John Martin: Expert Observer

Description

John Martin (1823-1904), a Bangor accountant and shopkeeper, drew an illustration of Gorham L. Boynton, a Bangor lumber merchant, whom he described as "among a class of risky and reckless men."

Martin, who wrote and illustrated five volumes of recollections about his life and events in the Bangor area and commentaries on contemporary topics, wrote that Boynton "appears as I have given him very large not very tall wears usually a low crowned straw hat drab or yellow pants & vest sometimes a black coat & sometimes dark or brown most generally cut frock coat and as a rule smokes a cigar while in the streets."

He also wrote, "Mr Boynton is a man of his word about his business and has a handsome property has a fine modern shaped house on Ohio st and grounds to correspond he is a man who always bows his head to every body he knows whether he is democrat or republican and why or how he is so tangled up in the principles of reducing our enterprising yankees to a serfdom is more than any man can solve. he is determined, Square outright in the belief that southern principles must & shall rule ..."

The illustration is on page 24 of his "Scrap Book no 3," which he began in 1867.

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