The history of Milton, Mass., 1640 to 1877, Part 51

Author: Teele, Albert Kendall, 1823-1901 ed
Publication date: 1887
Publisher: [Boston, Press of Rockwell and Churchill]
Number of Pages: 776


USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Milton > The history of Milton, Mass., 1640 to 1877 > Part 51


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he had an office in Boston, but never entered upon extensive practice. He was often placed on important committees, where his legal knowledge was of value to the town. The poor who needed legal advice found in him a ready friend and a safe adviser. Possessed of an ample estate, he was able and willing to contribute both his time and knowledge, and, if needful, to draw on his resources, for the benefit of his friends and fellow- citizens less fortunate than himself. He died here, March 26, 1856, leaving by will a legacy of $1,000 for the poor of Milton.


ASHUR WARE, ESQ. .


Ashur Ware graduated at Harvard College in 1804. He studied law, and in the early part of his professional life took up his residence in Milton, and opened an office in the Lewis Vose building. He was here in 1814, but remained only a short time. After his removal from Milton he was elected Professor of the Greek language at Bowdoin College, and received the degree of LL.D. from that institution. Subse- quently he became Judge of the United States Court, and died in Portland, Me., in the year 1873, at an advanced age.


ASAPH CHURCHILL, ESQ.


Of Asaph Churchill, the first of the name, the founder of the Milton family, it may be said emphatically that few men at the close of their lives have left farther behind them the place where they started ; few men in seventy-six years ever passed over greater space, using the word in its various senses. In fact, most of us, who go through life upon a somewhat even plane, can hardly conceive how he did it. We can only won- der at and admire the tenacity of purpose, courage, energy, and unceasing effort which enabled him to conquer all obstacles, and accomplish his results. We see many men who astonish us by their successful pursuit of knowledge under difficulties ; many more who succeed in the chase after material things; but the struggle of Mr. Churchill in the pursuit, and his success in the attainment, were fairly proportioned. Neither the intel- lectual nor the material was sacrificed, one for the other, - both were diligently pursued; and something more seems earned by his life than the gravestone biography: " Born in 1765, died in 1841."


He was the son of Zebedee Churchill (a descendant of John Churchill and Hannah Pontus, Plymouth) and Sarah Cushman Churchill. His birthplace was in the backwoods of Middle- borough, then a country town larger than all Norfolk County,


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and, in the absence of railroads, as far from Boston, both geo- graphically and in enlightened social and material progress, as is now, perhaps, any town in the State. His father, whom he never knew, died while Mr. Churchill was an infant. He had no brother or sister surviving. His mother soon married again ; and with her thus transferred, without any known near re- lation ; without an educated or influential friend, or any patron from the high social seats of the synagogue; with no inherited means ; with no one, so far as known, to aid or guide him, -. he was left to paddle along as best he could. The first heard of him is that he worked in an iron foundry at six and a quarter cents per day, and lived on corn-bread and milk and fish, the latter then so abundant in Middleborough that it was, as he told us, the custom aniong the people to feed their hogs on the finest brook trout.


How, under such circumstances, he came to entertain the idea of getting a liberal education is only less wonderful than how he managed to get it; and on this question we obtain but little light from any conversation with or account from himself in later years. He was too busy a man to spend time in talking of himself or his earlier life, or of anything past. He rather illustrated the sound philosophy of Longfellow, and "acted in the living present, letting the dead past bury its dead." But, somehow or other, he did conceive the idea of getting an education. He was not content with the iron foundry at six and a quarter cents per day, and broke away from it. He heard that somewhere, some fifty or seventy-five miles off, on the other side of Boston, there was such a thing as a college ; that in order to get there he must learn something of Latin and Greek ; that there was such a thing as a "Latin Accidence" and a Greek alphabet. In some way or other he got the books. He studied, and so far mastered them and all the preparatory studies that one day, in the summer of 1785, taking his only pair of shoes in his hands, and walking barefoot from Middle- borough to Cambridge to save their wear, he presented himself for examination at Harvard and was admitted. He went through the course, and graduated well up in his class, with John Thornton Kirkland and Nahum Mitchell as classmates, with the latter of whom, afterwards member of Congress from Massa- chusetts, he performed the part assigned to them at Commence- ment, entitled "A Syllogistic Disputation upon the Thesis: Gravitas non est essentialis materice proprietas." Having graduated, the question arose, which so often troubles our alumni at the present day, What to do next? Having begun with study he must go on with it, qualis ab incepto talis pro-


