Ezra Scollay Stearns (1838 - 1894)
Born at Rindge (NH); died at Fitchburg, MA.
Teacher, historian and genealogist, newspaperman, state legislator.
Portrait by H.E.C. Peterson, n.d.
Presented to the State [date unknown].
Location: Legislative Office Building Room 210 (in storage, 2008)

Ezra Stearns was educated in the Rindge (NH) public schools, then followed an advanced course of study as a student and teacher at the Chester (NH) Institute (1858/62).

In 1862 Stearns returned to Rindge and got involved in Republican state politics. In 1864, at age twenty-six, Steams was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, and he was annually reelected 1865/67, and again in 1870. In 1865 Governor Smyth appointed Stearns one of three commissioners to ascertain the Civil War expenditures of New Hampshire towns and cities, because it had been proposed that the State would assume these debts. The commissioners' report, presented in June 1866, calculated the war expenditures at four million dollars, and the commissioners' efforts were very highly regarded within state government.

Stearns' biographical entries are hazy on Stearns' career at several points, but at some point in these post-Civil War years Stearns became manager and editor of the Fitchburg (MA) Chronicle. He also wrote voluminously on historical topics, including a history of Rindge, published in 1875, and a history of Ashburnham (MA), published in 1887. A "sketch" of Lunenburg (MA) appeared in 1908.

Stearns served as Moderator of Rindge for more than twenty years. He was elected to the New Hampshire State Senate in 1887 and 1889. While serving in the State House of Representatives in 1891, Stearns was appointed State Secretary of State (served 1891/9).

References: Biographical Review ... of Merrimack and Sullivan Counties (1897); Sketches, Genealogical and Biographical, of the Members of The New Hampshire Historical Society (1896); Charles R. Corning, "Hon. Ezra Scollay Stearns", Granite Monthly vol. X no. 5 (May 1887); George H. Mason, New Hampshire Men (1893).