History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 11

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1034

USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 11

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RUFUS HOSMER, son of Joseph Hosmer, of Con- cord, was born in that town March 18, 1778, and graduated at Harvard in 1800. He was admitted to the har of Essex County in 1803 and removed to Stow.

STEPHEN MINOTT, son of Jonas Minott, of Con- cord, was born in that town September 28, 1776, and graduated at Harvard in 1801. After admission to

the bar he settled in Haverhill, where he became a judge of the Circuit Court of Common Pleas. After the abolition of that court he was appointed in 1824 county attorney for Essex, and resigned in 1830.

JONAS WHEELER was the son of Jotham Wheeler, of Concord, aud was born iu that town February 9, 1789. He graduated at Harvard in 1810, iu the class with James Gore King and Theodore Lyman. He read law with Erastus Root, of Camden, Maine, and settled in that town. He was both Representative and Senator in the Maine Legislature and died May 1,1826.

EDWARD BROOKS was the oldest son of Peter C. Brooks, of Boston, aud was born in that city in 1793. He graduated at Harvard in 1812 and read law in the office of his uncle, Benjamin Gorham. He was a rep- resentative in the General Court from Boston in 1834, 1837 and 1842, and rendered important aid to Samuel G. Howe in establishing the Perkins Institution for the Blind. He became finally a resident of Medford and died in that town in 1878.

GORHAM BROOKS, a younger brother of the above, was born in Medford, February 18, 1795. He fitted for college at Phillips Academy and graduated at Harvard in 1814. He read law with Joseph Lyman, of Northampton, but soon abandoned his profession and entered upon mercantile pursuits. In 1833 he was a member of the firm of W. C. Mayhew & Co., of Baltimore, and afterwards of the firm of Brooks & Harrison, in the same city. In 1840 he returned to Massachusetts and made Medford his residence. He was a member of the Legislature from Medford in 1847 and died September 10, 1855. His wife was a daughter of R. D. Shepherd, of Shepherdstown, Vir- ginia.

EBENEZER BOWMAN was born in Wilmington, July 31, 1757, and gradnated at Harvard in 1782. He practiced law at Wilkesbarre and died in 1829.

ISAAC FLETCHER was born in Dunstable, November 22, 1784, and graduated at Dartmouth in 1808. He read law with Prescott & Dunbar at Keene, New Hampshire, and in 1811 removed to Lyndon, Ver- mont. He was eight years attorney for Caledonia County, a member of the Legislature in 1837 and 1841, and a member at one time of the Governor's staff. He married, in 1813, Abigail Stone, aud died October 9, 1842.

AMOS KENDALL was the son of Zebedee and Molly (Dakin) Kendall, of Dunstable, and was born in that town August 16, 1787. Until he was sixteen years of age he worked on his father's farm and then fitted for college at the academy at New Ipswich and at the academy at Groton. He graduated first scholar at Dartmouth in 1811, and while in college taught school a portion of the time in his native town. He read law in Groton with William M. Richardson, of Groton, and was admitted to the Middlesex bar. In 1814 he removed to Kentucky, where he was for a time a tutor in the family of Henry Clay. At

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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

Frankfort, Kentucky, he edited the Argus, and in 1829 was appointed fourth auditor of the United States Treas- ury, by Andrew Jackson. From 1835 to 1840 he was Postmaster-General and afterwards devoted himself to his profession. He was the founder and the first president of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Washing- ton, and was for some years one of the trustees of Columbia College, in that city. He married, October 1, 1818, Mary B. Woolfolk, by whom he had four children, and in 1826 he married Mary Kyle, by whom he had ten more, and who died iu Washington in June, 1864. In 1849 he received a degree of Doctor of Laws from Dartmouth College. During his resi- dence in Washington he gave $115,000 to the Cavalry Baptist Church, $20,000 to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, $25,000 to found two mission schools, and $6000 to. establish a scholarship in Columbia College. In 1862 he removed to Kendall Green, New Jersey, and in 1866 visited Europe and the Holy Land. He died in Washington, November 12, 1869. Mr. Ken- dall was descended from Francis Kendall, who came to New England from England about 1640 and settled in Woburn. Francis Kendall married Mary Tidd in 1644, and had John, born 1646 ; Thomas, 1649; Mary, 1651; Elizabeth, 1653; Hannah, 1655; Rebecca, 1657; Samuel, 1659; Jacob, 1661 ; and Abigail, 1666. Jacob Kendall, one of these children, was the great- grandfather of Zebedee, the father of the subject of this sketch.

