Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/394

 35 6

��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

��of his sons, Washington Libbey, the twin brother of Harry Libbey, still lives — a good farmer and a much re- spected citizen. The Libbey farm, situate in that part of Wakefield known as the Oak Hill neighborhood, was, when Nathan Libbey and his young wife first made their home there, in 1S16, wild land — a forest of oak. The labor of clearing the land and making it into a farm that would yield a support to the family was all to be gone through. In due time the re- ceding forest gave place to a pleasant, productive farm on the hillside. Here a famjly of thirteen children were in- doctrinated in that stern school of morals and trained to those habits of industry and frugality which have proved the glory and success of the well ordered family every where ; but the paternal acres could ill support so large a family ; so the sons of the Lib- bey family, as they grew toward man- hood, left the narrow limits of the old homestead to make their fortune in the wide world.

Early in 1861 Harry Libbey, then a boy of scarcely eighteen years, entered the employ of the Adams Ex- press Company, at Old Point Com- fort, Virginia, where he remained for years, after which he was engaged in business at the same place with an elder brother — Joseph Libbey. At the close of the war Mr. Libbey set- tled in Elizabeth City county, near Old Point Comfort, as a merchant and farmer, and has there remained so employed to the present time. Mr. Libbey's main business is that of a merchant, furnishing supplies to the farming community about him, and as incidental to his mercantile busi- ness he "runs" several "truck" farms, furnishing large quantities of early vegetables for northern markets. In his private business, as well as in pub- lic affairs, Mr. Libbey has from the first been successful, and at the age of forty finds himself well off in this world's goods. Starting for himself in business, a mere youth, among strangers, without capital or social in-

��fluence, his success in business has been alike creditable to his early training and his own abilities.

In his intercourse with men Mr. Libbey is a quiet, unobtrusive gentle- man — but a gentleman always. While he observes the blunt frankness and directness of speech and manner that he learned from parental precept and example, no poor person, white or colored, is too humble to receive from him gentle treatment and kind words of encouragement. For Mr. Libbey's advancement to places of public trust and power he is in no way indebted to any special gifts of nature.

With nothing better for an educa- tion than the district school of a small New Hampshire town could afford, without those powers of ora- tory which so often captivate the masses and bring renown and position to the possessor of them, entirely without the prestige of family and social relations which have always been so powerful, especially in the South, in bringing political preferment to young men of ambition, Mr. Lib- bey has, by force of his unsullied life and honorable business career, com- mended himself to the suffrages of his fellow-citizens, and won his place in the congress of the nation.

Mr. Libbey was elected to congress upon the " Readjuster " ticket, over the candidates of the Democratic and straight Republican parties, and while he ardently favors the " Readjuster" pol- icy as a means of displacing the " Bour- bon " element, as it is termed, from power in Virginia, he is fully in ac- cord with the Republican party on all national questions. To one of Mr. Libbey's quiet ways, engrossed with the cares of his business, nothing could be more out of place or more distasteful than office-seeking or the practices of a questionable school of politicians. Still, disinclined to enter the field of politics as a political athlete, it must not be supposed that Mr. Libbey has failed to show that interest in politics which marks the

�� �