USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 74
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WILLIAM SAINT AGNAN STEARNS, son of Richard Sprague and Theresa (Saint Agnan) Stearns, was born in Salem, Mass., September 27, 1822. He received his early edu-
Henry W. Sieift=
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cation at the Salem Latin School and the Dummer Academy, and graduated at Harvard in 1841. He studied law in Worcester in the office of Emory Washburn, and in Andover in the office of Nathan Hazen, and was admitted to the Essex county bar at Ipswich in 1846. He first opened an office in Princeton, Ill., where he spent two years, and then returned to Massachusetts and practiced in South Reading one year. He then practiced in Malden and finally in Charlestown, where he continued with an office a part of the time in Boston until the annexation of Charlestown to Boston in January, 1874. For a number of years he was associated in business with John Quincy Adams Griffin. In 1868, two years after the death of Mr. Griffin, he formed a partnership with John Haskell Butler, which continued until January, 1892. Mr. Butler had been a student in his office. Buring the last three years of the cor- porate existence of Charlestown he was its city solicitor, and performed the duties of that office not only with the approval of the city government but with that also of the community at large. While Mr. Butler has entered to a certain extent the field of politics, Mr. Stearns has resisted the allurements of public life and devoted himself to his professional work and to the successful development of real estate in Charles- town and Somerville and Salem, which under his prudent management has largely enhanced in value. In January, 1892, he abandoned practice altogether, and since that time has been devoted to his private affairs. He married H. Emily Whitman in Malden May 10, 1849, and has his residence in Salem in the house built by his great-grandfather, John Sprague, in 1750.
JOHN LOWELL, son of John Amory and Susan Cabot (Lowell) Lowell, was born in Boston October 18, 1824. Perhaps no family in Massachusetts has for so many gen- erations and in so many of its branches been more distinguished. Going no farther back than John Lowell, who was born in Newburyport in 1743, and became chief justice of the United States Court of the first circuit, including Maine, New Hamp- shire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, we find in the next generation his son John, a lawyer and writer of repute, born in Newburyport in 1769, a founder of the " Bos- ton Atheneum," " The Provident Institution for Savings in the town of Boston," and of the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company; another son, Francis Cabot Lowell, born in Newburyport in 1775, from whom the city of Lowell received its name; and still another son, Charles, born in Boston in 1782, who was for many years the distinguished pastor of the West Church in Boston. In the third generation we have John Lowell, called the Philanthropist, a son of Francis Cabot Lowell, born in Boston in 1799, who bequeathed $250,000 for the maintenance in that city of the "Lowell Institute;" James Russell Lowell, son of Rev. Charles Lowell, the poet statesman and scholar, and John Amory Lowell, son of John Lowell mentioned above as a founder of several institutions, and the father of the subject of this sketch. In the fourth and present generation we have Charles Russell Lowell and James Jackson Lowell, brothers, and grandsons of Rev. Charles Lowell, both of whom dis- tinguished themselves in the Civil War, the former of whom, with the rank of brigadier-general, was killed at the battle of Cedar Creek; and the latter, as first lieutenant, was killed at the battle of Glendale; and John Lowell, son of John Amory Lowell, and the subject of this sketch. Thus John Lowell, of whom these words are written, is descended through both his father and mother from Judge John Lowell, who so long and so worthily graced the bench of the District and Circuit 73
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Courts of the United States. He was fitted for college in a private school under the instruction of Daniel Greenleaf Ingraham, a Harvard graduate of 1809, and gradu- ated at Harvard in 1843 in a class many of whose members have become distinguished in the various walks of life. Among these may be mentioned John William Bacon, a late judge of the Superior Court, Charles Anderson Dana, editor of the New York Sun, Rev. Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Rev. Thomas Hill, late president of Har- vard College, Charles Callaghan Perkins, distinguished in the department of art, William Adams Richardson, at one time secretary of the United States treasury and now chief justice of the Court of Claims, Eben Carleton Sprague, the eminent lawyer of Buffalo, and Eben Francis Stone, of Newburyport, late member of Con- gress. He studied law at the Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1845 with the degree of LL.B., and after further study in Boston in the office of Charles G. Loring, was admitted to the Suffolk bar in October, 1846. He was for some years associated in business with William Sohier, a Harvard graduate of 1840, and became so eminent at the bar that on the resignation of Peleg Sprague of his seat on the bench of the United States District Court, he was appointed