USA > New Hampshire > State builders; an illustrated historical and biographical record of the state of New Hampshire at the beginning of the twentieth century > Part 30
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He was sent to Point Lookout, Maryland, in charge of a steamer-load of the captured prisoners. In the ad- vance on Wilmington he again displayed great courage. On the IIth of February, when he was in charge of the line (left wing), he captured a greater number of pris- oners than his own force. At Wilmington, after its cap- ture, he was assistant provost-marshal, the duties of which office required great skill, sagacity, and diplomacy. He was in charge of the flag of truce which arranged for the wholesale exchange of prisoners at North East Ferry. He returned home with the regiment at its final muster out in July, 1865.
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GEORGE A. MARDEN
GEORGE A. MARDEN.
Of that great army of men of New Hampshire birth who have chosen the State of Massachusetts for their adoption and the field of life's efforts and activity, few have gained greater distinction or more widespread pop- ularity than George A. Marden, who in April, 1899, was appointed by President Mckinley the assistant treasurer of the United States, at Boston, and reappointed for the second term by President Roosevelt. Since 1867 Mr. Marden has been a legal resident of Lowell, in which place he has been prominently identified with the news- paper press of Massachusetts, and it is in the news- paper field as well as in the realm of politics that he has become so prominently known throughout New England and, indeed, the entire country.
Mr. Marden was born in the town of Mont Vernon, August 9, 1839, the son of Benjamin Franklin and Betsey (Buss) Marden. On the paternal side he is de- scended from Richard Marden who took the oath of fidelity in New Haven, 1646, and both lines of ancestry are prominently identified with the settlement and devel- opment of the colony and state of New Hampshire.
Mr. Marden's preparatory education was obtained at Appleton academy in Mont Vernon, now the McCollom institute, of whose trustees he is president. In this period he was also taught the shoemaker's trade by his father, who was both a tanner and a shoemaker, and he worked thereat after attaining the age of twelve, in intervals oc-
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curring while he was fitting for college and subsequently during college vacations. Having entered Dartmouth college in the fall of 1857, he graduated in July, 1861, being the eleventh member in rank in a class of fifty- eight members. In 1875 he was the commencement poet of the Phi Beta Kappa society, and in 1877 he delivered the commencement poem before the Dartmouth Associ- ated Alumni. Of each of these two societies he was the president for two years. Among his classmates in college was the Rev. William Jewett Tucker, now the president of the college.
With his patriotism deeply stirred by the outbreak of the Rebellion, Mr. Marden enlisted as a private in Com- pany G, Second Regiment of Berdan's United States sharpshooters. In November, 1861, he was mustered into the United States service, receiving a warrant as second sergeant. Transferred to the first regiment of sharp- shooters in 1862, he was, during the Peninsular cam- paign, under McClellan from Yorktown to Harrison's Landing. On July 10 of the same year he was made first lieutenant and regimental quartermaster, and subse- quently served in that capacity until January, 1863, when he was ordered on staff duty as acting assistant adjutant- general of the Third Brigade, Third Division, Third Corps. After serving in this position until the fall of 1863, having been in the battles of Chancellorsville, Get- tysburg and Wapping Heights, he was ordered to Riker's Island, N. Y., on detached service. Soon after, at his own request, he was sent back to his regiment, with which he remained until it was mustered out in September, 1864.
Having returned to New Hampshire, Mr. Marden en- tered the law office of Minot and Mugridge at Concord, N. H., where he engaged in the study of law and also wrote for the Concord Daily Monitor. In November, 1865, he removed to Charleston, Kanawha County,
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West Virginia, and purchased a weekly paper, the Kana- wha Republican. This he edited until April, 1866, when he disposed of it and returned to New Hampshire. Then he worked for Adjutant-General Nat Head of New Hampshire, compiling and editing a history of each of the state's military organizations during the civil war. In the meantime, still pursuing journalism, he wrote for the Concord Monitor and was the Concord correspondent of the Boston Advertiser, having obtained this post in July, 1866. He accepted, January, 1867, the position of as- sistant editor of the Boston Advertiser and discharged its duties until September following. Then, conjointly with his classmate, Major E. T. Rowell, he purchased the Lowell Daily Courier and the Lowell Weekly Journal, both of which he has since conducted. On September I, 1892, the partnership of Messrs. Marden and Rowell, which lasted just twenty-five years, was suspended by a stock corporation styled the Lowell Courier Publishing Company, the two proprietors retaining their respective interests in the enterprise. Since January 1, 1895, the Courier company has been united with the Citizen com- pany, under the name of the Courier-Citizen company, the Citizen having been made a one-cent morning paper, and Mr. Marden remaining in editorial charge of both papers.
