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��GRANITE MONTHLY,

A NEW HAMPSHIRE MAGAZINE

Devoted to Literature, Biography. History, and State Progress.

��Vol. VI.

��SEPTEMBER, 1883.

��No. 12.

��HON. HARRY LIB BE Y.

��BY HON. JOSHUA G. HALL.

��No one of the original thirteen states has furnished more emigrants to other parts of the union in propor- tion to her population than New Hampshire, and the children of no one of the old commonwealths who have sought fortune and fame abroad have reflected more honor on the state of their birth, or achieved greater success than the young men who have in years past left the family home here and tried the wider and more diversified fields of effort presented elsewhere. The leavening influence of New England's sons and daughters in the newer states has always made itself felt, until to-day the vast North- west, in all the great and beneficent features of its civilization, is New Eng- land, reproduced on a grander scale. Up to the time of the late civil war comparatively few of our sons found homes in the sunny South ; the tradi- tions and the customs of that part of our country were not in harmony with ours, and those of our sons who located there permanently generally acquiesced quietly in the views of those by whom they found themselves surrounded. Whatever predilections they might have had for the New England ways, they were not of the kind to stand up for them in the face

��of opposition. Since the close of the war. however, our ' sons have gone South as well as West, in numbers comparatively small, to be sure, but they have gone, impressing upon the communities where they have settled lessons in New England enterprise, thrift, and love of labor. Of this number is the subject of our sketch.

Hon. Harry Libbey, a representa- tive in the forty-eighth congress of the United States irom the second district of Virginia, was born in Wakefield, Carroll county, New Hamp- shire, November 22, 1843, being at the time of his election to congress just thirty-nine years of age. His parents were Nathan and Olive (Ber- ry ) Libbey. Nathan Libbey, the father, was born March 18, 1792, at Berwick, York county, Maine. The family settled at Scarborough, Cum- berland county, Maine, about 1635, and have continued from that time to reside in the westerly part of Maine up to June, 18 16, when Na- than Libbey, having married Olive, the daughter of Francis and Sally G. Berry, of Milton, New Hampshire, settled upon the tract of land in Wakefield where he continued to re- side to the time of his death, a period of forty- eight years, and whereon one

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