History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 74

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 74

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" GALUSHA A. GROW,

" Speaker of the House of Representatives.

" Attest : EM. ETHERIDGE, Clerk."

Reaching Washington on the 26th of April, Colo- nel Hincks was that day appointed a second lieuten- ant of cavalry in the regular army, the only rank in which, at that time, an officer could enter the regular service. From the date of his eutrance into the reg- ular army his military history is borne on the rec- ords of the office of the adjutant-general, as follows : "Appointed second lieutenant Second Cavalry April 26, 1861 ; colonel Eighth Massachusetts Volun-

CAMBRIDGE.

teers May 16, 1861 ; colonel Nineteenth Massachusetts Volunteers August 3, 1861; brigadier-general United States Volunteers November 29, 1862; brevet major- general United States Volunteers March 13, 1865, for gallant and meritorious services during the war; re- signed volunteer commission June 30, 1865; ap- poiuted lieutenant-colonel Fortieth United States Infantry July 28, 1866 ; transferred to the Twenty- fifth United States Infantry March 15, 1869 ; breveted colonel United States Army March 2, 1867, for gal- lant and meritorious services at the battle of Antie- tam, Md .; and brigadier-general United States Army for gallant and meritorious services in the assault of Petersburg, Va .; retired from active service for disa- bility resulting from wounds received in the line of duty December 15, 1870, upon the full rank of colo- nel United States Army.

" Service .- With Regiment Eighth Massachusetts in the State of Maryland until August 1, 1861 ; with Regiment Nineteenth Massachusetts in the Army of the Potomac from August, 1861, to June 30, 1862, when wounded in action at White Oak Swamp, Va. ; absent, wounded, to August 5, 1862; commanding Third Brigade, Sedgwick's division, Army of the Po- tomac, to September 17, 1862, when twice severely wounded in the battle of Antietam, Md .; on leave of absence, wounded to March 19, 1863; on court- martial duty as brigadier-general at Washington, D. C., April 2 to June 9, 1863; and under 'orders of War Department to July 4, 1863; commanding draft rendezvous at Concord, N. H .; acting assistant pro- vost marshal, general and superintendent of the Vol- unteer Recruiting Service for the State of New Hamp- shire to March 29, 1864; commanding district of St. Mary's and camp of prisoners of war at Point Look- out, Md., April 3 to 20, 1864; commanding Third Division, Eighteenth Army Corps, to July, 1864, when wounded; on court-martial duty to September 22, 1864 ; commanding draft depot and camp of pris- oners of war at Hart's Island, New York Harbor, to February, 1865; on duty at New York City as acting assistant provost marshal general, superintendent Volunteer Recruiting Service, and chief mustering and disbursing officer for the Southern Division of New York to March, 1865 ; and on the same duty at Harrisburg, Pa., for the Western Division of Penn- sylvania to June 30, 1865; governor of the Military Asylum to March 6, 1867; en route to, and in com- mand of, Fort Macon, N. C., until April 13, 1867; on special duty at headquarters Second Military Dis- trict at Charleston, S. C., to April 27, 1867 ; provost marshal general Second Military District North and South Carolina to January 16, 1868; commanding Fortieth Regiment and the sub-district and port of Goldsboro', N. C., to July 13, 1868; on sick leave of absence to December 4, 1868; commanding reg- iment in North Carolina and Louisiana until April 20, 1869, when he assumed command of the Twenty-fifth Infantry, and remained in command of

that regiment and the post of New Orleans, La., until August 14, 1869; on sick leave of absence to December 4, 1869; and in command of regiment in New Orleans and en route to and at Fort Clark, Texas, from that date to December 15, 1870."

Such is the record borne on the pages of the army books, and no narrative could set forth the military life of General Hincks so clearly and eloquently as these authoritative words. Aside from the leading well-known generals of the war, few officers can boast of a more varied and gallant and useful career.

In concluding the narrative of the war experience of General Hincks, while the repeated testimony of his superior officers in their general orders to his gal- lantry will be omitted, the list of battles in which he was engaged must not fail to be mentioned :

Battle of Ball's Bluff, Va., October 21, 18G1 ; siege of Yorktown, Va., April, 1862 ; affair at West Point, May 7, 1862; Fair Oaks, June I, 1862; Oak Grove, June 25, 1862; Peach Orchard, June 29, 1862; Sav- ege's Station, June 20, 1862 ; White Oak Swamp, June 30, 1862; Glen- dale, June 30, 1862; Chantilly, September 1, 1862; South Mountain, September 11, 1862; Antietam, September 16 and 17, 1852; Baylor's Farm, June 15, 1864 ; assault at Petersburg, June 15, 1864.

