His maternal grandfather,
Jacob Marshall, was the inventor of the cotton press, an invention
originally made, however, for pressing hops. His father, Sewall
Boutwell, removed with his family in 1820 from Brookline to Lunenburg,
Mass., where he held several town offices; he was a member of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1843 and 1844 and of the
Constitutional Convention of 1853.
Mr. Boutwell attended in his early years a public school in Lunenburg,
where he became a clerk in a general store at the age of thirteen, thus
gaining a practical as well as a theoretical knowledge of affairs.
Later he supplemented this experience by teaching school at Shirley.
He also studied the classics, and in various ways improved every
opportunity for advancement which limited circumstances afforded. In
1835 he went to Groton, Mass., as clerk in a store. But to be a
lawyer was his dream before he had ever seen a lawyer. Endowed with
unusual intellectual ability, which has been one of his chief
characteristics from boyhood, he felt himself instinctively drawn to
the legal profession, and as early as possible entered his name as
a student at law.
In 1839 he was chosen a member of the Groton School Committee, and
in 1840 he was an active Democrat, advocating the re-election of
Martin Van Buren to the Presidency.
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