History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 12

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 12

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Mr. Keyes was prominent in the Masonic Order, at one time holding the second office in the State, and in the Anti-Masonic excitement of 1834 he was an ob- ject of special attack, and in consequence lost his of- fice of county treasurer. In 1837, when removed from the post-office, he ended his public service.

In town affairs he was active, but declined office, except that of moderator of town-meetings, to which he was frequently chosen. He was a good pre- siding officer and was selected to act as President of the Day at the bi-centennial celebration of the settle- ment of Concord. He was one of the projectors of the Mill Dam Company, the Insurance Company, the Bank and Savings Institution in that town, and either president or director in these corporations. In the Lyceum, the schools and the parish he was earn- est and useful, and all of them have felt the impress of his hand and life.

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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

In 1816 Mr. Keyes married Ann S. Shepard, daugh- ter of Dr. T. Shepard, of Hopkinton, whose widow had removed to Concord and lived there, the wife of William Hildreth, sheriff of Middlesex County, from 1810 to 1815. He had five children, of whom two were girls and died young, and three were sons, of whom one, John S. Keyes, is mentioned in this narrative. Mr. Keyes died at Concord, August 29, 1844, at the age of fifty-seven.

ABRAHAM FULLER, son of Joseph and Sarah (Jackson) Fuller, was born March 23, 1720. He kept school in Newton four years; was town clerk and treasurer of that town twenty-seven years from 1766; representative to the General Court eighteen years ; delegate to the Provincial Court, Senator, councillor and judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He died April 20, 1794.

WALTER HASTINGS was born in Chelmsford in 1778 and graduated at Harvard in 1799. He read law with Judge Prescott at Groton, and opened an office in Townsend, where he practiced until the War of 1812, during which he was a colonel of a regiment. At the close of the war he returned to Townsend, and in 1814 married Roxanna, daughter of Moses Warren, and died June 6, 1821.

NATHANIEL GORHAM was born in Charlestown May 27, 1738. He was many years one of the select- men of the town, and its representative from 1771 to 1775. He was a delegate to Provincial Congress, a member of the Board of War, a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention in 1779, a delegate to Con- gress in 1782-83 and in 1785-87, and its president in 1786. He was also, for several years, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He died at Canandaigua, New York, October 22, 1826.

BENJAMIN GORHAM, son of the above, was born in Charlestown February 13, 1775, and graduated at Harvard in 1795. He studied law with Theophilus Parsons, and become an eminent lawyer at the Mid- dlesex and Suffolk bars. He was a member of the General Court, and in 1820, '21, '22, '23, '27, '28, '29, '30, '31, '33, '35 was a member of Congress. He died in Boston September 27, 1856.

DANIEL BLISS RIPLEY, son of Rev. Ezra Ripley, of Concord, was born in that town in 1788, and grad- uated at Harvard in 1805. He died at St. Stephen's, Alabama, April 30, 1825.

JOSEPH STORY was neither a native of Middlesex County nor a practitioner at its bar, but he had his res- idence so long within its limits, and in the minds of persons living, who remember him, he was so identi- fied with Cambridgeand the Law School, of which he was many years the head, that a chapter on the Mid- dlesex Bench and Bar would be incomplete without a reference to his professional career and the law pub- lications which he left as memorials of his legal knowledge and indefatigable industry. He was born in Marblehead, September 18, 1779, and was the son of Dr. Elisha Story, a native of Boston, and a surgeon

in the Revolution. He graduated at Harvard in 1798, and received degrees of Doctor of Laws from Brown in 1815, Harvard in 1821 and Dartmouth in 1824. The writer can do no better than follow the text of a sketch of Judge Story published in another work, which contains all the facts, necessary to relate, and which might as well be literally copied, as to be pre- sented in a merely remodeled form :

Among his classmates were William Ellery Chan- ning, John Varnum and Sidney Willard. His edu- cation before entering college was received in Marble- head under the direction of Rev. Dr. William Har- ris, afterwards president of Columbia College. He began his law studies in the office of Chief Justice Samuel Sewall, in Marblehead, and continued them, after the appointment of Mr. Sewall to the bench, in the office of Samuel Putnam, of Salem. He was ad- mitted to the Essex bar in July, 1801. He was a Democrat in politics, and as such stood almost alone among the lawyers of the county. He was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1805, '16 and '17, a member of Congress in 1808, again a member of the Legislature from 1809 to 1812, and was chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives in January, 1811.

