USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > The Biographical cyclopedia of representative men of Maryland and District of Columbia Pt. 2 > Part 17
USA > Maryland > The Biographical cyclopedia of representative men of Maryland and District of Columbia Pt. 2 > Part 17
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BURNELL, GEORGE WASHINGTON, Lawyer and Landowner, of Snow ITill, Worcester County, Maryland, was born in that place in the year 1841. LIis parents were William Undrill and Eleanor Horsey (Robins) Purnell. Ilis descent on both sides is from the earliest settlers of our country. Ile is the seventh in descent from Thomas Purnell, who in 1664 came from Beckley, Northamptonshire, England, and set- tled on an estate called " Fairfield," in Worcester County, which is still in the possession of a member of the family. I hs mother was the daughter of James B. and Elizabeth (Horsey) Robins. The earliest American representative of the Robins family was Obedience Robins, who, with
his brother George, settled in Virginia, on the James River, in 1621. Ile afterward removed to Northampton County, in the same State, and his grandson, Thomas, came to Worcester County, Maryland, at the close of the seven teenth century. The families of Robins and Purnell have been connected by marriage for the last century, and it is an incident worthy of note that both families were origin- ally from the same county in England, and resided con- tiguously. George Washington Purnell is the eighth in descent from Obedience Robins. He commenced attend- ing school at the age of six years. When in his twelfth year he had the misfortune to lose both his parents. His brother, Littleton R. Purnell, was appointed his guardian, and at fourteen years of age he was placed at the Snow Hill Academy, where the late Ilon. C. L. Vallandigham taught in early life. Here he spent three years in pre- paring for college, and in his seventeenth year entered the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, in that State. The place proved very unfavorable to his health, and he was compelled to leave in consequence at the end of the first year. In the autumn of 1859, he entered the Sopho- more class at Princeton College, New Jersey. His health became re-established, and for two years he pursued his studies in happy anticipations of graduating with credit to himself and his friends, when in 1861 the storm of civil war broke in upon the quiet of cloistered and academie seclusion as well as upon the stirring scenes of more active life. His class, numbering ninety-four, was nearly broken up; half of them were from the other side of Mason and Dixon's line. The sympathies of young Purnell were with the South, and he left Princeton with his comrades, going first to his home, and afterward, without the knowledge of his guardian and friends, he proceeded further South, and entered the Confederate Army as a private in the First Maryland Cavalry. Afterward he was promoted to an Ad- jutancy in the Second Maryland Cavalry, serving nearly three years, thirteen months of which he spent as a prisoner on Johnson's Island, Lake Erie. In consequence of his being an officer and declining to take the oath after Lee's surrender, he did not obtain his liberty till late in June, 1865. Ile then tried to interest himself in mercantile pur- suits, but finding his tastes were not for that kind of busi- ness, he began in the spring of 1867 the study of law in the office of John R. Franklin, afterward Judge Franklin, of Snow Hill. In the autumn of that year he entered the Law Department of the University of Virginia, and re- mained until the next May, when he returned home and was the same month admitted to the bar. The following August he opened an office and commenced the practice of the law, in which he still continues. Mr. Purnell has been very successful as a lawyer, and has a large and growing practice in his district. Ile is an enthusiast in his profes- sion, and delights especially in the preparation of cases, and in bringing them before the court. He is personally pleasing, an indefatigable worker, and his increasing popn.
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larity and success are the natural result of well-directed effort and an agreeable manner. Notwithstanding the part he took in the late war, he disclaims the idea of partisan- ship; while tenacions of his own views, he willingly ac- cords the fullest liberty to others in thwir political opinions. Mr. Purnell married, in 1870, Margaret D., daughter of Edward II. Bowen, a member of the Snow Hill bar, who died in 1848. They have three children. Mr. Purnell is the owner of over one thousand acres of land in Worcester County.
