A career as a lawyer and poet emerges from a lame shoulder.
Joseph Addison Wing's story.

Joseph Addison Wing was born in East Montpelier on this day in 1810.

Wing suffered from a lame shoulder, and partly because he could not perform manual labor, he pursued law. Luckily, he was a good lawyer.

He worked tirelessly, studied hard, but always remained humble and humorous. He once said, "I supposed, in 1835, when I started, I knew just as much law as I suppose I know now." He lived and worked in Plainfield and then in Montpelier.

Wing also wrote and published a variety of poems. Some of them were based on local events, such as the burning of the state house, and some were simply playful commentaries.

Image courtesy the Vermont Historical Society.

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