The services of General Hincks after the war were only less important than those during its continuance. Under General Sickles and General Canby the aid he rendered in perfecting and carrying out the recon- struction measures of the government in Northi and South Carolina, forming what was called the Second Military District, was recognized by his superior offi- cers as efficient and valuable.

On the 15th of December, 1870, the general was retired from active service upon the full rank of colonel in the United States Army on account of wounds received in battle, and on the 7th of March, 1872, he was appointed, by the Board of Managers of the National Homes, deputy-governor of the Southern Branch of National Homes, at Hampton, Va. On the 1st of January following he was trans- ferred to the Northwestern Branch, near Milwaukee, WVis., and resigned October 1, 1880.

After the resignation of his position as deputy-gov- ernor of the National Home at Milwaukee, General Hincksremained in that city until June, 1883, and was largely influential in the organization of the Milwaukee Industrial Exposition, a corporation then formed and still in existence, having for its object the promotion of the industrial interests of Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin. Since 1883 he has lived in Cambridge, Mass., enjoying a period of well-deserved peace and comfort. He occupies a stately old man- sion, said to be more than two hundred years old; and the books and pictures, and quaint old family china and furniture with which it is replete, reveal the culture and taste of its occupants.

In the autumn of 1862, after having been severely wounded in the battle of Antietam, General Hincks was urgently requested by many independent Repub- licans, to run for Congress in the Sixth District, then represented by Mr. John B. Alley, but he positively

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declined to be a candidato for any office that would prevent his return to the field as soon as he should sufficiently recover from his wounds. He was ser- geant-at-arms of the National Republican Conven- tion at Philadelphia in 1872, when General Grant was nominated for a second term ; and again at Cin- cinnati, in 1876, when General Hayes was nominated for President. In the Cincinnati Convention he was nominated by the chairman of the Michigan delegation " for his many wounds received iu battle," and was unanimously elected.

General Hincks is a Knight Templar in the Ma- sonic Order, a companion iu the National Command- ery of the Loyal Legion and a member of the New England Historical Genealogical Society ; commander of Wisconsin Commandery of Military Order of the Loyal Legion in 1876, 1877, 1879 and ·1880, and commander of Massachusetts Commandery in 1889- 90; was a member of the Cambridge Board of Aldermen in 1886, 1887 and 1888, and during the year last named was president of the Board and oc- casionally acting mayor; is (1890) president of the Reliance Co-operative Bank in Cambridge.

General Hincks has heen twice married-first, Jan- pary 25, 1855, to Annie Rebecca, daughter of Moody Clarissa (Leach) Dow, of Lynn, who died in , August 21, 1862. Her only child was Anson 'ame, who was born in Lynn, October 14, " LIEUTEL' died in Rockville, Md., January 27, 1862.

" Sir -- I tried, second, September 3, 1863, Elizabeth "Ing whether,achter of George and Susan (Treadwell) that are und. Nicer aid in the Cambridge, whose only child, Bessie Hinche "it we are in .

formu. Cambridge, April 11, 1865, died in Cambrio, fourteen f ?: 1885.

The deas oui this daughter was peculiarly sad. She had graduated in 1883 from the Milwaukee Col- lege, and had entered the Harvard Annex full of hope and promise. While walking in the street her dress took fire from a burning cracker, and she was burned to death. Her sweet and loving character, blended with high literary attainments, lent a joy and grace to her parents' home, since shadowed in perpetual gloom. It is only necessary, before closing this sketch, to add a word of explanation concerning the family name of General Hincks.

