Essex County, Massachusetts - Chapter 2: The Bench and Bar, 1888 (part 3 of 3)

" He entered Congress at the first session of General Taylor's administration, when the problems in politics and government, which grew out of the Mexican War and the acquisition of California and Kew Mexico, infused such intensity of feeling into the public mind. The old Whig party, with which Mr. Duncan had long been honorably connected, was becoming more anti-slavery ; while the Democratic party was gradually giving way to the entire leadership of Southern men, and becoming hopelessly involved in the sin, shame and want of statesmanship, involved in the advocacy and support of slavery extension. Mr. Duncan had relations of friendship with the old leaders of the Whig party, and was welcomed into their fellowship at Washington on his arrival at that city. But his moral perceptions had been cultivated beyond what was common among the devotees of either of the old parties, and he knew and felt the force of the moral questions which were discussed throughout the country upon the relation of the government to slavery. Attached to his party, and attached to his honored friends, he yet could not be blind or deaf or insensible to the claims for justice of the humble who could not even speak for themselves. He remembered those in bonds, as bound with them, and, at the expense of personal comfort, voted, I believe, from first to last, during his Congressional term of four years, under all the circumstances of an excited period of our history, on the slavery question in all its phases, only as his best friends could now wish he had voted, after all the light since shed upon the subject. That he so signally and uniformly acted on the side of wisdom and right, while so many of his associates were misled by excitement, or failed for other reasons to see and maintain what it is now apparent they ought to have supported, I attribute in a great degree to his elevated moral character, to hie cultivated sense of right, to his determination never to violate the dictates of an enlightened conscience. He was not a frequent debater in the House of Representatives ; but when he did speak, he commanded more than common attention. He was one whom to know was to love, who made many friends and no enemies, and who left Congress possessing universal esteem."

The tribute of affection and respect which the poet Whittier paid to him after his decease makes honorable mention of him as a man in public life and in his social relations. " His Congressional career was a highly honorable one, marked by his characteristic soundness of judgment and conscientious faithfulness to a high ideal of duty. In private life as in public, he was habitually courteous and gentlemanly. For many years the leading man in his section, he

Not the least of Mr. Duncan's public services were his labors in behalf of the Union during the Civil War. He was active with voice and pen in strengthening the hands of the government. He cheerfully acted as the medium of communication between the soldiers in the field and their families at home. They sent to him their well-earned money, which he personally distributed, gladdening often many a humble home by his presence as the harbinger of good tidings and comfort.

These statements indicate how constantly Mr. Duncan was in public life. Meanwhile, he was serving in other large public interests not of a political nature ; while in town matters his services were constantly demanded. For fifty years, scarcely an important item of municipal business was transacted except under his advice or leadership. If a matter needed to be brought before the General Court he was delegated to do it. He took the leading part in the erection of two town halls, making, at the dedication of both, historical addresses. In this connection Hon. Alfred Kittredge says, - " He took great interest in the affairs of the town^ and frequently addressed his fellow-citizens upon subjects of importance. He was listened to with great interest, and usually carried a majority with him. In all discussions he was in a marked degree gentlemanly, both in his manner of presenting subjects and in his treatment of those who differed from him, stating his own views forcibly, and giving others due credit for their own. He had a remarkably clear utterance, and a rich ringing voice that gave him great power over an audience. When in the Legislature, Samuel Allen, I think, gave him the cognomen of the ' silvertongued member ' from Haverhill.

This sketch would be incomplete if it overlooked Mr. Duncan's relation to the great religious and benevolent movements of his time. He took the most lively interest in the cause of education, and in the great missionary organizations of his own and other Christian denominations. He Avas a member of the Board of Fellows of Brown University from 1835 till his death. In 1861 the Board conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. It is not too much to say that his name and influence were a tower of strength in the councils of the corporation. It is thus that Barnas Sears, then president of the University, speaks of him as he appeared at its annual meetings, or in the larger gatherings of the representatives of the Missionary Union, - " Long will men remember the impressions made on these and similar occasions by this Christian gentleman and scholar, with his finely-cut features and symmetrical form, his graceful and animated delivery, his chaste, beautiful, and musical language, his pertinent, clear and convincing arguments, his unflinching fidelity, and spotless integrity. So blended in him were these various attributes of body and mind that we can think of them only in their union, and it would seem that a mind of delicate mould had formed for itself a bodily organ suited to its own purposes. In him we see how much Christianity can do for true culture, and how beautiful an ornament culture is to Christianity.''

Mr. Duncan during his whole life worshipped with the First Baptist Church in Haverhill, though he did not become a member of the church until the age of forty. His ancestors on both sides were among its founders. Thus a Baptist by birth and education he afterwards added to the principles thus inculcated the full conviction of his mature years. However attached to his own communion he was not in the narrow sense of the term a denominationalist. By nature he was catholic and took the broad and liberal side on all church questions. Every good cause had in him a friend. He wrought zealously with all true lovers of God and man. The cause of home and foreign missions, of popular education and the dissemination of a sound literature enlisted his earnest advocacy. Indeed, he was quick in his response to all good objects by which humanity could be elevated and God honored.

Mr. Duncan remained single till the age of thirtythree, when, June 28, 1826, he married Miss Mary Willis, daughter of Benjamin Willis, Esq., of Boston. Thirteen children were born to them. Three died in early childhood, and three passed away after they had attained to adult years, leaving seven, - two sons and five daughters. His home, of which Mr. Duncan was pre-eminently the head, was the centre of a liberal culture and of a refined and generous hospitality. This hospitality was not the mere reciprocation of society. His ample mansion was open alike to friends and strangers. If the town, or any religious or secular interest could be served by his hospitality, it was proffered without stint. His house was regarded as the temporary home of public speakers, lecturers, clergymen and all others to whom hospitality seemed due. The grace and tact and dignity which Mr. Duncan uniformly exhibited thus in his own home is remembered by multitudes.

Mr. Duncan's last illness was brief, and its fatal termination was a surprise to all. Although he was seventy-five years old he bore no marks of age. A cold which caused no apprehensions at first, suddenly developed into pneumonia, which after only a few days of sickness terminated fatally, February 8, 1869. The announcement of his death passed rapidly through the town, and was received almost with incredulity. When the surprise passed, a general sorrow and sense of bereavement took possession of all hearts. Many had lost in him a loved and faithful friend, and all felt that the town had been bereaved of its most useful and honored citizen, and that his place would not soon be filled. By the general urgent desire of the community the funeral services were held in the church, instead of the house, as was first intended, and were attended by a large concourse of people. Though holding no office at the time, such was the appreciation of his services in the past, and such the sense of the love sustained by his removal, that the town adopted most appropriate resolutions upon the event.

There are other deceased members of the bar of whom sketches would be interesting, if reliable materials could be readily obtained. Some of these will be remembered by present members of the bar, and are as deserving of a place in this record as many who have been especially mentioned. Edward Pulling (H. C), 1775, John W. Proctor, Jacob Gerrish, Ellis G. Loriug, Francis B. Crowninshield, George H. Devereaux, George Andrews, Hobart Clark, Asa Andrews, Eben Shillaber, John B. Peabody, Wm. Howland, George Foster Flint, Frederick D. Burnham and Jairus Ware Perry are some of those whose sketches have been necessarily omitted.

Hon. Stephen Heney Phillips ^ was the eldest son of the Hon. Stephen Clarendon Phillips and Jane Appleton (Peele) Phillips, of Salem. His paternal great-grandfather. Deacon Stephen Phillips, a descendant of the Rev. George Phillips who reached Salem with Winthrop in 1630, and settled at Watertown, had removed from his ancestral home in that town to Marblehead, where he became a leading citizen, taking the Chair as Moderator of the tumultuous town-meeting called to protest against the Boston Port Bill of 1773, and was thenceforth an active patriot and a member of the Committee of Correspondence and Safety. His grandfather, Stephen Phillips, was a well-known citizen and merchant of Marblehead. His father's public services as a sturdy supporter of the interests of Salem, as an untiring friend of Freedom in Congress and elsewhere and of the Public School System of Massachusetts, will be recounted by others and are freshly remembered. Other descendants of the same Puritan ancestry have won distinction. The same stock produced the founders of academies bearing the name at Exeter and at Andover. It produced the famous Boston patriot of the Revolution, William Phillips ; his son, the first mayor of Boston, John Phillips ; in the third generation, Wendell Phillips, a son of the latter, our matchless master of English speech ; as well as that much admired divine, the Rev. Phillips Brooks.

The subject of this sketch was born at the family mansion in Charter Street, Salem, now occupied as a City Hospital, August 16, 1823. His school experience was unique. Before 1830 he had been a pupil at the dame's school of Miss Mehetable Higginson, and from that date on he enjoyed the successive teachings of Henry K. Oliver, with whom Jones Very, David Mack, and Surgeon John L. Fox of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition were assistants, in Salem ; of Frederick P. Leverett, at the Old South Chapel in Bos- ton ; of the Rev. Joseph Allen at his boarding-school in Northampton ; and of William J. Adams at a private school in Murray Street, New York City. The year 1836 found him at the Select Classical School in Washington, D. C, founded by Salmon P. Chase when a law student in the office of Attorney- General Wirt, and there Charles Levi Woodbury, Alfred Pleasanton, since known as a famous cavalry general, and Mansfield Lovell, the rebel commandant who evacuated New Orleans in face of Farragut, were among his schoolmates. The next year he passed in Salem at the school of Rufus T. King, in Chestnut Street, and another year under Master Oliver Carlton, of the Latin Grammar School, brought him a certificate with which, at the exceptional age of fifteen, he entered Harvard in 1838, taking his degree in course, a winter spent in the West Indies in the senior year for the recovery of his health depriving him of the very high rank he had previously held. Here he had for classmates the Rev. Samuel Johnson, of Salem, the eminent Orientalist, and a well-known essayist and magazine writer, Frederick Sheldon, of Newport, R. I. On graduating in 1842, he became a member of Harvard Chapter, Alpha, of the Society of the Phi Beta Kappa, and was at a later date a founder, and for its first six years President, of the Harvard Club of San Francisco.

The three years following his graduation, - the last three years of the life of its great patron. Judge Story, - Mr. Phillips spent at the Dane Law School, where Charles Sumner was an occasional lecturer and Simon Greenleaf was Royal Professor. Ex-President Rutherford B. Hayes ; Chief Justice Peters, of Maine ; Chief Justice Morton, of Massachusetts ; Chief Justice Lee, of the Sandwich Islands ; Ex- Chief Justice Foster, of New Hamjishire, and Ex- Chief Justice Bradley, of Rhode Island, were among his fellow students. After a further period of study in the office of the Hon. Benjamin R. Curtis, at Boston, he was admitted to practice at the Suflfolk bar in April, 1846, and for the years 1847, '48, '49, '50 edited the Boston Law Reporter.

Having removed his office to Salem, Mr. Phillips was appointed by Governor Boutwell, in 1851, District Attorney for the County of Essex, a position which he filled with acceptance and which he resigned in 1854. Advancing rapidly in professional and general estimation, and having formed a business connection with James A. Gillis, since for many years City Solicitor of Salem, - an office which Mr. Phillips himself filled for the years 1856, '57, - he had already achieved a leading position at the Essex bar, when he was elected in the last named year, at the unusual age of thirty-four. Attorney-general of the Commonwealth. This responsible and dignified position he retained by popular election through the three years' administration of Governor Banks, the first Republican administration in Massachusetts, and at its close, in 1861, was by him appointed Judge-advocate-general of the militia of the State. vi

Continuing the practice of his profession in Boston and in Salem, with such interruptions as no patriotic citizen could honorably avoid during the five troubled years which followed, and acting, from November, 1863, as chairman first of the City Water Committee, charged with procuring an act for the introduction of a water-supply for Salem, and then of the Water Commission, upon which devolved the duty of construction, Mr. Phillips in 1866 accepted overtures from Kamehameha V. for a position as one of the four responsible ministers of his privy council, and temporarily left the United States for Honolulu. Under the Hawaiian constitution, modeled largely on our own, he acted, throughout his residence in Honolulu, as Attorney -general, and for a considerable portion of the time as Minister of Foreign Affiiirs also. At times he added to these trusts that of Minister of Finance, and very generally he was the recognized head of the Royal Government in the House of Nobles, King's Cabinet and Privy Council. He was at liberty to practice in the courts of law in causes in which the interests of the State were not involved.

A position as the responsible head of a government like this is not without peculiar difficulties. For reasons of their own, England, France and the United States had seen fit to i-ecognize the Sandwich Islands as an independent sovereignty. But with a standing army of seventy men, it was no mean task to keep the peace amongst as many thousands of these tawny, mercurial, Malayo-Polynesian subjects; to suppress the occasional armed outbreaks of religious fanaticism or of jealousy of foreign influence; to maintain at all times the dignity and self-respect of a reigning house under a form of government, nominally constitutional, in which the elements of strength were wanting, and, while yielding all that could safely be granted to foreign commercial and diplomatic agents and foreign missionaries, to see to it that none of them secured concessions injurious to rival denominations, nationalities or interests, or to the State. And this was the task which confronted Mr. Phillips during his seven years' residence at Honolulu. He was largely instrumental in the reciprocity negotiations of 1867-69, in which President Grant took so active an interest as to invite him to a private interview, and while securing to the people of the islands a measure of domestic tranquillity and peace which made life and property as safe there as in any portion of the civilized world, he was able to apply to their foreign afiairs the good, old American doctrine of Washington's farewell address, - "Friendly relations with all nations; entangling alliances with none."

Upon the change of dynasty consequent upon the death of Kamehameha V., Mr. Phillips returned in 1873 to the United States and established himself at San Francisco as Resident-Director and Solicitor of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. During eight years spent here in the practice of the law he was at times retained as the official coun- sel of the State Board of Eailroad Commissioners, and the California State Keports show that he appeared in important causes, of which Estate of Hinckley, 58 Cal., 457, dealing in a radical way with the State law of charities, is perhaps the most noteworthy. In 1881 he resumed the practice of his profession in the State of Massachusetts, residing in Danvers. He had previously married, at Haverhill, Oct. 3, 1871, while on a temporary absence from Honolulu, Miss Margaret D., daughter of the Hon. James H. Duncan, of Haverhill, a lady whose acquaintance he had made in the Hawaiian Islands.

It will be seen that, throughout a somewhat varied career, Mr. Phillips has only in a single instance been a candidate for office before the people, and in that instance the office was a professional one. Never slow to respond to the calls of good citizenship and good neighborhood ; never hesitating to show his colors in any exigency where the public has a right to his opinions, he remains first, last and always a lawyer. Coming to the Essex bar, one of the ablest in the country, at a time when the rough habits of bluster and brow-beating were passing out of vogue, he made it his rule to appeal directly and with emphasis to the intelligence and convictions of jurors, and to the sound, legal discrimination of the Court, and in all cases to treat persons whom chance placed in his power on the witness-stand with the consideration due to that most trying and unprotected of positions. The thorough preparation which was insured to every cause entrusted to his hands left nothing to be decided by chance which could be foreseen and provided for, and the sagacity, energy, discretion and nerve which he displayed in his chosen calling were not slow in meeting their reward. It came to be a rare occurrence during his practice at the Essex bar to find a case of exceptional magnitude on trial from any part of the county in which Mr. Phillips did not appear on one side or the other. Among the most interesting of his cases may be noticed Boston and Lowell Railroad Corporation vs. Salem and Lowell Railroad Company, 2 Gray, 1 ; the famous Rockport liquor case. Brown vs. Perkins, et ux., 12 Gray, 89; and a case against the Sergeant-at-arms, upon writ of habeas corpus, Burnham vs. Morrissey, 14 Gray, 226, which settled the constitutional prerogative of the House of Representatives, in matters of contempt.

