USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 62
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TRISTRAM DALTON, son of Michael Dalton, was born in Newburyport, May 28, 1738, and graduated at Harvard in 1755. He studied law in Salem and settled in Newburport. Ile was a representative of that town and speaker of the House of Rep- resentatives from 1783 to 1785, a member of the State Senate and a United States senator from 1789 to 1791. He removed to Washington, and finally to Boston, where he was appointed, in 1815, surveyor of the ports of Boston and Charlestown. He married a daughter of Robert Hooper, of Marblehead, and died in Boston, May 30, 1817.
PATRICK R. GUINEY was born in Parkstown, Tipperary, Ireland, January 15, 1835, and came to Portland, Me., in 1842. He was educated in the Portland public schools and at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, and came to Boston in 1855, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1856. In April, 1861, he en- listed as private ; was made captain June 11, 1861 ; major October 24, 1861 ; lieutenant- colonel July 28, 1862; colonel July 26, 1863, and in 1864 commanded the Second Brigade, First Division, Fifth Corps. He was severely wounded May 5, 1864, and brevetted brigadier-general March 13, 1865. He was assistant district attorney for Suffolk county from 1866 to 1870, and register of probate and insolvency from 1869 to his death, which occurred in Boston, March 21, 1877.
JOHN E. FITZGERALD was born in Dingle, Kerry county, Ireland, November 17, 1844, and attended the school of the Christian Brothers at Dublin. At the age of nineteen he came to America in the steamer Bohemia, which was lost with one hundred lives at Cape Elizabeth near Portland. He landed in a boat February 24, 1864, one of three surviving passengers. He taught school in Salem eighteen months, and studied law with William D. Northend, of that city. In January, 1866, he came to Boston and studied in the office of George W. Searle, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar October 5, 1868. He was a member of the Common Council from 1872 to 1875; a representative in 1870-71-73-74; master in chancery from 1873 to 1878; a member of the School Committee from 1873 to 1876; an alderman in 1877, and fire commissioner from 1879 to 1886. In 1886 he was appointed collector of in- ternal revenue, and in 1887 delivered the Boston Fourth of July oration.
CYRUS COBB, twin brother of Darius Cobb, the well-known painter, is the son of Rev. Sylvanus Cobb and Eunice Hale (Waite) Cobb, and was born in Malden, August 6, 1834. He was educated at the public schools, one of which was the Lyman School in East Boston. While his brother adopted the profession of a painter, Cyrus pre- pared himself for the law, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in June, 1873. He had previously devoted himself to art and finally resumed the profession which was more congenial to him than law, and is now a sculptor whose works are well known and much admired. His colossal head of "The Celtic Bard," his bas-relief of " Prospero and Miranda," and his bust of General Butler, have placed him in the front ranks of his profession. His design for the soldier's monument in Cambridge was selected from forty or more submitted to the late N. J. Bradlee, the noted architect, as in- comparably the best. He married Emma Lillie, while his twin brother, Darius, married her sister, Laura M. Lillie.
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BIOGRAPHICAL REGISTER.
JOSIAH WILLARD, son of Samuel Willard, the president of Harvard College from 1701 to 1707, was born in Boston, May 1, 1681, and graduated at Harvard in 1698. He was secretary of Massachusetts from 1717 to his death, which occurred in Boston, December 6, 1756. He succeeded Samuel Sewall as judge of probate of Suffolk county December 19, 1728, and was followed by Edward Hutchinson, February 12, 1745-6. In 1734 he was a member of the Council.
THOMAS GREAVES, of Graves, was born in Charleston in 1638, and graduated at Harvard in 1656, acting for a time as tutor after graduation. He was a deputy from 1676 to 1678, and judge of the Inferior Court when Andros was deposed. He mar- ried first, May 16, 1677, Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Hagborne, of Roxbury, and widow of Dr. John Chickering, and second, May 15, 1682, Sarah, daughter of John Stedman, of Cambridge, and widow of Dr. John Alcock. He was the father of Thomas Greaves, judge of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1737. He died in 1697.
