No. 7214 Micah Dyer, Jr.
Men of Progress. Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Leaders in Business and Professional Life in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Boston, 1894), 238.
Micah Dyer, Jr., member of the Suffolk bar, is a native of Boston, born September 27, 1829, son of Micah and Sally (Holbrook) Dyer. He is of English descent. He was educated in the Eliot School in Boston, where he received the Franklin medal, at Wilbraham Academy and Tilton Seminary, and graduated from the Harvard Law School in 185o. He entered the law office of Stephen G. Nash, judge of the Superior Court of Suffolk County, and soon after was admitted to the bar, and began practice. He early won a large clientage. In 1861 he was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the United States. He has had the management or been executor and trustee of a large number of estates, and the integrity of his administration has gained him high esteem. He was elected from Boston to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1854, and served two terms (1855 and 1856), the youngest member of the body. He was for several years a member- of the Boston School Board and chairman of the Eliot School committee. During the latter service he was hastily summoned one morning to quell a disturbance in the school occasioned by the refusal of four hundred Catholic boys to obey the rule which required the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and the Decalogue. Not considering what church they might represent, but taking his stand on the question, ” Is it a rule, and have they refused to obey it ?” and finding the charge true, he promptly ex-pelled the whole four hundred. He left the decision as to the injustice of the law or rule to those who had the power to annul it ; yet he was severely criticised, and was made to suffer for this performance of his duty. The parents of the children, however, soon understood the situation ; and within two weeks almost every boy had applied for readmission, promised to obey the rules, and had been received. Mr. Dyer was the first president of the Female Medical College in Boston (established in 1855). ‘That was in the days when the medical faculty did not approve of ” women doctors,” and explains why the di-plomas of the early graduates bore the signature of an I.L.B. instead of an M. I). He is a member of the Boston Women’s Charity Club, and one of the advisory board of the organization in the care of the Gifford fund donation to its hospital. Other organizations to which he belongs are the American Bible Society, of which he is a life member, the Massachusetts Temperance Alliance, the New England Conference Missionary Society, the Bostonian Society, Post 68 of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Eliot School Association (president), and the Old School Boys’ Association (president); and he was a member of the old Mercantile Library Association of Boston from 1849. He has been a Free Mason for forty years, now belonging to the Boston Commandery, and has taken thirty-two degrees. He was also for many years an Odd Fellow in good standing. In politics he is a liberal Republican. He has done much benevolent work in a quiet way, and unostentatiously has expended thousands of dollars in rendering life easier to the poor, the sick, and the unfortunate. Mr. Dyer was married in May, 185.1, to Miss Julia A. Knowlton, of Manchester, N.H. They have had two sons and one daughter. The daughter died in infancy. The sons are both residents of Boston : Dr. Willard K. Dyer, of Boylston Street, and Walter R. Dyer, who is associated with his father in business.
The following is from From American Series of Popular Biographies. Massachusetts Edition. This Volume Contains Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Boston: Graves & Steinbarger, 1891.
Micah Dyer, Jr., formerly a well-known Boston lawyer and one of the most prominent residents of the Dorchester District, was born on North Street, Boston, September 27, 1829, son of Micah and Sally (Holbrook) Dyer. He was a representative of an old and highly reputable Barnstable County family, founded by Dr. William Dyer, an Englishman, who arrived on Cape Cod toward the latter part of the seventeenth century. Dr. William Dyer was married at Barnstable to Mary Taylor in 1686, and subsequently moved to Truro, Mass., He died July 27, 1738, aged about eighty-five years; and his wife died on October 8 of the same year, aged about eighty years. They were the parents of eight children. Many of their descendants have attained distinction in the different walks in life. Among them may be named Captain Nehemiah M. Dyer, United States Navy, who commanded the protected cruiser “Baltimore” in the battle of Manila Bay.
When a young man, Micah Dyer, Sr., removed from Wellfleet, Mass., to Boston, where he engaged in mercantile business and became a successful hardware merchant. He lived to be eighty-seven years old. His wife, Sally, who also was a native of Wellfleet, daughter of Joseph Holbrook, died at the age of eighty-four. They were the parents of eleven children.
