USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 55
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James Murphy
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born in Dorchester, Mass. Her mother was Sarah Page, a descendant of Nathaniel Page, who settled in Bedford, Mass., in 1638, and whose original residence, known as the " Page Place," is still owned by the family. Ensign Page of this family carried the colors at the battles of Lexington and Concord, and Captain Page com- manded a company at Bunker Hill. Mrs. Ruhamah Lane, the great-aunt of Mr. Morse, and the mother of Jonathan A. Lane, of Boston, who died some years since at the age of ninety-five, used to tell the story of her mother's recollection of the sharp rap made upon her father's door in the early morning of April 19, 1775, by Paul Revere on his famous midnight ride. An old flag dating back of the Revolu- tion which was carried in the earlier wars, called " The Flag of the Three Counties," is now in the possession of the Bedford Public Library. It contains a mailed arm and hand with a sword, and is the coat of arms of the present Commonwealth of Massachusetts, except that the hand is set sidewise on the banner instead of perpen- dicularly. This banner was in the Page house for a century, and had originally a gilt fringe, which Ruhamah Page took when a young lady for the trimming of a dress. Mrs. Morse was a college graduate and the recipient of a degree from a medical university. The parents of Mr. Morse emigrated in 1838 to the Ohio Valley, where he was born, and for nine years his father was the postmaster of Lodi. Twice each week the mail was carried to Pomeroy, a distance of seventeen miles over rough country roads, and transportation was done in the saddle. It was the habit of young Morse to start at three o'clock in the morning, on horseback with the mail for Pom- eroy, and bring the return mail, attending school at nine o'clock, after riding thirty- four miles in the saddle. In 1855, at the age of ten, he was placed under the charge of President Finney, at the preparatory school of Oberlin College, but at the end of two years he came to Massachusetts with his parents and attended school at Haver- hill and Andover, and entered Chester Academy in New Hampshire, where he remained until the spring of 1861. On the 11th of May in that year, in his six- teenth year, he enlisted as a private in the Second Massachusetts Regiment of In- fantry, the first regiment from Massachusetts in the field, for three years' service. At the end of his term he re-enlisted in the field for the war, serving continuously in this regiment from May, 1861, to July, 1865, and of the original thousand men who left Massachusetts in 1861, he was one of less than one hundred who returned with the regiment in 1865. The regiment during the war received seventeen hundred recruits, making in all twenty-seven hundred men on its list, and of this number only about four hundred returned with it at the end of the war. The Second Regiment covered the retreat of the army of General Banks in the Shenandoah campaign of 1862, and those who remained alive of the rear guard on skirmish line in this retreat were captured, including Mr. Morse. After confinement four months at Belle Isle and in other prisons, he was exchanged and returned immediately to service. With the exception of the campaign carried on during his absence as a prisoner, he was in every campaign and battle participated in by his regiment during the war. He was promoted to sergeant and first sergeant, and at the close of the war was first lieu- tenant commanding Company I, at the age of nineteen years. . This company, commanded at first by Adin Ballou Underwood, afterwards General Underwood, distinguished itself in defence of a bridge against Jackson's army in the Banks retreat. Mr. Morse was the only original member of Company H of the Second Regiment who ever received a commission, although the youngest in the regiment
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by two years. The regiment served in all the important campaigns of the Army of the Potomac until September, 1863. At Cedar Mountain a third of the regiment fell together with more than half of its officers; at Antietam and Chancellorsville it suffered severely, and at Gettysburg half of the regiment fell in less than ten minutes of contest in carrying the Confederate works at the base of Culp's Hill, on the right near Spangler's Spring, over which the regiment charged. The officers of this regiment erected the first regimental monument on the battlefield of Gettysburg, and when the monument was proposed it was suggested that a boulder, if one could be found between the lines, would be an appropriate base for a monument in the form of a section of a parapet cut from granite. Mr. Morse remembered such a boulder,
and although he saw it but for a moment, he could almost describe its angles, for as the regiment advanced to assault the Confederate works, part of his company went on one side and part the other, and as he looked across at his comrades on the other side of the rock, he saw them cut down almost to a man by a volley. On an exam- ination of the field the rock was found, and the monument was set on it as suggested. In September, 1863, the Second Regiment was sent south to join General Hooker, and participated in the battle of Lookout Mountain. At the fall of Atlanta it was the first to enter the city and act as the provost guard during the occupation. The regiment had charge of the destruction of the public buildings of Atlanta previous to the evacuation, and was the last to leave the city on the " March to the Sea." In recent years Mr. Morse has been counsel for the Thomson-Houston Company, and in his repeated visits to Atlanta in that capacity he has been welcomed as one of those who have given that city an