WILLIAM MERCHANT RICHARDSON was horn in Pelham, N. H., Jan. 4, 1774, and graduated at Har- vard in 1797. He practiced law a few years in Gro- ton, and was a member of Congress from 1811 to 1814. Removing to Portsmouth, he became distinguished at the bar, and was chief justice of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire from 1816 to 1838. He was the author of the "New Hampshire Justice and Town Officer," and performed a great amount of work on the New Hampshire reports. He died at Chester, N. H., March 23, 1838.

WILLIAM AUSTIN was born in Charlestown March 2, 1778, and graduated at Harvard in 1798. He prac- ticed law in the courts of both Suffolk and Middlesex, but was a member of the Middlesex bar. In 1801 he delivered an oration at Charlestown, on the 17th of June, and in 1807 published a volume entitled “ An Essay on the Human Character of Jesus Christ." In 1805 he was wounded in a duel with James H. Elliott, the result of a newspaper controversy. He died in Charlestown June 27, 1841.

WILLIAM BRATTLE was the son of Rev. William Brattle, of Cambridge, and was born in that town in 1702. He graduated at Harvard in 1722, in the class with William Ellery and Richard Saltonstall. He combined in his practice the occupation of a lawyer, preacher, physician, soldier and legislator. He was captain of an artillery company in 1733 and a major- general in the militia, and at various times a member of the General Court and of the Council. Being a

Loyalist he removed to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1776, and there died in October of that year.

RICHARD DANA was the grandson of Richard Dana, who came early to New England and settled in Cambridge in 1640. He was born in Cambridge July 7, 1699, and graduated at llarvard in 1718. He was eminent in his profession, and practiced in Marble- head, Charlestown and Boston. He married a sister of Edmund Trowbridge, and was the father of Francis Dana, already mentioned. He died in Cambridge May 17, 1772.

RICHARD H. DANA was the son of Francis Dana, of Cambridge, and was born in that town November 15, 1787. He graduated at Harvard in 1808, and read law with his father, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1811, and, not long after, to the Baltimore bar. In 1812 he settled in practice in Cambridge, and at one time was a member of the General Court from that town. He is believed by the writer to have had no other experience in public life. His taste for purely literary occupation was early developed, and as an essayist and poet he had wide distinction. In 1814 he delivered a Fourth of July oration, in 1818 and 1819 he was associated with Edward Tyrrel Chan- ning in the editorial management of the North Ameri- can Review, and in 1839 and 1840 delivered a series of lectures on Shakespeare in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. As a poet, however, his name is better known. In 1825 he published in the New York Re- view his first poems-" The Dying Raven " and the " Husband and Wife's Grave," and in 1827 he pub- lished " The Buccaneer, and Other Poems." In 1833 a volume of his poetical works was issued, and in 1850 two volumes of his poems and prose writings were issued, which included all his literary efforts except his lectures on Shakespeare. He received a degree of Doctor of Laws from Williams College and died in 1867.

STEVEN SCALES, believed to have been born in Boston, graduated at Harvard in 1763, in the class with Josiah Quincy, Nathan Cushing, John Jeffries, Samson Salter Blowers, Timothy Pickering and Caleb Gannett. He removed, in 1772, from Boston to Chelmsford, and died November 5th, in the same year.

