Solon Bancroft, son of Emory and Harriet (Batchelder) Bancroft, was born July
22, 1839, at Reading, Massachusetts. He pursued his preparatory studies at the public
schools of his native town, afterward spending one term at Phillips Academy, Andover,
Massachusetts, and two terms at South Woodstock, Vermont, and entered college at the
beginning of the Fall term, August 24, 1860.
Immediately after graduating, he went to Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he taught for one year in the Roxbury Latin School. In September, 1865, he commenced the
study of law in the office of Charles T. & T. H. Russell, in Boston, Massachusetts,
remaining there until the Spring of 1866, when he attended lectures at the Harvard Law
School, and was admitted to the bar of Massachusetts in July, 1866. He commenced the
practice of his profession immediately in Boston, and has continued there up to the
present time, having an office at 23 Court street, but residing in Reading,
Massachusetts.
He has served for four years as a member of the School Committee of Reading,
and has been complimented by his fellow-citizens with many positions of trust. He is
nearly always called upon to preside at public meetings, and for the larger portion of the
years since his graduation he has been the moderator of the town meetings.
In 1874 he was commissioned a special Justice of the First District Court of
Eastern Middlesex County, which position he still holds. In 1879 he was appointed one
of the receivers of the Reading Savings Bank.
Though always a Republican, he was appointed by Governor B. F Butler one of
the Trustees of the Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, Massachusetts. This position is one, like
so many others he has held, as he says, entirely without profit.
He is an attendant of the Congregational church.
He was married December 23, 1868, to Miss Ellen M. Temple, daughter of Abraham Temple, of Reading, Massachusetts. They have two children: Edith, born July
16, 1870, and Edward Winthrop, born May 23, 1874.
Source:
Memorialia of the Class of 64 in Dartmouth College, Compiled
by John C. Webster, Shepard & Johnston Printers, Chicago,
1884.
