History of Carroll County, New Hampshire, Part 86

Author: Merrill, Georgia Drew
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Boston : W.A. Fergusson & Co.
Number of Pages: 1124

USA > New Hampshire > Carroll County > History of Carroll County, New Hampshire > Part 86

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

708

HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.

influence were beneficent in all the relations of life, and his memory is grate- fully cherished.

" He who lives and dies in the full confidence of his fellowmen transmits a character worthy of thoughtful study."

DR CHARLES HENRY WHITE.1

Dr Charles Henry White, son of Dr Charles White, has had a career more eventful than falls to the lot of most men. Entering the public service in early life as assistant surgeon in the United States navy, he has sailed from ocean to ocean and passed from continent to continent, and very few men have such extensive knowledge of the world. He was born in Sandwich, November 19, 1838, and, like both his father and mother, was the eighth child of his parents. His education was begun under the instruction of Aaron B. Hoyt, Daniel G. Beede, and Albert Ethridge, in Sandwich, and he was a year in the academy at Northfield, now the Conference Seminary at Tilton. Ile was in J. B. Henck's civil engineering office in Boston several months, then studied medicine with Dr D. T. Huckins, of Watertown, Mass., attending at the same time Cambridge Scientific School as pupil of Jeffries Wyman. He attended Harvard Medical School three years, and graduated in March, 1862. He entered the navy as assistant surgeon, December 26, 1861, being the successful one of several applicants for the vacancy after an examination that lasted a week, and in May he was ordered to the Naval Hospital at Chelsea, Mass. He joined the United States steamship "Huron " in November of the same year, and was in the blockading squadron of Charleston, S. C., on this vessel, and on the monitor " Lehigh." He returned North in 1864, and was on shore duty till November, then went to the United States ironclad " Roanoke " in the Potomac, and remained on that vessel till the close of the war. In 1865 he was promoted to passed assistant surgeon, and was on duty in New York navy yard till the following spring, and then went to the Asiatic squadron on the United States steamship " Ashuelot," and passed three years in China and Japan. In 1869 he returned home and was promoted to surgeon and ordered to the naval laboratory at New York. In 1872 he returned to the Asiatie squadron, and served on the United States ships " Benicia," "Idaho," and " Monocacy," and then came back to duty in the naval laboratory, where he remained four years. Then followed a three years' cruise on the United States steamship " Lacka- wanna " in the Pacific squadron ; returning in 1883, he was ordered to the museum of anatomy and hygiene in Washington, and remained there on duty five years. From Washington he was ordered to the United States flagship " Trenton " as fleet surgeon of the Pacific squadron, and promoted to medical

1 Contributed.

b.A. White_

John boots

709

TOWN OF SANDWICH.

inspector, the highest grade save one in the navy. January 13, 1889, the "Trenton " was ordered from Panama to the Samoan Islands pending the con- troversy between Germany and the United States respecting the government of those islands. He was in the terrific gale of March 16 when six German and American war-vessels, including the " Trenton," were wrecked and almost ground to atoms. Himself rescued, it was Dr White's privilege to direct the care of the men who, bruised, maimed, half-drowned, surf-beaten, and utterly exhausted, survived the awful fury of that appalling tempest. His varied acquirements have made him sought for membership in many organizations, and to the following he belongs : Masonic Fraternity ; Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States ; American Association for the Advancement of Science ; American Public Health Association ; Philosophical Society of Washington ; Biological Society of Washington ; Chemical Society of Wash- ington ; Microscopical Society of Washington; National Geographical Society ; while for professional service he received a decoration - The Military Order of Christ - from the king of Portugal.

As a student Dr White in early life aspired to high attainments in his profession. His scientific knowledge is very thorough ; he investigates every- thing pertaining to his favorite studies, and the result is, he has attained to the standard of his early ambition. But he is much more than a professional student; his investigations extend into the broad fields of learning. In the subtilties of science, in the profounder depths of literature, in the later developing thoughts of the age, in his own striking originality, in the large variety of his conversational powers, those acquainted with him are surprised at the plenitude of his gifts.

