John Davis Long

He got married to Mary Woodford Glover in 1870 and they both lived in Hingham, Massachusetts. They had two daughters together: Margaret Long and Helen Long. Mary died in 1882.

Long got married again in 1886 to Agnes Pierce. She was a teacher and a daughter of a Universalist minister. They both had a son together: Pierce Long. He died in 1915 in Hingham, Massachusetts.

John D. Long was born in Buckfield, Maine, to Zadoc Long and Julia Temple Long. He attended Hebron Academy, for his primary studies and later graduated from Harvard in 1857, as a part of Phi Beta Kappa.

He used to write for a student magazine at Harvard. He also founded a private journal and maintained it for the rest of his life. He was so good at writing that he was asked to write an ode for his graduation ceremony.

After graduating, he became the headmaster of the Westford Academy in Westford, Massachusetts for 2 years. Later, he took admission in the Harvard Law School. He practiced law without any success in Buckfield and later went to Boston.

After his stint with law in Boston, Long became more and more interested in politics and involved himself at the local level in Hingham in 1870. He got a spontaneous Democratic nomination for a seat in Massachusetts House of Representatives but lost.

He again got nominated by Democrats and reformist Republicans for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives but lost the election again in 1872, which convinced him to become more of a Republican.

In 1874, Long presided over the state Republican convention and won election to the state legislatures. He supported Alexander H. Rice, the successful gubernatorial candidate.

He was elected to the post of speaker in 1876 and supported Benjamin Bristow in his Republican presidential nomination, in an effort to widen his reform views. Soon after, Long won the lieutenant governor nomination.

His tenure as the governor was rather monotonous, during which he tried to bring reforms in society in his own way. During this time, he wrote a verse translation of Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’.

While Long was practicing private law in Massachusetts after his long stint with Congress, he suffered from a nervous breakdown that forced him to take a break from his legal practice.

Long was not liked by Henry Cabot Lodge, who opposed his selection as the Secretary of the Navy and he helped Theodore Roosevelt to secure the position of Assistant Secretary to make sure that Long did not spend his tenure peacefully as Roosevelt’s views over the development of the Navy were strikingly different from Long’s.