USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 72
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offensive and defensive warfare must be learned by any new aspirant for success in the arena of law. Mr. Somerby was not slow to learn. The independence and cour- age and heroism which he exhibited in the trial of causes in the courts were charac- teristics which he owed in a large degree to his repeated conflicts with the gladiators of the Middlesex bar. He won his greatest triumphs, so far as the writer knows, in the criminal rather than the civil side of the courts, and his success in winning them was due oftentimes to the adoption and support of plans which a man of more timid nature would have hesitated to form and failed in firmness and nerve to carry out. One of the earliest criminal cases in which he was engaged after his removal to Boston was that of Deacon Andrews, of Kingston, indicted for the murder of Cor- nelius Holmes of that town. He was engaged as leading counsel for the defendant, and Charles G. Davis, of Plymouth, was associated with him as his junior. A later case in which he defended and secured the acquittal of Leavitt Alley, charged with murder, and tried in Boston in 1873, will ever stand as a memorial of his shrewdness and courage. As has been stated by another in describing the trial: " His defence was a hint, so shrewdly given, that it rather originated the suggestion in the minds of the jurymen themselves than passed his own lips, that the son of Mr. Alley was the real criminal. The prisoner's witnesses and the cross-examination of the wit- nesses for the government were so handled as to necessarily convey, through unseen and unexpected channels, this hint to the jury, and the refusal to put the son on the stand, though it was well known that he was conversant with many of the incidents of the affair, served to carry this hint home with a force that was sure to have an effect." The length of this trial, with the labor and excitement attending it, inflicted a permanent injury on the strength and health of Mr. Somerby. He never recovered his capacity for work, and his vigor of nerve and brain was never again what it was before. He continued, however, to practice his profession until his death, and no one perhaps but himself realized the extent of the prostration which that trial in which he enlisted all his energies had induced. He married Abby Olivia, daughter of Charles Backus and Rebecca (Sanger) Clark, at Framingham, Mass., February 17, 1853.
PELEG SPRAGUE, son of Seth and Deborah (Sampson) Sprague, was born in Duxbury, Mass., April 28, 1793. He was descended from William Sprague, who came to Salem from England in 1629. It is said that the father and mother of Mr. Sprague lived together under one roof sixty-four years. They had fifteen children, of whom Peleg was the ninth. The father, Seth Sprague, was justice of the peace and quorum forty years, a member of the Massachusetts Legislature twenty-seven years, and twice a presidential elector. In his old age, when most men become conservative and are content with existing conditions in social and political life, he entered with zeal into the anti-slavery cause at a time when that cause was unpopular in our com- munities. Mr. Sprague graduated at Harvard in 1812 in a class containing many members who afterwards distinguished themselves in the various walks of life. Among those who became physicians there were George Bartlett Doane, John Homans, George W. Heard, Amos Nourse, Abel Lawrence Peirson, Edward H. Robbins, Daniel Shute, and Ezekiel Thaxter. Among the clergymen were Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright and Henry Ware. Among the lawyers were Franklin Dexter, James Henry Duncan, Charles Greely Loring, and William Turell Andrews. Among them
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none became more distinguished than Mr. Sprague. Four of them received front Harvard the degree of LL.D., Mr. Dexter in 1857, Mr. Duncan in 1861, Mr. Loring in 1850, and Mr. Sprague in 1847. After leaving college he studied at the law school in Litchfield, Conn., and afterwards in the offices of Levi Lincoln in Worcester, and Samuel Hubbard in Boston, and was admitted to the Plymouth county bar in Au- giist, 1815. After his admission to the bar he removed to Augusta, in what was then the district of Maine but a part of Massachusetts, and there established himself in the business of his profession. At the end of two years he removed to Hallowell. After the State of Maine was organized in 1820, he was sent a representative from Hallow- well to the first Legislature, and was again a member of the Legislature of the next year, 1821. In 1825 he was chosen a member of Congress and served until 1829. In the latter year he was sent to the United States Senate from Maine and served one term of six years. In 1835 he removed to Boston and was admitted to the Suffolk bar. After six years' practice in Boston, during which he maintained the high repu- tation which he had won in Maine, he was appointed by President Harrison in 1841 to the seat on the bench of the United States Court which had been vacated by the resignation of John Davis. His duties in that capacity during the latter part of his service were rendered especially arduous by the novel cases in American jurispru- dence arising during the War of the Rebellion. He performed them with distin- guished ability, though at the time suffering from an affection of the eyes which incapacitated him for the work of taking notes and made even the light of the court- room a serious annoyance. Exercise indispensable to his continued health he was precluded from taking in the sun-light, and the writer remembers to have often seen him pacing the floor of the Doric Hall of the State House, wholly unobservant of everything about him and evidently solving some question of law or constructing some charge to the jury for the next day's session of his court. During the progress of the Civil War a distinguished practitioner in his court expressed in conversation a doubt whether the offence of treason could be committed in Massachusetts where no war existed. He replied " Bring me a man who, here in Massachusetts, has by any act, however slight or however remote from the field of war, given intentional aid to the rebels in arms, as by communicating to them information or advice, and I will show that I can try him and have him hanged." The affection of his eyes became finally so serious that he resigned his seat on the bench in 1865, and the last years of his life were spent in a darkened room. He died at his home in Boston, October 30, 1880, at the age of eighty-seven. A volume of his speeches and addresses was published in 1858, and a volume of his decisions from 1841 to 1861 was published in 1861. He married in Albany, in August, 1818, Sarah, daughter of Moses and Sarah Deming, who was born February 17, 1794.
