Title:  Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, v1

Author:  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

Release Date:  December, 2003 [Etext #4725] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 7, 2002]

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JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

A MEMOIR

By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Volume I.

NOTE.

The Memoir here given to the public is based on a biographical sketch prepared by the writer at the request of the Massachusetts Historical Society for its Proceedings.  The questions involving controversies into which the Society could not feel called to enter are treated at considerable length in the following pages.  Many details are also given which would have carried the paper written for the Society beyond the customary limits of such tributes to the memory of its deceased members.  It is still but an outline which may serve a present need and perhaps be of some assistance to a future biographer.

I.

1814-1827.  To AEt. 13.

Birth and early years.

John Motley, the great-grandfather of the subject of this Memoir, came in the earlier part of the last century from Belfast in Ireland to Falmouth, now Portland, in the District, now the State of Maine.  He was twice married, and had ten children, four of the first marriage and six of the last.  Thomas, the youngest son by his first wife, married Emma, a daughter of John Wait, the first Sheriff of Cumberland County under the government of the United States.  Two of their seven sons, Thomas and Edward, removed from Portland to Boston in 1802 and established themselves as partners in commercial business, continuing united and prosperous for nearly half a century before the firm was dissolved.