MEMOIR OF STANLEY CUNNINGHAM, A.B.

    BY LINDSAY SWIFT

    The first American ancestors of our late associate Stanley Cunningham were Andrew Cunningham, a Scotchman who came to Boston about the year 1680, and his wife Sarah Gibson. Their son was William Cunningham, who married Elizabeth Wheeler, both of Boston. Then came James Cunningham of Boston and his wife Elizabeth Boylston of Dedham, the parents of Andrew Cunningham who married Mary Lewis of Boston. To them was born Charles Cunningham, an old shipowner and merchant of the firm of A. & C. Cunningham, typical Bostonians of an earlier day. His wife was Roxalina Dabney of Boston. Their son, Frederic Cunningham (H. C. 1845), Stanley’s father, was a Boston merchant associated with his cousin Charles William Dabney, Jr. (H. C. 1844), in business at 67 Commercial Wharf. He married, in Boston, March 14, 1850, Sarah Maria Parker, a daughter of William Parker and granddaughter of Bishop Samuel Parker, and died in Boston March 27, 1864, leaving three children: Julia, now the wife of William Lawrence, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts; Frederic, a graduate of Harvard in the Class of 1874; and Stanley who, as we have already seen, was in the seventh generation of American Cunninghams. The name of Stanley, an old family name in the Parker family, came by inheritance to the subject of this memoir.

    Frederic Cunningham lived in the upper part of Chestnut Street, at No. 4, where Stanley was born January 10, 1856, and where he lived during his boyhood and till his graduation from college. He attended the Boston Public Latin School, then in Bedford Street, from 1866 to 1872, and in the fall of 1873 entered Harvard College with the Class of 1877, graduating in due course. This Class was destined to number among its members men of real distinction and achievement, among them Sigourney Butler, Governor William Eustis Russell, both members of this Society, Edward Henry Strobel, at the time of his death General Adviser to his Siamese Majesty’s Government, and Abbott Lawrence Lowell, recently elected to the Presidency of Harvard University. Although Cunningham played no conspicuous part in the annals of the Class, either as a scholar or as an athlete, he was the associate of these and other members of a class of unusual animation and virility, possessing, then and since, its fair share of brilliance and renown. Both in school and college we may think of him in the words of his kinsman and our associate, Mr. Henry W. Cunningham, as “thoroughly a Boston boy in all his habits, thoughts, and associations.”

    For two years after graduation, Cunningham was a clerk at 21 Pearl Street and then, for several years, did business as a cotton broker. About 1883 he became a member of the firm of Barnes & Cunningham, stock brokers. This firm dissolved partnership in May, 1895. In 1897 Cunningham became Treasurer of the Electric Tool Company of New York with offices at 78 Devonshire Street, Boston; and from 1900 till 1902 he was a note broker at the same place. Later he took the superintendency of the Safe Deposit Vaults of the Old Colony Trust Company, in Temple Place, a position he was obliged to resign on account of illness. After a year spent in Denver, Colorado, he returned, much improved in health, to spend the rest of his life at Cohasset, where he died, suddenly, on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1907.

    On October 16, 1879, Mr. Cunningham was married at Trinity Church, Boston, to Mary Ann Crehore, daughter of George Clarendon Crehore of Boston. They had six children:

    1. i. Stanley, Jr., born November 20, 1880; a graduate of Harvard College in the Class of 1901; a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and the A. D. Club; married to Esther, daughter of Edward Burnett, and granddaughter of James Russell Lowell; now a civil engineer in New York.
    2. ii. George Clarendon, born October 25, 1882; a graduate of Harvard College in the Class of 1904; now engaged in the banking business in Denver, Colorado.
    3. iii. Mary, born April 12, 1885.
    4. iv. Francis, born July 23, 1889; a student at Harvard College in the Class of 1911.
    5. v. Alice, born January 2, 1892.
    6. vi. Alan, born January 11, 1895.

    The death on August 23, 1903, of Mrs. Cunningham, a woman of great worth and personal charm, was a terrible affliction to her husband and children, but Mr. Cunningham found comfort in his bereavement through the fine character of his elder daughter, who presided over the household after her mother’s death. During the early years of his married life his home was at 229 Beacon Street, then at 167 Newbury Street, and from 1889 to 1893 at 148 Marlborough Street. Subsequently, and until his visit to Colorado, he resided in Brookline.

    Mr. Cunningham was elected a member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in April, 1893. He was also a member of the Essex County Club, the University Club of New York, and of the Exchange Club in Boston.

    It would be no kindness to the memory of a departed associate of this Society to dwell unduly upon the record of a life spent quietly and uneventfully. They who knew Stanley Cunningham remember him as gracious in manner and speech, popular among his friends, and with a gentleman’s tolerance and courtesy toward all men. Writing of him as a classmate and later as a pleasant and affable acquaintance, I recall him especially as a part of that vivid mosaic—a college class. Each variegated bit seems necessary to make up the complete pattern, and when one or another drops out, the aspect of the whole changes, gently, yet sadly and inevitably. Into that harmonious whole of thirty-five years ago, Stanley Cunningham fitted admirably and played his part well. To some of his more intimate friends he was known as the “Old Man” from a certain old-fashioned cautiousness of manner, which, by contrast with the general audaciousness of those about him, only endeared him the more to those who knew him best. A man who has earned an affectionate nickname from his fellows has really not lived in vain.

    Cunningham had a genuine interest in the history and antiquities of his birthplace, and perhaps would have done something effective as a member of this Society had not business affairs, the loss of his wife, and the state of his health necessarily distracted his attention from such congenial pursuits. It was probably true of him, as we may well believe it to be true of many business men who, confronted as they often are with other men trained to the practice of writing and the art of expression, become shy and uncommunicative, when, in truth, the substance of what they might wish to say or write is really of value, even though it be unadorned by literary skill. It seems a pity to lose all benefit of the knowledge of our “silent partners,” for a Society like this should encourage into action the natural hesitancy of members who think well but who have come to believe themselves incapable of formal expression. In talking with Stanley Cunningham I always found him interested in the best things and conversing well about them, yet always restrained, I feel sure, by a real modesty which held him back from performance. Would that we might have drawn from such a quiet, undemonstrative man at least one communication for our Publications before the opportunity was gone. It would have been a satisfaction to the Society, to his family, and to himself.