USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Plymouth > History of Plymouth, New Hampshire; vol. I. Narrative--vol. II. Genealogies, Volume I > Part 37
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He was a representative in the State legislature, 1856, 1857, and 1858, and a councillor, 1860 and 1861. His service in the
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THE PEMIGEWASSET HOUSE, 1860
THE PEMIGEWASSET HOUSE, 1905
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executive council extended into the first year of the War of the Rebellion, and he was a loyal supporter of the early war measures.
ALFRED RUSSELL was born at Plymouth, N. H., March 18, 1830, and was the second of seven children of William Wallace and Susan (Carleton) Russell. He was prepared for college at Holmes Plymouth Academy, Gilmanton Academy, and Kimball Union Academy, Meriden. At Plymouth one of his teachers was Charles Short from Harvard, afterwards professor of Latin at Columbia, and president of Kenyon College. At ten years of age he wrote a translation of Cicero de Senectute. Other teachers were Mr. Samuel B. G. Corser, Mr. Lawrence, and Mr. J. G. Hoyt of Exeter Academy. He was examined for admission to Harvard at fourteen, but his father feared he would turn Unitarian, and that he was also too young, and so delayed sending him to college for two years. He entered Dartmouth at sixteen. Professor E. D. Sanborn, of the Latin chair, said he was the best Latin scholar ever in the college. During his Dartmouth days he was a member and president of the Social Friends, and of the Psi Upsilon and Phi Beta Kappa societies, and graduated second in 1850. He was instructed in German in the college, became a good French scholar, and noted as a speaker and debater. In the fall of 1850 he entered Harvard Law School, and graduated LL.B. in the class of 1852, being awarded a prize for an essay on Landlord and Tenant. During vacations he read law in the office of William C. Thompson at Plymouth, using Espinasse's Nisi Prius and other volumes inherited by Mr. Thompson from his father, with whom Webster studied. Mr. Russell was ad- mitted to the Bar in October, 1852, at Meredith Bridge, now Laconia, on motion of Senator James Bell, after an examination by a committee headed by Stephen C. Lyford. In November, 1852, he removed to Detroit, and after spending a short time in the office of James F. Joy, to acquire local law, established himself in practice, and soon won a place among the foremost lawyers. His professional career was from that time one of continuous achievement. His accurate judgment, powerful memory, logical
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presentation, and clearness of statement commanded respect from the courts, and as a jury lawyer he had few equals. His legal eminence was due to character as well as to intellect. His counsel was sought in litigations of the most complex character. and in- volving enormous sums. His practice extended into other States, east and west, and he presented many causes in the United States Supreme Court; the first, The Propeller Niagara vs. Cordes, 21 Wallace Reports, 7, in 1858, and the latest, South Dakota vs. North Carolina, 192 U. S. Reports, 286, in 1904. His name is found in every volume of the Reports of the Supreme Court of Michigan from 3 Michigan to 133 Michigan. At the age of thirty-one he was appointed, by President Lincoln, United States District Attorney, - a very difficult and important office during the Civil War in a frontier State, - and continued in office under Presidents Johnson and Grant. His appointment to the United States Supreme Court was considered by both Presidents Garfield and Harrison. President Hayes offered him the post of Minister to Germany, which he declined, although his family were then residing in Germany for the education of his children. Mrs. Russell was Mrs. Ellen P. England (born Wells) of St. Albans, Vt., a woman of great beauty and accomplishments. This long and happy union lasted from 1857 to 1902 (when Mrs. Russell died), and the marriage was blessed with seven children, three of whom are now living: Mrs. Alice Glenny of Buffalo, Mrs. Phobe Roberts of Detroit, and Mrs. Louisa Maugham of Chicago. Mr. and Mrs. Russell were both members of St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal church, the oldest Protestant Episcopal church in Mich- igan. In 1891 Dartmouth College conferred on Mr. Russell the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. He delivered the Commence- ment Oration at Dartmouth in 1878, and the annual address before the American Bar Association at Boston in 1891, and very many . addresses of a similar character in other places, and contributed many articles to the legal magazines. In 1900 he published a work on The Police Power of the State (Callaghan Co., Chicago), which has had an extensive sale, and has been held to be a valuable
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contribution to American jurisprudence. Mr. Russell is a member of the Michigan Historical Society, president of the Detroit Club, president of the Michigan Political Science Association, president of the Sons of the American Revolution, president of the Harvard Club, president of the Dartmouth Alumni Association, a director of the Chamber of Commerce, a founder of the Detroit Light Guard, and of the Detroit Boat Club. In 1900 the Bench and Bar paid Mr. Russell the extraordinary tribute of a public dinner. The tables were of a beauty never surpassed in Detroit, and the decorations magnificent. A parchment address signed by one hun- dred lawyers and judges was presented to Mr. Russell upon the occasion, reading as follows : -