SIMON GREENLEAF, though perhaps not strictly belonging to the Suffolk bar, was so closely associated with it as to deserve a place in this register. He was descended from Edward Greenleaf, who settled in Newbury, Mass., in 1635, and was the son of Moses Greenleaf, and his wife, Lydia, daughter of Rev. Jonathan Parsons, of New- buryport. He was born in Newburyport, December 5, 1783, and attended the schools of that town, including the noted school taught by Michael Walsh. At the age of eighteen years he removed with his father to New Gloucester, Me., and there entered the law office of Ezekiel Whitman, where he remained three years in the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in Cumberland county, and began practice in 1806 in the town of Standish. Remaining there a short time, he moved to the town of Gray, where he practiced until 1818, when he removed to Portland. In 1820 he was appointed reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of Maine, and his reports are contained in nine volumes. In 1832 he resigned as reporter, and in 1833 was appointed Royall professor of law at the Harvard Law School, to succeed John Hooker Ashmun, who died in that year. After the death of Joseph Story, which occurred in 1845, he was appointed his successor as Dane professor of law at the same institu- tion, but resigned after two years' service, continuing, however, as professor emer- itus until his death, which occurred October 6, 1853. In 1821 he published " A Full Collection of Cases Overruled, Denied, Doubted or Limited in their Application taken from American and English Reports;" and in 1842 a " Treatise on Law of Evidence." At a later date he published an " Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Admitted in Courts of Law," and an edition of " Cruse's Digest." In 1806 he married Hannah, daughter of Captain Ezra Kingman, of East Bridgewater, and had fifteen children, eleven of whom died in infancy. He received the degree of A. M. from Bowdoin in 1817, and that of LL. D. from Harvard in 1834, from Amherst in 1845, and Alabama College in 1852.
BENTLY W. WARREN, son of William Wirt Warren, was born in Boston in 1864, and was educated at the public schools, including the Boston Latin School, from which he graduated in 1885. He studied law at the Boston University Law School, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1887. He was a representative in 1891 and 1892, and one of the leaders among the Democrats of the Legislature. He is asso- ciated in business with Thomas P. Proctor and Eugene Tappan, under the firm name of Proctor, Tappan & Warren.
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HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR.
JOSEPH STORY, as a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, holding court in Boston, should be included in this register, though never a member of the Suf- folk bar. He was born in Marblehead, September 18, 1779, and was the son of Dr. Elisha Story, a native of Boston, and a surgeon in the Revolution. He graduated at Harvard in 1798, and received the degree of LL.D. from Brown in 1815, from Har- vard in 1821, and from Dartmouth in 1824. He studied law with Samuel Sewall, afterwards chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, and with Samuel Putnam, afterwards an associate justice of the same court, and was admitted to the Essex bar in July, 1801. He began practice in Salem and was a representative from that town in 1805-06-07-09-12, serving the last year as speaker of the House. He was a mem- ber of Congress in 1808, and on the 18th of November, 1811, he was appointed by Madison associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to fill the va- cancy caused by the death of William Cushing, of Scituate. In 1820 he was a dele- gate to the Constitutional Convention, and in 1828 Nathan Dane, who in founding the Law School at Cambridge had reserved the right to appoint its professors, ap- pointed him Dane professor of law and associated with him John Hooker Ashmun aş Royall professor of law. In 1829 he removed from Salem to Cambridge, where he continued to reside until his death, which occurred at Cambridge, September 10, 1845. He was as distinguished for his industry as for his legal learning, and it is diffi- cult to realize that with the labors of the court and the law school pressing upon him, he could have found time and vigor sufficient for his accomplishments in the literature of law. A list of his publications may be interesting to the reader. His first work was a poem entitled the " Power of Solitude," published in Salem in 1804. In 1805, a " Selection of Pleadings in Civil Actions with Annotations," issued from the press; in 1828, the "Public and General Statutes," passed by Congress from 1789 to 1827, and in 1836 and 1845 supplements to these dates edited by him; in 1832, " Commentaries on the Law of Bailments with Illustrations from the Civil and For- eign Law;" in 1833, "Commentaries on the Constitution;" in 1834, "Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws, Foreign and Domestic, in Regard to Contracts, Rights and Remedies, and especially in regard to Marriages, Divorces, Wills, Successions and Judgments;" in 1835 and 1836, "Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence as admin- istered in England and America;" in 1838, "Commentaries on Equity Pleadings and the Incidents Thereto, according to the Practice of the Courts of Equity in Eng- land and America;" in 1839, "Commentaries on the Law of Agency as a Branch of Commercial and Maritime Jurisprudence, with occasional illustrations from the Civil and Foreign Law;" in 1843, "Commentaries on the Law of Partnership as a Branch of Commercial and Maritime Jurisprudence, with occasional illustrations from the Civil and Foreign Law;" in 1843, "Commentaries on the Law of Bills of Ex- change, Foreign and Inland, as Administered in England and America, with occa- sional illustrations from the Commercial Law of the Nations of Continental Europe ;" in 1845, "Commentaries on the Law of Promissory Notes." His decisions in the First Circuit from 1812 to 1815 are in "Gallison's Reports;" from 1816 to 1830, in "Mason's Reports;" from 1830 to 1839 in "Sumner's Reports," and from 1839 to 1845 in "Story's Reports." Among his other publications were a "Eulogy on Wash- ington," 1800; a "Eulogy on Captain James Lawrence and Lieutenant Ludlow," 1813; a "Sketch of Samuel Dexter," 1816; "Charges to Grand Juries in Boston and Providence," 1819; "Charge to the Grand Jury at Portland," 1820; "Address before
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BIOGRAPHICAL REGISTER.