The common ancestor of the Hincks family in this country, Councilor and Chief Justice John, uniformly wrote his name Hinckes, hut when copied by clerks it was usually written Hinks, and so frequently ap- pears in the Council Records of Massachusetts and the Archives of New Hampshire. Captain Samuel, who graduated at Harvard in 1701, and his son, Samuel, Jr., the schoolmaster on the Cape, uniformly wrote their name Hincks; but Elisha and his son, Captain Elisha, Jr., the father of the general, appear to have dropped the c, and to have written their names Hinks ; and in early life the general also wrote his name without the c (Hinks), and it so appears in the Army Register and the official records of the war,

although other branches of the family wrote their names with a c; but in 1871, under authority of law, the general restored the letter c to his name, and has since written it Hincks, and all the branches of the family descended from Chief Justice John now con- form to this style. It will be noted that all of this family in this country bearing the name of Hincks are descended through the Winslows from Mary Chilton, who came in the "Mayflower," and Anne Hutchinson, the Quakers

HON. J. WARREN MERRILL.1

This prominent citizen was an inhabitant of Mid- dlesex County, Mass., for some fifty years. During almost thirty-eight of the final years of this period and of his life of seventy years, his home was in Cam- bridge, of which city he was the ninth mayor, and, previously, a representative in the General Court of Massachusetts.

His earliest ancestor in this country was Nathaniel Merrill, who came from Salisbury, England, to New- bury, Massachusetts, in 1633. The family tradition is that the English progenitors were of French ex- traction, through an official of the exchequer, who, hy friendly aid, escaped the massacre of St. Bartholomew, in Angust, 1572, and crossed the Channel for refuge.

Joseph Warren Merrill, the oldest son of Nathan and Sarah (Page) Merrill, was born in South Hamp- ton, N. H., Dec. 13, 1819. His father, who was a teacher, removed his family to Portsmouth in 1825, and abont eight years later to Boston. The youth was for some time a pupil at the English High School. He became an apprentice to Mr. Joshua P. Preston, apothecary, on Federal Street, about the 1st of June, 1835. Six years later, June 15, 1841, at the age of twenty-one years and a half, he engaged in the same business for himself, at the corner of Salem and Rich- mord Streets. He found that he could not conscien- tiously do, on Sunday, the most profitable business of the week, in the sale of luxuries. The pecuniary effect of confining himself to the sale of medicines on that day was so discouraging that he gave up the business, and a meeting with his old employer, who had retired, resulted in a partnership in the business of fancy goods, including domestic, imported, and some proprietary articles, the latter pertaining to manufacturing chemistry. Thus was formed, in 1845, the firm of Preston & Merrill, whose name has been so familiar throughout our country, if not the world. A venture in the shipment to California of a culinary compound which they manufactured, proved a most successful ministration to the comfort and luxury of settlers rushing to the land of gold, and also to the fortunes of the proprietors. Mr. Merrill divided his share of the gain between his wife and some henevo- lent institution. Thenceforward his business success was secured.

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CAMBRIDGE.

On the 13th of June, 1848, he had been married to Miss Hannah B. Wattson, of Philadelphia, and to them were born six children, two of whom were re- moved by early death. In the morning of his pros- perity, Mr. Merrill looked about for a home for his wife and infant son, and selected Cambridge, to which he removed from Charlestown, June 11, 1852. He first owned and occupied, for fifteen years, an attract- ive estate on Harvard Street, upon the eastern slope of Dana Hill; and then built a mansion upon the summit of the hill, facing Broadway, which was finished in 1868, and was his home for the remaining twenty-one years of his life.

The nearly forty years of Mr. Merrill's residence in Cambridge witnessed a great change iu it from rural to urban aspect and characteristics; and as a prop- erty-owner, public-spirited citizen, and municipal officer, he was no small factor, directly and indirectly, in the process. His first official service was as a member of the Common Council, in 1861, from which he went to the Board of Aldermen the following year. He was long a member of the Water Board of the city, part of the time as its president. He was a repre- sentative in the legislature of Massachusetts in 1864, and he was mayor of Cambridge in 1865, including the closing months of the war, aud was re-elected for 1866. In view of the demands and rewards of his profitable business-in view, also, of his growing family and strong domestic tastes, it was not strange if, after these six years of strenuous service, embracing the peculiar exigencies of the war, he should not en- courage the suggestion of a congressional term upon the broader stage at Washington. Besides the busi- ness of the firm with which he was so long identified, Mr. Merrill was interested in other enterprises, nota- bly that of the Boston and Colorado Smelting Com- pany, of which he was one of the founders, in 1867, and the treasurer.