Mr. Marden's first vote in a Presidential election was cast for Abraham Lincoln. Since 1867 there has been no election, state or national, when he did not serve his party on the stump. The most notable of these was the presidential campaign of 1896, when, in company with Major General O. O. Howard, Major General Daniel E. Sickles, Gen. Russell A. Alger, Gen. Thos. J. Stewart, Corp. James Tanner, Major J. W. Burst, and Col. George H. Hopkins, he stumped the middle west on a platform car, travelling over 8,000 miles in fifteen states,
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addressing more than a million people. As a speaker he has also been in much request for Memorial Day and for jubilee anniversaries generally. In April, 1893, he delivered a memorable address at the reunion of the "Old Guard," held in New York on Forefathers' Day of 1889 and 1892, the invitations to which he regards as the greatest honor of his life. July 4, 1891, he read the poem at the annual encampment of the Society of the Army of the Potomac at Buffalo.
It was as a member of the state legislature that Mr. Marden first entered political life in Massachusetts, hav- ing secured election in 1873. He was first chosen clerk of the House in 1874, an event chiefly due to the friend- liness with which he had inspired his fellow members of the preceding year. He was regularly elected to that office afterward to 1883. Then he decided to seek election to the house again, with the purpose of becoming a candi- date for the speakership. Having obtained both desires, he was first elected speaker for 1883. He was again elected representative and the speaker for 1884. Al- though new to the gavel in 1883, when the session was the longest held before or since then, mainly owing to Governor Butler's frequent intervention in legislative affairs, he made an exceptionally creditable record in the chair. In 1885 he was a member of the state senate. After being defeated in his candidacy for the senate of the following year, he was appointed by Governor Ames a trustee of the agricultural college at Amherst. Begin- ning in 1888 he was annually elected Treasurer and Re- ceiver-General of the Commonwealth for five consecutive years, thereby exhausting the period for which the office can be constitutionally held by the same individual unin- terruptedly, and winning general commendation by his administration of the state's finances. In company with Hon. George S. Boutwell, ex-Secretary of the United
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States Treasury, he represented the Seventh Congres- sional district in the National Republican convention of 1880, held in Chicago, where both ardently supported the nomination of General Grant, thereby earning their right to membership in the "Old Guard," and to their "306 medals," which they have treasured to this day.
Mr. Marden married, December 10, 1867, Mary Por- ter Fiske, daughter of Deacon David Fiske of Nashua. They have two sons, Philip Sanford, born Jan. 12, 1874, graduated from Dartmouth, 1894, and Harvard Law School in 1898; and Robert Fiske, born June 14, 1876, graduated from Dartmouth, 1898.
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DANIEL WALTON GOULD.
A strong and influential personality as respects char- acter and type of manhood in that contingent of New Hampshire men in Massachusetts, is Daniel Walton Gould, for many years a resident of the city of Chelsea in that state. But his influence as a citizen and active participant in general affairs is not confined to his home city but extends throughout the state. He is rich in the possession of a good name and the respect and affection of thousands of Bay State citizens who have come to know him in the passing years of a well-directed life.
He belongs to that body in American citizenship who when boys, or in the first years of an ardent young man- hood, rallied to the defence of their country's flag and for which they sought no other reward than the con- sciousness of a duty well performed. The echo of the guns that were turned upon Fort Sumter on that event- ful April day had scarcely died away before Daniel W. Gould was numbered among those who had volunteered in defence of the Union. In less than three months after leaving his peaceful abode in the shelter of the hills of his native New Hampshire he received his first baptism of shot and shell on that fatal field of the first Bull Run clash of arms. He went with McClellan to the Penin- sula, where in one of the first battles of that campaign, so disastrous to the Union arms, he received a wound that caused the amputation of his left arm.
