USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume IV > Part 13
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3 Dante's Inferno, IV., 80.
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CELIA (LAIGHTON) THANTER
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A HISTORY
writers and noblest characters. The charm of her poetry lies largely in her minute acquaintance with the ways of the sea as she watched it lovingly through many years. Winds and tem- pests, waves and ships, clouds and skies, and the little sandpiper had moral lessons for her. She mused upon little common things so long in her early years that she saw their hidden meaning and brought them into the soul for teachers, after the manner of Him who taught by parables. When one points out the corre- spondence between our inner world of thought and feeling and the outer world that surrounds us and so makes both worlds better understood and appreciated, then we recognize the poetic seer and the great teacher :
"Thou great Creator! Pardon us who reach For other heaven beyond this world of thine, This matchless world, where thy least touch doth teach Thy solemn lessons clearly, line on line.
And help us to be grateful, we who live Such sordid fretful lives of discontent, Nor see the sunshine nor the flower, nor strive To find the love their bitter chastening meant."
The poems of Albert Laighton are above the ordinary. He was born in Portsmouth, January 8, 1829, and died there Feb- ruary 6, 1887. He was a cousin of Celia Laighton Thaxter, and he lived in the house in which Aldrich was born. His poem, "My Native River," surpasses all that has been said and sung about the Pascataqua. He began making verses when he was fifteen years of age and kept at it in a desultory way. In 1858 he delivered a poem on Beauty before the literary societies of Bowdoin College, parts of which were published with many short poems in a booklet the following year. A current of religious faith runs through his verses, as through the "Hymns of the Soul," by Professor Thomas Upham. Indeed without religious faith what poet has ever soared on high and carried his readers with him? The unseen things that are eternal are the most powerful realities in the world of thought and emotion.
Another Portsmouth author of much religious poetry is Harriet McEwen Kimball, born November 2, 1824. She has been called the Keble of the American church. She wrote "Swallow Flights," "Blessed Company of All Faithful People," etc. Her complete works were issued in 1889.
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Edna Dean Proctor has gained recognition among the fore- most poetical writers of New Hampshire. She was born in Hen- niker, September 1, 1829. She began to publish poems at the age of twenty and has never ceased. In early life she taught school in New Haven and Woodstock, Conn., and for nine years was instructress in the family of H. C. Bowen. Thus she was introduced to the columns of the New York Independent. Dur- ing the Civil War many national poems and songs of freedom came from her pen. Her first book was an anti-slavery story, entitled "Aunt Sallie." Her first volume of poems was pub- lished in 1866. "Columbia's Banner" was written for national school celebrations on Columbus Day. She wrote "Doom of the White Hills" in response to President Harrison's request to aid in preventing the destruction of the White Mountain forests. In 1847 she taught a select school in Concord. After traveling in Europe she published "A Russian Journey." When the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of New Hampshire was celebrated by the New Hampshire Historical So- ciety, the poem for the occasion was delivered by her. She is perhaps as well known as any of the poets of the Granite State.4
Amanda Bartlett Harris, a native of Warner, has written much in the way of poetry and stories. "Wild Flowers and Where They Grow," "The Luck of Edenhall" are specimens of her work.
Mary D. (Chellis) Lund, a native of Goshen, born February 13, 1826, died June 2, 1891. She wrote forty volumes of Sunday School and temperance literature, besides many articles for periodicals.
For half a century Godey's Ladies' Book has been widely and favorably known. Its editor was Sarah J. (Buell) Hale, born in Newport October 24, 1788. Her husband, David Hale, a lawyer, died about 1822 and left her with five children. She published a volume of poems in 1823 and a novel, "Northwood," in 1827. In 1828 she went to Boston as editor of the Ladies' Magazine, which later was removed to Philadelphia with the title changed to Ladies' Book, and continued with that publica- tion till 1877. While in Boston she originated the Seaman's Aid Society. For twenty years she urged the national celebration
4 See Cogswell's Hist. of Henniker, pp. 698-9.
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A HISTORY
of Thanksgiving Day, till its adoption by President Lincoln in 1864. She published the "School Song Book," which contained the famous poem beginning with the line, "Mary had a little lamb." Her largest work was one of a thousand pages, "Woman's Record," containing brief biographies of celebrated women down to 1868. Her brother, Horatio Hale, instructed her in Latin, mathematics and philosophy, and it was her habit to spend two hours every day in reading or study with her hus- band. Twenty-five volumes are found in her list of publications.
