History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 6

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1538

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 6

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

sachusetts in 1856. The editorial care of this volume was entrusted to Messrs. Bradford K. Pierce and Charles Hale. In their preface these gentlemen say : "The proceedings of the Convention were of great importance, and were so regarded throughout the country at that time. It is quite certain that, if Massachusetts had refused her assent to the Consti- tution of the United States, that well-devised scheme of government, the careful work of the patriots and statesmen of the last century, under which the nation has enjoyed so large a 'degree of prosperity, would have failed."

John Hancock and Samuel Adams were two of the most important members of the convention. Both were doubtful, but it was generally supposed that while they were not friendly to each other, they agreed in a decided leaning against the Constitu- tion. General Knox, after the Constitution was adopted, writes to Washington as follows: "The op- position has not arisen from a consideration of the merits or demerits of the thing itself, as a political machine, but from a deadly principle levelled at the existence of all government whatever. . . . It is a singular circumstance that, in Massachusetts, the property, the ability and the virtue of the State are almost solely in favor of the Constitution. The Massachusetts convention was of the opinion that certain amendments and alterations in the Constitu- tion would remove the fears and quiet the apprehen- sions .of the people of the commonwealth and more effectually guard against an undue administration of the Federal Government. These amendments were often called in the histories of the times, the " Con- ciliatory Resolutions," and they were eminently so. It was their purpose to reconcile conflicting opinions and to procure the adoption of the Constitution. Samuel Adams at once arose and declared himself satisfied with the Constitution with these amend- ments, and seconded them, and Hancock withdrew his opposition. They were referred to a committee and reported with little change. After some discus- sion, in which one or two of the opponents of the Constitution spoke of the amendments as reconciling them to it, the Constitution was adopted by a vote of one hundred and eighty-seven yeas to one hundred and sixty-eight nays. Mr. Parsons wrote these amend- ments, and it is always said that these "Conciliatory Resolutions " saved the country.

Mr. Parsons was now living with his wife in New- buryport in Green Street. He married Elizabeth Greenlief, daughter of Judge Greenlief, and he used to say that the suit in which he won his wife was worth all the others he ever gained. In 1800 he re- moved to Boston. When he left Newburyport for Boston, gentlemen in the town gave him a farewell dinner, at which Robert Treat Paine gave him an en- thusiastic toast: "Theophilus Parsons, the oracle of law, the pillar of politics, the bulwark of government." To which Mr. Parsons replied : "The town of New-

buryport ; may the blessing of Heaven rest upon it as long as its shores are washed by the Merrimac." I will pause here to mention a trait of character in which he did not stand alone in his profession. He made it an imperative rule, from which he never swerved during his professional career, never to make any charge against or accept any fee from a widow or a minister of the gospel.

In 1806 Chief Justice Dana resigned on account of the infirmities of age, and Mr. Parsons was invited to become the Chief-Justice, which office he accepted and held until his death, which occurred in 1813.

The last words of a distinguished man are often worthy of commemoration, for they not only fre- quently witness that his thoughts are occupied with the duties of his profession, but sometimes seem to bear a certain relation to the life upon which he is about to enter. Judge Parsons' were: " Gentlemen of the jury, the case is closed and in your hands. You will please retire and agree upon your verdict." Judge Parsons always maintained that the authentic- ity of the gospels was proven by the fact oftheir una- nimity in all essentials and disagreement in unessen- tial details. After death his face wore an expression of triumph. It was that which he might have worn when he exhibited to a jury indisputable evidence of some great fact which he had asserted and others had denied. The expression was as if he said in words like these: "See there the proof. I have believed ; and when I could not believe I have hoped; and throngh all objection, uncertainty and despondency I have kept my belief and my hope; and now there is the proof that I was right."

BENJAMIN PICKMAN, the son of Benjamin and Mary (Tappan) Pickman, was born at Salem Septem- ber 30, 1763, and married, October 20, 1789, Anstiss, daughter of Elias Hasket and Elizabeth (Crownin- shield) .Derby. He studied ław with Theophilus Par- sons at Newberyport, and settled permanently at Salem. He was at various times Representative and Senator in the State Legislature, a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1820, a member of the Executive Council, and from 1809 to 1811 a member of the national House of Representatives. He died at Salem August 16, 1843.

TIMOTHY PICKERING was born in Salem July 17, 1745, and was admitted to the bar in 1768. He was a graduate of Harvard in 1763, and received a degree from New Jersey College in 1798. He commanded a regiment in the Revolution, was adjutant-general of the army in 1777, and was quartermaster-general in 1780. After the war he settled in Pennsylvania, and between 1791 and 1800 was Postmaster-General, Sec- retary of War and Secretary of State. He returned to Salem in 1801, was chief justice of the Essex County Court of Common Pleas, United States Sen- ator from 1803 to 1811, and a Representative in Con- gress from 1815 to 1817. He died in Salem January 29, 1829.

