Gardiner Tufts was born on July 3, 1828, in Lynn, Massachusetts, to Richard and Rebecca Tufts. His father was a trader who owned $2,000 of real estate by 1850. He grew up and attended school in Lynn, and by 1850, he was working as a machinist. He married Margaret Harris on March 19, 1854, and they had at least three children: Mary, born around 1856; Anna, born around 1860; Nellie, born around 1866. He worked as a “wood turner,” and by 1860, he owned $300 of real estate and $200 of personal property. He served in the state legislature from 1859 until 1860.

 

During the Civil War, he served as Massachusetts’s “state agent” to Washington, D.C. According to an early biographer, he assisted “sick, wounded, or dead Massachusetts soldiers,” and “established a bureau for the collection of soldiers’ pay, bounties and pensions.” He held the position until 1869, when he became “visiting agent of the board of state charities.” He later served as treasurer of the Reformatory Prison for Women and superintendent of Massachusetts’s State Primary School in Monson, Massachusetts. He died of pneumonia in Concord, Massachusetts, on November 23, 1891.

 

Image: Gardiner Tufts (Boston Herald, 25 November 1891)

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