ALDER, BASIL S., son of Thomas and Elizabeth (Spaulding) Elder, was born in Frederick County, Maryland, October 29, 1773, and died October 13, 1869, within a few days of attaining the age of ninety-six years. His grandfather, William Elder, died in 1775 at the age of sixty-eight. His grave is at the family homestead, not far from Mt. St. Mary's College. In the early part of this century his father removed, with all his family excepting Basil, from Frederick County to the neighborhood of Bardstown, Kentucky, where he died in 1832, at the age of eighty-five. His wife died in 1848, at the age of ninety-five. Basil S. Elder received a rudi- mentary education in the common country schools of his day, and when quite young came to Baltimore to take a clerkship in the store of his uncle, William Spaulding, with whom, after a few years, he was taken into partner- ship. They carried on an extensive grocery and produce business, under the firm name of Spaulding & Elder, on Howard Street, adjoining the old Wheatfield Inn, now the Howard House. At the death of Mr. Spaulding in 1810, Mr. Elder formed a copartnership with the late Joseph Taylor, and the firm assumed the name of Elder & Taylor. They continued the country grocery business for eighteen years, during which time they inaugurated and developed a new and very important feature in the business of the city, as forwarding merchants, receiving by the Boston and New York packets large quantities of goods, which they forwarded by sis horse teams over the Alleghany Mountains, to Pittsburg and Wheeling on the Ohio River, to be thence freiglited by steamboats to their destination at Cincinnati, Louisville, and other points. The copartner- ship with Mr. Taylor was dissolved in 1828, and Mr. Elder took his ellest son into the business, which was continued under the firm name of B. S. Ekler & Son, until gradually the inauguration of rail transportation superseded the for- warding business. . Mr. Elder was married in 1801 to Elizabeth M. Snowden, daughter of Francis Snowden, of Branton, Baltimore County. She died in 1860, after a married life of fifty-nine years. They had thirteen chil- dren, three of whom died in infancy. Of the remaining ten, seven sons and three daughters, one daughter and seven sons survive, whose united ages would be five hun-
dred and eighteen years. The eldest, a daughter now in the seventy-sixth year of her age, has been for nearly sixty years a Sister of Charity in the Mother' House of that community, St. Joseph's, at Emmettsburg. One son, Wil. liam Henry, now sixty years of age, and next to the youngest of all the children, was consecrated Bishop of Nat- chez, Mississippi, in May, 1857, and has recently been appointed by Pope Leo XIII as coadjutor, with the right of succession, to the present Archbishop of San Francisco. All the other sons, except Francis, the eldest, have settled in the West and South. Mr. Elder was born and brought up in the Catholic Church, of which he was an exemplary member throughout his long life. His wife was noted for her deeds of charity to the poor and to the orphan. He was one of the original incorporators and trustees of the Cathe- dral, and enjoyed the personal friendship and social inter- course of Archbishops Carroll, Mareschal, and their suc- cessors in the archiepiscopal office. Mr. Elder never held nor sought any public office. He was noted for his humane and charitable disposition and even temper. He was iden- tified with the old Savings Bank, from its incipiency, and continued to be an active director in that institution until declining years rendered him incapable of active service, when he relinquished the trust with great reluctance. He was not conspicuous in politics, but was a persistent voter to a very late period of his life. After going through the various party phases of the early portion of this century, he finally closed his days an earnest adherent of the Democratic party. His military record is embraced in the expedition of General Washington to quell the Whiskey Insurrection, as it was called, in Western Penn- sylvania, and to his participation in the defence of Balti- more in the last war with England, notably at the battle of North Point. His chief characteristic was his devotion to his religion and his probity as a merchant. In his letters to his children he scarcely ever failed to impress upon them the Gospel injunction, " What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose .his own soul ?" With this sentiment always in his heart he could not fail to attain an enviable distinction in the community as a good, upright, and useful citizen, one of nature's noblemen. In 1851 he celebrated his goklen wedding in Baltimore, on which occasion were assembled all his children and grand- children, numbering over thirty persons.
