USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 41
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The pen of the biographer can neither add nor lend any thing to these brilliant achievements. In 1886 he was a candidate for the office of circuit judge in the twelfth circuit, composed 56
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of the counties of Sebastian, Crawford, Logan and Scott, and carried every county in the circuit, both at the primary and general elections. His affable and magnetic manner, com- bined with his great knowledge of human nature, are almost resistless factors in the political arena, and make him a great favorite with the masses, and a Hercules in the pathway of an opponent before the people. It was much feared by the old members of the bar, when it became known that he would succeed to the office of judge, that he would fall below the standard required for that high office, but these fears vanished after he went the first round of his circuit. So lawyers on the circuit tell me.
JUDGE WILBUR FISH HILL, LITTLE ROCK.
Judge Hill was born on a farm near Clarksville, Red River county, Texas, the 15th of March, 1844, the son of Bernard Hill, an educated, polished gentleman, born in Virginia, the descendant of an old colonial family. Young Hill spent the early years of his life in the pursuit and wild diversion of a " Texas cow-boy," on the Brazos river, alternated by occasional attendance on the village school, where he learned rapidly, and early acquired the rudiments of an education, but was carried away on the resistless flood of that patriotic tide which swelled the southern armies to their maximum strength, and filled their rank and file with the best blood of the south. On his eighteenth birthday he volunteered his services to the Con- federate States, and joined her armies under General Albert Pike, and loyally followed her banners until the echo of the last gun died away and closed the history and drama of a pa- triotic war.
He participated in the battles of Prairie Grove, Arkansas, and Mansfield, Louisiana, and was shot down and severely wounded in the latter battle. After the close of the war, the ragged, sun-burnt youth, with four years' rough experience in war, matriculated at Mckenzie College, Texas, and after thor- ough preparation in that institution in the junior branches, en- tered Cumberland University, Tennessee, and graduated in that institution, in both the literary and law departments, with the highest honors, leaving that school in May, 1872, a ripe scholar
GHT ENG. CO. N.V.
WILLIAM F. HILL.
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and thoroughly qualified to indulge that taste for learning which he inherited from both paternal and maternal lines. In June, 1873, he opened his law office in Little Rock, where he has ever since remained. At the commencement of his . professional career, with him, as with most young lawyers, briefs were few, but he idled away no time for want of work. He saw a fine and remunerative legal field invitingly open before him, courageously embraced it, and essayed the duties and. responsibilities of legal authorship, in the thorough preparation of the civil branch of that most admirable treatise, "The Arkansas Justice," a remarkable production for one so young and inexperienced as the author was when he executed the work. The merits of the performance soon made the book very popular, and justly so, and it was early a potent agent in establishing the just claims of the young man to high consideration. The first edition of the work was long since exhausted, and the work is now (1886) under- going another edition. In 1884 the democratic party of Pulaski county nominated and elected him to the office of pro- bate and county judge, and, in 1886, he was again nominated and elected by the same party as successor to himself. When he entered on the discharge of the duties of that office, he found the credit and scrip of the county much depreciated - maladministration of that office in reconstruction times had crippled the large resources of that populous and wealthy county. Here was indeed a fine field in which to test and measure the fidelity of the public servant and the untried administrative ability of the judge.
The county was destitute of public buildings, her exchequer was bankrupt, but, in the short compass of two years, a splendid jail has been built and paid for, a court-house, to cost about $75,000, contracted for, and her county scrip commands one hundred cents on the dollar in the market. The county was prostrated with judgments against it amounting to $300,000, which was recently (1887) funded by Judge Hill - the county bonds sold at par, and the judgments paid off. He has de- veloped great executive ability. These facts pointed and led the way to the succession, and crowned the triumph with greatly-increased majorities. Pulaski county has long been
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noted for her hot political contests. Judge Hill, during the last canvass, developed into a fine speaker on the hustings, where his wit, humor, irony and sarcasm crystallized in the bowels of the opposition. He is a scholar - his scholastic acquirements at college embraced Greek, Latin, French and the German languages, and the highier branches of mathemat- ics ; he is an enthusiasti clover of books, especially that charac- ter of works embracing the weighty and substantial, rather than the light and trivial, fields of learning; this taste is both cultivated and inherited. Aristotle, Bacon, Plato, Kant, and works of kindred character, feed the demands of his cultured mind. Buckle's History of Civilization is far more attractive to him than all the metaphysical disquisitions of Dugald Stewart, and that class of writers .. On all questions he is a very pronounced and independent thinker, and measures every question by the standard of his own attainments. The author for ten years has enjoyed a very intimate acquaintance with Judge Hill, and possesses many facilities enabling him to form this judgment. As a lawyer he has attained high standing, and deservedly so.