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cesserit. He must attain the position of a lawyer: then, at least, one of distinction, and attained by comparatively few. His ambition could be contented with nothing less, and he achieved it. He somehow acquired the necessary knowledge of the books, and somehow picked up the necessary means of living while getting it, by teaching a little, by working a little at carpentering, by, we are told, even preaching a little. The latter business must have been rather abnormal, for his theology was always rather broad and liberal for the pulpit of 1790. He was favored with some tuition by the Hon. John Davis, and was duly admitted to the bar at Plymouth, on the 13th of August, A.D. 1793, at the age of twenty-eight. The old Boston Directory of 1805 shows him to have had his office at that date on Court street, Boston. About that time he came to Milton, and there commenced and continued the practice of law in Norfolk and Suffolk Counties to the time of his death. His first law office there was at the junction of what are now called Randolph and Canton avenues and Adams street, in a building formerly the property of the late Gen. Moses Whitney, his lifelong friend, an inducement to the occupancy of which, in his straitened circumstances, was the direct and abundant sunlight pouring through its windows, making a large saving in his fuel bill. He followed his professional labors and study with patient and persevering diligence and economy, and, as almost a necessary consequence, with a reasonable measure of material success and reputation.


At the age of forty-five he had purchased the large and beautiful place on Milton Hill known as the Governor Robbins estate, hardly surpassed in beauty or value by any in the coun- try, and had married, May 5, 1810, Mary Gardner of Charles- town, whose personal beauty, upon her arrival in Milton, was said, by the good people of that generation, to have created a special sensation. He was recognized by his contemporaries as one of the ablest lawyers of the county, among whom were such men as the late Theron Metcalf of the Supreme Court bench, Horace Mann, James Richardson, and Judge Abel Cushing. In addition to the more public manifestations of his learning and ability in the constant trial of cases before juries of the county his name comes down to posterity in his cases cited to-day as determinative of law, in the volumes of our reports from almost the 1st of Massachusetts to the 20th of Pickering ; among them, one against the Merchants' Bank, to enforce payment of its bills in specie at the time the banks had suspended, attracted attention. Another one of special interest was the case of Commonwealth v. Glover, to be


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found in No. 3 of the olden time series published by Ticknor & Co., in 1886, entitled " The New England Sunday." In that case the defendant, who lived in Quincy, was prosecuted in 1820 for selling fresh milk Sunday mornings in Boston, and was defended zealously, and, as the reporter said, "with great ability, by Mr. Churchill." The lower court of that day de- cided that even this was not a work of necessity or charity, and that it would be better for the spiritual, if not for the physical, welfare of the people of Boston to drink sour milk than to buy it on Sunday, and so found defendant guilty ; but on appeal the decision was reversed in the higher court, and the defendant discharged. We believe that fresh milk, ever since, has been practically held vendible in Boston Sunday mornings, as an offence neither against God nor man.


Neither, however, did Mr. Churchill confine himself exclu- sively to the law. His active mind asserted itself in various directions, in matters of public and private interest ; sometimes of a more personal nature, sometimes literary or moral, some- times of a business character. He was an accomplished French scholar, had a goodly collection of French books in his library, and spent largely of his leisure time in reading them, particu- larly Voltaire, by whom there is reason to think his theology was strongly colored. For one or more years he had a French- man of Bonaparte's time, one Verly, afterwards connected with Harvard College, an inmate of his house, whose conversa- tion, always in that tongue, kept Mr. Churchill's French bright and fresh.


He was a prominent member of that good old institution the Dorchester and Milton Lyceum, constantly attending and con- tributing his share to its lectures and debates. He there orig- inated and pushed forward his scheme for the establishment of some one universal language to be adopted and used in all the civilized countries, selecting the French, and he got a vote of the Lyceum in favor of the project, and in favor of sending a memorial, written by himself, to the Executive Department at Washington, requesting that negotiations be opened with the representatives of foreign powers for some concerted action in aid of the scheme. The memorial was forwarded, and, if its recom- mendations had been adopted and put in execution, the present generation would have found foreign travel more comfortable and convenient.


