452). He has established a reputation as a careful, thorough, and reliable antiquary, and has been made an honorary member of several of the learned societies of England devoted to such researches.

**Mr. Chester has recently assisted in editing, for the Harleian Society, the Visitation of London of 1634, one of the most valuable of the English heraldric records. He has also had in preparation, for several years, an annotated edition of The Marriage and Baptismal Register of Westminster Abbey, from the Commencement to the Present Time, to be issued under the sanction of Dean Stanley and the Chapter of Westminster. The style of his writings is nervous and compact; and as an investigator of historical subjects, he is said to have few equals.

CHARLES, WENTWORTH UPHAM

Was born in St. John, New Brunswick, May 4, 1802. His earliest years were passed in the depths of a forest, on the very extreme outsettlements of that province, partly in what is now the parish of Upham and partly in Sussex Vale, on the banks of the Kennebecasis. At about eight years of age he was placed in the Latin School at St. John. When less than twelve years of age, he came near having his lot in life cast in a very different direction from that afterward assigned him. Captain Blythe, of the British sloop-of-war Boxer, stationed at St. John, took a warm interest in him, and was making arrangements to procure for him a midshipman's warrant in the royal navy and take him on board his vessel. But in the mean while word was brought that the United States sloop-of-war Enterprise was off the coast. Captain Blythe slipped his cables and hurried without a moment's delay to meet her. On the 4th of September, 1813, off Portland harbor, after a most sanguinary and gallant action, in which both commanders were killed, the Boxer was captured. This put an end to the business of the midshipman's warrant.

work of which a lad of his years was capable. On the 14th of June, 1816, he left that country, without any companion for the trip, and, crossing the Bay of Fundy to St. John, made his way to Eastport, then in possession of the British, and from point to point along the coast to Boston, where he arrived on the 27th of June. A benevolent relative took him into his family, placed him in his store for a time, then sent him to school, under the tuition of Deacon Samuel Greele, who fitted him for Harvard College, which he entered in 1817. He took his first degree in 1821, having shared with a talented and manly classmate the highest honors of scholarship. In the winter of his sophomore year he taught a district school at Wilmington, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. In the winter of his junior year he taught at Leominster, and of his senior year, at Bolton, in Worcester County, Massachusetts. After spending the usual time in preparatory studies at the Cambridge Theological School, he was ordained as colleague pastor to the Rev. John Prince, LL. D., over the First Church in Salem, Massachusetts, on the 8th of December, 1824. On the 8th of December, 1844, he resigned the pastoral office, in consequence of a severe and long-continued bronchitis, which prevented the use of his voice in public delivery for two or three years. He transferred his place from the pulpit to a pew, and has continued ever since to worship in that church and to reside in Salem. On the 24th of March, 1826, he was married to Ann Susan, daughter of the Rev. Abiel Holmes, D. D., of Cambridge, and sister of Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Although born beyond the boundaries of the United States, his ancestors had ever lived in Massachusetts, of which they were among the earliest settlers. His grandfather was born in Malden, and lived and died a physician in Brookfield. His father was born and lived in the practice of law at that place. He graduated at Harvard College in 1763. He was an enter

tion to his professional business, built the first woollen-mill in the country, and started the manufacture of salt in some of the seaboard towns. He was a Judge of the Supreme Court of New Brunswick, at the organization of the judiciary of that province. He died at London in 1808, while engaged in public business relating to the affairs of the British North American Provinces.

Soon after this, young Upham was placed in an apothecary's store, where, for some time, he was employed in preparing medicines, going through the entire Edinburgh Materia Medica, and waiting as an attendant upon the proprietor, who was a physician and surgeon in extensive private practice and in charge of hospitals. The death of the physician broke up the establishment, and the subject of this sketch was then placed on a farm in Nova Scotia, in the valley of the Annapolis, about fifteen miles above the town of that name, where he performed the

During the ministry of Mr. Upham in Salem he published a considerable variety of discourses and tracts, and from early life to the present time he has been a frequent contributor to periodical works, in literature and theology, as well as to the newspapers. His discourses at the dedication of the present house of worship of the First Church in Salem, in 1826, and at the completion of its second century in 1829, were the result of much research, as also was an extended treatise, in the form of a discourse, on the prophetical argument for Christianity. Sermons on special occasions, and on topics of theological or controversial interest, were printed at different times. In 1828, he published a work belonging to the department of Scriptural interpretation, entitled Letters on the Logos. Tho

