Charles Wentworth Upham

Charles Wentworth Upham (May 4, 1802 – June 15, 1875) was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts. Upham was also a member, and President of the Massachusetts State Senate, the 7th Mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, and twice a member of the Massachusetts State House of Representatives. Upham was the cousin of George Baxter Upham and Jabez Upham. Upham was later a historian of Salem and the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 when he lived there.

Charles Wentworth Upham
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Massachusetts's 6th district
In office
March 4, 1853 – March 3, 1855
Preceded byGeorge T. Davis
Succeeded byTimothy Davis
7th Mayor
of Salem, Massachusetts
In office
1852–1853
Preceded byDavid Pingree
Succeeded byAsahel Huntington
Member of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives
for Essex
In office
1849–1849
In office
1859–1860
President of the Massachusetts Senate
In office
1857–1858
Preceded byElihu C. Baker
Succeeded byCharles A. Phelps
Member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853
In office
1853–1853
Member of the
Massachusetts Senate
for Essex
In office
1850–1850
In office
1857–1858
Personal details
Born(1802-05-04)May 4, 1802
Saint John, New Brunswick Colony, British Canada
DiedJune 15, 1875(1875-06-15) (aged 73)
Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.
NationalityCanadian, American
Political partyWhig, Free Soil, Republican
SpouseAnn Susan Holmes
Signature

Biography

Charles Wentworth Upham was born in Saint John in the New Brunswick Colony of British Canada on May 4, 1802 to Col. Joshua Upham, Supreme Court Justice of New Brunswick, and his second wife Mary Chandler. Joshua Upham was born in Brookfield, MA in 1741 and died in England in 1808.

Charles W. Upham married Ann Susan Holmes on March 29, 1826. She was the daughter of Rev. Abiel Holmes and Sarah Oliver Wendell. Ann was the sister of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Charles and Ann had 15 children all born in Salem, Massachusetts and only four survived to adulthood; Charles Wentworth Upham Jr. born in 1830 and died at the age of 30 in Buffalo, New York, married to Mary Haven, no children; William Phineas Upham born in 1836 and died in 1905, Newton, Massachusetts, married to Cynthia Bailey Nurse and had two daughters (Mary Wendell Upham and Elizabeth Upham); Sarah Wendell Upham born 1839 and died unmarried at 25; and Oliver Wendell Holmes Upham born in 1843 and died in 1905, Salem, Massachusetts, married to Caroline Ely Wilson, one daughter (Dorothy Quincy Upham, b. 1881) and one son (Charles Wentworth Upham, b. 1883).

He attended Harvard in the class of 1821, and was a member of the Porcellian Club.[1] A classmate and former friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Upham was an opponent of the burgeoning Transcendentalism movement and later engineered for Nathaniel Hawthorne to be dismissed from his job at the Salem custom house.[2] He also arranged for Jones Very to be institutionalized at McClean Asylum.[3] Senator Charles Sumner once referred to Upham as "that smooth, smiling, oily man of God".[2]

In 1858, Upham was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.[4]

Upham died on June 15, 1875, in Salem, Massachusetts.

See also

Publications
  • Life, Explorations and Public Services of John Charles Fremont. Ticknor and Fields, Boston, MA. 1856
  • Salem Witchcraft with an account of Salem Village and a history of opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects. Frederick Unger, New York, 1978 (Reprint), 2 vv.
  • "Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather A Reply". Morrisania, N.Y. 1869. Public Domain. Project Gutenberg free eBook.
  • Lectures on Witchcraft Comprising a History of the Delusion in Salem in 1692 (1831) Kessinger Publishing (Reprint), 2003. ISBN 978-0-7661-8088-8
  • A Discourse Delivered on the Sabbath After the Decease of the Hon. Timothy Pickering. Kessinger Publishing, United States, 2010 (Reprint). ISBN 978-1-163-74927-2
  • Eulogy on the Life and Character of Zachary Taylor. BiblioLife, LLC, USA (Reprint), 2009. ISBN 978-1-117-40148-5
  • Memoir of Francis Peabody, President of the Essex Institute. Pranava Books, 2008 (Reprinted on demand from 1868 edition.
  • Letters on the Logos (1828) Kessinger Publishing, 2003 (Reprint). ISBN 978-0-7661-4679-2
  • Life of Sir Henry Vane, Fourth Governor of Massachusetts in the Library of American Biography, conducted by Jared Sparks Vol IV.

References

Notes
  1. Catalogue of the Porcellian Club of Harvard University (1857), p. 34.
  2. Baker, Carlos. Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait. New York: Viking Press, 1996: 123. ISBN 0-670-86675-X
  3. Richardson, Robert D., Jr. Emerson: The Mind on Fire. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1995: 304. ISBN 0-520-08808-5
  4. American Antiquarian Society Members Directory
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