The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, issue 1 | Page 2

editors of THE BAY STATE MONTHLY, having decided to

begin in its pages a series of articles devoted to the material
advancement and prosperity of Massachusetts, and the record of her
past greatness, have selected the Honorable Marshall Pinckney Wilder
as a representative man, and have decided that his memoir shall be the
initial article in the series, and also in this periodical. He has as a
merchant won for himself a high position, and by his enterprise has
essentially advanced the business of the city and the State. He has also
been active in developing our manufacturing industries, while his name
is first on all lips when those who have increased the products of the
soil are named. His life affords a striking example of what can be
achieved by concentration of power and unconquerable perseverance.
The bare enumeration of the important positions he has held and still
holds, and the self-sacrificing labors he has performed, is abundant
evidence of the extraordinary talent and ability, and the personal power
and influence, which have enabled him to take a front rank as a
benefactor to mankind.
MARSHALL PINCKNEY WILDER, whose Christian names were
given in honor of Chief-Justice Marshall and General Pinckney,
eminent statesmen at the time he was born, was the eldest son of
Samuel Locke Wilder, Esq., of Rindge, New Hampshire, and was born
in that town, September 22, 1798. His father, a nephew of the Reverend
Samuel Locke, D.D., president of Harvard College, for whom he was
named, was thirteen years a representative in the New Hampshire
legislature, a member of the Congregational church in Rindge, and held
important town offices there. His mother, Anna, daughter of Jonathan
and Mary (Crombie) Sherwin (married May 2, 1797), a lady of great
moral worth, was, as her son is, a warm admirer of the beauties of
nature.
The Wilders are an ancient English family, which The Book of the
Wilders, published a few years ago, traces to Nicholas Wilder, a
military chieftain in the army of the Earl of Richmond at the battle of
Bosworth, 1485. There is strong presumptive evidence that the
American family is an offshoot from this. President Chadbourne, the
author of The Book of the Wilders, in his life of Colonel Wilder gives
reasons for this opinion. The paternal ancestors of Colonel Wilder in

this country performed meritorious services in the Indian wars, in the
American Revolution, and in Shays' Rebellion. His grandfather was
one of the seven delegates from the county of Worcester, in the
Massachusetts convention of 1788, for ratifying the Constitution of the
United States, who voted in favor of it. Isaac Goodwin, Esq., in The
Worcester Magazine, vol. ii, page 45, bears this testimony: "Of all the
ancient Lancaster families, there is no one that has sustained so many
important offices as that of Wilder,"
At the age of four, Marshall was sent to school, and at twelve he
entered New Ipswich Academy, his father desiring to give him a
collegiate education, with reference to a profession. When he reached
the age of sixteen, his father gave him the choice, either to qualify
himself for a farmer, or for a merchant, or to fit for college. He chose to
be a farmer; and to this choice may we attribute in no small degree the
mental and physical energy which has distinguished so many years of
his life. But the business of his father increased so much that he was
taken into the the store. He there acquired such habits of industry that at
the age of twenty-one he became a partner, and was appointed
postmaster of Rindge.
In 1825, he sought a wider field of action and removed to Boston. Here
be began business under the firm-name of Wilder and Payson, in Union
Street; then as Wilder and Smith, in North Market Street; and next in
his own name at No. 3 Central Wharf. In 1837, he became a partner in
the commission house of Parker, Blanchard, and Wilder, Water Street;
next Parker, Wilder, and Parker, Pearl Street; and since Parker, Wilder,
and Company, Winthrop Square, having continued until this time in the
same house for forty-seven years. Mr. Wilder has lived to be the oldest
commission merchant in domestic fabrics in active business in Boston.
He has passed through various crises of commercial embarrassments,
and yet he has never failed to meet his obligations. He was an original
director in the Hamilton (now Hamilton National) Bank and in the
National Insurance Company. The former trust he has held for fifty-two
years, and the latter for forty years. He has been a director in the New
England Mutual Life Insurance Company for nearly forty years, and
also a director in other similar institutions.

But trade and the acquisition of wealth have not been the