At the age of seven years Micah Dyer, Jr., began his attendance at a primary school on Hanover Street taught by a Miss Chamberlain. He was a Franklin-medal scholar at the Eliot School, where he was graduated in 1842. He next attended for two years the Wilbraham (Mass.) Academy, then in charge of Masters Raymond and Twombly, after which he spent a year at the Northfield (N.H.) Academy, and was for some time under the private tutorage of Dr. E.O. Phinney in Boston. Prevented by impaired health from pursuing a college course, he entered the Harvard Law School at the age of seventeen and was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Laws three years later. He subsequently continued his legal studies in the office of the Hon. S.G. Nash, Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Superior court. When twenty-one years old, he opened an office in a building occupying the present site of Young’s Hotel; and his professional career advanced rapidly upon lines well calculated to insure the prominence which he ultimately attained in the courts and legal circles of the Commonwealth. He also practised quite extensively in the United States courts. In addition to his law business he was actively interested in various financial enterprises of importance, and for many years was a conspicuous figure in the business circles of Boston. His progressive tendencies were frequently the incentive to active measures for the Public good. Anticipating the ultimate construction of Columbia Road some years prior to the commencement of work upon that splendid thoroughfare, he, at considerable personal expense, set back the ancient trees upon the street line of his fine estate at Upham’s Corner in order to facilitate the improvement. Kind-hearted and benevolent, he was very helpful to the young; and there are many men of position in Boston to-day who owe their start in life to Mr. Dyer.
From 1853 to 1856 he was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, serving on the Judiciary Committee and as chairman of the Committee on Probate and Chancery. As a member of the Boston School Board during the fifties, he created wide-spread comment and considerable antagonism by the persistent manner in which he enforced at the Eliot School the rule requiring the reciting the Lord’s Prayer by the pupils; and, in spite of the reception of numerous letters threatening him with personal violence, he fearlessly adhered to his position, although his stand in the matter caused his defeat for a seat in the State Senate by a small margin. He was identified with several charitable organizations, and a member of various military, social, and fraternal bodies, including the Masonic order up to the thirty-second degree, the Odd Fellows, the Bostonian Society, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and the Boston Club. He was an associate member of Benjamin Stone Post, No. 68, G.A.R., of Dorchester, and for some time chairman of the Eliot and Boston School Boys’ Associations. His religious affiliations were formerly with the Methodist Episcopal church, of which he was a trustee; but, later in life embracing the Unitarian faith, he withdrew from that denomination, and joined the congregation of the Church of the Unity. Micah Dyer, Jr., died November, 1898.
On May 1, 1851, Mr. Dyer was united in marriage with Miss Julia Knowlton, a native of Deerfield, N.H., daughter of Joseph and Susan (Dearborn) Knowlton.
The immigrant progenitor of the Knowlton family of New England, to which Mrs. Dyer’s father belonged, was Captain William Knowlton, who died on the voyage from London to Nova Scotia, and whose sons a few years later settled at Ipswich, the earliest to arrive there, it is said, being John in 1639.
Through her maternal grandfather, Nathaniel Dearborn, who married Comfort Palmer, of Haverhill, N.H., Mrs. Dyer is descended from Godfrey Dearborn, who came from England and was one of the earliest settlers of Exeter, N.H., in 1639, later removing to Hampton, N.H. Mrs. Dyer is of Revolutionary ancestry on both sides, her great-grandfather, Edward Dearborn, and her grandfather, Thomas Knowlton, having both served, it is said, at Bunker Hill and at Dorchester Heights. In the revolutionary Rolls of New Hampshire, Volume II., Edward Dearborn is named as one of the enlisted soldiers in the militia now raising (September 7, 1777) to join General Stark at Bennington; also on the pay-roll of Captain Nathan Sanborn’s company, Colonel Evans’s regiment, which marched, September, 1777, from New Hampshire to re-enforce the Northern Continental army at Saratoga. Edward Dearborn married Susanna Brown, whom he left when he entered the Continental army, to carry on the farm and care for three small children, the nearest neighbor being ten miles away. Susanna Brown was a daughter of Nehemiah and Amy (Longfellow) Brown, of Kensington, N.H., and grand-daughter of Nathan Longfellow. The last-named ancestor of Mrs. Dyer was probably the Nathan born in 1690, son of William and Anne (Sewall) Longfellow, and brother to Stephen, born in 1681, from whom the poet Longfellow was descended. Joseph Knowlton, Mrs. Dyer’s father, participated in the war of 1812-15; and Joseph H. Knowlton, her brother, served in the federal army from the commencement to the close of the Civil War.