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THE BENCH AND BAR.

JOHN PICKERING was born in Salem February 17, 1777. He was a son of Colonel Timothy Pickering, and graduated at Harvard in 1796. After several years' residence in Europe, he returned to Salem in 1801, and was admitted to the Essex bar in 1806. In 1827 he removed to Boston, and in 1829 was appointed city solicitor, and held that office until his death, at Boston, May 5, 1846. He was equally distinguished as a lawyer and a scholar, achieving in the latter capacity, however, his chief fame. His Greek and English Lexicon, his studies and publications in philology, his proficiency in the languages, with more than twenty of which he was familiar, including He- brew, Chinese and the Indian languages of America, made him an authority universally respected, and whenever appealed to, considered decisive. He re- ceived the degree of LL.D. from Bowdoin College in 1822, and from his alma mater in 1835.

THEOPHILUS BRADBURY, a descendant from Thomas Bradbury, of Salisbury, was born in Newbury Novem- ber 13, 1739. He graduated at Harvard in 1757, and for a time taught a grammar school in Falmouth (now Portland) Me., where he afterwards opened a law- office and practiced law from May, 1761, to 1779. He then removed to Newbury, where he resided until his deatlı, September 6, 1803. He was at various times Senator and Representative in the State Legislature, a member of Congress from 1795 to 1797, and in the latter year was appointed associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court.

NATHAN DANE was born at Ipswich, in the parish then called the "Hamlet," now the town of Hamilton, on the 29th of December, 1752. He was descended from John Dane, of Berkhamstead, England, who came to New England before 1641, and died at Rox- bury in 1658. The American ancestor, by a first wife, whose name is unknown, had John, probably born in Berkhamstead about 1612; Elizabeth, who married James Howard ; Francis, born about 1616, who had three wives, Elizabeth Ingalls, Mary Thomas and Hannah Abbot. The son John had a first wife, Eleanor Clark, and a second named Alice. His children were John and Philemon, who married Mary Thompson and Ruth Converse. He died in Ipswich September 29, 1684. His son, John, married Abigail Warren and had John ; Daniel ; Susan, born March, 1685-86; Nathaniel, born June, 1691; Abigail ; Rebecca; and Elizabeth. Daniel married (1st) Lydia Day, and (2d) Mary Annable, and had Daniel, born about 1716; John, about 1719; Mary, about 1721; Lydia, about 1725; and Nathan, about 1727. His son Daniel, born in Ipswich, probably in 1716, married, in 1739, Abigail Burnham, and was the father of the subject of this sketch. He worked on his father's farm until he was of age, when he prepared himself for college, and entered Harvard with the class which graduated in 1778. He then taught school at Beverly, pursuing at the same time his law studies in the office of Judge Wetmore, of Salem. In 1782

he began the practice of law in Beverly and made that town his residence until his death, February 15, 1835. He was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1782 to 1785, of Congress from 1785 to 1787 aud for five years, between 1790 and 1798, a member of the Massachusetts Senate. He was a member of the Electoral College in 1812, and a member of the State Constitutional Convention in 1820. In 1794 he was appointed justice of the Court of Common Pleas for Essex County, but resigned his place almost immediately after its acceptance. In 1814 he was a member of the Hartford Convention.

Mr. Dane was one of the founders of the Massa- chusetts Temperance Society, and for several years its president. He was a member of the Massachusetts and Essex Historical Societies, and of the American Antiquarian Society, and received the degree of LL.D. from Harvard in 1816. In 1829 he founded, in Har- vard University, the law professorship that hears his name, and at a later date was a liberal contributor for the erection of the Dane Law College. He was a diligent student and his authorship of " A General Abridgment and Digest of American Law " gave him a fame in the profession which time has not dimmed. As a statesman, the identification of his name with the ordinauce of 1787 for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio, drafted by him, will give him a place in history as long as the institution of slavery, whose spread and power that ordinance checked, has a record in the annals of the land.