HARVEY JEWELL, son of Pliny and Emily (Alexander) Jewell, was born in Win- chester, N. H., June 26, 1820. His brother, Marshall Jewell, was governor of Connecticut in 1869, 1871 and 1872; minister to Russia in 1873, and postmaster-gen- eral in 1874. Pliny Jewell, the father of Harvey Jewell, was a tanner by trade, as his father and grandfather had been before him, and the son, the subject of this sketch, learned the ancestral trade. He afterwards, however, entered Dartmouth College, and graduated in 1844. After leaving college he taught in one of the public schools of Boston, while pursuing his law studies in the office of Lyman Mason, of
Et Joinedby
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BIOGRAPHICAL REGISTER.
that city. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar August 11, 1847. While in practice he was at various times associated in business with William Gaston, Walbridge A. Field, now chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, and E. O. Shepard. Possess- ing a critical mind, he devoted himself specially to the work of drafting contracts, charters of incorporation, and other instruments requiring the closest attention to details and the avoidance of weak and indefensible points. He gave much attention also to maritime law, and his advice in this branch of his profession possessed to a large degree the authority of law. Though a lover of the law and obedient to its behests, he felt the attractions of political life and yielded to them, probably to his disadvantage, looking only to professional success. In early life a Whig, and later a Republican, he was a member of the Boston City Council in 1851 and 1852 and in 1861, and from 1867 to 1871 was a member of the Massachusetts House of Repre- sentatives. During the last four years he was speaker of the House, and performed his duties easily, intelligently, impartially, and with the enthusiastic approval of the different bodies over which he presided. Indeed so popular had he become as speaker that in the State Republican Convention of 1871 he was a prominent candidate for governor. In that convention Benjamin F. Butler, then a Republican, was an aspi- rant for the nomination, and the two other candidates were Mr. Jewell and William B. Washburn. The contest was an earnest one, and Mr. Jewell withdrew his name and gave his support to Mr. Washburn, who finally received the nomination. In 1875 he was appointed by President Grant judge of the Court of Commissioners of Alabama Claims, and held that office two years, during which he resided in Wash- ington. In 1877 he resumed the practice of law in Boston and remained there until his death, which occurred in that city December 8, 1881. He received a degree of LL.D. from Dartmouth in 1875. He married Susan A., daughter of Richard Brad- ley, of Concord, N. H., December 26, 1849.
