Life of James Sullivan

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. FROVINCIAL CONGRESS. When Sullivan's regular course of legal studies was completed, and the oaths required by existing forms had been duly administered for his admission to the bar, some suitable place was to be selected, offering a reasonable promise of professional employment. The province...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. FROVINCIAL CONGRESS. When Sullivan's regular course of legal studies was completed, and the oaths required by existing forms had been duly administered for his admission to the bar, some suitable place was to be selected, offering a reasonable promise of professional employment. The province of Massachusetts, of comparatively limited dimensions within its own borders, although by its charter bounding west on the Pacific, included at this period within its territory the District of Maine. Excepting, however, a few scattered settlements fringing its shore, the district was still an unbroken wilderness of wood from the ocean to that imaginary range of highlands later to be definitely established as its northern boundary. At the mouth of the Kennebec, Arrowsick Island and a small tract of land on the main then constituted what was called Georgetown. The place is memorable as the seat of the earliest colony in New England ? Bonham and Ealeigh Gilbert, with their party, having passed there the winter of 1606-7. But the ravages of disease and the death of their leader discouraging those who survived the rigors of the climate, it was soon abandoned. In the first volume of the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society is an interesting account of the early history of Georgetown, contributed by James Sullivan, then their president. This spot, selected for the commencement of his life as a lawyer, was sufficiently unpromising. It was wild and desolate, and with but few inhabitants. When, at a later period, some brother in the law inquired, What on earth could have induced you to settle in such an out of the way place? he answered, with characteristic quickness, that, wishing to break into the world somewhere, he had concluded to assail it at its weakest ...