William Gaston

William Gaston (October 3, 1820 – January 19, 1894) was a lawyer and politician from Massachusetts. A Democrat, he was the first member of that party to serve as Governor of Massachusetts (1875–1876) after the American Civil War. He was a successful trial lawyer and politically conservative Democrat, who won election as governor after his opponent, Thomas Talbot, vetoed legislation to relax alcohol controls. Born in Connecticut, Gaston was educated at Brown University, where he helped establish the second chapter of Delta Phi in 1838. Gaston launched a successful law practice in Roxbury before becoming involved in local politics. In the 1860s, he served as mayor of Roxbury, and afterward promoted its annexation to Boston (completed in 1868). He then later served as Boston mayor, during a period which included the Great Boston Fire of 1872. Early years Gaston was born on October 3, 1820, in Killingly, Connecticut. His father, Alexander Gaston, was a merchant of French Huguenot descent, and his mother, Kezia Arnold Gaston, was from an old Rhode Island family. He received his primary education at Brooklyn, Connecticut, and was prepared for college in the academy at Plainfield. He entered Brown University at the age of fifteen, and graduated in 1840 with high honors. Gaston then moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts (then independent of neighboring Boston), where his parents had taken up residence, to pursue the study of law. He first studied with Francis Hillard, and then with Benjamin Curtis, later a justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1844, and opened his own practice in Roxbury in 1846. The practice flourished, and he soon became a leading trial lawyer in Norfolk and Suffolk Counties.