The
GRANITE MONTHLY.
A NEW HAMPSHIRE MAGAZINE.
'Devoted to Literature, Biography, History, and State Progress.
Vol. IX. JULY, 1886. No. 7.
HON. THOMAS COGSWELL.
BY JOHN N. MCCLINTOCK, A. M.
It has been suggested that Colonel Thomas Cogswell, the Democratic candidate for Governor of New Hampshire, is a blue-blooded aristocrat. If having a long line of honorable, Christian ancestors, the record of whom extends back to the old country, to the days when the Stuarts ruled England and Cromwell was unheard of, if pious, patriotic, and sagacious forefathers give a man blue blood, the Colonel is really afflicted with blue blood. If being a hard working and practical lawyer, a farmer who personally superintends the cultivation of five hundred acres of land, a scholar who tries to keep up with the literature of the period, a kind and considerate neighbor, a citizen always at the command of his fellow-citizens, a brave soldier in the late war, an easy and graceful public speaker, a man with a multitude of personal friends, if these are the characteristics of an aristocrat, then is Colonel Cogswell an aristocrat. If in his veins flows the best New England blood, if his character for honor and integrity is as established as the granite hills which hem in his paternal farm, there is no doubt that his ancestors are in part responsible. If a man's sins will live after him for generations so also will the noble actions
of a man's ancestors be reflected in him and help him in the race. The Colonel's ancestors were among the first settlers who planted the Massachusetts Bay Colony early in the seventeenth century. In every generation they have been law-abiding, God-fearing, and patriotic citizens, ready to serve their country in war or peace. •
BOYHOOD.
Hon. Thomas Cogswell, son of Hon. Thomas and Mary (Noyes) Cogswell, was born February 8, 1841, in Gilmanton, in the house which in the early part of this century was the homestead of his great grandfather, General Joseph Badger, and which stood a few rods east of the Colonel's present residence, under the shade of a great elm tree lately injured by lightning. The frame of the old house was taken and used in the construction of the residence of James W. Cogswell, another son of Hon. Thomas and Mary (Noyes) Cogswell, who lives a quarter of a mile away on the main highway from Gilmanton Iron Works to Laconia. The present resi- dence was built in 1784 by Colonel' Thomas Cogswell, of the Continental Army, his father's uncle, and came into his father's possession over forty years