So long, too, as the famous speech of Mr. Webster in reply to Robert Young Hayne, in the United States Senate, January 26 and 27, 1830, shall be read, Mr. Dane will be kept in memory by the eulogy which Mr. Webster uttered in his splendid effort. He said :

" In the course of my observations the other day, Mr. President, I paid a passing tribute of respect to a very worthy man, Mr. Dane, of Massachusetts. It so happens that he drew the ordinance of 1787 for the government of the northwest territory. A man of so much ability and so little pretence, of so great a capacity to do good and so unmixed a dis- position to do it for its own sake, a gentleman who had acted ao import- ant part forty years ago in a measure the influence of what is still deeply felt tu the very matter which was the subject of debate, might, I thought, receivs from me a commendatory recognition. But the honorable Sena- tor was inclined to be facetious on the subject. He was rather disposed to make it matter of ridicule that I had introduced into the debate the name of one Nathan Dane, of whom he assures us he had never before heard. Sir, if the booorable member had never before heard of Mr. Dane, I am sorry for it. It shows him less acquainted with the public men of the country than I had supposed. Let me tell him, however, that a sneer from him at the mention of the name of Mr. Dane is in bad taste. It may well be a high mark of ambition, sir, either with the hon- orable gentleman er myself, to accomplish as much to make our names known to advantage and remembered with gratitude as Mr. Dane has accomplished."

Those readers of this imperfect sketch of Mr. Dane who may wish to know what he said himself concern- ing his connection with the ordinance of 1787, are re- ferred to an interesting letter from him to. Daniel Webster dated Beverly, March 26, 1830, which may be found in the " Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society from 1867 to 1869," page 475.

WILLIAM WETMORE was born in Connecticut in

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IHISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

1749, and graduated at Harvard in 1770. He was admitted to the bar in 1780, and began to practice in Salem. After a few years, having property in Maine, which came to him through his wife, who was a Wal- do, he removed to Hancock County, where for some years he lield the office of judge of probate. In 1804 lic removed to Boston, where he hell a seat on the bench of the Circuit Court of Common Pleas, and died in 1830. The wife of Judge Joseph Story was a dangliter of Judge Wetmore.

DANIEL FARNIIAM was born in York, Me., in 1719, and was the son of Daniel Farnham, a native of Andover, Mass. He was fitted for college hy Rev. Samuel Moody, of York, and graduated at Har- vard in 1739. He studied law with Edmund Trow- bridge, of Cambridge, who was considered the best lawyer of his time, and who, in 1759, became chief justice of the Superior Court of Judicature. Only a year after leaving college, in July, 1740, he married Sybil Angier, daughter of Rev. Samnel Angier, of Watertown, and granddaughter of Uriah Oakes, the fourth president of Harvard College. Soon after marriage Mr. Farnham took up his permanent resi- dence in Newburyport, and began practice. At that, time there was no lawyer east of Salem in Essex County, and the field was one in which a man of less ability would have won success, But Mr. Farn- ham was a man not only of learning, but of indomi- table energy and activity, and soon stood in the front rank at the Essex bar. In 1768 he was one of five barristers in Essex County, the others being Wm. Pynchon, John Chipman, Nathaniel Peaselee Sargent and John Lowell. The house which he built and oc- cupied was a fine specimen of that style of domestic architecture which Harrison, the English architect, who came to this country with Bishop Berkely, in- spired, and which was freely adopted in Salem, Mar- blehead, Portsmouth and Newburyport. The house stood where the Kelly School-house now stands, and is remembered by many of the present generation.

that there never was known to be in Newburyport more than four loyal subjects, one of whom went off to Scotland, Colonel Farnham was killed by the rebels, and Mr. Bass and Dr. Jones gave satisfaction to the rebels and remained there."

Though the patriotic citizens of Newburyport looked upon the death of Colonel Farnham as a purifying event, it is certain that during his long res- idence in that town, up to the Revolutionary period, he was an honored lawyer and citizen, prominent in every good work, and a means of purification to all who came within the sphere of his example and in- fluence. In his domestic relations he was a loving husband and a tender father. After his death the copy of a prayer which was found in his pocket-book, and which he was in the daily habit of repeating, shows him to have been a devout and faithful Chris- tian.

WILLIAM PYNCHON was born in Springfield in 1725, and graduated at Harvard in 1743. In 1745 he removed to Salem, where he studied law with Stephen Sewall, one of the judges of the Superior Court of Judicature. He died in Salem in March, 1789.

JOHN CHIPMAN was the son of Rev. John Chip- man, of Marblehead, and graduated at Harvard in 1738. He died in Falmouth (now Portland) in July, 1768.

NATHANIEL PEASELEE SARGENT was born in Methuen November 2, 1731, and graduated at Har- vard in 1750. He practiced law in Haverhill. Hc was the son of Rev. Christopher Sargent, of Methuen. In 1776 he was appointed judge of the Superior Court of Judicature, and in 1789 chief justice of that court, holding the place until his death, in October, 1791.

