USA > Washington DC > The Biographical cyclopedia of representative men of Maryland and District of Columbia Pt. 1 > Part 9
USA > Maryland > The Biographical cyclopedia of representative men of Maryland and District of Columbia Pt. 1 > Part 9
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time to manifest her wisdom. Short as has been her new career, it has been long enough already to attest the value of that wisdom ; and any true son of the good old State, as he looks back into her past through the five years that have just elapsed-a period of time in her history, that, like the Roman Lustrum, has been to her a season of purifica- tion-then takes a glance at her present, and peering away across its clear sky, surveys the bright horizon of her future, must feel like the old Roman, at the thought of his citizenship, an exultant pride in his birthplace, as he can say, ' This Maryland, this loyal, union-loving, freedom- loving Maryland, this upward bound, expanding, regen- erated Maryland, this is, indeed, our Maryland.' Long may she continue to grow and prosper, fulfilling and re- alizing the motto upon her time-honored escutcheon, that bids her to ' increase and multiply.'" The reporter from whose published report we quote, added the following note : " The Governor's speech was delivered with an indescribable eloquence and earnestness, that carried with him the fullest sympathies of his audience, as was mani- fested not only by their applause, but by the rapt and close attention which was given to every word that fell from his lips. At the close nearly all present sought an opportunity to present their respects and express their appreciation of his great services to the State." Governor Bradford is a member of Mount Vernon Place M. E. Church, of Balti- more. He has had twelve children, of whom seven are living. Their names are Augustus W., Emeline K., Jane B., Lizzie, Charles 11., Thomas Kell and Samuel Webster.
SASON, REV. AUGUSTE FRANCKE, Pastor of Cal- vary Baptist Church, Washington, D. C., was born in Clockville, New York, November 17, 1839. Ile is a descendant of sturdy old Samson Mason, a Dragoon of the Republican army of Oliver Cromwell, who came to America in 1650, and con- cerning whom the records of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, contain the following curious mention : " December 9, 1657, it was voted that Samson Mason should have free liberty to sojourn with us, and to buy house, lands, or meadow, if he see cause for his settlement, provided that he lives peaceably and quietly." Anabaptist as he was, this permission was regarded a peculiar act of grace on the part of the New England Puritans. For generation after generation the descendants of Samson Mason were pastors of the Baptist Church in Swansey, Massachusetts. The Rev. Alanson P. Mason, D.D., the sixth generation from the old Cromwellian, and Sarah Robinson Mason, were the parents of Auguste Francke Mason. Mr. Mason's father, an able and prominent minister of the Baptist Church, after a pastorate at Clock ville, New York, was settled for six years at Brooklyn, New York, and thirteen years at Chelsea, Massachusetts. Mr. Masou's mother was the
daughter of a New England farmer, of moderate means, and a woman of superior intelligence and great force of character. She was educated at the then celebrated Mrs. Willard's Seminary, at Troy, New York, in which school she afterwards became a teacher. Mr. Mason was educa- ted at Chelsea, Massachusetts. After leaving the High School, he became a clerk in the counting-room of the dry goods house of James M. Beche & Co., of Boston, where his energy and business aptitude pointed to a successful business carcer. But, in 1857, during the great religious awakening of that year, he was the subject of deep re- ligious convictions, which caused him to withdraw from mercantile life, and to turn his attention to the Gospel ministry. After a course of study at Madison University, Hamilton, New York, from which he afterwards received the degree of Master of Arts, he was ordained, at Barn- stable, Massachusetts, in June, 1859. Although compara- tively a young man, his ministerial labors extend over a period of nearly twenty years, and have been attended with marked success. Ile has been settled as pastor at Meriden, Connecticut; New York City; Leominster, Mas- sachusetts; and is at present (1878), Pastor of Calvary Bap- tist Church, Washington, D. C., one of the largest churches in that city. Mr. Mason is an earnest and forcible speaker, and his sermons exhibit much originality of thought and scholarly research. The efficiency with which he has dis- charged his pastorial duties is evidenced in the large and increasing membership of Calvary Church, and the pros- perous condition of the Sunday-school, in which he has always taken the deepest interest. The church of which he is pastor, was organized sixteen years ago, and owns an edifice that cost over one hundred thousand dollars, to- gether with two Mission Chapels, all free from debt. In the vestibule of the church is a tablet to the memory of the lion. Amos Kendall, through whose efforts and mu- nificent donations, the church secured its edifice and sub- stantial basis. The funds for the support of the church and Sunday-schools, -- about six thousand dollars per an- num, -- are raised entirely by pew rents and voluntary sub- scriptions, and no collections for the benefit of the church are ever taken. Calvary Church now has a membership of five hundred and forty, and the aggregate average attendance of the three Sunday-schools supported by it is about one thousand.