JONATHAN WILLIAM AUSTIN, the son of Benjamin Austin, of Boston, was born in that town April 18, 1751, and graduated at Harvard in 1769, in the class with James Winthrop, Peter Thacher and Theophi- lus Parsons. He read law with John Adams, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar July 27, 1772. In 1773 he removed to Chelmsford and began his pro- fessional life. He was a member of the Middlesex Convention in 1774, and passed through the several grades of captain, major and colonel in the War of the Revolution. He died in 1778, while in the army, on one of the Southern campaigns.

JOHN WYTHE, whose time and place of birth are unknown to the writer, graduated at Harvard in 1760, in the class with John Lowell and William

BENCH AND BAR.

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Baylies. He settled as a lawyer in Chelmsford in 1778, and subsequently removed to Lexington aud Cambridge, at which latter place he died in 1811.

SAMUEL DEXTER, son of Samuel Dexter, of Bos- ton, was born in that town May 14, 1761, and gradu- ated at Harvard in 1781, in the class with John Davis and Dudley Atkins Tyng. He read law in Worcester and went to Chelmsford in 1786, subse- quently removing to Charlestown and finally to Bos- ton, where he became one of the most eminent lawyers of his day. He was a member of both the House and Senate in Congress, serving in the latter capacity in 1799 and 1800, and was appointed, by President John Adams, Secretary of War in 1800, and Secretary of the Treasury in 1801. His chief dis- tinction, however, he won at the bar. He lived in days before oratory was a lost art in the courts, and his arguments were masterpieces of logic clothed in lan- guage delighting the ear and winning the heart and judgment of all who heard him. His peroration in his speech, in 1806, in defense of Thomas Oliver Self- ridge, indicted for the murder of Charles Austin, the writer heard repeated many years since by Judge Nahum Mitchell, of East Bridgewater, who was in the court-room at the time of its delivery. Selfridge was a graduate of Harvard in 1797, and the father of Rear Admiral Selfridge, of the United States navy. He

was a practicing lawyer and a prominent Federalist. Austin was the son of Benjamin Austin, an active and earnest Democrat, who, it was claimed by his son, had been abused in the newspapers by Selfridge. For this abuse Austin threatened to punish Self- ridge, and the two meeting in State Street, Boston, Selfridge, expecting an attack, fired the fatal shot. Both Selfridge and Austin occupied high social posi- tions, the latter being the son of a distinguished mer- chant and the uncle of the late James Trecothic Aus- tin, the Attorney-General of Massachusetts from 1832 to 1843 ; and intense excitement, both political and social, attended the trial. The writer remembers a capital trial about 1841, in which James T. Austin, the Attorney-General, was opposed by Franklin Dex- ter for the defense, the son of Samuel Dexter, who successfully defended Selfridge, the slayer of Mr. Austin's uncle, and it was not difficult to detect, in the course of the trial, a trace of the ancient family feud which the events of 1806 had excited. The closing words of Mr. Dexter's speech were as follows :

"I respect the dictates of the Christian religion ; I shudder at the thought of shedding human blood; but if ever I may be driven to that narrow pass where forbearance ends and disgrace begins, may this right arm fall palsied from its socket if I fail to defend mine honor."

Mr. Dexter died at Athens, in the State of New York, May 4, 1816.

ELISHA FULLER was the son of Rev. Timothy Fuller, of Princeton, and was born in 1795 and grad- uated at Harvard in 1815, in the class with George

Eustis, Convers Francis, Thaddeus William Harris, John Amory Lowell, John Gorham Palfrey, The- ophilus Parsons and Jared Sparks. He was admit- ted to the bar in 1823 and settled in Concord, whence in June, 1831, he removed to Lowell. He finally re- moved in 1844 to Worcester and died in 1855.

TIMOTHY FULLER, a brother of the above, was born in Chilmark, Massachusetts, July 11, 1778. He gradu- ated at Harvard in 1801, and read law in Worcester in the office of Levi Lincoln. He was State Senator from 1813 to 1816, member of Congress from 1817 to 1825, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representa- tives in 1825 and member of the Executive Council in 1828. He was the father of Sarah Margaret Ful- ler (Countess d'Ossoli), Arthur Buckminster and Rich- ard Frederick Fuller, all of whom were born in Cam- bridge during the residence of their father in that town. After many years' residence in Cambridge he removed to Groton and there died October 1, 1835.

