Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume I, Part 60

Author: Davis, William T. (William Thomas), 1822-1907
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: [Boston, Mass.] : Boston History Co.
Number of Pages: 1160

USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 60

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HORACE GRAVES graduated at Harvard in 1864 and at the Harvard Law School in 1867. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar January 28, 1867.

BENJAMIN DANIEL GREENE graduated at Harvard in 1812, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in September, 1815. He died in 1862.

LUCIAN BISBEE THOMPSON, Second son of Oakes and Livonia (Banks) Thompson, was born in Hartford, Oxford county, Me., January 29, 1838. He is a direct de- scendant from John Thompson, who came to Plymouth, Mass., on or before 1623, and married Mary, daughter of Francis Cooke, one of the Mayflower passengers. He was educated at Hebron Academy and at Tufts College, where he graduated in 1863, taking high rank in his class, though absent a part of the course engaged in teaching. He assisted in raising a company in the War of 1861, and in 1864 was commissioned for the recruiting service in Georgia and South Carolina, with head quarters at Hilton Head. He was at Savannah and Charleston with Sherman's army, and assisted General Anderson in raising the old flag at Fort Sumter, April 14, 1865. On his return north at the close of the war, he studied law for a year in the office of his brother, Roscoe H. Thompson, of Canton, Me., and was admitted to the Oxford county bar in 1866. He then entered the Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1867, and after a further study in the office of Lothrop & Bishop, of Boston, was admitted to the Suffolk bar October 2, 1868. In 1867 he was appointed bankruptcy clerk in the clerk's office of the United States District Court, where he remained seven years, and where he had an opportunity which he improved of be- coming familiar with the decisions of the United States courts. On the resignation in 1869 of Charles M. Ellis, the register in bankruptcy, Mr. Thompson's name was favorably presented to Chief Justice Chase for the vacancy by a large number of the leading members of the Suffolk bar, but the appointment was given to General

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F. W. Palfry, whose military service, and wounds, from which he was still suffering, entitled him to prior consideration. Mr. Thompson retired from the office in 1874 and entered on the practice of law, establishing in a short time a large and success- ful business, the greater part of which was connected with the United States courts. He was admitted to practice in the United States Supreme Court in 1881. An interesting case, in which Mr. Thompson acted as counsel, was that of Helen J. Ward, who in 1879 was charged with the murder of her mother at their rooms in Hamilton Place, Boston. Mrs. Ward was shot in the head with a bullet from a pis- tol which had some time before been given to the daughter by a clerk at the Parker House whom she was engaged to marry. A wound was also inflicted on the temple by some implement not discovered by the government, which fractured the skull from ear to ear. Mr. Thompson prosecuted the defence with untiring energy and skill, and against strong circumstantial evidence secured the discharge of the accused on the plea of somnambulism, although no other instance of a like hallucination had appeared in the girl's history. A successful defence on such a ground was the more remarkable because the defence and verdict in the case of Albert J. Tirrell, the only other case in Massachusetts in which, in a capital case, such a plea had been suc- cessfully made, had provoked almost universal condemnation. In 1886, and again in 1889, with health impaired by professional work, Mr. Thompson traveled exten- sively in Europe, and since his last return has devoted himself chiefly to office prac- tice in the department of mercantile law. An independent in politics, he has never sought nor held political office. He has never married, but for several years has maintained for himself and his sisters a home in the Dorchester District of Boston.

THOMAS PARKER PROCTOR, son of Daniel and Elizabeth (Parker) Proctor, was born in Chelmsford, Mass., June 27, 1831. His mother, Elizabeth Parker, was a native of New Boston, N. H., while on his father's side, the Proctor family during seven gen- erations had lived on the same homestead in South Chelmsford. His great-grand- father was an officer in the War of the Revolution, and his father was an officer in the War of 1812. Mr. Proctor attended school in Chelmsford under the instruction of Emerson C. Whitney, a good teacher and a valued friend, and after fitting for college at Phillips Andover Academy, entered Yale College in 1850. While pursuing his college course his old teacher and friend, then living in Middleton, N Y., in charge of the classical department of the State Academy, was stricken with his last sickness, and he left college to look after the comfort of his latter days. On the death of Mr. Whitney his position was offered to Mr. Proctor, and its duties were performed by him for a single year. In the mean time he kept up his college studies, and in 1853 entered the junior class at Harvard, and graduated with a part at com- mencement in 1854. In the year of his graduation he entered the law office of Charles Tracey in New York city, and was admitted to the bar in Brooklyn on examination in the latter part of 1854. In 1855 he entered the Harvard Law School, engaged a part of the time while there in assisting Professor Parsons in the preparation of notes to his law books, and graduated in 1856. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar May 6, 1856, and soon after became associated with Harvey Jewell, with whom he re- mained two years. He then practiced alone until 1862, when he formed a connection with William Wirt Warren, which continued until the death of Mr. Warren in 1880. From 1880 to 1884 he was the senior member of the law firm of Proctor, Brigham &