opportunity to expand and flourish as it could never have done under the old regime. At the close of the war, Mr. Morse attended Phillips Andover Academy, and in 1866 entered the C. S. D. Dartmouth College, in the junior year, where he remained two years. In his senior year, feeling unable to spend time and money in finishing his course, he left college and studied law first with Charles G. Stevens, of Clinton, Mass., and afterwards with Chandler, Shattuck & Thayer, of Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in June, 1869. Dartmouth College has since conferred upon him the degrees of Master of Science and Master of Arts. He opened offices in Boston and Ashland, in which latter place he fixed temporarily his residence. He established a weekly paper in Ashland called the Ashland Advertiser, and in connection with it a printing office carried on by him- self and William Walker, under the firm name of Morse & Walker, which, when it became well grounded and profitable, he sold out to devote his whole time to his in- creasing professional business, with a residence in Hyde Park. For the first few years the most remunerative part of his practice was connected with bankruptcy cases. He took up the Boston, Hartford & Erie litigation ; later was counsel for N. C. Munson, the railroad contractor, whose failure involved millions of dollars, and afterwards had charge of the affairs of F. Shaw & Bros., which, in connection with the affairs of other houses which followed them into bankruptcy, involved ten mill- ions of dollars. In 1887, with health somewhat impaired by the labors attending these matters, he went with his family to Europe, visiting before his return Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and attending lectures at the School of Law in Paris. With re- stored health he resumed practice, and has been largely engaged in corporation work. He has organized, among other things, the several street railways now oper- ating in Newton, Waltham and Watertown, of which he was the president during
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BIOGRAPHICAL REGISTER.
their legal stages. He is also one of the special counsel of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, which has brought him into contact with electric railway matters of the country and especially in the South. He married Clara R. Boit, of Newton, where he now has his residence.
HENRY TALLMAN DAVIS, son of John Watson and Susan Hayden (Tallman) Davis, was born in Boston in 1823, and graduated at Harvard in 1844. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar November 29, 1847, and settled in Boston. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the First Massachusetts Cavalry, October 31, 1861 ; first lieuten- ant, May 1, 1862; captain in the Tenth United States Cavalry, and brevet major in 1866. He died in New York, April 10, 1869.
EDWIN MORTON, son of Edward and Betsey T. (Harlow) Morton, was born in Plym- outh, Mass., in 1832, and graduated at Harvard in 1855. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar June 27, 1867. He has been living some years in Europe.
MICAN DYER, jr., son of Micah Dyer, was born in Boston, September 27, 1829, and was educated at the Eliot School in Boston, where he received the Franklin Medal, at the Wilbraham Academy and the Tilton Seminary. He graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1850, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar on the 13th of May in that year. He established himself in Boston, and his entire devotion to his profession, together with the personal interest he took in the cause of his clients, advanced him rapidly in his professional career. He was chosen a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1855 and served two years-the youngest member of the House. In one of these sessions he plead successfully the cause of aged citizens of Boston, to postpone the stoppage of burials in the city grave yards until such a time as might permit them to be laid by the side of the partners of their lives. He became a member of the Mercantile Library Association in 1849, is a life member of the Ameri- can Bible Society, and secretary of the Massachusetts Temperance Alliance and of the New England Conference Missionary Society. He was for several years chair- man of the committee of the Eliot School District, and during that time it became his duty to pursue a bold and determined course in the suppression of a rebellion against the rules of the school. Four hundred Catholic boys refused to obey the rule which required the recitation of the Lord's prayer and the decalogue. He at once, when called on to aid the masters, declared that the rules of the school must be obeyed as long as they existed, and if they were wrong the responsibility rested on those who made them, and not on the teachers, whose only duty was to enforce them. The ex- pulsion of the whole number of four hundred, by his direction, was a proceeding which excited a feeling of bitterness against him for a time, but was finally aeknowl- edged to have been wholly justifiable, and the only method of restoring a spirit of obedience in the school. The scholars all returned with the promise of themselves and their parents of no further disturbance. Mr. Dyer was the first president of the Female Medical College, at a time when " women doctors," as they were called, were almost universally frowned upon by the medical faculty. In the early days of the . college the diplomas of the graduates bore the title of LL.B., instead of M.D., in consequence of the determined opposition to the institution. He was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the United States in 1861. As executor or trus- tee he has had the management of many large estates, and the promptness and fidelity of his administrations have secured the entire confidence of interested parties.