He, at one time, established a bank of his own, issued his own bills, and obtained a good circulation for them. But this enterprise was arrested by the Act of the next winter's Legislature interdicting the issuing by any citizen of bills to


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be used as currency, and limiting this power to incorporated banks.


He had almost a passion for the acquisition of land, stimu- lated at the time the banks suspended specie payments by the fear that they would never resume, and became the owner of large tracts, - so large, indeed, that it became the subject of remark ; and one may hear quoted to this day the humorous sayings of old Jolin Drew (the colored man who lived on Churchill's lane, in the box of a house, on fifty feet square of land given him by Dr. Holbrook), that "he and Squire Churchill owned more land than any two men in Milton." He did not think it profitable to raise cultivated crops in Milton by hired labor, and so stocked his lands with herds of cattle, regarding that as the best mode of farming. His oft-repeated agricultural maxim was, "Keep the fences up; keep all in that is in ; all out that is out," if you do not wish to lose by your operations on land. One of his neighbors, disposed to find fault with this system of agriculture, querulously asked why he did not "farm it as General Capen [the great farmer of the day] did." He replied that he did. The neighbor re- monstrated against this assumption, when Mr. Churchill asked if the general did not "farm it as he had a mind to." This being admitted, Mr. Churchill sententiously replied, " And so do I."


He was a member and regular attendant of the Third Church in Dorchester, under Dr. Richmond (Unitarian), formed by the famous secession from Dr. Codman's society.


He contributed largely to the stock, and was active in pro- curing the charter, and organizing the old Dorchester and Milton Bank (now the Blue Hill), which has been three times successfully robbed, yet flourishes to-day among the best.


Although living and dying before the time when the temper- ance movement had exhibited much of its present strength, he had seen wasting away around him so many of the families of his town, and the unnumbered evils of drunkenness, that in advance of his age he had learned to shun all intoxicating liquors, and to keep them from use by his family. Without pledge he consistently abstained.


At the call for volunteers in the war of 1812 he shouldered his musket and did the brief military service the occasion required in New England, mainly in meeting false alarms. He was always interested in the State militia, and turned out with the Milton Company, in which he held a subordinate office.


In politics he was always independent, but never indifferent.


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He took sides on all the important questions of the day, what- ever they were. On national matters his affiliations were with the democratic rather than the federal school.


He was a zealous anti-Mason, sympathizing strongly with his townsman, Mr. Joseph Morton, who, when Mr. Jacob Allen, a seceder and anti-Masonic lecturer, desperately complained that he was afraid of being murdered by the Masons, exhorted him by all means to take the chances of it, as his assassination would be the very best thing in the world for the cause, -the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. It has been doubted whether Mr. Allen saw it in just that patriotic light, but the advice was sincere.


In 1810 and 1812 Mr. Churchill represented Milton in the General Court. He was several times put in nomination for office, but was not generally a successful nominee. He had too much individuality; he did his own thinking; he was not con- ventional; he practised no arts, adopted no course of action for conciliation, proclaimed no buncombe sentiments to capture voters; he had nothing but integrity and ability to commend him; he was not popular; his prominent virtues were exact justice, rigid honesty, and precise truthfulness. He trespassed against no man ; he paid his own debts; he did not ask that his own debts or trespasses should be forgiven, nor did he readily forgive those who owed or trespassed against him; he expected and exacted from others, and felt that he had a right to expect, the same effort and sacrifices in the line of their duty that he had made, and thought that if they met this requirement there would be neither failing debtors nor trespassers to be forgiven. He did not favor bankrupt or insolvent laws. He was of the old school of strict, perhaps severe, but strong men. And this was equally true in the government of his own family and in his dealings with the rest of the world. He gave his sons the best collegiate and professional education to be obtained. For their welfare and that of his two daughters he was unceasingly solicitous. At all times of their sickness, and at all the impor- tant crises of their lives, his paternal love (all the deeper and stronger in that its manifestations were suppressed) was evident. It is not perhaps too much to say, that no one thing contributed more to make him willing to labor and deny him- self than his wish to save them from the hardships he had himself undergone, and his hope to leave them the competence which he did; but, notwithstanding this, his reticence, his reserve, the sternness of his manner rather than of his nature, prevented him from receiving in his lifetime the grateful appreciation which was his due.


