MEMOIR OF HON. MARSHALL P. WILDER. • 21 



Representative in the Legislature of New Hampshire for thirteen 

 years. His mother (Anna Sherwin) was the daughter of Jonathan 

 Sherwin of Rindge, grandfather of Thomas Sherwin, Principal of 

 the Boston High School for more than thirty years. The father 

 was of Puritan origin and Puritan principles, and was a member 

 of the Congregational Church in Rindge. The mother was en- 

 deared to her family and friends by deep piety and great moral 

 worth. She was a warm admirer of the beauties of nature and 

 doubtless transmitted religious and aesthetic instincts to her eldest 

 son. 



Young Wilder was sent to school at the age of four 3'ears, and 

 at twelve he entered New Ipswich Academj'. His father desired 

 to give him a thorough collegiate education, and thus to prepare 

 him for professional life. But at sixteen, after he had studied 

 awhile with the village pastor, having the choice between agricul- 

 tural, mercantile, and professional life, he chose to be a farmer. 

 His father carried on a farm in connection with a country store, 

 and the business of the latter increasing Marshall was taken into 

 the store, beginning at the lowest round to ascend the mercantile 

 ladder ; but he soon acquired such habits of industry and such 

 mastery of detail that he was admitted to partnership as soon as he 

 had attained his majority. 



The country town did not afford sufficient scope for his energies, 

 and in 1825 he sought and found a larger field in Boston. He con- 

 ducted a wholesale business in West India goods in Union Street, 

 under the firm name of AYilder & Payson ; next in the firm of Wilder 

 & Smith in North Market Street, and afterward in his own name at 

 No. 3 Central Wharf. 



In 1837 he became a partner in the dry goods commission house 

 of Parker, Blanchard, & Wilder, in Water Street ; the style being 

 afterwards changed to Parker, Wilder, & Parker, and the location 

 to Pearl Street. Still later it was changed to Parker, Wilder, & 

 Co., in Winthrop Square, where the firm was burned out in the 

 great fire of November 9, 1872. They soon however resumed 

 business, and through all the checkered fortunes of mercantile life, 

 and in all the commercial crises of the last half century, Mr. 

 Wilder never failed to meet his pecuniary obligations. At the 

 time when he left the grocery business that of selling domestic dry 

 goods on commission was a new one, the senior partner in the 

 new firm, Mr. Isaac Parker, having sold the first bale of these 



