638 WILLIAM SUMNER APPLETON. 



WILLIAM SUMNER APPLETON. 



William Sumner Appleton was born in Boston January 

 11, 1840, and died in his native city April 28, 1903. He was 

 the elder son of the Hon. Nathan Appleton, for nineteen 

 years a Fellow of the Academy, and for three sessions a Rep- 

 resentative in Congress from the Boston district, by his 

 second wife, Harriot Coffin, daughter of Jesse Sumner, of 

 Boston. On both his father's side and his mother's he was 

 descended from ancestors who were among the first settlers 

 of Massachusetts, Samuel Appleton at Ipswich and William 

 Sumner at Dorchester. Of his father it was truly said, not 

 long after his death, that he was "a merchant of large en- 

 terprise and unsullied integrity ; a member of many learned 

 societies ; a writer of many able essays on commerce and cur- 

 rency ; a wise and prudent counsellor in all private and public 

 affairs ; who had served with marked distinction in the legis- 

 lative halls both of the State and of the nation, and who had 

 enjoyed through life the esteem, respect, and confidence of the 

 community in which he lived."* And in the equally just 

 words of another: "Emphatically a merchant, his mind was 

 not narrowed nor his heart contracted by the influence of a spe- 

 cial calling. His inquiry and his information w r ere extensive. 

 Acquainted with political history and the principles of civil 

 government, with all questions of national finance, with some 

 branches of physical science, with Christian theology and bib- 

 lical criticism, so far as was needful for the stability or the 

 defence of his own faith, he was ready to communicate the 

 fruits of his research for the benefit of others."! Such was 

 the example which was set before young Appleton as he was 

 growing up, and such the sturdy and sterling qualities which 

 he afterward exhibited in his own life and character. 



As a small boy he was sent to a boarding-school at Jamaica 



* Memoir by Hon. Robert C. Winthrop in Proceedings of the Massachusetts 

 Historical Society, vol. v. p. 250. 



t Sermon preached July 21, 1861, the Sunday after the Funeral ef the late 

 Hon. Nathan Appleton, by Ezra S. Gannett, D.D., p. 17. 



