Author: Power, Thomas
Biography:
POWER, Thomas (1786-1868: ancestry.com)
He was born in Boston, graduated from Brown in 1808, was called to the bar in 1811 and practised first in Northfield MA (1811-15) and then in Boston. The date of his marriage to Elizabeth Sampson of Duxbury MA, a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers, is not certain; they had at least one child but there is no mention of a widow or children in the obituary notices and it is likely that he outlived his family. He was an active member of Boston society--a Mason, eventually Commander of one of the Boston branches; a frequent contributor to the Boston newspaper The Argus; a longtime member of the Handel and Haydn Society; and one of the citizens chosen to give a public Oration on the 4th of July. In 1822 he was appointed Clerk of the Boston Police Court, a position he retained for over thirty years until obliged to resign on account of ill health. He composed campaign songs and in 1844 published a collection of Masonic Melodies. He died at his home in Framingham MA and is buried in the Mayflower Cemetery of Duxbury. (ancestry.com 5 Jul. 2020; Death notice, Boston Daily Journal 10 Sept. 1868; James Spear Loring, The Hundred Boston Orators . . . 1770-1852 [1855] 586-8)