ULIVANE, HON. CLEMENT, Lawyer, Editor, and State Senator, the eldest child of Dr. Vans Mur- ray and Octavia (Van Dorn) Sulivane, was born in Port Gibson, Claiborne County, Mississippi, August 20, 1838. His father's family were descended from Major James Sulivane, an Irish officer in one of the regi- ments of King James, who removed to this country, and
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settled in Dorchester County, Maryland, in 1693. All the families of his descendants have from that time lived and died in that county, with the exception only of a great unele of the subject of our sketch, who was also named Clement Sulivane, and who was a Captain in the United States Army, and who was killed at Black Rock in the war of 1812, and of Dr. Sulivane, the father of Senator Suli- vane, who lost his life by violence in l'ort Gibson, Mis- sissippi, where he had married and settled. The associa- tions of the place were made by the circumstances of his death so trying to his widow, that she with her two infant children, Clement Sulivane, and his sister, still younger, removed to Cambridge, Maryland, the former home of her husband, and ever afterwards resided with his family. Dr. Sulivane was named for a maternal great uncle, Vans Murray, who was Minister to France and Holland under the administration of the first President Adams. Mrs. Sulivanc was the daughter of Judge Van Dorn, of Port Gibson, Mississippi. The Van Dorns are numerous in New York and New Jersey, where they have lived since the early Dutch settlements, and have occupied every position in life. The maternal grandmother of Senator Sulivane was Miss Donaldson, of Tennessee, who was the niece of Mrs. General Andrew Jackson, and the adopted daughter of herself and husband. Governor William Grason, of Queen Anne's County, was an uncle by mar- riage of Senator Sulivane. The latter was always of a studious disposition; he was brought up and educated at Cambridge. When fourteen years of age, he spent one year at Northampton, Massachusetts, followed by a year at Princeton, New Jersey, where he stood second in his class; and this was succeeded by two years at the Uni- versity of Virginia. Ile then studied law with IIon. Charles F. Golsborough in Cambridge, and was admitted to the bar in November, 1860. The next April he en- listed in Company A, of the Tenth Mississippi Regiment, at Pensacola, Florida, and in July of the same year, was transferred, on application, to Company B, of the Twenty- first Virginia Regiment, at Richmond. In November, 1861, he was appointed First Lieutenant and Aide-de- Camp, on the staff of General Carl Van Dorn, his mother's brother, at Manassas, having been called for that purpose from West Virginia, where he was a private soldier under General R. E. Lec. He accompanied General Van Dorn to Arkansas, in January, 1862, and served with him until May, 1863, when the General was killed at Spring Hill, Tennessee. Lieutenant Sulivane was in all the principal battles in the West, from March, 1861, to May, 1863, in- ยท cluding the battles of Elk Horn or Pea Ridge, Farmington, Corinth, Vicksburg, etc. He had three horses killed under him, but never received a wound. In May, 1863, he was ordered East, and assigned to duty as Assistant Adjutant- General on the staff of Brigadier-General G. W. E. Lee, eldest son of General R. E. L.ce, then commanding the defences of Richmond, and took part in repelling the
cavalry raids made against the city. With two regiments of his command he drove back the night attack of Colonel Dalilgren, March, 1, 1861. He was promoted Captain in July, 1864, and Chief of Staff to Brigadier General Lee. In January, 1865, he was promoted Major, and Lieutenant Colonel the following March, and was recom- mended as Brigadier-General, and the appointment was ordered to be made by President Davis, but the Con- federate Army retreated from Richmond before the neces- sary papers had been sent to receive the signature of the I'resident. The military career of Colonel Sulivane ended with the surrender of Lee's army, and he was paroled and returned to his home at Cambridge, where he has since resided, practicing his profession in partnership with the Hon. Daniel M. Henry, member of Congress from the First District of Maryland. In 1871 he became, and has since continued, the editor and proprietor of The Cam- a bridge Chronicle, a long-established and influential weekly paper, which has lost none of its prestige in the hands of its present owner. Through its columns he is the efficient promoter of every good and worthy cause, and both by word and pen exerts a strong influence in the favor and support of every public improvement. Ile has been a member of the National Democratic party from his youth, and was for seven years Chairman of the Executive Com- mittee for his county, until, in November, 1877, he was elected State Senator from Dorchester County for four years. Senator Sulivane has been a member of the Knights of Pythias for several years, and of the A. F. and F. M. since August, 1876. He has always been at- tached to the Protestant Episcopal Church. Ile was mar- ried, November 26, 1868, to Delia B. Ilayward, only daughter of Dr. William B. Ilayward, who has been Commissioner of the Land Office of Maryland since Jan- uary, 1870. The office of Dr. Hayward will expire in 1880, he having been three times appointed to it by successive governors of Maryland. Senator Sulivane has three chil- dren. He is a man of fine physique ; well known for his outspoken manliness of character, and as a prominent mem- ber of the Dorchester bar ; also as one of the most public- spirited, and enterprising citizens of Cambridge.
