History of New Braintree, (Worcester County) Massachusetts United States of America

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Biographies:

William Barrows, clergyman, was born at New Braintree, Mass., Sept. 19, 1815. He attended Phillips academy from 1834 to 1836, and was graduated from Amherst in 1840, after which he taught in St. Louis until 1843, when he entered the Union theological seminary. On the completion of his course in 1845 he was ordained in the Congregational ministry and installed at Norton, Mass. In 1850 he was placed over the church in Grantville, near Wellesley Hills. Thence he moved in 1856 to become pastor of the Old South church, Reading, Mass. In 1869 he was made secretary of the Congregational Sunday-school publishing society, and filled this office until 1873, when he was elected to the secretaryship of the Massachusetts home missionary society. He relinquished this work in 1880 to devote himself to the educational and religious wants of the western frontier, where he had already made eleven long tours. He was a lecturer on prehistoric America and on the colonial and pioneer history of the United States, and he wrote much on these subjects for periodicals. In 1869 he published: "Twelve Nights in a Hunter's camp"; in 1875, "The Church and her Children," and in 1876, "Eight Weeks on the Frontier" (1876). In 1881 he accepted the pastorate of a church at New Braintree, where he remained until 1885 during which time he published: "Purgatory Doctrinally, Practically and Historically Opened," and "Oregon: the Struggle for Possession" (1884), of which the 8th edition was printed in 1893. In 1887 he issued "The Indians' Side of the Indian Question," and "The United States of Yesterday and of To-morrow." He was for seven years editor of the Congregational Review. He died Sept. 9, 1891.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Charles Eames, diplomatist, was born in New Braintree, Mass., March 20, 1812. He was graduated at Harvard in 1831, studied law at Harvard and completed his course in the office of John Duer, afterward chief justice of the New York superior court. He was prevented from practising on account of ill health, and in 1845 was appointed by Secretary Bancroft to an office in the navy department in Washington. He also became associate editor of the Union. President Polk appointed him U.S. commissioner to the Sandwich islands in 1849, where he negotiated an important treaty. In 1850 he edited the Nashville Union and at the end of six months returned to the Washington Union and continued work on that journal, 1850-54. In 1854 President Pierce appointed him charg? d'affaires to Venezuela, S.A., and soon after his arrival there made him U.S. minister. He resigned the office in 1857 and became an admiralty lawyer. He died in Washington, D.C., March 16, 1867.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor