Essex County, Massachusetts - Biographical sketches (3 of 8 so headed), 1888

Benjamin Franklin Newhall was born April 29, 1802. His father was Jacob, son of Landlord Jacob Newhall. His mother was Abigail, daughter of William and Ruth Makepeace, of Norton, Mass.

She was a woman of noble presence, of exemplary Christian character, pious without ostentation, and devoted to her family, which consisted of three sons and five daughters, for whom she labored day and night and lived to see her prayers answered in their behalf.

Benjamin Franklin was her first-born child, and so very naturally upon him fell early the burdens of the family. Passionately devoted to his mother, he gave

Brought up in a tavern in his earliest years, he was exposed to great temptation. In his autobiography he thus speaks of these days and experiences : " What saved me God only knows. But I was saved. I remember I always resisted, and often heard the exclamation, 'What ails the child that he will not drink ! ' Some spiritual guardian was about me to watch my infantile footsteps and keep me in the path of rectitude." After writing of the many beauties of his birth-place, he speaks of his mother thus : " And better still, the glowing vision of that angel form, who every day supplied my infant wants, and whose voice was sweeter to me than the sweetest music."

He writes again, " How well do I remember, in the late hours of the night, when her husband was away and her dear ones were sleeping, that she would come to my bedside and, kneeling with overflowing heart, pour out her soul in prayer that God would jireserve her darling boy from the snares so thick around him. She thought I was asleep, but I was awake and still, and the silent tear moistened my young cheek, and I vowed before God that a mother's prayers should not be in vain, How often she kneeled at my bedside when I was asleep I know not, no doubt often." Again he writes, "My mother, in her extreme anxiety for my welfare, never tired in giving me good advice. She felt that there was great danger of my giving way to the use of the dreadful cup, and so there was."

Again he writes, "When about four years of age my mother had bought me some picture books, and she commenced learning me to read. About the same time the school-house, afterwards called the ''Rock," was in process of building. My mother took me into it one pleasant summer's eve, and, pointing out tome the smallest and lowest seat, saying at the same time, ' there, my son, is your .seat.' This in a few days I found to be literally true, for on my first entrance into the school I was appointed to the little seat."

It was at this early age, in the autumn before he was fourteen, that he commenced work for Mr. Childs in the chocolate mill, often working day and night.

He writes again in his autobiography, " I could scarcely endure it. I sometimes declared, ' this shall he my last night; ' but when the beautiful sun shone in the morning I felt better and was encouraged to go on. I hated shoemakingand was yet determined to earn something for my mother. If I could earn eightythree cents a day for work night and day it was to nie a great sum. But with all the hard work and suffering I got through my first winter in the mill. How I bore the fatigue God only knows. Some unseen hand supported me, and when I was just on the

Such were his early labors that it might almost be said he had no boyhood, so early was the yoke fitted to his youthful shoulders. But he bore it with courage. He writes, " When I had nothing to do I could read, and used always to keep a book in the mill always ready." He soon also engaged in teaming for Mr. Childs. He writes of himself when eighteen years old, " I had so much per day for driving the team and twenty-five cents to buy me a dinner. I always managed to carry my dinner, and thus save and lay up twenty-five cents. This I continued for two years or more. I generally took my book with me and studied while I was driving; so I turned my labor into amusement.'' Of this same period he writes, "This season I found religious impressions growing more and more in my mind. I felt more and more the need of Divine strength to enable me to resist successfully the evil temptations of the world. I read the Bible, prayed often and frequently went to meeting. I began to hear with new ears, because I felt an interest in the subject preached. Night and day religious matters were in my thoughts, and I was looking forward to a period of church membership as a kind of bulwark of defense."

He identified himself at once with the Methodists and labored zealously with them. When twenty years of age he was baptized by immersion in the pond at Melrose.

He was now making his plans for more schooling, just as soon as he was twenty-one years of age, and for this object he laid some money aside until he had one hundred and seventy dollars. He reached his freedom year, and away he went to New Market Academy, in New Hampshire. We wish we had space to give his account of his start in the stage. He says of his studies : " I pored into the grammar with all my energy, but it was all darkness to me ; I knew nothing about it. My boyhood's studies of grammar were but a parrot performance, as I now found by experience. What would I not have given for some one to explain to me the first principles, and know the meaning of the Parts of Speech. But I had no one and so I delved alone. I read and then thought, meditated and then studied. One night, while I was trying to penetrate its mysteries, I instantly saw it all clearly. As the sun suddenly bursts through the obscuring clouds and shines upon the earth, so a knowledge of English grammar burst suddenly on my mind. I saw it all in a glance, simple as my A, B, C. I could pass the most difficult passages instantly." He writes again : " I soon procured some French books, and commenced that language. I learned five thousand words in about a week, and in two weeks could translate the New Testament pretty well."

