On sale on eBay is the signature of William H. Moody, prosecutor in the Lizzie Borden trial and fomer Secretary of the Navy.
MOODY, WILLIAM HENRY 1853 – 1917: born in Newbury, Massachusetts, son of Henry Lord and Melissa Augusta (Emerson) Moody. Educated in the public schools of Salem and Danvers. Massachusetts, he prepared for college at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, graduating in 1872. He continued his studies at Harvard University where he graduated third in his class in 1876. He studied law at Harvard and in the office of Richard H. Dana, Esq. and was admitted to the Salem bar in 1878. He then began a practice with Edwin N. Hill, Esq. in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Active in civic affairs there, he served ()it III(school board and held the post of city solicitor in 1888 and 1889. He was subsequently elected district attorney for Essex County, a position he held for six years. It was in this capacity that he was appointed by Massachusetts Attorney General Albert E. Pillsbury to serve on the prosecution in the Borden trial. He delivered the opening argument for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Lizzie A. Borden. In 1895, he was elected representative to Congress for the Sixth District, an office to which he was reelected in 1896, 1898 and 1900. In 1902, he was named Secretary of the United States Navy by President Theodore Roosevelt, succeeding Hon. John D. Long. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Amherst College as well as one from Tufts University in 1904. That same year, he was appointed to the position of attorney general of the United States and remained in President Roosevelt’s cabinet until he was chosen to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court in 1906. He retired from the bench due to ill health in 1909 and was residing in Haverhill, Massachusetts, at the time of his death. The following year destroyer #277 in the United States Navy was named for him in recognition of his accomplishments when serving as secretary of that division of the armed forces.
Source: Commonwealth of Massachusetts VS. Lizzie A. Borden; The Knowlton Papers, 1892-1893. Eds. Michael Martins and Dennis A. Binette. Fall River, MA: Fall River Historical Society, 1994.
