Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/94

78 THE GRANITE MONTHLY. The inheritor of his wealth, his ability, and his popular favor, was his son, William Badger, who was the third generation of a family to whom honors came by a sort of natural descent. Born in 1779, William was but a boy of five years when his father settled upon the hill. Thus his youth was passed among the charming influences of this unsurpassed location. Much of what he achieved in life must be ascribed to the environs of his boyhood, and thus is exemplified the helpfulness of lofty surroundings. He did not owe all to his ancestry, nor to his training; the fact that he rose higher than his fathers he owed undoubtedly to the exquisite beauty of the landscape he gazed upon, and to the strengthening breezes that blew around his boyhood home. His early school advantages were good. He attended the district schools, and when he was fifteen went several terms to Gilmanton Academy, which had been incorporated the previous year. He was proficient in the English branches, and there his education stopped. Choosing to be neither lawyer, divine, or physician, he wisely let the classics alone, although, perhaps, if he had been able to read Virgil's Georgics in the original, it might have added a renewed charm to his culture.

On May-day, 1803, William Badger married and took his wife home to the paternal roof. She was Martha Smith, daughter of Rev. Isaac Smith, the first settled minister of the town. She was one year his junior and an excellent and beautiful lady. She was the mother of two children, — John Badger, born in 1804, and died while a student at Bowdoin College, in 1824, and Martha Smith Badger, born in 1806, and died in 1826. Mrs. Badger died in 1810, — the next year after his father, — and he was left a widower at the age of thirty, with two small children to care for, a large estate to look after, with the added responsibilities of public office to weigh him down. For William Badger, following in his father's path, had just set out in that career that was to lead him to the executive chair of the state, and was that year the representative of the town to the legislature. He had previously served upon Gov. Langdon's staff, with the title of colonel.

Dividing his attention between the cares of his farm and the welfare of his constituents, — for he was annually elected to the legislature, — four years passed with Badger. At the end of that time he married again. His second wife was Hannah Pearson Cogswell, who came of a distinguished family. She was born in Atkinson, N. H., July 6, 1791. Spirited, energetic, and capable, Miss Cogswell made an excellent help-meet. She was fitted to be the mistress of a large house, and had the faculty for conducting business. She had the thrift of a "Widow Scudder." Some of the neighbors who remember her say she had the faculty of getting more work done in a day than any other woman in Gilmanton.

The very year that he married his second wife, William Badger was elected a state senator from district No. 6. He was twice reelected, and the last year, 1816, he was President of the Senate. This latter year he was appointed an associate Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, an office that he held until 1820. In May of that year Gov. Bell appointed him Sheriff of the county of Strafford, and he served in that capacity ten years, retiring in 1830.

Col. Badger was a democrat of the Jefferson and Jackson school, and about this time began to be regarded as a sort of prospective candidate for gubernatorial honors. His large wealth, his noble ancestry, his long and meritorious services brought him before all men's eyes. He had moreover those popular democratic manners that endeared him to the people. In 1831 the elder Samuel Dinsmoor, of Keene, was the nominee of the party, and was three times successfully elected. In 1834 Col. Badger became the candidate, and received a triumphant election. The