Leverett Saltonstall
Portrait of Saltonstall by Daniel Huntington
Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston
In office
1885–1889
Appointed byGrover Cleveland
Preceded byRoland Worthington
Succeeded byAlanson W. Beard
Personal details
Born(1825-03-16)March 16, 1825
Salem, Massachusetts
DiedApril 16, 1895(1895-04-16) (aged 70)
Brookline, Massachusetts
Political partyWhig
Constitutional Union
Democrat
Spouse
Rose Smith Lee
​
(m. 1854)​
RelationsSee Saltonstall family
Children6, including Endicott
Parent(s)Leverett Saltonstall I
Mary Elizabeth Sanders
Alma materHarvard College
Harvard Law School
Signature

Leverett Saltonstall (March 16, 1825 – April 16, 1895) was an American political figure who served as Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston.

Early life

Leverett Saltonstall (right) sitting next to his Harvard classmate Charles William Dabney Jr. and an unidentified friend, c. 1850

A member of the Saltonstall family, Saltonstall was born on March 16, 1825, in Salem, Massachusetts.[1] He was a son of Mary Elizabeth (née Sanders) Saltonstall and Leverett Saltonstall I, who served as the first mayor of Salem.[2]

Saltonstall graduated from Harvard College in 1844 and studied law at Harvard Law School and with the firm of Sohier & Welch. He was admitted to the bar in 1850.[1]

Career

Saltonstall began his political involvement with the Whigs, his father's political party. In 1854 he was appointed to the staff of Governor Emory Washburn.[2]

By 1860, the Whig Party had dissolved and Saltonstall disapproved of the new Republican Party. He was a founder of the Constitutional Union Party. Saltonstall served as the party's state chairman and gave up his law practice to focus on the party.[2] In 1860 he was the nominee of the Constitutional Union and Democratic parties for the United States House of Representatives seat in the Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district, but lost to Republican Charles Francis Adams Sr.[1][2] After the Constitutional Union Party disappeared, Saltonstall became a Democrat. He was the Democratic nominee in the 7th congressional district in 1866, 1868, and the 1869 special election following George S. Boutwell's appointment as United States Secretary of the Treasury. Saltonstall was a War Democrat and made speeches encouraging enlistment in the Union Army.[1] During the 1876 presidential election, Saltonstall spoke throughout the country for Samuel J. Tilden and served as an election monitor for the Democratic Party in Florida. He disputed the Republican victory there, charging them with manipulating the results.[2]

From 1885 to 1889, Saltonstall served as Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston under president Grover Cleveland.[1] Saltonstall gave John F. Fitzgerald a job as a customs inspector. Fitzgerald later became Mayor of Boston and championed major improvements to the port.[3]

Personal life and death

Rose Smith Lee

In 1854, Saltonstall was married to Rose Smith Lee (1835–1903), a daughter of John Clarke Lee.[4] Together, they were the parents of four sons and two daughters.[1]

Saltonstall died on April 16, 1895, at his home in Chestnut Hill in Brookline, Massachusetts.[1] In his will, he left $5,000 (~$153,646 in 2022) to establish a scholarship for "meritorious students" at Harvard.[10]

Descendants

Through his son Richard, he was a grandfather of Massachusetts Governor and United States Senator Leverett Saltonstall.[3]

Through his daughter Mary Elizabeth, he was a grandfather of Louis Agassiz Shaw Jr., a Harvard physiologist who is credited in 1928, along with Philip Drinker, for inventing the Drinker respirator, the first widely used iron lung.[11]

Through his youngest son Endicott, he was a grandfather of art teacher Elizabeth Saltonstall.[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Hon Leverett Saltonstall Dead". The Boston Daily Globe. April 17, 1895. p. 7. Retrieved March 19, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Saltonstall: Collector of the Port of Boston". The Boston Daily Globe. Washington. November 10, 1885. p. 2. Retrieved March 19, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b Saltonstall, Leverett. The Autobiography of Leverett Saltonstall: Massachusetts Governor, U.S. Senator, and Yankee Icon. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
  4. ^ a b c d e f The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. New England Historic Genealogical Society. 1922. p. 211. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  5. ^ "Richard Middlecott Saltonstall with family". www.masshist.org. Massachusetts Historical Society. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  6. ^ Cummins, TK (1909). "Records of the class". Twenty-fifth anniversary report (report VII) of the secretary of the class of 1884 of Harvard College. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 191–2.
  7. ^ Harvard Alumni Bulletin, Vol. 63. Harvard University. 1960. p. 481. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  8. ^ "Mrs. E.P. Saltonstall". The New York Times. October 14, 1951. p. 88. Retrieved May 13, 2022.
  9. ^ "The Obituary Record: Leverett Saltonstall". The New York Times. April 17, 1895. p. 3. Retrieved March 19, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ "Affairs at Harvard College; Hasty Pudding Club's Last Performance -- New Memorial Window". The New York Times. Cambridge, Massachusetts (published April 29, 1895). April 28, 1895. p. 11. Retrieved March 19, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ^ Kenneth E. Behring Center (2011). "The iron lung and other equipment". Whatever happened to polio?. Washington, DC: National Museum of American History. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011. Retrieved July 2, 2011.
  12. ^ "Artists Association of Nantucket Saltonstall, Elizabeth". Retrieved May 8, 2020.
Government offices Preceded byRoland Worthington Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston 1885–1889 Succeeded byAlanson W. Beard
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