The Tragedy of William P. Weeks
- Alisa Kline
- Dec 6, 2024
- 7 min read
William P. Weeks almost snuck through the Wallace History without my noticing him. His name pops up in a lot of different places. He’s always listed on this or that committee. He was an opponent of Noyes Academy, but one of the opponents who were credited with reigning in the hotheads, not urging them on. He was a successful lawyer and banker.
I might not have paid him any him any attention at all except for Wallace dropping a bombshell near the end of Weeks’ bio in the chapter on Lawyers. After pages detailing a life of financial accomplishment and dreadful politics, apropos of nothing at all, Wallace includes this line.
Page 331
Mr. Weeks died suddenly, on January 8, 1870 by hanging himself from a beam in his barn, aged 66 years.
Even knowing that sentence is coming, it still smacks me in the chest. A successful and prominent man hanged himself in his barn. And no one seemed to have seen it coming. I’m assuming that’s what the word “suddenly” is doing in that sentence. Otherwise death by hanging is always sudden, as in one moment you’re standing there and the next moment you’re swinging, dead
Suicide demands an explanation. Wallace gives us none. Mr. Weeks was not financially embarrassed, far from it. At his death, he had two sons both making a great success of themselves and two daughters. Wallace tells us that his life seemed good.
Page 329
In his later years he became in reality a banker, and his loans were great accommodations to persons in need of money, and it is only just to say that in his transactions as a banker he was lenient and honorable with his clients. He was a great lover of sheep and cattle and spent much time caressing his nice flocks.
Bits and pieces of Weeks’ story can be found all over Wallace's History. Perhaps his most significant contribution to the town was his involvement in Canaan Union Academy, which was intended to supplant Noyes after it was destroyed. That story is interesting enough that I will devote an entire post to it. For here, it’s enough to say Weeks founded Canaan Union Academy in 1839 and behaved more or less honorably when a lot of people stuck their hand in the town till.
Weeks always behaved more or less honorably. But man, he was ruthless.
Page 330
During the early days, and before the Northern Railroad was built, it was customary for the merchants in town to go to Boston to buy their goods. Before making this yearly trip it was necessary for them to have money to pay for what they wished to buy. All the merchants with the exception of Jesse Martin never had money enough ahead to pay for their goods, so that just before starting they would take their ledgers to Mr. Weeks and ask the loan of money upon their accounts. Mr. Weeks always loaned them, never charging more than $10 on a hundred dollars.
I need to stop and make clear what’s happening here. Merchants had to purchase a year’s worth of things to sell. But they didn’t have the money to buy that much until they sold what they hadn’t yet bought. The way they got around the problem was to borrow the money from Weeks. Weeks loaned each of them enough money to purchase a year’s worth of merchandise and charged them 10% interest on the money he loaned
But Weeks wasn’t loaning them money on the strength of their good name or the strength of their future sales. Those merchants took “their ledgers to Mr. Weeks.” Those ledgers told Mr. Weeks the identities of all who owed that merchant money. People often didn’t have money to pay for something, so merchants sold things on account and when the buyer had money, he was expected to pay.
Human beings, being always human, tend not to pay a debt until pressed. So, once a year, Mr. Weeks essentially bought up all the debt from the merchants and went about collecting.
The next day he would set his partner or clerk to writing letters to those whose names appeared as debtors on those books, asking them to call the next day and settle. These letters were not mailed, but were placed in the post-office in plain sight behind a string which held them up to the sight of every one.
By not mailing the letters, Weeks saved himself the postage. But more important, he put on display the names of everyone in Canaan who owed money to a merchant. Everyone scurried down to his office and paid what they owed. Part of this was no doubt the shame of being publicly named in this way. Part of this was also to avoid the second bite that Mr. Weeks was about to take out of their hide.
