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��hon. p. a. Mckean.
��had a large family, one of whom was William McKeen, Jr., the grandfather of Frank A. McKean, who became a prom- inent citizen and was a member of the State Senate in 1844 and 1845.
Hon. Albert McKean, son of William McKeen, Jr., and father of Frank A., was born in the town of Deering in the year 1810. When quite young, he took his worldly possessions in a bundle and walked to Francestown, where he se- cured a position in the country store of Messrs. Clark & Dodge, a well-known firm in that region, in whose employ he remained several years, till he com- menced business for himself in a general store at Hillsborough Bridge. He re- mained at Hillsborough but a short time, however, removing to Nashua in 1833, ■where he has ever since resided, being successfully engaged in trade in a gener- al store until 1851, when he disposed of his business and became cashier of the Indian Head Bank, which position he re- tained until 1867, when, the bank having been reorganized as a National Bank, he established a private banking house . Mr. McKean has always been a decided Dem- ocrat, taking a deep interest in public and political affairs. He was a member of the N. H. House of Kepresentatives in 1843 and 1844, of the State Senate in 1851, and a member of the Executive Council in 1874. He is still living, in the full en- joyment of his bodily health and mental powers. He married, soon after com- mencing business, a Miss Paine of Rhode Island, by whom he has had four chil- dren, a son — Frank A. — and three daugh- ters. One of the daughters died in in- fancy. The others are now the wives of two brothers, George F. and Isaac N. Andrews, both residing in Nashua.
Frank A. McKean was born in Nash- ua, Oct. 13, 1840, and is, therefore, now in his thirty-eighth year. He attended the public schools of his native city, which, by the way, have long been known as among the best in the State, and was afterward for about a year a student at the Green Mountain Liberal Institute, at South Woodstock, Vt., where he was a classmate of Hosea W. Parker, now of Claremont, late member of Congress from the Third District. After this he was
��for some time under the tuition of Rev. Farrington Mclntire, who kept a private school for boys, where he finished a thorough college preparatory course,
From early boyhood it had been young McKean's ambition to enter the Military Academy at West Point. To that end his prepartoiy education had been direct- ed, and having attained the proper age for admission and the requisite prepara- tion, he made application, through the Secretary of War , for an appointment at large by the President, knowing it to be useless to apply for the appointment by the member of Congress in that District, who was a Republican and entirely un- likely to consider such a request from the son of a prominent Democrat. His application was aocompanied by letters of recommendation from Hon. Harry Hibbard, Hon. John S. Wells, and other distinguished Democratic politicians, and he was also personally recommended by ex-President Pierce. Soon afterward he received a communication from the Sec- retary of War, John B. Floyd, stating that his application and accompanying recommendations were duly received and submitted to the President, and adding that he might rest assured he would re- ceive the desired appointment. Time passed, and he heard nothing further un- til he saw the list of appointments of cadets at large made by the President, but his name was not among them. Some time after, when in Washington, President Pierce, who as a personal friend of Albert McKean had taken an in- terest in the matter, in the course of an interview with President Buchanan al- luded to the subject and inquired how it happened that the appointment was not made, when Mr. Buchanan informed him that he had never seen the application. As all or nearly all of the ten cadets at large appointed by the President at this time were from the South, it seems en- tirely probable the Secretary of War, Floyd, purposely withheld from the Pres- ident Mr. McKean's application, with those of others from the North, so as to secure the appointments for Southerners. This was about midway in President Bu- chanan's term of office, when, as it will be remembered, the Southern leaders
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