History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 6

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534

USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 6

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JOHN W. AMES .- Attorney of Supreme Judicial Court, 1820. He was the eldest son of Fisher Ames, and was born Oct. 22, 1793. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1813, and studied law with JONATHAN PARKER BISHOP was born in Kil- lingly, Conn., April 10, 1792. He was the son of Jonathan Parker Bishop, a well-known physician, and Hannah (Torrey) Bishop. He commenced the practice of law in Medfield about the year 1818, having been admitted to the bar in another county, Theron Metcalf. He had an office in Boston for a short time, but soon removed to Dedham. He was Representative to the General Court from Dedham in 1822, and was president of the Dedham Bank from June 16, 1829, to his death, Oct. 31, 1833. He was never married, but always lived with his mother. He | and was prominently identified with the affairs of the

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town during his life. He represented the town in the Legislature in 1848 and 1851, and was actively interested in the election of Charles Sumner to the United States Senate, which first took place in the latter year. He was largely instrumental in the build- ing of the Charles River Railroad, which was opened through the town in 1861. He died July 10, 1865.

AARON PRESCOTT .- Attorney of Supreme Judi- cial Court, 1820. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1814. He practised law for many years in the county, and had an office in Randolph. He died in 1851.

JONATHAN H. COBB .- Counsellor of Supreme Judicial Court, 1824. He was born in Sharon, July 8, 1799, and was graduated at Harvard College in 1817. He began the study of law in the office of William Dunbar, of Canton, where he remained until Oct. 9, 1818, when he went to Charleston, S. C., and opened a classical school. In 1819 he returned to Massachusetts, and completed his legal studies in the office of Jabez Chickering, of Dedham. He was editor of the Village Register, in Dedham, and had an office in Boston. In 1831 he was active in the formation of the Dedham Institution for Sav- ings, of which he was the first treasurer. In 1831 the Legislature requested the Governor to procure the compilation of a manual on the mulberry-tree and the manufacture of silk, which was prepared by Mr. Cobb, of which several editions were published, and afterwards republished by order of Congress. In 1837 he established a manufactory of sewing-silk in Dedham, of which he was superintendent and principal proprietor, but which was burned in 1845. In 1833 he was appointed register of probate for Norfolk County, which office he held until 1879. He was for thirty consecutive years the town clerk of Dedham, declining re-election in 1875. He was deacon of the First Church for more than forty years, and for the same period an active magistrate of the county. He died March 12, 1882.

GEORGE C. WILDE .- Attorney of the Supreme Judicial Court, October term, 1826. He was the son of the Hon. Samuel S. Wilde, a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. His professional life was a brief one, but he practised law in Wrentham until about the year 1835, when he was appointed Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court in the county of Suffolk, an office which he held for about forty years.

IRA CLEVELAND .- Attorney of the Court of Common Pleas, Dec. 5, 1827.

HORACE MANN .- Attorney of Court of Common Pleas, 1826; Supreme Judicial Court, 1827. He was the son of Thomas and Mary Mann, and was

born in Franklin, May 4, 1796. He was graduated at Brown University in 1819. He entered the office of Josiah J. Fiske, at Wrentham, but soon after became a tutor at Brown University for two years. He then studied a year in the law-school at Litchfield, Conn., and completed his studies with James Richardson, at Dedham. He opened an office in Dedham, being the same lately occupied by Jabez Chickering, on the corner of Court and Church Streets. He was a Representative to the General Court from Dedham for four years, 1827- 31. In 1833 he removed to Boston, and entered into a partnership with Edward G. Loring. He was a member of the Senate from Suffolk four years, and in 1837 was president of that body. He was chair- man of the committee for the revision of the statutes of 1836, and prepared the marginal notes and cita- tions of cases, as editor with Theron Metcalf. He was appointed secretary of the Board of Education upon its organization, June 29, 1837. Of the great distinction and influence to which he attained in this office it is unnecessary to speak in this notice, or of his career as a member of Congress from 1848-52, which though brief was memorable. He died while president of Antioch College, Ohio, Aug. 2, 1859.

The brief period of practice in his profession at Dedham is naturally overlooked by reason of his having become so widely known as an educator and philanthropist, yet he was remembered by his con- temporaries who knew him as a lawyer as a man of brilliant parts, and was a successful advocate. He was fond of controversy, and wielded an extremely caustic pen. He had many admirers in Norfolk County, and years after his removal from Dedham, when he was an independent candidate for Congress, the popularity and influence gained while at the bar, aided materially in his election.

