This brief sketch can perhaps be no more appropriately concluded than in the following language of the gentleman (Sidney Webster, Esq.,) heretofore quoted:
"Years of incessant toil, while they have diminished somewhat the energetic temperament and the exuberant animal spirits of Col. George's youth, and have naturally softened his once blunt and almost brusque manner in debate, have not diminished the real force and strength of his genuine character, for character is just what Col. George has always had. As the ripples of his experience spread over a wider and wider area, he may have less and less confidence in the infallibility of any man's opinions, and less belief in the importance to society of any one man's action; but Col. George has reached and passed his half century with his mental faculties and his moral faculties improving and strengthening, year by year. New Hampshire has to-day very few among her living sons better equipped to do triumphant battle for her in the high places of the world."
Wm G Means
WILLIAM GORDON MEANS.
William Gordon Means, for sixteen years clerk and paymaster of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, and afterwards treasurer of the Manchester Locomotive-Works, was born at Amherst, Hillsborough county, April 27, 1815. He is of the third generation in descent from Col. Robert Means, who came to New Hampshire from Stewartstown, Ireland, in 1766, and commenced business at Merrimack, with Dea. Jacob McGaw, who emigrated to this country about the same year. This partnership, which had prospered, was dissolved when Amherst became the shire town, and Col. Means opened a store there, in which he prosecuted a successful business. A man of great energy, he was prominent in the affairs of the town; elected its representative at the general court three times, also a member of the senate three years, and councilor for Hillsborough county, his name is identified with the most important measures of that period.
Col. Means had a large family. Several of the daughters were married to gentlemen who subsequently attained great distinction in the learned professions. Of the sons, Robert became a lawyer, and David McGregor, who bore the name of his mother (a daughter of Rev. David McGregor of Londonderry), succeeded his father as a merchant. He married Catherine, daughter of Hon. Joshua Atherton, who is described as a woman of vigorous understanding and positive convictions, ready in conversation, and of sprightly and pleasing manners. By this marriage, David McG. Means had three sons and six daughters, of whom the subject of this sketch was the third son and the fourth child, receiving the name of his uncle, Hon. William Gordon, at that time a lawyer of great promise in Amherst.
Among his schoolmates, William G. Means is remembered as a quick-witted boy, fond of adventure, and overflowing with fun. The schools in Amherst at that date did not furnish advantages of a high order. Aside from the training of the household, the youth had no superior privileges, except a few terms at Pinkerton Academy, Derry, then under the care of Abel F. Hildreth, an eminent teacher. For parts of three years he attended this school, in company with his brother James, Edward and Alfred Spalding, E. D. Boylston, and other students from Amherst.