While Attorney-general of Massachusetts Mr. Phillips was called on to prepare papers for the removal, by process of address to the Governor, of the Hon. Edward Greeley Loring from the office of Judge of Probate for the county of Suffolk, a proceeding which excited the most intense political feeling at the time, for which the files of the office affijrded no precedent, and which did more than any other single event to make of a comparatively unknown lawyer, John Albion Andrew, the great War Governor of Massachusetts. He was also called to Lynn by a threatening demonstration of unemployed workmen during the feverish period which succeeded the financial disasters of 1857, and by his firm bearing and calm, persuasive address did much to avert the grave disorders which seemed to be impending. He was present, as a member of the Governor's staff, at the. great Concord muster of the State Militia in October, 1860, and seconded in every way the efforts then making to put the Massachusetts contingent on a war footing. Not many months later he found an opportunity to present the sword there worn to a citizen of Marblehead, marching, in command of a company of his patriotic townsmen, the first company in the State to respond to the call of Governor Andrew, to the relief of the capital beleaguered with rampant treason, and it received no stain in the hands of Captain Knott V. Martin.

Mr. Phillips was associated with ex-Governor Clifford as Commissioner of Massachusetts for the adjustment of a boundary question between this State and Rhode Island, which called for the intervention of the Attorney-General of the United States, and was in Washington on that errand in the closing days of January, 1861. Brought, in this way, in daily contact with Mr. Stanton, at a time when Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet was in the last stages of disintegration, the Massachusetts Commissioners were not slow to divine the nature of the suspicions which distracted him, and reported confidentially to Governor Andrew, in the following letter:

Washington, Wednesday night, January 30, 18G1. Dear Sir : - In an interview we had to night with the Attorney-general of the United States, we have been authorized to express to you, confidentialhj , his individual opinion that there is imminent, if not inevitable peril of an attack upon the city of Washington between the 4th and the 15th of February - with a view to secure the symbols of government and the power and prestige of possession by the traitors who are plotting Ihe dissolution of the Union.

We have but a moment before the closing of the mail to say to you, in this informal way, that no vigilance should be relaxed for Massachusetts to be ready at any moment, and upon a sudden emergency, to come to the succor of the Federal Government.

This may be an unnecessary precaution, but we feel that it is a simple discharge of a plain duty on our part to give you this intimation after what we have heard from a source of such high authority.

Governor Claflin, in his address in Doric Hall, February 14, 1871, accepting in behalf of the Commonwealth the Statue of Governor Andrew, says it was upon this letter that action was taken, February 5, 1861, to furnish two regiments with overcoats, not a company in the State being then ready for marching orders, and he attributes to this cause the advanced state of preparation which enabled our troops, though remote, to reach Washington with the foremost.

Bred among the Conscience Whigs, so called, Mr. Phillips became a Free Soiier from the start and acted with that party in the national campaigns of 1848 and 1852. In 1856 he represented his native district in the first national Republican Convention which sat at Philadelphia and nominated Fremont. Subsequently he served as president of the local campaign club, which met weekly at Lynde Hall, Salem, in support of that nomination, and in 1864 he sat again in the Republican Convention which named Lincoln for a second term. In 1884 he presided at a county demonstration in Salem in support of Blaine and Logan. His religious affiliations have been with the Unitarian body, with such advanced leaders of thought as Channing, Emerson and Parker. Mr. Phillips holds personal independence above sectarian and party allegiance.

Nathaniel Ward was born in Haverhill, County of Suffolk, England, in 1570. He was the son of Rev. John Ward, one of a long line in direct descent belonging to the clerical profession. He graduated at Cambridge in 1603, studied law in the Temple and after extended travels on the continent, began his professional practice. He soon, however, abandoned the law, and studied divinity, finally settling as a clergyman in Standon, in Hertfordshire. As early as the year 1629 he seems to have become disaffected towards the English Church. The following is an extract from the records of a meeting of the " Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England," held in London, November 2f>, 1629 :

" Lastly, upon the mocon of Mr. Whyte, to the end that this business might bee pceeded in wth the first intencon, wch was cheifly the glory of God & to that purpose that their meetings might bee sanctyfied by the prayers of some faithfull ministers resident heere in London, whose advice would be likewise requisite upon many occasions, the Court thought fitt to admitt into the freedome of this company Mr. Jo : Archer & Mr. Phillip Nye, Ministers heere in London, who, being heere psent, kindly accepted thereof: also Mr. Whyte did recoraend unto them Mr. Nathaniell Ward, of Standon."

On the 12th of December, 1631, he was ordered to appear before Bishop Laud and answer the charge of non-conformity. In 1633 he was forbidden to preach, and in April, 1634, sailed for New England, arriving in June. He was settled at once, as the first minister of Agawam (now Ipswich), with Rev. Thomas Parker, as the teacher or assistant. In 1636 he resigned, on account of ill health, and seems after that time, as long as he remained in New England, to have been engaged, more or less, in public affairs, for the details of which his early education in the law had specially fitted him. Winfhrop's Journal, first printed in 1790, says that " on the 6th of the 3d month. May, 1635, the Deputies having conceived great danger to our State in regard that our magistrates, for want of positive laws in many cases, might pi'oceed according to their discretion, it was agreed that some men shall be appointed to frame the body of grounds of laws in resemblance to a Magna Charta, which, being allowed by some of the ministers and the General Court, should be received for fundamental laws."

The above extract does not appear in the records of the court, but the following entry is found in the record of the proceedings of the above date :

" The Governor (John Haynes), Deputy-governor (Richard Bellingham), John Winthrop & Tho : Dudley, E-q., are deputed by the Court to make a draught of such lawes as they shall judge needfull for the well ordering of this plantation, & to present the same to the Court."

On the 25th of May, 1636, nothing having been yet accomplished in the matter of the laws, the records state that " The Governor (Henry Vane), Deputygovernor (John Winthrop), Tho : Dudley, John Haynes, Rich : Bellingham, Esq., Mr. Cotton, Mr. Peters & Mr. Shepheard, are intreated to make a draught of lawes agreeable to the word of God, which may be the fundamentals of this commonwealth, & to present the same to the next Generall Court."

In September, 1636, Mr. Cotton reported a code of laws, but no action was taken on their adoption. Under the date of March 12, 1637-38, the following entry appears in the records of the General Court :

" For the well ordering of these plantations, now in the beginning thereof it having been found by the little time of experience we have here had that the want of written laws have put the court into many doubts and much trouble in many particular cases, this Court hath therefore ordered that the freemen of every town (or some part thereof chosen by the rest) within this jurisdiction shall assemble together in their several towns & collect the heads of such necessary and fundamental laws as may be suitable to the times and places where God by his providence hath cast us, & the heads of such laws to deliver in writing to the Governor for the time being before the 5th day of the 4th month, called June, next to the intent that the same Governor together with the rest of the standing counsell & Richard Bellingham, Esq., Mr. Bulkley, Mr. Phillips, Mr. Peters & Mr. Sheapard, elders of several churches, Mr. Nathaniel Ward, Mr. William Spencer & Mr. William Hawthorne, or the major part of them, may upon the survey of such heads of law make a compendious abridgement of the same by the General Court in autumn next, adding yet to the same or detracting therefrom what in their wisdom shall seem meet."

