History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 16

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 16

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

DAVID H. MASON was born in Sullivan, New Hampshire, March 17, 1818, and graduated at Dart- mouth in 1841. He lived in Newton twenty-five years and there died May 29, 1873. He delivered the oration at the centennial anniversary of his native town, July 14, 1864; in 1860 he was a member of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and December 22, 1870, was appointed United States district attor- nev.

JOEL GILES was born in Townsend in 1804, and grad- uated at Harvard in 1829, after which he was for a time a tutor in the college. He was descended from Edward Giles, who came from Salisbury, in England, and settled in Salem. He settled in Boston, and in 1848 delivered the Fourth of July oration in that city. He was a member of both branches of the General Court, member of the Constitutional Conven- tion of 1853, and died in Boston.

JOHN GILES, brother of the above, born in Town- send in 1806, graduated at Harvard in 1831, read law with Parsons & Stearns, in Boston, and died in June, 1838.

LUTHER STEARNS CUSHING, son of Edmund Cush- ing, of Lunenburg, and grandson of Colonel Charles Cushing, of Hingham, was born in Lunenburg, June 22, 1803, and graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1826. After conducting for a time the Jurist and Law Magazine, he was appointed clerk of the Massa- chusetts House of Representatives in 1832, and served until 1844. In the latter year he was chosen a representative from Boston, and in the same year appointed judge of the Court of Common Pleas, re- maining on the bench until 1848. In 1845 he publish- ed a " Manual of Parliamentry Practice." In 1854, as reporter of the Supreme Judical Court, to which position he was appointed after leaving the bench, he published twelve volumes of Reports. He also pub-

lished " Elements of the Law and Practice of Legisla- tive Assemblies," "Introduction to the Study of Roman Law," and "Rules of Proceeding and Debates in Deliberative Assemblies." He died in Boston, June 22, 1856.

THOMAS HOPKINSON was born in New Sharon, Maine, August 25, 1804, and graduated at Harvard in 1830, in the class with Charles Sumner and George Washington Warren. He read law with Lawrence & Glidden in Lowell, and was admitted to the bar in 1833. Hle was a representative from Lowell in 1838 and 1847, Senator in 1845, and in 1848 was appointed judge of the Court of Common Pleas, resigning the next year to assume the position of president of the Boston and Worcester Railroad Company. He was city solicitor of Lowell in 1840, a member of the Constitutional Convention from Cambridge, in 1853, and died in that place on November 17, 1856. .

FREDERICK AUGUSTUS WORCESTER was born in Hollis, New Hampshire, in 1807, and was the son of Jesse Worcester, of that town, and graduated at Har- vard in 1831. He had four brothers who were col- lege graduates,-Joseph Emerson, the Jexicographer, who graduated at Yale in 1811, and died in 1865 ; Rev. Taylor Gilman, who graduated at Harvard in 1823, and died in 1869; Rev. Henry A, who gradu- ated at Yale in 1828, and Hon. Samuel Thomas, who graduated at Harvard in 1830. He had two other brothers-Jesse, who entered Harvard in 1809 and died the same year, and David, who entered Harvard in 1828 and left college in his junior year. Frederick Augustus studied at Pinkerton Academy, in Derry, New Hampshire, and at Philips Academy before en- tering college. He read law with Benjamin M. Farley, at Hollis, and at the Harvard Law School ; and finished his studies with George F. Farley in Groton. In 1835 he went to Townsend, thence to Banger, but returned. He married Jane M. Kellogg, of Amherst.

JOHN A. KNOWLES was born in Pembroke, New Hampshire, April 25, 1800, and died at his home on Sonth Street, Lowell, Mass., July 25, 1884, at the age of eighty-four years. He was the son of Simon and De- borah Knowles who were natives of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, and was the youngest of a family of thir- teen children. Like almost all other boys reared in the farming towns of New Hampshire in the begin- ning of the present century, he very early learned to rely for support upon his own exertions. At the age of fifteen years he left home and engaged in the trade of wagon-making in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. A. part of his time, however, was devoted to attending school. He seems to have very early entertained the fixed resolve to attain by the cultivation of his intel- lect a higher position in life than that of an ordi- nary workman. Accordingly from the age of nineteen years to that of twenty-four years he devoted him- self alternately to a course of study and to teaching in district schools. Subsequently, however, on ac-

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

count of his feeble health and his limited pecuniary ability, he relinquished the cherished hope of ob- taining a college education, and devoted himself for two years to teaching school in Keene, New Hamp- shire, and Taunton, Massachusetts.

