ter of the Unitarian Church at
Portsmouth, N.H., and was born in that city, July 23, 1821. He was
educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, and from thence came to Harvard
College, where he graduated in 1841 with the highest honors of his
class. He studied his profession in the law-school at Cambridge, and in
the office of the late Mr. Richard H. Dana, and on his admission to the
bar, about 1846, he formed a professional connection with that gentleman
which continued until Mr. Dana's appointment to the office of United
States District Attorney, in 1861. He early gained a good position as a
lawyer, but his tastes led him more to chamber practice and to the
management of trust estates than to the conflicts of the court-room,
although he never entirely gave up the latter. As a trust lawyer he
stood in the front rank of the profession, and no one was intrusted
with greater and more momentous interests, and no one's judgment was
relied on with more implicit confidence on difficult and delicate
questions. In 1865 he was a member of the State Senate. For many years
he was a member of the School Committee and an Overseer of the Poor, and
rendered efficient services in those positions. He was long an active
officer of the Boston Provident Association, and at the time of his
death had been for many years one of the most influential members of the
Board of Overseers of Harvard University.

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January 19.--Death, at Springfield, Mass., of Benjamin Weaver, one of
the founders of the _Springfield Union_. He was the most active and
influential Democrat in that city.

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January 21.--The Hon. Samuel Metcalf Wheeler, a prominent citizen of
Dover, N.H., died after a protracted illness. He was born in Newport,
N.H., May 11, 1823; educated in the seminary at Claremont, N.H., the
military academy at Windsor, Vt., and the Newbury Seminary; studied law;
was admitted to the bar in 1847; soon after moved to Dover, and became a
partner with ex-Congressman Hall. In 1858 the partnership was dissolved.
He represented Dover in the Legislature for five years; was a member of
the Constitutional Convention, Speaker of the House; was a candidate for
Congress in the Republican Convention in the First District, twice being
defeated by only one vote, and he received the honorary degree of M.A.
from Dartmouth. He was at one time president of the Dover National Bank.

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