GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR
HOAR, GEORGE FRISBIE, Harvard, A.B., 1846; LL.B., 1849; practising lawyer in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1849-68; representative in the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1852; state senator, 1857; representative in the United States congress from the Worcester congressional district, 1869-77; United States senator from March 5, 1877; overseer of Harvard university; regent of the Smithsonian Institution; trustee of the Peabody Education Fund; statesman, author, and lecturer; was born in Concord, Middlesex county, Massachusetts, August 29, 1826. His father, Samuel Hoar (1778-1856) married Sarah, youngest daughter of Roger (the Signer) and Rebecca (Prescott) Sherman. He was one of the leading lawyers of Massachusetts contemporary with Mason, Webster and Choate. His grandfather, Samuel Hoar, was a soldier in the French and Indian wars, a prisoner for three months among the Indians and a lieutenant for the Lincoln Company at the battle of Concord Bridge, April 19, 1775. His great grandfather, John Hoar, and another great grandfather, Colonel Abijah Pierce of Lincoln, were privates in the same company. His earliest paternal ancestor, John Hoar, came to America in 1640 with two brothers and their widowed mother, Joanna Hoare, whose husband, Charles Hoare, sheriff of Gloucestershire, England, died previous to their emigration. They settled on the Conihassett Grant at Scituate, Plymouth colony and about 1660 removed to Concord, Massachusetts Bay colony. His first maternal ancestor in America, Captain John Sherman, came from Dedham, England, to the Province of Massachusetts Bay, settled in Watertown about 1634, and married Martha Palmer. They were the great grandparents of Roger Sherman, the Signer.
George Frisbie Hoar was sent to school when very young, could read Latin when six years old and began the study of Greek when nine years old, having at that time read several books of Virgil. He attended the schools of Concord having at one time Henry D. Thoreau as a schoolmate and subsequently as teacher. One year of