design of this volume was to show that the true meaning of "the Word," in the first chapter of the Gospel of John and in the New Testament Scriptures generally, is to be found, not in Platonizing writings of a later period, but in the literature and usages of language of the Jews themselves at that time. This work was considered a valuable contribution to theological literature by learned men of the author's denomination. In 1832, he published a volume entitled Lectures on Witchcraft, comprising a history of the delusion in Salem in 1692. This volume is considered a reliable and standard account of that wonder of the early times. In 1835, he published in Sparks's American Biography a Life of Sir Henry Vane. This work was republished by authority of the Board of Education in the School Library of Massachusetts. It also substantially reappeared in one of the volumes of an English Family Cyclopædia. Pages upon pages are taken without acknowledgment, and the whole work is vamped up with scarcely an attempt to disguise the plagiarism, with the name of an Englishman as its author. Mr. Upham delivered the Municipal Oration at Salem, on the Fourth of July, 1842. In 1846, on the 22d of December, he delivered the oration before the New England Pilgrim Society, in the city of New York. On the 18th of July, 1850, he delivered, at the request of the city government of Salem, a eulogy on President Taylor. He had delivered, some years before, discourses on President Harrison, Timothy Pickering, and Rev. John Prince, LL. D. All these several discourses were published, at the times of their delivery, and several of them republished. In consequence of repeated solicitations made to him by gentlemen acting for the Board of Education of Massachusetts, he was Induced to prepare, especially for school libraries, a Life of Washington. In accordance with suggestions in some of his published letters, Washington was allowed to tell his own story, in extracts from his own writings. This could only be done for some period of his history, but so far as his published writings afforded the material it was done, partly in deference to his expressed wishes, and partly because, so far as it went, it gave to the work the authority and interest of an autobiography, and distinguished it from all the biographies of Washington. An injunction was obtained against its publication, on the ground that it was an encroachment upon, and would affect injuriously the sale of, the "Writings of Washington," edited by Jared Sparks, in twelve large octavo volumes. The work accordingly was not issued, and its author never beheld it except in parcels as they came to him, from time to time, for correction and revision, in proof-sheets. More than ten years afterward he was surprised to learn that it was having a large circulation in England. By whose agency, and in what way, it got there, remains a mystery to this day. It purports to be published in London, at the office of the National Illustrated Library, Strand, 227, 1852. It is in two volumes, duodecimo, pp. 443, 423. Without alteration, by addition or subtraction of a word or letter, it is precisely the same as it was prepared here. It was evidently put to

press in England; whether the identical stereotype plates cast here were got over there, is not known to the party who would seem to have some right to be informed in the premises.

In 1856, Mr. Upham published the Life, Explorations, and Public Services of John Charles Fremont. From March, 1845, to March, 1846, he edited the Christian Register. From August, 1851, to August, 1852, he was employed in the service of the Board of Education of Massachusetts, and visited the schools, addressing the people in public assemblies in furtherance of that cause, in more than a hundred towns. In 1852, he was elected Mayor of Salem, and during his administration reorganized the police, introducing the system upon which it has since operated efficiently, and also efficiently, and also secured the requisite appropriations and arrangements for the establishment of a State Normal School in that city. He was a member of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts in 1849, 1859, and 1860. He reported and carried the measures that made education a regular department of the State Government, with permanent accommodations within the walls of the State House. He was a member of the State Senate in 1850, 1857, and 1858, and chosen president of that body, by unanimous election in each instance, the two last-named years. His efforts in the State Legislature were chiefly directed to the interests of education in the district and high schools, and the endowment of the colleges, and to the improvement of the language of the statute law of the commonwealth. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1853.

He represented the Sixth District of Massachusetts in the Thirty-Third Congress of the United States, from 1853 to 1855. He was chairman of a select committee raised to investigate the affairs and condition of the Smithsonian Institute, and in an elaborate report advocated the policy of making it the foundation of a library worthy of a nation already acknowledged as a first-rate power in the world, and whose strength and glory are in the diffusion of universal knowledge among its people.

***In 1867 appeared, in two volumes: Salem Witchcraft; with an Account of Salem Village, and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects. It was followed by: Address at the Re-Dedication of the Fourth Meeting-House of the First Church in Salem, 1868; Memoir of Francis Peabody, 1869; Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather: A Reply, 1870. Mr. Upham in 1873 completed the Life of Timothy Pickering, begun by Octavius Pickering, by the issue of three additional volumes.

