History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 193

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1672

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II > Part 193

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JACOB NEWMAN KNAPP was born in Newburyport November 7, 1773, and was the second of nine chil- dren of Isaac and Susan (Newman) Knapp, of that town. His parents were poor, and, though their whole library consisted of a Bible and hymn book, " Paradise Lost," a few odd volumes of Shakespeare, Josephus and a few printed sermons, they were un- wearied in their efforts to secure for their children the full advantages of the public and Sunday-schools. Samuel Lorenzo Knapp was one of the children, and his career, sketched in the chapter on the bench and bar, as well as that of Jacob, attests the success of their efforts. Joseph Knapp, another brother, prac- ticed medicine in North Carolina many years, and there died after a successful professional career.

The subject of this sketch at the age of five years entered the common schools of his native town, and for ten years reaped the benefits of an instruction un- der the care of Masters Sewall, Norton and Nicholas Pike. He remembered well and often spoke of the visit of Washington to Newburyport in 1789, the last year of his attendance at school. IIe said that "the children of the schools were drawn up in lines to re- ceive the Father of his Country. The children were badged according to their proficiency, the elders car- rying a slate and pencil in token of their having at- tained to cyphering. Those who had mastered spell- ing carried a primer, while those that could write held each a sheet of paper and a pen in hand."

When about sixteen years of age he taught school in Loudon, New Hampshire, having forty pupils of boys and girls. He said that most of the children under ten years of age wore leather aprons, reaching from their chins to their ankles, and that many of the girls took snuff in accordance with the fashion of the day. The next year he tied up his worldly goods in a handkerchief, and walked to Sanhornton, in the same State, where he taught four years. Notwith- standing the low wages of a teacher-six dollars a month and board-he was able before entering upon the second step of his career to purchase for his father fifty acres of woodland, and to clear up ten of them for cultivation.

He next entered Phillips Academy of Andover, of which Professor Mark Newman, a cousin of his

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1868. Nathaniel Pierce. 1869. Nathaniel Pierce. 1870. Rohert Couch.

1871. Elbridge G. Kelley.

1872. Elbridge G. Kelley.

1559. Albert Currier.

1860. Albert Currier.

1861 (part). Moses Davenport.

1861 (part). George W. Jackman, Jr. 1862. George W. Jackman, Jr.

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

mother, was principal. On leaving the academy he sought a school in which he might earn enough to enter college, but at this very time his schoolmate, Cassius Lee, son of Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, who was about entering Princeton, died and be- queathed to him fifty guineas. With this money he entered Harvard, and by the aid of teaching in win- ter, transcribing college documents, hiring two hun- dred dollars, and further gifts from the family of his former friend Lee, graduated with high honors in 1802.

After graduation he taught the town-school of Charlestown, Mass., and at the same time studied the- ology with Rev. Dr. Jedediah Morse, the author of the old geography. After a three-years' course of teaching and study he preached in Boston and Salem, but, being afflicted with a serious trouble in his eyes, was obliged to relinquish all hope of a settlement.

In 1805 he opened a private school for boys in Salem, where he remained about ten years, having Wm. H. Prescott, Francis Peabody and others who afterwards became well-known, among his pupils. While in Salem he was urged to become a candidate for Congress, but declined, and was asked by Mr. Webster to permit his name to be presented to the trustees of Dartmouth College for the presidency of that institution. The state of his eyes was, in his opinion, such as to disqualify him for either of these positions.

After leaving Salem he soon opened a home school for boys in Brighton, which he afterwards removed to Jamaica Plains, where he taught until 1824. During his career as a teacher he fitted about two hundred young men for college, all of whom were admitted without conditions. On the 3d of June, 1819, he married Louisa, daughter of Colonel Joseph Bellows, of Walpole, New Hampshire, and in 1824 bought a farm in Walpole,and ever afterwards made it his home.

Rev. Dr. Bellows, after seeing him at the age of ninety-three, said :

" I had gone to school in my boyhood to this venerable man and from him learned the Latin accidents and the Greek alphabet. I remember he seemed to me then-it is forty-five years ago-when he was forty- nine years of age, as old as anybody ever ought to be, and far older than I could conceive myself as ever hecoming. Since then nearly a half century had passed and here a few weeks ago he still was, his body bent, his limbs shrunken, his flesh nearly dried up in the suns of almost a century, his hair as white as snow, and his voice quivering with age, but with his intellect active and keen, hisimagination lively and playful, his interest in events as natural and eager as ever, full of humor and jest, apt at quotations from classic and from English poetry ; his affec- tiona tender and warm, but, above all, with a religious confidence and napiration as firm and soaring as when his blood was in its fullest tide, and his experience of weakness and bodily decay had not begun."

