Very, very remarkable men

Toward the end of the 19th century, Concord presses turned out a series of popular books containing short biographies of prominent New Hampshire residents.  The pages of New Hampshire Notables and its competitors were filled with paragraphs of praise and engraved portraits of civic leaders (who, with their families, were undoubtedly expected to buy copies).  In 1886 a pamphlet appeared called Remarks on Remarkable Men. This purported to be a lecture, with blackboard drawings, delivered in Concord by one Dr. Bennett Monroe Pratt, described only as “blindman.” That’s the first clue.

Margaret Pelren Brewitt, of Kennebunk, Maine, donated a copy of Remarks to the Concord Historical Society in 2012. The original owner, her father, Robert Pelren, had lived on Ridge Road. Printed by Sen. William E. Chandler’s Republican Press Association, which also published the Concord Daily Monitor and the Independent Statesman, the cover portrays a bearded gentleman who appears to need a long cane for navigation.

The portraits included some of the men who were in fact among the state’s leading citizens. Dr. Pratt lectured: “The invidious discriminations of the Granite Monthly, in its biographies, and the considerable expense of a creditable appearance in such works as Clarke’s Successful Men of New Hampshire and the recent twelve-dollar History of Merrimack County, together with the innate modesty of many of our worthiest and most exemplary citizens. ..have conduced to leave a dangerous void in the invaluable history of human experience, which I shall humbly and most respectfully attempt to fill.” This is the second clue.

Among the Concord men the good doctor proclaimed as remarkable:

Joseph H. Abbot, vice president of the stagecoach-building Abbot-Downing Co.:  “He superintends a fertile farm and thereupon raises pumpkins of a superior quality.”

James O. Lyford, Esq. is best known in the 21st century as the principal author of the 19th century History of Concord, which preceded the Concord Historical Society’s Crosscurrents of Change, Concord, N.H., in the 20th Century. Dr. Pratt’s lecture listed Lyford’s political and journalistic accomplishments and said, “He served with great credit as a member of our Constitutional Convention and has been surprisingly successful in all his undertakings – except in transmitting fresh fried oysters by U.S. mail to his friends in New Hampshire.”

Capt. John H. Toof, whose family name still graces an apartment building on Warren Street:  “Captain Toof won his title in the Fire Department, to which he is an invaluable devotee.”

Charles R. Corning, Esq., a future Concord mayor and contributor to the Lyford history: “It is with something of reverend curiosity that we gaze upon a man who has stood upon Mount Sinai, and has strode along the Sea of Galilee, that has looked upon Jerusalem, and seen the cattle upon the thousand hills.”

Sheriff William K. Norton: “It is not considered desirable to be hanged, but if a man is to be hanged by a man better than Ko-Ko Norton,” an apparent reference to Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado.

Thomas A. Pilsbury, deputy warden of the State Prison: “One of the crew of the Mayflower was a man named Pilsbury, and he was made keeper for a time over two others of the crew who were refractory and disobedient, and, from that day to this, there has always been a Pilsbury at the head of a penal institution in this country.”

General Charles Williams, chief of staff to Gov. Moody Currier: “Driving to church through a principal street, one Sunday morning, many years ago, an old sitting hen flew from her disturbed nest in his fleeting carriage with a tremendous cackle, startling the public, and greatly annoying Gen. Williams. But he was not disturbed in his devotion to the Methodist faith.”

Close readers won’t need the third clue, which is that Dr. Pratt delivered his lecture on April 1, 1886. The pamphlet was actually written by a Depot Square lawyer named Henry Robinson, who was elected Concord’s mayor a few years later. These descriptions appear to be jokes that would have been well known to the audience.

If any current readers can decipher in-jokes that are more than a century and a quarter old, contact us at info@concordhistoricalsociety.org.