e BROWN, J. HARMON, Register of Wills, in Balti- more, was born in that city, January 14, 1809. llis father, Stewart Brown, was, for many years, a highly respected merchant in Baltimore, and was prominent in many of the good works of his day. The subject of this sketch received his education in the city schools. When seventeen years of age, he entered the counting-room of Mr. Hugh Boyle, and remained in it about four years. In 1830, he engaged in the metal
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business in Baltimore, on his own account, which he con- dneted for thirteen years. In 1843, he was an assistant in the banking house of Alexander Brown & Sons, and afterwards, in the banking agency of Brown Brothers & Company, of New York, until about 1866. In 1867, he was elected, on the Democratie ticket, Register of Wills of the city of Baltimore, an office for which his previous business experience and tact well qualified him. To this office he was again elected in 1873, without opposition. Mr. Brown has been a ruling elder in the First Presbyte- rian Church for thirty-eight years. For ten years he has been Treasurer of the Baltimore Association for Improv- ing the Condition of the Poor. He has been a Manager of the Maryland State Bible Society since its formation, and, for the last five years, Corresponding Secretary. Ile has also been, from its beginning, a Manager of the Mary- Iand Industrial School for Girls, and also, a Manager and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Henry Wat- son Children's Aid Society. Ever since its organization, he has been Vice-President of the Prisoners' Aid Society. For about twenty years he has been a teacher in the Peni- tentiary Sunday-school. He has also been an efficient member in all the religious societies connected with the Presbyterian Church. In 1830, Mr. Brown married Miss Margaretta, daughter of John Wilson, a well-known mer- chant of Baltimore. He has four children living, all of whom are married. One is a missionary in Brazil.
ILVERWOOD, HON. WILLIAM, Legislator, Tem- perance Reformer, and Merchant, son of Wil- liam and Sarah (Sensecal) Silverwood, was born at Croxton Kerrial, Leicestershire, England, Jan- uary 13, 1826. Ilis parents were both natives of England, his father being a descendant of Thomas and Sarah Silverwood, whom the genealogical record of the family shows to have been residents of Crox- ton Kerrial as early as the year 1709. Mr. Silverwood's father died at Croxton Kerrial, February 8, 1873, at the advanced age of eighty-five, and, as Mr. Silverwood was revisiting England at that time, he was present at his father's bedside during the closing hours of his life. Wil- liam Silverwood, Senior, being a farmer, in .reduced cir- cumstances, with a large family to support, the educational advantages of the subject of this sketch were necessarily very limited. Ilis present position has been attained en- tirely through his own exertions. lle attended school in his native village until his twelfth year, and was then em- ployed, away from home, as a farmer boy, until he was eighteen years of age. After two years spent in the em- ploy of W. Parson, Esq., he entered into the service of an English gentleman, the Rev. Edward Manners, a rela- tive of the Duke of Rutland. He remained in the em- ploy of that gentleman until the year 1848, being then
twenty-two years of age, when he decided to emigrate to America, having accumulated enough from his earnings to defray his expenses to this country. He was married on the 6th of March, 1848, to Miss Mary Sadler, daughter of David and Elizabeth Sadler, of Waltham, Leicestershire, the marriage ceremony being performed by the Rev. Mr. Manners, his employer, who gave the bridal party a wedding dinner, as a mark of the high esteem in which Mr. Silver- wood and his bride were held. On the 4th of April, follow- ing, Mr. Silverwood and his wife embarked, at Liverpool, on the sailing vessel " Thomas Bennett," and, after a long voyage, characterized by all the disagreeable and hazardous experiences of an ocean voyage in those days, they landed in the city of New York May 27, 1848. Four days thereafter they embarked in a schooner, at New York, and sailed for Baltimore, arriving at the latter city on Saturday, June 4th, of the same year. The expense of the trip re- duced Mr. Silverwood's means to the sum of a sovereign and a few shillings, and as he was unable to obtain em- ployment for several days after his arrival in Baltimore, his future outlook was not altogether encouraging. Ile remained unemployed but one week, however, and just as his last dollar was being expended, he apprenticed him- self to Mr. Daniel Goodacre, a stonecutter, with whom he worked for a year and a half, and, after that, completed his apprenticeship with Messrs. Gault & Brothers. On completing his apprenticeship, he was engaged