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Tappan, and after again practicing alone four years became the senior member of the firm of Proctor, Tappan & Warren, which still continues. Mr. Warren is the son of his earlier partner. Mr. Proctor has always devoted himself assiduously to his professional duties, and with the exception of the office of trial justice at Jamaica Plain for one year, has never accepted a public position. He has, however, always felt a deep interest in social progress and political reform, and devoted to their cause such time and effort as could be spared from his professional pursuits. The practice of Mr. Proctor covers a considerable range of legal causes, including cases in bank- ruptcy, admiralty, patents, questions on the construction of wills and statutes, and actions relating to real estate. He is a trustee of many estates, some of which are large, and has been largely employed as counsel in commercial and corporation matters. His preparation of cases is marked by thoroughness, and their management in court by ingenuity and skill. His reputation is that of a conscientious lawyer, devoted to the cause of his client whose interests he seeks, not necessarily by a trial, but by a settlement if possible on fair and equitable terms. He married, May 27, 1857, Lucena Sarah, daughter of Amos and Mary Spalding, of Billerica, Mass., who died May 1, 1868, leaving three children, George B., Sarah L. and Mary Bessie; the oldest, George B., dying March 3, 1869. He married again, April 28, 1870, Sarah (Miller) Street, of Boston, who died December 16, 1879; and a third time, June 7, 1883, Abby, daughter of Southworth and Abby Shurtleff Shaw, of Boston. His residence is at Jamaica Plain.

BAXTER E. PERRY, son of Rev. Baxter and Lydia (Gray) Perry, was born in Lyme, Grafton county, N. H., April 26, 1826. He fitted for college at Thetford, Vt., and graduated at Middlebury College. He studied law with Ranney & Morse, of Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar April 19, 1855. He married at Hanover, N. H., August 26, 1851, Charlotte S., daughter of John and Nancy (Stickney) Hough. Mr. Perry is descended on his father's side from a family which settled at an early date in Watertown, Mass., and moved to Worcester in 1751. On his mother's side he is descended from a family of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, forming a part of the immi- gration of those people into Massachusetts in 1718. For some years before entering the profession of law he was engaged in teaching as principal of the Chester Acad- emy in Vermont. His business is a general one and its pursuit, which he has made the main work of his life, has been successful. With the exception of the office of trustee of Middlebury College, and a membership at one time of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, he has permitted no offers of place or power to lure him from the paths of professional life. A few collegiate and other public addresses which he has been induced to deliver, display a literary taste and culture which bear proof that his studies and thought are not, however, confined within the limits of the field of law.

DANIEL WEBSTER, Son of Ebenezer and Abigail (Eastman) Webster, was born in Salisbury, now Franklin, N. H., January 18, 1782, and received his early education at Phillips Exeter Academy and under the tuition of Rev. Samuel Wood, of Bos- cawen, N. H. He graduated at Dartmouth in 1801, and studied law in the office of Thomas W. Thompson, of Salisbury, and in that of Christopher Gore in Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in January, 1805. He began practice in Boscowen, but in 1807 removed to Portsmouth, where he remained until June, 1816, when he es-

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tablished himself in Boston. He married in June, 1808, Grace Fletcher, of Hopkin- ton, N. H., who died January 21, 1828. In December, 1829, he married Caroline Le Roy, of New York, and died in Marshfield, October 24, 1852.

The above meagre sketch of his life is sufficient for this record. A memoir of a man of whom so much has been written by other hands would be superfluous here, and such a one as the limits of this work would permit would be unsatisfactory. It is the design of the writer to speak of him as a private citizen, not a statesman, as a neighbor, not a lawyer, as a friend irrespective of his position in the nation, as the grandest example of human development which the institutions of America have produced. For this pur- pose he is permitted to use the sketch prepared by him for the pages of the Plymouth County History. The life of Mr. Webster is yet to be written. Exact justice has never yet been awarded him. Those who worshipped him as their idol have pre- sented one side of his character, forgetful or neglectful of the other, while those who have inherited the prejudices of his contemporary opponents have dwelt on his faults and overlooked those grand traits in his character, which in the nature of man must necessarily be balanced by those which are less commendable and attractive. His character was like his native State, showing on its surface the mountain peaks and the lower lands of the valley. The mountain cannot exist without the intervale, nor can extraordinary intellectual powers be found in man without corresponding frailties to preserve the equipoise of a general level.