JOHN JONES CLARKE .- Counsellor of the Supreme Judicial Court, Nov. 5, 1830. He was born Feb. 24, 1803; was the son of Rev. Pitt Clarke (H. C. 1790), of Norton, Mass., and Rebecca (Jones) Clarke, of Hopkinton. He was at school at the Nor- ton Academy, and was fitted for college partly at the Framingham and Andover Academies and partly by his father, who was, for his time, a distinguished scholar and teacher.

He entered Harvard College in 1819, with a class in which, at the end of the course of four years, a famous rebellion occurred, on account of which a large majority of the class were refused their degrees, and it was not until 1841 that Mr. Clarke received from the college the degrees of A.B. and A.M.

Upon leaving college, Mr. Clarke pursued the

HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

study of law in the office of Hon. Laban Wheaton, of Norton, for a year ; he then' entered the office of James Richardson, Esq., at Dedham, where he re- mained two years ; he was then, in 1826, admitted to the bar of the Court of Common Pleas, and after- wards, in 1830, to the bar of the Supreme Court.

In 1826, Mr. Clarke commenced the practice of law in Roxbury, where he has ever since resided, having an office on Washington Street, nearly oppo- site Eustis. Here his business gradually increased, and in 1830 he married Miss Rebecca Cordis Has- well, a daughter of Capt. Robert Haswell, formerly in the navy, and afterwards in the mercantile service, and step-daughter of John Lemist, Esq., a prominent citizen of Roxbury, a union which has been emi- nently happy, the fiftieth anniversary of which was celebrated by a large circle of their friends in 1880.

Mr. Clarke early became one of the leaders of the bar of Norfolk County, and he was frequently re- tained in important cases in Plymouth and Bristol Counties.

On the acceptance in 1848 of a seat on the bench by Hon. George T. Bigelow, Mr. Clarke formed a partnership with his brother, Mr. Manlius S. Clarke, who had to that time been Judge Bigelow's partner. The principal office of the firm was in Boston, but Mr. Clarke retained his office in Roxbury for some years after this, and continued to attend to business . in Norfolk County, in addition to attending to a por- tion of the large business of the firm of J. J. & M. S. Clarke in Suffolk County and elsewhere.

This partnership was ended by the death of Mr. M. S. Clarke in 1853, and for a few months Mr. Elias Merwin was associated with Mr. Clarke, and aided in winding up the unfinished business of the old firm. In April, 1854, he took as a partner Mr. Lemuel Shaw, Jr., who had been a student in his office. This partnership continued until 1863, when in consequence of the increasing personal responsi- bilities of both partners it was dissolved, and from the same cause Mr. Clark gradually withdrew from active practice.

Mr. Clarke early joined the First Church in Rox- bury, and has been an active and useful member of that church and congregation.

He was a member of the House of Representatives for Roxbury in 1836 and 1837, and of the Senate for Norfolk County in 1853, and when Roxbury was incorporated in 1846 he was chosen its first mayor, and rendered efficient service in organizing the new city government, but declined to hold the office for more than one year.

Mr. Clarke was at one time president of the Win-

throp Bank of Roxbury, was one of the founders and the first president of the Roxbury Gas Company, and in the early history of the Metropolitan Railroad was one of its directors, and in every relation in life has always commanded the respect and confidence of his fellow-citizens.

Mr. Clarke was in early life a zealous member of the Whig party, but since the dissolution of that party he has not taken an active part in politics, though always doing his duty as a good citizen in voting at every election. He has always taken a great interest in the suppression of intemperance, and has for many years been a total abstainer from all intoxicating agents.

Mr. Clarke continues to occupy an office at 27 State Street, Boston, where he has been in practice since 1848, but of late years his time has been de- voted principally to the care of estates of which he is trustee.

JOHN MARK GOURGAS .- Attorney of the Supreme Judicial Court, November term, 1830. He was grad- uated at Harvard College in 1824. He practised law in this county during his life, having an office in Quincy. He died in 1862, and was never married. He was a careful and accurate lawyer.