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He was married but once. His wife, who survived him, died in January, 1859, beloved by all, and most by those who knew her best. Her tenderness of heart, which never thought of self, and the simple purity and beauty of her character fully entitled her to all that love and veneration of her children and the re- spect of the community which she always commanded.


Of seven children five survived him. The oldest son, Asaph, left Milton in 1838 and has since lived in Dorchester. Joseph McKean, the second son, died in Milton in 1886, honored and regretted. The youngest son, Charles Marshall Spring, still lives upon a part of the old homestead. Both children and grandchildren represent and perpetuate the name or the profession of Asaph Churchill.


JOSEPH MCKEAN CHURCHILL, ESQ.


Joseph Mckean Churchill was the son of Asaph Churchill, Sen .; born in Milton, April 29, 1821; died in Milton, March 23, 1886. He graduated at Harvard College in 1840, and was one of the overseers 1856-68; was delegate to the Constitu- tional Convention 1853; representative in State Legislature 1858-59; and member of Governor Banks' Council 1860-61. He enlisted as a nine months' man in the 45th Mass. Volun- teers, in which regiment he was Captain of Company B. This regiment arrived at Newbern Nov. 5, 1862, and was mustered out of service July 8, 1863,


He was one of the County Commissioners from January, 1868, to April, 1871, and during two of those years was chair- man of the board. During a period of twenty-five years he served as moderator in the conduct of thirty-two meetings in town affairs. In 1867 he was appointed a Special Justice, and subsequently one of the Associate Justices of the Municipal Court in Boston, which office he held at the time of his decease.


He died suddenly of heart disease on the morning of the day he was expected to preside at an adjourned town-meeting. Resolutions of respect to his memory are placed on record in the proceedings of the town, of the court in which he was one of the Associate Justices, and of other associations with which he was connected, to which reference may be had for more extended minutes. .His tastes inclined to participation in political affairs, and few men devoted more attention to the furtherance of the objects of primary and local organizations and conventions in the practical details of the work of the politician. He seldom engaged in any public effort as an


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advocate in his profession or in the debates of the assembly, and we are not apprised of any remains of his literary labors.


He discharged the duties of official station with fidelity and to public acceptation. He left no immediate family except his widow, his only son, McKean G. Churchill, a promising youth, having died in his sixteenth year, Feb. 12, 1883. Beneath this crushing blow his spirit bowed in deepest sorrow.


In reference to this sad bereavement we here give his own words : -


McKean Gardner Churchill, only son of Joseph Mckean Churchill, who died Feb. 12, 1883, was endowed by nature with a bright and retentive mind. He stood at the head of his class at the Roxbury Latin School, where he was preparing for Harvard University ; unselfish, pure and holy in all his tastes and aspirations, he died in early youth, beloved and mourned by all who knew him.


LAWYERS OF MILTON, 1887.


JOHN M. BROWNE, ESQ.


John M. Browne was born in Parsonsfield, Me., April 15, 1839. He received a preparatory college education at " Par- sonsfield Seminary," and was a successful teacher in the public schools in several towns of Maine and New Hampshire. He stud- ied law in the office of Messrs. Ayer and Wedgwood, at Cornish, Me., and afterwards attended, for two years, the Law School of Cambridge University ; was admitted to the bar of York County ; practised law one year in his native town, and moved to Massa- chusetts in 1872, when he opened an office in Boston, where he still continues to practise his profession. Mr. Browne was a Trial Justice for Norfolk County for a term of four years. In 1879 he removed to Milton, where he now resides.


JOHN P. S. CHURCHILL, ESQ.,


son of Charles M. S. Churchill, was born in Milton, Feb. 16, 1858, graduated at the Boston University School of Law, in the Class of 1882, was admitted to the Suffolk Bar Feb. 23, 1883, and is now actively engaged in the duties of his pro- fession. He resides in Milton, and is one of the auditors of the town.


EDWARD C. PERKINS, ESQ.


Born at Cincinnati, O., Feb. 25, 1844; prepared for college at Phillips Academy, Exeter, N.H .; graduated at Harvard College in 1866. Spent three years in Texas, in business, and then studied law at the Harvard Law School, and with George


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S. Hale, Esq, in Boston. Married and settled in Milton, Mass., in 1869. Practised law in Boston and Milton since 1872, ex- cept between 1879 and 1883, during which time he was in Colorado.


