USA > Maine > Biographical encyclopedia of Maine of the nineteenth century > Part 40
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The third son, Nathaniel, who was the father of Dr. Gilman, was born November 10, 1759, and died at Exeter, New Hampshire, January 26, 1847. Following the footsteps of his honored father and brothers also, he succeeded his eldest brother, John Taylor, in the Treasury Department, Continental Loan Office, in 1783. In 1795, and again in 1802, he was a member of the State Senate, a Representative in 1804, and Treasurer of the State of New Hampshire from 1805 to 1814, excepting an interval of two years-1809 and 1810. He died universally esteemed by all who had come in contact with him. He was twice married : first on December 29, 1785, to Abigail, a daughter of Rev. Woodbridge Odlin ; she died August 10, 1796. His last marriage was to Dorothy, daughter of Nathaniel Fol-
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som of Portsmouth, who was the mother of Dr. John Taylor Gilman. She died February, 22, 1859.
The education of Dr. Gilman was obtained at Phillips (Exeter) Academy, and subse- quently at Bowdoin College, from which he was graduated in 1826. Electing to follow the medical profession, he prosecuted his studies in the office of Dr. William Perry at Exeter, New Hampshire, and in 1829 received his degree of M.D. from Bowdoin College. Being desirous of more extended clinical and anatomical instruction than was afforded by Bow- doin, he repaired to Philadelphia, the then medical Athens of America, where he passed the winter of 1830-31 in attending the various clinics, and on January 1, 1832, commenced the practice of medicine and surgery at Portland, Maine.
A half-century of practice, with the rapid and wonderful advances made in medi- cine and surgery during this period, combined with an accuracy and quickness of percep- tion in the diagnosis of disease, has placed Dr. Gilman among the acknowledged leaders of his profession. While devoted to an extensive family practice, his thorough anatomical knowledge has made him a skilful and successful surgeon; and he enjoys the distinction of being the first one in his fraternity in the State of Maine to perform the Cesarean section, which he did with successful results. Devoted to his profession, Dr. Gilman has always been actively identified with its various institutions. He was one of the founders of the Maine General Hospital, is president of the Board of Directors, and has contributed liberally to its support both in time and money. He is also a trustee of the Maine Insane Hospital, and maintains a similar connection with Bowdoin College. He was married, August 24, 1837, to Helen A., daughter of the late Hon. Reuel Williams of Augusta, Maine, who was at one time a U. S. Senator. The issue of this union, Helen Williams Gilman, is the wife of John Taylor Gilman Nichols, M. D., of Cambridge, Mass.
From the outlines of the lives of those whom we have mentioned in this notice it will be readily perceived that the descendants of Edward Gilman who landed in this country some two hundred years since have been largely instrumental in shaping the political and financial affairs of their times, particularly in the State of New Hampshire. They have attained a high degree of distinction both in the forum of the State and nation, and the ability and aid rendered by them in the various financial trusts with which they were con- nected can hardly be estimated. Their strict integrity in the performance of all public duties and trusts is well worthy of emulation ; and the people of New Hampshire in honor- ing them honored themselves also .*
* Dr. Gilman died since this memoir was written, on the 16th of January, 1884.
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JACKSON, GEORGE EDWIN BARTOL, of Portland, Maine, President of the Maine Central Railroad. Born in Portland, August 14, 1829. His parents were Henry Jackson of Chichester, New Hampshire, and Elizabeth (Durgin) Jackson of Sanbornton, New Hampshire. Mr. Henry Jackson pursued the profession of school-teaching, first in Portsmouth, New Hamp- shire, and afterward in Portland, Maine. As was very natural under the circumstances, young Jackson aspired to thorough educational preparation for the active duties of life ; and, after passing through the public schools in Portland, was fitted for college in the high- school of that city. Matriculating at Bowdoin College in 1845, he graduated therefrom with the diploma of A. B. in 1849, and subsequently took the degree of A. M. in 1852.
Selecting the profession of law, he began the study of its theory and practice in the office of Fessenden & Deblois at Portland, and on the completion of his preliminary studies was admitted, after satisfactory examination, to practice at the bar in 1852. He then settled in Bath for professional pursuits, but yielding to the superior attractions of Portland, removed thither in 1853. For the next twelve months he sustained the relation of partner to Charles G. Caine, and after that to Thomas Amory Deblois from 1854 to 1865.
