'jqdost- master of the town. The following year he was united in marriage with a fellow townswoman, in many respects of kindred spirit, of lovely character, superior culture and winning manners, whose death, after a union of eleven years, was his first great sorrow, and probably the greatest sorrow of his life. He showed as a young man the versatile genius, which gave him in maturer years so many and very diverse connections with society. He was skilled in sacred music, officiated as chorister on important occasions, and as a performer on the bass-viol was leader of the village orchestra. In common with the best citizens of his day, he took an active inter- est in military affairs, bore the most laborious part in the formation of the Rindge Light Infantry of which he was the first captain, and obtained, as col- onel of a New Hampshire regiment, the title by which he was afterward known. As a field-officer emeritus he subsequently became a member of the 16 N. E. HISTORIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. Ancient and Honorable Artillery, and was at one time the commander of that corps. He attained high masonic honors while still a citizen of Rindge, though it was not till his removal to Boston that he reached the supreme grade, from which, in 1867, he went to Paris as the delegate of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, and was the only Ameri- can whose voice was then and there heard in the World's Convention of Masons. But Mr. Wilder was in training' for a larger sphere, and in the best possible training for a more extended commerce. There have not been want- ing conspicuous instances in which merchants of established reputation have formed their habits of diligence, punctuality, thrift without meanness, gen- erosity without ostentation, and especially, of prob- ity and integrity, in precisely such a school as was afforded by the variety-shop in Rindge. Mr. Wilder left Rindge for Boston at the age of twenty-six, his father shortly afterward retiring from the busi- ness, which passed into the hands of his son-in-law, Stephen B. Sherwin, and his younger son, Josiah. Mr. Wilder on his removal to this city entered up- on the wholesale dry-goods business, and in this, as dealer and importer, he continued, sometimes with, sometimes without, a partner, until he became a partner in a commission house for the sale of do- mestic fabrics, with offices both in Boston and in New York. He lived to say on his eighty-fifth MARSHALL P. WILDER. IT birthday: — "I have been constantly in business for nearly threescore years in this city, and I beg to assure you, my friends, that there is no title which I prize more highly than that of an upright, in- telligent and enterprising merchant of Boston." When Ave consider what sort of men they were who before his time had given to Boston merchants their world-wide fame for every trait that could make their profession what it ought to be, it indicates the most strong and estimable qualities of mind and heart for one to say this before the men who knew him best, and to have their unanimous suffrage for his merited place on that roll of honor, without a momentary shadow on his integrity and trustworth- iness. It is worthy of note, too, that with him, as with so many of like type, the strait way of honest, fair, and faithful dealing led to prosperity and af- fluence, while more crooked paths have been strewn with the wrecks of fortune no less than of charac- ter. With vigilance at least equal to that which our president bestowed on his own property he watched that committed to his charge. He did not regard himself as relieved from responsibleness by sharing it with others. As a director of one corpo- ration for more than half a century, of another for more than forty years, of others still for shorter periods, he made such trusts veritably his own, not sinecures, but posts of personal service, and in those times of financial embarrassment which 2 18 N. E. HISTORIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. have not been infrequent, of arduous and anxious duty.. Of political honors he was not ambitious, and seems to have accepted office, not because he sought it, but because he was sought for it, and to demands for service of whatsoever kind he had never learned to say "No." Thirty-eight years ago, he was president of the senate of Massachu- setts, having previously been a member of the lower house and of the executive council. At that time, I think, it would have been discreditable in this state for a man to contribute to his own elec- tion by money, speech or canvassing, so that choice by a respectable constituency was what it no longer is, a certificate of character. Mr. Wilder's devotion to horticulture, which his early tastes made inevitable, was probably hastened by his bereavement. Under the shadow of deep grief, he naturally sought a more quiet abode than his city home, and in 1831 he became a tenant of the house and grounds in Dorchester, built and laid out by Governor Sumner, which he bought the next year, and occupied for the residue of his life. He now found the most congenial employ- ment for his leisure hours, and as he was always an early riser, he had no small part of the solid day for his garden, greenhouses and fruit trees. He brought to this new life just the kind and de- gree of knowledge which could not fail of growth. MARSHALL P. WILDER. 