In 1806 he advocated in the Legislature an increase of the salaries of the judges of the Supreme Judicial Court, in opposition to the prejudices of his party against high judicial salaries, and more especially against Theophilus Parsons, whom it was proposed to put upon the bench, but who could not afford to relinquish a practice of $10,000 for a position having attached to it the paltry salary of $1200. Mr. Parsons was especially obnoxious to the Democrats, but Mr. Story, with that sturdy independence which always characterized him, advocated and carried a bill to increase the salary of the chief justice to $2500, and of the associate justices to $2400, and Mr. Parsons was appointed and accepted the appointment. In 1809 he advocated and was largely the means of se- curing a further increase of the salaries of the chief justice and the associates to $3500 and $3000 re- spectively.

On the 18th of November, 1811, he was appointed by Madison associate justice of the Supreme Court of United States, to till the vacancy caused by the death of William Cushing, of Massachusetts, which oc- curred on the 13th of September, 1810. The appoint- ment had been previously offered to John Quincy Adams, who declined it. Mr. Story was then only thirty-two years of age, and his appointment reflects credit on the sagacity of Mr. Madison who discovered in so young a man the signs of promise which his career afterwards fully verified. In 1820, at the time of the separation of Maine from Massachusetts, he was a delegate from Salem to the Constitutional Conven- tion. In 1828, Nathan Dane, who, in founding the Law School at Cambridge, had reserved to himself the appointments to its professorships, appointed Judge

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BENCH AND BAR.

Story, Daue Professor of Law, and John Hooker Ashmun, Royall Professor of Law, and in the next year, 1829, he removed from Salem to Cambridge, where he continued to serve until his death, on the 10th of September, 1845.

Aside from his learning in the law and that wonder- ful flueucy in the use of language, both spoken and written, which made his learning available, nothing distinguished him more than his industry. With the labors of a judge constantly pressing upon him and the cares of his professorship, the press was kept busy in supplying the law libraries of the land with his commentaries and treatises and miscellaneous prodnc- tions. His first publication seems to have been a poem entitled the "Power of Solitude," published in Salem in 1804. In 1805 appeared "Selections of Pleadings in Civil Actions with Annotations." In 1828 he edited the public and general statutes passed by Congress from 1789 to 1827, and in 1836 and 1845 supplements to these dates. In 1832 appeared "Com- mentaries on the Law of Bailments with Illustrations from the Civil and Foreign Law; " in 1833 " Com- mentaries on the Constitution ; " in 1834 "Commen- taries on the Conflict of Laws, Foreign and Domestic, in Regard to Contracts, Rights and Remedies, and Es pecially in Regard to Marriages, Divorces, Wills, Successions and Judgments." In 1835 and 1836 ap- peared "Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence as Administered in England and America ;" in 1838 " Commentaries on Equity Pleadings and the Inci- dents Thereto according to the Practice of the Courts of Equity in England and America ; " in 1839 " Com- mentaries on the Law of Agency as a Branch of Com- mercial and Maritime Jurisprudence, with Occasional Illustrations from the Civil and Foreign Law ; " in 1841 " Commentaries on the Law of Partnership as a Branch of Commercial and Maritime Jurispru- dence, with occasional illustrations from the Civil and Foreign Laws ;" in 1843 "Commentaries on the Law of Bills of Exchange, Foreign and Inland, as Administered in England and America, with occa- sional illustrations from the Commercial Law of Na- tions of Continental Europe ; " in 1845 " Commenta- ries on the Law of Promissory Notes." His decisions in the first circuit from 1812 to 1815 are in " Gallison's Reports ; " from 1816 to 1830 in " Mason's Reports ; " from 1830 to 1839 in "Sumner's Reports," and from 1839 to 1845 in "Story's Reports." Among his nu- merous other publications were an " Eulogy on Wash- ington," at Salem, in 1800; an "Eulogy on Captain James Lawrence and Lieutenant Ludlow," in 1813; "Sketch of Samuel Dexter," in 1816; "Charges to Grand Juries in Boston and Providence" in 1819; " Charge to the Grand Jury at Portland," in 1820 ; " Address before the Suffolk Bar," in 1821; " Dis- course before the Phi Beta Society," in 1826; " Dis- course before the Essex Historical Society " in 1828; " Address at his own inauguration as Professor," in 1829; " Address at the dedication of Mount Auburn,"

in 1831 ; " Address at the funeral services of Professor John Hooker Ashmun," in 1833; "Eulogy on John Marshal," in 1835; "Lectures on the Science of Law," in 1838; " Address before the Harvard Alum- ni," in 1842, and a "Charge to the Grand Jury of Rhode Island on Treason," in 1845. In addition to this long list of his works might be mentioned a large number of essays and articles in magazines and re- views, and three unprinted manuscript volumes fin- ished just before his death, entitled " Digest of Law Supplementary to Comyns," which are deposited in the Harvard College Library.