CALEB BUTLER was born in Pelham, New Hamp- shire, September 13, 1776, and graduated at Dart- mouth in 1800. He read law in Groton with Luther Lawrence and settled in that town, where he was the principal of the Groton Academy eleven years, and postmaster thirteen years. He devoted much of his time to literary pursuits and published a history of Groton in 1848. He died at Groton October 7, 1854.

WILLIAM L. CHAPLIN was the son of Rev. Daniel and Susanna (Prescott) Chaplin, and was born Octo- ber 27, 1796. He died at Cortland, New York, April 28, 1871.

CHRISTOPHER GORE was born in Boston Septem- ber 21, 1758, and was the son of John Gore, of that town. He graduated at Harvard in 1776 and studied law with John Lowell. In 1789 he was appointed United States district attorney, and in 1796 was ap- pointed, with William Pinckney, commissioner under Jay's treaty to settle American claims against England. He was a member of both branches of the State Leg- islature, Governor of Massachusetts in 1809 and Uni- ted States Senator from 1813 to 1816. He died at his residence in Waltham March 1, 1827.

ROGER SHERMAN, one of the signers of the Decla- tion of Independence was a native of Middlesex County, and was born in Newton April 19, 1721. Un- til twenty-two years of age he followed the trade of shoemaker, and in 1743 went to North Milford, Con- necticut, where he engaged in trade with an older brother, and in 1745 was appointed county surveyor of lands. He subsequently read law and was admit- ted to the bar in 1754, at the age of thirty-three. He was at one time a member of the Assembly and in 1759 was appointed a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1761 he removed to New Haven and was appointed there in 1765 judge of the Common Pleas, an assistant in 1766 and later a judge of the Superior Court. In 1774 he was appointed member of Con- gress, became United States Senator and from 1784 until his death was mayor of New Haven. In 1776

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

he was one of the committee of Congress appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence, and in 1783 assisted in codifying the laws of Connecticut. He died at New Haven July 23, 1793.

ROGER MINOT SHERMAN, nephew of the above, was born in Woburn May 22, 1773, and graduated at Yale in 1792. He was admitted to the bar in 1796, and made Fairfield, Conn., his permanent residence. He was a member of the Assembly in 1798, of the Senate from 1814 to 1818, a member of the Hartford Convention in 1814, and judge of the Superior Court and the Supreme Court of Errors from 1840 to 1842. He died at Fairfield December 30, 1844.

ASHER WARE was born in Sherburne February 10, 1782, and graduated at Harvard in 1804, receiving a degree of Doctor of Laws from Bowdoin in 1837. After leaving college he was tutor at Harvard from 1807 to 1811, and Professor of Greek from 1811 to 1815. After admission to the bar he practiced one year, 1816, in Boston, and in 1817 removed to Port- land. Upon the organization of the State of Maine, in 1820, he was made Secretary of State, and from 1822 to 1866 was judge of the United States District Court.

