Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men
informed man and antiquarian in the state, on all topics that related to
the early settlement of New Hampshire." He was genial and social, with a
keen relish for humor and anecdote, friendly with all classes. The rich
and the poor found in him a true friend in time of need. He was a
devoted friend of the militia organizations of the state, and second
commander of the Amoskeag Veterans, a company that adopted the uniform
of the continentals. They visited Washington during the administration
of President Pierce, commanded by Col. Potter, who entertained the
Veterans at his home, the McNeil (N. H.) mansion and birthplace of
Franklin Pierce, in 1865. A grand entertainment was given them in a
large tent upon the grounds.
In Dr. Loring's address to the Veterans he remarks:--
"As a strong, active, and useful son of New Hampshire, he will
long be remembered, and when all to whom his form and presence
were so familiar shall have passed away,--his associates, his
family, kindred, his daily companions to whom his anecdote and
good sense rendered his company desirable,--the fruits of his
labor as a careful historian and annalist will remain, a
valuable contribution to the literature of New Hampshire, a
tribute from one who loved every incident of her early and
aboriginal and heroic age. To his friends he left an honorable
reputation; to his company, a record which will not be forgotten
until the history of New Hampshire shall be blotted out."
Col. Potter's last able work, The Military History of New Hampshire,
published in 1866, consists of two volumes, from the settlement in 1623
to the close of the war of 1812, with valuable biographical sketches.
Judge Potter married, November 1, 1832, Clara A., daughter of John
Underwood, of Portsmouth, by whom he had four children. She died March
19, 1854, and November 11, 1856, he married Frances Maria, daughter of
Gen. John McNeil, of Hillsborough. After this marriage he resided at the
Gov. Pierce homestead in Hillsborough during the remainder of his life.
Col. Potter loved the society of intelligent and worthy people, and
welcomed all without distinction. His domestic relations gave a great
charm to his existence. He died at Flint, Mich., whither he had gone
with his wife on business, August 3, 1868. After the funeral ceremonies
were performed at Manchester, the Veterans met at their armory and
passed the following resolution:--
"WHEREAS, an inscrutable Providence has seen fit to remove from
our midst our loved and chosen commander, and we have performed
the last sad rites of sepulture over his remains; therefore, be
it
"_Resolved_, That in the decease of their colonel, Chandler E.
Potter, the Amoskeag Veterans have sustained an irreparable
loss,--that their foremost man from the beginning, who at all
times, and under all circumstances, in sunshine and in storms,
unselfishly sought to promote their highest welfare, is no
more,--and for each one of us to resolve that in our day and
generation we will endeavor to follow his example is the highest
tribute we can pay his memory. We mourn not alone. Society has
lost an ornament; the state a historian whose labors, yet
incompleted, in compiling and preserving her military history,
will long outlive our feeble efforts."
HON. DANIEL BARNARD.
BY M. B. GOODWIN.
1. John Barnard, was among the early settlers of Massachusetts. He came
to this country in 1634, in the ship Elizabeth, from Ipswich, England,
and settled in Watertown.
2. John Barnard, son of the pioneer, John Barnard, had two sons,
Jonathan and Samuel.
3. Jonathan Barnard, son of John Barnard, was a resident of Amesbury,
Mass. Owing to the manifold duties of a busy professional life, DANIEL
BARNARD has not had the time or opportunity to trace out the genealogy
of his family fully, but there is much reason for believing that this
Jonathan Barnard was his great-grandfather. His great-grandfather was
Captain Jonathan Barnard, inn-holder in Amesbury, who kept "The Lion's
Mouth" in provincial days, was a captain in the colonial militia, and
was prominent in the affairs of the town in which he lived. He was one
of the sixty original grantees, in 1735, of the township of New
Amesbury, or "Number One," which was afterwards granted, in 1767, by the
Masonian proprietors, as Warner. His name heads the list of the
grantees.
4. Charles Barnard, son of Capt. Jonathan Barnard, was a soldier in the
patriot army of the Revolution, and settled in Warner, on the northeast
slope of Burnt Hill.
5. Thomas Barnard, son of Charles Barnard, was born in Warner in 1782;
married, first, Ruth Eastman, of Hopkinton; married, second, Phebe, his
first wife's sister. In the fall of 1826 he removed, with his young
family, from Warner to Orange. He died January 29, 1859; his second wife
died June 30, 1845.
