Live Free and Draw

Tragedies, travels, & teenage failures of an influential Granite Stater…

SOURCE: Griffin’s History of Keene, N.H. (1874) + roadside marker

(The “quoted text” in the comic are apparently from Chase’s own autobiographical account.)

Of course, Salmon P. Chase would bounce back from this initial hardship, and go on to become a successful lawyer, Senator, Governor, an abolitionist leader in the new Republican party, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury (during the Civil War), and ultimately Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court!  Chase died around the same time that Griffin was preparing his History.

During an expedition this week along the Connecticut River, I came across this State roadside marker:

I suspected Griffin’s history must have more to say about Chase’s early life, and sure enough it contained some of the lesser-known stories (p. 572-3)!

13 January 1808