ALBERT E. PILLSBURY, son of Josiah Webster and Elizabeth (Dinsmoor) Pillsbury, was born in Milford, N. H., August 19, 1849. His father graduated at Dartmouth in 1840, and on account of feeble health abandoned his intention of studying a profes- sion and devoted himself to the occupation of a farmer. The early life, therefore, of the subject of this sketch was passed on his father's farm, in the cultivation of which he aided his father whenever his studies at school would permit. After passing through the lower grade schools of Milford he attended the High School in that town, and subsequently fitted for college at the Appleton Academy in New Ipswich, N. H., and at the Lawrence Academy in Groton, Mass. He entered Harvard College in 1867, at the age of eighteen, but early in his sophomore year left college and went to Sterling, Ill., the residence of his unele, Hon. James Dinsmoor, a lawyer of high standing in that town and a member of the distinguished family in New Hampshire bearing that name, two members of which have been governors of that State. While in Sterling he taught school a year and studied law with his uncle, and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1869. In 1870 he came to Boston and was admitted to the Suf- folk bar in June of that year. His eminent abilities soon secured for him a foothold at the bar, and from that time to the present his growth has been constant and his reputation has been more and more firmly established. For several years in the early part of his professional career he was vice-president and president of the Mer- cantile Library Association of Boston, and to his membership of that body with its
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parliamentary and controversional lessons may perhaps be due his marked success as a presiding officer and a participant in legislative and political debate. In 1876, 1877 and 1878 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from Ward 17 of Boston, and in 1884, 1885 and 1886 a member of the Senate from the Sixth Suffolk District. During his last two years at the Senate Board he was presi- dent, having been chosen both years by a unanimous vote. In both House and Senate he served on the judiciary committee, and with his clear head and logical mind proved himself to be the man now and then found in our legislative bodies who unties the knot and tangle of debate, and clearing the atmosphere of discussion of the fog which is so apt to invest it, simplifies the question before the house and en- ables its bewildered members to come to a just understanding of its merits. In 1887 Mr. Pillsbury was offered by Governor Ames the position of judge advocate-general, but he declined it, and in 1888 he was offered by the same governor a seat on the bench of the Superior Court. This he also declined, as well as the appointment of corpo- ration counsel of the city of Boston, offered to him by Mayor Hart of Boston in 1889. In the fall of 1890 he was nominated as the Republican candidate for attorney-gen- eral, and chosen in that and the two following years. He is now, in April, 1893, serving his third year in that office, and it is not too much to say that since 1858, when John Henry Clifford left the office, not one of its eight incumbents has per- formed its duties with more brilliant ability or marked success. Certainly since the trial of John W. Webster, in which Attorney-General Clifford, assisted by his able and indefatigable junior, George Bemis, so distinguished himself as to cause Samuel Warren, of the the English bar, to say " that his reply for the prosecution cannot be excelled in close and conclusive reasoning conveyed in language equally elegant and forcible," no greater professional triumph has been won by a prosecuting officer of the Commonwealth than that in the recent trial of Trefethen in Middlesex county, in which Mr. Pillsbury by a masterly construction of a chain of evidence secured a conviction in spite of the efforts of the ablest counsel for the defense, and in opposi- tion to a very general public opinion. Mr. Pillsbury delivered the annual oration before the city authorities of Boston on the Fourth of July, 1890, and is an occasional and welcome contributor to newspapers and magazines. He married Louise F. (Johnson) Wheeler, daughter of Edward C. and Delia M. (Smith) Johnson, at New- bury, Vt., July 9, 1889.
ROBERT TREAT PAINE, son of Thomas and Eunice (Treat) Paine, was born in Boston, March 11, 1731, and received his early education under Master Lowell in that city. He graduated at Harvard in 1749, and received a degree of LL. D. from his alma mater in 1805. His father was at one time pastor of a church in Weymouth and afterwards a merchant in Boston. His mother was Eunice, daughter of Samuel Treat, and grand- daughter of Samuel Willard, president of Harvard from 1701 to 1707. The subject of this sketch after leaving college taught school for a time and afterwards made three voyages to North Carolina as master and one to Greenland for whales. He studied for the ministry, and in 1755 served for a time as chaplain in the French War. He afterwards studied law with Judge Willard at Lancaster, and with Ben- jamin Pratt in Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1759. He established himself in Boston in 1761 and went to Taunton, and in 1769 was a representative from that town, In 1770 he conducted the prosecution of Captain Preston for the Boston massacre in the absence of the attorney-general, in 1774-5 was a delegate to
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the Provincial Congress, and a member of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1778. In 1777 he was again a representative and speaker of the House. He was ap- pointed attorney-general during the Revolution to succeed Jonathan Sewell, the last attorney-general under the provincial charter, and held office until the appointment of James Sullivan, February 12, 1790. 1n 1776 he was appointed a judge of the Su- perior Court, but declined, and in 1779 was a member of the State Constitutional Convention. About 1780 he removed to Boston and bought and occupied the resi- dence of Governor Shirley on the corner of Milk and Federal streets, and in 1790 was appointed a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, which office he held until his resig- nation in 1804. He was an able lawyer and judge, and as a signer of the Declara- tion of Independence his name has been made immortal. He married in 1770, Sally, daughter of Thomas Cobb and sister of General David Cobb, of Taunton, and died in Boston, May 11, 1814.