In club work, a marked and ameliorating feature of the times, and in noble philanthropic labors, Mrs. Dyer, like her distinguished contemporaries, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, takes a conspicuous part, being the leading spirit in no less than twenty-two associations, among them the famous Woman’s Charity Club and Hospital and the Wintergreen Club of Boston, of both of which she is the founder and has been president from their organization. She is president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Upham’s Corner, a life member of the Ladies’ Aid Association of the Soldiers’ Home, and for ten years its president, and is on the board of managers of the Massachusetts Home for Intemperate Women. All movements having as the keynote of their existence charity, philanthropy, social intercourse, and the moral and mental elevation of society, are certain to receive her hearty support and valuable co-operation.
Mrs. Dyer has two sons: Willard Dyer, M.D., born April 21, 1852, a graduate of Harvard University, and a well-known Boston physician and Walter R. Dyer, born April 20, 1855, who was formerly engaged in the lumber business in one of the western States, and is now a real estate dealer in Boston. A daughter, Mabel, born in 1857, died in infancy.
The following is from Arthur Wellington Brayley. Schools and Schoolboys of Old Boston. (Boston, 1894).
Micah Dyer, Jr..
The son of Micah and Sally (Jenkins) Dyer, was horn in Richmond street, Boston, September 29, 1829. His father came to Boston from Wellfleet, Mass., when a young man and carried on a hardware business, dying in Boston at the age of eighty-seven. His mother. also a native of Wellfleet was a daughter of Joseph Holbrook and died at the age of eighty-four. Micah is the eldest son of a family of eleven, four brothers being dead, and two sisters living.
When seven years of age he attended a primary school in Hanover Street kept by Miss Chamberlain, and the following year went to the Eliot School, where he was taught by Masters Conant, Kent, Tower, and Sherwin, and by Misses Carter and Skinner assistants. From this school he graduated in 1842, receiving a Franklin Medal. He then spent two years at Wilbraham (Mass.) Academy, under the tuition of Masters Raymond and Twombly, followed by one year at Northfield (Mass.) Academy, after which he prepared for college under the private tuition of Dr. E. 0. Phinney of Boston. About this time a period of sickness disturbed his plans, and he abandoned his idea of a college course, and entered the Harvard Law School at the age of seventeen, graduating and receiving the degree of L.L.B., four years later. During this time he was also connected with the office of Hon. S. G. Nashh, one of the justices of the Superior Coon of Massachusetts.
Mr. Dyer began his professional life at the age of twenty-one, in an Mike in the building now occupied as an annex to Young’s Hotel, being the commencement of a higher successful practice which has made Mr. Dyer’s name familiar in all the courts and law circles of Boston.
In 1855-56 he was one of the forty-four Boston representatives in the General Court, serving as chairman of the committee of probate and chancery, also being’ a member of the judiciary committee. About this time, as a member of the school committee, be attained a wide celebrity from the fearless manner in which he enforced in the Eliot School the rule of the school committee, relative to reading the Bible and ten commandments. Mr. Dyer at this time received many letters threatening personal injury, but they did not change him in the stand he had taken, and like most of such threats, proved to he empty ones. His position upon this subject was used against him the following year, when he was a candidate for State senator, but even here his opponent were able to defeat him only by a handful of thirty votes.
Mr. Dyer has been identified with many charitable and social associations and with many financial enterprises. He is a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, the Odd Fellows, the Bostonian Society, and is chairman of the Eliot and Boston School Boys’ Associations. He belongs to the Boston Club, is a Mason of the Thirty-second degree, and has been admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States. He was formerly a trustee of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but has changed his faith to the liberal Unitarian worship of the Church of the Unity.