Returning to his home in New Hampshire he entered heartily into every duty of the true citizen.
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DANIEL WALTON GOULD
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The story of Mr. Gould's life to these first years of the twentieth century told in brief is that he was born in the town of Peterborough, August 10, 1838, son of Gilman and Mersylvia Walton Gould. He is a descendant of Zacheus Gould who is supposed to have come to this country from England in 1638 and settled in Topsfield, Mass., in 1643. He was educated in the public schools of Peterborough and passed three years in the law office of R. B. Hatch. When the civil war broke out he enlisted under the call of President Lincoln for 75,000 men, on April 26, 1861, at Peterborough, as a private, and on the fifth of June following he was mustered into the United States service at Portsmouth, N. H., for three years and assigned to company G, second Regiment, New Hamp- shire Volunteers. He served with his regiment in the first battle of Bull Run and the siege of Yorktown. In the battle of Williamsburg, Va., May, 1862, he was wounded in the leg in the morning but continued to fight in his company until late in the afternoon, when he was wounded in the left arm. The bullet still remains in the leg; the arm was amputated above the elbow. While his regiment was engaged and under a hot fire, Mr. Gould's rifle becoming deranged, he sat down and unscrewed the cap nipple, cleaned and replaced it and continued his fire upon the enemy. Upon his discharge from the service he returned to New Hampshire, where he remained until his appointment to a clerkship in the Treasury Department at Washington in 1874. From 1868 to 1874 he was paymaster and clerk for the Union Manufacturing Company of Peterborough, N. H. In 1868 he was also clerk of the town of Peterborough; and in 1872 and 1873 he represented his town in the New Hampshire legislature. He remained in Wash- ington about a year, and in 1876 was appointed inspector of the Boston Custom House. For some time after the war he continued his interests in military affairs, serving
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as lieutenant and subsequently captain of Company B, Second Regiment, New Hampshire National Guard. He is a charter member of Aaron F. Stevens Post, No. 6, Grand Army of the Republic, has held most of its offices, and been a continuous member of the W. S. Hancock Command, Union Veterans Union, of Chelsea, was elected department commander of the department of Massachusetts for 1887-1888, was judge advocate general of the National Command in 1889, and quar- termaster general in the Massachusetts Department. He is prominent also in the Masonic and Odd Fellows orders. He is a member of Altemont Lodge of Free Masons, member of the Peterborough Royal Arch Chap- ter, the Hugh de Payens commandery, Keene, N. H., and the Naphtali Council, Chelsea; and is a member and past noble grand of Peterborough Lodge, Odd Fellows, and past high priest of Union Encampment No. 6. In politics he is a Republican. He has resided in Chelsea since May, 1874. He is much interested in the Unitarian Society of Chelsea and is chairman of the standing committee of this society.
In 1895 he was nominated by the Chelsea Republicans for alderman-at-large and received the popular vote of the city, he getting 2514 votes, or 124 more than any other successful candidate for alderman and 16 more than the candidate for mayor.
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CHARLES E. SLEEPER
CHARLES E. SLEEPER.
Charles E. Sleeper, the subject of this sketch, was born at Fremont, N. H., July 13th, 1852, being of the fifth generation to be born on the same homestead.
The ancestor of these successive proprietors came from England and settled upon the estate sometime in the 17th century, having a grant of three hundred and sixty acres from the King of England.
After graduating from the Kingston academy with high honors Mr. Sleeper followed mercantile life for sev- eral years, awaiting patiently the opening of the door to his great ambition, that of a hotel proprietor.
The opportunity which paved the way to his chosen vocation came with an offer of a position at the Rocking- ham, Portsmouth, where he not only had a valuable experience, but proved to his employers as well as to himself that he had made no mistake in the choice of a vocation.
After some years of progressive effort Mr. Sleeper took the management of Hotel Weirs, Weirs, and for five seasons made this well-known hostelry a favorite resort, with a constantly widening patronage.
His next move was the purchase of the Kingswood Inn and the New Wolfboro, two of the finest hotels in the lake region, at Wolfboro.
While these various relations were productive and educational, the intermittent character of the summer hotel business left something to be desired. The rush of four or five months in the season is succeeded by an
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uneventful period, representing an extreme, which to one fitted for active life is not congenial.
