Newcomb Genealogy Forums

B.M. Newcomb wrote:

Mr. Newcomb received his education at Punahou College, Sandwich Islands; Poultney Academy, Vermont; and at the College of California. He mastered several branches of business to qualify himself for his later position. He was a good chemist, practical assayist, and skillful telegraph operator. For a time he devoted himself to the study of law in its several departments, and made himself practically acquainted with stock operations on the Pacific coast. He became city editor of the San Francisco Morning Call, circulation 30,000, and was one of the finest writers in his special department in the state. As a caricaturist he achieved a reputation second only to Nast. He was first president of the Bohemian Club, San Francisco, organized 1872. Residents of California who were graduates from colleges and universities formerly met annually at Oakland, organized into an alumni society with historian, poet, etc. In 1872 Mr. Newcomb was named poet.

In 1880 Mr. Newcomb was made notary or appointment clerk in the executive chamber, Albany, by Governor Cornell, a position which he held through the different administrations until that of Governor Odell in 1903, when he was transferred to the Adjutant General’s office. At the time of his death he was secretary to the Governor of New York. He was a member of the Fort Orange Club of Albany. “Thomas Newcomb was a man of ability and genius. Naturally of a keen intellect, his education developed him into a humorist of the most pleasing, refined type. His lyrics were models in composition and his prose was cleancut and of the purest diction. He was equally as clever at delineation with his pen as he was in composition and many excellent examples of his talent are cherished by those fortunate enough to possess them. His reputation as a newspaper writer was known from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”

B.M. Newcomb wrote:

Mr. Newcomb became a merchant’s clerk when twelve years old, continuing in that occupation until the age of twenty-two, when he went to sea. He soon became master of a West India schooner; followed the sea for several years. once, when returning from the West Indies his vessel capsized and he was fifteen days on the wreck at sea without food.

In 1832, after acquiring a good education, he commenced the study of law at Amherst N.S., and received his diploma as barrister from Judge Halliburton. in Oct. 1839, in the same vessel with his brother Simon, he moved to Texas and settled at Victoria, then a frontier settlement. Before leaving Nova Scotia, Capt. Newcomb had taken a prominent part in politics and was well known throughout the province. He arrived in what was then the Republic of Texas during hard times, at the close of the struggle with Mexico. He endured many dangers and hardships; acquired a large practice as a lawyer, standing among the first in the country; served a while as district attorney. “He died in the prime of life, with a brilliant prospect for wealth and position before him; he was in every sense one of nature’s noblemen — a man of genius, eloquence and courage.”

From Chalmers’ Biographical Dictionary:

Newcomb (Thomas), M.A. son of a worthy clergyman in Herefordshire, and great grandson, by his mother’s side, to the famous Spenser, was born in 1675, and was, for some time educated at Corpus Christi college, Oxford; but we do not find his name among the Graduates. He was afterwards chaplain to the second duke of Richmond, and rector of Stopham in Sussex, in 1734, when he published a translation of “Velleius Paterculus”. For some time before this he lived at Hackney, in rather distressed circumstances. So early as 1718, he was author of an excellent poem, under the title of “Bibliotheca,” which is preserved in the third volume of Nichols’s “Select Collection of Miscellany poems,” and on which Dr. Warton thinks Pope must have formed his goddess Dulness, in the “Dunciad.” Besides the many productions of Dr. Newcomb reprinted in that collection, he was author of several poems of merit; particularly of “The last Judgment of Men and Angels, in twelve books, after the manner of Milton,” 1723, folio, adorned with a fine metzotinto portrait; of another, “To her late majesty queen Anne, upon the Peace of Utrecht;” “An Ode to the memory of Mr. Rowe;” and another, “To the memory of the countess of Berkeley.” He also translated several of Addison’s Latin poems, and Philips’s “Ode to Mr. St. John.”

Dr. Newcomb died probably about 1766, in which year his library was sold, and when he must have been in his ninety-first year.