Well known as is Mr. Dyer, the name of Mrs. Micah Dyer, Jr., is perhaps as familiar to the public as his own. This lady, formerly Miss Julia Knowlton, is the recognized leader of Boston society, and is the leading spirit of twenty-eight clubs and associations. Whatever organization stands for charity, philanthropy, or for social intercourse which is mentally and morally elevating among its active and influential members will be found her name.
Mr. and Mrs. Deer have two sons—Willard, a physician, and Walter R., who deals in real-estate, being located in the same offices with his father at the Exchange building.
Their home is in Dorchester.
July 6, 1907 [Boston Evening Transcript?]
Mrs. Dyer’s Funeral
Pilgrim Church at Upham’s Corner Crowded with Large Number of Well-Known Persons–Services Conducted by Revs. Allbright, De Normandie and Horton
Seldom has a larger and more distinguished company gathered within the borders of Dorchester than last Saturday afternoon, when Pilgrim Church, Upham’s Corner, was crowdded with the many friends of Mrs. Micah Dyer, Jr., who gathered to pay a final tribute of respect to a woman who for many hears has shone forth as one of the leaders of her sex in this country, in matters educational and philanthropic.
Her life, which closed suddenly last week, ahs been an active one in behalf of humanity and her passing has been the cause of much sorrow not only in this City, but over the entire country, where she was well known and loved. The church in which the funeral services were held, is situated almost directly opposite her home on Columbia road, which is a large old-fashioned structure with plenty of green lawn in front of it and many shade trees about it.
Mrs. Dyer has been so well known because of her long humanitiarian work and her affiliation with so many women’s organizations that she had endeared herself to a large proportion of the members of these clubs, and they were well represented. The large attendance in itself was an honor to her memory. At the church, members of the Woman’s Charity Club, of which for twenty years Mrs. Dyer had been president, acted as ushers under the leadership of Mrs. R. D. Cushing, herself formerly an office of the club for twelve or more years, serving as its corresponding secretary. People found quantities of beautiful flowers massed within the chancel of the Church and about the pulpit, mute evidences of the general love and respect felt for Mrs. Dyer. These silent tributes represented many clubs, including the Woman’s Charity club, and also its individual members, as well as many family friends and relatives.
The service was conducted by the pastor of the church, Rev. William H. Allbright, who read from the scriptures, and whose ministrations were shared by Rev. James De Normandie, minister of the First Religious society, of Roxbury, long a friend of Mrs. Dyer, and Rev. Edward A. Horton, who stood in a like relation to her in his friendship, and who has been “adopted” by the Charity club as its honored member and only “son.” He frequently has been present at the club’s formal functions and often has been heard as a speaker on these occasions. Saturday it fell to him to speak in tribute to the sterling worth and strength of character of his friend, and of her place in the community, so long well and capably filled in the pursuit of good works, and he recalled her uplifting help always to those associated with her in this humanitiarian or charitable work. Much that found a deep echo in the hearts of everyone present who had known Mrs. Dyer well was said by Rev. Mr. Horton, whose hearers were deeply affected. Rev. Dr. De Normandie’s part in the serviced included the prayers. The Apolllo Quartet, Walter E. Paine and E.E. Holden, tenors; Frank A. Henderson, baritone; and George E. McGowan, bass, sang several selections which had been dear to Mrs. Dyer’s heart in her love of music. The selections were “One Sweetly Solemn Thought,” “Crossing the Bar,” the musical setting of Tennyson’s verses; “Eternal Goodness,” Whittier’s verses, and “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
The burial, which was private, took place at Mount Auburn cemetery and the honorary pall bearers were chosen from the staff of surgeons at the Woman’s Charity club hospital in Roxbury maintained by the club, and from the advisory board of directors of its interests.
Julia (Knowlton) Dyer was born in Deerfield, N.H., in 1829. Her parents were Joseph Knowlton and Susan Dearborn. Her great-grandfather, Nathaniel Dearborn, was a soldier of the French war, and fought at Bunker Hill, as did her grandfather, Thomas Knowlton. Her father served in the war of 1812 and her brother was wounded at the battle of James Island in the Civil War. She was educated in Concord, partly at a private school, and later attended the New Hampshire institute, where she was graduated at 18 with high honors. Then she taught for year in the high school at Manchester, her specialties being belles-lettres, French and mathematics. Her marriage to Mr. Dyer took place in May, 1851, and since then this daughter of New Hampshire has been a loyal daughter of Massachusetts, where she has lived ever since her marriage. Her husband’s death about ten years ago greatly saddened Mrs. Dyer.
