Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/169

 THE

��G-BANITE MONTHLY.

��A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, HISTORY AND STATE PROGRESS.

VOL. 1 OCTOBER, 1877. NO. 6.

��HON. EZEKIEL A. STB AW.

��The city of Manchester, the manufac- turing metropolis of the State, a city of whose rapid growth and development every citizen of New Hampshire is justly proud, standing in the front rank among the manufacturing cities of the country, and wanting only the completion of one or two short links of railway, demanded alike by local and general interests, to make her second only to Worcester among the great business centers of New England, takes precedence of other New Hampshire cities and towns, not alone on the score of greater population and more extensive manufacturing enterprises. Her church edifices, her schools and pub- lic buildings, her business blocks and ele- gant private residences are all of superi- or order. Nor is it in these respects only that Manchester excels. She reckons among her citizens a remarkable propor- tion of the prominent and influential pub- lic men of the State. Among these may be mentioned four of the eight living ex- Governors of the State, three ex-Con- gressmen, one ex-United States Senator and present Judge of the United States District Court, one member of Congress now in service, three Justices of the Su- preme Court, two ex-Justices, and a score of others who have been conspicu-

��ous in various departments of public ser- vice and political life. Of these, ex-Gov. Straw may be mentioned as among the more prominent; and certainly there is no one who through his entire active career has been more intimately connect- ed with the growth and progress of the city than he, not only from his position as the active manager of its largest and most powerful manufacturing corpora- tion, but from strong personal interest in the welfare and progress of his adopted city.

Ezekiel A. Straw was born Dec. 30, 1S19, in the town of Salisbury — in a re- gion, by the way, which has given to the state and nation some of the most illustrious names of onv political history. His father, James B. Straw, a man of much energy and decision of character, had a family of seven children, two daughters and five sons, of whom Ezek- iel A. was the eldest. During his child- hood the family removed to Lowell, Mass., where his father engaged in the service of the Appleton Manufacturing Company. He attended the public schools of that city, acquiring the rudi- ments of a thorough English education, which was supplemented through an at- tendance of some time at Phillips Exe-

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