Mr. Knowles came to Lowell in the autumn of 1827, when twenty-seven years of age, and opened an evening school, in which penmanship (in which he was an expert) was the leading branch. This school, however, he soon relinquished, and commenced the study of law in the office of Elisha Glidden, who for nine years was an attorney-at-law in Lowell, and was at one time the partner of Luther Lawrence, second mayor of the city.

After nearly five years spent in the office and fam- ily of Mr. Glidden, and in attending, at Dedham, the lectures of Judge Theron Metcalf, he was admitted to the bar in 1832, at the age of thirty-two years, and immediately opened a law-office in the city of Lowell. He continued the practice of law is that city until increasing deafness demanded his retirement. As a lawyer he was distinguished, not for brilliant oratory or persuasive eloquence before a jury, but for the soundness of his counsel, the conscientious fidelity of his service, and the purity and uprightness of his character. These qualities secured to him for many years a large office practice, and gained for him not only a good estate, but also an enviable name as a man of exalted moral character.

Few citizens of Lowell have been called to a larger number of positions of trust and honor. For several years he was clerk of the Police Court under Judge Locke. In 1833 and 1834 he was city solicitor. In 1835, 1844 and 1845 he was a representative of Low- ell in the General Court of Massachusetts. In 1847 he held the office of State Senator. For several years he was a member of the Board of School Committee. From 1847 for nearly thirty years he was president of the Appleton Bank, resigning the office at length on account of impaired eye-sight. From 1848 he served for several years as treasurer of the Lowell & Law- rence Railroad.

In every position of responsibility Mr. Knowles displayed a character of transparent honesty and strict integrity. He was a man to be trusted. Though of a genial and complacent nature, yet, when occasion called and justice demanded, he knew how to “ put his foot down firm." When he was president of the Citizens' Bank, an institution which, after a brief ex- istence, went down in the financial depression of 1837 and the following years, he gained an enviable name by his firmness in resisting steadfastly every attempt of speculators to induce him to resort to doubtful methods of management.

Mr. Knowles was fond of literary pursuits. His pen was not idle. By his sketches of the early days and the early men of Lowell, read before the Old Residents' Historical Association, he did much to in- terest its members. There was in his mind a poetic

vein, and he often repeated the flowing lines of Pope and other old poets which his memory had re- tained for fifty years. The writing of poems was to him a pleasant recreation. He was for many years a beloved officer of the Unitarian Church, of which he was one of the founders.

DANIEL SAMUEL RICHARDSON was born in Tyngs- borough, Mass., December 1, 1816, and died at his residence on Nesmith Street, Lowell, March 21, 1890, at the age of seventy-three years. He was descended from a long line of New England ancestors, all of whom occupied such honorable positions in life that it is interesting to trace his genealogical descent from the early settlement of Massachusetts.

1. Ezekiel Richardson, his earliest American an- cestor, belonged to that large colony of Puritan Eng- lishman who, about 1630, under Governor John Win - throp, settled in Salem, Boston, Charlestown and the neighboring towns. He was a conspicuous man, having been on the first Board of Selectmen of Charlestown and representative of that town in the General Court. He subsequently served on the Board of Selectmen of the town of Woburn.

2. His son, Captain Josiah Richardson, was promi- nent among the first settlers of Chelmsford, having been for fourteen years a selectman of the town. It is an interesting fact regarding him that he was once the owner of that part of the territory of Lowell on which now stand most of the large manufactories of that city, having, in 1688, received it by deed from two Indians, John Nebersha and Samuel Nebersha, " for ye love we bear for ye aforesaid Josiah."

3. His son, Lieutenant Josiah Richardson, was the clerk and a selectman of the town of Chelmsford.

4. Captain William Richardson, son of the latter, represented the town of Pelham (then a part of Mas- sachusetts) in the General Court. He died in 1776, at the age of nearly seventy-five years.

5. His son, Captain Daniel Richardson, resided also in Pelham. He was for three years a soldier in the Revolutionary Army, and was present at the bat- tle of Monmouth. He died in 1833, at the age of eighty-four years.

