► c >^ -I -v. *, -^ '-^^0^ .0''' o » " " » [* ^^ -^^ -TO^* J" "> A(<^ V v^ ^^ -y^v^* ^v ^ 7o <.4o^ -"^^^m^ tP-Kt •<<. •X- ^ V . . « * ^'V ^ c ° " • ♦ "^O J.*^ . ^ ' • * <^ O'^ o » " • '^ -^^0^ -J^^ . ^oV" ^^-^^, •1 o ^0 T •^^.tsi^^^* ^O 5^ " <^^ ^^ ~- CJL^^^^i^^-^J, u!^ U^^J-^c^^^^. MEMOIR OF Chaeles Wentwoeth Upham, BY GEORGE E^'ELLIS. Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, December, 1876. oXKc CAMBRIDGE: PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 1877. "RW MEMOIR CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM. Chaeles Wentworth Upham, though he was not born within the limits of the United States, had every other claim to its full and honored citizenship. Here he passed all but the early boyhood of his life ; and here, in several forms of high service, he discharged a larger variety of trusts than is often assigned to the most favored of those born on our soil. He came of a family among the original English Colonists of Massachusetts Bay. A line of five generations between his first ancestor here and himself gives us the names of those who were trusted and serviceable in all the ordinary and emergent offices, calling for able and faithful men, in the development of communities and States. The first of the family in Massachusetts was John Upham. His gravestone, in the old burial-ground of the town of Mai- den, implies that he was born in England, in 1597, near the close of tlie reign of Queen Elizabeth, He emigrated hither at the age of thirty-eight, with wife and children, and settled at Weymouth. He was admitted a freeman — signifying his being in church covenant — Sept. 2, 1635 ; and was repeatedly deputy or representative from that town in the General Court. Before the year 1650, he had removed to Maiden ; serving the town and the court as selectman and commis- sioner, and in the municipal trusts then committed to the worthiest citizens. He died in 1681, aged eighty-four ; having been for twenty-four years a deacon of the church. A son of John Upham, who would seem to have been the first of his children born in the colony for the defence of which he was to give his life in Indian warfare, was Lieu- tenant Phineas Upham. He died in iNIalden, October, 1676, at the age of forty-one, from wounds received in the Great Swamp Eight with the Narragansetts, in Philip's war, Nov. 19, 1675. Just previous to the breaking out of the war, which disabled him for nearly a year afterwards and brought his life to a close, he had been engaged in the first enter- prises for the settlement of Worcester. The eldest son of the lieutenant bore his name ; and died in Maiden, in 1720, at the age of sixty-two, after having served as selectman, representative, and deacon of the church. A third who bore the name of Phineas, and the eldest son of him just named, was the progenitor of a numerous family connection ; which, including the subject of this Memoir, offers us a long list of men widely known over our extending country, eminent and honored in all j)rofessions and pursuits, — in trade, in law, in medicine, in scholarship, and philoso- phy, in the churches and colleges, and in the senates of the States and the nation, — and of women, also, as wives, moth- ers, and matrons in the best of our households. One of the sons of tlie third Phineas Upham was Dr. Jabez Upham, who went to Brookfield, Mass., ai^d there practised his profession as a physician till his death, in 1760. His son, Josluia Upham, was the father of the subject of this Memoir ; and because of a special interest attached to his life and ex- perience, connected with the early fortimes of liis son, the writer of these pages must anticipate a matter in the line of his narrative. Tiie last, and it may fairly be said the most genial and the most felicitously wrought, labor of the })en of our late associate was his Memoir of Colonel Timothy Pickering, soldier and statesman, Adjutant-General and Quartermaster-General of the armj'of the Revolution, and Postmaster-General, Secretary of War, and Secretar}'- of State, of the United States. In his later years he was a much honored and esteemed parishioner and intimate friend of Mr. Upham, then minister of the First Church in Salem. There was still another tie between the venerated Pickering and his biogra[)her, which the latter felt to be a warm and strong one, as the patriot statesman had been in Harvard College the classmate and chum, and con- tinued to be the friend, of Mr. Upham's father, though their Avays in troubled times divided tlieir interests and fortunes. The reader of the admirable l)iograi)hy of Colonel Pickering will notice that, among the incidental episodical discussions in ■which Mr. Upham allows some liberty to his own pen, always adding charm and vigor to his pages, is one on tlie treatment of the Loyalists, or so-called Tories, on the first outburst of the spirit