JOHN ADAMS VINTON

Was born in Boston, Mass., February 5, 1801. His father was a dry-goods merchant of the city, in whose store his son, after acquiring the elements of education in a country school, passed the early years of his life. Being of a thoughtful turn of mind, he employed his leisure in reading, and became well acquainted with history, biography, and geography. He was also seriously impressed with the obligations of religion. On coming of age he formed the resolution to obtain a college education, and, being

assisted with the means of support by his family and friends, entered Phillips Academy, in Exeter, N. H., in 1823. After fourteen months' special preparation, he entered Dartmouth College in 1824, and graduated with distinction at that institution in 1828. After spending three years at the Theological Seminary at Andover, he was ordained to the work of the ministry in 1832. He continued in the active discharge of his clerical duties in Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts for twenty years, when the failure of his health compelled him to seek retirement. He is now (1873) a resident of Winchester, Mass.

The publications of Mr. Vinton embrace various occasional discourses; a series of articles on Capital Punishment," in the Vermont Chronicle, in 1843; on the "Condition and Prospect of the Jews," in the same journal and the Portland Christian Mirror, in 1846; and eight papers of "Reminiscences in Relation to Park Street Church, Boston," contributed to the Boston Recorder in 1849. The last series forms a valuable contribution in its personal and critical notices to the religious history of the period. In 1858, Mr. Vintou published, in an octavo volume, the result of extraordinary labor and industry, The Vinton Memorial, comprising a Genealogy of the Descendants of John Vinton of Lynn, 1648; also, Genealogical Sketches of Several Allied Families, interspersed with notices of many other Ancient Families, with an Appendix containing a History of the Braintree Iron Works, and other Historical Mutter. In 1864 Mr. Vinton published a similar volume, The Giles Memorial; also, The Sampson Family.

**Mr. Vinton reprinted in 1866, with notes, a Memoir of Deborah Sampson, a heroine of the American Revolution, from the edition of 1797– a satisfactory account of that remarkable woman. He has ready for the press (1873) two family histories the Symmes Family and the Upton Family, with a genealogy of the Wheelwright family, and a history of the Antinomian Controversy of 1637. He has prepared analytical indexes for fifteen leading historical works.

LORENZO SABINE,

A New England historical writer, was born at Lisbon, New Hampshire, February 28, 1803. The story of his life, looking to the valuable results of authorship in his writings, in a department of literature requiring great diligence and much nicety of preparation, is somewhat remarkable. It is the narration of a self-educated man, adding another to the memorable instances of the distinguished pursuit of knowledge under peculiar difficulties. At fifteen years of age, on the death of his father, the youth was left in utter poverty, and without even the rudiments of knowledge, to make his own way through the world as he best could. In 1821, after seeking employment in Boston until his little stock of money was nearly exhausted, he went to Eastport, Maine, where he entered a retail shop at ten dollars a month, sleeping in the unfinished attic, filled with old barrels, boxes, and other rubbish-an elevation which he reached by a ladder. This humble

mode of life was dignified by a love of literature. The shopkeeper's assistant soon obtained a few books on credit, and devoted his entire leisure to study. His activity then displayed itself in his opening a small store on his own account while yet a minor, an undertaking which resulted in bankruptcy in less than a year. He then engaged with a merchant who owned ships and transacted a large business; kept the books of the "Passamaquoddy Bank;" and, by making the best of his assets and earnings, settled with his creditors. Such, briefly told. is his early history. For the fifteen years that followed he was a mere frontier trader. From 1837 to 1838 he served in various capacities as a bank officer. Meantime the acquisition of information was his paramount object; and the weariness of business was relieved not by amusements, but by his books and his pen. His ability and usefulness also led to his employment in public affairs. While at Eastport he was elected to the Legislature of Maine three, successive years, and held the office of Deputy Collector of the Customs. He returned to Massachusetts in 1849; was appointed, in 1852, a secret and confidential agent of the Treasury Department of the United States, with reference to the operation of the Ashburton Treaty as connected with our commerce with the British Colonies; and was elected to the Thirty-second Congress to fill the vacancy occasioned by the decease of the Hon. Benjamin Thompson. He was afterwards appointed secretary of the Boston Board of Trade. Bowdoin College conferred upon him the degree of A. M. in 1846, and Harvard University in 1848.

His published writings are, The Life of Commodore Edward Preble, U. S. N., an 18mo volume, in 1847; and the same year his elaborate work, The American Loyalists, or Biographical Sketches of Adherents to the British Crown in the War of the Revolution, Alphabetically Arranged, with a Preliminary Historical Essay. A new edition of this work, greatly enlarged, has appeared in two volumes, 8vo, in the year 1865. In the elaborate preface to this work, Mr. Sabine presents various conclusions of his own deduction, drawn from his study of the details presented in the lives which follow. follow. The work has taken its place as an independent and original contribution to the American historical library.

