Strangers to Us All Lawyers and Poetry

Henry Weld Fuller, Jr.

(1810- )
Maine & Massachusetts

George Bancroft Griffith (ed.), The Poets of Maine 136 (Portland, Maine: Elwell, Pickard & Co., 1888):

Henry Weld Fuller, Jr. Born in August, January, 1810. His father, Hon. H. W. Fuller, was a leading lawyer, and his mother was sister of Miss Hannah F. Gould, the poetess. Fuller graduated at Bowdoin with the salutatory, and, when made Master of Arts, had the Latin valedictory. Later, he pronounced the annual oration before the Athenaean Society. After reading law at Cambridge, he spent several months in Florida for his health, and, soon after his arrival there, had his legal skill put to the test in the trial of an Indian chief, and prosecuted his defence with marked success. The reputation which this gave him led to his being summoned to Tallahassee to defend a negro for murder, and, by procuring the acquittal of the prisoner, he received a sufficient sum to meet the expenses of his nine months' sojourn, and furnish himself with a library. Returning to Augusta, he became partner with his father for ten years. He afterwards removed to Boston, and continued the practice of law for thirteen years, when he was appointed Clerk of the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts, and held the position eleven years, when he resigned, and has since then acted as trustee and treasurer for different persons and corporations. His love of horticulture and agriculture led him to purchase a farm a few miles from Boston, which he converted into the Woodlawn Cemetery. He is now vice-president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and Chairman of the Society of Arts, Institute of Technology, Boston.

Orations

H. Weld Fuller, An Oration, pronounced in the Meeting-house at Augusta, on the Fourth day of July, 1804, being the twenty-eighth anniversary of American freedom (Augusta [Maine]: Printed by Peter Edes, 1804)