SIMON GREENLEAF, though not a member of the Middlesex bar, was so long a resident in the county as Professor in the Dane Law School at Cambridge that he ought not to be omitted in these sketches. Mr. Greenleaf was descended from Edmund Greenleaf, of Brixham, Devonshire, England, who came to New England very early and settled in Newbury in 1635, whence he removed about 1650 to Boston, and there died in 1671. The family is supposed to have been of French origin, and its name a translation of the French Feuillevert. Jonathan Greenleaf, of the fourth generation, lived in Newbury, accumulating property by ship-building and taking an active part in public affairs as Representative, Senator and Coun- cilor. His son Moses was a ship-builder and re- moved to New Gloucester, Maine, where he died in 1812. Moses Greenleaf married, in 1776, Lydia, daughter of Rev. Jonathan Parsons, of Newburyport, and Simon Greenleaf, the subject of this sketch, was his fourth child, and was born in Newburyport De- cember 5, 1783. After the removal of his father to New Gloucester, about 1790, Simon, left in the care of his grandfather, attended the Latin School of New- buryport, under the instruction of Michael Walsh, and at the age of eighteen joined his father and began the study of law in the office of Ezekiel Whitman, afterwards chief justice of the Supreme Court of Maine. In 1805 he was admitted to the bar of Cum- berland County and began to practice in the town of Standish, Maine, whence he removed to Gray, and in 1818 removed to Portland. When the district of Maine became a State in 1820, and a Supreme Court was established, he was appointed by the Governor reporter of decisions, and held office twelve years. During this period he published nine volumes of re-

ports. In 1832 he resigned his position, and in 1833 succeeded John Hooker Ashmun as Royall Professor in the Dane Law School, which situation be held until 1846, when, on the death of Judge Joseph Story, he was transferred to the Dane Professorship. In 1848 failing health induced his resignation, but until his death he held the position of Professor Emeritus.

Besides his volumes of reports Mr. Greenleaf pub- lished in 1821 "a full collection of Cases Overruled, Denied, Doubted or Limited in their application, taken from American and English Reports ; " in 1842 a "Treatise on the Law of Evidence," and at various times an "Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence administered in Courts of Justice;" an edition of "Cruise's Digest of the Law of Real Property ; " a " Discourse at his In- anguration as Royall Professor," and a "Discourse Commemorative of the Life and Character of the Hon. Joseph Story, LL.D." He received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Harvard in 1834, from Am- herst in 1845, from Alabama College in 1852, and the degree of Master of Arts from Bowdoin in 1817. He died at Cambridge October 6, 1853. He married, in 1806, Hannah, daughter of Ezra Kingman, of East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and had fifteen children, of whom only one survived him.

ABNER BARTLETT was a descendant of Robert Bart- lett, who came to Plymouth in the " Ann " in 1623 and married, in 1628, Mary, daughter of Richard Warren, who came in the "Mayflower." He was the son of Abner and Anna (Hovey) Bartlett, of Plymouth, and was born in that town in 1776. His sister Anna mar- ried, in 1796, Ellis Bartlett, the grandfather of Wil- liam Lehman Ashmead Bartlett, who married Baron- ess Burdett-Coutts. He graduated at Harvard in 1799 and married Sarah Burgess and settled in Med- ford. One of his daughters was the first wife of Rev. Dr. George W. Briggs, now of Cambridge. He died in Medford, September 3, 1850.

SAMUEL BLODGET was born in Woburn, April 1, 1724, and at the age of twenty-one was engaged in the expedition against Louisbourg, in 1745. He was before the Revolution judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Hillsborough County. In 1791 he became interested in the manufacture of duck, and in 1793 began the construction of the canal round Amoskeag Falls, which bears his name. He died at Haverhill, September 1, 1807.

JOHN HOAR went from Scituate about 1660 and set- tled in Concord, where he died April 2, 1704.

DANIEL BLISS, son of Rev. Daniel Bliss, was born in Concord, March 18, 1740, and graduated at Har- vard in 1760. He read law with Abel Willard, of Lancaster, and was admitted to the Worcester bar in 1765. He began practice in Rutland, removed to Concord in 1772, but retired to Fredericton, New Brunswick, at the time of the Revolution, where he became chief justice of the Provincial Court of Com- mon Pleas, and died in 1800.

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BENCH AND BAR.

THOMAS HEALD was born in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, March 31, 1768, aud graduated at Dart- mouth in 1797. He read law with Jonathan Fay and was admitted to the bar in 1800. He settled in Concord in 1813 and died at Blakeley, Alabama, in 1821, while a judge in that State.

JOHN LEIGHTON TUTTLE was born in Littleton and graduated at Harvard in 1796. He practiced law in Concord, where he was postmaster, county treasurer and Senator, and died at Watertown, New York, July 23, 1813.

