Charles William Storey, Jr.

Charles W. Storey, Jr., born in Bible Hill, Claremont, NH, July 18, 1816, at the house of his great grandfather, Daniel Giddings, "graduated at Harvard College in 1835, and was admitted to practice at the Suffolk bar in 1840. He married, July 30, 1842, Elizabeth Moorfield of Hingham, and was clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1846 to 1850. He resided in Roxbury, which is now a part of Boston, where the following-named children were born: Moorfield, born March 19, 1845; counsellor-at-law in Boston; married, January 6, 1870, Anna Gertrude, daughter of Richard D. Cutts of Washington, D. C. Mariana Teresa, born October 30, 1847. Susan Tappan, born November 1, 1851."

See History of Newburyport, Mass. (Volume 2), by John J. Currier.

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CHARLES WILLIAM STOREY

CHARLES WILLIAM STOREY was born in Claremont, N.H., 18th July, 1816; but one year after his birth his parents removed to Newburyport, Mass., and that town became his home. At the age of 13 he was sent to Exeter Academy, "where," he says, "I was very well fitted for College in every respect but that of learning." He made no attempt while at Harvard to obtain College honors which with his abilities he might easily have done; but a natural indolence, of which he speaks in the Class-Book, interfered with the attainment of such distinctions; and at the close of his course at Harvard he was elected Admiral of the Navy Club, an honor supposed to be conferred "on the laziest and best fellow in the Class."

His career after graduation is thus described by himself: "After leaving College I stayed at home some six months in grievous doubt as to the choice of an occupation out of several more or less repulsive ones which alone offered themselves. Finally I went in January, 1836, to the Harvard Law School, and partly there, and partly in the office of Messrs. C. P. & B. R. Curtis, completed the required three years, and was in January, 1839, admitted to the Bar. From the last of February to the last of December I spent in what was then the Far West, looking at Toledo, Ohio ; Burlington, Iowa ; Milwaukee, Wis., and various other places ; and finally settling for six months at Galena, Ill., where I did exceedingly little; and whence I returned satisfied that a person who had any fair chance in Massachusetts would do much better there than in any new country, and enjoy life vastly more; which conviction remains with me. The place of reporter of debates in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for the Atlas newspaper was then found for me by Spooner and Minns; and at the close of the session I opened an office at No. 4 Court Street, Boston, with Minns; who, however, soon came to me and mournfully announced that although we led a very agreeable life, we were not in the least likely to earn the means of sustaining it unless we separated."

After separating from Minns he became for a time the Washington correspondent of the "Atlas."

In 1844 he was elected Clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and held that office until 1851. Then resuming his law practice with considerable success, he was appointed, about 1855, Registrar of Insolvency for Suffolk County, and discharged those duties until about 1858, when the office was abolished.

Soon after this he formed a partnership with the late Hon. John Wilder May, which continued up to about 1870, a connection agreeable and prosperous. For a short time he was Clerk of the Superior Criminal Court of Suffolk, and after dissolving his connection therewith gradually retired from business, "and" as he says, "now seldom go into the city from Brookline where I have lived for the last eight years. I am, to borrow a lady's expression, 'young, but infirm,' and so much so in the feet and legs that walking for any distance worth mentioning is disagreeable to me.

"On the 30th July, 1842, I married Miss Elizabeth Moorfield, formerly of Hingham, who had kept a school for young ladies in Newburyport for some time. This was imprudent from an economical point of view, for we were both poor, and my expected earnings were very slender; but we adopted the lowest scale of living, and have passed very happy lives together. I have a son, Moorfield Storey, who has made me the grandfather of three girls and a boy, and two daughters who still contribute largely to the happiness of our home."

"In religion I have sounded the depths of Presbyterianism in which I was bred, and various other phases of faith, and landed in rather solid agnosticism; and in politics have been successively Whig, Republican and Mugwump, which last I find the most satisfactory."

The above is from Memorials of the Class of 1835, Harvard University (1886).

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All of his children were born in a house on what was then Chestnut Street (the name was changed to Forest Street on April 20, 1868), Roxbury, MA. The family referred to the house as the "Brown Cot." They lived there until 1857 (see 'Family Recollections,' by Mariana Storey), when they moved to 8 Florence Street, Boston (in the northeast corner of the South End). Florence Street and the surrounding neighborhood were demolished in the 1950s as part of an urban renewal project.