JOHN LOWELL, the last of the five Essex County barristers in 1768, was not long identified with his native county. He was born in Newbury in 1743, and gradu- ated at Harvard in 1760, receiving the degree of LL.D. in 1792. He studied law in Boston in the office of Oxenbridge Thacher, and after a short term of prac- tice in Newburyport removed to Boston, and finally to Roxbury, where he died in May, 1802. In 1781 he was chosen a member of Congress, and in 1782 was appointed one of the three judges of the Court of Appeals from the Court of Admiralty. In 1789 he was appointed judge of the United States District Court, and in 1801 was made chief justice of the First Circuit of the United States Court, and held the office until the law establishing the court was re- pealed, in 1802.

Mr. Farnham, or, as he is better known, Colonel Farnham, having received a commission from Governor Bernard in 1769 as lientenant-colonel of the Essex Regiment, continued in active and successful practice until the Revolution. His attachment to the King was strong, and after all hope of a peaccable adjust- ment of the controversy with Great Britain was aban- doned, though he had taken an active part in opposing the Stamp Act and other measures of the home gov ernment, he remained a persistent, carnest and out- spoken adherent of the crown. He was the only one in Newburyport who had the courage to avow loyal NATHANIEL ROPES was born in Salem May 20, 1726, and graduated at Harvard in 1745. In 1766 he was appointed judge of probate for Essex, and chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas for the same county. He lived in Salem until his death, which occurred March 19, 1774. sentiments, and after his death, which occurred in 1776, it was the boast of the town that it had been purified. There is some ground for the suspicion that his death was the result of abusive treatment at the hands of the patriots. Dr. Samuel Peters, in a letter dated June 19, 1783, says : “ Messerve (collector of TRISTRAM DALTON, son of Michael Dalton, was Portsmouth) and Porter, a lawyer of Salem, agree ! born in Newburyport May 28, 1738, and graduated at

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Harvard in 1755. He studied law in Salem and mar- ried a daughter of Robert Hooper, of Marblehead. He was a representative from Newburyport and Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representa- tives, and a member of the State Senate. With Caleb Strong, he represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1789 to 1791 in the first Congress after the adoption of the Constitution. He invested largely iu property at Washington, and re- moved to that city, but eventually sustained serious losses. He was appointed, in 1815, surveyor of the ports of Boston and Charlestown, and died in Boston May 30, 1817. The house in which he lived in New- buryport is still standing on State Street, a gambrel- roof house, a little above the Public Library, on the opposite side of the street.

OCTAVIUS PICKERING, son of Colonel Timothy Pickering, was born in Wyoming, Pa., September 2, 1792, during the temporary residence of his father in that place. His father returned to Salem, his native town, in 1801, and Octavius was a Salem youth of fourteen years when he entered Harvard, in 1806. He was admitted to the bar at Salem at the October term of the Circuit Court of Common Pleas in 1813, but very soon removed to Boston, where he was ad- mitted to the Suffolk bar March 6, 1816. From that time until his death, October 29, 1868, he was no longer identified with Essex County. He published, in 1867, the life of his father, and engaged in other literary works, but his twenty-four volumes of Mas- sachusetts decisions, known as "Pickering's Re- ports," are his best title to a lasting remembrance.

JOHN GALLISON was born in Marblehead in Oc- tober, 1788, and graduated at Harvard in 1807. He was admitted to the bar at Salem in 1810, at the Sep- tember term of Court of Common Pleas. After a short practice in Marblehead he removed to Boston, where he published, in 1807, two volumes of Circuit Court reports and engaged in literary work. He died December 25, 1820.

HON. DANIEL APPLETON WHITE, for thirty-eight years judge of probate for Essex County, was born in Methuen, on ground now at the heart of the present city of Lawrence, June 7, 1776. He was the sixth son and eleventh child of John White, a gentleman farmer of that day, and was descended in the sixth generation from William White, one of the founders of Newbury and, in 1640, one of the original gran- tees of Haverhill, his mother being Elizabeth, dangh- ter of Joseph Haynes. It was a happy country home of the best class in which his early years were passed, abounding in comfort, plenty, intelligence and affection, with high-minded parents and a large family of brothers and sisters united hy ties of unu- sual strength, and amid surroundings of natural beauty, on a noble farm of nearly three hundred acres, bounded by the Merrimac and the Spicket Rivers. As in most New England families, the boy of less physical strength and of a studious bent was

