History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 14

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 14

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Two sons and two daughters constituted the fruit of Colonel Needham's first marriage ; only one of them is now living. Mrs. Needham died on the 30th of June, 1878. On the 6th of October, 1880, he was mar- ried to Ellen M. Brigham, of Groton, by whom lie has two children-Marion Brigham and Alice Emily. -

Colonel Needham's son, William Channcy Hall Needham, died at Columbus, Ohio, on the 11th day of January, 1882-while a member of. the Ohio Sen- ate-aged thirty-six years. He was a graduate of the Norwich University ; studied medicine in the Medical Department of Harvard University, where he took the degree of M.D .; was subsequently city physician of Gallipolis, Ohio, and was elected one of Ohio's thirty- one Senators at the election of 1881. He was a man universally respected and beloved, leaving at his death a widow and two children-one son and one daughter.

Colonel Needham's mother, at the age of ninety- five, is still living in the enjoyment of health and all. her faculties.

BENJAMIN KINSMAN PHELPS was born in Haver- hill Sept. 16, 1832, and was the son of Rev. Dudley and Ann (Kinsman) Phelps. He removed with his father to Groton in 1837, and, fitting for college at the Groton Academy, graduated at Yale in 1853. He read law with Benjamin M. Farley, of Hollis, N H., and removed to New York. From 1866 to 1870 he was assistant district attorney of the Southern Dis- trict of New York, and in 1872 and 1875 was chosen district attorney for the city and county of New York.

EUGENE FULLER, born in Cambridge May 14, 1815, graduated at Harvard in 1834, read law with George F. Farley, of Groton, and was drowned at sea June 21, 1859.

JOHN LOCKE was descended from William Locke, who died in Woburn in 1720. He was born in Hop- kintor Feb. 14, 1764, and gradnated at Harvard in 1792. He read law with Timothy Bigelow in Groton, and settled in Ashby. At one time he was a member of Congress, a member of the Constitutional Con- vention of 1820, and died in Boston March 29, 1855.

GEORGE MOREY was born in Walpole June 12, 1789, and graduated at Harvard in 1811. He read law with Luther Lawrence at Groton, and in the later years of his life was well known in Boston as an active and prominent member of the Whig party. He was at various times a member of both branches of the General Court, and a member of the Executive Conncil. He never, however, sought office for himself, but, proud of his State and city, he was always anxious to see them well goverued, and unselfishly exerted all his influence in the selection of the best men for places of trust.

GEORGE SEWALL BOUTWELL was born in Brook- line, Mass., Jan. 28, 1818, and worked, when a boy, on a farm. He was engaged in mercantile pursuits many years. He kept a country store in Groton, and, on the death of Henry Woods, Jan. 12, 1841, he was appointed by President Van Buren postmaster of that town, holding the office until April 15, 1841, when he was displaced by the new Whig administra- tion, and Caleb Butler was appointed. Somewhat later lie abandoned business for the study of law, and from 1842 to 1850 he was a member of the Legisla-

BENCH AND BAR.

ture from Groton. In 1851-52 he was Governor of Massachusetts, and in the first year of his service re- ceived the degree of Doctor of Laws from Harvard. In 1853 he was a member of the Constitutional Con- vention. Previous, however, to his election as gov- ernor heserved as bank commissioner by appointment of the State executive. Between the years 1853 and 1862 he served five years as secretary of the Board of Education, and a term of six years as an overseer of Harvard College. He was the first commissioner of internal revenues, serving from July, 1862, to March, 1863, and from 1863 to 1869 was a member of Con- gress. From March, 1869,. to March, 1873, he was Secretary of the Treasury, having, before his acces- sion to that office, been one of the managers of the impeachment trial of President Johnson, in 1868. On the resignation of Henry Wilson as United States Senator to take the office of Vice-President of the United States, to which he was chosen in '1872, Mr. Boutwell was chosen to fill his place, and served from 1873 to 1877. Since 1877 Mr. Boutwell has devoted himself to his professional business. His home is still at Groton, but he has a law-office in Boston and one in Washington, and in the latter place is largely occupied with important business, both in committees of Congress and before the Supreme Court.

