ABBOTT, Samuel Appletox Browne, president of the Trustees of the PubHc Library of the City of Boston, was born in Lowell, March 6, 1846, son of Josiah Gardner and Caroline (Livermore) Abbott.
On both sides he is of early New England ancestry. He is a descendant in the eighth generation of George Abbott, an English Puritan, who came from Yorkshire in 1640, and was one of the settlers of Andover in 1643; and, through his paternal grandmother, of the Fletchers, also English Puritans, who came from Devonshire and settled in Concord, and in 1653 in Chelmsford. Both of his paternal great-grandfathers were in the battle of Bunker Hill, and held commissions in the Continental army. On the maternal side he descends from John Livermore, who came from England in 1634, settled first in Watertown, thirty years later removed to Connecticut, and was one of the signers of the fundamental agreement of the colony of New Haven, and, returning to Watertown, died there in 1685. His maternal great-grandfather, Samuel Livermore, was attorney-general for the province of New Hampshire, after the Revolution chief justice of the State (appointed in 1782), a member of the convocation for the adoption of the Federal Constitution, a representative in the first Congress, and later a senator and president of the Senate pro tan. for nine years ; and his maternal grandfather, Edward St. Loe Livermore, was United States district attorney (appointed by Washington), a justice of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire (appointed in 1798), and a member of Congress for three terms. His father, Judge Josiah G. Abbott, one of the foremost members of the Massachusetts bar, served in the General Court, was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1853, justice of the Superior Court for the county of Suffolk from 1855 to 1858, when he resigned (and two years later declined a place on the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court), a representative in Congress in 1876-77, and a member of the Electoral Commission of 1877, the leader of the minority of that commission, preparing the address of the minority to the people of the United States, which, though approved, was not issued.
Samuel A. B. Abbott was educated in the public schools and at Harvard. His early education was acquired in the Lowell public schools and in the Boston Latin School ; and he was fitted for college by Professor Lane, of Harvard. He entered Harvard as a sophomore, and graduated in 1866, in 1869 receiving the degree of A.M. In college he was president of the Hasty Pudding Club and of the Med. Fac, also a member of the Porcellian Club, the D. K. E. and the A. D. clubs; and he rowed in the university crews in 1864. After graduating he studied law in the office of his father, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1868. Subsequently, in 1876, he was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. He has practised in Boston since his admission to the bar, and also in the United States courts, circuit, district, and supreme. He has twice conducted successfully contested election cases before Congress, — that of Josiah G. Abbott in 1867 and that of Benjamin Dean against the present Chief Justice Field in 1878. He is president of the Hill Manufacturing Company of Lewiston, Me., succeeding his father in that position, and a director of the Atlantic Cotton Mills at Lawrence, of the Franklin Company of Lewiston, of the Union Water Power Company of Lewiston, of which his father was the principal promoter, and of the Peterborough Railroad. His public service, with the exception of a term on the Board of License Commissioners in Boston in 1877, has been as a trustee of the Boston Public Library, which position he has held since 1879, president of the board since May, 1888. For several years he was acting librarian of the library. He is identified with the construction and embellishment of the new Public Library Building on Copley Square, the whole control of the erection of this monumental edifice having been placed, at the beginning of the work in 1887, in the hands of the trustees. In politics Mr. Abbott is a Democrat. In 1883, when General Butler was nominated by the Democratic party the second time for governor of the State, he was nominated for lieutenant governor ; but he declined to run on the same ticket with Butler. In 1862 he was a member of the New England Guards. He is a member of the Suffolk Bar Association, of the Somerset, St. Botolph, and Athletic clubs of Boston, and of the Century, University, and Players' clubs of New York.
He was married first, April 21, 1869, to Miss Mary Goddard, of Boston, of which union there were no children; and second, October 15, 1873, to Miss Abby Frances Woods, of Providence. R.I. They have four children : Helen Francis, Madeleine Livermore, Ann Francis and Caroline Livermore Abbott.
Mr. Abbott's country residence is at Wellesley Hills, and his town house on the Back Bay, Boston.