Winthrop's Journal states that in December, 1641, " The General Court continued three weeks and established one hundred laws, which Avere called the Body of Liberties, composed by Mr. Nathaniel Ward sometime past at Ipswich, who had been a minister in England, and formerly a student and practiser in the course of the Common Law." This was the first code of laws established in New England, and was so mingled in the subsequent codification of the laws with later statutes, that for a long period its precise provisions were unknown. In or about 1823, however, Mr. Francis C. Gray, of Boston, found in the Boston Athenaeum a manuscript of sixty j^ages which, probably, belonged to Elisha Hutchinson, who died in 1717, at the age of seventy-seven years. This manuscript contained a copy of the colonial charter and a " Coppie of the Liberties of the Massachusetts Colony in New England." This " Coppie" contained one hundred distinct articles separated by black lines, the introductory and concluding paragraphs not being numbered. Unlike the code, which Kev. Mr. Cotton prepared, and which was not accepted, it did not follow closely the laws of Moses, nor did it cite Scripture except relating to punishments. Cotton went so far in this respect as to add to the provision " that the Governor, and in his absence the Deputy Governor, shall have power to send out warrants for calling the General Court together," the Scripture authority contained in the first verse of the twentyfourth chapter of Joshua, " And Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers, and they presented themselves before God."

The Body of Liberties followed the Scriptures so far as to make no crimes capital, not made so by the Mosaic law, and some of these were omitted, such as heresy, profaning the Lord's Day, reviling magistrates, etc. As the author of this code, Nathaniel Ward, a resident in Essex County, as long as he I'emained in New England, is entitled to a place in this narrative.

Oa the 13th of May, 1640, the General Court granted him six hundred acres of land at Pentucket (now Haverhill), which he sold November 26, 1646, to John Eaton. In 1641 he preached the election sermon. During the winter of 1646-47 he returned to England, and was settled at Shenfield, in the county of Essex, where he died in 1653. His son John, born in Haverhill, England, November 6, 1606, graduated at Cambridge in 1630, and was settled in Haverhill, Mass., in 1645, where he died December 27, 1693.

Mr. Ward was an author of some notoriety, if not repute in other fields than that of law. In 1648 he published a humorous satirical address to the London tradesmen, turned preachers, entitled " Mercurius Anti-Mechanicus on the Simple Coblers Boy," which was reprinted in Washington in 1844. On the 30th of June, 1647, he preached a sermon before the House of Commons, which was published, and in the same year published " A Religious Retreat sounded to a Religious Army." In 1648 he published " The humble petitions, serious suggestions and dutiful expostulations of some freeholders of t&e Easterne Association to the high and low Parliament of England," and in 1650 "Discolliminium a Reply to Bounds and Bonds." But the work by which, next to the Body of Liberties, he is best known, is a quaint political tract satirizing the affairs and manners of the Massachusetts Colony and the fashionable ladies of the day, of whioh the following is a copy of the title-page:

" The simple Cobler of Aggawam in America Willing To help mend his native country lamentably tattered both in the upper Leather and Sole with all the honest stiches he can take

Ill English. When boots and shoes are torne up to the lefts Coblers must thrust their awles up to the hefts. This is no time to fear Apellis gramm : Ne sutor quidem ultra crepidam.

This work, though printed in England after the return of Mr. Ward, was written in New England in 1645. A careful reprint was edited by David Pulsifer, of Boston, in 1847.

Thomas Bancroft Newhall. - Mr. Newhall was born in that part of Lynn which is now the town of Lynnfield October 2, 1811. He is a lineal descendant from Thomas Newhall, the first white child born in Lynn, and a son of Asa T. Newhall, a prominent and successful farmer and magistrate.

Mr. Newhall was fitted for college at Andover and Lynn Academies, and graduated from Brown University in 1832. He studied law in offices in Danvers and Boston and at the Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the bar at the March term of the Court of Common Pleas, 1837, and early in the following month established hims^elf in business in Lynn. He soon acquired a very satisfactory practice, in which he has continued during the intervening fifty years, and with the discharge of the duiies of various offices of a public and private character w ith w'hich he has been honored, his life has been active, useful and honorable. In 1852 he married Miss Susan S. Putnam, of Salem, and he has two children surviving - James S Newhall, of Lynn, and Mrs. Caroline P. Heath, of Boston.

William Crowninshield Endicott is descended from John Endicott, who came to Salem in 1628 as Governor of the Colony, sent out by the Massachusetts Company. The family in his line has, during the two hundred and sixty years which have elapsed since that date, always lived in Salem and its vicinity, and most of the time on the farm which included the homestead of the Governor. John Endicott was born in Dorchester, Dorsetshire, England, in 1588, and married Anna Gouer, who came with him to New England. She died in 1629, leaving no children, and Governor Endicott married, August 17th, 1630, Elizabeth Gibson, of Cambridge, England. He died March 15th, 1665, and his children were John, born about 1632, and Zerubbabel, born in 1665. Zerubbabel married a wife, Mary, who died in 1677, and he afterwards married Elizabeth, widow of Rev. Antipas

The Bench And Bak

Newman, and daughter of Governor John Winthrop. He was a physician, and lived in Salem. His children, all by the first wife, were John, born 1657 ; Samuel, 1659; Zerubbabel, 1664; Benjamin, 1665; Mary, 1667; Joseph, 1672; and Sarah, 1673. Of these children Samuel married Hannah Felton about 1694, and had John, born October 18, 1695; Samuel, August 30th, 1697; Ruth, 1699; and Hannah 1701. Of these Samuel, who was christened at South Danvers, September 30th, 1716, after he had reached manhood, married his cousin, AnnaEndicott, December 20th, 1711, and widow Margaret (Pratt) Foster, February 11, 1724. He died in 1766, and was buried in the family burial-ground at Danvers. His children by his first wife were John, born April 29th, 1713; Sarah, September 19th, 1715; Samuel, March 12,1717; Sarah, 1719; and Robert, 1721. By his second wife he had Hannah and Ann, twins, born November, 1727; Elias, December, 1729; Joseph, February, 1731; Lydia, 1734; and Ruth, 1734. Of the children of Samuel, John was christened at South Danvers, June 9th, 1717, and owned and occupied the old Governor Endicott farm. He married Elizabeth Jacobs May 18th, 1738, and died in 1783. His children were John, born in 1739; Elizabeth, 1741; William, 1742; and Robert, 1756. Of these, John was christened in the South Church, at Danvers, June 7th, 1741, and lived on the old Endicott estate. He married Martha, daughter of Samuel Putnam, and had the following children : Samuel, born in June, 1763 ; John, January 13th, 1765 ; Moses, March 19th, 1767; Ann, January, 1769 ; Elizabeth, August, 1771 ; Jacob, 1773; Martha and Nathan, twins, September, 1775; Sarah, September, 1778 ; Rebecca, May 20th, 1780 ; William, 1782; and Timothy, July 27, 1785. Of these, Samuel was christened in the South Church, at Danvers, November 1st, 1767, and was in early life a shipmaster. He retired from the sea in 1805, and, making Salem his place of residence, entered actively into mercantile pursuits. The records of the town of Salem show that he was prominent in town affairs, serving both as selectman and Representative in the General Court. He married, in 1794, Elizabeth, daughter of William Putnam, of Sterling, Mass., and with his brothers, John and Moses, owned the old family estate. He died May 1st, 1828, and his children were Samuel, born March, 1795; Eliza, who married Augustus W. Perry ; Martha, who married Francis Peabody ; William Putnam, March 5th, 1803 ; and Clara, who married George Peabody. Of these, William Putnam, who was christened in the North Church, at Salem, March 13, 1803, graduated at Harvard in 1822, and married, in February, 1826, Mary, daughter of Hon. Jacob Crowninshield. He married again in December, 1844, widow Harriet (French) Peabody. His children, all by the first wife, were William Crowninshield, born in Salem, November 19th, 1826; Mary Crowninshield, February 4th, 1830, who died February 16, 1833 ; George Freilerick, September 11th, 1832, who died January 11th, 1833; and Sarah Rogers, March 3d, 1838, Avho married George Dexter, of Boston.