JUDGE ISAAC C. PARKER.
One of the greatest amongst the many blessings conferred on mankind by our revolutionary ancestors is traced to their abolition of hereditary offices, privileges and titles, in which they threw open all the avenues and highways to fame as freely to the poor plow-boy and mechanic as to the lordly strip- ling and conceited heir to millions. America's greatness and her transcendent destiny owe as much to that fiat as to all other causes. The patent of nobility, impressed with the seal of a king, is as apt to descend to a noble idiot as to a statesman, jurist or philosopher. The only patent to nobility recognized by our ancestors, and sanctified in organic laws, bears alone the signet of the Creator. Under the beneficent operation of this wise system, which calls into requisition and utilizes the talents of all her sons, our government and people cannot be otherwise than great. Under it the shoeless plow-boy, toiling in the fields for food and raiment, may educate himself in the indul- gence of a noble ambition, and aspire to the highest offices in
ISAAC C. PARKER.
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the gift of the people. These reflections are not only inspired by the life of the man we are now sketching, but also by the example and heroic efforts of many others mentioned in this book. The lives of such men are valuable acquisitions to the permanent history of any country-they lend inspiration to the aspirations of noble youth and mature manhood.
Isaac C. Parker was born of poor but highly respectable pa- rentage, in Belmont county, Ohio, on the 15th October, 1838, of English lineage, which cannot, at this distant day, be easily traced by the most zealous biographer. His paternal ancestors emigrated at an early day from England and settled in the colony of Massachusetts. His father, Joseph Parker, was a native of Maryland.
Jane Shannon, his mother, was born in Belmont county, Ohio, and belonged to a very prominent family of early pio- neers there. Her uncle, Wilson Shannon, was twice governor of Ohio, a representative in congress from that State, governor of Kansas, and minister to Mexico. The mother imparted her strength and force of character to the son, to whom she trans- mitted a robust body, on which was engrafted an equally robust mind. The boy toiled on the farm until he was seventeen years old, occasionally attending the neighborhood common school in winter, and rapidly absorbed every species of useful knowledge which came in his mental pathway. At the age of seventeen he was qualified to teach the English branches well, which he did for four years, dividing his time between teaching and attending Barnesville Academy. Early in life he deter- mined on the law as a profession, and was proud and ambitious to work out and mold his own destiny unaided, pecuniarily, by others. As a lawyer, he educated himself - any man of suffi- cient learning and will power may do it - and in 1859 located at St. Joseph, Missouri, and began there the practice of his profession, and advanced rapidly in professional reputation and preferment. The mayor and aldermen of St. Joseph, for three successive years, elected the young man city attorney, his ser- vices in that capacity ending in 1864. The republican party, in November, 1864, appointed him presidential elector. At the same time he was elected State's attorney for the ninth judicial district of Missouri, and held the office two years. In No-
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vember, 1868, at the age of thirty, he was elected judge of the ninth judicial circuit of Missouri, for six years. In 1870 the republican party of the St. Joe district nominated him for congress, and triumphantly elected him at the November elec- tion ; he resigned the office of judge when he accepted the nomination. In 1872 he was again nominated and elected to the forty-third congress. In the forty-second congress he was a member of the committee on territories and chairman, of the committee on expenditures. In the forty-third congress he was on the committee on appropriations - Garfield chair- man. He took an active part in Indian affairs. In 1875 President Grant nominated Judge Parker to the office of chief justice of Utah, and he was confirmed by the senate, but, at the request of the president, he declined the office, to accept a better position-that of United States district judge for the western district of Arkansas, which he still holds.