ROBERT TREAT PAINE, jr., son of the preceding, was born in Taunton, Mass., December 9, 1773, and graduated at Harvard in 1792. His original name "Thomas" was changed by an act of the Legislature in 1801. After leaving college he engaged in mercantile pursuits which he soon abandoned for the paths of literature. In 1794 he established a paper called the Federal Orrery, in which appeared articles and verses sensational and personal in their character, and the next year published a poem entitled " Invention of Letters," which was much admired. He also published " The Ruling Passion " and the celebrated song " Adams and Liberty." About 1800 he studied law with Theophilus Parsons and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1802. He retired from the profession in 1809, and died in Boston, November 13, 1811.
ROBERT TREAT PAINE 3d, son of the preceding, was born in Boston, and gradu- ated at Harvard in 1822, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in the Common Pleas Court October 19, 1825, and in the Supreme Judicial Court June 17, 1828. He aban- doned the practice of law and became distinguished as an astronomer and in other branches of science. He was a member of the American Academy and of the Amer- ican Philosophical Society. He died in 1885.
ROBERT TREAT PAINE 4th, son of Charles Cushing and Fanny Cabot (Jackson) Paine, was born in Boston, October 28, 1835, and is the great-grandson of Robert Treat Paine, the signer of the Declaration of Independence. He fitted for college at the Boston Latin School and graduated at Harvard in 1855. After leaving college he spent a year at the Harvard Law School and two years in European travel. On his return he studied law with Richard H. Dana and Francis E. Parker in Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1859. He continued in practice in Boston until 1870, when he retired from business, the possessor of sufficient wealth to enable him to gratify his wishes in the promotion of benevolent enterprises. From 1872 to 1876 he was an efficient member of the committee charged with the care of the erection of Trinity Church, and to the judgment of this committee in the selection of an archi- tect and the adoption of his plans the merit is due of making an honorable and worthy contribution to the architecture of Boston. In 1878 he aided in the establish- ment of the Associated Charities of Boston, an institution which, with others of a similar character, has done so much to alleviate poverty and suffering. In 1879 he organized the Wells Memorial Institute, which embraces a loan association, a co- operative bank and a building association. In 1891 he organized a Workingmen's
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Loan Association, and is still active in the promotion of every enterprise looking to the welfare and prosperity of the poor. He has built more than two hundred small houses for workingmen and sold them at moderate prices and on easy credits. In 1887 he endowed a fellowship of $10,000 at Harvard College for "the study of the ethical problems of society, the effects of legislation, governmental administration and private philanthropy, to ameliorate the lot of the mass of mankind," and in 1890 he established a trust of about $200,000 called the Robert Treat Paine Association. He is not waiting to give away at his death what he can no longer use, but indulges himself in a pleasure than which there can be no greater of bestowing his wealth while living and witnessing the ripened fruit of his benevolence. Mr. Paine was a representative from the town of Waltham in 1884, and has been a candidate for Con- gress in the Fifth District. He is now president of the American Peace Society. He married Lydia Williams, daughter of George Williams and Anne (Pratt) Lyman, in Boston, April 24, 1862, and lives in Boston.
ROBERT TREAT PAINE 5th, son of the preceding, graduated at Harvard in 1882, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1886. He married Ruth. daughter of Dr. Walter Channing Cabot, of Boston.
