ily in 1820 from Brookline to Lunenburg,
Mass., where he held several town offices; he was a member of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1843 and 1844 and of the
Constitutional Convention of 1853.

Mr. Boutwell attended in his early years a public school in Lunenburg,
where he became a clerk in a general store at the age of thirteen, thus
gaining a practical as well as a theoretical knowledge of affairs.
Later he supplemented this experience by teaching school at Shirley.
He also studied the classics, and in various ways improved every
opportunity for advancement which limited circumstances afforded. In
1835 he went to Groton, Mass., as clerk in a store. But to be a
lawyer was his dream before he had ever seen a lawyer. Endowed with
unusual intellectual ability, which has been one of his chief
characteristics from boyhood, he felt himself instinctively drawn to
the legal profession, and as early as possible entered his name as
a student at law.

In 1839 he was chosen a member of the Groton School Committee, and
in 1840 he was an active Democrat, advocating the re-election of
Martin Van Buren to the Presidency. In the meantime he delivered a
number of important lectures and political speeches, his first lecture
being given before the Groton Lyceum when he was nineteen, and he was
now rapidly gaining a reputation in public affairs, in which he early
took a deep interest. In January, 1842, he became a member of the
lower House of the Massachusetts Legislature from Groton, and for ten
years thereafter his law studies were neglected. He served during the
sessions of 1842, 1843, 1844, 1847, 1848, 1849 and 1850, and was also
at different times a railroad commissioner, a bank commissioner, and a
member of various other commissions of the commonwealth.

As a member of the House he made many important arguments that were
legal in name if not in fact. One related to the Act of the
Legislature of 1843, by which the salaries of the judges were reduced,
and another upon a bill for the amendment of the charter of Harvard
College. On the latter question, which was in controversy for three
years, his opponents were Judge Benjamin R. Curtis and Hon. Samuel
Hoar.

Mr. Boutwell originated the movement for a change in the college
government, which was effected by a compromise in 1851. Chief Justice
Lemuel Shaw, a member of the corporation, wrote an answer to his
argument. This led to Mr. Boutwell's appointment in