Of these children of William Putnam Endicott, the eldest, William Crowninshield Endicott, is the subject of this sketch. He was reared and educated in Salem, surrounded by families of wealth and culture, and carrying in his veins a share of the best New England blood. Indeed, few places can boast of the careful training of youth for which Salem has always been distinguished, and which has educated and developed that school of cultivated gentlemen of which Mr.Endicott is a marked example. He was fitted for College at the Salem Latin School, and graduated at Harvard in 1847. No man ever had better opportunities for the study of his chosen profession, the law, than were afforded to him in the office of Nathaniel J. Lord, of Salem, who during many years stood in the front rank of the Essex Bar. In 1850 he was admitted to practice at Salem, and in 1853 associated himself with J. W. Perry, who had been admitted to the bar in 1849. It was not long before his abilities as a lawyer were recognized, and these combined with a grace of deportment and dignity of character attracted and held a large and constantly increasing business.

So marked was his prominence, both as a lawyer and a man, that when a vacancy occurred on the Bench of the Supreme Judicial Court in 1873, Governor William B. Washburne unhesitatingly selected him from the political party opposed to his own for an appointment to the vacant seat. He continued on the bench until his resignation in 1882, leaving it after a service of nine years, to the regret of members of the bar and his associates, and carrying with him the affection and esteem of both.

Ifi 1884 he was the candidate of the Democratic party of Massachusetts for Governor, and in 1885, after the inauguration of Grover Cleveland as President of the United States, was appointed by him Secretary of War, a position which he still holds with honor to himself, his native State and to the nation.

Mr. Endicott married Ellen, daughter of George Peabody, of Salem, and has two children, a daughter Mary, and a son, William C. Endicott, Jr.

William H. Niles was born in Orford, New Hampshire, December 22, 1839, and is the son of Samuel W. Niles and Eunice (Newell) Niles, of that town. At the age of five years he removed to South Reading (now Wakefield), and afterwards to North Bridgewater and East Bridgewater, in which last place he grew into manhood. He pursued the usual courses of study in the common schools and for two years was a private pupil under the care of Rev. R. W. Smith, of East Bridgewater, in whose family he lived. He then pursued a classical course in the Providence Conference Seminary, at East Greenwich, Rhode Island, and left that institution in 1861 to take the situation of principal of an academy in Georgia.

He remained in the South until the latter part of 1865, when he came to Boston and there engaged in mercantile business. He not long after began the study of law under the direction of Caleb Bludget, now a judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, and at the March term of that court, at Lowell, in 1870, he was, on examination, admitted to the bar.

He at once opened an office in Lynn, where he has since pursued a successful career. In March, 1878, George J. Carr, who bad for several years been a student in his office, was admitted to the bar and became his partner. The business of the firm, which has rapidly increased in volume and importance, is a general one, embracing all branches of the law. Mr. Niles has neither held nor sought nor desired public office, but has confined himself assiduously to the labors of his profession. He has rendered willing service on the School Board of Lynn, believing it to be one which every good citizen should render, if called upon, and one rather within the field of citizenship than that of public life. He married, on the 19th of September, 1865, Harriet A., daughter of L. D.Day, of Bristol, New Hampshire, and has three daughters, all under nineteen years of age.

Charles Perkins Thompson is descended from John Thompson, who came to Plymouth iu the " Ann," or the " Little James," in 1623. He was born in Braintree, Mass., July 30, 1827, and was educated in the common schools of that town and in the Hollis Institute, which was established in Braintree in 1845 by John R. Hollis, and discontinued in 1865. He studied law with Benjamin F. Hallett, of Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in the spring of 1854. Mr. Hallett was United States District Attorney from 1853 to 1857, and Mr. Thompson, after his admission to the bar, was employed by him as hia second assistant, his son, Henry L. Hallett, now United States Commissioner, acting as first assistant. In the spring of 1857 he removed to Gloucester, and has since continued to make that place his residence. In 1871 and 1872 he was a member of the State House of Representatives, and in 1874 was chosen a member of the Forty-fourth Congress. In 1885, on the appointment of William Sewall Gardner, then a justice of the Superior Court, to a seat on the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court, he was appointed by Governor George D.Robinson to fill the vacancy.

Judge Thompson has been for many years active in the interests of the Democratic party, and in 1881 was the candidate of that party for Governor. His warm friends are far from being confined, however, to that political organization, and the number is not small of those who were only restrained by the shackles of party from giving him their support, and would have been glad to welcome him as the chief executive of the State.

The ancestor, George Marsh, came from England in 1635 to Charlestown, and settled in Hingbam, Mass. His son, Onesiphorus, settled in Haverhill iu 1672. He located at what was long known as "Marsh's Hill," a mile west of the village, in modern times Wingate's Hill.

David, son of John, was chosen deacon in 1737, continuing in that office till his death, Nov. 2, 1777. About 1728 he removed from Marsh's Hill to the village, to the site adjoining on the north, the Centre Church, still occupied by descendants. David Marsh had twelve children, who lived to a great age. The average of the twelve was eighty-three years, and the united age of all was one thousand. They were all noted for industry, temperance and frugality. Two of them, Lydia and Abigail Marsh, born in 1745 and 1747 respectively and unmarried, gave, in 1825, a lot of land on the north side of what is now Winter Street, for the Haverhill Academy.

Nathaniel Marsh, born 1739, was active in town and military affairs, commanded a relief company which marched from Haverhill to Stillwater in the Burgoyne campaign, was chosen in 1787 to the State convention to deliberate on the Federal Constitution and voted yea upon the question of its adoption. He was also a representative in the Legislature in 1786, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1797 and 1798.

Moses, sou of David, had twelve children, like his father. Two of his sons, David and John Marsh, were partners in business for nearly fifty years in a store in Merrimack Street, on the river side.

There they manufactured hand cards for carding wool, before machines for that purpose, driven by water, were introduced here. After their introduction, and during ^he second war with England, they began to make the machines also and the cards with them. It is supposed that under the direction of Abraham Marland, an Englishman, who commenced woolen manufacturing in Andover as early as 1807, the brothers Marsh made the first carding machine used in this part of the country. Subsequently they sent many into New Hampshire and Maine. During their long career it has been said that the example of David and John Marsh was proverbial, not only for the fairness of their dealings and their promptness to meet all obligations, but also for the brotherly kindness which marked their intercourse with each other.

Samuel Marsh, the youngest of this long-lived and estimable family, was born iu 1786 and died in 1872, in the city of New York, where he had resided many years and was largely engaged in important transactions. He was heavily interested in the Fox and Wisconsin Improvement Company, and was president of the New York and Erie Railroad Company, being succeeded in the latter position by his nephew,

Nathaniel Marsh, also a native of Haverhill. Marshfield, now a thriving town in Wood County, Wisconsin, preserves the name and marks the foresight of Samuel Marsh.

John James Marsh, son of John Marsh, the partner of David, was born at Haverhill May 2, 1820. His early education was received in its schools and at the Haverhill Academy. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1841. Of his seventy-six classmates, the largest number have deceased. Gardner Greene Hubbard, well-known to many through his early connection with the development of the telephone, Henry Elijah Parker, for many years professor of the Latin language and literature at Dartmouth, Edward Reed, son of " Honest " John Reed, many years in Congress from Massachusetts, and Edward Webster, son of the great stateman, Daniel Webster, may be mentioned, the first three still surviving. Mr. Marsh's law studies were pursued in the offices of Alfred Kittredge, of Haverhill, and Slossons & Schell, of New York City, and at the Dane Law School, Harvard University. In 1846, he commenced the practice of the law in Haverhill, continuing in it till about 1872, when the pressure of private business caused him to relinquish the profession. Upon the change from a town to a city government in 1870, Mr. Marsh consented to act as city solicitor in that and the succeeding year. Otherwise he has never held public office. During the period of Mr. Marsh's active practice, he had many students, of whom may be mentioned John James Ingalls, United States Senator from Kansas, and Addison Brown, Judge of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. He was always regarded as a sound, energetic lawyer and successful practitioner.