19 Had he been brought up in the city or on a place like the Sumner estate, he would have been con- tent to let things take their course without essen- tial change. But he abandoned the culture of his father's farm and came to this widely different sphere of operation with knowledge enough to en- able him to ask questions that could be answered, and to try experiments intelligently, so that the questions which he put to nature received their gainful answers; while his experiments, wisely di- rected, were oftener than not successful, and when not so, their failure had a teaching power for the apt and mindful learner. It was but a little while after his removal to Dorchester that he became a member of the infant Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and intimate- ly associated with its first president, General Henry A. S. Dearborn, who had in his time no superior in taste for the beautiful and in generous propagan- dism of all that appertained to aesthetic culture. Whether the earliest important enterprise of that society was an improvement upon nature, I am one of the few who can claim the privilege of doubting. In what to my younger hearers may seem a prehis- toric age, I was a member of Harvard College, and regarded Sweet Auburn as the loveliest spot on earth, rich in the earliest and latest wild flowers of the season, the anemone and violet, the golden- rod and aster, commanding unobstructed views of 20 N. E. HISTORIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. river, field and forest, town and village, and the favorite haunt of our Saturday afternoon pilgrim- ages. This charming spot the Horticultural Soci- ety purchased for what then seemed the enormous price of six thousand dollars, with the intention of making a cemetery of a part of it and an experi- mental garden of the rest. The cemetery portion was laid out. I well remember, in 1832, attending the dedicatory service, at which Judge Story gave the address, and but a little while after I followed what was mortal of the celebrated Spurzheim in the first funeral procession that entered those gates. Mr. Wilder bore an active part in that movement, and was ready, as on all like occasions, with his gener- ous subscription. After a year or two it was found that the interests united in this purchase could be better pursued apart, and the Mount Auburn Cor- poration bought the estate of the Horticultural Society, pledging to the society one-fourth of the proceeds from the sale of lots. This agreement was proposed by Mr. Wilder, when the committees of conference of the two corporations were on the point of separating, in despair of alighting on any plan that would be mutually satisfactory. The result was the cemetery of which you all know the conspicuous beauties and the glaring deformities, and an annual income to the Horticultural Society of from three to ten thousand dollars, from which was erected the hall in School street, on the present MARSHALL P. WILDER. 21 site of the Parker House, replaced a few years later by the building in which we are now assem- bled. In 1840 Mr. Wilder was chosen President of the society, and remained in office for eight years, dur- ing which period he officiated at the laying of the corner stone, and superintended the erection, of the first hall, and presided at two triennial festivals of peculiar interest for their brilliant array of illustri- ous guests. In the practice of ornamental horticulture, Mr. Wilder bore the leading part which might have been expected- from his official position. He at one time had no less than three hundred varieties of the camelia, many of them produced by his own exper- iments in hybridization. His attention was at the same time directed to the culture of fruit, especially of pears, of which he had eight hundred varieties on his own grounds. Before retiring from office in the Horticultural Society he issued a circular calling a convention of fruit growers, which was held in New York, and rcsnlted in an organization, first called "The American Congress of Fruit-Growers," subse- quently and still bearing the name of "The Ameri- can Pomological Society." Of this he was the first president, and remained in office until his death, giv- ing instructive addresses at the triennial meetings, which, held in different sections of the country, have been of more service than can be easily estimated 22 N. E. HISTORIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. in improving and multiplying the products of this department of industry and enterprise. . But he was not content with flowers and fruit. With his native farmer instinct he applied himself to the more necessary, though with our present fa- cilities of exchange and transportation, hardly to us more useful, departments of agriculture. In 1849 he took a leading part in the formation of the Nor- folk Agricultural Society, was chosen its president, and in the autumn of that year delivered at its first annual Cattle Show an address upon agricultural education, which had no little influence in calling attention to a need of our community, which now seems too obvious to be specified, but which then had hardly found its way to the public mind. He held this presidency in active duty for twenty years, and then was made honorary president, in gratitude for Ms preeminent usefulness in advancing the vari- ous arts appertaining to garden, orchard and farm, and for his special services and benefactions to that particular society. In the matter of agricultural education, Mi'. Wil- der was, as I have intimated, a pioneer. The year after his Dedham address, when he was President of the Senate, he prepared a bill for the establish- ment of an agricultural college, which passed the Senate by a unanimous vote, but was lost in the lower House, where the proportion of farmers was much larger than in the Senate, so that the vote MARSHALL P. WILDER. 