Dear friend : - Called forth by no special occasion in your life, but from the desire born of long years of admiration, high regard and sincere affection for you, we delight to gather around you to-night as an honored guest, true and well loved. As members of the honorable profession which you adorn, we recall your great intellectual gifts, your extraordi- nary industry and diligence, your brilliant powers of exposition and your graceful charms of manner and of diction. As fellow workers with you in its field, we appreciate your unvarying courtesy, even when an adver- sary ; the ever-willing assistance to the beginners as well as their elders which you so freely give from the rich stores of your comprehensive and profound learning. As your friends we attest your never-varying kind- ness, your ever present active sympathy in time of joy or trouble, and the daily grace of your true and constant affection. Every heart around this table beats quicker as we indite these our common sentiments, and have the honor to sign ourselves your friends.
This sketch of Mr. Russell would be incomplete without a refer- ence to his political creed and his friendship for the illustrious Lincoln. He attended the convention called at Jackson, Mich., in 1854, which founded the republican party, voted for Fremont in 1856, and stumped the State in every national campaign since, speaking with Lincoln in that year, and with Salmon P. Chase in 1860. He was president of the Republican Club during those years, and addressed a meeting on the Sumner outrage. In closing this sketch we subjoin an account, written by Mr. Russell, of his connection with Mr. Lincoln : -
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I first met Mr. Lincoln in 1856. I had taken part in the formation of the new Republican Party in 1854, " Under the Oaks at Jackson," Michigan, not far from Detroit, to which city I had then recently removed from New England on the completion of my law course at Harvard. I was one of a committee to invite Mr. Lincoln to speak at Kalamazoo, Michigan, and called upon him at his hotel there. As I entered his room with another committee man, he said in a cheery voice, "Come right in, boys; I am just turning over a new leaf "; viz., he was changing his shirt, and we had sight of his muscular lower limbs. After he became famous, on being consulted as to the proportions of his statue, he was inquired of how long the limbs should be, and he re- plied, " Long enough to reach from the trunk to the ground !" Wash- ington Irving relates that the sexton at Stratford, excavating near the tomb of Shakespeare, peeped in, and Irving says, "It was something to have seen the dust of Shakespeare"; so I say it was something to have seen the legs of Lincoln ! At the Jackson celebration, in 1904, of the founding of the party fifty years before, I remarked to Mr. Hay, the then Secretary of State, that I was probably the only person present who had seen Mr. Lincoln's extremities. He replied, "Oh, no, I have often. He would frequently come into my room abont two o'clock in the morning, and sit on my bed, and discuss the heavy weight of the na- tion's troubles upon him, I then being his private secretary." On first seeing Mr. Lincoln, I was struck by his gigantic, angular, and ungainly form, indicative of great strength and tough fibre. His manners were extremely unaffected and cordial, and the directness and sincerity of his talk during the interview was impressive. Later in the day I heard him on the platform, after I had made a brief speech. His diction was col- loquial, with great condensation of thought expressed in language with a flavor of the Bible, Shakespeare, and Bunyan. He used few gestures, and his general style of oratory, to my Eastern observation, was em- phatically of the West, Western ! The burden of his speech was the radical difference of opinion North and South upon slavery ; one sec- tion regarding it as intrinsically wrong, and not to be extended, the other deeming it essentially right, and therefore to be admitted into the territories. This was before the great debate in Illinois between Mr. Lincoln and Senator Douglas in 1858, which gave the former the national prominence which led to his nomination for the presidency in 1860. I did not for a moment imagine when I met Mr. Lincoln that he was destined to become illustrious, and to be enrolled among the most remarkable of mankind ; nor had any one at that time foreseen that dis- play of great qualities which a few years later astonished the world. After Mr. Lincoln became President I received from him the appoint-
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ment of United States District Attorney for Michigan, and had occasion to meet him at Washington many times, officially and socially, and to mark the development of his intellectual stature. The last time I saw him was about five days before his assassination, at a private interview in the cabinet room. As we came downstairs together, and as I left him at the outer door, with a warm parting clasp of the hand, he referred to the Kalamazoo meeting and the marvellous events intervening. In par- ticular, just after the battle of Fredericksburg, when Washington was filled with the dead and dying, in the public buildings and private houses, my wife and I were at the White House, and the noble and ten- der heart of the great President seemed like to break. The language he used resembled the sublime and pathetic closing words of that wonder- ful production, the Second Inaugural.