He remained at the Academy about six months. He then returned home and immediately procured a school in Stoneham and began teaching. As an instance of his remarkable memory, he states that while teaching this school he committed to memory the whole New Testament in thirty-seven days. This was in 1824. He taught this school six months. April 25, 1825, he married Dorothy Jewett, daughter of David and Sarah Jewett, of Standstead, Lower Canada. This explains why, soon after this, he, in company with his brother-in-law, opened a store in Canada. But this business proved disastrous and left him in heavy debt. He then returned to Saugus for good, wiser from experience, if poorer in purse.

We have thus dwelt upon his early life experiences to show the difficulties, the privations, and the hardships he met and subdued. He was stronger than all of these, even making them his servants for discipline and preparations for his remaining life's work. On his return from Canada, already in debt, he borrowed money and commenced the shoe business in earnest. His untiring zeal, his strict business rules, his steadfast integrity, his keen foresight, and his rigid economy, brought him rapid success. He never swerved from these paths, so early chosen. They brought him competence, if not wealth; respect and honor from those who knew him best.

The very poor privileges of the village school in his early youth, ending at thirteen years of age, adding a six months' term at New Market Academy when twenty-one years of age, constitute his scholastic equipment ; but these were a small part of his endowments. His mind was always inquiring, extremely receptive, and, what was far more important, it grasped with a tenacity never to be loosed and never to be forgotten, everything that could be of value, benefit, use, or help to him. He might be called a self-educated man, in the best sense of that term. His heart and nature were sympathetic. Having had so many difficulties in his youth, he knew how to sympathize with young men, and many there are of these, to-day, who will testify to his personal assistance in their time of need. What he espoused was with his whole heart. Interested from his youth in the temperance cause, having witnessed the direful effects of intemperance, he never relinquished his warfare against the demon, but, with sledge-hammer blows, on the platform, in the pulpit, as well as in business and social walks of life, he lifted up his voice for total abstinence, and labored in every way to save the youth from this destroying vice, and to make of the inebriate a sober and useful man.

He showed the same characteristics in politics. Always an anti-slavery man, his home and heart were ever open to the fugitive slave, who found a shelter at his fireside, and a God-speed in his journey or mission. He saw in the old Liberty and Free-Soil party the cloud no bigger than a man's hand ; he entered its ranks, fought beside its standard, and lived long enough to see the hydra-headed monster slain and buried.

He had no place for hypocrisy in his heart, and he could brook nothing of the kind in others. He became an exhorter, and then a local preacher, in the Methodist Church. We may well imagine that no grass was allowed to grow under his feet. As wel! bid the torrent cease its flow as to curb his powers ol mind and heart from progress and growth. His warmth in moral reforms often led to some friction with the stereotyped ideas of the Methodist clergy, some of whom could not allow interference with their denominational tenets and labors. The church did not, at that time, stand where it does to-day in relation to these movements. If it had, he probably would never have severed his union with the people of his early choice.

He entered the Universalist Church because he found there a more congenial atmosphere, where he could exercise more freedom of thought and action. He became a very regular preacher for this denomination, and even amid his multiplied business labors he found leisure nearly every Sabbath, for many jears, to supply gratuitously some pulpit either near or far away.

He also served his native town of Saugus in nearly every ofticial capacity. As town clerk, selectman, overseer of the poor, school committee and representative to the General Court. In the Legislature he strongly opposed capital punishment. He was chosen one of the commissioners of the county of Essex for two terms, from 1844 to 1850, when the labors of that oflSce were as abundant and onerous as to-day, and, perhaps, far more so.

These were but a few of his labors. From his awaking in the morning until his sleeping at night, his fertile brain was always active. He gave himself little rest or recreation. Like a locomotive, steam was always on. His style was simple, chaste and clear. He wrote much for the newspapers, among which contributions were his interesting "Historical Sketches of Saugus," which have furnished me much material for my "History of Saugus" in this work. He also wrote a great deal of poetry, indeed his writings in both prose and verse would, if j)rinted, fill volumes.

The last ten years or more of his life were full of pain and suffering. He was afflicted with chronic rheumatism, which never loosed its gri]) u^wu him ; his limbs became swollen, his joints distorted and dislocated. When walking was ditficult, he rode ; then was wheeled about in his invalid chair ; then was confined to his house, then to his room, then to his bed for two years, until his naturally iron constitution gave way. During all these years he was busy reading and writing, and his fortitude and cheerfulness never failed him. He died October 13, 1863, aged sixty-one years.

His widow survived him twenty-three years, dying October 7, 1886. They had seven children, two of whom died in infancy ; Benjamin, their eldest, a graduate of Harvard and a lawyer, died in Milwaukee, Wis., at the aged of twenty-nine years; two sons and two daughters still survive, and are residents of East Saugus.