Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/136

Presoott,” and that “his bravery could never be enough acknowledged and applauded.” He was one of the last to leave the intrenchments when he found it necessary to order a retreat, and immediately offered to retake the position if the commander-in-chief would give him three regiments. Before the attack Gage, reconnoitring the works, saw Prescott walking on the parapet, and asked Counsellor Willard who he was, and if he would fight? The latter replied, “That is Col. Prescott he is an old soldier, and will fight as long as a drop of blood remains in his veins.” Early in 1777 he resigned and returned home, but in autumn of that year he joined the northern army under Gen. Horatio Gates as a volunteer, and was present at Saratoga. After this battle he returned home and sat in the legislature of Massachusetts for several years. He wrote “A Letter from a Veteran to the Officers of the Army encamped at Boston” (Boston, 1774). See Samuel Swett's “History of Bunker Hill Battles” (Boston, 1827; new ed., with notes, 1835). The illustration on page 109 represents the statue by Story erected on Bunker Hill in 1881, on which occasion an oration was delivered by Robert C. Winthrop.—His brother, Oliver, soldier, b. in Groton, Mass., 27 April, 1731; d. there, 17 Nov., 1804, was graduated at Harvard in 1750, and practised medicine in his native town. Before the Revolution he was successively major, lieutenant-colonel, and colonel in the militia, early in 1776 he was appointed a brigadier-general of militia for the county of Middlesex, and became a member of the board of war. In 1777 he was elected a member of the supreme executive council of the state, in 1778 he was appointed third major-general of militia in the commonwealth, and in 1781 he became second major-general, but soon afterward he resigned. In this year he was commissioned by the government to cause the arrest and committal of any person whose liberty he considered dangerous to the commonwealth. From 1779 till his death he was judge of probate for Middlesex county. He was very influential in suppressing Shays's rebellion. In 1780 he became a fellow of the Academy of arts and sciences, and he was a trustee, patron, and benefactor of Groton academy.—Oliver's son, Oliver, physician, b. in Groton, Mass., 4 April, 1762; d. in Newburyport, 26 Sept., 1827, was graduated at Harvard in 1783, studied medicine with his father, and was surgeon of the forces that suppressed the Shays insurrection in 1787. Leaving a large practice in Groton, he removed to Newburyport in 1811, practising successfully there till his death. He was often a representative in the legislature, and was a founder, trustee, and treasurer of Groton academy. He contributed valuable articles to the New England “Journal of Medicine and Surgery,” but is best known by the annual discourse before the Massachusetts medical society in 1813, entitled a “Dissertation on the Natural History and Medicinal Effects of Secale Cornutum, or Ergot,” which was republished in London, and translated into French and German.—William's son, William, jurist, b. in Pepperell. Mass., 19 Aug., 1762; d. in Boston, 8 Dec., 1844, was graduated at Harvard in 1783, and taught first at Brooklyn, Conn., and afterward at Beverly, Mass., where he studied law with Nathan Dane, and practised successfully from 1787 till 1789. In the latter year he removed to Salem, and after representing that town for several years in the legislature, he was elected a state senator by the Federal party for Essex county, first in 1806, and again in 1813. He twice declined a seat on the bench of the supreme court of Massachusetts. In 1808 he removed to Boston, and was for several years a member of the governor's council. He was a delegate to the Hartford convention in 1814, in 1818 was appointed a judge of the court of common pleas for Suffolk, which post he soon resigned, and in 1820 was a delegate to the State constitutional convention. He was a member of the American academy of arts and sciences.—

The second William's son, William Hickling, historian, b. in Salem, Mass., 4 May, 1796; d. in Boston, Mass., 28 Jan., 1859, was graduated at Harvard in 1814, and would have devoted himself to the law but for the results of an act of folly on the part of an undergraduate, who threw at random a large, hard piece of bread, which struck one of Prescott's eyes and practically destroyed it. His other eye was soon sympathetically affected, and the youthful student was now obliged to turn his back upon the sun, and at a later period for many months to remain in a darkened room. “In all that trying season,” said his mother, “I never groped my way across the apartment to take my place by his side that he did not greet me with some hearty expression of good cheer, as if we were the patients and it was his place to comfort us.” His literary aspirations were not subdued by the sad results of this misfortune. “I had early conceived,” he wrote to the Rev. George E. Ellis, “a strong passion for historical writing, to which perhaps the reading of Gibbon's autobiography contributed not a little. I proposed to make myself a historian in the best sense of the term, and hoped to produce something which posterity would not willingly let die. In a memorandum-book, as far back as the year 1819, I find the desire intimated; and I proposed to devote ten years of my life to the study of ancient and modern literatures, chiefly the latter, and to give ten years more to some historical work. I have had the good fortune to accomplish this design pretty nearly within the limits assigned. In the Christmas of 1837 my first work, the ‘History of Ferdinand and Isabella,’ was given to the world. I obtained the services of a reader who knew no language but his own. I taught him to pronounce the Castilian in a manner suited, I suspect, much more to my ear than to that of a Spaniard, and we began our wearisome journey through Mariana's noble history. I cannot even now call to mind without a smile the tedious hours in which, seated under some old trees in my country residence, we pursued our slow and melancholy way over pages which afforded no glimmering of light to him, and from which the light came dimly struggling to me through a half-intelligible vocabulary. But in a few weeks the light became stronger, and I was cheered by the consciousness of my own improvement, and when we had toiled our way through seven quartos. I found 1 could understand the book when read about two thirds as fast as ordinary English. My reader's office required the more patience; he had not even this result to cheer him in his labor. I now felt that the great