NATHANIEL FOSTER SAFFORD Was born in Salem in 1815, and was graduated at Dartmouth College in 1835. He studied law with Asahel Huntington, of Salem, where he was admitted to the bar. He began practice in Dorchester in 1839, where he acted as magistrate, and also as a master in chancery in the period of jurisdiction under the insolvent laws. He was Representative to the General Court from Dor- chester in 1850 and 1851. In 1853 he was nomi- nated by the Whig party to succeed Samuel P. Loude, who had declined further service as county commis- sioner, but there having been no choice by the people after two trials, he was appointed by Governor Clifford to fill the vacancy. He was elected chairman of the board, a position which he continued to fill by succes- sive re-elections until Jan. 1, 1868. He was again elected county commissioner in 1872, and from Jan. 1, 1873, to January, 1879, he was chairman of the board. He now resides in Milton, but has an office in Boston.

WILLIAM S. MORTON practised law at Quincy for many years, but he was not admitted in this county. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1831, and died at Quincy in 1871. He was a trial justice for some years.

NAAMAN L. WHITE .- He was graduated at Har- vard College in 1835. He has had an office in Brain- tree for many years, where he now resides. He was

Same Warner

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active practice.

ASAPH CHURCHILL, JR .- Attorney and counsellor, September term, Court of Common Pleas, 1834. He was born in Milton, April 20, 1814. He was grad- uated at Harvard College in 1831; studied law with his father at Milton, and in the Harvard Law-School. He was admitted to the bar before he was twenty-one years of age, and had an office at the Lower Mills, in Dorchester, and Milton until 1857, when he took an office in Boston, where he has since continued to prac- tise, having had for his partner, from 1857 to 1870, Edward L. Pierce, and since that time his son, Joseph R. Churchill. He was a Senator from Norfolk County in 1857 ; was a director and president of the Dorchester and Milton Bank, afterwards the Blue Hill Bank, for more than twenty-five years. He was also president of the Dorchester Mutual Fire Insurance Company. He has resided in Dorchester, and has had a large practice, to which at this date (1883) he is fully devoted.

ABNER L. CUSHING .- He was born in Dorchester, and was the son of Abel Cushing. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1838. He edited the Boston Republic a few years, and studied law with his father. He began practice in Boston, and subsequently re- moved to Randolph, where he had an extensive prac- tice in this county for many years. In 1863 he removed to New York, where he is now engaged in the practice of law.

SAMUEL WARNER .- Attorney and counsellor, Court of Common Pleas, September term, 1841. He was born in Providence, R. I., and was fitted for college at Day's Academy, in Wrentham. He was gradu- ated at Brown University in 1838. He began prac- tice in Wrentham, where he has continued to reside and practise law ever since. He was Representative to the General Court from Wrentham in 1843, 1848, and 1882. He was Senator from the county in 1851, and a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1853. He was land agent of the commonwealth from 1851 to 1854, and has been a trial justice since 1858.

admitted to the bar elsewhere, and is not now in . Brown University, but did not complete his college course. He studied law in the Dane Law-School at FISHER A. KINGSBURY was a native of Norfolk County, and practised many years at Weymouth. He died many years ago. He acted as magistrate in Wey- mouth. He was admitted as counsellor of the Supreme Judicial Court in 1831. Cambridge, and in the office of Ezra Wilkinson at Dedham. He had an office in Dedham for a short time after his admission to the bar. He afterwards removed to Fort Wayne, Ind., and thence to Mil- waukee, Wis., where he continued to practise law. He was afterwards the general agent of the ÆEtna Insurance Company of Hartford at Springfield, Ill., and was subsequently the vice-president of the Put- nam Insurance Company of Hartford. He died in Palmyra, N. Y., Nov. 28, 1871.

JOHN KING .- Attorney and counsellor, April term, Court of Common Pleas, 1843. He is the son of John King, of Randolph, and was graduated at Har- vard College in 1839, and studied law with Ezra Wilkinson. He had an office in Dedham for a time, but he afterwards removed to the West, and now 1 resides in Iowa.

HON. WILLIAM GASTON .- The subject of this sketch traces his ancestry to a family of France who were zealous adherents of the Huguenot cause. The direct ancestor of his branch of the family, driven from his native land, sought refuge in Scotland, from which place, between the years 1662 and 1668, his sons, being in great peril because of their firm ad- herence to the Protestant faith, fled to the north of Ireland for safety.