the Suffolk Bar," 1821; "Discourse before the Phi Beta Society," 1826; "Discourse before the Essex Historical Society," 1828; "Address at his own Inauguration as Pro- fessor," 1829; "Address at the Dedication of Mt. Auburn," 1831; "Address at the Funeral Services of John Hooker Ashmun," 1833; " Eulogy on John Marshall," 1835; "Lectures on the Science of Law," 1838; " Address before the Harvard Alumni,', 1842; and his "Charge to the Grand Jury of Rhode Island on Treason," 1845. Be- sides the above, his essays and articles in reviews and magazines were too numerous to mention, and he left at his death three unprinted mannscript volumes entitled "Digest of Law Supplementary to Comyn's," which are deposited in the Harvard College Library.
ARTHUR PORTER PETERSON, son of Daniel Porter and Jernsha M. (Clark) Peterson, was born in New Bedford in 1858. His father, born in Plymouth, was descended from Joseph Peterson, of Duxbury, who settled in that town about 1660. His mother was descended directly from Thomas Clark, who came to Plymonth in the ship Ann in 1623, and indirectly from Rev. John Lothrop, who settled in Scituate in 1634. Ile attended the public schools of New Bedford until he was twelve years of age when he went with his father to the Sandwich Islands. After remaining there seven years he returned to the United States and entered Ann Arbor College. After leaving col- lege he spent a year in Hawaii, and coming to Plymouth, Mass., studied law in the office of Arthur Lord in that town. He was admitted to the Plymouth bar November 14, 1881, and moving to Boston became a member of the Suffolk bar. In 1884 he returned to Hawaii, where his father and two brothers and a sister were living, and was not long after appointed attorney-general of the kingdom. After leaving that office he devoted himself to the practice of law, and was again appointed attorney- general a short time before the recent deposition of the queen, and was in office at the time of the revolution. He married, November 21, 1883, Nettie, daughter of James and Sarah Jane Mitchell Brown, of Weymouth, Mass.
ALEXANDER YOUNG, son of Rev. Dr. Alexander Young, was born in Boston May 19, 1836, and was educated in the Boston schools. He graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1862, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar, October 14, of that year. He was an associate editor of the Boston Globe for a time soon after the establishment of that journal in 1872. At a later time he was connected with the editorial depart- ment of the Boston Post. In 1884 he published a " History of the Netherlands," which was republished in England in 1886. He died in Boston in 1891.
WILLIAM WINTER Was born in Gloucester, Mass., July 15, 1836, and graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1857, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar September 28, 1858. He moved to New York where he has won distinction as a journalist and lit- erary and dramatic critic. He has been connected with the New York Tribune since 1865, and has written and delivered numerous occasional poems.
EDGAR O. ACHORN Was admitted to the Plymouth bar, June 16, 1884, and has prac- ticed in Boston.
FREDERICK HUNT ALLEN, son of Samuel C. Allen, was born in New Salem, Mass., and graduated at the University of Vermont in 1823. After studying for the bar he was admitted to the bar, and after a short practice in Athol, settlod in Bangor and acquired distinction among the lawyers of Maine. In 1849 he removed to Boston
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HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR.
and was made professor at the Harvard Law School, holding the position one year. He was a member of the Suffolk bar as late as 1853, and has been dead many years.
