The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884

The Bay State Monthly, Volume
1, Issue 5, May, 1884

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Title: The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 A
Massachusetts Magazine
Author: Various
Release Date: October 5, 2004 [EBook #13632]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Chester A. Arthur]

THE BAY STATE MONTHLY.
A Massachusetts Magazine.

VOL. I.
MAY, 1884.
No. V.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by John N.
McClintock and Company, in the office of the Librarian of Congress at
Washington.
* * * * *
CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR.
BY BEN: PERLEY POORE.
Chester Alan Arthur was born at Fairfield, Vermont, October 5, 1830.
His father, the Reverend Doctor William Arthur, was a Baptist
clergyman, who emigrated from county Antrim, Ireland, when only
eighteen years of age. He had received a thorough classical education,
and was graduated from Belfast University, one of the foremost
institutions of learning in Ireland. Marrying an American, Miss
Malvina Stone, soon after his arrival, he became the father of several
children. Chester was the eldest of two sons, having four sisters older
and two younger than himself. While fulfilling his clerical duties as the
pastor, successively, of a number of Baptist churches in New York
State, Dr. Arthur edited for several years The Antiquarian, and wrote a
work on Family Names, which is highly prized by genealogists. Of
Scotch-Irish descent, he was a man of great force of character,
impatient of restraint, at home in a controversy, and frank in the
expression of his opinions. He was a pronounced emancipationist,
although he never expected to see the overthrow of slavery, which it
was his good fortune to witness, as his life was spared until the
twenty-seventh of October, 1875, when he died at Newtonville, near
Albany. He was a personal friend of Gerrit Smith, and they had
participated in the organization of the New York State Anti-Slavery
Society, which was dispersed by a mob during its first meeting at Utica,
on the twenty-first of October, 1835 (the day on which William Lloyd

Garrison was mobbed in Boston, and was lodged in jail for his own
protection). A friend of the slave from conscience and from conviction,
Dr. Arthur was never backward in expressing his convictions, and his
children imbibed his teachings.
When a lad, young Arthur enjoyed at home the tutelage of his father,
whose thorough knowledge of the classics enabled him to lay the
foundation of his son's future education broad and deep. He entered
Union College in 1845, when only fifteen years of age. His collegiate
course was full of promise, and every successive year he was declared
to be one of those who had taken "maximum honors," although he was
compelled to absent himself during two winters, when he taught school
to earn the requisite funds for defraying his expenses, without drawing
upon his father's means. Yet he kept up with his class, and when he was
graduated in 1848, he was one of six out of a class of over one hundred,
who were elected members of the Phi Beta Kappa, an honor only
conferred on the best scholars.
Following the natural inclination of his mind, young Arthur began the
study of law, supporting himself by teaching and by preparing boys for
college. It so happened that two years after he was the preceptor of an
academy at North Pownal, Vermont, a student from Williams College,
named James A. Garfield, came there and taught penmanship in the
same academy for several months.
In 1853, young Arthur went to New York City, by the invitation of the
Honorable Erastus D. Culver, whose acquaintance he had made when
that gentleman represented the Washington County district, and Dr.
Arthur was the pastor of the Baptist Church at Greenwich. Mr. Culver
had been noted in Congress as an advanced, anti-slavery man, and he
was prompted to take an interest in the son of a clergyman-constituent,
who did not fear to express anti-slavery sentiments, at a time when the
occupants of pulpits were generally so conservative that they were
dumb upon this important question. Before the close of the year, young
Arthur displayed such legal ability and business tact, that he was
admitted into partnership, and became a member of the firm of Culver,
Parker, and