Mr. James F. Joy of Detroit, with whom I studied law, told me that during his long acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln he did not exhibit any manifestations of the extraordinary abilities which marked his presi- dency. Mr. Joy's acquaintance was from 1845 onward. Mr. Lincoln's power as a lawyer was such as to command employment in cases of magnitude, bringing handsome fees for that day and region. Mr. Joy being President of the Michigan Central, and the promoter of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, employed him in a case which carried a fee of five thousand dollars. I was told by my friend George Hard- ing, the celebrated patent lawyer of Philadelphia, that Mr. Lincoln was retained jointly with himself and Edwin M. Stanton, the future Secre- tary of War, in the so-called "Reaper " case in the United States Cir- cuit Court in Cincinnati in 1854. Harding and Stanton had never met Mr. Lincoln, and when he joined them at the Burnett House, Cincin- nati, they made some excuse to leave him, as they did not wish to be seen walking through the streets of the city to the courthouse with a person of such peculiar dress and appearance. Eleven years later, at Lincoln's deathbed, Stanton exclaimed, "Now he belongs to the ages !" Another friend of mine, Sullivan M. Cutcheon of Detroit, Speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, was Superintendent of Schools at Springfield, Illinois, in 1860, and told me that he was pitching quoits with Lincoln when the latter received the telegram in- forming him of his nomination for the presidency, and that Mr. Lincoln wore an old straw hat, a long linen duster, and one suspender ! He simply smiled and said he guessed he would go over to the house and tell the little woman. The year before his nomination for the presidency, Mr. Lincoln sent his son, Robert Todd, a friend of mine (afterwards Secretary of War and Minister to England), to enter Harvard College. Edward Everett Hale relates that at that time not one of the faculty of
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that college, except James Russell Lowell, knew of the existence of Mr. Lincoln ! Some years before that, I had invited my friend, Mr. Lowell, to come to Detroit and lecture, and at my table he solemnly asserted that he did not know who was the then President of the United States ; thirty years after, when dining at Mr. Lowell's house in Lowndes Squarc, London, he being the American Minister there, I reminded him of that statement, and with much merriment he again protested that the state- ment was correct. In the fall of 1864, the Confederates established (under the leadership of Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, then late Sec- retary of the Interior under Buchanan) in Canada, whose people were Southern sympathizers almost to a man, organized two armed expedi- tions into the United States -- one to rob the banks at St. Albans, Ver- mont, and another to release the Confederate prisoners confined on John- son's Island, off Sandusky on Lake Erie. The St. Albans raiders were mounted men, and carried away about $300,000 from the banks, and took the lives of some of the inhabitants, escaping back to Montreal at once, St. Albans being only about fourteen miles from the boundary line. The Lake Erie raiders seized two private passenger steamers belonging at Detroit, - one " The Philo Parsons " and the other " The Island Queen," - robbed and confined the crews and passengers, and attempted to seize the United States armored vessel, the "Michigan." Their attempt was unsuccessful, and they escaped into Canada. Presi- dent Lincoln instructed me to go to Montreal and Toronto and attempt to secure the extradition of the raiders. At Montreal the application for extradition was unsuccessful, and it was currently stated, and gen- erally believed, that the judge received some of the money which had been stolen at St. Albans. At Toronto I spent three months in court in the trial of the raiders, associating with myself Mr. Richards, after- wards Chief Baron, and Mr. Harrison, afterwards Chief Justice, and obtained the extradition of the leader of the gang, Bennett G. Burley. Jake Thompson sat at the same table with me at the Queen's Hotel and made insulting remarks, intended to drive me into a personal collision, although I was accompanied by my wife. I subsequently prosecuted Burley in court at Port Clinton, Ottawa County, Ohio, on a charge of robbery within the territorial limits of that county, there being no Fed- eral statute there, as there is now, punishing piracy on the lakes. Judge Ranney of Cleveland and Mr. Larned of Detroit defended, and they produced a commission signed by the President of the Southern Con- federacy authorizing the raid, which commission was undoubtedly manufactured after the fact. Judge Miles of Toledo was upon the bench. He was one of that kind of Democrats then denominated " Copperheads." He instructed the jury that the commission of Davis
