Dated May 29th, 1876 from Sarah Ann Fessenden, wife of John M Fessenden.

Edwards Pierrepont (March 4, 1817 – March 6, 1892) was an American attorney, reformer, jurist, traveler, New York U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Minister to England, and orator. Having graduated from Yale in 1837, Pierrepont studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1840. During the American Civil War, Pierrepont was a Democrat, although he supported President Abraham Lincoln. Pierrepont initially supported President Andrew Johnson's conservative Reconstruction efforts having opposed the Radical Republicans. In both 1868 and 1872, Pierrepont supported Ulysses S. Grant for president. For his support, President Grant appointed Pierrepont United States Attorney in 1869. In 1871, Pierrepont gained the reputation as a solid reformer, having joined New York's Committee of Seventy that shut down Boss Tweed's corrupt Tammany Hall. In 1872, Pierrepont modified his views on Reconstruction and stated that African American freedman's rights needed to be protected.

In April 1875, Pierrepont was appointed U.S. Attorney General by President Grant, who, having teamed up with Secretary of Treasury Benjamin Bristow, vigorously prosecuted the notorious Whiskey Ring, a national tax evasion swindle that involved whiskey distillers, brokers, and government officials, including President Grant's private secretary, Orville E. Babcock. Upon his appointment, Pierrepont quickly cleaned up corruption in Southern U.S. districts. Pierrepont had continued former Attorney General George H. Williams moratorium on prosecuting the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had been previously prosecuted by President Grant's Attorneys General Amos T. Akerman and Williams from 1871 to 1873, prosecuting civil rights violations of whites against African Americans. Pierrepont ruled that a naturalized Prussian immigrant's son born in the U.S. was not obligated to serve in the Prussian military as an adult. In his ruling of the Chorpenning Claim, Pierrepont cited the Supreme Court case Gorden v United States, having agreed that the Postmaster General, as well as the Secretary of War, served as ministers rather than legally binding arbitrators for a monetary claim by a private citizen. After serving as Attorney General, Pierrepont was appointed Minister to Great Britain by President Grant serving from 1876 to 1877. After many visits to France, Pierrepont became an advocate for bimetalism. Having returned from England, Pierrepont resumed his law practice until his death in 1892.

John Milton Fessenden (1804—1883) was a prominent American civil engineer in the first half of the 19th century.


John Milton Fessenden was born in Warren, Rhode Island, December 23, 1802, and died in Washington, D.C., on February 8, 1883, to John Fessenden (born 1770) and Abigail Miller Child (born 1783). His grandfather, also John Fessenden, was a member of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress during the American revolution and then after the successful introduction of a state constitution, state senator for seven years after the war.[3] Fessenden was appointed to the United States Military Academy and graduated in 1824. In his second year at the academy a remarkable event occurred in his life; the cadet corps marched from West Point to ex-president John Adams' home in Peacefield, near Boston in the summer of 1821 to honor the ailing Adams.[4][page needed]

Upon graduation, Fessenden was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Artillery serving first as a topography engineer on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (1824‑26) and then at the Kanawha, James, and Roanoke Rivers in 1827, and then on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 1827‑28. While Fessenden went to Europe for the 1828‑29 period, he spent the remainder of his enlistment in garrison at West Point, N.Y., 1829, and then at Fort Jay, N.Y., until he resigned his commission in 1831.

While Fessenden was chief engineer of the Boston and Worcester Railroad for the 1831‑36 period, later in that same time, he was engineer of record for the initial survey of the Western Railroad corporation (Mass.). Later he consulted with the Boston and Newburyport Railroad, Mass., in 1836‑42; and then the Salisbury and Portsmouth Railroad, N.H., in 1839‑43.

Fessenden's first wife was Mary Pierce Bumstead, daughter of John and Frances Gore Bumstead of Boston, and they married on May 21, 1834, and produced several children although she died in 1856. Fessenden's second wife was Sarah Ann Murphy, daughter of Dr Robert Murphy of Westmoreland Virginia, on June 25, 1868.