The jurisdiction of this court embraces a large area of the State, and the five civilized tribes in the Indian territory - Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles. The judicial labor involved is more than that required of any other judge in the United States. The criminal calendar, embracing crimes and misdemeanors growing out of an infraction of the intercourse laws- murder, arson, larceny, bigamy, and the revenue laws - constitute the principal part of the business.
Judge Parker is an able lawyer, an able jurist, both in the civil and criminal branches of the law. This is the universal expression of all competent to judge. He is eminently social in character, a fluent and fine conversationalist, and is possessed . of fine literary attainments. The author has, a great number of times, been the victim of mistaken identity, in being ad- dressed as Judge Parker. On one occasion a minister of the gospel approached me and desired to sell the judge some fine stock. I assured his reverence that he was mistaken in the man. With a look of astonishment he declared that he was not mistaken, that he had listened to me the year before deliver one of the finest orations he had ever heard, and that he could never forget Judge Parker.
On another occasion the judge passed sentence on a young man convicted in his court on a charge of robbing the United
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States mail. The mother of the young convict became ex- tremely solicitous for a pardon, and frequently importuned the judge to sign her petition to the president, but he bowed his neck and very firmly refused. A few days after this the old lady walked up to the author on the street, and to emphasize her indignation made a very ugly mouth at him. Pardon me, dear madam, I said, you have mistaken me for Judge Parker ; I am not the man. "Yes, you are," she said, " and you are now ashamed of your name on the streets, and deny it, and ask my pardon. Betsy Jones don't pardon such men as you are ; no sir, never."
HON. JAMES H. BERRY, BENTONVILLE.
Hon. James H. Berry was born in Jackson county, Alabama, on the 15th day of May, 1841. In 1848 his parents re- moved to Carroll county, Arkansas, and settled the locality which has taken its name from the family, and grown into the town of Berryville. Here the boy received a limited education at the village school, which was interrupted by the civil war, and never again resumed except in the privacy of his own studio, after the return of peace. In 1861 the martial spirit of the young man led him from the school-house into the rank and file of the Confederate army. He joined the Sixteenth Ar- kansas infantry, and was commissioned second lieutenant. He fought on the bloody field of Shiloh, in April, 1862. On the 4th of October, 1862, at the battle of Corinth, he lost a leg at the head of his column, which disabled him from further participa- tion in the war.
After the return of peace he taught a common school for a livelihood, and read law industriously, at spare intervals, from borrowed books, and was admitted to the bar in November, 1866, by Judge Thomas Boles, the circuit judge, who has since filled many Federal offices. The career of the young man since his admission to the bar has been phenomenal, although the prospect was any thing but inviting at the beginning. A domestic episode will here serve to illustrate the impenetrable veil which then shadowed the future of the coming man. In October, 1865, he married the accomplished daughter of that good but stern old citizen, James F. Quaill of Ozark. It was
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the old story of love defying opposition, and ending in a run- away marriage. The defeated, irate father saw no promising future for his daughter who had married a penniless, one-legged school teacher, and he closed the door on him, and refused to recognize or speak to him until he became the chief executive of the State. To this circumstance Governor Berry owes his rapid advancement and great political fortune. It fired the heart and kindled the ambition of the noble woman who hon- ors him as wife. She recognized and accepted him for his in- tellectual and moral worth. The vulgar and miserable ambi- tion of gold-getting did not corrode her heart into commerce . of the affections. Her noble inspiration pointed her husband onward and upward until the crippled and maimed soldier's wife became the bride of the legislator, jurist, governor and senator in the congress of the United States. Eighteen event- ful and busy years rolled away to swell the tide of the past, and these years in the end brought to the idolized wife a priceless pearl, a civic crown - she was mistress of the executive man- sion of a great State. Though gentle as the dove she had the heart of the eagle, and on tireless wing had directed and consummated a lofty flight. The iron in her father's Roman heart had melted in the shadow of years and his children's glory. The penniless soldier of " The Lost Cause " had become the child of fame, and the idol of the State - rich, not in the plebeian sense of gold, but in the greatness of honorable fame nobly achieved. No artist, no brain, no pen can ever paint or tell the ineffable tide that flooded the heart of the loving wife and noble daughter, as she looked on the scene of reconciliation. The recollection of that elysian hour, and the glorious con- summation it wrought, the ambition and the toil it ennobled and sanctified, are hidden away in the heart, like gems in the deep caverns of the sea. Governor Berry, in a letter to the author, says : " Whatever of success I have had in life is attributable to my wife." In August, 1866, he was elected to the legisla- ture from Carroll county. After his return from the legislature in 1867, he began the practice of his profession in Carroll .county, but did very little practice until after his removal to Benton county, in December, 1869. After his removal to Ben- tonville he was in partnership with his brother-in-law, the Hon.