Mr. Knapp died in Walpole, July 27, 1868, at the age of ninety-five, leaving two sons, Francis Bellows Knapp and Rev. Frederick Newman Knapp, both graduates of llarvard in 1843, and now living in Plymouth.

WILLIAM INGALLS, a descendant of Edmund In- galls, who came from England in 1629, and finally

settled in Lynn, was born in Newburyport, May 3, 1769. He graduated at Harvard in 1790, studied medicine, was professor of anatomy in Brown Uni- versity and afterwards an eminent physician of Bos- ton. He published several medical works and died at Wrentham, Massachusetts, September 8, 1851.

EBENEZER BRADBURY,-Was born in Newbury- port, July 31, 1793. He was the sixth in descent from Thomas Bradbury, the agent of Sir Ferdinand Gorges who came to New England, in 1634, and after a short stay at Agamenticus, now York, settled in Salisbury. Thomas married Mary, daughter of John Perkins, of Ipswich, and had Wymond, born in 1637, who married Sarah Pike. Wymond's son Wymond born in 1669, married Maria Cotton, and had Theo- philus 1706, who married Aun Woodman. Jonathan son of Theophilus born in 1734, married Abigail Smith, and had Theophilus, the distinguished lawyer of Newburyport, whose sketch may be found in the second chapter of this work, relating to the Bench and Bar of Essex County. Theophilus married Lois Pillsbury, and Ebenezer, the subject of this sketch, was his son.

Ebenezer received only a common school education and then learned the trade of silversmith, which in the days when nearly every well-trained boy was taught some trade was thought, perhaps of all the trades, the most respectable. His education was not completed, however, with his graduation from scho ,l. He possessed an elasticity of mind which rendered it more and more susceptible of knowledge, and from his youth he continued to grow in intellectual capacity and strength. He early interested himself in town affairs, and at town-meetings learned that art of oratory and that knowledge of parliamentary affairs which proved a means of advancement in his later career. He was selected as moderator of the annual meeting of the town in 1827, and acted in that capacity again in 1830, '34, '40, '41, '42,'43, '44, '45, '46. In 1828, he represented Newburyport in the House of Representatives and again in 1830, '41, '44, '47, '48, '49, and in 1847, he served as speaker. In 1845, he was a member of the Executive Council, and from 1849 to 1851 he was treasurer and receiver general of the commonwealth.

While holding the office of treasurer he removed to Newton, and was a delegate from that town to the Constitutional Convention, in 1853. In June, 1859, he removed to Milford, where he was appointed judge of the Police Court of the town of Milford, to succeed Sullivan Thayer, who resigned June 30, 1859. He held that office until the court was abolish- ed in June, 1861, and in November, 1861, removed to East Salisbury where he died June 19, 1864.

ROBERT BAYLEY was for many years an enterpris- ing and honorable merchant in Newburyport, and contributed largely to the reputation which that town acquired for commercial activity and wealth. He was the son of Robert Bayley, and at the age of

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NEWBURYPORT.

twenty-two he eutered into business with his father under the firm name of Robert Bayley & Son, and con- tinued in business until January 1, 1879. The firm was largely engaged in the importation of sugar and molasses and coffee, and its dealings in these articles were the largest ever carried on in Newburyport. For many years the house paid customs duties to the amount of fifty thousand dollars a year, and for several years exceeding one hundred thousand dollars. During his business career he was highly respected, and as a citizen was public-spirited, and always ready to encourage and aid in whatever was for the bene- fit of the community. He was married July 6, 1830, and after fifty-three years of married life the death of his wife in August, 1883, was followed by his own on Sunday, November 4th, in the same year.

DANIEL DANA was born in Ipswich, July 23, 1771, and was the son of Rev. Joseph Dana, who for sixty- three years was pastor of the Congregational Church in that town. At the age of six he entered the pub- lic school and remained two years. At the age of eight he began the study of Latin, and the next year Greek, and at the age of fourteen commenced a school for girls, associated with his brother Joseph, In 1785 he entered Dartmouth College, and at his graduation in 1789 delivered the Greek oration. After leaving college he was appointed preceptor of Moore's charity school at Andover, and shortly after- wards accepted the preceptorship of Phillips Acad- emy at Exter. After two years' connection with the academy, he returned to Ipswich, and pursued his theological studies with his father.