6. His son, Daniel Richardson, the father of the subject of this sketch, was a successful attorney-at- law in Tyngsborough, Mass., and served the town in · the General Court of Massachusetts, both as Repre- sentative and Senator. Of his three sons, who were his only children, Daniel S. was the oldest, William A. is chief justice of the Court of Claims at Wash- ington, having formerly held the high office of Secre- tary of the United States Treasury, and George F. is one of the ablest lawyers of the bar of Middlesex County. The three brothers all graduated from Harvard College and the Law School, all pursued the study of law, all practiced their profession in Lowell, and all in succession were elected to the presidency of the Common Council of that city. It is an interesting fact that for twenty-one years one at

Daniel J. Richardom

1xi

BENCH AND BAR.

least of the brothers was a member of the univer- sity.

Daniel S. Richardson fitted for college at the acad- emy at Derry, N. H., and graduated at Harvard in 1836, before he had reached the age of twenty years. In college he ranked among the first scholars of his class, being a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and receiving the Bowdoin prize. He subsequently graduated from the Law School.

At the age of twenty-three years he commenced the practice of law in Lowell, occupying an office in a location on Central Street, in which he remained for more than fifty years.

He loved his profession, and to it he devoted his highest powers. His cases were prepared with scru- pulous fidelity, and all that patient research and un- remitting toil could do he freely gave to his clients. He was a lawyer and not an orator. Others might excel him in a popular harangue, but before a jury such was the force of his logic, the perspicuity of his language, the evident sincerity of his conviction, and above all the admirable thoroughness of his preparation, that few advocates were his peers. In the first case which Mr. Richardson argued before the full bench of the Supreme Court the celebrated Chief Justice Shaw so far departed from his habitual reticence as to say : "This case has been very well argued."

Mr. Richardson acquired a very extensive practice in civil cases. It is said that in the Massachusetts Reports there are more than three hundred cases which he took to the Supreme Court. His office was a school for young lawyers. Very few men have had around them so many students of the law. In him they found a patient and sympathizing instructor and friend whom they learned to love, and whose generous kindness they still recall with affection and tenderness. The honor and esteem in which his compeers at the bar hold him were well expressed at the recent memorial meeting of the Middlesex bar by General Butler, who had intimately known him for fifty years, in the following words : " He was one of the few men I ever knew who apparently had no enemies. The practice of the bench shows no more fragrant name than that of Daniel S. Richardson."

Although the practice of the law was Mr. Richard- son's chosen vocation, yet his fellow-citizens recog- nized his merits by placing him in many positions of trust and honor. In 1842, 1843 and 1847 he was a member of the General Court and was in the State Senate in 1862. In 1845 and 1846 he served in the Common Council, and was, in both years, president of that body. He was in 1848 on the Board of Alder- men. He was for a very long time a director, and for sixteen years the president of the Prescott Na- tional Bank. For fifteen years or more he was trus- tee of the State Lunatic Asylum at Danvers. He was president of the Lowell Manufacturing Company and director in the Lowell Bleachery and the Traders'

and Mechanics' Insurance Company. He was presi- dent of the Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad from 1863 to the time of his death. He was also formerly president of the Lowell & Nashua Railroad. For three years he was chairman of the commissioners of Middlesex County. And even yet we have by no means completed the full list of offices and trusts which occupied his busy and useful life.

Mr. Richardson was, during all his life, a diligent student. He kept himself informed in the politics, science and literature of the day. In 1841 he was, for several months, the editor of the Lowell Courier, but his law business forbade him to continue his work as a journalist. As editor his motto, as he de- clared in his valedictory, was expressed in the fol- lowing couplet :

" Do boldly what you do, and let your page

Smile when it smiles, and when it rages, rage."

He adds, however, that he had leaned towards the smiling page. In religious sentiment he was a Uni- tarian and it has been said of him that his creed was the Sermon on the Mount. In politics he was, in his early years, a Whig. After the Whig party became extinct he was through life a firm and consistent Republican.

GILES HENRY WHITNEY, son of Abel and Abigail H. (Townsend) Whitney, of Lancaster, was born in Boston January 18, 1818. His father kept, in Boston, a private school for boys. The son Giles attended the Latin School from the age of eight to that of thir- teen, and finished his preparation for college with Frederick P. Leverett. He graduated at Harvard in 1837, and after reading law with George F. Farley, of Groton, with Washburn and Hartshorn, of Worcester, and at the Harvard Law School, was admitted to the bar in September, 1842. He practiced in Westminster until April, 1846, when he removed to Templeton, and in June, 1857, to Winchendon. He was in the Senate in 1851, and in the House of Representatives in 1864, 1866 and 1881. He married, in November, 1850, Lydia A., daughter of Capt. Joseph Davis, of Tem- pleton.