JOHN COOK.1

John Cook was a grandson of Cornelius Cook, who, with his brothers Eben and Robert, came to this country from England some time previous to the year 1700. Cornelius, although a cooper by trade, appears to have had a literary turn of mind, and was a natural poet, for he wrote verses and hymns enough to fill a large volume, which, through neglect, became scattered and lost. He first settled in Moultonborough, where Joel, John's father, was born. He sub- sequently moved to Sandwich with Joel and another son, Dr Lot Cook, buying the land now partly occupied by the village of Centre Sandwich, where he and his son, the doctor, died. Joel was quite an extensive farmer ; and when he first moved to Sandwich with his father he bought a tract of land near the present residence of Deacon Asa Severance, where John was born and grew to

1 By Colonel E. Q. Fellows.

710

HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.

manhood. He also subsequently bought four hundred acres of land in the southwest part of the town bordering on Squam lake and Holderness, including the whole of Rattlesnake mountain.

John Cook, born in 1795, had eight brothers and sisters, and, like nearly all of the older settlers, had no inheritance except a robust constitution and stal- wart frame, being over six feet tall. He came of the best blood in the country, of which he was justly proud, on the side of his paternal grandmother, whose maiden name was Adams, of Braintree, Mass., near of kin to those illustrious statesmen and patriots, Samuel, John, and John Quincy Adams. He lived about two years in Lowell, and seven in Illinois, but passed more than eighty years of his long life of over ninety years in Sandwich, and was at the time of his death, in June, 1887, aged ninety-two, one of the old landmarks and one of the oldest inhabitants.

Though the apparently adverse circumstances under which he was placed required constant exertion as a farmer and drover, he yet found time to read and digest the current news of the day, and, being blessed with an excellent memory, was a living cyclopædia of the noted events of that most interesting period of the world's history from 1810, when Napoleon Bonaparte was at the very climax of his splendor, to the last Indian outbreak on the frontier in 1887. He served in the last war with England in 1814, before he was twenty years old, and received a pension for his services for many years. He was an old- line Whig, and as such represented the town twice in the legislature, was a lifelong political associate with such men as General Hoit and Stephen Beede, but immediately, as well as they, became a Republican on the organization of that party and continued one of its firm adherents till his death.

He was a man of sound judgment, honest in his dealings and upright in his deportment, a good neighbor and citizen, and it was always a rare treat to have an hour's conversation with him on the current events of the eighty years from 1807 to 1887. He was, for more than a generation, a consistent member of the Methodist church. He raised a family of seven children, of whom two only survive : John Otis, a veteran of the war of the Rebellion, and Hon. Asa S. Cook, one of Hartford's wealthiest citizens, mentioned elsewhere. His widow still survives at the age of ninety-four.

Judge David H. Hill, of Sandwich, says: "John Cook differed from most men in many respects. Such was the clearness of his thought that he was able to give voice to an idea in language clear-cut and incisive that fitted the thought he wished to express and gave it its exact force. But his native originality was not his leading quality. It was rather the power of absorption to make all men's thoughts subservient to his own. Such is the highest use of education. As a historian of local and general matters, he kept the fact ever in view, and never allowed prejudice or imagination to east its shadow over the historie fact. Hence, in local matters, when he commenced by differing from

Asuslook

711

TOWN OF SANDWICH.

others of equal age and opportunities, he ended with convincing them of his correctness. At the age of ninety years, he was the most interesting man in his county in conversation on all matters of local character, and also on all matters of general history from the Revolutionary period down."

ASA SINCLAIR COOK.

Asa S. Cook, eldest son of John and Sarah (Sinclair) Cook, was born at Sandwich, N. H., January 10, 1823, amid comfortable but not affluent sur- roundings. His father, a sturdy and highly respected farmer, was a fellow- member of the legislature with Pliny Jewell, who subsequently removed to Hartford, and thus two families of two small New Hampshire towns have con- tributed liberally in brain, energy, and character toward the upbuilding of the capital city of Connecticut.

Having supplemented the slender advantages of the district school by two terms at the high school, then taught by Daniel G. Beede, an able instructor, he was ready at the age of eighteen to start forth in quest of fortune, equipped with a purse somewhat lean, but with a fair education, robust health, and a resolute will. He was especially proficient in mathematics, a fact which proved of great advantage later on. Having worked for brief periods at Salem, Waltham, and Lowell, Mass., he determined to learn the trade of the machinist, for which he had a natural inclination. This accomplished, he spent five years at Gloucester Point, N. J. During the time, he was sent by his employers to Tuscaloosa, Ala, to assist in setting up the machinery of one of the pioneer cotton-mills of the South. In 1850 he moved to Hartford, Conn., to enter the employ of the Colt's Patent Firearms Company, and as workman, foreman, and contractor, remained with the establishment during the next fifteen years, except for a few months in 1858, which he gave to the cause of freedom on the bloody soil of Kansas. In 1865 the oil excitement drew him to Petrolea, Canada West, where he arrived the morning after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He remained in the business about three years without materially adding to his worldly possessions. Forseeing perhaps the base uses to which Canada was to be put as an asylum for Americans whose sins had found them out, like a wise man he returned to Hartford and to the field of labor for which both inclination and training peculiarly fitted him. His skill was brought into immediate use, for he was called by the National Screw Com- pany to make from their patterns and drawings machinery for the production of wood screws. When a few years later this company was absorbed by their powerful rival in Providence, R. I., he began to manufacture wood-screw machinery for the trade from designs of his own, introducing several impor-