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He is a member of the Bostonian Society, taking great interest in their proceedings, and is an associate member of Post 58 of the Grand Army and participates enthu- siastically in their camp fires. He is also an honorary member of the Ladies' Aid Association, of the Massachusetts Soldiers' Home, and of the Boston Woman's Char- ity Club, being a member of the Advisory Board of the latter in the care of the Gifford Fund donation to its hospital. Being also high in the rank of Free Masonry, and president of the Eliot School Association and of the Old School Boys' Association, it will be seen that he has abundant opportunities for relief from the routine of pro- fessional work. He married in May, 1851, Julia Knowlton, of Manchester, N. H., a lady well known in Boston as an active and able organizer of charities, which the well remunerated labors of her husband in his profession enable both husband and wife to generously dispense.
GEORGE W. COOLEY came to Boston from Bangor, Me. He was admitted to the Maine bar in 1835, and to the Suffolk bar April 13, 1843. He was appointed attorney for Suffolk county as the successor of George P. Sanger, September 5, 1854, and served until February 26, 1861, when Joseph H. Bradley was appointed. Mr. Brad- ley, however, declined, and on the 21st of March Mr. Sanger was again appointed.
DANIEL SARGENT CURTIS, son of Thomas B. Curtis, was born in Boston, and grad- uated at Harvard in 1846. He graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1848, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar August 1, 1849.
JOHN CLARK ADAMS was born in New York State, and graduated at Harvard in 1839. He graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1843, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar September 20, 1844. While studying law he was a tutor in rhetoric and elocution at Harvard. He died in New York in 1873.
WILSON JARVIS WELCH graduated at Harvard in 1839, and at the Harvard Law School in 1842. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in January, 1842. He died in 1885.
JOHN DAVIS WASHBURN, son of John Marshall and Harriet Webster (Kimball) Wash- burn, was born in Boston, March 27, 1823. When five years old his parents removed to Lancaster, Mass., where he received his early education. He graduated at Har- vard in 1853, and at the Harvard Law School in 1856, having previously studied in the offices of Emory Washburn and George F. Hoar in Worcester. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar May 27, 1856, and established himself in Worcester in partnership with H. C. Rice. In 1866 he succeeded Alexander H. Bullock, on his accession to the governor's chair, as general agent and attorney of insurance companies, and also served on Governor Bullock's staff from that year until 1869. He was a represent- ative from 1876 to 1879, and senator in 1884, and has represented the United States as minister to Switzerland. He married in 1860 Mary F., daughter of Charles L. Putnam.
WINSLOW WARREN, son of Dr. Winslow and Margaret (Bartlett) Warren, was born in Plymouth, Mass., March 20, 1838, and graduated at Harvard in 1858. He is de- seended from Richard Warren, of the Mayflower, and is a great-grandson of James Warren, the successor of Dr. Joseph Warren as president of the Provincial Congress. He studied law with his uncle, Sidney Bartlett, in Boston, and at the Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1861, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar March 12
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in that year. He married, January 3, 1867, Mary Lincoln, daughter of Spencer and Sarah (Lincoln) Tinkham, of Boston, and lives in Dedham, with his office in Boston. As attorney of the Boston and Providence Railroad Company he had charge of the settlement of the claims arising from the Buzzey bridge accident, and out of a million dollars paid, only fifty thousand dollars was paid on suits brought against the com- pany.
IRA D. VAN DUZEE was admitted to the Suffolk bar July 21, 1857. He married Jane Sturtevant, daughter of Atwood Lewis and Jane (Harlow) Drew, of Plymouth, and is in active practice in Boston.