Learning and ability received due recognition during the latter period in his appoint- ment to the office of U. S. District Attorney, which he held from 1861 to 1864. The legal knowledge and experience then gained, added to practical business aptitudes, justified the change of actual energies from professional to manufacturing and financial occupations. Leaving the practice of law in 1865, he accepted the positions of Treasurer and Manager of the Portland Rolling Mills, and also of the Presampscot Iron Company.
The duties of his new offices necessarily involved close association with the railroad interests of the country, and prepared the way for his assumption in 1879 of the responsible post he now occupies, viz., that of President of the Maine Central Railroad, a corporation operating 355 miles of railway. Mr. Jackson is and has been director in several other corporate organizations, and is also one of the managers of the Portland Savings Bank.
He was married in 1853 to Cornelia Stuyvesant, daughter of the Rev. Petrus S. Ten Broek of New York. Three children are the issue of the union : 1. Margaret Stuyvesant, wife of Dr. John Blake White of New York; 2. Elizabeth Deblois Jackson ; 3. Stuyve- sant Ten Broek Jackson, now a student in the paternal Alma Mater-Bowdoin College.
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AVIS, GEORGE T., of Portland, Maine. Born in Sandwich, Massachusetts, January 12, 1810. His family was one of considerable local and political distinction. His father was sheriff of his county, and his uncle served for a number of years as Judge of the U. S. District Court of Massa- chusetts. Very early fitted for college, he entered Harvard, passed through it with credit, and graduated at the age of nineteen years. Among his classmates were the late Chief Justice Bigelow ; O. W. Holmes, "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table ;" and the celebrated theological writer James Freeman Clarke. No class of American college graduates has ever been more famous, unless it be that of one in Maine, whose fiftieth anniversary was distinguished by H. W. Longfellow's " Morituri Salutamus."
Mr. Davis chose the pursuit of law after his honorable graduation, and completed the necessary studies in Cambridge. Commencing the practice of his profession at Greenfield, in Massachusetts, he continued to reside there until his removal to Portland in 1865. While at college, or soon afterward, when studying law, he made the acquaintance of Margaret Fuller, whose place in American literature is so distinctly marked. She was about his own age, and by her conversation and correspondence exerted a powerful influ- ence upon his character. Transcendentalism was beginning to make itself apparent in the profound and daring speculations of leading thinkers, and especially among the Unitarian clergy. Their ideas were subsequently embodied in sermons and books, and more strik- ingly in the scheme of a new social life at Brook Farm, near Boston. Margaret Fuller says of Mr. Davis in one of her letters :
" He was as premature as myself at thirteen-a man in the range of his thoughts, analyzing motives and explaining principles, when he ought to have been playing at cricket or hunting in the woods. All his characteristics were brilliant hues; he was very witty, and I owe to him the great obligation of being the only person who has excited me to frequent and boundless gayety. In later days-for my intimacy with him lasted many years-he became the feeder of my intellect. He delighted to ransack the history of a nation, of an art or a science, and bring to me all the particulars. Telling them fixed them in his own memory, which was the most tenacious and ready I have ever known; he enjoyed my clear percep- tion as to their relative value, and I classified them in my own way."
Legal practice in a rural town could not satisfy a mind so powerful and active as his. In the second year of his residence at Greenfield he established the Franklin Mercury newspaper. This he managed and edited for three years. Politics, too, possessed great interest for him. For one year he served as representative in the lower House of the General Court, and for two years in the Senate. In 1851 and 1852 he also represented his district in the National House of Representatives. In the latter assembly it was obvious
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that his natural conservatism had alienated him in some degree from the aggressive radi- calism of the Massachusetts transcendentalists, and that the pressure of political relations had caused him to compromise, at least by suppression and silence, the just and humane sentiments that he cherished in the heart. The cautious and constitutional measures of Daniel Webster had more commendations to one of his refined character than the uncom- promising antagonism of Charles Sumner to human selfishness and injustice in their worst manifestation-that of human enslavement. Webster and Sumner did splendid patriotic service, each according to the best light that he had. When the dreadful convulsion, foreseen by the sage of Marshfield, came ; when the foul fabric of slavery tottered to its fall; when the nation was reconstructed on the basis of equal rights for all-then was it seen that the American Republic was as much, if not more, indebted to the overpowering Union sentiment fostered by Webster and Everett, Cass and Benton, as to the hatred of slavery nurtured by Sumner and Garrison, Phillips and Giddings.