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JAMES H. BERRY.
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HON. JOHN B. JONES.
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Samuel W. Peel, a member of the forty-eighth, forty-ninth and fiftieth congresses. In 1872 he was elected to the legislature from Benton county. At the extraordinary session of 1874 he was elected speaker of the house. In 1876 he was elected presi- dent of the democratic State convention. In 1878 he was elected judge of the fourth circuit, and served the people in that office four years. In 1882 he was elected governor of the State by a majority of twenty-eight thousand four hundred and eighty- one in a total vote of one hundred and forty seven thousand one hundred and sixty-nine. He was not a candidate for re-election, and would not have had any opposition in the democratic ranks if he had wanted the nomination, but he added another step to the ladder of his ambition and entered the field in an exciting and pro- tracted contest for the United States senate, wherein Hon. J. K. Jones and Hon. Poindexter Dunn were formidable rivals. Hon. J. K. Jones was elected for six years, and Governor Berry was elected in March, 1885, to fill the unexpired term of Governor Garland, which expires in 1889. Thus rapid has been the unchecked flight of one of the children of fame and fortune. If he lives, a great political battle will be fought, both in and out of the halls of State legislation, when the time comes in January, 1889, to choose his successor. Governor Berry has a fine personal appearance, an open, frank, generous and com- manding countenance, and as his history indicates, much mag- netism - powerful factors when competing for popular favor. No act of his life can be characterized as a stain on his charac- ter. In this he is singularly happy and fortunate for one who has rode down all opposition in the road to political for- tune.
HON. JOHN B. JONES, LITTLE ROCK.
Hon. John B. Jones was born on a farm in Tuscarawas county, Ohio, on the 28th of June, 1843, and his name and life, though yet quite a young man, is another confirmation of what an ambitious poor boy may accomplish by honest labor and faithful application, in removing and overcoming obstacles which rise up in his pathway, in an enlightened country where there is no aristocratic monopoly and artificial precedence to dwarf the aspirations and overshadow the abilities of the citi- 57
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zen whose only capital lies in the honest application of native ability.
Mr. Jones' youth, up to years of majority, was spent on a farm, in the discharge of all the duties and demands which that avocation and station in life imposed, with but a few short months in all that time given to the common school of the neighborhood. But he studied and toiled and employed all his spare moments in educating himself, and thus became a com- petent, self-made and self-reliant man when he attained to years of majority. When he was twenty-one years of age, he had ac- complished a good, practical English education, and was, at Taylorsville, Illinois (where he had removed in December, 1864), by competent authority, pronounced qualified to teach school, which avocation he followed for three years, during which time he pursued his legal studies with great avidity. In April, 1868, he was, by the supreme court of Illinois, admitted to the bar of that State, and immediately entered on the prac- tice of his profession at Taylorsville, Illinois. In 1878 he was elected to the legislature of Illinois and served two years in that capacity, and was a member of the judiciary and other im- portant committees. In March, 1882, he moved to Little Rock, where he has been actively engaged in the discharge of pro- fessional duties ever since, chiefly in landed litigation, in which he has achieved distinction as an able land lawyer, and de- servedly so. He is a man of commanding height and avoirdu- pois, and resembles General Albert Pike when young more than any other man I ever met. He is now president of the Real Estate Exchange of Little Rock, an active institution with ramifications extending throughout the north and west. Some of his contributions to the Bar Association of Arkansas are models, indicating much learning and research, and throw- ing a flood of light on difficult questions.
