Voyages to the east coast of America, in the XVI century
(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format. Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship.
A History of the Law, the Courts, and the Lawyers of Maine, from Its First Colonization to the Early Part of the Present Century
(
This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
(
This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Guide Book for Portland and Vicinity: To Which Is Appended a Summary History of Portland
(
This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
William Willis was an American lawyer, historian and politician.
Background
William Willis was born on August 31, 1794, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, the second son of Benjamin Willis, Sr. and Mary McKinstry. His father, one of the leading merchant shipowners of the Haverhill-Newburyport district, removed with his family to Portland in 1803.
Education
William went first to Phillips Exeter Academy and then was graduated from Harvard College in 1813. He returned to Portland and began reading law in the office of Prentiss Mellen. When the whole Willis family removed to Boston in 1815, he continued his law studies there under Peter O. Thacher.
Career
He was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1817. For a year or two he dallied with the idea of a commercial career, but in 1819 he returned to Portland to enter a partnership with Prentiss Mellen, but this relationship was dissolved the next year, when Mellen became chief justice of the new state.
In 1835 Willis took, as a younger partner, William Pitt Fessenden, and this association lasted for almost twenty years. Although allied with distinguished members of the bench and bar in Maine, Willis' interest in the law was secondary to his other concerns. He was an office, not a court, lawyer and always resented the drudgery of the legal profession. For fifty years he filled the role of a "substantial citizen" of Portland. Although he had no desire for political office he was at one time or another senator in the state legislature, mayor of Portland, presidential elector, bank commissioner, and chairman of the state board of railroad commissioners. His considerable business interests included a directorship and vice-presidency in a Portland bank and the presidency of the Maine Central Railroad. He was an early advocate of the advantages of the railroad for Portland and stimulated her efforts to obtain rail connections with Canada and the West. A mainstay of the Unitarian Church, he was still a conservative in religious matters and a humanitarian busy in innumerable causes ranging from the wood fund for poor widows to the recreation of the city library after the great fire of 1866.
His diaries reveal his love and care for his gardens of fine roses and his cold-house grapery. For the newspapers he wrote sketches of old houses, articles on the weather, past and present, detailed obituaries of rich and poor, and episodic accounts of Maine history. Successively secretary, treasurer, and finally president of the Maine Historical Society he was also the editor of the first six volumes of its Collections (1831 - 1859), and all but the third volume of these contained at least one article from his pen. His chief works were The History of Portland, issued in two volumes (1831 - 1833 and 2nd ed. 1865), and A History of the Law, the Courts, and the Lawyers of Maine (1863). Only the early adoption of systematic methods of investigation and a retentive memory enabled him to produce this historical flood. He died on February 17, 1870, in Portland, Maine, on a bed that had been set up in his library.