In a contested-election case from the State of Pennsylvania Mr. Davis took a con- spicuous part, "showing himself an expert in the comprehension and exposition of legal principles, and in the discussion of the evidence applicable to those principles." His speech in the House on reporting resolutions drawn by him, and appropriate to the death of Daniel Webster, gave him a temporary National reputation. "His exquisite literary taste, and the stores of classic and poetic learning his tenacious memory retained, enabled him to excel all his peers in the grace and eloquence with which this affecting tribute to the fame of the great statesman, his personal friend, was performed."
A single term of Congressional service satisfied Mr. Davis's legislative ambition. He had no desire for a second. Returning with enthusiasm to his legal pursuits, he attained and held for many years the first place at the bar of his county.
In many respects his life was singularly felicitous. As the Hon. George F. Talbot has justly remarked :
"In a youth never cramped by poverty, nor affronted with the mean hardships and privations that try the spirits of men destined to a great career, there is very little to make a popular or touching story. He passed by easy gradations from youth to age in the achievement of professional, political, and social success, never conspicuous, but always adequate to a modest self-estimation and a rational ambition. Notwithstanding some severe and peculiar domestic sorrows, which his elastic spirit and sincere faith enabled him to bear without repining or depression, his life may be considered to have been, according to the standard of an average experience, a happy and successful one." " In a liberal culture, embrac- ing the most miscellaneous reading, and that made him an encyclopedia upon all points of minute knowledge in history and literature, it cannot be said that he had any special study." "It seemed to be one of the canons of his conduct never to make himself disagreeable, even to the most fastidious and delicate sense. His rare powers of pleasing, due to a genial wit, and cultivated to the highest style by the most favorable social opportunities, prevented him from intruding his conviction or opinion upon any question in any provoking or belligerent way."
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Mr. Davis died in Portland, whither he had gone, while still in the fulness of his powers, to pass the elegant leisure of his age, on the 17th of June, 1877. For several of the last years of his life he was a confirmed invalid. He spoke of himself as reprieved from the inevitable stroke only from day to day. No severe or protracted suffering, no long clouding of the intellect-which he dreaded worse than death, preceded his dissolution. That came happily, and as he himself might have wished.
Men of the stamp of George T. Davis are comparatively very rare in American society. He moved in a path but little beaten by the tread of other feet. "He made conversation an art, and introduced into the circles that surround a New England dinner-table, the gathering of a college class, or the festive occasions of an agricultural society, the high style, the copious anecdote, and the enlivening wit that distinguished the salons of Paris in the early part of the century." Samuel Bowles, the brilliant editor of the Springfield Republican, critically described him in the following language, which is worthy of perma- nent preservation :
" His great distinction was in literary culture and his social gifts. Here he was indeed a genius, so superior and so brilliant, that not only were all other men dwarfed in comparison, but everything else that he did or was seems small and inadequate. His knowledge was eclectic, yet universal. He knew something of everything, and of many things much. His mind was all-devouring, all-embracing, and seemed never to let go of anything it had ever possessed. As a conversationalist indeed, brilliant, sug- gestive, deft to daintiness, sufficiently sympathetic to established personal relations, but not too much so to interrupt the flow of his wit, which was ever the dominant quality of his talk, it may fairly be said that he had no peer in all America. For a generation he made life in Greenfield famous by his pres- ence, his social and literary leadership, and the circle of bright people that he drew out and around him, at home and from abroad."
"Those who never saw him and listened to his conversation can have no adequate idea of the mar- vellous brilliancy of his mind and its rare stores of knowledge. Those who had such opportunity will preserve a vivid memory of one of the most remarkable characters that ever lived; and those who had the good fortune to come still nearer to him, and feel the added charm of his singularly frank confiding nature, its tender charity, its generous philosophy, its great capacity for enjoyment of little things, will be somewhat at a loss to decide for what their admiration is the most profound, and their sadness that he is dead the deepest."