HENRY H. FULLER, the son of Rev. Timothy Fuller, of Princeton, and brother of Elisha, William W. and Timothy Fuller, already mentioned, was born in Princeton in 1790, and graduated at Harvard in 1811. He read law in Litchfield, Vermont, with Chief Justice Reeve and Judge Gould, and also in Boston. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1815, where he practiced many years. He died in Concord, September 15, 1853.

JOHN FARWELL graduated at Harvard in 1808, and read law with Asahel Stearns. He settled in Tyngs- boro' and there died November 19, 1852.

ANSON BURLINGAME was born in New Berlin, Chenango County, New York, November 14, 1822. He was educated at the Branch University, Michigan, and read law at the Harvard Law School. He lived in Cambridge for a time, and married a daughter of Hon. Isaac Livermore, of that town. He was a Sen- ator in 1852 ; a member of the Constitutional Conven- tion in 1853; a member of the Executive Council in 1853; and member of Congress from 1856 to 1861. He was appointed Minister to Austria by President Lincoln in 1861, and was Minister to China from 1861 to 1867, and from 1867 to his death in St. Peters- burg, February 23, 1870, he was in the confidential employment of the Chinese Government.

NATHANIEL PRENTISS BANKS was born of poor parents in Waltham, January 30, 1816. When a boy he worked in a factory, and in political sketches of his life he has been called the "bobbin boy." He was one of those boys whom all of us have seen, to whom books seemed to be a natural food and the only food which assimilated and nourished the system.

With the appetite for learning born in him, he could. no more fail to rise than boys of another class, with inborn proclivities which they were unable to resist and overcome, werc sure to fall. There is as much difference between various forms of human nature as between the stone and the feather. Both obey the laws of nature, and common charity should lead us to reflect that oftentimes he who falls makes a greater effort to resist the law of gravitation than he who rises in yielding to his uplifting law. He attended the common schools of his native town, and while a young man edited a newspaper there, and afterwards in Lowell. After studying law he entered into poli- tics and has been almost continuously in public life. Under the administration of President Polk he held a position in the Boston custom-house, aud in 1849 was a member of the House of Representatives, hold- ing his seat in 1850, 1851 and 1852, and during the last two years the Speaker of that body. For the duties of Speaker he possessed peculiar qualifications. He had a commanding presence, a good voice with a clear and sharp enunciation, a promptitude of de- cision, a clear brain -- which made him an almost ideal presiding officer. The writer has seen in the chair of the House every Speaker since 1838, including Robert C. Winthrop, George Ashmun, Thomas Kinnicut, Daniel P. King, Samuel H. Walley, Ebenezer Brad- bury, Francis B. Crowninshield, Ensign H. Kellogg, Nathaniel P. Banks, George Bliss, Otis P.Lord, Daniel C. Eddy, Charles A. Phelps, Julius Rockwell, John A. Goodwin, Alexander H. Bullock, James M. Stone, Harvey Jewell, John E. Sanford, John D. Long, Levi C. Wade, Charles J. Noyes, George A. Marden, John Q. A. Brackett and William E. Barrett, and he remem- bers none whose administration on the whole was so brilliant as that of Mr. Banks. The terse, crisp and well-pronounced method of putting questions to the House, the thorough knowledge of parliamentary law exhibited in the progress of debate, the dramatic manner with which the whole business of Speaker was conducted, made an impression on the writer's mind which has never been effaced. He believed, with every good parliamentarian, that in a large ma- jority of questions of order a prompt ruling would be universally acceptable without a question of its ab- solute technical correctness. He never hesitated in deciding a point of order on the spot, for he was well aware that a ruling postponed until the following day would give others as well as himself an opportunity to examine the question and would be less likely to be accepted as correct, than a ruling made at the moment in the heat and smoke of debate.

In 1858 Mr. Banks was a member of the convention for the revision of the Constitution, and was chosen its president. He was a member of the Thirty-third, Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses, from 1853 to 1858 inclusive, and in 1855 and 1856 was the Speaker of the House. The contest which resulted in his election was more protracted than any before or since,

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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

and the discretion, coolness and judgment which characterized him during its continuance, gave him a national reputation which his subsequent career in the chair only served to enhance. In the autumn of 1857 he was chosen by the Republican party Governor of Massachusetts, and on the 1st of January, 1858, resigned his seat in Congress to assume office. As Governor he fully met the expectations of the com- munity in the performance of his official duties, while an address which as Governor he was called upon to deliver at the dedication of Agassiz Museum, gave him a renown as a scholar, for which the literary world had not been prepared.