The Children's Aid Society of Haverhill, a most deserving charity, established some years since a home upon Kenoza Avenue, which was ill-adapted to its beneficent purposes. In 1883, Mr. Marsh and his sister, Mrs. Ames, erected upon the lot on Main Street, which had been previously donated to the society by them and their cousin, Mrs. Kelly, a substantial and commodious brick building, which, upon its completion, was, with simple ceremonies, transferred to the society. Being in memory of their deceased sister it is known as the " Elizabeth Home."

" John Marsh," as he is known in Haverhill, is active in his habits and social ia his temperament. Apparently in vigorous health, he bids fair to rival the remarkable longevity in the past, of the family whose most conspicuous representative he at present is. His residence is on Summer Street, and he is fre. quently to be seen driving out to his farm in the West Parish, on the shore of Crystal Lake, where he takes great sa'tisfaction in the improvement of his acres, and the breeding and management of stock.

Charles Johnsox Notes is a lineal descendant of Rev. James Noyes (one of the colony which settled at Newbury in 1G35), preacher and scholar, who erected what is now known as the ''old Noyea house,'' standing a short distance to the right of the upper green, not far from the Old Town Church in old Newbury. His paternal grandfather was Parker Noyes. who was born September 26, 1777, at Haverhill, Mass., and died in 1848. Parker Noyes married Mary Fifield, who was born at Hopkinton, N. H., in 1780, and died in 1810. They lived for a time at Canaan, N. H., where Johnson Noyes, the father of the subject of this sketch was born, January 23, 1808. Johnson Noyes, while a young man, moved to Haverhill, Mass., having learned the shoemaker's trade, and was married to Sally Brickett, daughter of John and Abigail Brickett, on the 10th of October, 1833. They settled at what was known as the North Parish, in Haverhill, where he carried on a country store and manufactured shoes to a limited extent. Here one of four children, Speaker Noyes, was born, August 7, 1841, and lived until about nine years of age, when his parents moved into the main village, then a thriving town, now a city of twenty- four thousand people. John Brickett was born at Newbury, Mass, in 1762, and his wife at Haverhill, in 1763. The former died December 27, 1845, and the latter in the March previous, each at the ripe age of eighty-five years.

The other children of Johnson Noyes were Ann Augusta, who died when a mere infant; Sarah B., who was born December 10, 1834, and died May 29, 1862 ; and Elizabeth C, who was born December 23, 1845, and died May 5, 1870. After moving to the village Speaker Noyes attended the schools and passed through all the various grades, graduating at the Haverhill Academy in 1860, the valedictorian and president of his class. And when, afterward, an alumni association was formed, he became its first president and held the office five years, finally declining a re-election. He was twice the class orator and chairman of its senior catalogue committee. He was admitted to the bar at Cambridge, Mass., and began practice simultaneously in Boston and Haverhill in 1864. The extent of his Essex practice soon necessitated the discontinuance of his Boston office. In the second Lincoln campaign, that of 1864, Mr. Noyes was made president of the Lincoln Club of Haverhill, an organization composed of leading business men and citizens, and on the assassination of President Lincoln he was selected to deliver the memorial oration before the city authorities. In the fall election of 1865 Mr. Noyes was elected a member of the House of Representatives of 1866, in which he served on the committee on the judiciary. Declining a reelection to the House, he accepted a nomination from the citizens of Haverhill as candidate for the Senate, and was elected in a triangular contest, in which George S. Merrill, of Lawrence, and Moses F. Stevens were competitors.

In the Senate Mr. Noyes served on the committee on education, library (being chairman), and on the joint special committee on amendments to the Con- stitution. At the close of the session he declined further political honors and devoted himself to his profession. He again ojiened an office in Boston and carried on a successful practice in the two counties until the business in Boston required his whole time. In 1872 he located his family in South Boston, where he has since continued to reside.

In 1876 he again entered the field of politics by accepting a nomination for Representative, and was elected, thus re-entering the House in 1877. He served that year as chairman of the committee on mercantile affairs and on the committee on Hoosac Tunnel and Troy and Greenfield Railroad. Reelected in 1878, he served as chairman of the committee on harbors and Hoosac Tunnel.* In the House of 1879 Mr. Noyes was a prominent candidate for Speaker, but was defeated by Mr. Levi C. Wade, who received the caucus nomination and consequently an election. Mr. Noyes was made chairman of the committee on amendments to the Constitution, and as such took charge of and secured the adoption in the House of a number of important amendments. Returning to the House of 1880, Mr. Noyes was elected Speaker over a number of competitors on the fourth ballot, receiving one hundred and twenty-one votes. Chosen to the House again the following autumn, he was elected Speaker by a practically unanimous vote. He was also again elected, and was Speaker in the House of 1882.

In the following summer, when it became known that Governor Long would decline a renomination, Mr. Noyes' name was at once taken up by the press as one in every way suitable for the head of the ticket, and friends from all parts of the State urged him to contest the nomination. After considering the matter some time he declined, however, to allow the use of his name in this connection. Had he gone into the convention as a candidate, the outcome would have been very different, with the probabilities largely in favor of the nomination coming to him. As it was, he received next to the largest vote for the Lieutenant-Governorship. In the campaign of 1883 he received the unanimous nomination for the Governor's Council from the Republican Convention of the Fourth Council or District, and, although the district was Democratic, received a very large vote.

He now sought retirement from active politics, determining to devote himself to the labor of his profession and the care of his growing private interests. He was soon after appointed as special justice of the Municipal Court of the City of Boston for the South Boston District, which position he has continued to hold. Ill 1886, however, he was again induced to become a candidate for the House, and though the district was more than doubtful, won. the election. He at once began an active campaign for the Speakership, and, to the surprise of the other candidates and the consternation of their friends, won upon the first ballot.

Mr. Noyes is a member of the Order of Odd Fellows, and has long been active therein, having passed the chairs respectively of the subordinate lodge and the encampment. He is also an active member of the Masonic fraternity. He is a member of Adelphi Lodge, and one of its Past Masters; a member of St. Matthew's Royal Arch Chapter; a member of St. Omer Commandery, Knights Templar, and one of its Past Commanders ; a member of Lafayette Lodge of Perfection ; a member of the Giles F. Yates Council, Princes of Jerusalem ; a member of Mount Olivet Chapter Rose Croix, and a member of Massachusetts Consistory. He has also taken the council degrees in Boston Council, but has never taken menibership. He was also for a time a member of the National Lancers 'and of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. Mr. Noyes is connected with the directory of a number of business corporations, in two of which he is president. In his religious affiliations Mr. Noyes is Unitarian, and has at times been quite active in church and Sunday-school work. In politics he has taken an active part on the stump during the last fifteen years in different parts of the country, and in the Garfield campaign of 1880 he spent six weeks speaking for the Republican cause throughout the States of North Carolina and Florida.

As a speaker, Mr. Noyes is fluent in utterance, easy and graceful in manner and remarkably apt in his choice of words. His memorial address at Worcester on Sunday evening, May 28, 1882, was a finished production, and was listened to by an audience that packed Mechanics' Hall to its utmost capacity. It was published in the Worcester Gazette of the following evening, and widely quoted by the press of the State. His oflF-hand eflbrts are always appropriate to the occasion and exceedingly felicitous.

As a presiding officer, Mr. Noyes has few equals and no superiors. His fine presence and quiet dignity of manner awe and hold in check all turbulent demonstrations, while his unfailing courtesy is felt and acknowledged by all. Gifted with keenness of vision and a readiness of apprehension, any movement made by a member to get the floor is immediately recognized, while a motion coming from any part of the House is caught at once and clearly stated to that body. Added to these qualifications is a thorough knowledge of parliamentary law, which makes him at all times the master of the situation. No attempt at resorting to the most bewildering of parliamentary tactics can disturb his equanimity, or make him for a moment lose sight of the point in hand; but, through all the intricacies of motions and amendments and counter-motions, the debate is kept under rigid control, and the final disposition of the question so clear and just that from the decisions of the chair there is no appeal.