Her son, Horatio Hale, was graduated at Harvard and ere his graduation was philologist to the United States Exploring Expedition, commanded by Captain Wilkes, publishing after his return "Wilkes'.Expedition Around the World," in several large volumes at the expense of the United States. This work secured commendations from the highest sources for its research in his- tory, ethnography and philology. It contained, among many other things, a comprehensive grammar of Polynesia, in which many dialects, widely separated, are compared. After Mr. Hale's return he divided his time between linguistic studies and law.
New Hampshire's most famous writer of religious litera- ture was probably James Freeman Clarke, born at Hanover, April 4, 1810. He was brought up in the family of his grand- father, James Freeman, pastor of King's Chapel, Boston, and was educated in the Boston Latin School, Harvard College, and the Divinity School at Cambridge. From 1833 to 1840 he was pastor of a Unitarian church in Louisville, Kentucky. Then he returned to Boston and took charge of the Church of the Dis- ciples, with which organization he remained many years. It was esteemed a liberal organization and ranked with the Unitarians, yet when Mr. Clarke exchanged pulpits with Theodore Parker in 1845, fifteen of Clarke's leading parishioners forsook him. It was not the first time that Boston people claiming freedom of thought in religion for themselves denied it to others. Mr. Clarke used to say that "a rational Unitarian has no quarrel with a rational Trinitarian," but the difficulty is, that so many of both schools of thought are irrational and uncharitable; but that time is fast passing away. Mr. Clarke's best known work was "Ten Great Religions," a comparison of the World's re- ligious beliefs. It was read by people of all denominations who wanted to know what the wise of many ages have been teach-
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ing. A book that makes for Christian unity is "Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors," which some Unitarians thought to be more orthodox than they wished it to be. Other works were "Com- mon Sense in Religion," "Essentials and Non-Essentials in Re- ligion," "Steps of Belief" and "Christian Doctrine of Prayer." He wrote also "How to Find the Stars" and a volume of poems, entitled "Exotics." He was professor of Natural Religion and Christian Doctrine at Harvard, 1867-71, and lecturer on religion, 1876-7. He died in Jamaica Plain June 8, 1888. His autobiogra- phy down to the year 1840 was completed and edited by Edward Everett Hale. His successor in the pastorate of the Church of the Disciples was Charles Gordon Ames, also a native of New Hampshire, reared in Canterbury, a man of genius and prophetic insight, author of many religious tracts and sermons. The church they served was organized to "co-operate in the study and practice of Christianity," and there Trinitarians and Unitarians lived and labored lovingly together, as in the earlier days of New England. James Freeman Clarke left a lasting impress upon the religious thought and spirit of the age.
A writer of great influence for good was Thomas Cogswell Upham, born in Deerfield, January 30, 1799. After graduation at Dartmouth College in 1816 and at Andover Theological Sem- inary in 1821 he was pastor for a year at Rochester, whence he was called to the professorship of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Bowdoin College. Here he remained till 1867, then retiring to Kennebunkport, Maine, where he lived, although his death occurred in New York city, April 2, 1872. His study was the activities of the human mind, and especially its religious activi- ties. In 1827 appeared his first philosophical work, supplemented in 1834 by his treatise on the Will. He first made clear the distinction between the Intellect, the Sensibilities and the Will in mental activities, a distinction that was adopted and followed by many philosophical teachers and writers. "Disordered Men- tal Actions" appeared in 1840. Probably he is more widely known by his works of religious devotion, "Interior Life," "Life of Faith," and "Divine Union," as well as his lives of Madame Guyon and Fenelon. He also wrote "Cottage Life" and "Letters from Europe." "Interior Life" is well worth study to save one from religious hallucinations and to cultivate sound piety and devotion. It is not a book of casuistry or of moral and religious
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A HISTORY
precepts, but it helps one to do one's own thinking and to do it rightly.
A preacher and writer of note in his day was the Rev. Ephraim Peabody, born at Wilton, March 22, 1807. He was fitted for college at Phillips Exeter Academy and was graduated at Bowdoin in 1827. He received his degree of Doctor of Divinity from his Alma Mater in 1848. His work as a Unitarian preacher was done in Cincinnati, New Bedford and King's Chapel, Boston. His published sermons and poems are of a high order. The Westminster Review likened him to Frederick Robertson, the famous preacher of Bristol, England. At the centennial celebration of his native town he delivered an address. He is described as a man of rare features, tone and spirit. A daughter was the first wife of President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard University. Dr. Peabody died in Boston November 28, 1856. He was the father of Professor Francis G. Peabody of Harvard University.
