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RAPER, WILLIAM FRANKLIN, soldier, manufacturer, legislator, and diplomat; private, lieutenant, captain, major, colonel and brigadier-general in the Civil war; representative from Massachusetts in the fifty-third and fifty-fourth Congresses; manufacturer of cotton machinery; and United States Ambassador to Italy; was born in Lowell, Middlesex county, Massachusetts, April 9, 1842, son of George and Hannah (Thwing) Draper, and a descendant of James Draper, the Puritan, who came from England to New England in 1647, and continued the business as a fuller of cloth which he had learned from his father, Thomas Draper, who was a noted fuller in England about 1630. A Revolutionary ancestor was Major Abijah Draper of Dedham, Massachusetts, who fought in the American army under Washington. The inventive genius of the family was first manifested in Ira Draper.

George Draper was a manufacturer, a man of inventive genius, and of great strength of character, uncompromising on principles in which he believed, a total abstainer, a Garrison abolitionist, an earnest believer in protection and the founder of the Home Market club of Boston.

William Franklin Draper's early education was directed to preparing him for a college course at Harvard, but his father wished him to become acquainted with the processes of manufacturing and so part of his time was spent in machine shops and cotton mills, and three years before the Civil war were given to the practical study of the manufacture and operation of cotton machinery. He was about to enter Harvard college when the war broke out and on the ninth of August, 1861, he enlisted as private in a local volunteer company which his father had raised. It became Company B of the 25th Massachusetts regiment and he was chosen second lieutenant, when but little more than nineteen years old. The regiment was attached to General Burnside's expedition to North Carolina and he was made signal officer on Burnside's staff and as such took part in the battles of Roanoke Island, New Berne and Fort Macon. Upon