BIOGRAPHY OF HON. DAVID A. BUNTON of Manchester NH ------------------------------------ Information located at http://www.nh.searchroots.com/Manchester On a web site about GENEALOGY AND HISTORY OF MANCHESTER NEW HAMPSHIRE TRANSCRIBED BY JANICE BROWN Please see the web site for my email contact. ---------------------------------- The original source of this information is in the public domain, however use of this text file, other than for personal use, is restricted without written permission from the transcriber (who has edited, compiled and added new copyrighted text to same). ======================================================== SOURCE: Manchester, A Brief Record of its Past and A Picture of Its Present, including an account of is settlement and its growth as town and city; a history of its schools, churches, societies, banks, post-offices, newspapers and manufactures; a description of its government, police and fire department, public buildings, library, water-works, cemeteries, streets, streams, railways and bridges; a complete list of the selectmen, moderators and clerks of the town and members of the councils, marshals and engineers of the city, with the state of the cote for mayor at each election; the story of its part in the war of the rebellion with a complete list of its soldiers who went ot the war; and sketches of its representative citizens; Manchester N.H.; John B. Clark; 1875 ------------------- 383 **** THE HON. DAVID A. BUNTON *** David Augustus Bunton was born October 18, 1805, at Goffstown Centre, NH. He is the son of Andrew and Lavinia (Holden) Bunton, and the third in a family of five sons and two daughters. Of these survive Lavinia, the widow of Robert Richards, of Pristol P.Q., Sarah Jane, the widow of John Gilchrist of Goffstown, Jesse of Milton Mass., Dr. Sylvanus, formerly of this city and now of Mont Vernon [NH], and William, now residing in Boston. He comes of an old New Hampshire family, his grandfather having been carried captive from Allenstown to Quebec by Indians in 1746. When the Revolutionary War broke out, he enlisted among the first, was at the battle of Bunker Hill, and was killed at White Plains in 1776. Mr. Bunton acquired a common-school education in Goffstown, taught two winters at the "east village" in the same place, and was employed by his father in tanning and currying hides until he was twenty-one years of age. Then he went to Massachusetts and was employed in several places in quarrying and cutting stone, working two years upon the Bunk Hill monument and also upon the United States arsenal at Augusta, ME. Returning to Goffstown in 1831, he built a saw-mill and grist-mill upon the Piscataquog river at Goffstown Centre, where P.C. Cheney & Company's paper mill now stands. He operated these mills and also kept a store for a time. Mr. Bunton had already been employed by Dr. Oliver Dean, one of the capitalists who conceived the idea of building the city of Manchester upon the Merrimack, to do some stone-work for him, and in the fall of 1836 Dr. Dean confided to him the plans of the Amoskeag Company in regard to the acquisition of territory and the erection of mills and engaged him to work for the Company. He agreed, and in January, 1837, moved to Manchester, his being nearly the first family in town. From that time till 1846 or 1847 he remained in the company's employ and built for it by contract, among other things, the first stone dam at Amoskeag Falls, the dam at Hooksett, the extension of the canals, the foundation of the first mills for the Manchester corporation, boarding-houses, etc. He left the Company's employ when it ceased to do work by contract, and in 1849 was appointed superintendent of the Manchester & Lawrence Railroad, then just beginning business, having been employed before and after in negotiations with landholders upon the route. He resigned the office of superintendent after a few months and was elected a director, a place he had vacated to become superintendent, and continued in that position till about 1860. For about five years after he left the Company, he was engaged in the grocery business with George W. Adams, now of the firm of Adams & Lamprey. For some time afterwards he was busied in selling wild lands in Coos county, where he had an interest in thousands of acres. About 1858 he became interested in the Manchester Iron Company which was engaged in the manufacture of scales in the lower part of the city. This failed some years aftewards and he was employed in settling its affairs. In company with the late Gilman H. Kimball of this city, he was engaged two years in cutting wood and lumber in Goffstown. In 1864 he was sent out to Fredericksburg by Gov. Gilmore to administer to the needs of the soldiers who had been wounded in Grant's campaign before Richmond. In 1865 he went to live in Cambridge, Mass, while his sons went through Harvard College. He spent six years there and then returned to Manchester and has since been engaged in stone-work. In 1842 Mr. BUnton was elected as the first Whig representative to the general court from Manchester and was re-elected in 1843. He was elected alderman in 1847 and served as mayor in 1861 and 1862, being elected by the Republican party. He has been a director of the Manchester Bank and Manchester National Bank and a trustee of the Manchester Savings Bank ever since their organization. Mr. Bunton married in 1831 Eliza Jane Adams, daughter of John Adams of Sutton NH, by whom he had seven children, of whom the two youngest,-- William A. and George W.-- are living. It will be noticed that Mr. Bunton played a very important part in the city of Manchester in its early years and enjoyed to a great degree the confidence of the corporations and finally that of the city, having been wtice elected to its highest office. This confidence has never been mis-placed. Honest, liberal, trusting almost to a fault, his heart is always in every good word and work. To the young men of the city he has been of espeical service, aiding them by his word, by the use of his name, and by personal commendation. (end)