After, leaving the Gubernatoral chair he was made president of the Illinois Central Railroad, and occu- pied that position when the War of the Rebellion broke out. He at once offered his services to the President and received a commission as major-general of volunteers, dated May 16, 1861. He was soon after appointed to command the Annapolis Military Dis- trict, and subsequently that of the Shenandoah. No man had at this time a clearer conception of the char- acter of the war in which the nation had engaged, and of its probable duration. In May, 1861, about the time of his appointment to the Annapolis Dis- trict, the writer, then on a tour of survey among Mas- sachusetts men in the field by order of Governor An- drew, met General Banks at Fort McHenry, near Balti- more, where General Devens, then a major, was sta- tioned in command of a Worcester battalion. General Banks rode from the fort to Baltimore with him, and expressed his belief that the call for troops, which then had been made, was wholly inadequate for a struggle which he confidently expected would last at least four years. On the 24th of May, 1862, he was attacked in the Shenandoah by Stonewall Jackson and compelled to retreat. In the battle of Cedar Mountain, August 9, 1862, he commanded a corps under General Pope, and in December of that year succeeded General Butler as commander of the De- partment of Louisiana. He took Opelousas in April, 1863; Alexandria in May ; and Port Hudson on the 8th of July. In March, 1864, he commanded an ex- pedition to the Red River, the results of which were not fortunate. In May, 1864, he was relieved from command. Like other civilian generals in the war, it is probable that he failed to receive from officers of a military education that cordial co- operation and sup- port which are essential to success in operations in the field. He came out of the war with a reputation for honesty, fidelity, patriotism and courage, and for ability as a soldier fully up to the standard which it might have been expected that a man without mili- tary experience would reach.

In 1865 General Banks was chosen member of Congress again to the Thirty-ninth Congress, for the unexpired term of D. W. Gavit, and was re-elected to the Fortieth, Forty-first, Forty-second, Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Congresses, and, March 11, 1879, was

appointed United States marshal, serving until April 23, 1888. In the autumn of 1888 he was chosen again to Congress-to the Fifty-first Congress-and is now serving in that capacity.

JOSEPH WILLARD, son of Rev. Joseph Willard, president of Harvard College from 1781 to his death, in 1804, was born in Cambridge March 14, 1798, and graduated at Harvard in 1816. He settled in the law in Cambridge, but removed to Boston in 1829. From 1839 until 1855 he was clerk of the Common Pleas Court for Suffolk, and in that year he was appointed clerk of the Superior Court for the county of Suffolk. When that court was abolished, in 1859, he was chosen clerk of the Superior Court of the Common- wealth for the.county of Suffolk, and so continued until his death, May 12, 1865. From 1829 to 1864 he was the corresponding secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and in 1826 published a history of the town of Lancaster, and in 1858 the life of Simon Willard. His son, Morgan Sidney Willard, was killed at Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862.

GEORGE F. FARLEY .- It is always a difficult, if not impossible, task to portray the qualities and char- acteristics of an eminent man in a memoir or in his- tory so that he will be seen, known and judged by posterity as by his contemporaries. In this regard the painter has the decided advantage over the biog- rapher and the historian, for the painter, when poring over the face of a man, divinely, through all hin- drance, finds the man behind it, and so paints him that his face, the shape and color of a life and soul, lives for his children, ever at its best and fullest.

In attempting to write a just, accurate and full biographical sketch of the late George Frederick Farley, the writer is convinced of the impossibility of performing this task with any measure of satisfaction to himself or of justice to its distinguished subject.

He was the son of Benjamin and Lucy (Fletcher) Farley, and was born in Dunstable, in the Common- wealth of Massachusetts, April 5, 1793, and graduated at Harvard College in 1816. He read law in the office of his brother, Hon. B. M. Farley, of Hollis, in the State of New Hampshire, and Hon. Luther Lawrence, of Groton, in said Commonwealth. He was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of his profession at New Ipswich in 1821. In the year 1831 he was a member of the New Hampshire General Court from New Ipswich, and in the same year removed to Gro- ton, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where he practiced his profession until his death, November 8, 1855.

