In 1843
and 1844 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
and in 1853 he was a member of the Constitutional Convention. I was
also a member of the same bodies, and the association with my father
under such peculiar circumstances is one of the pleasant recollections
of my life.* My mother belonged to a family of unusual intellectual
endowment, and of great rigidity of opinion. Her father, Jacob
Marshall, was a student by tendency and habit, a stone mason and farmer
by occupation, and the inventor of the press used for pressing hops and
cotton in square bales. He lived to be more than eighty years of age,
was twice married, and had a large family of children whom he educated
and trained as well as children could be trained and educated at the
close of the last century in a country town in northern Massachusetts.
For the last fifty years of his life he devoted himself to the study of
the bible and such works of history as he could command. His knowledge
of the bible was so great that he was an oracle in the town, although
he departed from the popular faith and became a Universalist. He lived
comfortably and without hard work, and in the later years of his life
he became the owner of two farms in the northerly part of Lunenburg.
As I recollect him and his farms he could not have been a good farmer.
Pages:
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36