of liberty in Massachusetts and the other Provinces. It might seem as if the biographer's prom[)ting in this plea was a somewhat personal one, as he was himself the son of an exiled and proscribed Loyalist. But his plea and argu- ment may be allowed to stand on their own merits of perti- nency and cogency. His views and liis judgment in the matter wliolly coincided with those of Colonel Pickering. And it can hardly fail to strike the reader that the course which Mr. Upham thinks would have been a wiser one in the treat- ment of our Loyalists Avas precisely that pursued by our own government on the close of the War of Secession, in restoring to all their former political and social rights even the fore- most leaders of the Rebellion. Joshua Upham was born in Brookfield, Mass., in 1741. He graduated at Harvard College in 1763. In view of the agi- tations and alienations which were to be so painfully active among the members of that class when, after their pleasant fellowship in the College, they in a few years should find themselves at variance in the entrance of their manly careers, it is interesting to note the many names on the list which are associated with a remarkal)le personal history on both sides in the Revolutionary strife. There stand the names of the honored patriot, Josiah Quincy, Jr., prematurel}^ called from the good service which he was so nobly rendering ; of Nathan Cushing, Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts ; and of Timothy Pickering, just mentioned. Tliese are conspicuous names on the winning side. There, too, is the name of a neutral or a mediator, — that of John Jeffries, who returned from his medical studies in Aberdeen, just as our strife was o|)ening, in the British naval service ; went off with General Howe, as surgeon to the forces in Nova Scotia, and also in Charleston, S. C. ; returned to England, crossed the British Channel to France, in a balloon; and came back, in 1789, to practise his profession in Boston. The names on the college catalogne were then arranged in the order of social rank. After the name of Upham come those of Jonathan Bliss — afterwards Upham's brother-in-law — and of Sampson Salter Blowers, these three being all refugees in the war. Upham and Bliss became Judges of the Supreme Court of the Prov- ince of New Brunswick, Bliss being the Chief Justice ; and Blowers, Chief Justice of that of Nova Scotia. The last-named lived beyond one hundred years before he was starred in the catalogue. Similar divergences may be traced in the fortunes of members of the classes preceding and following that of 1763. They contained many prominent men, whose careers on either side Avere fond subjects of interest and study to the subject of this Memoir, as they illustrated history and character. Joshua Upham began the stutly of law in Brookfield, and had won much distinction at the Worcester bar ; being greatly honored in his profession, and p^reatly respected for public spirit as a citizen np to the painful crisis in his lot. It is re- markable that, while those who were driven to the royal side, as he was, generally accorded with tlie liritish polic}" in the snppression of manufacturing enterprises in the Colonies, he was very active in promoting such provincial industries. In March, 1768, a meeting was held in Worcester of those who, indignant Avitli the j:)rohil)itory measures of England, were in favor of advancing manufactures. The famous Ruggles op- posed the disloyal movement ; but Upham ai)i)roved it. He, with two brothers and other gentlemen, had built a woollen manufactory in Brookfield,* and he had made efforts to intro- duce the manufacture of salt at stations on the sea-coast. But he fell upon distracted times ; and there can now be no harm in saying that, like many others in the country of a class of so-called Loyalists, who were at worst only timid, halting, or cautious, while sincerely upright, conscientious, and patriotic, he received unmerited harsh treatment. Com- mittees of correspondence, of espionage and inquisition, be- came very active, sometimes overbearing and impertinent, in every town. The business which they assigned to themselves was to put to the question of King or People every citizen, especially the more prominent ones in place or influence. Hurry and dictation were offensive to some, who needed only time and fieedom of action to bring them into accord with the popular movements. On receiving a somewhat imperious call from the committee of his town, for a statement of his opinions and purpose in the critical state of affairs, he replied by a letter, which is printed in Force's " American Archives," fourth series, vol. ii., page 852, dated May 20th, 1775. In this letter, he says he is pausing to decide on the position which he shall himself take, until, after free debate and a pioper deliberation, the majority of the