FRANKLIN DEXTER, son of Samuel and Catharine (Gordon) Dexter, was born in Charlestown, Mass., November 5, 1793, and graduated at Harvard in 1812, receiving the degree of LL.D. from his alma mater in 1857. He studied law with Samuel Hub- bard, afterwards one of the judges of the Supreme Judicial Court, and was admitted to practice in the Common Pleas Court in Suffolk county in September, 1815, and in the Supreme Judicial Court in December, 1818. He soon became eminent at the bar and was associated at various times as partner with Charles Greely Loring, William Prescott, William H. Gardiner, and George W. Phillips. In 1819, the year after his admission to the bar of the Supreme Court, he was selected to deliver the annual oration before the authorities of the town of Boston on the Fourth of July. That he should have been chosen at the age of twenty-six to perform that service sufficiently attests the ability and promise with which he began his professional career. In 1825 he was a representative from Boston, and again in 1836 and 1840, serving in 1836 on the Select Committee of the Legislature on the revision of the statutes. In 1825 he was a member of the Common Council of Boston, and in 1835 a State senator. He was also at one time the commander of the New England Guards. In 1830 he was engaged in the defence of the Knapps, who were indicted for the murder of Joseph White, of Salem, and though opposed by Mr. Webster, who was employed to assist the prosecuting officer, the contest was found to be by no means an unequal one, and his reputation for ability and learning, already a brilliant one, was more firmly estab- lished. In 1840, or about that time, he defended Mrs. Kenney, indicted for the murder of her husband by poison. The trial took place at Boston and it was the good fortune of the writer, then a student at Harvard, to be present more or less during its progress. James T. Austin was attorney-general and con- ducted the case for the government, and the battle was one between giants at the law. The writer then saw Mr. Dexter for the first time, and he remembers well the Grecian head covered with curls of hair almost black, the sharp cut features and brilliant intellectual eye, which made him in appearance his ideal of an orator and man. In form and presence he belonged to the class of which Rufus Choate and
Deshraque
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Daniel Dougherty were also conspicuous types, and of the three, if Choate possessed more of the fire and fluency of eloquence, and Dougherty more of classical imagery, to Mr. Dexter must be accorded the merit of a grace and elegance which marked him as a gentleman and a scholar. In 1841 he was appointed United States attorney for Massachusetts and held the office until 1845. In 1849 he was reappointed by Presi- dent Taylor. Mr. Dexter in the latter part of his career did not devote himself ex- clusively to his profession. To literature and art he gave much of his time and thought, and in either department if he had failed in the law he would have distin- guished himself. He married Catherine Elizabeth, daughter of Judge William Prescott, of Boston, September 25, 1819, and died at Beverly, Mass., where his latter years were spent, August 14, 1857.
JAMES FREDERIC Joy, son of James and Sarah (Pickering) Joy, was born in Dur- ham, N. H., December 2, 1810, and graduated at Dartmouth in 1833. He was a tutor at Dartmouth in 1834 and 1835, and graduated at the Harvard Law School with the degree of LL. B. in 1836. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar August 27, 1836, and settled in Detroit.
JOSEPH HARTWELL LADD, son of Caleb and Mary Ann (Watson) Ladd, was born in Calcutta, August 14, 1845, and graduated at Dartmouth in 1867. He graduated at Harvard Law School in 1871, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in December of that year.
CHARLES H. MANN, son of Eben and Mary (Albee) Mann, was born in Boston, August 11, 1846, and graduated at Dartmouth in 1867. He graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1869, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in January of that year. lle died in 1878.
ABEL MERRILL, son of Abel and Sarah (Henry) Merrill, was born in Stow, Vt., April 2, 1811, and graduated at Dartmouth in 1839. He studied law with Joseph Bell at Haverhill, N. H., in 1839 and 1840, and graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1842. He practiced a few years at Hartwell, Vt., but was a member of the Suffolk bar in 1849. He left the profession and went to Plainfield.
THOMAS LEONARD LIVERMORE was born in Galena, Il1., February 7, 1844, and was educated at the public schools in Milford. N. H., the Appleton Academy at Mount Vernon, N. H., and at the Lombard University at Galesburg, Ill. He studied law with Bainbridge Wadleigh in Milford, N. H., and was admitted to the New Hamp- shire bar. In 1868 he moved to Boston and was admitted to the Suffolk bar July 7 in that year. Previous to entering on the study of the law he enlisted as a private in the First Regiment of New Hampshire volunteers in the spring of 1861, and served three months. In September, 1861, he enlisted as first sergeant in the Fifth New Hampshire Regiment for three years, and while connected with that regiment was promoted through all the grades to brevet colonel. In the spring of 1865 he was commissioned colonel of the Eighteenth New Hampshire Regiment, and was mustered out in July of that year. He practiced in Boston from 1868 to 1879, associated the latter part of the time with Frederick P. Fish. In 1879 he moved to Manchester, N. H., where he was engaged until 1885 as the manager of the Amoskeag Manufactur- ing Company. He then returned to Boston and resumed the practice of law, contin- ning in practice until 1890, when he was made vice-president of the Calumet and Hecla
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