Dorchester was celebrated on the Fourth of July, 1855. The oration was
by Edward Everett; Mr. Wilder presided, and delivered an able address.
On the central tablet of the great pavilion was this inscription:
"Marshall P. Wilder, president of the day. Blessed is he that turneth
the waste places into a garden, and maketh the wilderness to blossom as
a rose."

In January, 1868, he was solicited to take the office of president of
the New England Historic Genealogical Society, vacated by the death of
Governor Andrew. He was unanimously elected, and is now serving the
seventeenth year of his presidency. At every annual meeting he has
delivered an appropriate address. In his first address he urged the
importance of procuring a suitable building for the society. In 1870, he
said: "The time has now arrived when absolute necessity, public
sentiment, and personal obligations, demand that this work be done, and
done quickly." Feeling himself pledged by this address, he, as chairman
of the committee then appointed, devoted three months entirely to the
object of soliciting funds, during which time more than forty thousand
dollars was generously contributed by friends of the association; and
thus the handsome edifice at No. 18 Somerset Street was procured. This
building was dedicated to the use of the society, March 18, 1871. He has
since obtained donations, amounting to upward of twelve thousand
dollars, as a fund for paying the salary of the librarian.

In 1859, he presided at the first public meeting called in Boston, in
regard to the collocation of institutions on the Back Bay lands, where
the splendid edifices of the Boston Society of Natural History and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology now stand. Of the latter
institution he has been a vice-president, and the chairman of its
Society of Arts, and a director from the beginning. General Francis A.