In 1825 Mr. Webster was a member of the Nineteenth Congress, having taken his seat for the first time the year before. He had already won a national repu- tation. He had then delivered at Plymouth the anniversary oration on the 22d of December, 1820; he had made his great argument in Gibbon against Ogden, in which, in accordance with his views, the court decided that the grant by the State of New York to the assignees of Robert Fulton of the the right to navigate by steam the rivers, harbors and bays of the State was unconstitutional; and he had delivered his memorable oration at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill monument. In the summer of that year, as had been his custom for several years, he went with his wife and son, Fletcher, to Sandwich, Mass., to enjoy a season of fishing for trout. Before leaving Boston, in a conversation with Mr. Samuel K. Williams, Mr. Williams asked him why he did not go to Marshfield in- stead of Sandwich. The description of Marshfield impressed him favorably, and he determined to visit it on his return. After he had taken all the fish he wanted, he bade his old friend, Johnny Trout, the fisherman and guide at Scusset, good-bye, and he and his wife in an old fashioned chaise, with a trunk lashed to the axle, and his son, Fletcher, mounted on a pony, started for home, with the determination to stop at Marshfield on the way. Mr. Williams had given Mr. Webster directions to see Capt. John Thomas, a respectable and intelligent Marshfield farmer, who would doubtless be glad to entertain him, and give him all the information he might need about that part of the country. Captain Thomas was then the owner and occupant of a comfortable home and a farm of about one hundred and sixty acres. This farm was all that was left of his ancestral estate, the remainder, while in possession of his father, Nathaniel Ray Thomas, a conspicuous loyalist, having been confiscated when he left New England in 1776, and went with the British army, after the evacuation of Boston, to Nova Scotia. This portion was saved to his wife as her right in the

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estate of her husband. Captain Thomas was the only child who did not accompany his father, and consequently the farm came finally into his hands. Up to the time of the confiscation the estate had remained intact, from the time of the original grant by the Plymouth Colony to the ancestor, William Thomas, on the 7th of January, 1640-41. William Thomas was one of the merchants of London who furnished the Pilgrims with capital and vessels for their emigration to New England, and were partners in the enterprise. He was one of several of the merchants who finally cast their fortunes with the Pilgrims, and he came in the Marye and Ann from Yarmouth, England, in 1637, and settled in Marshfield. Adjoining the lands of Mr. Thomas were those of Edward Winslow, bounded out to him by the Colony Court on the 4th of December, 1637. These two estates, including about twenty-seven hundred acres, had at the time of Mr. Webster's visit nearly passed out of the Thomas and Winslow families, except the acres held by Capt. John Thomas, a lineal descendant from the ancestor, William Thomas, and to the farm-house standing on these acres, on a fine autumn day, Mr. Webster wended his way. After leaving Duxbury Mr. Webster took the wrong road, and instead of approaching the farm from the south, he made a detour and fortunately approached it from the north. From the various points of view on this northerly road, the farm with its sunny meadows and placid lake and comfortable dwelling, nestling as if for protection under the spreading branches of the since famous elm, showed to the best advantage, and Mrs. Webster, with a woman's eye for beauty, was enthusiastic in her admiration of its attractive charms. As the chaise with its hanging trunk, followed by the pony with Fletcher on its back, was driven down the avenue, Captain Thomas with his son, Charles Henry, now living in Boston, was sitting on the piazza. The hospitable farmer stepped out to meet his visitor, whoever he might be, as he alighted from his chaise, and it is not difficult to imagine the feelings with which this modest, hard-working, home-loving Marshfield man received the outstretched hand of his guest. "This is Captain Thomas?" said Mr. Webster. "Yes," said the farmer. " I am Mr. Webster," continued the visitor. "I thought so," said the captain, and this was the introduction to a friendship which continued to strengthen until broken by death, and which was as full of devotion and reverence and love as ever a friendship between man and man could boast. It is no feeble answer to the cavils of the critic, to the censures of ex- ploring biographers, who scratch and scrape the burnished gold in search of a baser metal beneath, to the unjust and unjudicial strictures on the character of Mr. Webster, that he inspired the affection and esteem of an honest, clear-lieaded, intelligent, pure-minded man like Captain Thomas, who for years had measured and weighed and sounded the man, the very fibres of whose heart he had touched, and whose innermost life had been spread out daily before him. The result of the inter- view was an invitation to stay over the night, and for two or three days Mr. Webster with his wife and son remained as welcome guests at the farm. During those two or three days he became acquainted with Seth Peterson and Porter Wright, the two men who were afterwards his right and left hand in his Marshfield life. He shot birds on the marshes, he fished for cod in the bay, he was satisfied that at last he had found the right place for his vacation, recreation and rest. From that time forth until he finally bought the estate, the recurrence of dog days found him annually a guest at the Marshfield farm. The interest which he felt in Captain Thomas and his wife ex-

