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OODY, WILLIAM HENRY, secretary of the navy in the cabinet of President Roosevelt from May 1, 1902, and attorney-general from July 1, 1904, and representative from the sixth district of Massachusetts in the fifty-fourth, fifty-fifth, fifty-sixth and fifty-seventh Congresses, was born in Newbury, Essex county, Massachusetts, December 23, 1853. He is the son of Henry Lord and Melissa Augusta (Emerson) Moody.

William Moody, his first ancestor in America, a native of Yorkshire, England, immigrated to the American colonies in 1634 and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts Bay colony. Henry Lord Moody was a well-to-do farmer who cultivated farms near Newburyport, Salem and Danvers, and William Henry Moody received all the advantages afforded by the excellent public school system of his native commonwealth, attending the primary and grammar schools of Newbury, Salem and Danvers, and spent his vacations at home, where he became accustomed to farm work which ministered to the development and benefit of his physical condition. He was fond of outdoor sports, but gave much of his leisure time to reading. His parents made provision for him to obtain a classical education and to that end, while residing in Danvers, they entered him at Phillips academy, the celebrated preparatory school at Andover, Massachusetts, and he was graduated in 1872. He then matriculated at Harvard university and was graduated A.B. 1876. After spending some months at the Harvard law school he left before graduating to enter the law office of R. H. Dana in Boston and he was admitted to the Essex bar in 1878. He at once began the practice of his profession at Haverhill, Massachusetts, extending his practice to the higher courts of Massachusetts, and he became known as an eloquent, able and painstaking laTyer. He was city solicitor for Haverhill, 1880-90, and district attorney for the Eastern district of Massachusetts, 1890-95. As district attorney he carried through the prosecution of boodling alderman of the city of Haverhill successfully and also assisted Attorney-General Knowlton in the celebrated