on the 11th of March, 1865, by President Lincoln as his successor. At the time of his appoint- ment the District Courts were held by the district judges, and the Circuit Courts by the justices of the United States Supreme Court. The law provided that the " chief justice and the associate justices of the Supreme Court shall be allotted among the circuits by an order of the court, and a new allotment shall be made whenever it becomes necessary or convenient by reason of the alteration of any circuit or of the new appointment of a chief justice or associate justice or otherwise." On the 10th of April, 1869, it was provided by law that "for each circuit there shall be appointed a circuit judge, who shall have the same power and jurisdiction therein as the justice of the Supreme Court allotted to the circuit. The Circuit Courts shall be held by the associate justice, or by the circuit judge of the circuit, or by the district judge of the district sitting alone, or by any two of said judges sitting together." It was further provided that the associate justice of the Supreme Court shall attend at least one term of the Circuit Court in each district of the circuit to which he is allotted in two years. After the passage of this law, George Foster Shepley, of Portland, was appointed circuit judge, and held that position until his death, July 20, 1878. On the 18th of December following, Judge Lowell was appointed circuit judge of the First Circuit which includes Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He continued on the bench until May 1, 1884, when, after nineteen years' service on the bench of United States courts, he resigned and resumed practice in Boston. Were it not probable that judicial traits, like all other mental characteristics, are inherited, it would seem more singular that Judge Lowell should have held for thirteen years the same position as district judge which his great-grandfather John Lowell held under an appointment from Washington three-quarters of a century before. It is still more singular that he should have been promoted to the position of judge of the Court of the First Circuit while the same ancestor was raised under the law of 1801, repealed in 1802, by appointment from President Adams from a judge of the District Court to chief justice of the court of the same circuit. Judge Lowell, since his retirement from the bench, has found no want of occupation, and his legal learning, supplemented by judicial training and the honest workings of an accurate and logical mind, has brought to him as auditor, referee or trustee, the
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adjudication and management of questions and trusts involving large and important interests. He married, May 19, 1853, Lucy B., daughter of George B. Emerson, of Boston. Two volumes of the decisions of Judge Lowell from 1872 to 1877 have been published, and on all questions relating to the subject of bankruptcy he is the highest authority. He received the degree of LL. D. from Harvard in 1871 and from Williams College in 1870.
ILARVEY NEWTON SHEPARD, son of William and Eliza Shepard, was born in Bos- ton, July 8, 1850. He received his early education at the public schools of Boston, including the Eliot School and at the Wesleyan Academy at Wilbraham. He grad- uated at Harvard in 1871, and after attending lectures at the Harvard Law School completed his law studies in the office of Hillard, Hyde & Dickinson, of Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in June, 1873. Beginning practice in the office of the above firm he established himself independently in business in 1875, and soon secured a foothold in the ranks of his profession. In the earliest days of his career he became active in politics, and in 1874 and 1875 was a member of the Republican City Committee of Boston, a member of the Republican State Committee in 1875-76 and 1877, and president of the Young Men's Republican State Committee 1879 and 1880. In later years he has allied himself with those who, having become dissatisfied with the course of the Republican party, have advocated and supported those meas- ures of public policy of which Grover Cleveland has been the most conspicuous exponent. He was a member of the Boston Common Council in 1878-1880 and 1881, and in 1880 was president of the Board. In 1881 and 1882 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; in 1878 and 1879 he was a trustee of the Boston Public Library, and in 1884 he delivered the annual oration on the Fourth of July before the city authorities of Boston. From 1883 to 1887 he was assistant attor- ney-general of the Commonwealth, and in 1892 was the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Tariff Reform League. In the ranks of the latter organization he has been especially active, and his speeches in advocacy of its measures have been able and instructive. In the Masonic fraternity he has been conspicuous. In 1881 and 1882 he was worshipful master of St. John's Lodge, in 1882 and 1883 high priest of St. John's Chapter, in 1887 and 1888 thrice illustrious master of East Boston Coun- cil, in 1883-1884 and 1885 district deputy grand master of the First Masonic District, and from 1885 to 1889 commissioner of trials of the Grand Lodge. He has been a member and officer of other associations too numerous to mention. He married in Everett, November 23, 1873, Fannie May Woodman, and resides in Boston.