Even this imperfect glance at some of his principal activities will show that Mr. Merrill was pre-eminently a man of affairs. As such he was marked by ability, energy, diligence, integrity and success. But he not only had a vocation in life, he had also avocations. One of these, the original impulse to which came to him in a time of physical and mental exhaustion, through the affectionate agency of his wife, was the study and collection of ferns; another was photogra- phy ; and a third was research into his family history. His skill and interest in croquet, with its undoubted benefit to his health, almost entitle it to mention as a pursuit as well as pastime.

Mr. Merrill was an ardent patriot. The writer recalls how he entered into the spirit of that great meeting under the Washington elm, in April, 1861, within two weeks of the first gun of the war-a meet- ing addressed, among others, by Palfrey and Banks, Hillard, Judge Russell and the Hon. John C. Park, to which marched the First Massachusetts Regiment, soon to depart for the seat of war. He was at this

time, as has been said, a member of the City Council; and a published letter, of the very date of the meet- ing just referred to, from Captain J. T. Richardson, of that famous earliest band of volunteers from Cam- bridge, attests how early and strong was Mr. Merrill's zeal as a citizen and an official in the uprising of the loyal nation. The following are the first two par- agraphs of the letter :-

"FORTRESS MONROE, 27th April, 1861.

"J. WARREN MERRILL, ESQ.

" Dear Sir : Yours of the 19th inst. is received, and has been rend to the company, and was received with the greatest enthusiasm. It cheers the heart and nerves the arms of the soldier to kuow that his sacrifices and toils and dangers are appreciated by his fellow-citizens at home, and that the dear family he has left behind him is to be cared for in hie ab- Bence.

"I am requested by the company to return their grateful thanks to you and the gentlemen associated with you, and through you to the City Government and citizens of Cambridge for their generous action to- wards them."

His sense of public obligations as a citizen was habitual and not confined to emergencies, either in war or in peace. Upon the bed of final illness, three weeks before his death, on the day of the State elec- tion, he spoke, in the morning, of being taken to vote, but was advised by his physician to wait until after- noon. The pleasing thought of citizenship in Heaven, where they go no more out forever, is here suggested, and forms a natural transition to Mr. Merrill's char- acter as a Christian, which was, to a noteworthy de- gree, the basis and principle of his private and public life, the vital source of that useful civic career which rightly causes him to be noticed in an historical work like the present.

At the age of eighteen years he embraced the duty and privilege of a religious life, being baptized in the Baldwin Place Baptist Church, Boston, April 8, 1838, by the late Rev. Dr. Baron Stow, his parents' friend and his own ; and at once addressing himself to the Christian and missionary endeavor for which his life was to be so remarkable. Upon removing from Charlestown, he united with the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, where, as in the wider field of the country and the world, he soon came to be known as a lover of the church ; a man of effort for the salva- tion of others ; a man of prayer; a liberal man that devised liberal things. The erection of this church's second house of worship went on at the same time with that of his own home, and he probably devoted about equal amounts of money to each. The cata- logue would be long of the institutions and societies to which he made large and habitual gifts in life, supplemented by the bestowal upon them, in his will, of what would once have been regarded as, in itself, a very extensive fortune. His beneficence, too, in numberless and constant instances, was tender and personal, as well as systematic and general in relig- ious, educational, patriotic and philanthropic chan- nels. Sometimes the personal and institutional di- rections of his bounty found most manifest and felic-

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itous combination, as in the Baldwin Place Home for Little Wanderers.

Decided in his religious, political and other con- victions, Mr. Merrill was, at the same time, able to take broad and Catholic views. There was something in the man akin to the great State in which he was born and the great sons whom it has begotten. This magnitude, commingled with refinement, was observ- able in his person, nature and tastes. Of large · stature and portly habit, he was of delicate health in youth, and always evinced traits of nice physical con- stitution. He was fond of the mountains and the ocean, of being abroad upon his grounds at Cam- bridge or Manchester-by-the-Sea, and was versed in woodcraft and horticulture, as well as ingenious, orderly and efficient in mechanical and practical de- vices. His home and library, favorite associations and pursuits, his written or spoken addresses, both in substance and expression, showed that he was a lover of great and good and fine men and things. The majestic eloquence of Webster and the elegant and finished oratory of Everett were alike his life-long admiration. On account of such traits as these, and the impressiveness, dignity and grace of his bearing, as well as because he had been mayor of the city, it was appropriate, when Cambridge celebrated her two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, with the oration of Colonel Higginson, the address of President Eliot, the presence and participation of one distinguished native poet, Holines, and the proud remembrauce and mention of another, Lowell, then at the court of St. James-it was fitting that Mr. Merrill should have been designated, in the order of ceremonies, as the companion of Longfellow, and never, it may be observed, did the gracious poet offer a more striking and regal figure than on that December day of 1880, erect, with flowing, whitened hair and beard, aud clad in an ample fur-trimmed overcoat.