ICHARDSON, CHARLES CHESTERFIELD, M.D., was born in Howard County, Maryland, August 10, 1831. Ile was the third son in a family of 00 fifteen children, some of whom still survive. His father, Dr. Charles Richardson, a native of the same county, graduated at the Maryland University in 1816, and for fifty-one years practiced in that county. He was snc- cessful in his profession, and highly esteemed as a man of learning, being the author of several medical and scientific works, among which may be mentioned a volume on the
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potato disease, when that scourge first made its appear- ance; also a volume on the cholera epidemic. He died in 1871, full of years and honors. The family descended from George Richardson, a Welsh nobleman, whose coal of arms is in Dr. Richardson's possession, and some ol whose descendants, near relatives of the latter, are the pro. prietors of the Bank of Richardson, Spencer & Co., Liver- pool, England. IIe has also German and English blood in his veins. His mother was Julia A., daughter of Samuel Smith, a prosperous shipping and commission merchant of Baltimore. IIe received his early education at an Acad- emy in Brookville, Montgomery County, and at St. Tim- othy's Hall, in Baltimore County. He was trained to medicine from his boyhood, his father being an enthusiast in the science, and he inheriting the same passion. He had also an elder brother, Samuel, who studied for the same profession, and graduated at the Maryland Univer- sity in 1848. Dr. Charles Richardson read with his father, and became practically acquainted with the medical art, after which he passed through the usual course at the above University, and received the degree of M.D. in 1855. Deciding to remain in Baltimore he settled at once, and soon secured a good practice, which has continued to in- crease. He is a general practitioner, has no specialties ; is a popular and trusted family physician. He has little taste for surgery, still has had his full share of remarkable cases, and of success in their treatment. IIe has the same natural gift in the healing art which his father possessed, and which has made them both so successful. IIe is now in the prime of life and at the height of his usefulness. For several years Dr. Richardson took much interest and a very active part in politics, especially during the great reform which rescued the eity from the hands of the mobs under Know-Nothing rule. Mayor George W. Brown, now Judge of the Supreme Court of Baltimore, appointed him Assistant Health Commissioner. He was also for a time a member of the School Board from the Sixteenth Ward. His marriage with Harriet A. Councilman, of Baltimore, took place in 1856. They have a son and a daughter, Harry and Nellie.
JUMP, HON. CHARLES MEDFORD, son of Charles and Margaret ( Pratt). Jump, was born January 3, 1829, in Talbot County, where he still resides. His father was engaged in the war of 1812. He was a man highly regarded in the community, but would never accept any office, though repeatedly solicited to do so. The grandfather of Hon. Charles M. Jump was a Colonel in the Revolutionary war. When brought under fire at the battle of Germantown his regiment fled, but he rallied them, brought them into action, and inspired by his example, they fought bravely to the end of the conflict.
Hle was promoted for his bravery and meritorious service on this occasion. He left at his death a family of fourteen children, eight sons and six daughters, all married. The material grandfather of the subject of our sketch left five daughters, three of whom manied three brothers of the name of Jump; two cousins of whom, also bearing that name, married the remaining daughters. The education of Charles M. Jump, well begun at the primary schools in the vicinity of his home, was finished at the Military Acad- emy at Oxford, Talbot County, where he devoted himself to mathematics, Latin, and the higher branches of study. At this school he underwent a very strict discipline, learning to work hard in youth in the field and to practice economy. He Was very fond of hunting, and had a de- cided taste for mechanical pursuits. After leaving school he built a house, hewing all the timbers himself, and com- menced farming the following year, 1852. He has re- mained to the present time at the same place, engaged in the same occupation. In 1866 he was elected to the Senate of Maryland, in which he served on the Pension Commit- tee and in the Examination of Applicants, also on the Com- mittee on Agriculture, and on the Engrossing Committee. In 1869 Mr. Jump was re-elected to the Senate and served until 1873. In 1877 he was elected County Commis- sioner for two years. April 4, 1874, he joined the Patrons of Husbandry, and was Master of the Chapel Grange for two years. In 1860 he became a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to which denomination he had always been attached, and in 1867 connected himself with the Methodist Episcopal Church South. In politics he has always been a Democrat. He claims the privilege of de- ciding for himself of the personal fitness of those who re- ceive his suffrages at the polls, and believes that no politi- cal organization should have the power to lill the offices with men who have no other than party claims. Mr. Jump was married, July 19, 1853, to Mary Henrietta, daughter of Philip Morgan, of Caroline County. They have five daughters; the second, Anna Pauline, is the wife of Rev. George S. Lightner, of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, now preaching in Baltimore. July 19, 1878, being the twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Jump celebrated their silver wedding, their five daugh- ters serving as bridesmaids: Mr. Jump is regarded as a man of superior intelligence, and is an honored member of his Church.
OX, CHRISTOPHER CHRISTIAN, A. M., M.D., L.L.D., was born in Baltimore, Maryland, August 28, 1816. Ilis father, Luther James Cox, a native of Queen Anne's County, early engaged in mercantile pursuits in the city, and became known as a high-toned and prosperons merchant. He was a consistent member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and an acceptable local min.
