"His prosperous labor fills
The lips of men with honest praise;
And, sun by sun, the happy days
Descend below the golden hills."
Charles A. Peabody
HON. CHARLES A. PEABODY.
Hon. Charles. A. Peabody, of New York city, was born in Sandwich, in Strafford (now Carroll) county, N. H., on the 10th day of July, A. D. 1814, and was the son of Samuel and Abigail Peabody, who were natives of Boxford, Essex county, Mass. His paternal grandfather was Richard Peabody, of Boxford, an officer in the war of the Revolution, who had a command at Ticonderoga and elsewhere. His mother, whose maiden name was Wood, was the daughter of Jonathan Wood, also of Boxford. His maternal grandmother's name was Hale. Her family claimed to be descended from a branch of the family of Sir Matthew Hale. On his father's side he is descended from Welsh ancestry. The name of Peabody (as tradition of heraldry has it) is composed of two words,—pea, meaning mountain, and boadie, meaning man,—and signifies mountain man, or man of the mountains. It was first borne by a chieftain of a clan in the mountains of Wales. After the battle between Nero and Boadicea, about the year 61, the Queen's forces, although routed, refused to surrender, and such of them as escaped the sword of the Romans fled to the mountains, and there maintained a wild independence under a chieftain, who, from that fact, acquired the name of Peabody, or man of the mountains.
The father of our subject, who was a lawyer of fine talents, and much respected as a gentleman of high moral and social qualities and much general culture, was graduated from Dartmouth College in the class of 1803. He was a college-mate of Daniel Webster and Ezekiel the cherished brother, whose name Daniel desired always to have associated with his own. An intimacy between himself and Ezekiel, contracted in college, continued throughout their lives. He lived and practiced law in Sandwich, Epsom, and Tamworth, N. H., at different periods of his life; and, after retiring from business, moved to Andover, Mass., in his native county, for the better education of his younger children, about 1843, where he died in 1859. His wife survived him, and died at Andover in 1872.
The subject of this sketch—the oldest of ten children—was educated partly by private tuition at his father's house, partly in Massachusetts, and partly in the classical schools (academies) in the northern part of New Hampshire,—at Wolfeborough, Gilford, Sanbornton (now Tilton), and Gilmanton. He fitted for college with the intention of entering Dartmouth, the alma mater of his father. Failure of health at the critical time defeated that purpose, however, and had almost unlimited control over his movements and destiny for a time much longer than the term of a college course. In the years 1832 and 1833 he lived most of the time in Beverly, Mass., where he taught and studied as health and circumstances permitted. In 1834 he went to Baltimore, attracted by advantages of climate over northern New Hampshire, and the greater facilities afforded there for his temporary occupation of teaching, by which to support himself and render needed pecuniary aid in the education of younger members of the family. There he pursued the study of law in the office of Nathaniel Williams, at that time attorney of the United States for the district of Maryland. He remained in Maryland a little more than two years, when he returned to New England and entered the law school of Harvard University. He remained there until 1839, when he went, in November of 1839, to the city of New York, where he has since resided. There he entered an office as a student, introduced by the late Rufus Choate, of Boston. But he soon commenced business as a practitioner at the bar. In 1846 he married Julia Caroline Livingston, daughter of James Duane Livingston, of the city of New York.
Mr. Peabody continued the practice of law in the city of New York, taking no active part in politics, but always observing with interest the course of events in the general government, and especially those connected with slavery and the slave power. He was an unconditional Whig, and his residence at the South in early life had given him such knowledge of slavery, in its effect on the slave, the owner, the free population, white and colored, and on general prosperity, that he early formed very positive opinions concerning it and its very great evils. On this, as on all other subjects, he was conservative and temperate in his opinions and feelings, taking no part in extravagant denunciations of those engaged in it, but always deprecating such courses as being, to his mind, not only inexpedient and unwise, but also unjust. With the strongest possible convictions against slavery on all grounds, moral and economic, he counseled moderation in the treatment of it. He was ever opposed to intemperate agitation, as tending to no good, but liable to lead to great evil. He was for years prior to the formation of the Republican party an active member of the Union Safety committee in New York, a body of conservative gentlemen of the highest character, organized to repress acrimonious treatment of the subject, as tending to alienate the different sections of the country, and to imperil the peace and possibly the integrity of the nation.