in journey- work for that firm for about six months, when he com- menced business, as a stone-cutter, on his own account, in Old Town, on what was then known as Canal Street. Ile continued in that business, at the same place, until the year 1866. Ten years prior to that time, he also entered into the coal business, in which he has continued up to the present time, being now exclusively and extensively engaged in the regular coal and wood business, at No. 261 North Front Street, and 81 East Monument Street, in the city of Baltimore. While in the stone business, Mr. Sil- verwood filled several large contracts in and around Balti- more. The steps and portico to the main entrance at Bay View Asylum, in Baltimore, the workmanship of Mr. Silverwood, is said to be one of the largest pieces of gran- ite work in the United States. The platform of the steps is sufficiently high to admit of vehicles passing beneath. For eighteen years prior to 1873, he was associated in business with Mr. Richard Sheckells, since whose death, which occurred at the time mentioned, he has carried on the business with his sons, under the firm name of Silver- wood & Sons. Commencing without a dollar, Mr. Silver- wood has worked his way up gradually and successfully, and his business career since his arrival in Baltimore, has been one of uninterrupted success. Ile is President of the Coal Trade Banking Association, of Baltimore city, which position he has held since the organization of that asso- ciation. Ile was a member of the Maryland Legislature, having been elected to the House of Delegates, on the
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Republican ticket, in the year 1864. While a member of that body, he introduced a bill, which became a law, and is now in force, providing against the sale of spirituous liquors to minors, the beneficial results of which are apparent in the great decrease in drunkenness throughout the State, since the passage of the bill. He has been iden- tified with the Republican party since its organization, and, during the late war, was very outspoken in his allegiance to the United States Government, often at great personal peril. He was a member of the Union League, and was an efficient member of the Christian Commission from the time it was first organized, contributing to its financial needs, and visiting the hospitals, and ministering to the wants of the wounded and suffering soldiers. He was the pioneer of a large English element, which settled at Bal- timore and vicinity after his arrival here, over which he exerted a great influence in favor of the Government, during the war. He has been a member of the Methodist Church from boyhood, his ancestry having been members of the same church from the days of Wesley. For seve- ral years he has been Treasurer of the Board of Trustees of the Monument M. E. Church, of North Baltimore Station. He has long been an earnest and enthusiastic worker in the cause of temperance, being connected with most of the temperance organizations of the State. He has filled the positions of Grand Worthy Templar of the Temple of Honor of Maryland and the District of Colum- bia ; Grand Worthy Patriarch of the Sons of Temperance; Grand Worthy Patron of the Cadets of Temperance, and Chairman of the First Legislative District of the City of Baltimore, of the Maryland State Temperance Alliance, the meetings of the Alliance in the district mentioned being held under his direction. Ile has lectured and worked diligently and energetically throughout the State for years, in the interest of the temperance canse, declin- ing to receive any compensation whatever for his services. Hle has also lectured, frequently, on miscellaneous sub- jects, his lectures being principally descriptive of his American and European travels, Mr. Silverwood having crossed the American Continent in 1877, spending some time at Salt Lake, San Francisco, the Geysers, and other places of interest on the Pacific Coast, and having twice revisited Europe, since his arrival here, in 1848. Ile al- ways speaks extemporaneously ; and, having a remarkable memory, brings to bear an inexhaustible fund of statisti- cal information to illustrate the truth of which he speaks. He has acquired a ready mode of generalizing facts, cal- culated to interest and convince his hearers. He is a member of the Baltimore Poor Association, and also of the association, under the auspices of which the children's excursions are carried on every year, and has, from time to time, contributed liberally towards other charitable and benevolent enterprises, as he has had opportunity. He has five children, three sons and two daughters: John William, Sarah Elizabeth, Robert David, Harriet Lucy,
and Wesley Lincoln. His two oldest sons are associated with him in business, and all the members of his family are active in temperance and church work.