NATHAN CROSBY was born in Sandwich, N. H., February 12, 1798. He was descended from Simon and Ann Crosby, who settled in Cambridge in 1635. The descent was through Simon, of Billerica, Josiah, Josiah, Josiah and Asa, a physician, who married Betsey, daughter of Colonel Nathan Hoit, and died in Hanover, N. H., April 12, 1836, at the age of seventy years. Nathan was one of seventeen children by two mothers, six dying young, five sons receiving degrees from Dartmouth and two daughters marrying profes- sional men. Three of the brothers of Nathan were pro- fessors at Dartmouth. He graduated at Dartmouth in 1820, and married Rebecca, daughter of Stephen Moody, a lawyer of Gilmanton, N. H. He studied law with Mr. Moody and with Asa Freeman, of Dover. His wife died January 3, 1867, and he then married, May 19, 1870, Mrs. Matilda (Pickens) Fearing, daugh- ter of James and Charity (Mackie) Pickens, of Boston, and widow of Dr. Joseph W. Fearing, of Providence. Iu 1826 he removed from New Hampshire to Ames- bury, thence to Newburyport, and, in 1843, to Lowell, where he succeeded Joseph Locke as judge of the Police Court.

JOHN P. ROBINSON was born in Dover, N. H., in 1799, and, after attending Phillips Academy, entered Harvard in 1819, and graduated in 1823. He read law in the office of Daniel Webster, and in 1827 began practice in Lowell. He was a member of the House of Representatives in 1829, '30, '31, '33, '42, and a Senator in 1835, He was a scholar as well as a law- yer, and devoted no small portion of his time to classi- cal study. He married a daughter of Ezra Worthen, and died October 20, 1864. He was a man of some- what eccentric traits, and inveterate in his personal dislikes and quarrels. On one occasion, meeting a brother member of the bar, he said, while rubbing his hands with apparent satisfaction : "There will be hot work in hell to-night." " How is that, Mr. Rob- inson ?" asked his friend. "Farley died this morn- ing," he replied.

WILLIAM W. FULLER, son of Rev. Timothy Fuller, and brother of Elisha and Timothy, already men- tioned, graduated at Harvard in 1813, and practiced law in Lowell eight years, but removed to Illinois, where he died in 1849.

NATHAN BROOKS, son of Joshua Brooks, of Lin- coln, was born in that town October 18, 1785, and

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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

graduated at Harvard in 1809. He settled in Con- cord in 1813, from which town he was Representative to the General Court in 1823, '24, '25. In 1827 he was appointed Master in Chancery, in 1829 he was a member of the Executive Council, and in 1831 Sena- tor. He married, in 1820, Caroline Downes, and had Caroline, who married Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar. He married, second, Mary Merrick, and had George Merrick. He died in 1863.

SAMUEL FARRAR, son of Deacon Samuel Farrar, and brother of Timothy Farrar, already mentioned, was born in Lincoln, December 13, 1773, and gradu- ated at Harvard in 1797. He was tutor at Harvard one year, after which he read law and settled in An- dover, where he was at one time president of a bank and treasurer of the Theological Seminary, and died in 1864.

JOSEPH FARRAR, son of Humphrey Farrar, of Lin- coln, was born in that town February 14, 1775, and graduated at Dartmouth in 1794. The writer is un- able to state where he practiced law.

JAMES RUSSELL, son of Daniel Russell, of Charles- town, and brother of Chambers Russell, already men- tioned, was born in Charlestown, Angust 5, 1715. He was a Representative from Charlestown thirteen years, from 1746, and May 16, 1771, was appointed a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1775 he removed to Dunstable, and thence to Lincoln, where he lived more than fifteen years. He married Katharine, daughter of Thomas Graves, who died in Lincoln, September 17, 1778. His children were Thomas, who married Elizabeth, daughter of George Watson, of Plymouth; Charles, a graduate of Harvard in 1757, who became a physician ; Chambers, who died in South Carolina ; Katharine, who married a Mr. Henly, of Charlestown ; Rebecca, who married Judge Tyng and Judge Sewall; Margaret, who married John Codman, and Sarah and Mary, unmarried. Mr. Rus- sell died in Charlestown.

NATHANIEL PIERCE HOAR, son of Samuel Hoar, of Lincoln, was born in that town September 2, 1784, and graduated at Harvard in 1810. He read law with his brother, Samuel Hoar, of Concord, and set- tled in Portsmouth, N. H., in 1813. He returned to Lincoln, and there died May 24, 1820.