SOLOMON ALONZO BOLSTER, son of Gideon and Charlotte (Hall) Bolster, was born in Paris, Oxford county, Me., December 10, 1835. He was educated in the public schools and at the Oxford Normal Institute in Paris. He studied law in the office of William W. Bolster in Dixfield, Me., and continued his studies at the Harvard Law School, where he graduated with the degree of LL.B. in 1859. He was admitted to the Maine bar in Paris and later to the Missouri bar in Palmyra. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar April 24, 1862. On the 29th of September, 1862, he was mustered into the United States service for nine months, and on the 15th of November he was commissioned second lieutenant in the Twenty-third Regiment of Maine Volun- teers. In his devotion to his profession he has been constant and faithful. No popular political excitement has drawn his footsteps from the chosen path of his pro-
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fession, no allurements of public office, so potent with many, have distracted his mind, but with a single eye to the career he had marked out for himself, and obedient to its behests, he has gained position and honor in the legal ranks. On the 22d of April, 1885, he was appointed justice of the Municipal Court for the Roxbury Dis- trict of the city of Boston to succeed Henry W. Fuller, who was the successor of P. S. Wheelock, for many years a judge on the bench of that court. In the Massachu- setts Militia he was appointed June 29, 1867, judge advocate with the rank of captain in the First Brigade, assistant inspector-general with the rank of major March 22, 1870, and assistant adjutant-general with the rank of lieutenant-colonel August 15, 1876. At the expiration of his war service he established himself in Roxbury, where he still resides and has his office. He married in Cambridge, October 3, 1864, Sarah J. Gardner.
WILLIAM ADAMS RICHARDSON, son of Daniel and Mary (Adams) Richardson, was born in Tyngsborough, Mass., November 2, 1821, and graduated at Harvard in 1843. He graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1846 with the degree of LL. B., and was admitted to the Suffolk bar July 8 in that year. He established himself in Lowell, where he was associated as partner with his brother, Daniel S. Richardson. In 1849 and 1853 and 1854 he was a member of the Lowell Common Council, and during the last two years he was president of the Board. In 1846 he was appointed judge advo- cate of the Second Division of the Massachusetts Militia with the rank of major, and in 1850 he was a member of the staff of Governor George. Nixon Briggs. In 1855 he was appointed one of the commissioners to revise the statutes of Massachusetts, who reported the revision which finally became the General Statutes of 1860. In Decem- ber, 1859, he was appointed with George Partridge Sanger to superintend the publi-
cation of the General Statutes and prepare an index. In 1856 he was appointed judge of probate of Middlesex county, and held that office until the creation by law of the office of judge of probate and insolvency in 1858, when he was appointed to that office. In 1863 he was chosen an overseer of Harvard College, and in 1869 was rechosen. In 1867 he was appointed with Judge Sanger to edit the annual supple- ment of the "General Statutes," and performed that service until the issue of the "Public Statutes" in 1882. In March, 1869, he was appointed assistant secretary of the Treasury, and on the retirement of George S. Boutwell, the secretary, in 1873, he was appointed to succeed him. In June, 1874, he was appointed one of the judges of the Court of Claims at Washington, and in January, 1885, was made chief justice. In June, 1880, he was appointed by Congress to edit and publish a supplement to the Revised Statutes of the United States with notes and references, which was published in 1881. In 1880 he was appointed a professor of law in the Georgetown University and he has received a degree of LL.D. from Columbian University in 1873, George- town in 1881, Harvard in 1882, and Dartmouth in 1886. He married, October 29, 1849, Anna M. Marston, of Machiasport, Me.
CHARLES S. BRADLEY, son of Charles Bradley, a Boston merchant, was chief justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, and afterwards practiced in Boston. He was at the Suffolk bar in 1877.
WILLIAM MINOT, son of William and Louisa (Davis) Minot, was born in Boston - April 7, 1817, and graduated at Harvard in 1836. He graduated at the Harvard Law School in 1840 and was admitted to the Suffolk bar July 6, 1841. He established
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himself in Boston in association with James Benjamin, a Harvard graduate of 1830, as his partner. The firm engaged in a general practice until the death of Mr. Ben- jamin in 1853. Not long after that time his father, a Harvard graduate of 1802, who had been for many years engaged as administrator and trustee of large and exceed- ingly valuable estates, began to gradually relinquish the cares and responsibilities of business, and these were chiefly assumed by the son. It is probable that no man in Massachusetts had the management of a larger amount of trust funds than the elder Mr. Minot, and it is certain that m no other hands were these considered more safely deposited or more conscientiously and wisely invested. The management of these trusts is of course incompatible with a continued practice of law in the courts, and since his father's death he has been little known in the trial of causes. It is easy to understand the temperament and general characteristics of a man qualified for the position he holds. He possesses the retiring disposition of his father, his conservative views, his judicial mind, his sensitive conscience, his love of justice, integrity and honor. He has inherited all those traits which made his father an honest and wise counsellor and friend. He married Katharine Maria, daughter of Charles and Eliza- beth Sedgwick, of Lenox, Mass., and has two sons, Robert S. and William Minot, jr., associated with him in business.