people have committed themselves to the one or the other alternative. He will not set up his jn-ivate judgment against that of the people, but chtims a right to express his own views and apprehensions to help in the decision of the question. Then he will acquiesce in the popular resolve, and take common part and lot in measures designed to save tlie couutrj' in resisting the royal govermnent, though he may think such measures improper, and not likely to be successful. In the mean while, he de- manded freedom of opinion, and security for person and prop- erty. But the intense feelings of the hour, and the humor of * See Boston Evening Post, Oct. 10, 1768. his fellow-citizens, would not admit of what seemed weak and cautious temporizing, and a timid mistrust of a hopeful cause. The coolness of treatment which he received, with threats or apprehensions of what might follow, drove him, as they did many others under like circumstances, to the protection of the royal sympathizers in Boston. This act decided his future for him. Without means of support for himself and family in a besieged town, he accepted from the British commander the office of supervision of the refugees from the country, and, soon after, an appointment as aid on the staff of Sir Guy Carleton, subsequently Lord Dorchester, between whom and himself there continued a warm friendship. The close of the war found him at New York in the British service as a colonel of dragoons. He was among the proscribed whose estates were confiscated by the State of Massachusetts in 1778 ; and nothing but exile was before him. Mr. Upham had married, first, a daughter of Colonel John Murray, of Rutland, Mass. ; and, on her decease, a daughter of Honorable Joshua Chand- ler, of New Haven, Conn. The latter was the mother of the subject of this Memoir and of several other children. The stately mansion-house of her father was afterwards long known as the " Tontine " Hotel, in New Haven. A building of the same name succeeds it on the same site. Mr. Uphain's fine homestead in Brookfield long served a similar use. Colonel Pickering, Avho, as above stated, was one of those who disapproved of the summary measures pursued towards the so-called Loyalists, felt a sincere sympathy for his old college chum, Upham. In a letter which he wrote to a friend in March, 1783j he says that Upham had expressed to a correspondent in Boston, where he had left a daughter, an intention of returning there ; and he adds, " Upham is a good- hearted fellow, and probabl}^ would not have joined the enemy but for his marriage connections." After the close of hostilities, and during the long delay in the evacuation of New York, Pickering, who had hoped to have a friendly in- terview with Upham, which the hurried departure of the latter prevented, wrote to him from West Point, Nov. 14, 1783, a most cordial letter of unbroken regard and sym- pathy. To this Upham, on the 18th, replied in the same spirit of kindness and esteem, saying, " I leave the country for the winter from pecuniary considerations, not from re- sentment." * New Brunswick, which had been a county of Nova Scotia, * Life of Timothy Pickering, Vol. I. pp. 405, 491, 492. called Sunbury, was separated and made a distinct govern- ment and province in 1784. At the first organization of the Supreme Court of the Province, Joshua U[)ham was made an assistant justice, Nov. 25, 1784. He was also, with other refugees, on the council of Thomas Carleton, Esq., Avho was commissioned as first governor of the Province. The judge faithfully and ahly dischaiged the arduous duties attendant upon tlie tasks assigned him, under the conditions of a rough country and a settlement among a raw and heterogeneous population. His brethren on the bench sent him to England in 1807, on a mission to the government, for securing a more complete organization of the judiciary of the Province. He met with perfect success in the purpose of his errand. He also made many strongly attached personal friends, among whom Avere JVIr. Palmer, who bequeathed his valuable library to Harvard College, Sir John Wentwoith, Sir William Pep- perrell, and Mr. Spencer Perceval. The last-named gentle- man. Chancellor of the Exchequer, formed so strong a regard for Mr. Upham — who died in l^ondon in 1808, and was buried in the Church of Marylei)one — as to continue acts of sub- stantial kindness to the widow and children, whom the judge had left Avith very slendet means. The Chancellor, a few da3's before his assassination, sent a considerable sum of money, — four hundred silver dollars, — with books and other valuable gifts, for the education of the sul)ject of this Memoir. Charles Wentworth Upham was born in St. John, New Brunswick, May 4, 1802. This was at the time a Avild, un- settled region of forest, on the edge of the farthest boundary of the Province, — a region now partly the