In 1852, Mr. Sabine published Suggestions to Young Cashiers on the Duties of their Profession, originally a prize essay in the Bankers' Magazine. In 1853 appeared his Report on the Principal Fisheries of the American Seas, prepared for the Secretary of the Treasury, an octavo of over three hundred pages. The same year he published an Address before the Middlesex County Agricultural Society. In 1855 appeared his Notes on Duels and Duelling, a work of curious biographical, social, and historical interest. The material, unhappily too well stocked with American examples, is alphabetically arranged, and is prefaced by a general historical essay.

On the 13th of September, 1859, the hundredth anniversary of the death of Major-Gen

introduce illustrative engravings into an American town history. The work was a decided success. Although New Ipswich was not a very old town, and therefore did not possess the antiquarian interest which some places do, the history proved quite interesting; it showed the rise and progress of a New England town for the first century of its existence.

Mr. Sabine, in discharge of his official duty, has written nine Annual Reports of the Government of the Boston Board of Trade (beginning with The Fourth), and is also the author of a number of articles in the North American Review, the Christian Examiner, and the Historical Magazine. His entire writings have been collected in eight stately octavo volumes.

FREDERIC KIDDER,

Frederic Kidder was born April 16, 1804, in the town of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, on the borders of Massachusetts, and fifty miles from Boston, where his grandfather was, till the Revolution, a prominent citizen, having purchased, about 1745, a large part of the township. His father, Isaiah Kidder, a man of enterprise and note, was, as early as 1805, interested in the first cotton manufacturing in that State, and had, at great expense, commenced the manufacture of goods not before produced in this country. His early death, and the change of national policy caused by the peace of 1815, which swept away the property of our infant manufacturers, left his family with small resources, dependent for their education and support upon his widow, a woman of much energy. Frederic, who had early shown a decided taste for books, had been kept at an academy in his native town, and was intended for college; but the change of affairs on the death of his father caused him to look around him for some employment that would sooner prove remunerative. Accordingly, at the age of seventeen, he went into a store in Boston, and, after remaining there a few years, removed to the South, and engaged in mercantile business. Here he remained about ten years, for the most of the time in business with his brother. He then returned to Boston, where he established himself in the Southern commission business. He was married in 1841.

He has devoted much of his leisure to the reading and investigation of American history. In 1849, he became a member of the N. E. Historical and Genealogical Society, to the prosperity of which he has devoted much time and considerable money. As early as 1835, he had made researches relative to the history of his native town; and from 1849 to 1851, he devoted most of his time to the collection of materials for a volume on the subject, and in preparing them for the press. In the latter part of the work he had the assistance of an old school-fellow, who had some experience as an author, though in a different line. The book was brought out in an elegant style. Mr.

Mr. Kidder has contributed valuable historical articles to the Historical and Genealogical Register and to other periodicals. He has given much time to the history of the New England Indians, particularly to their language and religion.

** Mr. Kidder has recently published: The Expeditions of Captain John Lovewell and his Encounters with the Indians, including a particular account of the Pequauket Battle, with a history of that tribe, and a reprint of Rev. Thomas Symmes's Sermon, 1865; Military Operations in Eastern Maine and Nova Scotia during the Revolution, chiefly compiled from the Journal and Letters of Col. John Allan, with Notes and a Memoir, 1867; History of the First New Hampshire Regiment in the War of the Revolution, 1868; and History of the Boston Massacre, 1870.

WILLIAM BLAKE TRASK

Was born at Commercial Point, in Dorchester, Mass., November 25, 1812. He is of the seventh generation in descent from Captain William Trask, who came probably from Somersetshire, England, and who settled in Salem, Mass., prior to the arrival of Endicott, in 1628. He was a deputy to the General Court, was an intimate friend of Governor Endicott, and was commander of a company in the Pequod wars. On the maternal side he is descended from Robert Pierce, one of the early settlers of Dorchester.

After receiving a good common-school education, he was apprenticed, at the age of sixteen, to the cabinet-making business, in his native town. In 1835, at the age of twenty-two, he went to Lockport, New York, where he remained a short time working at his trade, proceeding thence to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where he continued about nine months, thence to Philadelphia, where he tarried nearly a year, and returning to his home at Dorchester in the spring of 1837. He was for three years, until 1845, a member of the school committee in Dorchester, aud assistant assessor in 1850. He was obliged to quit his occupation on account of ill health, when his attention was drawn to historical and antiquarian pursuits, a taste for which he inherited from his maternal grandfather, John Pierce, father of the late Rev. John Pierce, D. D., of Brookline. He assisted S. G. Drake, the historian, in collecting material, in the shape of notes, for his valuable history of Boston, by making copies of the ancient town records of Boston, fac-similes of autographs, &c., copying some of the records almost entire. He assisted General W. H. Sumner in the preparation of his History of East Boston. He prepared many articles for the New England Historical and