On the 19th of June, 1794, he received a call to become pastor of the Federal Street Church, in New- buryport, and on the 19th of November he was or- dained. In 1814, he received the degree of D.D. from his alma mater, and in 1820, assumed the posi- tion of president of that institution. He resigned the presidency at the end of one year on account of ill health, and was settled at Londonderry, New Ilampshire, in February, 1822. In March, 1826, he received a call from the Harris Street Church, in Newburyport, and was installed May 24, 1826. Thus after an interval of six years he returned to a former field of labor, though in another church and pulpit. The Harris Street Church contained some members who had seceded from the Federal Street Church at the time of his first settlement, and were not long in discovering that their distrust of his soundness in doctrine had been unfounded. Dr. Dana died in 1859, and on the 4th of September, a funeral discourse was delivered in the Federal Street Church, by Rev. Heman R. Timlow, pastor of the church over which he was last settled.

THOMAS HUSE was born in that part of Newbury which was annexed to Newburyport in 1851, on the 30th of January, 1813. He was descended from Abel lIuse, who was born in London in 1602 and was among the earliest settlers of Newbury. It is said

that the family to which he belonged can be traced to the old Norman Barons who went into England with the Conqueror. He was the son of Samuel Huse and grandson of Captain Samuel Huse, who, with his brother, Colonel Joseph Huse, was among the most devoted patriots of 1776. He had ten brothers and sisters. Of six brothers, including Thomas, one was lost at sea, four died more than sixty-three years of age, one was seventy-three at the time of the death of Thomas; and of the three sisters who survived infancy, one died at seventy-three and two at the time of their brother's death were seventy and eighty - two. He married Hannah L. Poor, whom he left a widow with a son and daughter.

Mr. Huse had seen something of public life, having served Newbury in the General Court, and the city as Alderman from Ward 1 in 1851-52. For twenty years he was in business at the head of Coffin Wharf, and died on Thursday, December 18, 1879, in the sixty-seventh year of his age.

CHARLES TOPPAN was born in Newburyport in 1796, and was a descendant from Abraham Toppan, who settled in Newbury in 1637. Edward Toppan, the father of Charles, after serving in the Revolution- ary Army with his uncle, Colonel Moses Little, was a partner in the mercantile house of Hoyt, Coolidge & Toppan. As a boy, Mr. Toppan displayed artistic talent, and while yet young he was placed under the instruction of Jacob Perkins, the inventor, with whom he remained until 1814, when, at the age of eighteen years, he went to Philadelphia to enter the house of Draper, Murray & Fairman. In the early days of the Republic, the bank-notes used were gen- erally printed from type, on poor paper and without any safeguards against the operations of the counter- feiter. Among the early pioneers, as is stated in a paper read before the Antiquarian and Historical Society of old Newbury, which is freely u-ed in this sketch, who led the way in the path of improvement, was Gideon Fairman, of Connecticut, who established himself in Philadelphia as an engraver, and in 1811 formed a partnership with Draper and Murray. In 1816 Jacob Perkins, also of Newburyport, went to Philadelphia and entered the employment of the firm.

The engraving of bank-notes was carried by the firm to such a state of perfection that in 1819 Mr. Perkins and Mr. Fairman went to England, in the expectation of obtaining the work of the Bank of England. Mr. Toppan, then only twenty-three years of age, but already skilled in his profession, was taken with them. In a letter dated September 3, 1819, Mr. Toppan wrote from London that

" The engravers and amateurs in the arts are one and all extravagant iu their encomiums upon the beanty of the work and the merits of the plan, and are willing to recommend it for adoption. . . Some of my specimens have been shown and I was pleased to hear them well-spoken of. My large plate of Washington's farewell address, the title of which 1 have just completed, has astonished them. There has never been a plate of anything near the size engraved here, and there are at this time no engravers in the city who will attempt any large piece."

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

Upon the failure of the firm to sell its patent to the Bank of England, Messrs. Perkins and Fairman remained in London, where they established a house in Fleet Street, and Mr. Toppan returned to the United States in 1825. The next year he married Laura A., daughter of Dr. Robert Noxon, of Pough- keepsie, N. Y., and granddaughter of General Lazarus Ruggles, a Revolutionary officer from Connecticut. In 1828 he began business again as a bank-note engraver in Philadelphia, and was finally joined by Mr. Draper of the old firm and Mr. Carpenter, when the name of the house became Toppan, Carpenter & Co. In 1858 all the bank-note firms in the country were consolidated under the name of the " American Bank Note Company," and Mr. Toppan was chosen President. After organizing branches of the company in Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Montreal, with a principal office in New York, Mr. Toppan resigned after two years' service. Work is now done by this company not only for our own government, but for Russia, the Swiss Cantons, Can- ada, Greece, Italy, Spain, Japan and the South American States. Mr. Toppan died in Florence in October, 1874, leaving a widow and two children, Harriette Rogers Toppan and Robert Noxon.

