BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



OF 



MARSHALL PINOKNEY WILDER. 



BY CHARLES L. FLINT. 



FEW men in our community have made a more striking, or a more durable mark than 

 Hon. Marshall P. &quot;Wilder. Few have held more important public positions, or sustained 

 themselves more honorably in them through so long a course of years. It has fallen to the 

 lot of few men to initiate so many public enterprises which have enured to the benefit of the 

 people among whom they have lived. 



Born in the town of Rindge, N. H., on the 22d of September, 1798, he received his 

 Christian names from Chief Justice Marshall, and General Charles C. Pinckney, at that time 

 prominently before the public as a distinguished Federalist statesman. His father, a nephew 

 of the Rev. Samuel Locke, D.D., after whom he was named, was for thirteen years a repre 

 sentative in the New Hampshire Legislature; his mother, Anna, a daughter of Jonathan 

 and Mary (Crombie) Sherwin, was a lady of great moral worth, to whom, no doubt, he owes 

 many of the striking features of his character. His paternal grandfather was one of the 

 seven delegates from the county of Worcester in the Massachusetts Convention, called to 

 ratify the Constitution of the United States in 1788, who voted for its adoption. 



At four years of age Marshall was sent to school, and at twelve entered the New 

 Ipswich Academy, his father desiring to give him an education with reference to a profession. 

 At sixteen, his father gave him the choice to fit himself for a farmer, a merchant, or for 

 college. He chose the first, but the business of the store, which his father kept in the town, 

 increasing, he was taken into that, where he soon acquired habits of industry, and developed 

 such mental and physical energy that he was taken in as a partner at the age of twenty-one, 

 and soon became postmaster of the town. 



Conscious of a capacity for a wider field of action, he removed to Boston in 1825, and 

 began business in Union Street, under the firm name of Wilder & Payson, afterwards 

 Wilder & Smith in North Market Street, and finally set up for himself on Central Wharf. 

 Forming a partnership again in 1837, he passed through several progressive steps to the well 

 known and prosperous firm of Parker, Wilder & Co., now located in Winthrop Square. He 

 is therefore the oldest commission merchant in domestic fabrics in active business in Boston. 

 Though compelled, like all business men, to pass through various crises of commercial 

 embarrassment, he has the proud satisfaction of never having failed to meet his obligations. 

 With him success was a duty, and he had as a gift from nature that inherent energy of 

 character, and devotion to the ruling idea of his life, to enable him to resist the allurements 

 to ease and personal comfort, and to strive, not only for material prosperity, but for a higher 

 and nobler object, to make himself useful to mankind. His business capacity and his 

 executive ability were early recognized. He was one of the original directors of the 

 Hamilton Bank, and has held that position for more than fifty years, and that of Director 

 of the National Insurance Company for more than forty years, and of the New England 