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constituted a defence, with the result that the jury disagreed. Before I could try the man over again, Burley broke jail and ran away to Eng- land, and subsequently published his biography with an account of the raid. Subsequently, I reported in person to President Lincoln the gen- eral result. He lamented the thinly disguised wish and expectation of the British officials for the success of the Confederacy, and used expres- sions fully warranted, and which I ought not to repeat, concerning those who gave aid and comfort to the Confederates. His inimitable wit and sarcasm could not be reproduced. At that time the English statesmen said that there was as much hope of re-establishing the Saxon Hep- tarchy in England as the Federal Union in America ! We discussed somewhat the status of the States in rebellion, in case the Confederacy should be put down, and he earnestly expressed the idea that the indi- viduality and autonomy of the States should be preserved, and that they should not be wiped out, and the whole south regarded as a conquered province. I think the leading characteristic of Mr. Lincoln was his penetrating common sense, that is to say, his practical judgment to be applied to the thing in hand. This it was which enabled him to produce his wonderful letters, such as that to Greeley and to Erastus Corning, and the letters to the department commanders and generals, concern- ing strategetical movements. The maxim of the ancients applies : -
Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia.
Mr. Lincoln told me that he was more troubled by the conspiracies in the Northern States in favor of the Rebellion than anything else, such as the Knights of the Golden Circle, the plots to burn the Northern cities and distribute plague infection. In my home city, Detroit, the sympathies of nearly one-half the people were with the South. We had uprisings against the colored population, and burnings of their houses ; families and friends were divided, and the New England Society was broken up, as about one-half the members were Southern sympathizers. I had the pleasure myself of causing some of those people to be sent to Fort Lafayette. The ungainliness and rugged features of Mr. Lincoln have been much exaggerated. He was indeed indifferent to the graces of dress, as he was to the graces of speech or diction ; but his personal appearance and manners were the reflection of himself, just as his writ- ten style was the image of his mind. No one in his company could fail to be so attracted by the expression of his face, sometimes highly intel- lectual, sometimes pathetic, and sometimes humorous, and by the sin- cerity and inborn courtesy of his manners, as to forget, or not notice, any lack of conformity to conventional standards. His moral qualities were equal to his extraordinary intellectual endowments, and perhaps
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the former have impressed themselves upon history more than the latter. He was one of the greatest of mankind and was himself, - a new argu- ment in favor of republican institutions, which made possible the rise of such a man from such beginnings, - and his fame will constantly increase as the years recede.
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XXIX. LAWYERS.
J ONATHAN MITCHELL SEWALL was born in Salem, Mass., 1748. His father, Mitchell Sewall, was a clerk, and later a judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Essex County. His mother, a second wife, was Elizabeth Price. He read law with Jonathan Sewall of Boston, Mass., and with John Pickering of Portsmouth. In the organization of Grafton County, 1773, he was appointed Register of Probate, and immediately came to Plymouth. He made the record of a probate court held July 23, 1773. He soon relinquished the office, and Moses Dow was appointed and qualified before Jan. 10, 1774. That he was admitted to the Bar before he came to Grafton County is suggested by his appointment as King's Attorney in the absence of Samuel Livermore, Attorney-General, July 19 and Oct. 19, 1774. At this time his health was feeble, and it is probable that he divided the time between Portsmouth and Grafton County. Mr. Sewall was not taxed in Plymouth. His abode in this town was more than a visit and less than a residence.
After the return of Mr. Sewall to Portsmouth he won distinction in his profession and in literature. He was an ardent patriot, and during the Revolution his speech and verse were inspiring. He is the author of the well-remembered lines: -
No pent-up Utica contracts your powers, But the whole boundless continent is yours.