John Wettugive

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BIOGRAPHICAL REGISTER.

tended to his sons, Charles Henry and Nathaniel Ray. Charles was the elder son and his father's helpmate on the farm. Nathaniel Ray, or Ray, as he was always called, was the younger son, and still attending school under the care of Rev. George Putnam, then a teacher in one of the public schools in Duxbury. The attractive de- portment of Ray, whose future course of life was not yet marked out, especially inter- ested him, and it was not long before he drew him to himself and directed his career. When Mr. Webster was about to start for Boston at the close of his visit, Ray hap- pened to be holding by the halter a handsome horse belonging to his father which attracted Mr. Webster's attention. "Captain Thomas," said he, " I like that halter, I would like to buy it." The request was no sooner made than acceded to, and the boy was told to take the halter off and place it in the chaise. "Oh, but I want the halter with the head in it," said Mr. Webster. And thus the horse was bought, and the purchaser started for Boston with it tied behind the chaise, forming, with Fletcher and the pony in the rear, a procession which the statesmen of to-day would hesitate to exhibit on the highway and in the streets of the city. On his return from a subse- quent visit, he said to Ray, "Get into my chaise and go to Boston." The father was willing, and the son went with a glad heart, going to Mr. Webster's house in Summer street and remaining there during his stay in Boston. On the next day he was told to take Mr. Webster's satchel and accompany him to the Supreme Court, where he was to argue an important flowage case, in which parties in Lowell were the plaintiffs and defendants. For the first time in a great city, this country lad was launched at once from the quiet shades of a farm, not to the novel sights and sounds of the streets of Boston, as many a country lad has been before and since, but into the great arena in which the foremost men of the day, Webster and Mason, were the contestants. Through the livelong day, this boy of sixteen, with brown hands and tanned face, sat within the bar, listening and wondering if this were the world out- side of which he had been born, and for the duties of which the schools whose irk- some requirements he had been compelled to meet, were the means of preparation. From that time Ray Thomas was practically the ward of Mr. Webster, and Mr. Web- ster was his guardian. He was placed at first in the store of Trott & Bumstead, wholesale grocers in South Market street, and after the Stephen White murder trial in Salem, in which Mr. Webster acted as an assistant to the government attorney, in the counting-room of Stephen White, the nephew of the murdered man and the father of the lady who afterwards became the wife of Mr. Fletcher Webster. But he remained in neither of these places long; Mr. Webster wanted him nearer to himself, and in the end he became his confidential secretary, the manager of his western lands, and his other self in everything outside of his professional duties, except his affairs at Marshfield, which were mainly conducted under the faithful and assiduous care of Mr. Charles Henry Thomas, the elder son of Captain Thomas. The early death of Ray Thomas was a sad affliction to Mr. Webster, and one from which he did not easily rally. Though his business manager left behind him a trunk filled with important papers, an early examination of which was essential to the successful issue of enterprises in which Mr. Webster was engaged, six months elapsed before he could so far compose himself as to be able to examine its contents, surrounded as they were with associations of his loved young friend. This was one of the illustra- tions of that carelessness in money affairs of which the thrifty critic complains. But it illustrated something more, something as much higher than book-keeping and

