Autobiography of Seventy Years | Page 9

the
Reverend Josiah Sherman, my grandfather's brother, a clergyman of
Woburn, Massachusetts, where Roger Minott was born. His father died
in 1789. My grandfather took the boy into his household and educated
him and treated him as a son, and just before his death gave him his
watch, which is now in the possession of a son of General Sherman.
Roger Minott Sherman was unquestionably the ablest lawyer in New
England who never obtained distinction in political life, and, with the
exception of Daniel Webster and Jeremiah Mason and Rufus Choate,
the ablest New England ever produced.*
[Footnote] * See Appendix. [End of Footnote]
Roger Minott Sherman's father died in 1789. The widow wrote to some
of her friends to see what assistance could be obtained to enable her son
to continue his studies at Yale. It was apparently in response to this
appeal that Mr. Sherman wrote the following letter to his nephew.
NEW YORK, April 28, 1790.
Dear Nephew,--I would have you continue your studies and remain at
my house as you have done hitherto. I hope you will be provided for so
as to complete your education at College, and lay a foundation for
future usefulness. When I return home I shall take such further order
respecting it as may be proper. I shall afford you as much assistance as
under my circumstances may be prudent.
I am your affectionate uncle, ROGER SHERMAN.
Mr. Sherman died a year after his nephew graduated; but before he died
he doubtless saw the promise of that distinguished career which added
new lustre to the Sherman name.
It is a rather remarkable fact that my mother had such close relations to
so many eminent lawyers. Her father, though his public duties
prevented him from practising law very long, was a very great lawyer

and judge. Her brother-in-law, Judge Baldwin, was an eminent Judge of
the Connecticut Supreme Court. Her cousin, Roger Minott Sherman, as
has just been said, was an inmate of her father's household in her
childhood, and was to her as a brother. She had, after his mother's death,
the care of Senator Roger Sherman Baldwin, her nephew, who was for
many years at the head of the Connecticut Bar. To her nephew, William
M. Evarts, my father's house was as another home in his boyhood. He
was the leading advocate of his time. Her son, E. R. Hoar, was
Attorney General of the United States. And her husband was in his day
one of the foremost advocates of Massachusetts. So, with a little
alteration, the Greek epitaph of the woman who was the daughter, wife,
sister and mother of princes, might apply to her, if, as I like to think, a
first-rate American lawyer is entitled to as much respect as a petty
Greek prince.
CHAPTER III
SAMUEL HOAR
I was born in Concord August 29, 1826. My grandfather, two
great-grandfathers, and three of my father's uncles were at Concord
Bridge in the Lincoln Company, of which my grandfather, Samuel
Hoar, whom I well remember, was lieutenant, on the 19th of April,
1775. The deposition of my great-grandfather, John Hoar, with a few
others, relating to the events of that day, was taken by the patriots and
sent to England by a fast- sailing ship, which reached London before
the official news of the battle at Concord came from the British
commander. John had previously been a soldier in the old French War
and was a prisoner among the Indians for three months. His life was not
a very conspicuous one. He had been a Selectman of Lexington,
dwelling in the part of the town afterward incorporated with Lincoln.
There is in existence a document manumitting his slave, which, I am
happy to say, is the only existing evidence that any ancestor of mine
ever owned one.
My father's grandfather, on the mother's side, was Colonel Abijah
Peirce, of Lincoln. He was prominent in Middlesex County from a time

preceding the Revolutionary War down to his death. He was one of the
Committee of the Town who had charge of corresponding with other
towns and with the Committee of Safety in Boston. The day before the
battle at Concord Bridge, he had been chosen Colonel of a regiment of
Minute Men. But he had not got his commission, taken the oath, or got
his equipments. So he went into the battle as a private in the company
in which his son-in-law was lieutenant, armed with nothing but a cane.
After the first volley was exchanged he crossed the bridge and took the
cartridge-box and musket of one of the two British soldiers who were
killed, which he used during the day. The gun was preserved for a long
time in his family, and came to my grandfather, after his death.