Oak family register, 1906

PDF page 76, printed page 68

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68
HENRY LEBBEUS OAK
more marked
in Henry than
in his
father, causing him
to
lose,
or miss, many opportunities to make valuable acquaintances and
lasting
friends,
for
it
is
to be noted
that despite
his
feeling to
the
contrary,
to be
once
his
friend was
to remain
his
friend.
Always
pleasant
and
courteous
to
those whom
his
duties
or
chance threw in his way, he never made the slightest exertion to
cultivate or extend acquaintanceship.
When he could not escape
a social function, he became the
life of
it.
Henry's
mother,
Sarah
Elizabeth
(Merriam)
was
a
quiet,
thoughtful, devout woman, loved by all who knew her, and was as
near perfection as mortals attain.
Though
slight of form and
frail of health, yet she was
all a
mother could be to her growing family.
She died
in
t886.
Her
line
of recorded
ancestors, compiled by her
son
largely from
printed records, runs back much farther than on the father's side.
Joseph Merriam, the immigrant of 1638, to Concord, Mass., was
a son
of William Miriam and Sara Burges, of Hadlow, Kent,
England, and her line included both Abram and Ezra Merriam,
father and son, who served
in the War of the Revolution.
Our
mother was also a great grand-daughter, on her father's side, of
Oliver Elliot, of Mason, N. H., a Revolutionary soldier, and also
on her mother's side (Sally Hill-Merriam), a descendant of John
Bo5nnton, immigrant from England
in
1638, whose
wife, Ellen
Pell, was of a long English pedigree.
Henry's literary bent seems
to have come largely from his mother's side of the family.
Our
mother's grandfather, Ebenezer Hill, was a Congregational min-
ister of Mason, N. H., and mother received a legacy of a few hun-
dred dollars from an uncle, John Boynton Hill.
This money she
devoted to Henry's education, he being her
first born and early
showing considerable mental
ability,
in
the fond hope and
ex-
pressed wish that he too should become a minister of the gospel.
He sincerely desired to carry out her ambition for him, but his
peculiar temperament and mental mechanism made
it impossible,
and the fact clouded both their lives.
As a lad at school Henry was bright and quick to learn and
generally knew his lessons, though seldom caught studying.
He
was of slender build, with light curly hair and bright ways that
made him a favorite with the teachers and a leader with the boys.
L. O. Merriam, of Minneapolis, Minn., his cousin, school-mate
and afterwards
his
college
class and room-mate, writes thus of
his early school days.

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