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ister of that denomination. The mother of Dr. Cox was Maria Catharine, daughter of Christian and Susanna Kee- ner, and sister to Christian and David Keener, who are remembered by many as prominent among the most enter. prising and useful citizens of their day. Mrs. Cos was a cultivated and pious woman, possessed of fine literary taste and faithful in the discharge of every duty. Young C. C. Cox was sent at an early age to the best seminaries of learning in his native city, and was devoted to his books, excelling in the study of the classics. In IS33 he entered the Junior Class at Yale College, from which institution he was honorably graduated in 1835. Among his college mates were William M. Evarts, Chief Justice Waite, and the late minister to England, Edwards Pierrepont. He had decided to enter upon the study of law, to which his tastes early inclined him, and in which profession his large intellectual resources, clear analytical mind, and fine ora- torical powers would doubtless have secured for him brilliant success, but having become fascinated by the acci- dental perusal of a celebrated French treatise on physi- ology, he suddenly abandoned the law and prosecuted with much zeal the study of medicine. Before the com- pletion of his medical course he was married to Amanda, daughter of Clarke Northrop, of New Haven, Connecticut, a lady of rare accomplishments and superior mental en- dowments. After receiving the degree of Doctor of Medi- cine from the Washington Medical University, at Balti- more, in 1838, he entered at once upon the practice of this profession in the city of his birth. In consequence, however, of seriously impaired health, he soon located in Baltimore County, where he continued to practice labori- ously and successfully until his removal to Talbot County, in the fall of 1843, where the largest portion of his pro- fessional life has been spent. Ilere he became at once firmly established. His rides extended over an immense geographical area, and he was recognized in and out of the State as a physician and surgeon of marked ability. In 1848 he was invited to the chair of Institutes of Medicine and Hygiene in the Philadelphia College of Medicine, but in the succeeding year resigned the position and resumed his duties in Talbot. He became especially active about this time in his efforts to elevate the standard of the profession in his adopted county, and for this purpose organized a flourishing local medical society, over which he presided for a number of years. In 1851 he was elected President of the Medico-Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, embrac- ing within its membership the best talent of the State, and to this day ranking among the leading scientific organiza- tions of the country. About this time he became interested in the political questions then being agitated, and soon ac- quired reputation as a vigorous writer and speaker. Ilis affiliations had always been with the Whig party, whose principles he cherished and ardently advocated. In 1855 he was with great unanimity nominated for Congress in the First District of Maryland, by the convention which as-
sembled at Cambridge, but for reasons of a personal nature the proffered honor was declined. Two years later he was again nominated, and entered upon a spirited canvass in opposition to llon. James A. Stewart, then a prominent Democratic member of the House of Representatives, and now one of the Judges of the State Appellate Court. Ex- traordinary means were employed to return Mr. Stewart to Congress ( where the two political parties were very nicely balanced), and the result was the defeat of Dr. Cox by a moderate majority. In 1861 he was aroused to a sense of the peril which threatened the existence of the government, and although most of his friends and relatives sympathized with the Southern movement, he assumed a manly attitude against the rebellion and in defence of the Union. His bold and earnest course lost him many ad- herents, and sensibly diminished his success as a practi- .. tioner of medicine. In October, after passing an exami- nation, he was appointed Brigade Surgeon, U. S. A., and assigned to the medical directorship of Lockwood's Bri- gade, then occupying the counties of Accomac and North- ampton, in Eastern Virginia. Early in the following year he was ordered to Baltimore as one of an Army Board or- ganized for the examination of candidates for medical ser- vice in the war, and also as Chairman of the Board for the Inspection of Invalid Officers. In April, 1862, he received the appointment of Medical Purveyor of the Middle Mili- tary Department, located at Baltimore, a position of much labor and responsibility. In the same year he was made Surgeon-General of Maryland, with the rank of Colonel of Cavalry. The addition of this office greatly enlarged his sphere of duty. In the midst of these important gov- ernment cares and labors he was not unmindful of the claims of his profession, in which he continued to feel a lively interest. Accordingly, we find him, in 1863, reading two valuable papers before the American Medical Associa- tion at Chicago (now published in the printed Transactions), at which meeting he was unanimously elected Vice-Presi- dent of that distinguished body of physicians and scientists. In the autumn of 1864 Doctor Cox received the unsought and unanimous nomination of Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland, and was elected by a vote considerably in ad- vance of the general ticket. By virtue of his office he be- came the President of the Senate, the duties of which he discharged with signal ability and impartiality. At the death of the lamented Governor Hicks, the name of Gov- ernor Cox was urged by many as his successor in the United States Senate, and the probabilities of his success were very flattering, when he concluded to retire from the competition. This step has been regarded' by his friends as the serious mistake of his public life. In 1865 he was selected by President Lincoln as one of the Visiting Board at West Point, and assisted in the examinations of that year. In the spring of 1866 he made a visit to the Old World, having been accredited the first representative of the American Medical Association to the medical and sci -.
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