an in- telligent, worthy, and useful citizen. He died December 12, 1855. His wife, Sallie Joslin. of Leominster, Mass., who was born March 3, 1775, died December 24, 1858. She was the mother of eleven children; namely, Orinda.

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John, Charles, Luke, Lewis, Walter, Cyrus, Harriet, and Oliver, and two who died in in- fancy.

Asa Miles, a cousin of Oliver, second, was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1787, and practised medicine at Westminster, Mass., until his death, which occurred in 1804. The Rev. John Miles, also a cousin of Oliver, sec- ond, was a graduate of Brown University, class of 1794. He presided over a church in Grafton, Mass.

Henry A. Miles, son of the Rev. John and Mary (Denny) Miles, was born May 30, 1802 ; was graduated from Brown in 1829; was or- dained to the ministry in Hallowell, Me., De- cember 19, 1832; installed over a church in Lowell, Mass., December 14, 1836; and was subsequently called to the pastorate of the old church (Unitarian) in Hingham, Mass. He died in June, 1895. The Rev. Henry A. Miles was a prolific contributor to religious literature; and he compiled the genealogy of the Miles family. He also found time to closely identify himself with the general in- terests of Hingham. On May 28, 1833, he married Mary Moore, of Cambridge, Mass.

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Biographical sketches of representative citizens of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1901, Part 43

Author: Publication date: 1901 Publisher: Boston, Graves & Steinbarger Number of Pages: 924

Author:
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: Boston, Graves & Steinbarger
Number of Pages: 924