Biography
Samuel received his early education at the Fryeburg Academy, and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1806. He studied law with Judge Dana, of Fryeburg, and Daniel Webster, and was admitted to the bar in 1809. He began his practice at New Gloucester, Maine. In 1815-16, he was a representative in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and in 1818-19 represented his district in the Massachusetts State Senate.
He was major-general of the 12th division of the Massachusetts (later Maine) militia, to which office he was elected on leaving the senate, and to which he gave much attention. He moved to Portland, Maine, in 1822, and about 1828 declined the presidency of Dartmouth.
He was an ardent Federalist, and one of the early members of the anti-slavery party in Maine. In 1847, he was a Liberty Party candidate for congressman and governor, and an early supporter of the United States Republican Party.
For forty years he stood at the head of the bar in Maine. He was an active philanthropist. He published two orations and a treatise on the institution, duties, and importance of juries. The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Bowdoin College in 1846.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Fessenden
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)