CONSTANTINE C. ESTY was born in Newton, Mass., in 1824, and graduated at Yale in 1845. He was admitted to the Middlesex bar in October, 1847, and has been a member of the Suffolk bar. He is now settled in Framingham.
THOMAS B. FROTHINGHAM, son of Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham, was born in Boston and appears in the roll of Boston attorneys in 1860. He married Anna, daughter of Rev. William Parsons Lunt, of Quincy, and has been dead some years.
JAMES GRAHAM was one of the very few educated lawyers in Boston during the period of the Massachusetts Colony. He came to Massachusetts from New York and was appointed by Andros attorney-general, June 20, 1688. He was imprisoned with Andros after the news of the accession of William and Mary reached Boston and was sent with him to England in February, 1689. Nothing is known of his subsequent career.
GEORGE WASHBURN SMALLEY was born in Franklin, Mass., June 2, 1833, and grad- uated at Yale in 1853. He studied law in the office of George F. Hoar, of Worcester, and at the Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in September, 1856. He practiced law in Boston until 1861 when he became connected with the New York Tribune as a war correspondent. He was with the Union Army at Antietam and distinguished himself by the early and brilliant account of that engage- ment which was published in the Tribune. In 1863 he was made associate editor of that journal and in 1866 was its correspondent during the Prussian and Austrian War. In 1866 he organized in London a bureau for the Tribune which, owing to his efforts, has been maintained with success. During the French and German War, in 1870, he again made his mark as the agent of a plan of news-gathering which astonished the slower journalistic managers of England. He is now in London super- intending the affairs of his bureau and corresponding regularly with the Tribune.
LYSANDER SPOONER was born in Athol, Mass., January 19, 1808, and studied law in Worcester. Where he was admitted to the bar is unknown to the writer, but his name appears on the roll of Suffolk attorneys in 1861. He was chiefly distinguished for his successful efforts to have the rates of postage reduced. In 1844 the rate of letter postage was graduated by the distance a letter was carried. For instance, the postage from Boston to New York was twelve and a half cents and from Boston to Washington twenty-five cents. Contrary to law he established an independent service between Boston and New York at the uniform rate of five cents. He was compelled to abandon the business by the prosecutions which the government heaped upon him, but he demonstrated the possibility of supporting the post-office department with a lower rate of interest, and in consequence of his efforts a reduction in rates began which has been kept up to the present time. He died in Boston May 14, 1887.
PENN TOWNSEND, son of William Townsend, was born in Boston in 1651, and was a judge on the bench of the Suffolk Inferior Court of Common Pleas from 1702 to 1715 and chief justice from 1718 to 1727. He was a representative in 1686 and at the time of the Revolution in 1688 he was one of the Committee of Safety in whose hands the government was temporarily entrusted. He was again a representative from 1689
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BIOGRAPHICAL REGISTER.
to 1698, and speaker of the House in 1690 and 1697. He was also one of the com- mittee in 1690 authorized to issue, in behalf of the colony, bills of credit. He died August 21, 1727.
SAMUEL RIPLEY TOWNSEND graduated at Harvard in 1829, and the next year became the teacher of the High School in Plymouth, where he remained two or three years. After leaving Plymouth he engaged some years in business in Boston and finally studied law and was admitted to the Suffolk bar January 5, 1850. He afterwards practiced law in Taunton, and was for a time treasurer of Bristol county. He has been dead a few years.
PATRICK HENRY BURNE was born in Lavagh, county of Roscommon, Ireland, Feb- ruary 5, 1844, and came to Boston when five years of age. He was educated at the New York public schools and at the University of New York. He was first a marble worker, and later a traveling salesman of a Boston woolen house. He studied law, and was for a time a member of a collection agency in Boston and afterwards in New York. He died at Jamaica, L. I., July 31, 1881.
RICHARD OLNEY, son of Wilson Olney, was born in Oxford, Mass., and graduated at Brown University in 1856. His mother was a sister of Peter Butler, of Boston. He studied law with Judge Benjamin F. Thomas, and graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1858. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar April 26, 1859, and became asso- ciated in business with Judge Thomas, who had that year resigned his seat on the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court, and whose daughter he married. His business was largely connected with railroads, and he was counsel for the Boston and Maine, the Atchison and Topeka, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy corporations. While this volume is in press in March, 1893, he is the recently appointed attorney- general of the United States, in the cabinet of President Cleveland.