J. Warren Merrill was, indeed, a large man by nature, enlarged by New England education, by Christianity accepted as personal religion, by living heroically in a heroic time, by seeing much of men and manners in his own conntry, and in prolonged tours of foreign travel, and by sitting (as he did for years in the missionary organization of his commu- nion) at a conncil-board for the world's evangeliza- tion.

It is a pleasant office to furnish for these records of this good old county of Middlesex, some account of this life and character. Such men are the best of citizens. Happy the Commonwealth which has its quiver full of sons whom wealth, ability and position animate, not to aggrandize self and to ignore others, but rather to seek by all good living in church and state and society to follow Him who came "not to be ministered unto, but to minister." This was the motto of a commemorative discourse in the Cam- bridge Church, which is so largely a Merrill memorial, on Sunday, November 24, 1889. Within the same

walls had been held a brief and simple funeral ser- vice, followed by interment at Mount Auburn, on November 15th. He died, one month before the age of seventy years, November 12, 1889.

ERASMUS D. LEAVITT.1

Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, of Cambridge, son of Erasmus Darwin and Almira (Fay) Leavitt, was born in Lowell, Mass., October 27, 1836. He was educated in the Lowell Public School, entered the machine- shop of the Lowell Manufacturing Company in April, 1852, and served three years as apprentice, at the close of which time he worked under instruction for a year at the works of Corliss & Nightingale, of Providence, R. I., the birthplace of the Corliss engine. From 1856 to 1858 he was engaged in devel- oping some inventions in steam engineering for which a patent had been granted to him in 1855. In 1858 and 1859 he was assistant foreman at the City Point Works, South Boston, and had charge of building the engines for the flagship "Hartford." From 1859 to '61 he was chief draughtsman for Thurston, Gardner & Company, of Providence, R. I., leaving there to enter the United States Navy in the summer of 1861, as third assistant engineer. He served through the War of the Rebellion, and during his term of service was de- tailed to the Naval Academy at Aunapolis as in- . structor in steam engineering. Resigning in 1867, he resumed the practice of mechanical engineering, making a specialty of pumping and mining machinery.

In 1872 Mr. Leavitt designed and patented a novel pumping engine, which was first used at Lynn, Mass., and on account of its remarkable performance it be- came celebrated in Europe as well as in this country ; similar engines were subsequently erected at Law- rence, Mass., Louisville, Ky., and the sewage station of the city of Boston.

In 1874 he became connected with the famous Calumet and Hecla Copper Mine as an adviser on mechanical matters, and has been consulting engi- neer of the company since 1878, furnishing the de- signs and plans for the immense plant required.

He has also acted as consulting engineer to the cities of Boston and Louisville, and to the firm of Henry R. Worthington, of New York, the celebrated builders of pumps.

He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Institute of Mining Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (and past president of same), Boston Society of Civil Engineers American Society of Naval Engineers, life member of British Association for Advancement of Science, mem- ber of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers of Great Britain. In 1884 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Eugineer-

1 By George II. Cox.

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Leavitt

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ing from Stevens Institute of Technology, of Hoboken, New Jersey.

Mr. Leavitt was married, June 5, 1867, to Annie Elizabeth, daughter of William Pettit, of Philadel- phia, who was a pioneer in locomotive building in the United States, and long connected with the Baldwin Locomotive Works, Mrs. Leavitt died De- cember 28, 1889. Their children were Mary Alford, Hart Hooker, Margaret Almira, Harriet Sherman and Annie Louise. Of these, three are living: Mary, Margaret and Annie.

Mr. Leavitt's life has been one of close application to his chosen profession, and to-day he occupies a leading position among the most eminent engineers of this country and of Europe, his ahility being recognized by all his contemporaries. During his several trips abroad he has received marked attention from the leading men of his profession, and from the various engineering societies.

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 74

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