Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs/Chapter 05
V
GROTON IN 1835
IN the month of February, 1835, I read an advertisement in the Lowell Journal, asking for a clerk in a store, application to be made at the office. I at once wrote to Joseph S. Hubbard,[1] a former schoolmate, asking him to call at the office and get the name of the advertiser. This he did, and gave me the name of Benj. P. Dix of Groton. I wrote to Mr. Dix, and upon the receipt of an answer, I went with my father to see him. The result was an agreement to work for him for three years. Terms, board and one hundred dollars for the first year, one hundred and twelve dollars for the second year, one hundred and twenty-five dollars for the third year. I commenced my clerkship with Mr. Dix the fifth day of March, and in the month of September my contract was ended by his failure. His business was small, his manners were abrupt, his capital had been limited, and his family expenses, not extravagant, had exceeded his income, and bankruptcy in the end was inevitable. His sales were chiefly of boots, shoes, leather, and medicines, of which he kept the only stock in the village.
Mr. Dix was a man of exact ways of life. The sales made were entered each day at the close of business, the cash was carefully counted, and the cash-book was balanced. But these careful and businesslike ways did not save him, and in September he made an assignment of his property to his father Benj. Dix, and to Caleb Butler, for the benefit of his creditors according to the preferences specified in the assignment. Mr. Butler was not a creditor, but Mr. Dix, senior, was much the largest creditor. In fact he had furnished his son with the chief part of the means of doing business. He was a tanner by trade, and he had gradually enlarged his business by employing workmen to make boots and shoes. A portion of his product of leather and all his product of boots and shoes had been turned into the son’s store.
The deficiency of means on the part of the son was represented at each settlement by an addition to the debt due to the father. The debts amounted to about five thousand dollars. Following the assignment Mr. Dix left home, and he did not return until the spring or summer of 1836. Imprisonment for debt in a modified form then existed. He and his family were proud, and he may have wished to avoid seeing his neighbors and acquaintances while his misfortune was fresh upon him. His wife was a granddaughter of General Ward, who had been the rival of General Washington for the command of the army at the opening of the War of the Revolution. Mrs. Dix was proud, very properly, of her paternity, and of her grandfather’s association with General Washington, and neither from her, nor from either of two brothers whom I subsequently met, did I ever hear a word of criticism upon the wisdom of the selection of General Washington. Mrs. Dix had inherited many letters written by General Washington to her grandfather, and they were all written in a tone of sincere friendship.
Mrs. Dix’s eldest brother, Mr. Nahum Ward, was one of the early settlers, if not one of the founders of Marietta, Ohio. Mr. Dix went to Marietta, where he was given some employment by Mr. Ward. Neither Mr. Butler nor Mr. Dix senior, had any knowledge of business, and I was employed by them at a small advance in my pay, to sell the stock of goods, and close the business of the store. After such sales as could be made, the remainder of the stock was sold at auction the 23d day of November. During the preceding night there was a fall of snow, and the company came to the village in sleighs. The winter was severe, and the snow continued to cover the ground until the 18th of April, when the stage coaches for the north went on runners for the last time. The summer of 1836 was so cold, that the corn crop was a failure. During the year following corn brought from New Jersey sold for $2.50 per bushel.
In 1835 the town of Groton was a place of much importance relatively. It was the residence of several men of more than local fame. Timothy Fuller, the father of Margaret, was living there. He was a lawyer of considerable distinction, and he had held important public positions. He had been a representative and senator in the Massachusetts Legislature, speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and a member of Congress from the Cambridge district from 1817 to 1825. He died in October, 1835.
Mr. Fuller was a man of regular and careful habits, indeed he belonged to a family noted for their devotion to the profession of law, and for their odd manners and styles of dress.
Mr. Fuller’s eldest son, Eugene, was afterwards a student in the law office of George F. Farley. He was a good debater as a young man, but as a student rather irregular. He went to New Orleans to reside, became an editor of, or writer on, the Picayune, and on a return voyage from Boston he was lost overboard.
Margaret Fuller continued to reside in Groton with her mother and the other members of the family for several years—until about 1841, I think. In the meantime I met her frequently, although she was several years my senior. She was a teacher in the Sunday school, and at the Sunday-evening teachers’ meetings she was accustomed to set forth her opinions with great frankness, and in a style which assumed that they were not open to debate. While she lived at Groton she contributed to the Dial.
In personal appearance Margaret Fuller was less attractive than one might imagine from the portraits and engravings now seen. Her ability was recognized, but the celebrity that she attained finally was not anticipated, probably, by any of her town acquaintances. Her writings may justify the opinion that as a writer and thinker she is in the front rank of American women.