He inherited a strong constitution, and always en- joyed vigorous health. He possessed a gigantic in- tellect, but it was associated with the finest emotions and the most genial feelings. He was "rich in sav- ing common sense and in his simplicity absolute."

He had no disposition to enter into political life nor any ambition for its laurels.

He gave his sole and undivided attention to the

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practice of his profession, which he dearly loved, and which was the fit arena for the exercise and display of his marvelous powers. He met without fear the greatest lawyers of his day in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts-Webster, Mason, Dexter and others -and always held his own. This fact is a conclusive test and proof of his extraordinary ability as a law- yer and advocate.

In a conversation with Mr. Webster in the last year of his life, he used the following language in speak- ing of Mr. Farley : "I know him well-we have measured lances together. He is a very great law- yer." In his brief practice in New Hampshire he attained very high distinction, and was retained in its most important causes, and encountered its most emi- nent lawyers.

Upon his removal to Massachusetts he quickly dis- covered, by his retainer in causes of magnitude in Middlesex, Worcester, Essex and Suffolk Counties, that his fame as a lawyer and advocate had preceded him.

Among these cases was one when the late eminent lawyer, Samuel Mann, was his junior counsel-the fa- mous " Convent case," as it was called-where a large number of men were indicted for the alleged burning of the convent. It was one of the most celebrated cases in the history of trials in Massachusetts.

Mr. Farley defended all of the defendants, and with such consummate skill and ability that all of his clients were acquitted.

In this case the Lady Superior took the stand as a witness for the Government, attired in a thick veil, which completely concealed her face. Mr. Farley requested her to raise her veil. The Lady Superior refused. Mr. Farley addressed the Court, demand- ing that the witness should lift her veil, because, he claimed, that his client had the constitutional right to look upon the witnesses against them face to face. The Court so ordered, and the veil was raised, much to the indignation and discomfiture of the Lady Su- perior, who found that the law of the convent was not the law of the courts.

Among the notable criminal cases in which Mr. Farley was engaged, was a capital case, tried at Keene, New Hampshire, after he had established his residence in Groton. His client was indicted for the murder of his wife by poison. Prof. Webster, who analyzed the contents of the stomach of the wife, testified as a witness for the government.

Mr. Farley in his keen, adroit and searching cross- examination of Prof. Webster, elicited the most im- portant fact for the defence, that he employed poisons as tests in his analysis, and put him into a furious rage by the suggestion of the probability that the poisons contained in his tests satisfactorily explained and accounted for the presence of poisons, which he testified he bad found in the stomach. The cross- examination of Prof. Webster in this trial was merci- less, astute and triumphant, as the great lawyer ex-

posed, with his imperturbable coolness and self-posses- sion and perfect confidence in his position, the intrin- sic weakness of his testimony as well as his ungov- ernable temper, and will he long remembered as one of the masterpieces of cross-examination in the courts of that State. The verdict of the jury in this case was for the prisoner, and wholly due to the transcen- dent skill and ability with which Mr. Farley conduct- ed the defence.

Hon. John Appleton, ex-chief justice of the Su- preme Court of the State of Maine, who was the first law student in the office of Mr. Farley in New Ips- wich and who always enjoyed his friendship during his life, says of Mr. Farley : " He was an intellectual giant. He was one of the foremost men at the bar of New England. It was in the logic of his argument that lie was strong. Grant his premises, and the conclusion followed necessarily and irresistibly. He made prece- dents rather than followed them. His logical powers were superior to those of any man I ever met. As a student in his office I was on quite intimate terms with him. I think if I have acquired any reputation, it is due in no slight degree to the advice and instruc- tion I received from him."

The Hon. Amasa Norcross, of Fitchburg, Massa- chusetts, says of Mr. Farley: "In the early years of my practice it was my privilege to he engaged in sev- eral cases where Mr. Farley was senior counsel. I then had an opportunity to observe the remarkable intellectual powers he possessed. I thought then and now believe that he was not then nor has he been ex- celled by any member of our profession in the State in that he was able to present a cause to a jury upon its facts in a manner wholly unimpassioned-I may say in a conversational way ; hut with a precision of statement and with such an admirable selection of words as to carry to every mind the exact meaning he intended and to lead to the inevitable conclusion he was to reach. The simple, unadorned speech, yet most adorned with a forceful utterance and the sever- est logic, uttering no useless word, all supported the theory-the best possible for his client that could be constructed from the facts. His grasping of facts in support of his theory, with his ingenious arrangement of them, was simply marvelous. No case was tried by him withont a theory and an application of evidence in a way that was hest calculated to sustain it. As a man he secured the full confidence of whatever tribu- nal he addressed. The Worcester County jurors were wont to say of him that he was the fairest man in argument they ever heard. The simple, direct and graceful speech employed by him controlled their minds, as it tended certainly to the support of that view of the case he had determined in his mind as being best for his client. The statement of certain general principles involved in the case and a general statement of his theory, if accepted by the jury, de- termined the result, for the masterly argument that followed held the jury to the end. His treatment of