FRANCIS TUKEY graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1843, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar March 6, 1844. He was at one time city marshal of Boston.
ALANSON TUCKER was born in Boston and graduated at Harvard in 1832. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in October, 1835, but abandoned the law for business pursuits. He died in 1881.
NATHANIEL RUSSELL STURGIS, son of Nathaniel Sturgis, was born in Boston and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1827.
CHARLES F. SHIMMIN, son of William Shimmin, was born in Boston in 1822, and graduated at Harvard in 1842. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar and died July 5, 1891. He married Mary Harriot, daughter of Daniel Parkman, of Boston.
BENJAMIN BUSSEY, son of Benjamin Bussey, was born in Boston about 1783, and graduated at Harvard in 1803. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in January, 1807, and died in 1808. His father, who died in 1842, leaving a widow, one grandchild, and several great-grandchildren, provided by his will that on the death of the last survivor his estate, estimated at $350,000, should pass to Harvard University, one- half to endow a farm school, and the other half to be devoted to the support of the law and divinity schools.
ROBERT I. BURBANK was admitted to the Suffolk bar in October, 1846. He has been many years justice of the Municipal Court for the South Boston District.
JOHN HOLMES, son of Rev. Dr. Abiel and Sarah (Wendell) Holmes, was born in Cambridge, and graduated at Harvard in 1832. He graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1839. He has been prevented by illness from continuous work in his pro- fession, but his name is found in the list of Boston lawyers in 1853. With a humor quite equal to that of his brother, the autocrat of the Breakfast Table, he has kept it rather for home consumption than public display, and only his friends, among whom James Russell Lowell was one of his most devoted, have had the privilege of its en- joyment.
WILLIAM BURLEY HOWES was born in Salem, and graduated at Harvard in 1838. He graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1840, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar December 27, 1841. He died in 1878.
BERNARD ROLKER Was born in Germany, and graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1833. He was many years tutor in German in Harvard, but was admitted to the Suffolk bar April 19, 1841, and not long after established himself in practice in New York. He received the degree of Master of Arts at Harvard in 1848.
WILLIAM SIGOURNEY OTIS, son of William Church and Margaret (Sigourney) Otis, was born at Nahant, Mass., July 3, 1857, and graduated at Harvard in 1878. He
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HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR.
studied law at the Harvard Law School and in Boston in the office of Ropes, Grey & Loring and others, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1882. He married Pauline, daughter of James E. and Adelaide Root, of Boston. He died April 20, 1893.
FRANK T. MORTON, son of Edwin and Betsey T. (Harlow) Morton, was born in Plymouth, and was admitted to the bar in Plymouth, June 19, 1861. He established himself in Boston, and is there in active practice.
SAMUEL FOSTER MECLEARY Was born in Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in July, 1807, and was many years clerk of the city of Boston. He married Maria Lynde Walter.
WILLIAM KAPSUR, a German by birth, was admitted to the Suffolk bar May 15, 1846. He married Sally Gorham, daughter of Salisbury and Sally (Goodwin) Jackson, of Plymouth, and has been dead many years.
BELA FARWELL JACOBS, brother of Justin Allen Jacobs, mentioned in this register, graduated at Harvard in 1839, and at the Harvard Law School in 1844, and was ad- mitted to the Suffolk bar November 23, 1846.
ALFRED RODMAN, son of Alfred and Anna (Preble) Rodman, and grandson of Will- iam R. Rodman, of New Bedford, graduated at Harvard in 1870. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in November, 1879, and is now the actuary of the Bay State Trust Company in Boston.
EDWARD WILLIAM HOOPER, son of Dr. Robert William and Ellen (Sturgis) Hooper, was born in Boston, and graduated at Harvard in 1859, and at the Harvard Law School in 1861. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar June 30, 1868, and has been some years treasurer of Harvard College.
GEORGE BLAKE was born in Hardwick, Mass., in 1769, and graduated at Harvard in 1789. He studied law with William Caldwell, of Rutland, Mass., and James Sulli- van, of Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1792. He began practice in Newburyport in partnership with Dudley Atkins Tyng. After remaining in New- buryport one year he removed to Boston, and in 1801 was appointed United States attorney, holding office until 1829. He was a representative in 1801-1829-30-31-32- 35-36-37-38, and senator in 1833-34 '39. He died in Boston, October 6, 1841. .
