CLASS OF 1857

Rev. William Amherst Coult Converse died in his native town, Lyme, N. H., March 1. His daughter writes to the class secretary: "The summons 'Come up higher', came to him after an illness of only one week from grip, complicated with organic heart disease. These later years have brought increasing feebleness, but by great effort he had attended church almost constantly until December 3, 1911."

Mr. Converse was born April 30, 1830. his parents being Joel and. Abigail (Coult) Converse. He prepared for college at Thetford Acadetny. In college he became a member of Kappa Kappa Kappa and Phi Beta Kappa. From 1857 to 1868 he was principal of the high school of Toledo, Ohio, also county examiner of teachers. From 1869 to 1872 he was superintendent of schools at Ypsilanti, Mich. For some time he lived at Colebrook, N. H., and was then a farmer at Stewartstown, N. H. While there he began to preach, and supplied the church at West Stewartstown in 1884-5. In 1887 he removed to Piermont, N. H., and was pastor of its Congregational church to 1895, then returning to Lyme. Mr. Converse had pronounced poetic gifts, and read poems before the Phi Beta Kappa society at the Dartmouth Commencement o of 1865, before the united literary societies in 1867, and at a historical celebration at Lyme in 1885. He was married at Stewartstown, N. H., July 11, 1858, to Mary Tibbetts, who died July 6, 1883. Four daughters of this marriage survive their parents. A second wife, to whom he was married May 30, 1887, and who survives him, was Mrs. Sarah D. Smith, a daughter of Reuben and Pamelia Waite of Lyme.

Secretary, Dr. John H. Clark, Amherst, N. H.