American Biography

Roswell Morse Shurttleff was an artist, born in Rindge, N.H., June 14, 1838; son of Dr. Ashael Dewey and Eliza (Morse) Shurtleff; grandson of Ashael and Sarah (Dewey) Shurtleff and of Isaac and Myriam (Spofford) Morse and a descendant of William Shurtleff, who came from Yorkshire, England, to Plymouth, Mass., in 1628, and of Anthony Morse, who immigrated to Massachusetts from England in 1635. His paternal grandfather served in the wars of 1812 and the Revolution.

After his father’s death in 1840, the family settled in Berlin, Mass., where he attended the common schools. He was graduated from Dartmouth college, B.S., 1857; served as clerk in an architect’s office at Manchester, N.H., in 1857, and removed to Buffalo, N.Y., where he worked at lithography, 1858-59. He attended the evening classes of the Lowell Institute at Boston, Mass., and was employed during the day at drawing on wood by John Andrews, a prominent engraver. He studied at the National Academy of Design, New York city, 1859, and engaged as an illustrator of periodicals, 1860-61.

Shurttleff enlisted in the 99th New York volunteers, April 16, 1861; was promoted lieutenant and adjutant in his company, and was shot and taken prisoner, July 19, 1861, being the first officer in the Union army to meet that misfortune. He was confined in the hospitals and prisons of the Confederate States for eight months, when he was released on parole and resumed magazine illustrating and wood engraving.

Roswell Morse Shurttleff married, June 14, 1867, to Clara E. Halliday, daughter of Joseph B. Halliday and Eleanor (Carrier) Halliday of Hartford, Conn.

He opened a studio in New York city in 1870, and began to make oil paintings of animals, later devoting himself to landscape in both water-color and oil. He became an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1881, an Academician in 1890, and a member of the Water Color society. His best known oil paintings include: The Wolf at the Door (1878); A Race for Life, in the Smith College Art gallery (1878); On the Alert (1879); Autumn Gold (1880); Gleams of Sunshine (1881); A Song of Summer Woods (1886); and Silent Woods, in the Metropolitan Art museum (1892); Mid-Day in Mid-Summer (1899); his watercolors, Harvest Time (1881); Basin Barber, Lake Champlain (1881); The Morning Draught (1881); and A Mountain Pasture (1882); Forest Stream (1886); Mountain Mists (1895); Near the Au Sable Lake (1896); and Edge of the Woods (1900).

Samuel Russell settled in the Mile Slip area of Milford New Hampshire prior to the year 1757; coming there from Lunenburg, Massachusetts, where the family was among the early settlers.

On May 20th 1757, Samuel and his brother George, in consideration of the sum of two hundred dollars by them paid, purchased of Peter Powers of Hollis a tract of land consisting of three hundred and twenty acres and one hundred poles, and lying in the Mile Slip on the westerly, northerly and easterly slopes of great Muscatanipus hill–mentioned in their deed of purchase as–”Great Jane Pot’s hill.”

Soon after their purchase the brothers apparently divided this tract of land between themselves; George taking the westerly and Samuel the northerly part. The land thus acquired by Samuel Russell, with the exception of a few small tracts which have been sold off from time to time during the intervening years, has ever since its purchase remained in the occupancy and possession of his descendants in this town.

Samuel Russell’s log-cabin was located on the northerly slope of the hill, and on the east side of the highway which leads out of the west side of the great road at a point just south of Campbell’s mill-pond and passes in a southerly direction to Townsend, Massachusetts. Its site at the present time is occupied by the dwelling house of his great-great-grand-son, Clarence R. Russell.

Samuel Russell was one of the signers of the petition for Raby’s incorporation, and one of its soldiers in the War of the Revolution; and both before and after the war, one of its leading citizens. During the war, in addition to his services as a soldier, he was a member of the town’s committee of safety.

Samuel Russell married on November 28th 1757, Susanna Mitchell of Lunenburg, Massachusetts. He died fifty years later, November 30, 1807, aged 74 years, and is buried in the Pond Cemetery. Rufus G. Russell, deceased, who represented the town in the legislature in 1878, 1879 and 1880, was his great grandchild. Among his great grandchildren at the present time living are Clarence R. Russell, who owns and occupies the old homestead.

James N. Tucker, Esq., was born in Brookline, New Hampshire on May 20th 1811. Although his advantages for learning were limited to the common school, he acquired a very good education. His mother, noticing his fancy for trading while he was a boy, predicted that he would sometime be a rich man. All his thoughts and tastes in boyhood looked forward to a mercantile life.

Mr. Tucker married Rosella Jewett on the twenty-fifth day of December, 1835. In the fall of 1836, he opened a store at West Townsend Massachusetts, and continued in trade there about three years. At that time, his cash capital was rather limited, but his credit was good, and he withstood the financial crash of 1837 and 1838. During the time he was at West Townsend he did a profitable business.

In 1839 he moved to Brookline, New Hampshire, his native town, where he built a very convenient store, and commenced the coopering business, employing from forty to fifty men, and paying them, as much as he could, in goods from his store. This was also a success to him. He was in trade at Brookline about four years, when he sold out his business and moved to East Pepperell Massachusetts, where he was in trade only a short time before returning to Brookline, New Hampshire, and retired from business.

James N. Tucker moved to West Townsend Massachusetts in 1853, and has remained here since that time, except a temporary residence in Boston during 1876 and 1877. While at Brookline he was postmaster under two different administrations, and he represented that town in the New Hampshire Legislature, during the years 1851 and 1852. He has invariably acted with the republican party.

In 1854 when the Townsend Bank went into operation, he was chosen one of the directors, which office he has held ever since. He was a notary public several years, and one of the selectmen and assessors of Townsend in 1864. For more than twenty-five years he did nearly all the conveyancing and business required of a justice of the peace, at West Townsend. In 1864 in company with Walter Fessenden he went to Europe and visited the most important cities of England, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, France and Scotland. On the twenty-fourth of June 1875 James N. Tucker married, as his second wife, Mrs. Martha A. Coburn.