EDWARD LILLIE PIERCE, ESQ.


Edward L. Pierce was born March 29, 1829; graduated at Brown University in 1850, and from the Law School at Cam- bridge in 1852. After leaving the Law School he was, for a time, in the office of Salmon P. Chase at Cincinnati, and became his confidential secretary at Washington. In the year 1857 Mr. Pierce published his work on " American Railroad Law," and later a new edition of the same work. He is the author of an elaborate "Index of the Special Railroad Laws of Massachu- setts." His memoir of Charles Sumner, who appointed him as one of his literary executors, was published simultaneously in Boston and London, November, 1877. In 1860 and 1876 he represented his district at the national Republican conventions in Chicago and Cincinnati. He was among the very first to enlist in the late war. The proclamation was issued on the 15th of April, 1861 ; on the 18th the Third Regiment of the Massachu- setts Militia, in Co. L, of which he was a volunteer, was off for Old Point Comfort, and on the night of the 20th destroyed the Norfolk Navy Yard. As there was no mustering officer in Boston the regiment was sworn in at Fortress Monroe on the 23d, which fails to show their quick response. In 1862 Mr. Pierce was placed by Secretary Chase in charge of the freedmen and plantations of the Sea Islands of South Carolina. In 1863 he was appointed Collector of Internal Revenue for the Third Massachusetts District. Governor Bullock appointed him District Attorney in 1865, to fill a vacancy in this district oc- casioned by the resignation of the incumbent. He was elected to the same office by the people in 1866, and reelected in 1867. In October, 1869, he was appointed "Secretary of the Board of State Charities," and held the office till his resignation of the same in 1874.


The passing glance at the life-work of the living, which is only possible in these annals, will fail to show with any fairness or precision the career of our honored citizen; but one act of his useful life may properly receive here a definite recog- nition.


Mr. Pierce was a representative to the Massachusetts Legis- lature from the Eleventh Norfolk Representative District dur- ing the sessions of 1875 and 1876. He was a member of the Judiciary Committee both years, in 1876 being chairman.


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Next to that of Speaker this is the most responsible position in the House. In the session of 1875 Mr. Pierce was the first to call the attention of the Legislature to the heavy and still in- creasing indebtedness of the cities and towns in the State, often incurred in unnecessary or extravagant expenditures.


He subsequently drew the Act upon that subject, which was passed at the same session. This, it is believed, was the first statute limiting and regulating municipal indebtedness passed by any State in the Union. Substantially all the provisions of this statute were incorporated into the Public Statutes, and are law to-day.


At the time Mr. Pierce proposed the above legislation there was a great and increasing extravagance in cities and towns in the conduct of their affairs, which began soon after the close of the civil war. Costly improvements were being undertaken, debts were being incurred, and taxes levied in many places to an alarming extent.


The beneficial effects of this statute were soon noticeable, and the extravagant notions and designs of municipal bodies and officials have been kept under wholesome restraint. Since the above statute was passed, many other States, seeing the advantages to be derived from it, have made similar laws. It is impossible to estimate the value of this legislation to the Commonwealth and to the country.


GEORGE R. R. RIVERS, ESQ.


George R. R. Rivers was born in Providence, R.I., May 28, 1853. He moved to Milton in 1854. From 1866 to 1870 he was in Europe. He entered Harvard College in 1871, and was graduated in 1875. He was in the Law School in 1876 and 1879, but did not care to take the degree. He studied law in the office of Thomas M. Stetson, Esq., of New Bedford, and was admitted to the bar in Bristol County, April, 1880. Since that time he has been practising in Boston.


NATHANIEL FOSTER SAFFORD, ESQ.


Nathaniel Foster Safford, son of Nathaniel F. and Hannah (Woodbury) Safford, was born in Salem, Mass., Sept. 19, 1815; fitted for college at the Latin Grammar School in that city ; entered Dartmouth College, and graduated in 1835. He studied law with Hon. Asahel Huntington, of Salem; com- menced practice in Dorchester and Milton Village in January, 1839, where he has since resided. During thirty years past his office has been in Boston, where he has continued the pursuit




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