COMPTON, HON. BARNES, State Treasurer, was the third child and second son of William Penn and Mary Key (Barnes) Compton, and was born November 16, 1830, at l'ort Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland. His parents were of English descent, but Mary Key, his maternal grandmother, was of Scottish ancestry. She was the daughter of Philip Key, of St. Mary's, and a sister of the late Hon. Ilenry G. S. Key. Her husband, John Barnes, was clerk of the court for Charles County from his majority to his death, at sev- enty-six years of age, in the year 1844, and his brother, Richard Barnes, was Register of Wills for the same court for a number of years. The father of Mr. Compton was a son of Dr. Wilson Compton, of Charles County, who was a son of the original settler. Dr. Compton married Elizabeth Penn,. daughter of Wm. Penn, of the same county, the owner of the old estate known as Ludlow's Ferry, which was the great thoroughfare across the Potomac from Eastern Virginia. When only three years old, Mr. Compton lost his mother, and his father when he was at the age of eight. Ilis grandfather, John Barnes, died when Mr. Compton was fourteen years of age. In his childhood he lost two brothers and a sister, and was thus left sole survivor of his family and heir of both the paternal and maternal estates. Ile was educated at Charlotte Hall, St. Mary's, till ready for college. He graduated A. B. at Princeton, New Jersey, in 1851. Ile then returned and took possession of his patrimony, a large estate of twenty-seven hundred acres, and became a planter, and the second largest slave- holder in the county. In 1855 he was nominated as a candidate for the Legislature on the last Whig ticket in that county, but was defeated by Hon. William D. Mer- rick by five votes. He joined the Democracy in 1856, and voted for Buchanan. In the County Convention the fol- lowing autumn, he was nominated by acclamation for the State Senate, but this honor he declined. In 1859 he was without opposition nominated and elected to the House of Delegates for two years. The session of 1860 was held as usual at Annapolis, the capital of the State, but for po- litical reasons the session of 1861 was convened at Fred- erick City. Mr. Compton was on his way to take his scat in that Legislature, when learning that a number of its members had been arrested by the Federal authorities, he made his escape across the Potomac into Virginia, where he remained until the expiration of his term of service. He then returned to his home and remained unmolested until after the assassination of Lincoln, in 1865, when upon false information he was arrested and imprisoned in
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the Old Capitol at Washington. Ile was here retained four days and discharged without conditions. In 1866 he became a candidate for the State Senate, receiving sixty ont of eighty votes in the convention for the nomination, and was elected without opposition for four years The Constitutional Convention intervening in 1867, another election was required in the fall of that year, when he was again nominated and elected without oppposition, and made President of the Senate. The whole Senate having been elected, it required a casting of lots to decide who should take the short or the long term. Mr. Compton drew a short term, and was elected again in 1869, for four years from January, 1870, without opposition, either in the convention or before the people. Ile received three hun- dred and ten out of a poll of three hundred and thirteen votes, cast in his own district, and was for a second time made President of the Senate. Upon each of these occa- sions that body was composed exclusively of members of the Democratic party. In 1872 he became a candidate for the office of State Treasurer, but was defeated in caucus by Hon. John Davis, of Baltimore, In March of the same year he was appointed Tobacco Inspector by Governor William Pinkney Whyte, and served two years in that office. In 1874 he was elected State Treasurer for two years, and was re-elected in 1876, and in 1878 he was unanimously nominated in the party caucus for a third term, and re-elected by the Legislature. Mr. Compton was married October 27, 1858, to Margarette Holliday Sothoron, daughter of Colonel John Henry Sothoron, of St. Mary's County, and has six children. The names of his four sons are, John Henry Sothoron, Key, William Penn, and Barnes; his daughters are Mary Barnes and Elizabeth Somerville. Ile is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Mr. Compton has travelled very ex- tensively in the United States and in Canada. He is a man of fine presence and great personal popularity. For many years he has taken an active part in the political campaigns of the State and invariably attracts by his elo- quence a large and interested audience. As a public speaker he is clear, forcible, and logical. He has also de- livered a number of lectures of acknowledged merit on lit- crary and social topics. In the councils of his party he exerts a commanding influence, and in the many high public trusts which have been committed to him not a word has ever been breathed against his honor and integrity.