WILLIAM J. PURNAM, son of Rev. John K. and Sarah (Harter) Purnam, was born in Centre county, Penn., April 11, 1840. He was educated in the public schools and at Aaronsburg Academy. He read law and was admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania in 1861, when he entered the service. After the war he settled in Florida, in which State he was senator and secretary of state. He became judge of the court of Jack- son county, assessor of internal revenue, and member of Congress, serving in the Forty-third, Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Congresses. In 1884 he removed to Boston where he now lives. He married, October 19, 1871, Leadora Finlayson, of Marianna, Fla.
GEORGE FOSTER SHEPLEY, son of Ether Shepley, was born in Saco, Me., January 1, 1819, and graduated at Dartmouth in 1837. He read law at the Harvard Law School and was admitted to the Maine bar in 1840. He established himself in Bangor, where he remained until 1844, when he removed to Portland. From 1853 to 1861 he was United States district attorney for Maine, and in 1860 was a delegate at large to the National Democratic Convention at Charleston. In the early part of the war he was commissioned colonel of the Twelfth Maine Regiment. He was made mili- tary commandant of New Orleans after its capture and acting mayor until in July, 1862, he was appointed military governor of Louisiana. In the same month he was made brigadier-general of volunteers. At a later time he was placed in command of the military district of Eastern Virginia, and for a short time commanded the Twenty-fifth Army Corps. He was also appointed military governor of Richmond after its capture, and resigned his commission July 1, 1865. In 1869 he was appointed circuit judge of the First Circuit, which office he held until his death, July 20, 1878. His circuit included Massachusetts, and for the reason that he held court in Boston he is included in this register.
RAYMOND R. GILMAN, son of Ambrose and Eunice (Wilcox) Gilman, was born in Shelburne Falls, Mass., July 25, 1859. He was educated in the public schools and at the academy at Shelburne Falls. He studied law at the Boston University Law
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School and in the offices of F. Field, of Shelburne Falls, and Frederick D. Ely, of Dedham, now one of the judges of the Municipal Court of the city of Boston, and was admitted to the Norfolk bar September 28, 1880. He established himself in business in his native town, but finally removed to Boston, where he is now in active practice at the Suffolk bar. Since he opened an office in Boston he has advanced with sure yet rapid steps in his profession, and while so many young lawyers, after admission to the Suffolk bar, have been compelled to seek other business more profit- able than the law or to migrate to other fields where there seemed to be a promise for a more prosperous career, the larger opportunities of Boston have enabled him to develop and use the talents and capacity for work which he possesses and to snc- ceed where so many others have failed. He is an active member of the association of Odd Fellows and is a member of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. In the town of Melrose, where he has his residence, he takes an interest in every movement cal- culated to advance the welfare of the community with which he has identified himself. He married, June 16, 1882, Kate A. Tuttle.