He was a prominent member of the house of representatives, 1778, and was appointed attorney-general, but declined the office. In 1801 he published a volume of verse. An appreciative sketch is found in Bench and Bar, by Gov. Charles H. Bell. He died in Portsmouth, May 29, 1808.
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MOSES Dow, son of John and Mchitable (Haines) Dow, was born in Atkinson, Feb. 17, 1746/7; Harvard University, 1769; A.M., Dartmouth College, 1785. The homestead of his father was a part of Haverhill, Mass., until the adjustment of the province line, 1741, when it became a part of Plaistow. By a division of Plaistow in 1767, the homestead was included in Atkinson. He came to Plymouth in 1774, and if Jonathan Mitchell Sewall is not included in the list of resident lawyers, he was the first lawyer of Plymouth. He was in active practice in this town five years, when he removed to Haverhill. (Sce Volume II.)
JOHN PORTER, son of Samuel and Sarah Porter, was born in Boxford, Mass., March 10, 1747/8; Harvard University, 1767. He studied medicine, and settled, as a physician, in Holderness soon after 1774. A very few years later he relinquished his first chosen profession and studied law with Samuel Livermore. He removed to Plymouth, 1780, and was admitted a counsellor of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1784. He was secretary of the State Bar Association, resigning in 1793. Until the arrival of Phineas Walker in 1794, he was the only lawyer in Plymouth. He appeared before the General Court as an attorney for Plymouth in the adjustment of the boundary line between Plymouth and Campton, and he occupied a prominent position in the courts of the county. He died Feb. 13, 1813.
PHINEAS WALKER was a native of Brookfield, Mass., where he was born Sept. 29, 1768; Brown University, 1790. He was admitted 1794, and practised in Plymouth from that date until 1835, when he removed to Newport, Me., where he died 1843. During his early practice in Plymouth the number of his active competitors was not large, and he was employed in many cases. He was not a prominent or a willing advocate. Many of his cases were tried in court by associated attorneys. He was appointed Judge of Probate, Nov. 10, 1823, by Gov. Levi Wood- bury, and continued in office until he was removed by address, July 1, 1831.
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STEPHEN GRANT, son of Michael and Phebe (Wyman) Grant, was born in Alstead, 1775; Dartmouth College, 1800; and was admitted to the Grafton County Bar, September term, 1803. In the autumn of the same year he entered upon the practice of his profession in this town, and continued here until 1829 or 1830. Subsequently he practised in Sandwich and in Sanbornton. He died in Plymouth, Aug. 1, 1845. Undoubtedly he possessed a keen, ready wit and fair ability, but tradition has been so fully employed in the repetition of his quaint sayings that an intelligent view of the man is not preserved. He was a trustee of Holmes Plymouth Academy six years, and receives complimentary men- tion in town records. If he was eccentric, he was more than a wag, and in many quaint remarks attributed to him is discovered both wisdom and intelligence.
SAMUEL CUMMINGS WEBSTER, son of David and Lydia (Cum- mings) Webster, was born in Plymouth, June 28, 1788; Dart- mouth College, 1808. He read law with George Woodward of Haverhill, and was admitted 1812. He practised a short time in Swanzey, removing to Plymouth early in 1814. He was an active man, a successful lawyer, and a useful townsman. His success in life was the natural product of good judgment and an unconquerable will. He was direct and forceful, but not always diplomatic; tenacious, but not persuasive. He seized results with an instant grasp, and commanded success which many win by slower and more artful methods. He was town clerk of Plymouth, 1828-31, inclusive; representative, 1822, 1826, 1827, 1830, and 1832. He was elected representative, 1833, but resigned after election, and Isaac Ward was elected June 5, 1833. In the session of 1830 James B. Thornton of Merrimack resigned as Speaker of the House, June 15, and Mr. Webster was chosen to complete the term of service. He was a member of the Executive Council, 1831, being the first year of the administration of Gov. Samuel Dinsmoor. He was a delegate to the national democratic con- vention, 1832.
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In 1833 he was appointed sheriff for Grafton County, and removed to Haverhill, where he died July 21, 1835.
BENJAMIN DARLING, son of Daniel and Elizabeth (Leavitt) Darling, was born in Sanbornton, March 8, 1788. The family removed to this town when Benjamin was twelve years of age. He graduated from Dartmouth College, 1815, read law with Ezekiel Webster of Boscawen and Joseph Bell of Haverhill, and was admitted 1815.
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