712

HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.

tant improvements for which he secured letters-patent. Since then he has equipped many screw factories in America and Europe.

In 1872 Mr Cook began to manufacture Stephens' patent parallel vise, and has since turned out over thirty thousand. He has also made special machin- ery to order : dynamos, electric lamps, etc. etc. For many years his shop has been located in one of the wings of Colt's armory, where he employs from fifty to one hundred men, and disburses from $40,000 to $75,000 a year in wages.

As a reward for industry, wisely directed efforts, good work, and honorable dealing, Mr Cook has accumulated a handsome property. Readiness to face the bullets of " border ruffians " to rescue Kansas from the hands of the slave- power gives a hint of the courage and resolution which have been marked characteristics of his entire career. In politics Mr Cook is a Republican, and a recognized leader in the city of his adoption, having served two years in the common council and four years as alderman. When the principal financiers, manufacturers, and merchants of Hartford organized a board of trade in 1888, he was selected as one of the directors. He is also member of the Society of American Mechanical Engineers. He has long been a director of the Pratt and Whitney Company.

He has a pleasant home on Charter Oak Place, overlooking the valley of the Connecticut skirted by the distant Bolton Range, and, for a summer resi- dence, has recently erected a cottage on an island in Squam lake, in Moulton- borough, near the home of his boyhood.

Mr Cook married, October 31, 1850, Mary J., daughter of John and Harriet (Coburn) Cole, of Lowell, Mass., Francis A. Pratt, of Hartford, founder and president of the famous Pratt and Whitney Company, marrying a younger sister at the same time and place. Mr Cook attributes no small share of the happiness and prosperity which have fallen to his lot to the wise counsels and hearty cooperation of his most estimable wife. Their children are: Millard Fillmore Cook, born July 30, 1851 ; John Franklin Cook, born April 11, 1854 ; Harriet Elizabeth Cook, born July 31, 1857 ; Albert Sinclair Cook, born May 28, 1864 ; Mary Sinclair Cook, born July 8, 1871, died April 28, 1883.

Two of the children have married, namely, John Franklin to Josephine Emma Garrison, July 20, 1874; and Harriet E. to Philemon Wadsworth Robbins, October 13, 1880. Albert S. Cook belongs to the class which grad- uated at Yale University in June, 1889. Two sons, Millard F. and John F., graduates of the Hartford high school, and both practical mechanics, assist their father in carrying on the business, thus giving the strongest of assurances that this establishment, founded on energy, enterprise, and honesty, will con- tinue to grow in the future as it has in the past. This family, singularly united in aims and sympathies, in union has found both contentment and strength.

713

TOWN OF SANDWICH.

THE WENTWORTH FAMILY.1

Paul Wentworth was born in Dover, April 22, 1782. His father, John Wentworth, Jr, was in 1776 representative of Dover in the assembly which met at Exeter, and was reelected annually until 1781, when he was transferred to the council to succeed his father. He served in the council until 1783, when he was elected to the senate for two years. While a member of the assembly he was appointed one of the committee of safety for the state. This committee of safety, during the recess of the legislature, performed all the duties of the government - legislative, executive, and judicial. While a member of the assembly he was appointed a delegate of New Hampshire in the Continental Congress. He married, in 1771, Margaret Frost, of New Castle. He died at Dover in 1787. His father, Judge John Wentworth, was chosen representative to the legislature from Dover in 1749 and various years thereafter until the separation of Somersworth; then he was chosen from that town for several years, when, in 1771, he was chosen speaker of the house. He was also chief justice of the court of common pleas, and afterwards one of the members of the superior court, and served until his death in 1776.