Very few failed to appear the next day if they received the letter, but as sometimes happened the debtor did not go to the office or hear of his having a letter, for some days, but when he did and hastened to Mr. Weeks’ office he was told. “I waited twenty-four hours, and a writ has been made out, but I did not have it served, so I saved you that much. It will cost you about three dollars for the writ.”
So, if the debtor didn’t show up immediately, Mr. Weeks wrote up a writ that he could file with the court, charging the person with indebtedness. A very serious crime. But he didn’t file the writ, he simply wrote it up and then charged the debtor a bill for his time in making out the writ and claiming that he had done the indebted a favor by not having taken the matter further.
Mr. Weeks was known to have had as many as 100 writs returnable at a single term of court, and not one of them contested, upon all of which he collected costs.
That’s a tidy $300 for having done nothing more than write some words on pieces of paper. Do you imagine he was beloved in the community? Throughout his career, Mr. Weeks was very persistent in his collection of debts.
Page 330
Mr. Weeks, in the earlier years of his practice, was not always scrupulous of the means he used against his adversaries, and was unmerciful to debtors. Like many other young lawyers, his first rule of practice, was fees, costs and charges, and his second rule was to collect them. He had for a deputy for many years S. P. Cobb, whose levies were like the marches of the legions of Attila, the grass disappeared behind him.
Debt was a very serious matter in those days. It could land you in jail, and even prominent citizens were not safe from the sheriff if they owed money.
Dr. Timothy Tilton was one of the heroes of Noyes Academy. It was Dr. Tilton who stood in the second floor balcony and read the riot act to members of the July 4 gang who came to destroy the building. Dr. Tilton is buried in Canaan Street Cemetery and on his grave, no longer readable, is the phrase he requested, “a friend to the slave.” It didn’t save him from debtor’s prison.
Page 458
Old Doctor Tilton, who used to ride a black pacing horse, and was welcomed into every house in town, was in debt. In fact, he never was out of debt. He was a learned man, a good lawyer as well as physician: but all his learning could not save him from the sheriff’s hands, and he was sent to Haverhill.
His indebtedness was an endorsement for a friend. He used to say he hoped “the time for sending men to jail for debt would soon come to an end. It was no benefit to the creditor nor to the community to take an able-bodied man from his business and shut him up because he was unable to pay his debts.” The doctor remained in Haverhill several months.
Weeks was a Democrat and was one of the very few men in Canaan who supported the South during the Civil War. He believed firmly that the federal government could not tell states what to do.
Page 331
In the course of his forty years’ practice he accumulated a large property, all of which descended to his children. His habits were all close. His sympathies were with the Methodist Church, but he seldom attended the service after their clergy began to pray for the slaves. He always read the New Hampshire Patriot and conformed to all the legends of the Democratic party. He never expressed sympathy for the Union cause during the war, but always maintained with Mr. Buchanan that the government had no right to coerce a state.
In business his writs and summonses were always profitable; here he had no weaknesses. His liberality was not profuse. With all his success in business, his gains multiplying year by year for the long period he resided here, his name does not appear as a patron either of religion, learning or arts, and the only monument erected to record his virtues is that which stands above his grave.
Wallace knew William Weeks. He often writes about men and women he met when he was a child, or who he knew only through the stories told about them. But William Weeks came to practice law in Canaan in 1829. Wallace was fourteen and only a year from starting out on his own life’s voyage away from Canaan. Weeks was a young man of 26, just starting out in the law.
Wallace returned to Canaan permanently in 1861. Weeks was by then a prominent man in town. It is inconceivable that Wallace didn’t know him personally. It would be nine years before Weeks’ suicide. And still, Wallace offers us not a hint.
Since I first read the Wallace line about Weeks hanging himself, I have been haunted by the poem “Richard Cory.” It was written by Edward Arlington Robinson in 1897, not long after Wallace died. I don’t imagine Mr. Robinson, who was from Gardner, Maine, met William P. Weeks of Canaan, New Hampshire. But it seems that he knew him none the less.:
Richard Cory
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
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