To those who have come in contact with Mr. Noyes there is no difficulty in discerning the occasion of his popularity. He possesses in a high degree that strong personal magnetism that at once draws one to him, while there is a sincerity and cordiality manifested by him that makes the bonds of friendship enduring-. Easily approachable, genial and sunshiny by nature, he makes a most delightful companion, and his personal popularity is very great.

In 1864 Mr. Noyes was married to Miss Emily Wells, the only surviving daughter of Col. Jacob C. Wells, a well-known and successful merchant of Cincinnati, O. They have three children. The eldest, Miss Fannie C. Noyes, is a young lady of rare artistic talent, and is now studying in Paris as an animal painter; the second, Mr. Harry R. Noyes, holds a fine position with a well-known firm of stock brokers; and the youngest, Miss Gracie L., is still in school.

Marcus Mortok is the son of Marcus and Charlotte (Hodges) Morton and was born in Taunton, Mass., April 8, 1819. His father was born in Freetown, Mass., in 1784, and graduated at Brown University in 1804. He received the degree of LL.D., from his alma mater in 1826, and from Harvard University in 1840. In 1825 he was appointed justice of the Supreme Judicial Court and continued on the bench until 1840, when he resigned to assume the duties of Governor of the commonwealth, which office he held during that year and again in 1843. He died in 1864. The father of Governor Morton was Nathaniel Morton, of Freetown, born in 1758, who married in 1782, Mary Cary, of Bridgewater. The father of Nathaniel was Nathaniel, born in 1723, who married in 1749, Martha Tupper. The father of the last Nathaniel was Nathaniel of Plymouth, born in 1695, who married, in 1720, Rebecca, widow' of Mordecai Ellis, and daughter of Thomas Clark, of Plymouth. The father of the last Nathaniel was Eleazer, of Plymouth, who married in 1693, Rebecca Marshall, of Boston. The father of Eleazer was Ephraim, of Plymouth, born in 1623, who married, in 1644, Ann Cooper. The father of Ephraim was George, of Plymouth, who married in Leyden, in 1612, Julian, daughter of Alexander Carpenter, of Wrentham, England, and came to Plymouth in the '' Ann " in 1623. Another son of George Morton, and a brother of Ephraim, was Nathaniel Morton, the secretary for many years of the Plymouth colony and the author of " New^ England's Memorial."

Thomas Clark, whose daughter, Rebecca, married Mordecai Ellis and afterwards Nathaniel Morton above mentioned, married three wives, and Rebecca was the daughterof the third wife, born in 1698. The father of Thomas Clark was James, born in 1637, who married in 1657, Abigail, daughter of Rev. John Lathrop, of Barnstable. The fatherof James was Thomas, of Plymouth, a passenger in the "Ann" in 1623, who married before 1634, Susanna, daughter of widow Mary Ring, and in 1664 widow Alice Nichols, of Boston, and daughter of Richard Hallet. It will thus be seen that this branch of the Morton family is descended from two of what are called the " First Comers " of Plymouth.

Marcus Morton, the subject of this sketch, fitted for college at the Bristol County Academy, in Taunton, then under the charge of Frederick Crafts, a graduate of Brown University, in 1816, and a recipient of the degree of Master of Arts from Harvard in 1820. He graduated at Brown University in 1838, and after having studied two years in Dine Law School, at Cambridge, received the degree of Bachelor of Laws from Harvard, in 1840. After studying another year in the law office of Sprague & Gray he was admitted to practice in Suffolk County in 1841. He practiced law in Boston until 1848, living in Boston until 1850, and then removing to Andover, in which place he has since held his residence. In 1853 he was a member of the Constitutional Convention from Andover, and in 1858, represented that town in the House of Representatives. On the establishment of the Superior Court, in 1859, he was appointed by Governor Banks, one of its justices, with Charles Allen, of Worcester, as chief justice, and Julius Rockwell, of Lenox ; Otis Phillip Lord, of Salem ; Seth Ames, of Lowell ; Ezra Wilkinson, of Dedham; Henry Vose, of Springfield; Thomas Russell and John Phelps Putnam, of Boston ; and Lincoln Flagg Brigham, of New Bedford, as his associates. In 1869 two vacancies occurred on the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court, in consequence of the resignation of Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and Dwight Foster, which were filled by Governor Claflin by the appointment of Judge Ames, who had left the Supreme bench in 1867, and by the promotion of Judge Morton.

In 1882 Horace Gray, of Boston, Avho had occupied a seat as associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1864 to 1873, and since 1873 as chief justice; he resigned the latter office on his appointment as one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Judge Morton was appointed by Governor Long to fill the vacancy. In 1870 he received the degree of LL.D. from his alma mater, and in 1882 from Harvard.

Judge Morton still occupies his seat as chief justice and, in the performance of his duties, upholds and maintains the high character for which the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has always been distinguished.

William W. Story, son of Joseph Story, Avas born in Salem, February 12, 1819, and graduated at Harvard in 1838. He also graduated from the Dane Law School at Cambridge, in 1840, but soon gave up the profession and devoted himself to sculpture, in which he has won an enviable distinction. Among his best known works are the statue of Edward Everett, in the Boston Public Garden, and the statue of Chief Justice Marshall, at the west front of the Capitol in Washington.

an early New England settler, bearing that name. He was educated in the common schools of his native town, and in the Wesleyan Academy at Springfield, Vt- In his earliest manhood he taught four years in the Academy at Harwich, Mass., and in 1853 went to Lawrence, where, inthenextyear hebegan the study of law- In 1858 he was admitted to the bar of Essex Co., and soon after took the position of clerk of the police court of Lawrence, which, after two years, he resigned to become a partner of Daniel Saunders, of Lawrence, in the active practice of law. During his six years' connection with Mr. Saunders he enlisted in 1862 in the Forty-eighth Massachusetts Regiment, and after the battle of Port Hudson was breveted major, for bravery in the field. Having served out his time he again went to the front as captain in the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, and served until the end of the war. His active military career was supplemented after the war by his appointment as chief of the division staff and assistant adjutant-general on the staff of General Benjamin F. Butler, with the rank of colonel in the State militia, and he held that position until 1876.

After the war he entered into a law partnership of short duration with John K. Tarbox, who had been admitted to the bar in 1860, and who had subsequently, as well as Colonel Sherman, seen service in the field. In 1865-66 he was a member of the House of Representatives, and in 1868 was chosen district attorney for the Eastern District, which included the towns of Essex County. To this office he was chosen for five successive terms, of three years each, and resigned in December, 1882, to assume the duties of Attorneygeneral, to which he had been chosen as the candidate of the Republican party at the November election.

He was rechosen Attorney-general in 1883, '84, '85, '86, '87, and was, on the 14th of September of the present year, nominated by Governor Ames to fill the vacancy on the bench of the Superior Court caused by the promotion of Marcus Perrin Knowlton to the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of William Sewall Gardner. Before the publication of this sketch the nomination of Colonel Sherman will be confirmed, and he will be in full possession of his judicial office. In 1884 he received from Dartmouth College an honorary degree of Master of Arts, but neither occupies nor seeks public positions outside of the professional field in which he has labored faithfully, and is now reaping his harvest.