As a natural consequence Mr. Sleeper, in due time, disposing of his Wolfboro property, was prepared to accept the management of the Plaza, upon Columbus Ave., Boston, Mass., which soon showed. a marked in- provement under his administration, ranking among the best of the hotels in that city.
His success in the management of a metropolitan hotel brought him to the favorable notice of the Leicester Hotel Co., of Leicester, Mass., which was in search of a capable and reliable manager. For two years Mr. Sleeper acted in this capacity, with results which war- ranted his acquiring the property by purchase.
The sequel proved the wisdom of this action, and Hotel Leicester became a social centre for the territory for miles around, under the tactful methods of the landlord and his able wife.
Still growing in public favor and possessing to an unusual degree qualities which are considered by the craft as absolutely essential to the proper conduct of a modern hotel, a community of itself in its multiplicity of interests and administration, Mr. Sleeper received in 1901, an offer of the management of the Castle Square Hotel of Boston, Mass. This offer he finally accepted and later disposed of his Leicester property, in order that he might give the last enterprise his undivided attention.
Mr. Sleeper's popularity is evidenced by an increase of business which at times taxes the resources of this largest hotel in the city to its utmost, and the register shows patrons from all over New England, including many prominent New Hampshire names.
Mr. Sleeper's personality is largely responsible for his enviable position in the hotel world.
Combined with a masterful knowledge of detail is a wide acquaintance and the requisite poise which enable him to maintain an equitable balance between the ex-
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tremes, the guest and the employee, with the desire to do justice to each.
This faculty not only makes friends but retains them, and Mr. Sleeper's staunchest friends are those who in the past have been dependent upon these essentials, far more than they realized.
This biography would be incomplete, indeed, without the deserving mention of the woman who has been a will- ing helper and capable adviser throughout Mr. Sleeper's business career.
Mrs. Sleeper, nee Emma Robinson, is New Hampshire born-a native of Epping and a woman of energy and executive ability.
She is fully capable of managing a hotel in all its departments and has frequently shown her qualifications in a business and social way, ably supporting her husband in his rising progress.
In 1894 Mr. Sleeper was elected to the General Court as representative from the city of Laconia, N. H., as a Democrat from a Republican ward, which in New Hamp- shire politics is an unusual combination.
As a Knights Templar, Odd Fellow and a member of the H. M. M. B. A., he is well known and highly es- teemed.
Naturally modest and retiring, Mr. Sleeper is an ex- ample of one whose reward comes to him in recognition of sterling worth, strict integrity and a high standard of excellence which impress themselves to a marked degree upon all with whom he comes in contact. .
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THOMAS FELLOWS CLIFFORD.
Whatever may be said to the contrary, it is neverthe- less true that the great human family delights in recog- nizing merit and in rewarding it by the bestowal of its favors, when once it is satisfied that the recipient is worthy its confidence. No man, and especially no young man, is secure in his relationship to society and the gen- eral public unless he has proven himself deserving of the approval of this same general public no matter how strong his family and individual powers may be.
A strong personality of the type in question is Thomas Fellows Clifford, who, already at the very beginning of an extremely promising career, has been the recipient of important trusts and favors from a public that thoroughly believes in him, and that undoubtedly has a long list of other favors in store for him.
Born at Davis Homestead, Wentworth, December I, 1871, it was his great good fortune to come from an honored ancestry, and one that none will deny him the right to regard with justifiable pride.
Of this ancestry one was Increase Sumner, a governor of Massachusetts, and an able leader of his times. On the paternal side he has relationship with Nathan Clif- ford, long a lawyer of national repute, and for years an associate justice of the supreme court of the United States. A great grandfather of the subject of this sketch was Rev. Increase Sumner Davis, the first pastor of the
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Congregational church in Wentworth. The parents of Mr. Clifford were Thomas Jefferson and Sara (Fellows) Clifford. Their son was educated in the public schools of Concord, and, selecting the legal profession as his life work, he entered the Boston University law school and completed the prescribed course. Upon his admission to the New Hampshire bar he located in Franklin and at once entered upon a career that has thus far been ex- tremely creditable to him.