JOHN KEYES was the son of Joseph Keyes, of Westford, and was born in that town in the year 1787. He was the youngest son of a large family of twelve children, and until entering college lived with his father, working on his farm during the summer and attending the district school in the winter. His fa- ther reared his family during the disastrous days which followed the Revolution on a farm of about forty acres of poor soil and without a market, where his ancestors during four generations had before him struggled for a livelihood. Young Keyes, with a mind stronger than his body, whose constitution, nat- urally delicate, had been further unfitted, by a severe accident in his fifteenth year, for the labors of a farm- er's life, gradually drifted into the paths of knowledge which led to a better education than that which most of his school and playmates were able to receive. With health somewhat restored he entered Westford Academy, boarding at home and walking daily three miles to school. He entered Dartmouth College in 1805, and by careful economy and with the earnings of school-teaching in the winter he made the scanty supplies from home suffice for his college career, and graduated in 1809. Levi Woodbury, of New Hamp- shire, was the youngest in years and first in rank in his class, and it is said that the seventeen hours of study in the twenty-four which the robust constitu- tion of Woodbury permitted him without injury to endure, alone enabled him to compete successfully with his less fortunate classmate and friend.

After leaving college he returned to Westford and entered as a student the law-office of John Abbott, then an eminent practitioner at the Middlesex bar, supporting himself partly hy services rendered to his instructor and partly by teaching school. In the winter of 1811-12 he taught the school in Dis- trict No. 7, in Concord, boarding with Samuel Buttrick, and March 12, 1872, entered his name in the law-office of John Leighton Tuttle, of that town. At the September term of the Circuit Court of Com- mon Pleas in the last-mentioned year, before Judge Samuel Dana, he was admitted to the Middlesex bar, and at once took the office of Mr. Tuttle, who had heen appointed lieutenant-colonel of the Ninth Reg- iment for frontier service, and who died at Water- town, New York, July 23, 1813. Colonel Tuttle had been postmaster of Concord, and Mr. Keyes was ap- pointed his successor, holding the office from 1812 to

1837, when he was removed by President Van Buren. Colonel Tuttle had also been county treasurer, and Benjamin Prescott, who was chosen to succeed him, having failed to give bonds, Mr. Keyes was appointed hy the Court of Sessions in his place. He was sub- sequently rechosen annually until 1887, a period of twenty-four years. From the salaries of these offices he laid the foundation of a fortune which at his death was the largest ever inventoried in Concord.

Mr. Keyes was early led iuto politics and warmly supported the Democratic party in opposition to that of the Federalists. The alluring attractions of polit- ical work, together with the duties of the offices, he held, drew him somewhat away from the more sober paths of his profession ; but he acquired nevertheless a respectable and lucrative practice at a bar which in- cluded Artemas Ward, Samuel Dana, Timothy Big- elow, Asahel Stearns and Samuel Hoar among his seniors, and Hosmer, Fuller, Lawrence and Adams among his contemporaries. Though he was engaged in many important causes, he was, however, better kuown as a politician than as a practicing lawyer. In 1820 he was a delegate to the convention for the revi- sion of the State Constitution from Concord, and in 1821 and 1822 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. From 1823 to 1829 he was a member of the Senate, in which body he was of sufficient consideration to attract the shafts of his po- litical opponents, one of which was so libelous as to cause the editor who published it to be prosecuted and convicted. At the close of his first senatorial term he was nominated by the National Republican party for Congress, hut was defeated by Edward Ev- erett, after a close contest. In 1832 and 1833 he was again a member of the Massachusetts House of Rep- resentatives, and during the illness of the Speaker, Julius Rockwell, was chosen Speaker pro tem. From 1823 to 1833 his party was predominant in Middlesex County, and his counsels prevailed with his party, being, as he undoubtedly was, the most popular and influential man within its limits.

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 11

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed Publication date: 1890 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co Number of Pages: 1034

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1034