Page:One of a thousand.djvu/127

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

CHANDLER. CHANDLER. 113 most of the ordinances being re-drawn by him. After his resignation as city solicitor, he was appointed to revise the city charter and subsequent laws affecting it, and also to carry the same through the General Court. During the year 1S49, while a United States commissioner of bankruptcy, he published a work on the national laws concerning bankruptcy. In 1S50 he was a member of the executive council, when Emory Washburn was governor. To Mr. Chandler much is due for the reclaiming of the so-called "Back Bay" territory, and the act in 1859, providing for the general improvement in that part of the city, and the establishing of the PELEG W. CHANDLER. Public Garden, was drawn by him. This act, which secured to Boston one of the most beautiful city gardens in the world, was submitted to the citizens, and by them accepted by a heavy majority. He was House chairman of the committee on water supply for Boston, and reported and suc- cessfully advocated the passage of the act to provide Boston with pure water. In i860 Mr. Chandler was presidential elector at the first election of Abraham Lincoln as president. In 1S67 Mr. Chandler published a strik- ing essay on the "Authenticity of the Gos- pels," which afterwards appeared in book form, and has passed through several edi- tions. Mr. Chandler received the degree of LL. D. many years ago from Bowdoin Col- lege, and was an active member of its board of trustees. He was one of the oldest members of the Massachusetts His- torical Society, acting as its treasurer sev- eral years, standing at his death third on the list of active membership — Robert C. Winthrop and George E. Ellis preced- ing him. At the request of the society, he prepared a memoir of Governor An- drew, which appears in their proceedings. This memoir was afterwards greatly en- larged, and printed in a separate volume in 1880. Mr. Chandler's career in law, literature and politics was characterized by marked industry, fearlessness and conscientious devotion to duty, making his work a credit to himself and to the community whose respect and confidence he so long enjoyed. In 1S37 Mr. Chandler married, in Bruns- wick, Me., Martha Ann Bush, daughter of the late Professor Parker Cleveland, of Bowdoin College. Mrs. Chandler died in November, 1881, leaving a daughter and two sons : Ellen Maria, Horace Parker, and Parker Cleveland Chandler. CHANDLER, SETH, son of Roger and Lydia (Marshall) Chandler, was born in New Ipswich, Hillsborough county, N. H., December 2, 1806. His grandfather, Dea- con James Chandler, was of the earliest settlers of New Ipswich, and was a lineal descendant from Roger Chandler, who took such an important part in the Plymouth Colony and settled in Duxbury. In early boyhood Mr. Chandler was ap- prenticed to learn the trade of a machinist, at which he worked for a few years, but with a growing determination to enter the Christian ministry. Obtaining his educa- tion by difficult means, and through the aid of a private instructor, he was ordained as an evangelist in 1831, and a little later accepted an invitation to supply the small society in Oxford, Mass., where he remained two years. He then became the pastor of the First Congregational parish in Shirley, where he has passed the remainder of his active ministry. He began work in this parish, June, 1834, and continued his labors there for forty-five years, when age re- quired him to retire. He still resides in Shirley, at the advanced age of eighty-two years. Mr. Chandler was married on the 16th of August, 1831, to Arvilla, daughter of Jo-