Mr. Talbot adds from his own experience a testimony to the conversational powers of Mr. Davis that, in connection with the eulogy of Samuel Bowles, places him in the same category of brilliant talkers with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and the immor- tal and entertaining "Boz." He says :
" I have been with him at remote country inns when he has been introduced for the first time to people of both sexes, who seemed to me to be utterly incapable of intellectual appreciation, or to be the inspirers of wit or eloquence, and have seen him open his repertoire of stories, and narrate them in
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lively sequence and profusion, stimulated by the delight and amazement of his listeners, who seemed to regard him as a visitant from some other world."
Unlike the majority of great talkers, he was never arrogant, never monopolized the conversation, never evinced any annoyance at interruption or indifference. He delighted to put others under their best aspects, to tell the good jokes made by other people, to sympathize with all original fine thought, to collect unconsidered good things met with in miscellaneous reading. Such a man is a bright and cheery presence in the dull monotony of social life. He was willing to take any part in literary exercises, whereby good taste and culture could be improved. His society was relished for its own piquancy, and for the heartiness with which he appreciated all that was bright and good in the sayings of others. He was a Yankee Socrates in the stimulus he imparted to intellectual culture, and to eleva- tion of the standard of excellence in all literary and artistic work. He was an active and valued member of the Maine Historical Society. " Historical themes were always a great pleasure to him, and much exercised his interest and his industry in the later years of his life." Hospitable, genial, witty, gentlemanly, his demise was a loss to society that can scarcely be repaired.
Mr. Davis was twice married. His first wife was a daughter of Nathaniel P. Russell of Boston. His second wife, to whom he was married in 1865, was an estimable lady of Portland, whose mental traits and brilliant wit were so like his own, that they became attached and congenial companions.
B RADBURY, BION, of Portland, Maine. Born in Biddeford, York County, Maine, December 6, 1811. His father, Jeremiah Bradbury, was a native of Saco, in the same State, and a lawyer by profession. Beginning practice at Biddeford, he prosecuted legal pursuits in that town for a time, and then removed to South Berwick. While resident in the latter place, he received the appointment of Collector of Customs at the port of York from President Madison. This office he held until 1820, when he was appointed clerk of the courts. Removing to Alfred, he continued to discharge the duties of his legal position for the next twenty years. He died at Calais, the place of his last residence, in the year 1848. His father served as a captain in the Revolutionary War.
The wife of Jeremiah and the mother of Bion Bradbury bore the maiden name of Many Langdon Storer. She was a daughter of Captain Seth Storer of Saco, and a grand- daughter of Mrs. John Storer of Wells. Mrs. John Storer was the sister of Governor
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Langdon of New Hampshire, one of the immortal signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Bion Bradbury received his educational preparation for college in the Gorham and South Berwick academies, matriculated at Bowdoin, and graduated from thence in 1830. During the following year he held the position of principal in the Alfred Academy. But legal rather than educational activities possessed his choice. He commenced the prelimi- nary studies appropriate to his chosen vocation in the office of Daniel Goodenow at Alfred, completed them in that of William Pitt Preble at Portland, and was admitted to the bar at Alfred, York County, in May, 1834.
Soon after his admission to the bar (in July, 1834) he began professional practice at Calais, Washington County, and in the course of a short time entered into partnership with Anson G. Chandler. This association lasted until 1838, when his partner was elevated to the judicial bench. In 1842 Mr. Bradbury was elected to the lower House of the State Legislature from the Calais District, and served therein on several important committees. In 1844 he was commissioned as Collector of Customs at Eastport, Maine ; was subse- quently recommissioned by President Polk, and again by President Pierce. During the last term of incumbency, he served in the lower branch of the Maine Legislature as the Representative of Eastport, in the years 1849 and 1850. He was also a member of the National Democratic Convention held at Cincinnati in 1856. Two years after that, in 1858, he was the unsuccessful candidate of the Democratic Party in the Sixth District of Maine for the Congress of the United States, but was rejected by only a bare majority. In 1860 he was again a member of the National Democratic Convention, held in Charles- ton, South Carolina, and subsequently of that assembled in Baltimore.