selected by these qualities for an education, and he entered the academy at Atkinson, N. H., in June, 1792, and Harvard College in the freshman class of 1793, having completed his preparation in seven and a half months of actual study of from fourteen to sixteen hours a day. Although Cambridge has reared a host of loyal students, the college has rarely trained so devoted a son as he proved to be. Learning was, indeed, at a low ebb there in the last years of the eighteenth century, the apparatus of knowledge small and the opportunities were scanty, and in morals and religion the nnsettling effect of the French Revolu- tion was marked ; but it was a place to train a strong character and to knit worthy friendships. In a class of exceptional talent, young White graduated the first scholar, in 1797, and, after two years spent in teaching the public grammar-school in Medford, in August, 1799, returned to Cambridge as tutor in Latin, a position then of great responsibility and influence, in which he was enabled to be of much service to the college. Perhaps the four years thus occupied were the happiest part of his life, with his marked academic tastes and aptitudes. In Septem- ber, 1803, however, resigning his tutorship, he re- moved to Salem to complete, in the office of Mr. (afterwards Jndge) Samuel Putnam, the studies for the bar, which he had been pursuing while tutor. Here, with Mr. John Pickering, eminent later as a philological scholar, he prepared an edition of Sal- lust, "the first edition of an ancient classic ever published in the United States which was not a pro- fessed re-impression of some former and foreign edi- tion," the sheets of which were unfortunately de- stroyed by fire on the eve of publication, in 1805. Having been admitted to the bar in June, 1804, Mr. White began the practice of his profession in New- buryport with success and distinction as a lawyer and citizen, residing in that town for thirteen years. Of strong political convictions as a Federalist, he became prominent in that party in Massachusetts during the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, being a member of the State Senate from 1810 to 1815, and taking a leading part in public affairs, and in No- vember, 1814, being nominated for Congress as the Federal candidate in the Essex North District, he was elected by a nearly unanimous vote, the expression of a constituency not of his own party alone of the general respect and trust in which he was held. At this june- ture, on the threshold of a conspicuous public career, the offer by Governor Strong of the office of judge of probate for the county of Essex altered the course of his life. He accepted this position, and resigned his commission as Representative in the spring of 1815, against the judgment of many friends, who felt that he did not estimate his qualifications for high public service at their full worth ; but he was led to this decision by considerations such as appealed with pe- culiar force to a lofty and unworldly character. De- voted to the principles of his party, he yet could not

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

be its slave ; his strong taste for literary studies and for a life of scholarly freedom from engrossing pro- fessional cares found an opportunity for satisfaction ; but the controlling motive with him was due to the bereavement of his home. He had married Mrs. Mary Van Schalkwyck, daughter of Dr. Josiah Wil- der, of Lancaster, May 24, 1807, whose early death, June 29, 1811, had left him with two young daugh- ters, a care and duty which the life of a public man at Washington would have compelled him to sacrifice. In giving up the opportunity of a conspicuous public career he did not, however, turn aside from a large sphere of honorable service. The office of judge of probate, when held for the length of time during which Judge White exercised its duties, brings its holder into important relations with the whole com- munity, and enables him to stand to the widow and the orphan for the justice of the commonwealth in their hour of need. Moreover, a special reason for the appointment of a judge of such weight of char- acter and high reputation had been the fact that the methods of several of the probate courts, and partic- ularly that of Essex County, needed revision and reform. To this task Judge White addressed himself with results which made the court a model of admin- istration, which was followed in the other probate courts of the State. Still, the necessary changes which he introduced led to serious misunderstandings for a time in a public accustomed to loose and easy- going methods, and the feeling culminated in 1821 in a memorial addressed to the Legislature by sundry persons in complaint against the judge and the reg- ister of probate in Essex County. His former politi- cal opponents found this a favorable occasion of attack, and the special committee appointed by the House of Representatives held an ex parte investiga- tion, without giving the officers who were thus assailed any opportunity to vindicate their action. Yet the committee were compelled to do so in their own re- port, unanimously adopted by the Legislature, which stated that the changes which had been introduced werc "some of them expressly required by different statutes, others by the Supreme Court adjudged to be necessary, and, as far as they could find, all of them useful." Judge White took this occasion to publish, in 1822, a careful historical account of the course of probate law and procedure from the earliest times in this commonwealth, with an account of the former practice in Essex County and the changes which had been introduced. This little work, entitled “ A View of the Jurisdiction and Proceedings of the Courts of Probate in Massachusetts, with Particular Reference to the County of Essex," and which concluded with a dignified and just animadversion upon the mode in which the legislative investigation had been con- ducted, became an authority on the subject. The reforms which he had introduced were adopted in the courts of other counties, while fixed salaries were substituted for fees. When Judge White resigned

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 6

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1 Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1538

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1538