RCHER, JOHN, M. B., was born in Harford County (then a part of Baltimore County), Maryland, May 5 (O. S.), 1741. He was the son of Thomas Archer, a farmer, residing near Church- ville, in that county. llis great-grandfather was Robert Archer, who lived in the north of Ireland. Ilis grandfather, John Archer, who married Esther Irwin, came to America in the early part of the last cen- 1
tury from the vicinity of Londonderry, with his family, consisting of his wife, three sons and a daughter. It is believed that he first settled in Cecil County, near Notting- ham. He soon, however, removed to the adjoining county of Harford. The family is probably descended from John de Archer, who crossed over from Normandy to England with William the Conqueror, inasmuch as we have the excellent authority of the Encyclopedia Britannica for the statement (in the article " Heraldry") that all the Archers in Great Britain are descended from him. The date, however, of the migration to Ireland of the particu- lar member of the- family from whom the emigrant to America was descended is unknown. Two of the latter's sons, Nathaniel and James, removed to Virginia and North Carolina respectively. The daughter, Esther, mar- ried in Harford County and left numerous descendants. Thomas, the third son of John Archer, married Elizabeth Stevenson, of the same county. They had five children, four of whom were swept off in their infancy, in 1747, by a malignant fever, the only' surviving child, John, the sub- . ject of this sketch, and from whom all the Archers in Maryland, who are relatives of this family, are descended, barely escaping death at the same time. John Archer received his rudimentary education at Nottingham Acad- emy, in Cecil County, at that time a school of considerable reputation. Here he was a classmate of Dr. Benjamin Rush, with whom an intimacy continued until his death. In 1760 he took the degree of A. B. at Nassau Hall, and three years later that of A. M. He then studied theology and entered the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. I a very short time, however, a throat disease depriving him almost entirely of his voice, he abandoned the pulpit and turned his attention to medicine. In the spring of 1765, he became a private pupil of Professor John Morgan, and attended lectures in the College of Philadelphia, a medical department having just been engrafted upon it, which was the germ of the present University of Pennsylvania. On the 18th of October, 1766, he married Catharine, daughter of Thomas Harris, a neighboring farmer, and Mary Mc- Kinney. Thomas Ilarris was another youthful emigrant from the Protestant section of Ireland. He died in 1801, being upwards of one hundred years of age, and leaving several children, many of whose descendants now reside in Philadelphia. Between his second and third courses of lectures John Archer practiced physic in New Castle County, Delaware. After his third course he took his degree, June 21, 1768. This being the first graduating medical class in America, there was quite an exciting con- test as to who should receive the very first medical honors conferred in the New World .* Declining a partnership
* The faculty, out of respect to the mother country, favored an Englishman, the only one among the eight graduates. The Ameri- can aspirants resisted stoutly, and the matter was compromised by conferring the degrees alphabetically, except that the Englishimao's name was allowed to appear somewhat higher upon the list than the alphabetical arrangement would have permitled.
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generously offered by his preceptor, Professor Morgan, he returned from Delaware, in July, 1769, to the place of his nativity, and commenced the practice of medicine. There being no other regularly educated physician within many miles, his professional services were in constant requisition in his own and the adjoining counties. This did not, how- ever, prevent him from engaging early and with much spirit in the great Revolutionary struggle. In June, 1774, he was appointed on the " Committee of Observation," to which were intrusted the local interests of the patriot party, and he was noted throughout for the zeal and untir- ing vigilance with which he discharged the important duties of his office. Ile also found time to drill his company of minute-men, though for this purpose, owing to the impair- ment of his voice before mentioned, he was obliged to use a speaking-trumpet. On the 27th of November, 1776, he and another citizen were chosen "at a meeting of the greater part of the inhabitants of Harford County" __ so the record rius-" as Electors of a Senate to serve the State of Maryland and of a Committee of Observation for Ilar- ford County." In August of the following year he was chosen a delegate to the State Convention to frame a Con- stitution for Maryland. This convention also drew up and adopted the famous Bill of Rights. Upon the close of the war he devoted himself exclusively to his profession, and had constantly under his charge medical students from Maryland and other States. In 1796 he was chosen Presi- dential elector at large for the State. Four years after- wards he was elected to Congress as a Jeffersonian Demo- crat, and was re-elected in 1802. Whilst in Congress he was frequently consulted by his professional brethren of Washington in their most difficult cases. Soon after the expiration of his second term he was unfitted from active pursuits by an attack of rheumatism, and remained in this condition until 1810, when, on the 28th of Septem- ber, he died suddenly, in the seventieth year of his age. For nearly half a century he had been a member, and du- ring a great portion of the time, an elder in the Presbyte- rian Church at Churchville, as his father had been before him. In Hooper's Medical Dictionary, with Additions by Samuel Akerly, M.D., is the following : " Archer, John, M.D., of the State of Maryland, a celebrated prac- titioner of medicine. Many contributions of his on various subjects of medical science are to be found in the New York Medical Repository. . The " M. D." should be A.B., as he never applied for the higher degree, and was therefore called " Doctor" only by courtesy. There is also a sketch of him in Lanman's Biographical Dic- tionary of the American Congress. Dr. Archer had nine children, six of whom (all sons) reached years of disere- tion, five of them selecting medicine as their profession, and studying under their father. The youngest of these, George W., died whilst a student. The other four, Thomas, Robert Harris, John, and James-named in the order of their ages -completed then medical studies and
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