Harvard memorial biographies ...

Thomas Bayley Fox.

II5

THOMAS BAYLEY FOX.
Second Lieutenant 2d Mass. Vols. (Infantry), August 14, 1862; First
Lieutenant, November I, 1862; Captain, June 6, 1863; died at Dorchester,
Mass., July 25, 1863, of wounds received at Gettysburg, July 3.
THOMAS BAYLEY FOX, JR., fourth and youngest son
of Thomas Bayley and Feroline Walley (Pierce) Fox, was
born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, February r, 1839. He
was a healthful, bright, happy child; affectionate, thoroughly
good-tempered, requiring only the mildest government, fond of
play, and equally fond of books. The peculiar activity and
bent of his mind were shown in an artless inquisitiveness about
subjects not apt to attract the attention of a sportive lad, an
amusing fondness for argument, and a fanciful ingenuity in the
contrivance of amusements for himself and his companions.
He would say, in the most decided tone, that " he meant when
he grew up, to go to college, study law, and plead the cause of
freedom." From this almost instinctive choice of a profession,
made when he was hardly beyond infancy, he never for a
moment swerved. It shaped his whole intellectual career, and
colored all his tastes and pursuits. The unfolding of his mental and moral character was a natural and harmonious growth.
He received most of his elementary instruction in two of the
excellent public schools of Dorchester, to which town his father
removed in 1845. The following familiar letter from the then
principal of the High School, Mr. William J. Rolfe, correctly
describes Thomas's diligent and promising boyhood, while it
has a further interest as indicating how he and others were
unconsciously fitting themselves for a future then undreamed of.
" Tom was, on the whole, the most remarkable boy in that very
remarkable group of boys who formed the first class in the Dorchester High School. He was not the quickest scholar of the
group. He had to work as hard as the average of boys to get his
lessons. He was good in both the classics and the mathematics,