HENRY VOSE was the son of Elijah and Rebecca Gorham (Bartlett) Vose, of Charlestown, and was born in that town May 21, 1817. Early afflicted with asth- ma, he was sent to Concord, where he lived several years in the family of a farmer. He fitted for college at the Concord Academy and graduated at Harvard in 1837. During a part or the whole of his college life he was an inmate of the family of Rev. Henry Ware, Jr. After leaving college he was, for a time, a family instructor in Western New York and read law, first in the office of George T. Davis, of Greenfield, and afterwards in that of Chapman & Ashmun, of Springfield, when he was admitted to the bar. He was a member of the Massachusetts Ilouse of Repre- sentatives in 1858, and on the organization of the Su- perior Court in 1859 he was appointed one of its judges. He removed to Boston soon after his appoint-

1xii

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

ment and made that place his residence until his death, January 17, 1869. He married, October 19, 1842, Martha Barrett Ripley, of Greenfield.

FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE was born in Clithero, England, July 19, 1842, and was brought to this coun- try by his father in his youth. He received his early education in the common schools of Lowell, and though he entered Harvard in 1859 he did not pursue the whole college course. He studied law and was admitted to the bar at Lowell in 1865. He was a member of the Common Council of that city in 1868- 69, and received a degree of Master of Arts from Harvard in 1870. He was also a member of the Low- ell School Committee from 1871 to 1873, mayor of the city in 1880 and 1881, delegate to the National Repub- lican Convention in 1884, a representative in 1885, city solicitor in 1888 and was chosen member of the Fifty-first Congress as a Republican, in 1888. He is a man of fine scholarship as well as high legal at- tainments and of polished and winning eloquence. With life and health his further advancement is sure.

CHARLES THEODORE RUSSELL, now living in Cam- bridge, is descended from William Russell, who came to Boston in 1640, and settled in Cambridge in 1645. Mr. Russell is the son of Charles and Persis (Hast- ings) Russell, of Princeton, and was born in that town November 20, 1815. His father was a merchant in Princeton, clerk of the town and postmaster, represen- tative eight years, four years a member of the Senate and four years a member of the Governor's Council. Mr. Russell fitted for college at the Princeton Acad- emy, under the care of Rev. Warren Goddard, and graduated at Harvard in 1837, delivering the Latin salutatory at his commencement and the valedictory on the reception of the degree of Master of Arts in 1840. He read law in the office of Henry H. Fuller and at the Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. The writer, a student at Harvard at the time Mr. Russell was in the Law School, remem- bers the ease and skill in debate shown by him in the Harvard Union, to whose discussions the law students were admitted. After admission to the bar he was as- sociated with Mr. Fuller two years, and in 1845 en- tered into partnership with his younger brother, Thomas Hastings Russell, who graduated at Harvard in 1843, and had then become a member of the bar. Until 1855 he made Boston his residence and then re- moved to Cambridge, where he hassince lived. He was a representative from Boston in 1844, 1845 and 1850, and a Senator from Suffolk in 1851 and 1852, and from Middlesex in 1877 and 1878. He was mayor of Cam- bridge in 1861-62, has heen professor in the Law School of Boston University, fourteen years one of the Board of Visitors of the Theological School at Andover and secretary of the board, a corporate mem- ber of the Commissioners for Foreign Missions, mem- ber of the Oriental Society, president of the Young Mens' Christian Association, and delivered an address at its inauguration. He has written a short history

of his native town and delivered a centennial oration there in 1859 and also delivered the oration in Boston on the 4th of July, 1852. The law-firm of which he is the senior member includes, besides his brother, above-mentioned, his sons, Charles Theodore, Jr. and William E. and Arthur H., a son of his brother. Mr. Russell married, June 1, 1840, Sarah Elizabeth, dangh- ter of Joseph Ballister, of Boston.

