her nephew, William M. Evarts, my father's house was as another
home in his boyhood. He was the leading advocate of his time.
Her son, E. R. Hoar, was Attorney General of the United
States. And her husband was in his day one of the foremost
advocates of Massachusetts. So, with a little alteration,
the Greek epitaph of the woman who was the daughter, wife,
sister and mother of princes, might apply to her, if, as I like
to think, a first-rate American lawyer is entitled to as much
respect as a petty Greek prince.

CHAPTER III
SAMUEL HOAR

I was born in Concord August 29, 1826. My grandfather, two
great-grandfathers, and three of my father's uncles were at
Concord Bridge in the Lincoln Company, of which my grandfather,
Samuel Hoar, whom I well remember, was lieutenant, on the
19th of April, 1775. The deposition of my great-grandfather,
John Hoar, with a few others, relating to the events of that
day, was taken by the patriots and sent to England by a fast-
sailing ship, which reached London before the official news
of the battle at Concord came from the British commander.
John had previously been a soldier in the old French War and
was a prisoner among the Indians for three months. His life
was not a very conspicuous one. He had been a Selectman of
Lexington, dwelling in the part of the town afterward incorporated
with Lincoln. There is in existence a document manumitting
his slave, which, I am happy to say, is the only existing
evidence that any ancestor of mine ever owned one.

My father's grandfather, on the mother's side, was Colonel
Abijah Peirce, of Lincoln. He was prominent in Middlesex
County from a time preceding the Revolutionary War down to
his death. He was one of the Committee of the Town who had
charge of corresponding with other towns and with the Committee
of Safety in Boston. The day before the battle at Concord
Bridge, he had been chosen Colonel of a regiment of Minute
Men. But he had not got his commission, taken the oath, or
got his equipments. So he went into the battle as a private
in the company in which his son-in-law was lieutenant, armed
with nothing but a cane. After the first volley was exchanged
he crossed the bridge and took the cartridge-box and musket
of one of the two British soldiers who were killed, which
he used during the day. The gun was preserved for a long
time in his family, and came to my grandfather, after his
death. It was the first trophy of the Revolut