FREEMAN HUNT, the son of Elizabeth and Thompson (Parmenter) Hunt, was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., September 4, 1855. His father, well known in connection with Hunts Merchants' Magazine, was born in Quincy, Mass., March 21, 1804, and was the son of Nathan and Mary (Turner) Hunt. He was descended from Enoch Hunt, who emigrated to America from Berks county, England, and died in Weymouth, Mass., about 1652. Until he was twelve years of age Freeman Hunt, the father of the subject of this sketch, attended the public schools, and never after that time enjoyed the advantages of any other education than that secured by his own efforts. At that age he entered as a boy the office of the Boston Evening Gazette, and was soon after apprenticed to the trade of a printer. Having secured his trade he went to Springfield, where he was employed for a time as com- positor, and then returned to Boston, where he obtained a position in the same capacity in the office of the Boston Traveller. While in this office he was the anonymous author of articles which the editor of that paper accepted and published. In 1828, at the age of twenty-four, he formed a partnership with John Putnam, un-
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der the firm name of Putnam & Hunt, printers and publishers, having a place of busi- ness where the Globe Theatre now stands. Previous to the formation of this part- nership he published the Juvenile Miscellany, edited by Lydia Maria Child, which readers, as old as the writer, will remember as one of the joys of their childhood, the first number of which was issued in September, 1826. In January, 1828, the new firm began to publish the Ladies' Magasine, edited by Sarah J. Hale, and soon after the early tales of Samuel G. Goodrich. In 1831, having removed to New York, he there started a paper called the Traveller, but again returned to Boston and be- came the managing director of the "Boston Bewick Company," an association of artists, printers and bookbinders. In September, 1834, he projected the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, and in 1835 engaged in New York in the publication of "A Comprehensive Atlas," edited by Thomas Gamaliel Bradford. In 1837 he projected the Merchants' Magazine, with which his name has been so prominently associated, and the first number appeared in July, 1839. In 1852 he received the degree of Master of Arts from Harvard. He married first, May 6, 1829, Lucia Weld Blake, of Boston; second, January 2, 1831, Laura Phinney, of Boston, and third in 1853, Elizabeth Thompson, daughter of Hon. William Parmen- ter, of East Cambridge, and died in Brooklyn, N. Y., March 2, 1858. After the death of his father in 1858, the subject of this sketch was carried by his mother to her father's home in Cambridge, and he received his early education at the public schools in that town. He graduated at Harvard in 1877, and in 1881 received the degree of LL.B. from the Harvard Law School. He further pursued his law studies in the offices of George S. Hale and William E. Parmenter, of Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in January, 1882. He was first associated in practice with H. Eugene Bolles, and afterwards with William C. Tarbell, who died December 6, 1886. He is at present associated with Charles J. McIntire, city solicitor of Cambridge, and has acted for that city in matters connected with the new Harvard Bridge. He is engaged in general practice with a success commensurate with his earnest efforts to establish himself honorably and prominently in his profession. In Cambridge, where he has his home, he has served four years on the School Committee, and one year in the Common Council, and in 1890 was a member of the State Senate. He married, June 8, 1887, Abby Brooks, daughter of Sumner J. and Jane (Bullard) Brooks, of Cambridge.
EDWARD BANGS Was born in Hardwick, Mass., in 1756, and graduated at Harvard in 1977. His name appears on the roll of the Supreme Court admissions in Suffolk county before 1807. It is probable that he was admitted in 1780. He settled in Wor- cester. He died in 1818.
BENJAMIN ADAMS was born in Mendon in 1764, and graduated at Brown University in 1788. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar before 1807, and settled in Uxbridge. He died in 1837.
JOSEPH ALLEN was born in Lancaster in 1773, and graduated at Harvard in 1792. He was admitted to the bar in 1795, and praticed in Worcester county.
FRANCIS LINUS CHILDS was born in Millbury in 1849, and graduated at Brown Uni- versity in 1870. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in December, 1873, and settled in Worcester.
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HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR.
HENRY J. CLARKE Was born in Southbridge, Mass., and graduated at the Boston University in 1875. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in June, 1875, and settled in Webster, Mass.
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