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GENERAL JAMES CAMP TAPPAN, HELENA.
General Tappan is a native of Williamson county in the neighboring Commonwealth of Tennessee. Through his mother, Miss Camp of Virginia, he is descended from the old revolutionary stock that gave the United States her fourth president in the person of James Madison. His mother was
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GEN. JAMES C. TAPPAN.
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niece to that distinguished patriot and statesman. General Tappan enjoyed great educational facilities; he was prepared for college at Exeter Academy, New Hampshire, from which he was sent to Yale College, and there graduated in the higher branches and the classics. Among his classmates were General Dick Taylor of the Confederate army ; Judge Wood of the supreme court of the United States, and Mayor Harri- son of Chicago. After leaving college he went to Vicksburgh, Mississippi, and there read law with that very able and distin- guished lawyer, George S. Yerger, a native of Wilson county, Tennessee. He was licensed to practice law in 1848, and set- tled in Helena the same year, where he has continued to reside ever since, except the years he gave to the military service of the Confederate States. He married the daughter of Judge Samuel Anderson of Tennessee, and niece of the late Governor Aaron V. Brown. In 1851 he was elected to the house of representatives in the State legislature. But political strife was not congenial to a man of his refined and sensitive nature, and he voluntarily retired from the political arena after serving his constituents one term He was receiver of the United States land office at Helena from 1852 to 1850.
In 1861 he embarked in the military service of the Confede- rate States and was elected captain of a company, and on join- ing the regiment was immediately chosen colonel of the Thir- teenth Arkansas Volunteers. The regiment was first under fire at the battle of Belmont, Missouri, on the 7th of Novem- ber, 1861, when it received the shock of battle, and held Gen- eral Grant with his overwhelming numbers in check until re- inforcements came from Columbus and swept the field like a hurricane. Colonel Tappan handled his regiment magnificently, and the signal victory achieved at Belmont is largely due to his skill and the bravery of his men. The regiment next came under fire on the 6th and 7th of April, 1862, at the ever-mem- orable battle of Shiloh, where the gallant old Thirteenth Ar- kansas won for itself imperishable farne, and for its dauntless and heroic colonel a soldier's highest reward - promotion for gallantry - a brigadier's commission. General Tappan, after the battle of Shiloh, was put in command of a brigade, and transferred to the trans Mississippi department. He fought
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his brigade in the battles of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, and Jen- kins Ferry, Arkansas, and surrendered his brigade at Shreve- port, Louisiana, in April, 1865. After the surrender he returned to Helena and reopened his law office, to rebuild the fortune dis- sipated by the war. He has been an active political adviser in the democratic ranks, but has steadily ignored office-seeking. He has often given the party the benefit of his wise counsel when assembled in State conventions, and in 1884 was a dele- gate to the national democratic convention at Chicago which nominated Cleveland for president. In 1885 he was appointed on the board of visitors to West Point. General Tappan enjoys the confidence and esteem of his fellow citizens in an eminent degree. He is a wise counselor, a zealous advocate, and an able lawyer.
W. W. WILSHIRE.
Judge Wilshire was born in Gallatin county, Illinois, Sep- tember 8, 1830. His paternal ancestors came from England, and settled in Virginia at an early period in her colonial his- tory, and their descendants were staunch supporters of the revolution headed by Washington. Mary Logan, his mother, the first cousin of the late General John A. Logan, emigrated from Ireland. The tide of emigration, in the decade suc- ceeding the revolution, set strongly westward from the older colonies, and brought with it across the Alleghanies, the pater- nal grandparents of our subject, in the track of Daniel Boone, and they located in "the dark and bloody ground." in 1795. These early settlers in the wilderness, surrounded as they were by hostile savages, became expert riflemen and the best of sol-
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