JOHN NEWMARCH CUSHING was born in Salisbury, May 8, 1779. He was the sixth in descent from Matthew Cushing, who came to New England in 1638 with his wife Nazareth, and settled in Hingham. The ancestry of the family is easily traced back to the middle of the fifteenth century. Matthew, the immigrant, was son of Peter Cushing, of Hingham, England, who married Susan Hawes in 1585, and Peter was son of Thomas whose father, John, was son of Thomas, of Ilardingham, who lived in 1450. John Newmarch was son of Benjamin and Hannah llazel- tine Cushing, and married Lydia Dowe, by whom he had two children-Caleb, born in Salisbury, January 17, 1800, who died January 2, 1879, and Lydia, born in Newburyport in 1806, who died in April, 1851. He removed to Newburyport in 1802, and, after the loss of his first wife, married Elizabeth, daughter of Nicholas Johnson of that town, by whom he had four children,-Phillip 1., born in December, 1817, who died in 1846; John Newmarch, born October 20, 1820, now living; William, born August 10, 1823, who died October 15, 1875; and Mary Anna, born in March, 1816, who died in August, 1831.

His father, Benjamin, was in slender circumstances and unable to give his son a better education than the common schools of Salisbury afforded. Nor did he enjoy that long, for at about the age of ten or eleven years he began a sea life, and his preparatory instruct- ion for a business career was the result of his native power of observation, applied to the various incidents and events going on under his eyes on ship-board and in the different parts to which hesailed. While learn- ing the sailor's profession he looked beyond its narrow horizon into the field of commerce in which the

vessels he sailed in were engaged, taking a note of the eargoes out and the cargoes home, the wants of the people in foreign lands, the methods of dealing with them, and all the formula of trade, and thus, in a higher and better school than cities and towns could devise, laid the foundation of a mercantile career.

At about the age of twenty-one he became master, and, not long after, part owner of the vessel he com- manded. In 1806 the ship "Hesper," of 303 tons, was built in Amesbury for Samuel Toppan and John N. Cushing, and it is not unlikely that this was his first venture in ownership and that he commanded the vessel of which he owned a part. In 1814 the brig " Hesper," of 187 tons, was built in Newburyport, of which he was the chief owner, and it is probable that before that date he had abandoned the sea and as a merchant had begun to make use of his acquired knowledge. In 1815, with Nicholas Johnson, Jr., whose sister he about that time married, he built at Newbury the schooner "Success," of 75 tons, and in 1823, with the same associate, at Newburyport, the brig " Rapid," of 223 tons. In these two vessels Mr. Johnson was the chief owner, but after 1823 Capt. Cushing seems to have accumulated sufficient capital to stand alone and to extend more widely the busi- ness in which for many years he was prominent and successful.

Beginning with the West Indies trade, he soon added to that a trade with Russia, Holland and other north of Europe countries, and was among the first to reap the benefits of the trade on the northwest coast of America, in which Astor, of New York, and Bryant and Sturgis, of Boston, took a prominent part. In 1828 he built the" Czarina," of 218 tons; in 1830 the brig " Pocahontas," in which Henry Johnson was a part owner ; in 1632 the brig " Palos," of 277 tons, of which his son Caleb owned a part; in the same year, with Henry Johnson as part owner, the brig "James Caskie," of 283 tons ; in 1833, with Mr. John- son, the brig " Carthage," of 296 tons ; in 1833, alone, the brig "Ark," of 298 tons ; in 1834, with his son Philip, the brig " Corinth," of 414 tons; in 1837, with Mr. Johnson, the brig "Pallas," of 102 tons; 1840, with Mr. Johnson, the brig " Essex," of 273 tons; in 1841, with the same, the brig "Athens," of 300 tons, the brig " Massachusetts," of 308 tons, and the brig "Chenamus," of 202 tons; in 1842, alone, the brig "James Gray," of 300 tons; in 1844, alone, the brig "Salisbury," of 296 tons ; and in 1845 the brig " Key- ing," of 300 tons. No other vessel appears to have been built by him on the Merrimae before his death, which occurred at Newburyport, Jannary 5, 1849. His son, bearing his name, has, however, added largely to the fleet of which Newburyport has in the past been able to boast, and among the vessels built under his chief ownership may be mentioned the brig " Hesper," 1851, of 392 tons; the ship "John N. Cushing," 1853, of 633 tons; the ship "Sonora," 1854, of 708 tons ; the ship " Lawrence Brown," 1855,

