Background
Henry Alexander Scammel Dearborn was born on March 3, 1783 at Exeter, New Hampshire, United States. He was the son of Henry Dearborn and his second wife Dorcas, daughter of Colonel John Osgood of Andover, Massachusetts, United States, and widow of Isaac Marble.
Education
After a boyhood spent on a farm in Maine, he attended Williams College, Massachusetts, but, on his father becoming secretary of war and moving to Washington, D. C. , in 1801, he entered the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, where he graduated in 1803.
For a time he studied law in the office of William Wirt, at Washington, D. C. , then completed his course with Judge Story at Salem, Massachusetts, and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar.
Career
Having conceived a distaste for law he then applied for a foreign diplomatic station, but, under the advice of President Jefferson, relinquished the idea and commenced to practise at Salem.
In 1806, however, he was appointed to superintend the erection of the new forts in Portland harbor. On the completion of these works, he became an officer in the customhouse at Boston, of which port his father had been appointed collector.
In 1812, on Gen. Dearborn’s assumption of the command of the Northern army, he was appointed collector in his father’s stead, becoming also brigadier-general of militia in charge of the defenses of the port.
He resided at Roxbury, Massachusetts, and on the termination of the war, took an active interest in local affairs. At the same time he devoted a portion of his leisure to literary pursuits, writing a Memoir on the Commerce and Navigation of the Black Sea and the Trade and Maritime Geography of Turkey and Egypt (1819), in two volumes with an additional volume of charts.
Retaining his position as collector throughout the administrations of Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams, he was removed by President Jackson in 1829.
In 1830 he was a delegate to the state constitutional convention, being also elected state senator for Norfolk County. The following year he was elected representative from Roxbury in the federal House, but served only one term. In 1835 he received the appointment of adjutant-general of Massachusetts, and held this position for eight years.
He was Massachusetts commissioner, or “Superintendent of Massachusetts” for the sale of the Seneca Indian lands in 1838-39.
In 1843 in the absence of the governor, he loaned the state arms to the government of Rhode Island for the purpose of suppressing the “Dorr Rebellion” then in progress, and was dismissed from office in consequence.
In 1847 he was elected mayor of Roxbury, and continued to hold that position until his death which occurred at Portland, Maine, July 29, 1851. In addition to his work on the Black Sea he was the author of: Defence of Gen. Henry Dearborn against the Attack of Gen. William Hull ( 1824); a translation from the French of Monography of the Genus Camellia (1838), by the Abbé Lorenzo Bcrlese; Letters on the Internal Improvements and Commerce of the West (1839); A Sketch of the Life of the Apostle Eliot (1850), and a large number of papers and addresses on various subjects, particularly horticulture, in which he was deeply interested. Many of his writings, left in manuscript at the time of his death, have never been published.
When Collector he “usually drove to the Custom House in a stately carriage drawn by a double span of horses with postillions, and his elegant turnout was the envy of all. ”
Personality
Dearborn's personality was attractive. Tall and of fine physique, the essence of dignity, at the same time he kept in touch with all classes of the community, and was extremely hospitable, maintaining open house at Roxbury.