Samuel Dana, who had been a judge for many years, president of the Massachusetts Senate for three terms, and a member of Congress for one term, was also a resident of Groton. He had been an active politician on the Democratic or Jeffersonian side in politics, and for many years in early life he had been the competitor of Timothy Bigelow, who had been a resident of Groton and a leader in the Federal Party of the State. The town supported Bigelow and returned him to the House, where he became speaker for many sessions. Dana as a candidate for the Massachusetts Senate was elected by the county of Middlesex then Democratic, and for three terms he was president of the Senate. Judge Dana was interested in a small social library that was kept in a chamber over the store. It contained Josephus, Plutarch’s Lives, Rollins’ Ancient History, and some other standard works whose titles I do not now recall.
Judge Dana was also interested in the organization of a reading room club in a building connected with the store. As clerk in charge of the store I was custodian of the reading room and library. I found time to read Plutarch and Josephus, and I was skeptic enough to question in my own mind the passage in Josephus in regard to Jesus. Judge Dana died in the month of November, 1835, at the age of sixty. His hair was white and long, and his appearance was so venerable that it is now difficult for me to realize that he was not seventy-five years of age at least. His abilities were considerable, and his descendants, in more than one instance, have shown distinguished qualities.
Two other well-known lawyers, one of them a lawyer of eminence in the profession, were also residents of the town: Benj. M. Farley and George F. Farley, brothers. They were natives of the small town of Brookline, N. H. The elder, Benj. M., had practised in Hollis, N. H., where by economy and good care of his earnings he had acquired a competency. At Groton he made no effort to obtain business, and acted for the most part as an associate or aid to his brother, who was in the enjoyment of a large practice and income, for those days and parts.
With George F. Farley, whose age ran with the century, I was well acquainted from 1835 until his death in 1855. He was one of the small number of men that I have known who underestimated their powers. In one respect, perhaps, this was not true of Farley. He never appeared wanting in courage for any legal struggle with the leaders of the bar in New England. In the twenty years that I knew him he had for his antagonists Webster, Choate, Davis, Curtis, Franklin, Dexter, and others of eminence, and he never failed to sustain himself upon terms of equality. This was remarkable in presence of the fact that he was likely to be retained on the hard side of most cases. This was due, perhaps, to his reputation for shrewdness, and for a quality in practice which has been called the inventive faculty. When parties were not allowed to testify, there was a wide field for the imagination, and for the exercise of the inventive faculties on the part of an advocate. He had defended, successfully, the Ursuline Convent rioters, and he had been employed in many desperate cases on the civil side and on the criminal side of the courts.
In his later years he read very little either in law, history, or general literature. His law library was meager, although he had usually one or two students in his office. He preferred to discuss his cases with the loungers about the post- office and stores, getting thereby the benefit of the opinions of common men.
His manner in speaking was inartistic, and although he was a graduate of Harvard, he indulged himself in the use of country phrases and rustic pronunciation. His logic was unanswerable, and his faculty of cross-examination of witnesses was worthy of emulation.
He enjoyed a few books, the classics in the originals, but he seldom indulged in a quotation. Byron as a poet, and Locke as a logician he commended to me—the latter, Locke on the Human Understanding, with great earnestness. Under his advice I read it carefully, and for mental training he did not overvalue it. Farley commenced the practice of his profession at New Ipswich, N. H., and that town elected him once or twice to the Legislature of the State. Wishing for a wider field, he came to Groton. It was a day of small fees, and a good deal of the litigation grew out of the intemperate habits of the farmers.
In New Hampshire fees were even more moderate than in Massachusetts. If Farley had estimated his talents at their full value and had taken an office in Boston or New York, he could have gratified his love for money without disturbing his relations to his neighbors. In minor ways he was acquisitive and consequently there came to be a public sentiment which excluded him from public employments. His political course was not more erratic than that of many others, but his change of position was ascribed to policy and not to principle. In 1840 he was a Whig, in 1850 he was a Free-soiler, and in 1855 he was a Republican. In the autumn of the year 1855 he was elected a member of the State Convention of the Republican Party.
A day or two before the meeting of the convention I was passing by his premises where he was engaged apparently in examining a buggy which his man had been putting in order. The conversation turned upon politics, and I soon discovered that he wished for a nomination to the Legislature, and without admitting the fact, his remarks showed that he comprehended the nature of the obstacles in his way. At last he said: “When I began I thought the main thing was to get money; and I have got it; and it is very convenient to have it, but it isn’t just what I thought it was when I began.”
He went to the convention, took a cold which developed into a fever, and in a week he died.
- ↑ When I became Secretary of the Treasury, in 1869, I appointed Hubbard to a minor office in the revenue service in the State of Kentucky, where he then lived.