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NEWBURYPORT.

of 795 tons ; the ship "Lyra," 1855, of 812 tons; the ship "Elizabeth Cushing," 1857, of 888 tons; the ship "Elcano," 1864, of 1210 tons ; the ship " Whit- tier," 1869, of 1295 tons ; the ship " Nearchus," 1872, of 1288 tons ; and the ship " Mary L. Cushing," 1883, of 1658 tons.

To the qualities of quick perception, keen observa- tion, knowledge of human nature, active industry, indomitable energy and promptness of decision, in- dicated by the career here outlined, Mr. Cushing added a dignity of character and a sterling integrity which commanded the confidence and respect of his fellow- citizens.

DANIEL INGALLS TENNEY was the son of Richard and Rnth (Ingalls) Tenney, and was born in New- bnryport, May 2, 1800. His father was a carpenter, who lived at one time on Federal Street and at a later date on the corner of Orange and Fair Streets. Per- ley Tenney, a brother of his father, kept a store on Market Square, and in this store Daniel, at the age of twelve years, was entered as a boy or clerk. During the business depression caused by the War of 1812 he left his uncle and went on foot to Boston to seek employment. He there entered the office of his uncle, Dr. William Ingalls, a distinguished physician, who furnished him with occupation until he obtained a situation as an apprentice in mercantile life. After a few years' residence in Boston he removed to the city of New York to serve as a clerk for his brother, William I. Tenney, who was carrying on a jewelry store at the corner of Murray Street and Broadway.

It was not long before his aptitude for business made him sufficiently useful to his brother to be taken into partnership with him, a connection which contin- ued until his brother's death, in 1848. The business was carried on after that date under his sole manage- ment until May 1, 1856, when he withdrew from ac- tive business life, with a well-deserved-fortune. Though leaving Newburyport when a young man and forming absorbing interests, surrounded by the bustle and ac- tivity of city life, he never permitted his attachment to his native town to wither and fade.

In 1863 he subscribed the sum of four hundred do]- lars to aid in the purchase of the building now used for a Public Library. This was his first benefaction in behalf of the city. Ilis second was a new year's gift, in 1877, of the lamp-posts and lanterns which light the entrance to the City Hall. Previous to this last gift his sister, Mrs. Eliza Hanaford, who died in Brook- lyn in 1872, leaving Mr. Tenney the only survivor of the family, made a bequest of five thousand dollars to the Society for the Relief of Aged Females in Newbury- port. On the 7th of October, 1878, the city government received the following communication.

" To His Honor the Mayor and City Council of the City of Newburyport :

"GENTLEMEN :- I have the honor to announce to you that Daniel I. Tenney, of New York City, a native. of Newburyport, feeling a very deep interest in his birthplace, has contracted with the celebrated artist, J. G. A. Ward, for a bronze statue of Washington, which, when completed, lie proposes to present to this city.

" As his representative, I would respectfully petition your honorable body for leave to locate the statue in the triangular spot at the east end of the Bartlett Mall, and for permission to occupy the ground dur- ing its erection.

" Respectfully Yours, "EDWARD F. COFFIN."

The request of Mr. Coffin was, of course, granted, and on the 8th of November following a committee of the city government was appointed " to make the ne- cessary arrangements for the reception and nnveiling of the munificent gift." A committee was duly ap- pointed, but in consequence of unavoidable delays a new city government came into office before the re- ception of the statue, and a new committee, consisting of His Honor, John J. Currier, Aldermen Charles L. Ayers and William Il. Noyes and Councilmen Joseph Hall, Thomas Huse, Jr., and Thomas H. Boardman, was appointed to take charge of the ceremonies.

The statue was cast in bronze by George Fischer & Brother, of New York City, and the pedestal was wrought of granite by M. T. Jameson, of Rockland, Maine, from designs drawn by Rufus Sargent, of New- buryport. The reception and unveiling took place on the 22d of February, 1879, the former, in consequence of the inclemency of the weather, in the City Hall.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 193

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1672

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1672