Paul Wentworth aforenamed attended the academy at Exeter, and after- wards became a merchant at Dover. In 1812 he moved to Sandwich, and in 1814 married Lydia, daughter of Colonel Amos Cogswell, and was merchant and postmaster there for several years; was moderator and selectman for twenty years, and representative in the legislature seven years. In 1844 he removed to Concord, where he died August 31, 1855. Mrs Wentworth died in Concord, August 24, 1872. They had eight children, all born in Sandwich : John, Lydia C., Joseph, George, William B., Mary F., Margaret J., and Samnel H.

Hon. John Wentworth, LL.D., popularly known as "Long John," was born in Sandwich, March 15, 1815, and was son of Paul Wentworth. He was graduated from Dartmouth in 1836, and at once went West intending to some- where study law. He located in Chicago, then a mere village. He was the first person admitted to the bar in Chicago, edited the first newspaper estab- lished there, and was the first representative (in 1843) from Chicago in the national house of representatives. He became actively engaged in politics, was elected to Congress six terms, serving his sixth in the Thirty-ninth Congress. He was elected mayor of Chicago in 1857 and in 1860. Though a Democrat all his life, he was nominated the first time by a convention of delegates from all the old parties. The ticket was called the Republican fusion ticket. At the close of his second term in the mayor's chair he issued

1 Contributed.

714

HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.

the first proclamation of any mayor in the country denouncing the rebels and traitors who had taken possession of the property of the Union. He set apart January 8, 1864, as a day to celebrate the patriotism of Major Anderson in his faithful discharge of his duties at Fort Sumter, and ordered the city offices closed.

There was no man in the western metropolis of whom so many anecdotes have been told, and for years he was one of the characters of Chicago. He held many other offices ; among them president of the Alumni association of Dartmouth College in 1882 and 1883; vice-president of the Republican national convention in 1880, and vice-president for nearly a quarter of a century of the New England Historic-Genealogical Society. He wrote many historical essays, and is the author of the Wentworth Genealogy, the most complete and perfectly indexed of any of that class of works published. Hle was one of the earliest Masons and Odd Fellows in Chicago. He was made a doctor of laws by Dartmouth in 1876.

Throughout his life he was indefatigable in everything that concerned Chicago, and was authority on everything pertaining to her history or her interests. He acquired great wealth, and with great intellectual capacity he possessed decided convictions with courage to follow them, and made for himself a national reputation. He died October 25, 1888.

Colonel Joseph Wentworth, son of Paul and Lydia (Cogswell) Wentworth, was born in Sandwich, January 30, 1818. He is a descendant of noble ancestry. No better blood courses through the veins of any man in the Granite State. His mother was a descendant of Ezekiel, son of William Wentworth, and her father, Colonel Amos Cogswell, served the seven years of the Revolution, and represented Dover in the legislature five years, and in the senate three years. He died in Dover, January 28, 1826.

Colonel Wentworth attended school at New Hampton, Hopkinton, and Berwick, Maine, and at the age of twenty-one opened a general country store, where he did a successful business for thirty years; he also dealt in cattle, horses, and discounted notes, besides managing the homestead farm. He took hold of everything with all the energy of his nature, the enthusiasm of his youth, and the ability of his brains to help farmers to help themselves. He was instrumental in organizing an agricultural society in the county in 1860, and was its president several years ; and, on his retiring, this resolu- tion was moved by Hon. F. R. Chase and' seconded by L. D. Sawyer, and unanimously adopted by the society : -

Resolved, That Colonel Joseph Wentworth, of Sandwich, be constituted an honorary member of the Carroll County Agricultural and Horticultural Society, to enjoy all the privileges and immunities of membership for life, in testimony of the Society's appreciation of his highly honorable and efficient services as president during the first and second years of its existence.

Joseph Wentworth

Davon B. Start

715

TOWN OF SANDWICH.

He was register of deeds for Carroll County in 1841 and 1842; town clerk, selectman, and representative to New Hampshire legislature in 1844 and 1845, and a representative from Concord in 1878. He was delegate from Sandwich in 1850, and also from Concord in 1876, to revise the constitu- tion of the state. He was sheriff of the county five years, postmaster fifteen years, and president and chief owner of Carroll County National Bank. In 1870 he moved to Concord, purchased the former residence of ex-President Pierce, and went into mercantile business for awhile, and of late is enjoying himself in flower and fruit raising for his own amusement.