parish of Upham and partly Sussex Yale, bordering on the St. John's River, on the Bay of Fundy. Till 1785, the region was a part of Nova Scotia. Many of the Hessian soldiers settled after the Revo- lution in that neighborhood. Judge Upham's house was on the banks of the river Ken- nebekasis. The scenes around it, and the conditions of domestic and social life which it involved, were for several years rough and severe. Still, they had their compensations in the occasions for activity, enterprise, and sterling virtues which they presented, and were especially favorable to the development of good qualities in the children born and trained there by worth}^ parents. Had the Chancellor Perceval lived longer, it is probable that Charles might have been sent to England, under his patronage, and continued through life a British subject. He gave early* indications of the mental powers and proclivities which distinguished his maturity, and from his boyhood improved every opportunity which his own efforts and the aid of otliers coidd secure for his education and culture. After the death of his father, and when lie was but eight years of age, he was sent to a school then recently established at St. John, where instruction in Latin was of- fered. Still another occasion presented itself, which might have resulted in making him a British subject and naval officer for life. He was a bright and handsome youth, re- markable then, as always, for personal beauty and attractive- ness. These qualities drew to him the interest of Captain Blythe, of the British brig " Boxer," then stationed at St. John, during the war between Great Britain and her former colonies. The captain Avas about securing to the boy a midshipman's warrant aboard his vessel ; the mother having, though with reluctance, given her consent to the proposal. Just as the scheme was maturing, word came in that the United States brig " Enterprise," Lieutenant Burrows, was off the coast. Captain Blythe slipped his cables, and hurried out to engage her. The vessels came to action oif Port- land Harbor, Sept. 4, 1813. After a gallant and sanguinary combat, the "Boxer" was captured; but both the com- manders were killed, and peacefully interred side by side. When (as will be noted farther on), in the temporary raging of the excitement in the political field of the " Know-Nothing " or Native American party, Mr. Upham was superseded as a representative of his district in the National Congress, this friendly purpose toward him of Captain Blythe was made the starting-point of a story that he had once served in the British navy. Charles was then put into an apothecar3''s shop, charged with the preparation of medicines and prescriptions, and with attending on the proprietor, Dr. Paddock, of St. John, a physician and surgeon in large private and hospital practice. Here the youth, with his characteristic industry and love of learning, read through the whole Edinburgh " Materia Med- ica." But the death of his employer again arrested the cur- rent of his life in the direction of a professional education. He was sent to a farm fifteen miles above Annapolis, in the valley of the river of the same name, where he performed such rough and useful service as his j-ears allowed. In 1813, just before the close of the war, Mr. Phineas Upham, a mer- chant of Boston, and cousin of Charles, happening, on a visit to St. John, to see his young kinsman, proposed to befriend him b}^ training him for business in his store. From the in- ducements offered by this ojiportunity, maturely reflected upon, the subsequent career of the youth was decided. He 2 10 started, unaccompanied, on June 14, 1816, being then fourteen years old, to return to the country of his ancestry. He was then at an age to have formed abiding impressions of the scenes and companions of liis youth. One of his life-long interests was to retain and extend his knowledge of the history, the fortunes, and the inhabitants of the Provinces Avhich Great Britain leserved in America. He had occasion to know how feelings of embitterment in many of their inhabitants for two generations had grown from an undue or ill-timed severity towards the native or resident Loyalists at the opening of our Revolution. He believed, with reason, that more tolerant or conciliatory treatment of them would in many cases have drawn them over to the popular and successful side, and would have averted the rise and growth of prosperous settle- ments on our northern and eastern borders, whose interests have sometimes clashed with our own, and Avho have more than once in our history threatened a dangerous hostility against us. He continued, by correspondence, a close con- nection with the members of his family whom he had left behind him ; and in later years the survivors of them were frequently his visitors. As will be mentioned by and by, on graduating from