Her first public work was on the board of management of the Dedham Home for Discharged Female prisoners, to which she was appointed in 1864, and in which one month of every year was her charge, as visitor. She had since assumed exacting responsibilities in from twenty to thirty different associations. Of these one of the most important is the Ladies’ Aid Association, tributary to the Soldiers’ Home at Chelsea. Mrs. Dyer was one of those summoned to attend the preliminary meeting in 1861 to organize this society. She became corresponding secretary, and afterwards president, holding the position for a number of years. She resigned the higher office in 1892, yet continued her interest in the work of the society. During her years of activity as an officer the society accomplished much good work in behalf of veterans of the Civil war.
Some of the other organizations which are indebted to Mrs. Dyer for her activity or oversight are the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Bostonian Society, the Home for Aged Couples, the Moral Educational Society, the National Prison Association, the Daughters of New Hampshire, the Beneficent Society for the University Education of Women, the Helping Hand Society, the Dorchester Woman’s Club, the Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Book Review Club of Dorchester, the Castilian Club, and the Home for Intemperate Women at Brookline. At the head of a great fair for the benefit of the latter institution in 1888 she was greatly the means of raising, $13,000. The soldiers’ carnival, under her direction in the fifties, cleared neary $6000, and a domestic kettledrum in her own house netted $4000 for the Soldiers’ Home. The Boston Educational and Industrial Union in 1885 asked her to take charge of an entertainment for it benefit, and she arranged a Dickens carnival which brought it $7000. Her ladies’ aid table at the Ladies’ Carnival in 1887 cleared more than $5000, all evidence of her leadership in any good cause.
So great was Mrs. Dyer’s ability in this direction that the Woman’s Charity club was formed under her presidency to be an agency for helping any good work which might demand auxiliary aid. Mrs. Dyer was soon led to concentrate her energies upon the idea of a free hospital for respectable women without means, in need of important surgical operations. Having discovered a good situation for the institution, she called [undreadable] and brought about [unreadable] the purchase of the house No. 28 Chestnut Park to start a hospital. Years later she led the movement to build a larger hospital building on Parker Hill, Roxbury, the present hospital maintained by the Woman’s Charity Club. Mrs. Dyer seldom had missed attending the regular monthly business meeting of the Club and its other gatherings of a more social nature and frequently her hospitable home in Dorchester has been opened to its members.
Undoubtedly while keenly interested in various lines of beneficent and uplifting work, Mrs. Dyer has in later years held dearest to her heart and energies the work and purposes of the Charity Club. She had never been permitted to drop the reins of the office of president. But recently had been more of an interested observer than active presiding officer, the vice-president Mrs. Esther Boland, relieving her of the [undreadable] of the chair.
[Unreadable] It is named for the real wintergreen, which is green and glossy under the snow, long retaining its youthful freshness. Mrs. Julia ward Howe, the late Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods, Mrs. Walton and Mrs. Charles G. Ames have been among its members. Another little society in which Mrs. Dyer belonged is called “The Take Heed,” from the text “Take heed that ye speak not evil one of another.”
Mrs. Dyer is survived by her son Walter R. Dyer, with whom and his wife she made her home at 555 Columbia road; and by an elder son, Dr. Willard K. Dyer, of this city. She also leaves a sister, Mrs. Susan D. Garland, wife of Dr. Garland, of Gloucester. The house where Mrs. Dyer has lived, surrounded by trees and well-ordered grounds, is roomy and old-fashioned, with spacious rooms. She had her own suite of rooms on the second floor—a library, with a business-desk constantly used, a boudoir and bed room, furnished with heirlooms, and usually fragrant with flowers. Mrs. Dyer had written some beautiful poetry and her lectures have been heard in many places. It has been said of her, “Of all the beautiful works which Mrs. Dyer has accomplished, the note of her character is humility. Its manifestation is love.”