23 shows that those who were most intimately con- cerned in the matter were utterly unaware how much it concerned them. Mr. "Wilder, however, succeeded in obtaining the passage of a resolve for the appointment of a Board of Commissioners to investigate the subject of agricultural schools. Of this commission he was made chairman, and he guaranteed the expenses, afterward assumed by the state, of President Hitchcock of Amherst College, in visiting and examining European institutions of this kind. The result was the establishment of the Amherst Agricultural College, of which he was the first-named trustee, which he kept for the remain- der of his life under Avise and faithful supervision, and which he enriched by more than a thousand trees and plants removed at his own cost and charge from his own estate. He was also president of the Massachusetts Cen- tral Board of Agriculture until it became a depart- ment of state administration, still remaining a mem- ber of the Board when its executive functions were committed to a salaried secretary. Mr. Wilder also took the initiative in calling the convention which formed the United States Agri- cultural Society, of which he w T as president for six years, acting in that capacity at exhibitions in five different states. I have given but an imperfect outline of Mr. Wild- er's labors as a loyal son of the soil; to describe 21 N. E. HISTORIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. them in full would transcend the outside, possible limits of a commemorative address. His eminent services were fully recognized by votes and costly testimonials from the societies which he served, and by the honorary membership of kindred societies, equally in this country and on the continent of Eu- rope. His work was not only warmly appreciated; it was genuine and efficient work, and probably greater than received distinct recognition. His was not a, but the leading mind in improvements that have contributed largely to the general health, com- fort and well-beiug. It is not many years since good fruit was rare and costly, and even apples in alternate years were few and dear. The meanest table can now command more and better fruit than could be afforded thirty years ago by families for above want; and it is easy to imagine how for a lux- ury so appetizing and so wholesome may check the craving for indulgences both harmful and perilous, and may relieve the barrenness and meagreness of diet which in former times made a poor home look and seem all the poorer. I have no doubt that the progress would have taken place if Mr. Wilder had never lived ; for inventors, discoverers and leaders in every department are never possible till in the onward movement of society their work is inevi- table. But none the less worthy of honor is he who so reads the times as to anticipate the dawn of the near future, and to hasten its advent. MARSHALL I\ W.ILDER. 25 I can barely allude to the many and various pub- lic positions which Mr. Wilder filled at different times, as President of the Association of the Sons of New Hampshire ; as a Commissioner of the United States at the Paris Exposition of the World's In- dustries in 1867, at which he served as chairman in his own special department of horticulture ; as pre- siding officer on several commemorative occasions of commanding interest in Dorchester; as made first and foremost in numerous instances in which the leading place could be filled only by one whom the community could trust and honor, and only with the labor and sacrifice which for a worthy purpose he was always ready to bestow. The Society which I represent to-day owes to Mr. Wilder no common weight of grateful obliga- tion. Under the presidency of the late Governor Andrew who, when he died, left no better man be- hind him, it had indeed attained a position of honor and usefulness which promised well for its future; yet it was poor in funds, inadequately housed, and scantily furnished for its specific work. You will not charge me with over-statement when I say that for the nineteen years of Mr. Wilder's presidency he could not have done more for the society with- out transcending the fitnesses and limits of his of- fice, and that, if this had been his sole charge, it would have been difficult for him to magnify it more in assiduous and gainful service than he did while it was but one of several not unlike places 26 N. E. HISTORIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. which he was all the while filling with like pains- taking- fidelity. One of his earliest enterprises was the purchase and remodelling of the building in Somerset street; among the latest, the raising of funds for its enlargement. In the subscription for both these purposes, as in that for the fund for the librarian's salary, he set his wonted example of munificence, which was followed in great measure by the prestige of his name and through his per- sonal efforts and influence. Under his administra- tion the permanent