As an antiquarian and writer upon first things in New Eng- land no one has excelled Samuel G. Drake, born in Pittsfield, October II, 1798. Educated in the common schools he became a school teacher before he reached the age of twenty, and while thus employed produced his first literary work, an edition of Church's History of King Philip's War, with notes and additions. Later he owned an antiquarian bookstore in Boston and became an authority on Indian history. In 1832 he published "Indian Biography" and the following year "The Book of the Indians, or a Biography and History of the Indians in North America,"" which reached its eleventh edition. In 1839 was published his "Indian Captives," or original narratives of persons who had been in captivity among the Indians. Mr. Drake was one of the founders of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, in 1847, and conducted its "Register" for fifteen years. In 1858 he helped to found the Prince Society. The Drake and Mather genealogies came from his pen. He spent two years in research in the British Museum and official archives of England for information relating to the founders of New England and pub- lished the results. Another publication was "The Antiquities of Boston," a book that shows minuteness of research and fulness of detail in footnotes. The scope of this work was from 1630 to 1770, and he left an uncompleted volume of subsequent history
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of Boston. He wrote also a Memoir of Sir Walter Raleigh, "The Witchcraft Delusion in New England," "History of the Five Years' French and Indian War in New England," and many articles for the press. The article on Massachusetts in the Ency- clopaedia Brittanica was written by him. Few writers have produced so many works that indicate great painstaking and sound judgment. He died in Boston, June 14, 1875.
Francis Samuel Drake, son of the one just named, inherited his father's interest in books and antiquities. He was born in Northwood, February 22, 1828. He was educated in the schools of Boston and his father's bookstore. After twenty years of study he published "A Dictionary of American Biography," in 1872, which was incorporated in Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Mr. Drake published also a History of the Members of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, with brief biographies; "Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox, General in the Revolutionary Army"; "The Town of Roxbury"; "Tea Leaves"; and "Indian History for Young Folks." He died in Washington, D. C., February 22, 1885.
George Bartlett Prescott is well worthy of mention as an inventor and writer on subjects connected with electricity. He was born in Kingston, September 16, 1830. He was educated in private schools in Portland, Maine, and at the age of sixteen had made a special study of electricity. He was successively manager of offices in New Haven, Boston and Springfield, from 1847 to 1858. In the latter year he was made superintendent of lines operated by the American Telegraph Company. In 1866 he was called to a similar position with the Western Union Tele- graph Company and became its electrician residing in New York city. From 1873 to 1880 he was electrician of the International Ocean Telegraph Company. He was one of the earliest pro- moters of the telephone and connected as an official with several companies. He invented many improvements in telegraphing and with Thomas A. Edison was joint owner in all the quadru- plex systems in this country and in Europe. He introduced in 1870 the duplex telegraph and in 1874 the quadruplex telegraph, one of the most important inventions known to electricians. In 1852 he discovered that the Aurora Borealis was of electric origin and published an account of it in the Boston Journal. Subse- quently, on various occasions, he removed the batteries from tele-
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A HISTORY
graph wires and operated the latter by means of a current in- duced by the Aurora Borealis. An account of such experiments may be found in the Atlantic Monthly of 1859. He wrote many pamphlets in opposition to government control of the telegraph ; also "History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph"; "Dynamo-Electricity"; "Bell's Electric Speaking Telephone, Its Invention, Construction, Application, Modification and History"; and "The Electric Telephone." After a very laborious and useful life he died in New York city, January 18, 1894.
An entertaining writer of travels was Thomas Wallace Knox, born in Pembroke, June 25, 1835. Self-educated with little aid from the public schools, at the age of twenty-three he was principal of an academy in Kingston. Afterwards he became editor of the Daily News in Denver, Colorado. He served in two campaigns of the Civil War and was lieutenant-colonel on the staff of the governor of California. Later he was war corre- spondent of the New York Herald. In 1865 was published his "Camp Fire and Cotton Fields." The following year he made a trip with an expedition to establish a line of telegraphs through Asia and traveled five thousand miles in sledges and wagons. On his return he published "Overland Through Asia." He in- vented a system of topographical telegraphy which he sold to the United States government for use in transmitting by tele- graph the well known wind and storm maps of the weather bureau. It became his habit to write two books each year, and such was his method that the same amount of work was done each day-an animated writing machine. His books may be numbered by the dozen. Fifteen volumes were entitled "The Boy Travelers." In later life he wrote a "History of the Re- publican Party." He was a close friend and correspondent of the noted explorer, Henry M. Stanley.