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thrift, as a tender, generous heart is nobler than one whose grief by the bedside of a dying parent is assuaged by the thought of a coming legacy. After the annual visits of Mr. Webster to Marshfield for several years, Captain Thomas became somewhat embarrassed pecuniarily, and made a proposition to him to buy his farm. Mr. Web- ster objected at first on the ground of poverty, but at last consented to buy with the express understanding, suggested and demanded by himself, that Captain Thomas and his wife should live in the house and occupy the farm, and as long as they lived treat both as their own. That higher regard for money, which would have com- mended him to the approval of meaner natures, or in other words, a sordid spirit and a harder heart, would have driven a closer bargain than this. He never believed, however, that man, more especially such a man as he knew himself to be, with transcendent and ever outreaching powers, was made to count gold and cut coupons and accumulate money. Judged by such a standard, the Indian with his wigwam filled with wampum was deserving of as much respect and honor as the millionaire with his trunks packed with what we only in a higher state of barbarism are pleased to call wealth. Money to him was the means, not the end of life. The goal to be reached was the highest development of man's powers, the richest and rankest growth of affections, the supremacy of man over the accidental and incidental circumstances which attach themselves to his worldly and bodily existence and comfort. This was the spirit which animated Mr. Webster in the arrangement made with Captain Thomas, and during five or six years the cap- tain and his wife remained occupants of their old homstead, and after that the widow divided her time between the Marshfield farm and the residence of her son, Charles, in Duxbury. At this residence Mr. Webster would also occasionally stay during short visits to the Old Colony while his own house was undergoing repairs. It was situated on a commanding eminence overlooking Plymouth Bay, the Gurnet Light, Barnstable Bay, and the north shore as far as Minot's Ledge. The view from the chamber which he there occupied he said was the most beautiful he had ever seen, and there at half-past three on a summer morning he might have been seen sitting in an arm chair by the window, waiting for what he considered the most impressive spectacle in life, the break of day. He wondered that so many persons in the world should neglect the opportunity of witnessing that daily but sublime exhibition.

The earliest recorded deed of Marshfield land to Mr. Webster was from Peleg Thomas Ford of thirty-seven acres, for a consideration of $825, and dated September ?, 1831, though the agreement for the purchase of the Thomas farm was made before that date. The deed of the latter was for one hundred and sixty and one-half acres for a consideration of $3,650, and dated April 23, 1832. This deed included the house and outbuildings, and tillage, pasturing, mowing and wood-land and fresh and salt meadows on both sides of the main road. This deed was followed by others from Charles Henry Thomas of two and three-quarters acres and five rods for $130, July 6, 1832; from the same of one hundred and sixteen and one-quarter acres and thirty rods for $2,200, April 16, 1833; from Benjamin Lewis of four and three-quarters acres and twenty rods for $60.40, December 30, 1833; from Ebenezer Taylor of one acre and nine rods for $42.25, March 3, 1834; from Charles P. Wright of two acres and thirty- two rods for $110.62, March 3, 1834; from Asa Hewitt of seven acres and twenty-one rods for $300, May 17, 1834; from Henry Soule of eighty-five and one-half acres for $500, October 20, 1834; from Charles Henry Thomas of three hundred and seventy-

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three acres for $10,000, August 16, 1836; from Elizabeth Whitman of eleven acres for $319, August 16, 1836; from Charles P. Wright two deeds of twelve and a quarter acres for $652.31, August 20 and 22, 1836; from Asa Hewitt of eighty-six rods for $80.62, August 22, 1836; from Charles Henry Thomas of eight and three-quarters acres for $300, December 26, 1838; from Eleazer Harlow of seventy acres for $1,800, November 1, 1838; from Charles Henry Thomas of eighty-seven acres for $4,000, March 19, 1840; from Eleazer Harlow of seventy-two acres for $2,600. April 1, 1840; from Charles Baker of seventeen acres and seventy-six rods for $350, July 8, 1844; from Ebenezer Taylor of twenty-seven and three-quarters acres and thirty-two rods for $1,084, July 8, 1844; from Elizabeth Whitman of one acre for $40, September 2, 1845; from Gershom B. Weston of sixty-four acres and fifty-three rods for $1,600, April 9, 1851 ; from the Duxbury Manufacturing Company of factory privilege, dam, etc., for $3,000, April 12, 1851, and from Joseph P. Cushman of fifty-two and a quar- ter acres for $1,000, September 30, 1852. All of these purchases covered about twelve hundred acres, costing the sum of $34,644.20 as the original outlay. It is estimated by those who had an opportunity to know, that above the annual receipts from the farm the annual expenditure for at least fifteen years was $3,500, making the farm at Mr. Webster's death represent a cost, without interest, including the purchase money, of $87,144.20. It had been the ambition of Mr. Webster to gather into his hands the entire tract of twenty-seven hundred acres granted by the Colony Court to William Thomas and Edward Winslow, and it is probable that if he had lived a few years longer he would have approximately accomplished his object.

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Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume I, Part 60

Author: Davis, William T. (William Thomas), 1822-1907 Publication date: 1894 Publisher: [Boston, Mass.] : Boston History Co. Number of Pages: 1160

Author: Davis, William T. (William Thomas), 1822-1907
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: [Boston, Mass.] : Boston History Co.
Number of Pages: 1160