THOMAS FISKE, son of Elijah Fiske, of Lincoln, was born in that town about 1799 and graduated at Har- vard in 1819. He settled in Charleston, South Caro- lina, in 1826 and died in 1830.

AMOS SPAULDING, son of Zebulon Spaulding, of Carlisle, graduated at Dartmouth in 1805 and settled, as a lawyer, in Andover. As a citizen of that town he was at one time a Representative and Senator in the General Court.

JOEL ADAMS, son of Timothy Adams, of Carlisle, graduated at Harvard in 1805 and was admitted to the Middlesex bar in September, 1808. He settled in Chelmsford and died in 1864.

ASA GREEN, son of Zaccheus Green, of Carlisle,

graduated at Williams College in 1807 and settled as a lawyer in Brattleborough, Vermont, where he was at one time postmaster.

JOSEPH ADAMS, son of Rev. Moses Adams, of Acton, and brother of Josiah Adams, already men- tioned, was born in Acton, September 25, 1783, and graduated at Harvard in 1803. He settled as a law- yer in West Cambridge and died in that town June 10, 1814.

ABIEL HEYWOOD, son of Jonathan Heywood, of Concord, was born in Concord, December 9, 1759, and graduated at Harvard in 1781. He studied med- icine with Dr. Spring, of Watertown, and settled in his native town. In 1796 he was chosen town clerk and selectman; in 1802 he was appointed special judge of the Court of Common Pleas and was an associate justice of the Court of Sessions from 1802 to the time of the organization of the County Com- missioners' Court. He died in Concord in 1839.

JONATHAN FAY was the son of Captain Jonathan Fay, of Westboro', and graduated at Harvard in 1778. He settled in the law at Concord, where he married Lucy Prescott, and died June 1, 1811, at the age of fifty-nine years.

PETER CLARK, son of Benjamin Clark, was born in Concord and graduated at Harvard in 1777. He settled in the law in Southboro' and died in July, 1792, aged thirty-six years.

SILAS LEE, son of Joseph Lee, of Concord, was born in that town July 3, 1760, and graduated at Harvard in 1784. He settled as a lawyer in what is now Wiscasset, Maine, and in 1800 and 1801 repre- sented the district of Lincoln and Kennebec in the Sixth Congress. In January, 1802, he was appointed. district attorney for the district of Maine, and in 1807 judge of probate for the county of Lincoln. He held the offices of district attorney and judge until his death, March 1, 1814.

JAMES MITCHELL VARNUM was born in Dracut in 1749 and graduated at Rhode Island College. After his admission to the bar he settled at East Greenwich, Rhode Island, and acquired an extensive practice. In 1774 he commanded the Kentish Guards and in January, 1775, was appointed colonel of the First Rhode Island Regiment. He was made brigadier- general February 21, 1777, and in the next winter he was at Valley Forge. He was at the battle of Mon- mouth in June, 1778, and in July engaged in General Sullivan's expedition to Rhode Island. In 1780-82 and 1786-87 he was a member of the old Congress, and in 1788, having been appointed judge of the Su- preme Court in the Northwest Territory, he removed to Marietta, where he died, January 10, 1789.

SAMUEL HOAR, of Concord, was descended from Charles Hoar, sheriff of Gloucester, England, who died in that city in 1634. His widow, Joanna, came to New England about 1640 with five children, the sixth and oldest child, Thomas, remaining iu Eng- land. Of these five children, Joanna married Colonel

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Edmund Quincy; Margery married a Matthews in England, and in this country, when a widow, Rev. Henry Flint, of Braintree; Daniel went to England in 1653; Leonard was president of Harvard College from September 10, 1672, until his death, March 15, 1674-75; and John settled in Scituate and removed to Concord about 1660. The mother died in Brain- tree, December 23, 1661. John, who settled in Con- cord, by a wife Alice, who died June 5, 1697, had Elizabeth, who married Jonathan Prescott ; Mary, who married Benjamin Graves, and Daniel, who mar- ried, in 1677, Mary Stratton. Daniel had John, Leonard, Daniel, Joseph, Jonathan, Mary, Samuel, Isaac, David and Elizabeth. Of these Daniel, the third son, married, in 1705, Sarah Jones, and had four sons-John, Daniel, Jonathan and Timothy- and several daughters. Of these, John married Eliz- abeth Coolidge, of Watertown, and was the father of Samuel and Leonard, of Lincoln. Of these two sons, Samuel married Susanna Pierce and was the father of the subject of this sketch. He lived in Lincoln and was a lieutenant in the Revolution, a magistrate, Representative, Senator and a member of the Consti- tutional Convention of 1820.