Katherine Abbott Sanborn, better known a few years ago as Kate Sanborn, was born in Hanover, July II, 1839, daughter of Professor Edwin D. Sanborn. Her mother was daughter of Hon. Ezekiel Webster of Boscawen. Under the tuition of her father she made a special study of Latin and elocution. At the age of twelve she earned her first money as an author. Many years were spent in teaching, at Mary Institute, St. Louis, in a private day school at Hanover, in Packer Institute, Brooklyn, and five years as Professor of English Literature in Smith Col-
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lege. For twelve years she gave private instruction in elocution in New York city and lectured on literary themes. In 1884 was published her "Round Table Series of Literary Lessons." Among her works are "Home Pictures of English poets," the result of travel in England; "Vanity and Insanity, Shadows of Genius"; "The Wit of Women"; "A Year of Sunshine"; "A Truthful Woman in Southern California"; "My Literary Zoo"; "Adopt- ing an Abandoned Farm," and its sequel, "Abandoning an Adopted Farm." The last two were the outcome of attempted farming in Metcalf, Mass., where her home has been for several years. She made larger profits in writing anecdotes and stories about farming than in cultivating the soil, and some affirmed that her veracious anecdotes were made up out of whole cloth, which makes no difference from a literary point of view. Truth is superior to fact; facts are illustrations of truth, and imaginative facts are fine materials for writers of current literature, while they are of little use to a historian. In 1894 Miss Sanborn was elected president of a club of New Hampshire Daughters in Boston.
As a war correspondent nobody had a higher reputation than Charles Carleton Coffin, born in Boscawen, July 26, 1823. He was brought up on a farm and got some education at Boscawen and Pembroke Academies, but constant reading, conversation and observation were his real educators. Having picked up some knowledge of surveying he was employed on the Northern Rail- road and later on the Concord and Portsmouth Railroad. Mean- while he was writing poems and prose for the Concord news- papers and for Littell's Living Age. In 1840 he constructed the telegraph line from Harvard observatory to Boston, by means of which uniform time was given to Massachusetts trains. Then he was employed on the Boston Journal and the Atlas. Under the nome de plume of Carleton he reported the movements and engagements of the armies of the Potomac and of the Mississippi during the Civil War, generally with more fulness, better judg- ment and greater speed than anybody else. During the war of Austria with Germany and of Austria with Italy he was at the front, sending weekly messages to the Journal. This corre- spondence was continued during two years and a half that he was making a trip around the world. In completing the circle he journeyed five days and nights without a break in a stage
CHARLES C. COFFIN
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A HISTORY
coach over the Rockies. He delivered over two thousand lec- tures, one course being before the Lowell Instiute at Boston. He published "The Great Commercial Prize," advocating the Northern Pacific Railroad, in 1858. His books were many and of great interest to boys. Among them were "Days and Nights on the Battlefield," "Following the Flag," "Winning His Way," "Four Years of Fighting," "The Seat of Empire," "Old Times in the Colonies," "Drum-Beat of the Nation," "Boys of '76," which was the most popular of all, and "History of Boscawen," as a labor of love for his native town. He died at Brookline, Mass., March 2, 1896. So respected and trustworthy was he in all his work as a correspondent that he won the name of "Old Re- liable." He was a man of earnest Christian character, having the confidence of leaders in the army and in national affairs.5
Salma Hale, who has been mentioned in the list of con- gressmen, at the age of seventeen published a "New Grammar of the English Language," revised in 1831. He wrote a "History of the United States," for which he was awarded a gold medal and four hundred dollars by the American Academy of Belles Letters, and which had several editions. Other works were "Annals of the Town of Keene" and "The Administration of J. Q. Adams and the Opposition of Algernon Sidney."
