�The
RANITE n
���NTHLY.
��A NEW HAMPSHIRE MAGAZINE.
IDevoted to Literature, 'Biography, History, and State Progress.
��Vol. X.
��NOVEMBER, 1887,
��No. II.
��HON. WILLIAM DENNIS WEEKS. By J. S. Brackett.
��In a periodical like the Granite Monthly, devoted to the interests of a state and to the perpetuation of the memories of good men and noble deeds, it is well that a memorial trib- ute be paid to one who did not create admiration in the senate or on the fo- rum, or dazzle by wonderful genins, but by a life of unselfish usefulness and steadfast devotion to duty achiev- ed a name more dear and more en- during than wealth, honors, or power
��can give.
��The state of New Hampshire has been the birthplace of a large number of men whose reputation in the higher walks of life give it a character and fame abroad ; aud we who breathe the same air they breathed, and look up to the same rugged hills that gave them strength and inspiration, feel a natural pride in them and in their fame.
The Weekses were of purely Eng- lish origin. I have not data at hand
��to trace the ancestry of the present family very far back : suflfice it to say, then, that a John Weeks settled at " Strawberry Bank " as early as 1G36. One of ills descendants was Dr. John Weeks, a prominent pliysician of Portsmouth, who married a daughter of Dr. Joshua Wingate, some time of Salem. There were ten children born to them — four sons and six daugh- ters. Joshua Wingate AVeeks. the eldest, was rector of St. Michael's church. Marblehead, Mass., and be- ing a royalist, at the commencement of the Revolution went to Annapolis, N. S., where he died. John, the sec- ond son, was born in Greenland, Feb. 29, 1749, and married Deborah Brackett Dec. 27, 1770. The mar- riage ceremony was performed by the Rev. Dr. McClintock. Their children were Martha, who married in Lancas- ter, P^dward Spaulding, who lived to the advanced age of ninety- nine years, Deborah, Elizabeth, John
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