Young Men's Christian Associations of Massachusetts. Russell Sturgis, Jr.

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Hon. MARSHALL P. WILDER, Ph.D.
BY JOHN WARD DEAN, A.M.

[Librarian of the New England Historic Genealogical Society.]

THE 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 selfsacrificing 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, à 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,

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 obli

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 gations. He was an original director voted in favor of it. Isaac Goodwin, in the 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 store. He there acquired such habits of industry that at the age of twentyone he became a partner, and was appointed postmaster of Rindge.

In 1825, he sought a wider field of action and removed to Boston. Here

he 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

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 all-engrossing pursuits of his life. His inherent love of rural pursuits led him, in 1832, to purchase his present estate in Dorchester, originally that of Governor Increase Sumner, where, after devoting a proper time to business, he has given his leisure to horticulture and agriculture. He has spared no expense, he has rested from no efforts, to instil into the public mind a love of an employment so honorable and useful. He has cultivated his own grounds, imported seeds, plants, and trees, and endeavored by his example to encourage labor and elevate the rank of the husbandman. His garden, greenhouses, and a forest of fruit-trees have occupied the time he could spare from business, and here he has prosecuted his favorite investigations, year