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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

the evidence in a given case was oft-times philosophi- cal, and his felicitious use of language secured the fullest attention of the tribunal he was addressing and the breathless attention of all within sound of his voice. His style of argument was said to be not unlike that of the distinguished lawyer, Jeremiah Ma- son, who was practicing in the courts of New Hamp- shire when Mr. Farley entered the profession. Sever- al important causes pending in the courts of that State were tried by Mr. Farley in the later years of his profession. He was then regarded, as I happen to know, hy the best lawyers of that State as a man possessing a remarkable intellect, and the peer of Mr. Mason, who also removed to Massachusetts from that State."

Hon. Peleg W. Chandler, of Boston, in speaking of Mr. Farley, used this language : " Farley was a very great lawyer. I never knew his superior as a logician ; nor his eqnal, except in Jeremiah Mason."

Hon. Josiah G. Abbott, of Boston, writes of Mr. Farley : "I knew Mr. Farley from the time I was a student-at-law, and he was in the full maturity of his power as long as he lived. The last ten or twelve years of his life I knew him very intimately.

" He was among the ablest and strongest men I ever knew. He was not merely a lawyer and nothing else. Not only was he a good classical scholar, espec- ially keeping bright his knowledge of Latin writers, but he was a most discriminating admirer of the best, English literature. This, I suppose, was not gener- ally known, for I think he always was somewhat in- clined to put on an appearance of brusqueness and carelessness in reference to matters usnally reckoned as accomplishments.

" He had studied the law thoroughly and made him- self master of all its great principles and rules.

" But through his whole life he passed no considera- ble time in looking up cases and authorities.

"He looked upon the law as establishing great prin- ciples and rules, to regulate and govern the conduct of life, and whenever legal questions were submitted to him he settled them by a thorough and careful consideration of the principles upon which they de- pended, as he believed, and then looked for the author- ities to confirm his judgment. Early in my acquaint- ance with him, he told me that a lawyer who de- pended mainly on the study and citation of cases was never 'worth his salt.' The true course, he con- tinued, for one who wishes to make himself a real lawyer, was to firmly and thoroughly ground himself on the great principles upon which the law was founded, and which pervaded and governed it in its application to human affairs, and to make them ab- solntely his own. His arguments and conduct of cases were always governed by such considerations. He discussed principles, making comparatively but slight use of cases, thus making authorities instead of being governed by them.

"To bring him up to the full measure of his powers,

it required a cause of importance or one having some features which thoroughly interested him.

"I do not think in ordinary cases he by any means did justice to himself. They were not large enough to interest him. But when he was thoroughly inter- ested and aroused, either by the case itself or by the strength of the opposing counsel, no man could excel and but few-very few-equal him. I never knew any man who was a more perfect master of logic than Mr. Farley. At his best, it was difficult to find any weakness in his chain of reasoning. Grant his prem- ises, and his conclusions were impregnable. But logic was by no means all that gave him at times his won derfnl power. Logic alone was never very successful with juries of masses of men. There must be some- thing to give warmth and heat to logic to make it living, not dead-to so adapt it and so mould and warm those to whom it is addressed, that it shall con- trol their thoughts and reason. When aroused no man had a greater power of impressing himself upon those he addressed, making them take his thoughts and his reasoning as their own. Upon whatever that power depends, whether it is sympathetic or magnetic, to use a cant phrase, or comes from sheer power of will and force of mind, as I rather think it does, Mr. Farley certainly possessed it to a most remarkable degree. But I do not think he ordinarily manifested it to any great extent. I think I have heard four or five arguments by him, which I never did and never expect to hear excelled, hardly equaled.

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 14

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