PETER SARGEANT was a Boston man, and one of the committee who assumed the reins of government at the deposition of Andros in 1689. He was one of the Council under the provincial charter and chosen annually until 1703, when his election was negatived by Governor Dudley. He was appointed judge of the Suffolk Inferior Court of Common Pleas, March 3, 1693, and held office until 1702, when he was re- moved by Governor Dudley on account of the active part taken by him in the revolution of 1688. He was also one of the seven judges appointed by Governor Phipps in 1692 to try the witches. He married the widow of Governor Phipps.
CHARLES SEDGWICK, a Berkshire man, was admitted to the Suffolk bar March 25, 1821, and was many years elerk of the courts in Berkshire county.
A. H. SKILTON was admitted to the' Middlesex bar in January, 1876, and was a member of the Suffolk bar as late as 1890.
JACOB C. PATTEN Was admitted to the Middlesex bar in October, 1887, and was a member of the Suffolk bar as late as 1890. 1
JOIIN FRANKLIN SIMMONS, son of Hon. Perez and Adeline (Jones) Simmons, was born in Hanover, Mass., June 26, 1851. He is a lineal descendant from Moses Simmons, or Symondson, as he was called, who came to Plymouth in the ship Fortune in 1621, and settled at quite an early date in Duxbury. His grandmother, the wife of Eben- ezer Simmons, was Sophia, daughter of Dr. Benjamin Richmond, of Little Compton, R. I., and a direct descendant from Col. Benjamin Church, who won distinction in
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HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR.
the early Indian wars. Perez Simmons, the father of John Franklin Simmons, grad- uated at Brown University in 1833, and settled as a lawyer in Providence. He took a leading part in the movement for extension of suffrage in Rhode Island, and was one of the leaders in the convention which formed the People's Constitution. The constitution was adopted by a majority of the male citizens and freeholders of the State, and it fell to him to call to order the first Legislature organized under it, of which he was a member from the Fourth Ward of Providence. The Legislature held under the old constitution passed an act providing that whoever assumed to act un- der the new constitution should be held guilty of treason, and he was the first person against whom a warrant was issued. To avoid arrest he moved to the State of Maine, where he remained until a change of administration in Massachusetts rendered it certain that he would not be surrendered to the Rhode Island authorities, when he returned to his native town, and continued there to practice law with ability and suc- cess until his death. John Franklin Simmons, the subject of this sketch, received his early education at the Assanippi Institute and at Phillips Exeter Academy, and grad- uated at Harvard in 1873, having the honor of being selected as the class-day orator of his class. He studied law with his father and at the Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the Plymouth county bar at the February term of the Superior Court in 1835. For some years he retained his residence in Hanover, where he served fif- teen years as a member of the School Committee. For several years he has been as- sociated in business with Harvey H. Pratt, with offices in Abington and Boston, at which latter place he has his residence. He was the receiver of the Abington Na- tional Bank at the time of its failure, and is now one of its directors as well as presi- dent of the South Scituate Savings Bank. Brought up under the Democratic influences of his father, he is an active and energetic supporter of Democratic principles, and while lending his efficient aid on the platform to the political promotion of others, he has never sought office for himself. He devotes himself unremittingly to his profes- sion, and both in Suffolk and Plymouth counties the firm of Simmons & Pratt occu- pies a prominent position. He married at Hanover, his native town, January 10, 1877, Fanny Florence Allen. Aside from the labors of his profession he indulges himself at leisure hours in literary pursuits, and among the productions of his pen is the history of Hanover, contributed to the Plymouth County History.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER was the son of John Butler, of Deerfield, New Hamp- shire, a captain of dragoons in the War of 1812. After the war the father engaged in trade with the West Indies and died of yellow fever in March, 1819, leaving his widow with two young children, Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Franklin, with scanty means of support. The latter was born in Deerfield, November 5, 1818, and was consequently only four months old when his father died. He attended the pub- lic schools of his native town until he was ten years of age, when, in 1828, his mother removed to Lowell, Mass., then a town in the second year of its municipal life. She there maintained herself and family by taking a few boarders, and such was her suc- cess in the rapidly growing community in which she established herself, that she was able not only to live comfortably but to furnish her children with a liberal education. Benjamin was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy, and in 1834, at the age of sixteen, entered Waterville College in Maine. He graduated in 1838 burdened with a debt in- curred to secure his education and in feeble health, and with the view of relieving
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