property of the society (includ- ing its real estate) increased not less than twenty fold, while he left its library at least three times as large as he found it. You are aware, too, with how much dignity, courtesy and grace he presided at our meetings, what uniformly kind reception he gave to those who have contributed to their inter- est by specially prepared papers and in less formal utterances, and with what judicious skill, timeli- ness in subject and in illustration, elaborate finish of style, generous recognition of the broad range of knowledge and science within our legitimate scope, he has appeared before you in those admi- rable annual addresses, the last, with characteristic forethought, left so fully ready for delivery that the reverent listening to it was the most impres- sive of the tributes which at your first meeting after his death you could render to his memory. I have spoken of our president as a merchant from his boyhood till his death; yet had he re- MARSHALL P. WILDER. 27 mained in active business, he could hardly have performed such a vast amount of service, and es- pecially have performed it during the last quarter- century of eighty-eight years, a period often er than not, spent by those who live so long, in retirement and ease. His old age of strenuous industry for the interests very near his heart was due to what most men would have deemed disabling infirmity. Early in 1863 he fell heavily on frozen ground, and received a severe shock which, though at first chiefly affecting the limbs, undoubtedly occasioned a permanent lesion of the brain. In the next ensu- ing June he had an attack of vertigo, after which he had not a moment's respite from pain in the head and a sensation which he described as like the incessant shaking of a bowl of water in the cerebral region. From that time he left the man- agement of the business, in which he was still a partner, to the junior members of the firm, and was thus free for labor in a larger field. But im- agine the energy of character, the stress of will- power, which refused to succumb to what to most men would have sounded the retreat from care and effort, yet only launched him into a career of more abundant labor and more extended usefulness. In my narrative of our president's life I have virtually sketched his character, so that a prolonged eulogy would be but a repetition of what has been as fully implied as if it had been expressly said. Yet I ought not to close without recalling in 23 N. E. HISTORIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. brief some of the prominent traits of his life and work. We cannot but admire the diligence and breadth of his self-culture. With a good foundation, indeed, of home and school education, he can have built up the superstructure, only in the intervals of al- most unintermitted toil and responsibility, and Iry an economy of time rarely equalled; and yet his is a case under a general law verified by my life- long observation, that time is elastic only when well-filled, — that it is they who do the most that always have room for more. His writings which, if collected, would make many volumes, impress me by their accuracy, chasteness and euphony of style, by their uniform appropriate- ness to occasion and subject, and by the evidently philanthropic purpose that pervades them. This purpose, indeed, underlies his whole charac- ter. He was ambitious; but his ambition was to be useful. He liked distinction, but as a benefactor of his race. He was generous, and — what is of far greater praise — his liberal gifts were from. what was rightfully his own, the proceeds of faithful indus- try and honest enterprise. Best of all, he gave him- self, mind, and heart, and soul. All that he was he put into his work; and when a man like him, of sound and well furnished mind, of nncorrupt integ- rity, of stainless purity, of a life fair and honorable in every aspect, gives himself in any worthy cause, the gift far transcends any pecuniary estimate. MARSHALL P. WILDER. 99 I know from ample testimony how dear and pre- cious he was in his own home and to the hearts made desolate by his departure. It was his grief, we trust that it is now his joy, that his household was more than equally divided, — that there were more waiting for him than stayed to mourn, not for him, but for themselves. His repeated and severe bereavements only enhanced his tenderness and multiplied his offices of love for those that remained with him, and enlarged the circle of his beneficent sympathies. He could not have been all that he was but for the Christian faith inbreathed by his saintly mother, hallowed by the memory of a father whose up- right walk among men was a walk with God, con- firmed and matured by the temptations of early life in which it made him conqueror, by the successes to which it gave its healthful ministry, by the sor- rows in which it was the rainbow on the cloud. The prayer that he and those gathered with him at the family altar might be led in the paths of salvation had hardly died upon his lips, when for him it had its sudden, appalling, blessed, glorious answer. We are thankful that he lived so long and so well, — thankful that for him the fair volume of life was written through by his own hand with no appended record of inability, decline and decay. Happy he who thus passes, without intermission, from faith- ful work on earth to the nobler work of heaven.