His son, George Silsby Hale, lawyer, was born at Keene, September 24, 1835. Philips Exeter Academy and Harvard educated him. While he was teaching he studied law and began practice in Boston. He was lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, 1893-4. As associate editor he published three volumes of "Law Reports," and he was editor of "United States Digest." Other works were "Memoirs of Joel Parker," "Memoirs of Theron Metcalf," and a history of Boston charities in the Memorial History of Boston. He died at Bar Harbor, Maine, July 27, 1897.
Edwin Moses Hale was born in Newport, February 2, 1829. He went to Newark, Ohio, at the age of fifteen and educated him- self to be a homoeopathic physician. He was professor of Materia Medica in Hahnemann College for eighteen years. His principle works were "New Remedies," translated into German, French and Spanish; "Diseases of the Heart," also translated
5 Granite Monthly, Vol. VIII, pp. 97-106.
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into Spanish; "Therapeutics of Sterility," etc., to the number of fourteen. He was a student of botany, zoology and archae- ology and published a series of papers on "Ant Life." He died in Chicago, January 15, 1899.
Newport brings to mind a more recent author, born there October 30, 1830, Edwin Augustus Jenks .. Specimens of real poetry, "The Return" and "The Life-Stream," may be seen in the History of Newport. He was a contributor to the leading magazines. A later prose work was "Six Incursions by a Pred- atory Pew Into Some Theologic Fastnessess," which reveals plainly that he was a better poet than theologian. He died in Concord.
Now we come to the man from whose work all these writers took every word they used. It was Joseph Emerson Worcester, author of the dictionary that was a rival for a long time to Webster's Unabridged. He was born in Bedford, August 24, 1784. He fitted himself for Yale College and graduated there after two years of study in 1811, after which he taught school in Salem, Mass. In 1811 he published a "Geographical Dictionary, or Universal Gazette," of which a new edition was issued in 1823. A Gazeteer of the United States followed. Then he removed to Cambridge, Mass. In 1819 he published "Elements of Geogra- phy, Ancient and Modern," and then "Sketches of the Earth and Its Inhabitants." In 1830 was produced his "Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary"; in 1846 his "Universal and Critical Dictionary"; in 1860 "Dictionary of the English Language." His was the first dictionary to make use of illustrations. He re- ceived the degrees of Doctor of Laws from Brown and Dart- mouth. The study of words lies at the basis of all literary work and oral expression, and he who brings to light their root mean- ing and growing significance is a common benefactor. Dr. Wor- cester died in Cambridge, Mass., October 27, 1865.
It would be easy to make a long list of ministers who have published almost innumerable sermons, addresses, pamphlets, articles in periodicals and books on religious and especially doc- trinal subjects. Many of these are controversial in their nature and had no permanency. They can not be classed as literature. If the authors had preached and written upon universal truths rather than upon particular beliefs, their books would have en- riched the literature of their native State. Changing opinions
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A HISTORY
never can be the basis of enduring literature, however fine the mode of expression may be; the truth of the living God, simply told, is interesting unto all ages.
But what are fine thoughts, expressed in choice words, without wise publishers to spread them abroad? New Hamp- shire has furnished her full share of these. First may be men- tioned William D. Ticknor, born in Lebanon, August 6, 1810. At an early age he was employed with an uncle in Boston as a money broker, and soon became teller in a bank. The love of books could not be destroyed by the handling of money ; rather money became the means to a desired end. In 1832 he started business as a publisher with John Allen. The firm name changed with the lapse of years, yet Mr. Ticknor was the leading man till his death, April 10, 1864, in Philadelphia, while on a trip with his intimate friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne. James T. Fields was for years a prominent member of this firm. Together they pub- lished the Atlantic Monthly and the North American Review, and a long list of the most important books of English and American authors. Mr. Ticknor established the periodicals, "Our Young Folks," and "Every Saturday," the latter edited by Thomas B. Aldrich. He was the first to recognize the rights of foreign authors and in 1842 he paid to Tennyson one hundred pounds for the privilege of publishing his poems in America, although he had legal right to do so without consent or re- muneration. Thus he established a precedent afterwards gen- eraly recognized. His business was conducted in the "Old Cor- ner Bookstore" in Boston, on the corner of Washington and School streets, and here was the meeting place of distinguished authors and booklovers, among them Dickens, Thackeray, Trol- lope, Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell and others. Mr. Ticknor had rare literary taste and business judgment, coupled with sociability and hospitality. He was more intent upon pub- lishing good literature than upon making a fortune, and so suc- ceeded in doing both.
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