The subject of this sketch was born in Lincoln, May 18, 1778, and fitted for college with Rev. Charles Stearns, of that town, graduating at Harvard in 1802. After leaving college he was two years a tutor in the family of Colonel Taylor, of Mount Airy, in Virginia, and at the close of his law studies with Artemas Ward, in Charlestown, was admitted to the bar in September, 1805, and settled in Concord. In 1806 he declined the office of the professorship of Mathe- matics at Harvard, having already in his first year of professional life acquired a very considerable practice. He rose rapidly to the front rank of lawyers at the Middlesex bar, and in almost all important cases in the courts of that county he was counsel on one side or the other. It has been said of him that "so emi- nently practical and useful and so much to the point did he always aim to make himself, that one would not speak of Mr. Hoar as especially learned or saga- cious or eloquent, save when the precise condition of his cause needed the exercise of sagacity, of persua- sive speech or the support of learning. He threw away no exertion by misplaced efforts, but what his cause demanded he was usually able to furnish, and few men could judge as well as he by what means his object would be best accomplished. No man was more safe than he as an adviser; none more fully prepared to meet the varying exigencies of the forum ; no one, whatever his gifts of speech, more favorably impressed or convincingly addressed a jury. His style as a speaker was calm, dignified, simple, direct and unimpassioned, but he spoke as one who was first convinced, before he attempted to convince his tribunal. While he never went below the proper dignity of time, place and occasion, at the same time he would never fail to receive from all the juries and

bystanders at a Middlesex nisi prius term the general award that he was the most sincere and sensible man that ever argued cases at that bar. Nor was this all.' To the measure also of a greatness even to the sur- prise of his friends could he raise his efforts as an advocate when the occasion called for a full exhibi- tion of his clear, strong, logical faculty, or excited those genuine emotions from which spring the foun- tains of eloquence." It may be stated as an illustra- tion of the simple confidence reposed by the people of Middlesex County in his opinion and word, that on one occasion, when a jury failing to agree was called into court by the judge, the foreman said that there was no misunderstanding of the law on the evidence, but that they were embarrassed by the fact that while the evidence clearly proved the prisoner guilty, Mr. Hoar had said in his speech for the defense that he believed him innocent.

Mr. Hoar devoted himself almost exclusively to the labor of his profession until 1835, when he took his seat as a member of the Twenty-fourth Congress. He had, however, previous to that time represented Con- cord in the convention for the revision of the Consti- tution in 1820, and was a member of the State Senate in 1826, '32 and '33. In Congress he succeeded Edward Everett as a Representative from the Middlesex Dis- triet. Soon after his single term in Congress he withdrew from the practice of law, and devoted him- self to literary and philanthropic pursuits. He was a member of the Harrisburg Convention, which nom- inated General Harrison for the Presidency in 1839, and until ten years later than that time he was an unwavering supporter of the Whig party.

Not long after this time events occurred with which Mr. Hoar was personally connected, which served as one of the causes of that upheaval of public senti- ment at the North against the institution of slavery which was destined to extinguish that institution for- ever. On the 19th of December, 1835, the Legislature of South Carolina passed an act providing that any free negro or person of color coming voluntarily into the State should be warned to depart, and failing so to depart, on returning after such warning, should be publicly sold as a slave. Under this act colored stewards, or cooks, or sailors of vessels entering South Carolina ports were to be seized and placed in jail, and there confined until the departure of the vessel in which they had come, and if they failed to depart with their vessels, or if they returned, they were to be sold as slaves. After several remonstrances made by Massachusetts against the treatment of her citizens under this Act, the Legislature, in March, 1843, pass- ed resolves authorizing the Governor to employ an agent in the port of Charleston, " for the purpose of collecting and transmitting accurate information re- specting the number and names of citizens of Massa- chusetts who have heretofore been, or may be during the period of his engagement, imprisoned without the allegation of any crime. The said agent shall also be

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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

enabled to bring and prosecute, with the aid of coun- sel, one or more suits in behalf of any citizen that may be so imprisoned, at the expense of Massachu- setts, for the purpose of having the legality of such imprisonment tried and determined upon in the Supreme Court of the United States." On the 16th of March, 1844, another resolve was passed, under which Governor George N. Briggs employed Mr. Hoar on the 11th of October in that year. It is unneces- sary to here recount the various incidents which pre- ceded the enforced return of Mr. Hoar to Massachu- setts. He reached Charleston on the 28th of Novem- ber, and on the 5th of December the Legislature of Sonth Carolina adopted the following resolutions :

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 12

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