RUFUS CHOATE, son of David and Miriam (Foster) Choate, was descended from John Choate, who was made a freeman in Massachusetts in 1667. He was born in the town of Essex, Mass., October 1, 1799. He began the study of Latin in 1809 with Dr. Thomas Sewell and continued his studies with Rev. Thomas Holt, William Cogswell and Rev. Robert Crowell. Even earlier than that, when he was about six years of age, it is said that he could repeat from memory a large part of "Pilgrim's Progress," and before he was ten had exhausted the resources of the library in his native town. After a short period of study at Hampton Academy, where he fitted for college, he entered Dartmouth College in 1815 and graduated in 1819. He received the degree of LL. D. from Yale in 1844, from Dartmouth and Harvard in 1845, and from Am- herst in 1848. After leaving college he occupied the position of tutor at Dartmouth one year, and then for a short time attended lectures at the Harvard Law School. In 1821 he entered the office of William Wirt, then attorney-general of the United States, at Washington, and returned to Massachusetts in 1822, where he finished his law studies in Ipswich and Salem. He was admitted to the Essex bar at Salem at the September term of the Court of Common Pleas in 1823, and established himself in Danvers in 1824. In 1828 he removed to Salem. While living in Danvers he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1825, and a State sen- ator in 1827. From 1831 to 1834 he was a member of Congress from the Essex dis- trict, resigning in the latter year and removing to Boston. His brilliant career as a lawyer may be said to have begun on his entrance to the broader field which the Suffolk bar opened to him. In 1841 he succeeded Daniel Webster in the United States Senate when that gentleman resigned his seat to become secretary of state under President Harrison. In 1845 Mr. Webster was again chosen senator and Mr. Choate resumed the practice of his profession in Boston. In 1850 he visited Europe, traveling in England, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Germany. In 1849 the office of attorney-general of the Commonwealth, which had been abolished in 1843, was re-established and John H. Clifford was appointed to fill it. In 1853, on the accession of Mr. Clifford to the executive chair, Mr. Choate was appointed his suc- cessor as attorney-general, and held the office until his resignation in 1854, and the reappointment of Mr. Clifford in that year. In 1852 he was a delegate to the Whig
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National Convention at Baltimore, and advocated the nomination of Mr. Webster for the presidency, and in 1853 was a member of the Massachusetts convention for the revision of the constitution. In 1856 he supported Mr. Buchanan in the presidential campaign of that year. In 1858, in consequence of ill health, he abandoned profes- sional labor, and in 1859, accompanied by his son, sailed for Europe, hoping to re- gain health and strength. On the arrival of the steamer in Halifax, then a stopping place, he was too feeble to proceed and landing, died in that city July 13, 1859. He married, March 29, 1825, Helen, daughter of Mills Olcutt, of Hanover, N. H., a sis- ter of the wife of Joseph Bell referred to elsewhere in this register. It is not easy to measure and state with accuracy the characteristics of Mr. Choate in the various posi- tions which he was called upon to fill. As a statesman and politician he should not be accorded the highest place. As the former he was so far removed from his true element, and was so unfamiliar with the atmosphere surrounding him, that he breathed it timidly and with caution, and failed to exhibit that fearless independence so essential to success in the legislative arena. While in the Senate, when Mr. Web- ster remained in the Cabinet of President Tyler, after others of the Harrison Cabinet deserted him, against the protests and denunciations of Henry Clay and other leading Whig statesmen who looked on the president as a traitor to his party, Mr. Choate assumed the attitude of a defender of the secretary, and on one occasion sought in a speech to palliate, if not justify, the acts of Mr. Tyler. "And do you, too, pretend to be a mouthpiece of the administration," said Mr. Clay pointing his finger at the Mass- achusetts senator, but not a word was heard from Mr. Choate in response to an in- sult which a man of smaller calibre, but more courage, would have indignantly resented and rebuked. As a politician he was as much out of his element as in the role of a legislator. He was too much absorbed in the special vocation to which he had consecrated his powers to give much time to the study of political questions, and he thus naturally followed the tide on which he saw his friends and associates were drift- ing, and with his great good nature rendered them generously such aid as they sought from him. In the dominion of law, however, to which he gave his heart and soul and strength, he was supreme. As has been said of him by the writer of this sketch in another place, "though an orator of the highest rank, his greatest forensic efforts were before a jury, and no gladiatorial show ever exceeded in interest the continuous exhibition of logic, entwined with wreaths of eloquence, in which he indulged before a reluctant jury until one after another of the panel yielded to him his judgment, and was ready, as he triumphantly said, to give him his verdict." There was a fasci- nation about him which no juryman with the usual qualities of human nature could resist, and the writer who has many times seen and heard him in the trial of causes, fails to remember an instance where his sympathies were not enlisted on the side represented by Mr. Choate. But his success at the bar was not due alone to his oratory. No man understood human nature better, or was more keen in discover- ing the points which would influence the human mind. The writer remembers a trial at which he was present, of a shipmaster charged with wrecking his vessel on the the coast of St. Domingo for the purpose of obtaining a large and fraudulent insur- ance. The underwriters of Boston, who had, as they believed, been repeatedly de- frauded in a similar manner, determined to make a stand on this case, and, if possi- ble, secure a conviction. The case had been tried once with Robert Rantoul the prosecuting district attorney, and the jury had disagreed. Before the second trial
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