6. DANIEL BARNARD, son of Thomas and Phebe (Eastman) Barnard, was born
in Orange, January 23, 1827. When his father, Thomas Barnard, went there
and planted his home on his lot of three hundred acres on the highlands
dividing the waters which flow into the Pemigewasset from those which
flow into the Connecticut, the whole territory was still covered by the
primeval forest. But rugged, courageous hearts and hands in due time
converted forest into field, and while a troupe of seven sons and a
daughter was springing up in the rugged mountain home, a good farm was
opened, which, with its abundant crops of grass, the stocks of cattle
and very large flocks of sheep, allowed no place for idleness, summer or
winter. The church and the district school stood together more than
three miles off, and so continued till the subject of this notice, the
fifth child of the family, was fourteen years old, no regular school
being established nearer till he was eighteen years old. But the father
being a man of sense and intelligence, and the mother an uncommonly
bright, capable woman, they not only made the utmost exertion to give
their children the full benefit of the meager chances of the district
school, but also systematically supplemented these opportunities with
regular study and teaching in the long winter evenings at home. The
father, a good mathematician, managed the flock in arithmetic, and the
mother handled them in other branches. From the age of seventeen, Daniel
Barnard was granted the privilege of attending the Canaan Academy every
season during the winter months, until he was twenty-one, being employed
during the summer on his father's farm.
When he arrived at man's estate he fearlessly took his stand with the
Free-soil Democrats, and was four times elected to represent his native
town in the state legislature.
During this time he was intent upon securing the advantages of a college
education, and with this end in view he taught school, during the
winter, in Orange, Grafton, Groton, Lyme, Enfield, and Amherst, and
pursued his preparatory studies at Canaan and Boscawen academies, and
under the tuition of Prof. William Russell at the Normal Institute at
Reed's Ferry.
Mr. Barnard's legislative experience materially changed his plans in
life; and he decided to enter at once upon his professional studies. He
was well known in the house from his first appearance in that body; not
merely because so youthful in appearance, but because, also, of the
uncommon capacity, the sincerity and sagacity with which, in unassuming,
almost diffident ways, he met all his duties; and in the latter sessions
of the four years' service he became a leader of the Independent party
in the house, and an influential member of that body. At home, during
the same period, he was sleepless in his vigilance, contriving by
sagacious management to hold the little band of Free-soil Democrats in a
solid column, and annually to carry the town till he left it, in the
autumn of 1851.
At the close of the legislative session of that year, with fixed
professional aims, he went to Franklin, entered upon the study of the
law in the office of Nesmith & Pike, and in 1854, on admission to the
bar, became at once the junior partner with Mr. Pike, in the office
where he had read his profession, Mr. Nesmith at that time retiring from
the office and extensive business which he had so honorably founded and
built into its large proportions. In 1863, Mr. Barnard withdrew from the
firm and established himself alone in his profession in the same
village, rapidly rising into the very large, wide, and lucrative
business which for more than eighteen years has allowed him not so much
as a week, or scarcely a day, of vacation in the year. During this
period he has had as many students in his office constantly as the
circumstances of his office would admit, and has nearly all the time had
a partner in a temporary way. His partner now is his eldest son, William
M. Barnard, who graduated at Dartmouth College with superior rank, in
1876, at the age of twenty years; studied his profession in his father's
office and at the Boston Law School; and was admitted to the bar and
into partnership with his father in 1879. In relation to the business of
the office, it is perfectly safe to add that there has been no time
within the last fifteen years in which there has not been a formidable
amount of business piled up awaiting attention, notwithstanding the most
sleepless and indefatigable industry which Mr. Barnard has brought to
his duties. For the last ten years he has not only regularly attended
all the courts in the counties of Merrimack, Belknap, and the Plymouth
sessions of Grafton, but has constantly attended the United States
circuit courts, practicing in bankrupt, patent, and revenue cases.
The esteem in which Mr. Barnard is held by the immediate community in
which he lives may be casually mentioned. Though never seeking office,
he has been often chosen to places of responsibility by his townsmen. In
1860 and 1862 he represented the town of Franklin in the legislature;
and in all political contests in the town in which he has been candidate
for the suffrages of his townsmen he has always run much ahead of the
party ticket. In 1865 and 1866 he was a member of the state senate,
presiding over that body in the latter-named year; in 1870 and 1871 he
was a member of the governor's council; and in 1872 was a member of the
Republican national convention at Philadelphia. He was solicitor of
Merrimack county from 1867 till declining re-appointment in 1872, the
position being again tendered to him and declined in 1877. He was a
firm, earnest supporter of the homestead-exemption law of 1850, which
was opposed by most of the profession through the state, and introduced
the resolution in the house which first gave the members a daily paper.
As a member of the senate in 1867, he took a profound interest in the
amendment of the federal constitution prohibiting slavery, making an
able and effective argument in its support in that body.
In the cause of education he has always been a foremost friend in
Franklin and throughout the state. His own early struggles have
doubtless contributed to make him peculiarly a friend of the common
school, and his experience as a teacher in his early years gives him
practical wisdom in the cause. While studying his profession in
Franklin, he was from year to year employed in the Teachers' Institutes,
which did a large work in awakening higher ideas of the mission of the
common school in New Hampshire during that period, and in that business
he was in nearly every county of the state. In 1867, the honorary degree
of Master of Arts was conferred upon Mr. Barnard by Dartmouth College.