Volume 032-3 - July 1978 (10 pages)

Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin Volume 32 No. 3 July 1978 1827 AARON AUGUSTUS SARGENT 1887 NEVADA COUNTY’S INTERNATIONAL CITIZEN By Christine Freeman At the present time the memory of Aaron Augustus Sargent, has faded into oblivion. His sarcophagus rests in Nevada City’s Pioneer Cemetery, as his only monument. He was Nevada County’s first elected member to the House of Representatives; first elected United States Senator and Nevada County’s only citizen to be appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States to the Court of Berlin by President Chester Arthur. It is the purpose of this article, to document A.A. Sargent’s achievements while a resident of Nevada County. The information for this article has been vmpliled from newspapers, Sargent samily documents and scrapbooks. The text of these quotations is presented diplomatically, that is, without changes. AARON AUGUSTUS SARGENT Early in the nineteenth century, Newburyport, Massachusetts, was a small town situated at the mouth of the Merrimac River. The economy was supported by ship-building, fishing, West Indian and European trading as well as distilleries and goldsmithing. The Embargo act of 1807 was a disaster for this wealthy town and it lost promise of being a leading city on the Atlantic Coast. It was in this environment that Aaron Augustus Sargent was born, September 28, 1827, the son of Aaron Peaslee and Elizabeth (Stanwood) Flanders Sargent. Though not a ‘‘Mayflower family’’, his ancestors were English Puritans of the strictest type, who settledin Amesbury, a village near Newburyport, living in that area for two hundred fifty years. In Revolutionary times, the Sargents took the patriotic site of the struggle; his grandfather Sargent served in the Continental Army. The NEWBURYPORT HERALD reported in 1887 the following: “We eee™member in boyhood, his climbing to ae top of the tower of the Harris street ehurch. At much risk he wrote his name by the lightning rod. It was the man in the boy; all his life long was a struggle to overcome and rise higher.” This act PHOTOGRAPH OF A DAQUERRO.TYPE OF A.A.SARGENT TAKEN ABOUT 1857, WHEN HE WAS THIRTY YEARS OLD. (SIGNED) GEORGE C. SARGENT. COURTESY CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY. was a symbol of the life of A.A. Sargent. From a youth of limited opportunities and education, he educated himself to become a man of broad culture. “When he was thirteen years old, his father gave him his freedom, as it was then called, and from that time he supported himself. He had little schooling; did not even go through the grammar school of the town, and never afterwards attended a school or college of any kind.” He was first apprenticed to a cobbler, then to a cabinetmaker, but became discontented with the work. He then apprenticed himself toa printer at the office of the COURIER,a daily paper published in Newburyport.” Years later, Sargent said this suited him because he wanted an education. As a printer, he read everything he set in type. Later in his life he defended this type of education from the floor of the Senate: ‘‘There is no profession, doctors, lawyers, or preachers more intelligent than printers as a class it requires skilled labor, experience and intelligence.’’ During the early years he taught himself French, and in the 1880’s studied and mastered the German Language. He became a journeyman printer, and in addition to his typesetting wrote a series of articles entitled “The Manners and Matter of Several Clergymen of This Town.” It was followed by several well written essays on various subjects. Sargent by this time was considered so promising that an offer was made to educate him for the ministry, but he declined the offer. He was then eighteen years of age. Ellen Clark, whom he later married, met Aaron when he was sixteen. They both taught in the Sunday School of the Methodist Church. They became engaged before he left Newburyport. He promised to return for her and pledged that he would devote his life to making her a good husband and their life a happy one. In later years she recalled that he had kept this promise. In 1847 Sargent went to Philadelphia and worked for a short time as a printer for his uncle Joseph Sargent. The following year we have an interesting account written by Sargent: “In the spring of 1848 I was living in Washington, partly as a printer and partly as a writer for newspapers. Among my acquaintances was the Hon. J. L. Slingerland, a Whig member of Congress from Albany, New York, and Ezra L. Stevens, a writer for an Ohio paper. We all boarded at the same house on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few yards from the Capitol Gate. Stevens and I were strong free-soilers, and Slingerland was anti-slavery in feeling. He was a rough, farmerlike man, of very limited education, but with considerable shrewd sense, wholly unfit for a member of Congress. Some time that spring a considerable number of slaves escaped from Washington down the Potomac in the schooner ‘Pearl’. They were overtaken by a steamer dispatched after them, and brought back to Washington. Serious riots occurred in 13.

Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin Volume 32 No. 3 July 1978 1827 AARON AUGUSTUS SARGENT 1887 NEVADA COUNTY’S INTERNATIONAL CITIZEN By Christine Freeman At the present time the memory of Aaron Augustus Sargent, has faded into oblivion. His sarcophagus rests in Nevada City’s Pioneer Cemetery, as his only monument. He was Nevada County’s first elected member to the House of Representatives; first elected United States Senator and Nevada County’s only citizen to be appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States to the Court of Berlin by President Chester Arthur. It is the purpose of this article, to document A.A. Sargent’s achievements while a resident of Nevada County. The information for this article has been vmpliled from newspapers, Sargent samily documents and scrapbooks. The text of these quotations is presented diplomatically, that is, without changes. AARON AUGUSTUS SARGENT Early in the nineteenth century, Newburyport, Massachusetts, was a small town situated at the mouth of the Merrimac River. The economy was supported by ship-building, fishing, West Indian and European trading as well as distilleries and goldsmithing. The Embargo act of 1807 was a disaster for this wealthy town and it lost promise of being a leading city on the Atlantic Coast. It was in this environment that Aaron Augustus Sargent was born, September 28, 1827, the son of Aaron Peaslee and Elizabeth (Stanwood) Flanders Sargent. Though not a ‘‘Mayflower family’’, his ancestors were English Puritans of the strictest type, who settledin Amesbury, a village near Newburyport, living in that area for two hundred fifty years. In Revolutionary times, the Sargents took the patriotic site of the struggle; his grandfather Sargent served in the Continental Army. The NEWBURYPORT HERALD reported in 1887 the following: “We eee™member in boyhood, his climbing to ae top of the tower of the Harris street ehurch. At much risk he wrote his name by the lightning rod. It was the man in the boy; all his life long was a struggle to overcome and rise higher.” This act PHOTOGRAPH OF A DAQUERRO.TYPE OF A.A.SARGENT TAKEN ABOUT 1857, WHEN HE WAS THIRTY YEARS OLD. (SIGNED) GEORGE C. SARGENT. COURTESY CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY. was a symbol of the life of A.A. Sargent. From a youth of limited opportunities and education, he educated himself to become a man of broad culture. “When he was thirteen years old, his father gave him his freedom, as it was then called, and from that time he

supported himself. He had little schooling; did not even go through the grammar school of the town, and never afterwards attended a school or college of any kind.” He was first apprenticed to a cobbler, then to a cabinetmaker, but became discontented with the work. He then apprenticed himself toa printer at the office of the COURIER,a daily paper published in Newburyport.” Years later, Sargent said this suited him because he wanted an education. As a printer, he read everything he set in type. Later in his life he defended this type of education from the floor of the Senate: ‘‘There is no profession, doctors, lawyers, or preachers more intelligent than printers as a class it requires skilled labor, experience and intelligence.’’ During the early years he taught himself French, and in the 1880’s studied and mastered the German Language. He became a journeyman printer, and in addition to his typesetting wrote a series of articles entitled “The Manners and Matter of Several Clergymen of This Town.” It was followed by several well written essays on various subjects. Sargent by this time was considered so promising that an offer was made to educate him for the ministry, but he declined the offer. He was then eighteen years of age. Ellen Clark, whom he later married, met Aaron when he was sixteen. They both taught in the Sunday School of the Methodist Church. They became engaged before he left Newburyport. He promised to return for her and pledged that he would devote his life to making her a good husband and their life a happy one. In later years she recalled that he had kept this promise. In 1847 Sargent went to Philadelphia and worked for a short time as a printer for his uncle Joseph Sargent. The following year we have an interesting account written by Sargent: “In the spring of 1848 I was living in Washington, partly as a printer and partly as a writer for newspapers. Among my acquaintances was the Hon. J. L. Slingerland, a Whig member of Congress from Albany, New York, and Ezra L. Stevens, a writer for an Ohio paper. We all boarded at the same house on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few yards from the Capitol Gate. Stevens and I were strong free-soilers, and Slingerland was anti-slavery in feeling. He was a rough, farmerlike man, of very limited education, but with considerable shrewd sense, wholly unfit for a member of Congress. Some time that spring a considerable number of slaves escaped from Washington down the Potomac in the schooner ‘Pearl’. They were overtaken by a steamer dispatched after them, and brought back to Washington. Serious riots occurred in 13.