He married, May 7, 1845, Sarah Payson, daughter of Moses and Sarah C. Jones, of Brookline, Mass. They had, born in Sandwich, six children, all living. The oldest, Paul and Moses, were three years at Andover (Mass.) Academy. They entered Harvard College on the same day, graduated on the same day four years thereafter (in 1868, just one hundred years after the graduation of their great-grandfather from the same college), and from their high rank in the class both were assigned parts on graduation day ; the records of the college show no similar record of two brothers. The daughters are Sarah C., Lydia C., Susan J., and Dolly F.

Being a strong temperance man (having never used tobacco or intoxicating drink in any form, seeing as he did on every hand the evil of intemperance, the curse of rum being more baneful than slavery), he was nominated in July, 1886, as a candidate for governor of the state by the Prohibition party, and made several speeches during the canvass.

His personal appearance is good, being six feet three inches in height; he is of unblemished character, and is a man of brains and great activity. Weighing as he does every question in his own even scales of justice, he usually arrives at a correct verdict. He is an intense lover of a good horse. For thirty years while on a farm he raised colts, taking care of them himself, breaking them for market, and now at the age of seventy years he seldom allows a man to pass his horse without a trial of speed. He is conservative in principle, and independent in religion, although a strong believer in the verities of the Bible, having those truths instilled into his youthful mind by the pious teaching of a beloved father and mother. When a young man he founded his faith on the sacred teaching of the Holy Scriptures, and on that faith he is willing to rest his eternal future.

AARON BEEDE HOYT.

AMONG those who had charge of educational interests for many years was Aaron Beede Hoyt, the last preceptor of Sandwich academy. The Hoyt family emigrated very early to this country. Simeon, of Dorchester, was at

716

HISTORY OF CARROLL COUNTY.

Charlestown in 1629: William, of Ipswich, came in the "Planter " in 1635, was a householder in 1642; he had a large family.

Aaron Beede Hoyt was born in Ossipee, July 10, 1802, and died at Sandwich, July 12, 1880. He was a descendant of three notable Carroll county families. He was son of Dr Moses Hoyt, so famed as an early physician in Ossipee. His mother, Anna (Beede) Hoyt, was daughter of Aaron Beede (son of Judge Daniel Beede) and his wife Anna (Winslow) Beede, whose mother, Mrs Anna Winslow, was said to be the first Methodist in Sandwich. Mr Hoyt early showed a remarkable fondness for knowledge, and his father gratified his inclinations by giving him exceptional educational advantages. He prepared for college at Gilmanton and Phillips Exeter academies, and was graduated from Dartmouth College with high honors in 1822, in a class of forty-five. Among his classmates were Hon. Francis Cogswell, Hon. Ira Perley, LL.D., and Rev. Henry Wood, D.D.

He studied law with Samuel Emerson, at Little's Corners, and practised that profession for a few years, but it was not to his taste. He was an educator, and in 1832 he became connected with the noted Chauncey Hall school in Boston as teacher in the mathematical and English branches. Here he remained five years, showing more than ordinary ability as an instructor. Hon. G. F. Thayer, the principal of this school at this time, wrote thus of him : " His fidelity and success as a teacher secured my approbation and friendship. I always found him diligent, patient of labor, and capable of performing a large amount. He has enjoyed the advantages of a college education, is an excellent French scholar, and an almost unequaled penman. His mind is stored with various knowledge, and I consider him competent to teach a school of high order." During this time he was corresponding secretary, and one of the board of directors of the American Institute of Instruction. Shortly after this he went to Baltimore and established a private academy, which he conducted with marked success until his return to Sandwich about 1846 or 1847.

Mr Hoyt now made his home on the farm where his father had lived so many years, known still as the " Dr Moses Hoyt place," and here he passed the remainder of his life. This farm is in a magnificent location, on a beautiful intervale in view of the massive peaks of the Sandwich range, and the scenery is both lovely and awe-inspiring, and to Mr Hoyt's devoutly religious and philosophical mind it was second only in sublimity to the mountain scenery of Judæa that so inspired the tongues of prophets. In many ways Mr Hoyt was a man of marked individuality. He had strong convictions, and could give most logical reasons for the faith he held. He was a friend to the down- trodden and the oppressed, gave lavishly to the poor of his substance and his time, and was one of the strongest of the early band of abolitionists. He was deeply and conscientiously religious, and in this, as in other matters, he never

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Carroll County, New Hampshire, Part 86

Author: Merrill, Georgia Drew Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Boston : W.A. Fergusson & Co. Number of Pages: 1124

Author: Merrill, Georgia Drew
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Boston : W.A. Fergusson & Co.
Number of Pages: 1124