His popularity in Franklin and the esteem in which he is held by his fellow citizens were shown when upon the declaration of war against Spain he enlisted in Company E, First New Hampshire volunteers, and was commis- sioned first lieutenant. He served in the war on the staff of Gen. John W. Andrews, who commanded the third brigade, third division, first army corps. At the close of the war Lieutenant Clifford was mustered out as captain of Company E.
In the state legislatures of 1897 and 1899 he served as assistant clerk of the senate, and in the legislatures of 1901 and 1903 he filled the important office of clerk of the upper branch. He is the justice of the Franklin police court, and since 1900 has been secretary of the Republican state committee. Mr. Clifford has member- ship in the Sons of the American Revolution; in Blazing Star Lodge A. F. and A. M., Concord; in St. Omer chapter, R. and A. M., Franklin; in the Wonolancet Club, Concord; and the Red Star Club, Franklin.
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EDWARD GILES LEACH.
Edward Giles Leach was born in Meredith, New Hampshire, January 28, 1849, son of Levi and Susan Catherine (Sanborn) Leach. He attended the common schools of Meredith and spent one term at the New Hampshire Conference Seminary at Tilton, and for two years studied at Kimball Union Academy, being gradu- ated in 1867. He was graduated from Dartmouth in the class of 1871. Mr. Leach paid his own way through college, teaching in winter and acting as clerk in the Crawford House and Memphremagog House at New- port, Vermont, in summer. After his graduation he studied law and was admitted to the bar in September, 1874, since which time he has been in practice in Frank- lin and Concord. He was in partnership with the Hon. Daniel Barnard at Franklin until 1879. Since then his office has been in Concord, where he has been a member of the firm of Leach & Stevens, his partner being Henry W. Stevens. He was solicitor of Merrimack County from 1880 to 1884, and has been city solicitor of Frank- lin since its organization as a city. He served in the Legislature at the sessions of 1893 and 1895, being chair- man of the House Judiciary Committee in the latter years. In 1900 he was elected to the State Senate for the session of 1901 and served as chairman of the Ju- diciary Committee. Mr. Leach has been president of the Franklin Board of Trade; of the Franklin Building and Loan Association; of the Franklin Park Association;
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of the Manufacturers' and Merchants' Mutual Life In- surance Company, since the organization of each. He has been trustee and clerk of the Unitarian Church since 1880. He is a director in the Light and Power Com- pany; of the Franklin Falls Company, and of the Frank- lin Electric Road. He drafted in the charter of the city of Franklin and was active in securing its passage by the Legislature and its adoption by the vote of the city. He was a leading advocate of the city, owning its water- works, and of the system of control by a non-partisan Board without pay, and has been one of the Park Com- missioners since the Board was established. In politics Mr. Leach is a Republican and has been a member of the Republican State Committee since 1878. He was one of the leaders in the movement which changed the political control of the town in 1893. He had been fre- quently nominated for office before that year, but had been unable to overcome the Democratic majority. Mr. Leach married, December 24, 1874, Agnes A. Robinson. He has two sons, Eugene W. and Robert M. Leach, of the Dartmouth classes of 1901 and 1902 respectively.
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FREDERICK E. POTTER, M. D.
Born in Rumney, July 3, 1839, Frederick Eugene Potter had but just entered his manhood years when, on that ever memorable April day of 1861, the flag on Fort Sumter received the shot that precipitated the conflict between the states.
He was one of that class of young men to whom the- loyal people of the North looked with peculiar emphasis to save the Union from its threatened disruption, and promptly did he respond to the call of that fateful hour. Selecting the navy as his preferred arm of the service, he was on board the Monticello at the attack upon and capture of Forts Hatteras and Clark, that event, early in 1862, that so cheered the heart and raised the hopes of the oft-defeated North. Transferred from the North Carolina coast to the naval forces operating on the Miss- issippi river, he participated in the thrilling, arduous and decisive campaign against Vicksburg and its tributary country, and also saw exciting service on the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, returning from which he became attached to the ill-fated Red river expedition. His ser- vice in the navy throughout had been as a member of the medical corps, for the opening of the war had found him a practising physician, young as he was in years. Long continued campaigning, hardship and exposure resulted in impaired health, and for this reason it was sought to ameliorate his condition by an appointment as president of the board of examiners for admission to the naval
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