Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men

About the book

This collection gathers the lives of New Hampshire men whose careers the contributors regard as examples of deserved success. Lawyers, businessmen, public officials, and other prominent figures appear through accounts of family background, education, work, and civic association. The opening sketch of George Stark connects an individual career with the expansion and management of railroads, establishing the volume's interest in achievement within developing institutions. John B. Clarke's publisher's preface explicitly hopes that such examples will strengthen later generations and reflect honor on the state. The result is both a source of biographical particulars and a record of whom a community chose to celebrate. Its admiring selection and language invite attention to the assumptions behind public reputation as well as to the careers themselves.

• Success and civic reputation
• Regional identity
• Commemorative biography

Why read it

Reading across the sketches reveals recurring patterns in the careers that nineteenth-century civic culture treated as exemplary.

English text of the 1882 John B. Clarke collection