The forefather of Governor Gaston, with a younger brother, arrived in this country about 1730. He located in Connecticut, where his family remained for more than a century. Not only has Governor Gaston honored the family name and connected his name inseparably with the history of the old com- monwealth, but North Carolina as well claims among her distinguished citizens one of the same name and family, William Gaston, an eminent jurist and states- man, judge of the Supreme Court of the State.

Governor William Gaston, son of Alexander and Keziah Arnold Gaston, was born in Killingley, Conn., Oct. 3, 1820. His father was a well-known mer- chant of Connecticut, and a man of sterling integrity and strong force of character. The family removed from Killingley to Boston in 1838. Mr. Gaston was prepared for college at Brooklyn and Plainfield Acad- emies, and at the early age of fifteen entered Brown University, where he maintained a high rank in his class and was graduated with honor in 1840. Hav- ing decided upon the legal profession as a life-study, he entered the office of Judge Hilliard, of Roxbury, where he remained for a time, and continued his legal

ELLIS WORTHINGTON .- Attorney and counsellor, September term, Court of Common Pleas, 1842. He was born in Dedham, Feb. 11, 1816, and was the son of Erastus Worthington. He was fitted for | studies with C. P. and B. R. Curtis, of Boston, with college at Day's Academy, in Wrentham, and entered whom he remained until his admission to the bar in

HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

1844. In 1846 he opened a law-office in Roxbury, and very soon took a leading position at the bar. He continued his practice here with marked success until 1865, when, in company with Hawley Jewell and Walbridge A. Field, he formed a copartnership in Boston, under the firm-name of Jewell, Gaston & Field, which continued until Mr. Gaston's elevation to the gubernatorial chair of Massachusetts in 1874.

Governor Gaston is a Democrat in politics, and, although not an active politician, he has had many positions of trust and responsibility virtually thrust upon him, and his career in many respects has been as remarkable as it was brilliant. In 1853 and 1854 he was elected to the House of Representatives as a Whig, and in 1856 was re-elected by a fusion of Whigs and Democrats against the Know-Nothing candidate. He was elected to the Senate in 1868, although his district was strongly Republican. He was also for a long time city solicitor of Roxbury, and mayor of Roxbury, 1861-62. In 1870 he was his party's candidate for Congress, but was defeated. In 1870, after the annexation of Roxbury to Boston, he was elected mayor of the city, and re-elected in 1871. In this year a spirited contest ensued for the mayoralty, Mr. Gaston being the Democratic candidate and Hon. Henry L. Pierce the nominee of the Re- publicans. At first it was announced that Mr. Gas- ton was elected, but upon a recount of votes Mr. Pierce was declared mayor by a plurality of seventy- nine votes. Mr. Gaston's popularity and strength was significantly shown in this contest, for only one month previously Gen. Grant had carried the city by five thousand five hundred majority.

In the fall of 1874 Mr. Gaston recceived the nom- ination for Governor, and entered the canvass in op- position to Hon. Thomas Talbot, at that time acting Governor of the commonwealth, and one of the strongest men in the Republican party. The result astonished and electrified the country. Mr. Gaston was elected by seven thousand plurality. He entered upon his high office with a determination to discharge its duties solely for the benefit of the commonwealth as a whole, and nobly was this duty performed. He brought to the gubernatorial chair not only a superior legal mind, but that executive ability which a success- ful administration of the office demands. Not a bitter partisan, he was guided by a conservative policy which was commended alike by both parties. He declined the nomination for Governor in 1876, al- though a large majority of the convention was in his favor, and he also declined in the same year the con- gressional nomination from the Fourth District.

In 1875 he received the degree of LL.D. from

Harvard, and also from his Alma Mater, Brown Uni- versity. In 1852 he united in marriage with Louisa A., daughter of Laban S. Beecher, of Roxbury. Scholarly, with social attainments of a high charac- ter, and a legal mind that has placed him among the leaders of the Suffolk bar, he is justly esteemed as one of Boston's most honored citizens.