The times were portentous. Political parties were seething from conflicting opinions and volcanic passions. The unity and perpetuity of the National Union were in danger. Mr. Bradbury promptly and conscientiously arrayed himself with those who were resolved that, at all hazards, the integrity of the country and the supremacy of the National organic law should be maintained. He belonged to the class known as "War Democrats," to whom the whole country is so deeply indebted. Patriotic citizens of all parties had equal confidence in his probity and public spirit. In 1862 he was elected to the State Legisla- ture, as a War Democrat, from Eastport, by the unanimous vote of both the great political- divisions. In 1863 he was the Democratic candidate for the Chief Magistracy of Maine. In 1874 he was the nominee of his party in Portland for Congress. His letter of accept- ance plainly declared to all voters in the Cumberland and York Congressional District his views of, and his opposition to, the use of money in popular elections. The frankness of such an avowal may not have conciliated the feelings of some electors, but nevertheless it did exceeding honor to the candidate who made it. The old Roman candidatus, who in his white robes solicited the votes of the citizens, affirmed by the snowy purity of his attire
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that his motives and aims were free from the soil of selfishness and the stains of corruption. Whether the visible averment were true or not, it is eternally true that the welfare of the American people can only be secured by the action of uncorrupted and incorruptible officials. Bribery and corruption are to the State what pulmonary consumption is to the individual. One of the greatest dangers to the body-politic is from these very evils.
In 1880 Mr. Bradbury was a member of the National Democratic Convention held in Cincinnati, as a delegate-at-large from the State of Maine, and was also the chairman of his delegation.
In all his past official relations, Mr. Bradbury has maintained his professional practice ; and since his removal to Portland, in 1864, has been almost exclusively devoted to it. Learned in the literature of the law, adverse to all litigation that is not morally necessitated, advising compromise and arbitration wherever practicable and right in the settlement of disputes, he naturally and logically commands the confidence of all interested parties. In the exercise of forensic functions, he is persuasive and convincing toward the jury ; acute and skilful in the examination of witnesses; elegant, easy, and energetic in his oratory. In the Legislature he was known as an able debater, and one whose wisdom and counsel mainly directed the policy of his party. Local, State, and National affairs have always received due and proportionate attention, and in each and all his personal influence has been markedly felt as that of a true patriot and "hard money" political economist. Kind and neighborly in social relations, always preserving mental equipoise, smoothness of temperament, and remarkable self-control, he is also frank and affable in manner, sym- pathetic with the suffering, and encouraging to the tried and dispirited. In the amenities of the family-circle, in the perplexities of law-courts, and in the anxieties of legislation his characteristics and bearing are those of the courteous, cultured gentleman.
Bion Bradbury was married on the 25th of October, 1837, to Alice, daughter of John- son Williams of Brooklyn, New York, and afterward for many years a citizen of Water- ville, Maine. Five children constitute the living fruit of their marriage : 1. Albert W., a practising lawyer in Portland; 2. Bion, Jr., an attache of the Coast Survey ; 3. Mary Langdon, widow of the late Charles C. Wells; 4. Alice, wife of Charles F. Libby, Port- land ; 5. Maria Dow Bradbury.
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P
REBLE, WILLIAM PITT, of Portland, Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine. Born in the town of York, Maine, in the section called Scotland Parish, from the number of Scotch settlers therein, on the 27th of November, 1783.
The first member of the Preble family in Maine was an Englishman named Abraham Preble, who emigrated from his native land to this country before the year 1637. Settling first at Scituate, Massachusetts, he soon removed from thence to what is now the State of Maine. In 1642 he purchased a tract of land in Agamenticus, now called York, from Edward Godfrey, the agent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges; took up his residence upon it, and lived there until his death in 1663. His was a most conspicuous figure in the stirring scenes of the seventeenth century. One of the councillors of the proprietor in 1645, he held that office as long as the government of Gorges continued. He was a member of the Provincial General Court, a commissioner holding county courts, one of the treasurers of the colony, and also its chief military officer. His descendants have been scarcely less prominent in the history of Maine. His son Benjamin was the incumbent of many important offices. The famous Commodore Preble was his great- great-grandson. Abraham Preble, second, was the son of Benjamin, and the father of Samuel Preble, who was the sire of Esaias, the father of William Pitt Preble. Esaias was a Whig in the Revolution, a captain in the patriot army, and a dissident member of the Massachusetts Convention called to ratify the Constitution.
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