Lincoln Flagg Brigham, was born October 4, 1819, in that part of Cambridge called the " Port." He was the son of Lincoln Brigham and Lucy (Forbes) Brigham, the daughter of Elisha and Hannah (Flagg) Forbes, of Weatboro, Massachusetts. The first American ancestor of the Brigham family was Thomas Brigham, who came to New England in 1635, and settled in Cambridge, where he died in 1653. The subject of this sketch, after leaving the public schools of his native town, entered the counting-room of Samuel Austin, of Boston, with a view to a commercial life. His plans in this direction were, however, after two or three years abandoned, and he fitted for college under the care of Rev. David Peabody, the husband of his eldest sister, and afterwards Professor of Belles- Letters and Rhetoric in Dartmouth College, and graduated from Dartmouth in 1842. In 1844 he received the degree of LL. B. as a graduate of the Dane Law School, at Cambridge, and in 1883 received the honorary degree of LL.D. from his Alma-Mater. He finished his law studies at New Bedford, in the office of Clifford & Colby, a law firm composed of John H. Clifford, afterward attorneygeneral and Governor of the commonwealth, and Harrison G. O. Colby, who, while Mr. Brigham was a student in the office, was appointed by Governor George N. Briggs, a justice on the bench of the Common Pleas Court, and who resigned in 1847, and died in 1853. Mr. Brigham was admitted to the Bristol county bar in June, 1845, and after the appointment of Mr. Colby to the bench, became in July of that year a partner of Mr. Clifford. In 1853 he was appointed by Mr. Clifford, thea Governor, district-attorney of the southern district of Massachusetts, comprising the counties of Bristol, Barnstable, Nantucket and Dukes county. In 1856 the office becoming elective by a recent law, he was chosen attorney by the people of the district, and held the office until he was appointed by Governor Nathaniel P. Banks to a seat on the bench of the superior court, then first established. Judge Seth Ames, chief-justice of that court, was appointed in 1869 by Governor William Claflin, a justice of the supreme judicial court, and Judge Brigham was promoted to the seat of chiefjustice, which he has since up to this time held.

Judge Brigham married October 20, 1847, Eliza Endicott, daughter of Thomas Swain, of New Bedford, and has four sons, one of whom, Clifford Brigham, a graduate of Harvard in 1880, lives in Salem, and as a partner of George Burnham Ives, a graduate of Harvard in 1876, is engaged in the practice of law in Salem and Boston. During the residence of Judge Brigham in New Bedford, which terminated in 1860, he was interested in military affairs, and for a time was the efficient and popular commander of the New Bedford Light Infantry, one of the most active and respectable volunteer companies in the State. In 1860 he removed to Boston, and in 1866 to Salem, which place he has since made his residence. From the exacting labors of his official station he turns to music for his chief relaxation, and in whatever social circle he has lived he has done much to cultivate and refine its musical tastes. As a judge he has won not only the esteem, but the affection also of the members of the bar, and as a man he is universally beloved.

Charlotte (Bourne) Swett, and entered Harvard College in 1796, having been fitted by his father at the eraramar-school in his native town. He studied law in Exeter, N. H., with Judge Jeremiah Smith, and afterwards with Judge Charles Jackson and Judge Edward Livermore, and was admitted to the Essex Bar in 1805. He began the practice of law in Salem, where he married, August 25, 1807, Lucia, daughter of William Gray. He relinquished practice in 1810 and removed to Boston, where he became a partner in the firm of Wm. B. Swett & Co. In the last year of the War of 1812 he entered the army as a volunteer on the staff of General Izard, and served as a topographical engineer, with the rank of major. He was aide-de-camp on the staff" of John Brooks, Governor of Massachusetts, from 1816 to 1823, and was three years a member of the Legislature. His wife died May 15, 1844, and he died in Boston October 28, 1866.

William S. Allen was the son of Ephraim W. Allen and born in Newburyport in 1805. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1825, and after studying law with Stephen W. Marston, was admitted to the Essex Bar in 1827. For several years he was a partner of Caleb Gushing, and a representative from Newburyport in the General Court. He was the first editor of the Newburyport Daily Herald, started by himself and his brother, Jere. S. Allen, in 1832. At that time the Herald and the Neio Bedford Mercury, which started a few months earlier, were the only daily papers in Massachusetts outside of Boston. About the year 1835 he removed to St. Louis, where he was elected to a judgeship, which he held for several years. During the last twelve years of his life he was connected editorially with the St. Louis Re- Dublican, and died in St. Louis in June, 1868.

Stephen Hooper was the son of Stephen Hooper, a prominent merchant of JS'ewburyport, and was born in that town in 1785. He was fitted for college at the Dummer Academy, and graduated at Harvard in 1808. He was admitted to the Essex County bar in 1810, and opened an office in Newburyport. He represented the town of Newbury, to which town his father removed while he was a youth, and which place he continued to make his residence in the General Court when he was twenty-five years of age, and at the age of thirty-one he was chosen a State Senator. In 1818 he removed to Boston, and there devoted himself to the practice of his profession. He was for several years an alderman of the city, and there died in 1825.

Edward St. Loe Livermore was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, April 5, 1762. His father, Samuel Livermore, born in Waltham, New Hampshire, May 14, 1732, died at Holderness, New Hampshire, in May, 1803, and was Attorney-General of New Hampshire, member of the Continental Congress, member of the convention to adopt the Federal Constitution, president of the Constitutional Convention of 1791, judge of the Supreme Court, member of Congress and United States Senator. His son Edward was a counsellor at law, and United States Attorney, and judge of the Superior Court of New Hampshire. He removed to Newburyport, and while a resident there was chosen member of the tenth Congress in 1806. He removed to Boston in 1813, and died at Lowell, September 22, 1832.

Samuel Sumijer Wilde, so long a distinguished justice on the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court, deserves as a resident in Essex County eleven years, a place in this record. He was born in Taunton, Mass., February 5, 1771, and graduated at Dartmouth College in 1789. He read law with David L. Barnes, of Taunton, who was afterwards judge of the United States District Court for Rhode Island. He was admitted to the bar in 1792, and removed to Maine, practising his profession in Waldoboro' and Warren and Hallowell, to which last place he removed in 1799 ; while at Warren he represented that town in the General Court, and while at Hallowell was twice chosen one of the electors of president and vice-president, and in 1814 was a member of the executive council. In 1815 he was appointed by Governor Caleb Strong an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and at the separation of Maine from Massachusetts he removed to Newburyport, where he resided until 1831. He received the degree of doctor of laws from Bowdoin College in 1817, from Harvard in 1841, and from Dartmouth in 1849.

In early life he was an active Federalist, and lived to be the only surviving member of the Hartford Convention. He continued on the bench thirty-five years, and resigned in 1850, at the age of seventy-nine years. To those readers who remember Judge Wilde, and have been able by personal observation to measure his abilities as a jurist and his high character as a man, the following letter written in Hallowell in 1820, with its estimate of the judge in the early days of his judicial life, will be interesting:

" It is with much regret that we learn tliat Judge Wilde is malting preparations to leave the town and the State of Maine in order to reside in Massachusetts, and there exercise the functions of a Judge in the Supreme Court in that State.

"In his several capacities of a judge, citizen, friend and acquaintance, his value has been so generally known and felt among us that his departure must necessarily be viewed with concern. On the bench he is conspicuous for his talents and learning, as well as for his candor and impartiality. He is at all times affable, and yet he preserves order ; by his industry and arrangement he despatches business ; though he knows how to be piitient when the case demands it ; to his mildness lie joins firmness, and bj' his personal character he adds weight to his judicial decisions ; since his sincerity gives assurance that these decisions ai'e independent and conscientious. As a citizen he was formerly much engaged in public affairs, and yet he continued never to lose his temper or to give personal offence, and his intentions and fair dealing never called in question either when conducting his own affairs or those of his clients. Those who have known Judge Wilde as a friend are those who will most feel his loss ; since the warmth of his feelings, tho pleasantness of his temper, and his desire to render services were always conspicuous in his intercourse with them." * * *

Danvers. - Daniel N. Crowley (also in Salem), Willis E. Flint, Edward L. Hill, Stephen H. Phillips (also in S^ilem), J. W. Porter, Alden P. White (also in Salem).