SAMUEL BRADLEY NOYES, eldest son of Samuel and Elizabeth (Morrill) Noyes, was born in Dedham, April 9, 1817. On his father's side he is of the Noyes family of Choulderton, Wiltshire, England, and bis ancestor, Nicholas Noyes, with his brother, James, a clergyman, came to New England in 1634, to New- bury in 1635, five years after Winthrop's settlement of Boston. On his mother's side his grandfather, Eliakim Morrill, was a highly respectable citizen of Dedham, and his great-grandfather, the Rev. Isaac Morrill (H. U. 1737), was a solemn Puritan divine, who died (1793) in office as pastor at Wilmington. It will thus be perceived that Mr. Noyes is of a very old New England stock, and of that Puritan clerical strain which Dr. Holmes so felicitously calls " the Brahmin caste" in society. Mr. Noyes himself has always been interested in church and parochial affairs, and has enjoyed a wide acquaintance with the clergy of his faith. He attended the public schools, and for one year a private school in Dedham under the tuition of Hon. Francis W. Bird (B. U. 1832). He entered Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1836, and remained there till the summer of 1840, when he left to join his class at Cambridge (H. U. 1844). Of his student life at Phillips Academy Mr. Noyes has always re- tained a most tender regard; and in 1875 the Phil- omathean Society in the academy, in which Mr. Noyes played a prominent part during his student days at Andover, held its semi-centennial anniversary and he was chosen the orator of the day, his address being subsequently printed, together with the other literary exercises of the day, in an illustrated pamphlet of permanent interest and value. On leaving college he studied law with the Hon. Isaac Davis, of Worcester (B. U. 1822), afterwards with Hon. Ezra Wilkinson, of Dedham (B. U. 1824), and Hon. Ellis Ames, of Canton (B. U. 1830). He was admitted to the Norfolk County bar, April, 1847, and began practice in his adopted town of Canton, where he has resided ever since, with the exception of two years which he spent in Florida. He married, in January, 1850, Miss Georgiana, daughter of James and Abigail (Gookin) Beaumont. Her father came to New England from Derby, England, in 1800, and built the first mill erected for the manufacture of cotton by machinery in Massachusetts in 1802. Her mother

Samme Brych

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was the daughter of Edmund Gookin, a lineal de- scendant from Daniel Gookin, who in 1650 was magistrate of all the Indians in Massachusetts, and who accompanied the Apostle John Eliot in his visits to the various tribes, and whose history of the Indians is published in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. They have four children and two grandchildren.

His public offices have been justice of the peace (1849), trial justice (1850), commissioner of insol- vency (1853), special county commissioner for Nor- folk County (1856), trial justice again (1857). From 1849 to 1871 he was a member of the school com- mittee of Canton, superintendent of public schools, 1857-58, 1861-64, 1867-71, and he has always been an interested worker in the cause of popular education even beyond the borders of his own town.

In 1864 he was appointed by Hon. William Pitt Fessenden, Secretary of the United States Treasury Department, a special agent of the department, and acting collector of customs at Fernandina, Florida. In this post, on the frontiers of a rebellion not then sub- dued, he had a rare chance to study the undercurrents of the great war among the Southern people, and his private journal would no doubt show quaint and sug- gestive incidents of the popular temper and conduct in Florida and Southern Georgia at that exciting time. After two years' service here he returned North, leav- ing behind him many warm friends, whose memory he cherishes as among the most valued treasures of his busy life. On his return. to Massachusetts, in May, 1867, he was appointed by Hon. Salmon P. Chase, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, a register in bankruptcy for the Second Congressional District in Massachusetts, an office which he still holds, although the acts of Congress of 1878 so far modified its duties that Mr. Noyes has had leisure to return to some extent to the practice of his favorite profession of the law. As a lawyer Mr. Noyes has naturally been interested in politics,-State and national,-giving much time and attention to questions of public policy and administration, and since its organization has been a consistent and useful member of the Republican party.

In politics results are generally reached through carefully-arranged and judiciously-executed details, projected and planned away from public observation and in a wise adjustment of means to ends, in the absence of which political movements are like the moves in a game of chance. As an adviser as to what to do and how to do it, and a worker in the execution of well-laid plans, he has lent a ready and serviceable hand to party movements and party successes.

Mr. Noyes has always maintained an extensive acquaintance with political leaders, hence his influ- ence has been much sought and not withheld when it could be used in the furtherance of justice or the promotion of the right, etc., in helping to shape party action and legislation, so to secure these desir- able ends.

In private life Mr. Noyes is known to be a man of taste and culture, a reliable friend, and never more so than when friendship is needed, a genial com- panion and an accomplished entertainer in private hospitalities. The classics of his school and college life have been to him life-long companions and friends. He has from his youth devoted himself to music with an absorbing enthusiasm. While in college he was leader of the college choir and of the Harvard Glee Club.

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 6

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534