RICHARD JI. DANA, JR., son of Richard H. Dana, a sketch of whom has been given, and grandson of Francis Dara, also included in this chapter, was born in Cambridge, August 1, 1815. His mother was Ruth Charlotte Smith, of Providence. He entered Harvard in 1831, but owing to a severe affection of the eyes, he was obliged to abandon study for a time, and as a sailor before the mast, sailed from Boston, August 6, 1834, for the northwest coast. He reached Boston on his return September 20, 1836, and joined the class of 1837, with which he graduated. He attended the Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the Suf- folk bar in 1840. He published in that year "Two Years Before the Mast," and at later times " The Sea- man's Friend," "Dictionary of Sea Terms," "Customs and Usages of the Merchant Service," "Sketches of Allston and Channing" and "To Cuba and Back, a Vacation Voyage." He entered at once on a success- ful practice, not a small portion of which, in the earliest years of his career, was in the defense of sea- men from unjust and hard usage. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1853, and one of the founders of the Free Soil party, and its successor the Republican party. In the trials had in Boston of persons charged with the unlawful rescue of a fugitive slave from the hands of United States officers, in the court-house in that city, he labored diligently and elo- quently, alone in some cases, and in others associated with Hon. John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, and se- cured their acquittal. He was appointed United States district attorney by President Lincoln in 1861, and held the office until 1865. In 1866 he received the degree of Doctor of Laws from his Alma Mater. He married, August 25, 1841, Sarah Watson, of Hartford In 1881 he went to Italy and died at Rome, January 6, 1882.

BENJAMIN ROBBINS CURTIS was born in Water- town, November 4, 1809, and graduated at Harvard in 1829, receiving a degree of Doctor of Laws from his Alma Mater in 1852. He wasadmitted to the bar in 1832, and began practice at Northfield, Massachusetts. In 1834 he removed to Boston, where he soon reached the front rank in his profession, meeting as his com- petitors in the courts Charles G. Levering, Rufus Choate, Sidney Bartlett and at times Daniel Webster. In September, 1851, he was appointed an associate justice on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, and resigned in 1857. In 1868 he was one of the counsel of President Andrew Johnson be- fore the Court of Impeachment, and before that time he was two years in the Legislature. He published in

lxiii

BENCH AND BAR.

1857 "Reports of the United States Circuit Court" in two volumes, and later twenty-two volumes of " Deci- sions of the United States Supreme Court" and a " Digest " of the same.

GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS, brother of the above, was born in Watertown, November 28, 1812, and grad- uated at Harvard in 1812. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in August, 1836, and was a representative in the General Court from Boston from 1840 to 1844. He has been a voluminous law writer, of sound though conservative mind, and a respected authority on all constitutional questions. Among his published law works are "Rights and Duties of Merchant Sea- men," "Digest of the Decisions of the Courts of Com- mon Law and Admiralty," "Cases in the American and English Courts of Admiralty," " American Con- veyances," "Treatise on the Law of Patents," " Equity Precedents," a tract entitled "The Rights of Conscience and Property," a treatise on the " Law of Copyright," "Commentaries on the Jurisprudence, Practice and Peculiar Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States," and a " History of the Origin, Formation and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States." Besides these he has published a " Life of Daniel Webster." He is now a resident of New York, engaged in literary pursuits, and in prac- tice in the United States Supreme Court.

WILLIAM W. STORY, son of Judge Joseph Story, was born in Salem February 12, 1819, and graduated at Harvard in 1838. He read law in the Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1840. His father removed from Salem to Cambridge when he was ten years of age, and during his college aud pro- fessional life he was a resident of that town. He soon abandoned the law for the more congenial pur- suit of sculpture, in which he has won an enviable dis- tinction. Among his best known works are the statue of Edward Everett in the Boston Public Garden, and that of Chief Justice Marshall at the west front of the Capitol in Washington. He is now in Italy, where most of his artist life has been passed.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS SOMERBY, son of Samuel and Hannah (George) Somerby, of Newbury, was born in that town November 2, 1821. He was de- scended from Anthony Somerby, one of the clerks of courts in Essex County in the seventeenth century. He attended school at Wayland, and read law with Edward Mellen, being admitted to the bar in 1844. He practiced in Wayland until 1852, when he re- moved to Waltham and joined with Josiah Rutter in a law partnership, which continued until 1858, when he removed to Boston. During his career he occu- pied offices in Gray's Building on Court Street, in the old State-House and Sears Building. He died at South Framingham July 24, 1879, leaving a son, Sam- uel Ellsworth Somerby, who graduated at Harvard the year of his father's death. Mr. Somerby was a man of large frame and with mental powers in har- mony with his physical. He practiced largely at the

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 16

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