Harvard College, in 1821, in company with a friend and classmate, he made a tour in the Provinces, and visited his mother, then residing in Annapolis. He made a second visit to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in 1844, ac- companied by his friend, Mr. Humphrey Devereux, of Salem. Tiiere must have been something venturesome and exciting for the boy, as his own protector and guide, in a time of hos- tilities, travelling over disturbed scenes by sea and land to reach a new home. He crossed the Bay of Fundy, and then made his way to Eastport, Me., held at the time by the British ; and, following the coast, he reached Boston on June 27. His kind kinsman received him into his family and counting-house, intending to train him for busiuess. But his evident talents and tastes for a higher mental culture were indulged ; and, with a view to his preparation for a college course, he was sent to a school in Boston, under the charge of the late Deacon Samuel Greele, among whose pupils he was the eldest, Avhile Robert C. Winthrop was the youngest. He entered Harvard College in 1817, and, pursuing the usual course, graduated in 1821. His class contained many members who, like himself, attained distinction in mature life, and filled many places of trust and influence. How he stood among his associates will soon apjjcar from communica- tions from two of them, with which the Avriter of tiiis ^Memoir has been kindly favored. His first and constant object was 11 to secure the highest improvement of tlie opportunities which he enjoyed ; and the second, consistent with the first and helpful to it, was to win the respect and love of his teachers and associates. Though his kinsman cheerfully assumed the expense of his education and maintenance, young Upham felt prompted, alike by his circumstances and his inclination, to avail himself of the usual resource of many students in those days, — that of teaching school in country towns through a prolonged winter vacation, while following on with the studies of his class. The winter of his Sophomore year was thus spent at Wilmington, Mass. ; where, nearly a half century before, he had been preceded in the office by Benjamin Thompson, afterwards the famous Count Rumford. The winter of his Junior year was spent in similar service in the town of Leominster, and that of his Senior year in Bolton. Of his course and standing in College, the following letters from two of his classmates fuiiiish hearty and appreciative estimates ; and what the writer has heard in conversation from other members of the class is of the same genial and admiring tone. The writers of both these letters were present at the last rites of respect and affection for Mr. Upham. The first of them is from Honorable Josiah Quincy, a former Mayor of Boston : — Quincy, Nov. 20, 1875. My dear Doctor Ellis, — I do not know that I can give any particular reminiscences of ray friend and classmate, Charles Went- worth Upham. His chum for part, if not the whole, of his college course, was the late Benjamin Tyler Reed, the founder of the Episco- pal Seminary at Cambridge. Upham was very handsome and very popular, and was the second scholar in the class. Robert W. Barn- well, of South Carolina, was the first, and was a nearer friend to Mr. Upham than to any other of the young men of tiie North, — there being a line of distinction between those who came from the South and those from the North. The former were very polite, but, except among them- selves, very reserved and distant. Barnwell was a leader in our rebel- lion at College on account of the suspension of Manigault, who was his room-mate and friend. He was afterwards almost the author of the great Rebellion against the Union ; being a Senator of the United States from South Carolina, the author of the letter to the President, which even Mr. Buchanan refused to receive, and subse- quently a member of the Confederate Senate during the whole war. His house was burned by Sherman, his slaves freed, and he reduced to poverty. He is now President of the College at Columbia, S. C. He commanded the Harvard Washington Corps, of which Mr. Upham was the orderly sergeant. Upham was an excellent scholar, and univer- sally beloved by his classmates. I am very truly yours, JOSIAU QUINCT. 12 The second letter is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, under date Dec. 6, 1875 : — I send YOU such facts as T suddenly recall of my old classmate, whom I believe all his colloife frieiuls prized us I did. I was introduced to Charles Wentworth Upham at a little party of young people in Bos- ton, in 1817. As he never entered the Latin School, I was surprised to meet him a little while afterwards at Cambridge, at the examination for admission, when we entere G^ ^o 'o..* A .■^5^'- %/ ."-^^ "-^-0^ •^•- ^-°/ •'"^"' -^ 'W- 00^°% "-W /\ W-\o^°-% -.r^-f..- .^ .OUNDf, ?i