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��Hon. Josiah Quincy.
��HON. JOSIAH QUINCY.
lion. Jonathan Everett Sargent, 1J>.I), Ex-Chief-Justice of New Hampshire
��Hon. Josiah Quincy, late of Rumney, N.H., was born at Lenox, in the county of Berkshire, and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, March 7, 1793. The house in which he was born was located in \vhat was then called The Grant," a few miles north of the village of Lenox. His father's name, as also his grand- father's, was Samuel Quincy. His father was born in Roxbury, Mass., was a lawyer by profession, practising in his native town, married a daughter of Mr. Hatch of Boston, and had removed to Lenox, into the house before mentioned, a short time before his son Josiah was born. He had been a successful law- yer at Roxbury, and had accumulated a handsome property ; but in the finan- cial troubles of 1 7S7 he lost a large sum by being bondsman for a deputy-sher- iff. In consequence of this and other reverses, he sold his property at Rox- bury, and moved to Lenox, where, after collecting the few remnants of his for- tune together, he found he had only sufficient to buy a cottage-house and half acre of land in Lenox village, to which he removed soon after the birth of his son, as above stated.
Here he engaged in the profession of the law, and was accounted an able lawyer, and succeeded in supporting his family comfortably for a few years, when he was stricken with paralysis in his right side, from which he never re- covered so as to be able to use his right hand and arm.
Thus deprived of the ability of self- support, the family became very poor ; and the house was conveyed to Mr.
��Hatch of Boston, who held it many years.
Mr. Quincy died Jan. 19, 1846, aged fifty-two years, leaving a widow and four children, two sons and two daugh- ters. Samuel, the eldest son, went in early life to Boston, and followed the seas, and became captain of a vessel which he commanded many years, and accumulated a handsome fortune. Jo- siah, the subject of this memoir, had, when a boy, a severe attack of scarlet- fever, which resulted in his losing the use of one limb, so that he always used a crutch for the purposes of locomo- tion. Being thus unfitted for manual labor, he attended the village academy, where he received his education.
He writes, " My earliest recollections are of a family struggling with poverty. ... In my early youth I can remem- ber that at times we went to bed hun- gry." He speaks of a small annuity which his mother received from her father's estate, not exceeding forty dol- lars per year, which was all the means of support the family had, except what was received for boarding the lawyers and judges during the sessions of the court. But he says, " We were blessed with excellent neighbors, and received many presents from relatives and friends." When he became old enough to attend school, he went to the acad- emy at Lenox, which was near his home, and which at that time, and for many years afterwards, was very prosperous under the instruction of a Mr. Gleason, one of the most distinguished educators of youth in all that region, who fitted
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