What's Inside
This volume gathers eighty-eight biographical sketches of men deemed successful by late nineteenth-century standards, emphasizing their contributions to industry, law, and politics. The entries serve as a catalog of individual achievement, tracking subjects from their colonial ancestors in places like Newbury or Devonshire to their modern stations as mill owners, bank directors, and governors. Most accounts rely on a rigid template of family genealogy, educational background, and corporate milestones. Rather than a cohesive narrative, the work presents a gallery of portraits illustrating how the state’s population expanded its influence far beyond its own borders, specifically into the developing American West.
Works & figures
- Henry O. Kent
Representative New Hampshire man of the Kent family line (in “COL. HENRY O. KENT.”)
- David L. Jewell
Manager of three cotton mill establishments in Suncook (in “COL. DAVID LYMAN JEWELL.”)
- James A. Weston
Manchester native, mayor, and governor of the state (in “HON. JAMES A. WESTON.”)
- Charles E. Tilton
Explorer and prospector of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers (in “CHARLES ELLIOTT TILTON.”)
- William Amory
Treasurer of the Jackson Manufacturing Company in Nashua (in “WILLIAM AMORY.”)
- Charles Marsh
Partner in the dry-goods firm Jordan, Marsh, & Co. (in “CHARLES MARSH.”)
What it's really about
- Ancestral Continuity
- Tracing lineages back to seventeenth-century English settlers.
- Industrial Expansion
- Linking regional mills to national economic growth.
Why it's memorable
- A young man surveying the Orinoco and Amazon rivers for gold.
- A cotton mill village where 1,500 people live and work together.
Where to start
Start with the profile of Charles Elliott Tilton to see how the state's influence extended from Sanbornton to the far corners of South America.
For your book club
- The heavy reliance on lineage to define character.
- How geographic origin dictates professional prestige.