USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > The Biographical cyclopedia of representative men of Maryland and District of Columbia Pt. 2 > Part 57
USA > Maryland > The Biographical cyclopedia of representative men of Maryland and District of Columbia Pt. 2 > Part 57
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Order of Odd Fellows in the United States was opened. Though the Order made but little progress for several years, and was compelled to struggle against disfavor, apathy, and a want of confidence, it finally, through Mr. Wildey's wonderful energy and enthusiasm in the cause, became a great success, and when he retired from office in 1833 he had instituted four lodges in Maryland, organized the "Grand Lodge of Maryland and of the United States," and originated the Patriarchal Order; he had extended the institution to Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Louisiana, Kentucky, Delaware, the District of Co- lumbia, and saw them all united under the present Grand Lodge of the United States. He left the chair of Grand Sire of the Order in 1833 to mingle in the ranks of the brotherhood at large, having in 1826 visited England and obtained a charter from the Manchester Unity, giving the transatlantic Order independence, character, and power. Though divested of his high rank, Mr. Wildey still con- tinued to devote his time and energies to the spread and prosperity of the Order, travelling and instituting lodges in all directions, upon which missions he was deputed at dif- ferent times by the Grand Lodge of the United States. Mr. Wildey dicd, October 19, 1861, in the eightieth year of his age. His remains were interred in Greenmount Ceme- tery. In 1865 a large and handsome monument was erected to his memory on North Broadway, Baltimore.
SHANAHAN, REV. JOHN, D.D., was born at Harri- sonburg, Virginia. Eminently does he represent that large class of more than ordinary men who owe their prominence and success in life more to indomitable perseverance and tireless intellectual exertion amid very meagre educational advantages, than to favorable and long-continued surroundings for culture in academic or collegiate halls. Professing conversion in his youth, he soon realized inward impressions of a divine call to the work of the ministry. In March, 1838, he was ad- mitted into the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Early in his ministerial life his supe- rior talents won the attention of the Conference, and for many years his appointments have been the most com- manding and influential within its gift. Among the earlier charges he served in the pastorate are the principal Methodist churches of Frostburg, Maryland; Alexandria, Virginia ; Fredericksburg, Virginia ; Georgetown, District of Columbia; and Cumberland, Maryland. IIc afterwards occupied the pulpits of the Exeter Street and Caroline Street churches of Baltimore, and that of the Foundry Church at Washington, District of Columbia, then the most influ- ential appointment of the denomination at the National Capital. During the later ministry of Dr. Lanahan, he has served his Conference much in the important and laborious office of Presiding Elder. In such superintend- ency of church work he has travelled the Potomac, Vir-
ginia, Baltimore, Washington, and East Baltimore dis- tricts of the Conference, with which he has been connected through a period of forty years. By the votes of his brother pastors he has continuously represented them in the General Conference, the supreme legislative council of the denomination, from the session of 1856 to the present date. During the late civil war his work embraced much of the territory occupied by contending armies, and dotted with battle-fields. At that time the Hon, Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, gave expression to the estimate he placed on the honor and patriotism of Dr. Lanahan, by furnishing him with an official letter, ad- dressed to military officers at large, instructing them to provide Dr. Lanahan with protection and transportation when he should request it in the discharge of his ecclesi- astical duties. Probably the most important period in his- ministerial life is associated with his official connection with the Methodist Book Concern at New York. At the session of the General Conference of 1868, his name was presented as a candidate for Assistant Book Agent. He declined the nomination, but over his declinature he was elected. He resolved to thoroughly acquaint himself with the character and details of the vast business intrusted to the two agents. He made his work a study. He visited other publishing houses, and conversed with experienced representative publishers as to the grades and prices of materials, the amount of finished work certain quantities of paper and leather should produce, the wages paid for skilled labor, methods of administering the affairs of the various departments of the business, and prices obtained for books, etc. When made fully acquainted with these interests he began to look into the affairs of the Concern, and his gravest suspicions were aroused. Subsequent in- vestigation convinced him that dangerous and very loose business methods prevailed : that the superintendent of the Printing Department by private arrangement allowed an outside friend to purchase as "a middleman," and at a heavy gain to himself and corresponding loss to the house, all paper used in the establishment ; that enormous amounts expended for materials were audited by the cashier on the statements of those making the purchase, with which no vouchers were offered as proof of their accuracy; that the waste materials, such as gold-leaf, paper-clippings, etc., aggregating the amounts of salary received by the super- intendents, were sold as perquisites by these persons ; that hundreds of dozens of sheep and morocco skins and quan- tities of costly silk velvet had mysteriously disappeared from the bindery after their purchase ; that the pay-roll of the house was unreliable and fraudulently kept; that the ledgers contained enormous false entries ; that the annual exhibits to the Conferences were incorrect and deceptive ; and that grave discrepancies existed between the balances on the books of the house and those of the bank in which the agents made their monetary deposits. During the period involved in these discoveries and the acquisition of
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the proof with which these statements were finally forti- fied, rumors affecting the fair fame of the Concern became current. The New York Times published, September 21, 1860, an elaborate editorial presenting facts and figures impeaching the integrity of the house. In the editorial columns of the Christian AAdvocate the Assistant Agent was charged with being the inspirer of this article. The Book Committee of ministers and laymen, whose office it was to supervise the affairs of the Concern, were pressed to save the reputation of the establishment at any cost. Strug- gling to rescue the perilled credit of the house and more especially the characters of those who had long controlled its management, they nevertheless admitted the existence of wrongs in the Printing Department. Of the affairs of the Bindery, they say : " The investigation of the affairs and business of the Bindery has satisfied the committee that there has been great mismanagement in this depart- ment, and that serious losses have occurred therein." The impression made on the great denominational public by this report was so unfavorable as to produce throughout Methodism a profound sensation. Scores of the most in- fluential secular and religious journals of the country con- demned it as an ill-advised effort to cover up gross corrup- tion. The Committee were soon led to a reversal of their judgment, and a minority of their number issued an address to the Annual Conferences in support of the main allegations made by Dr. Lanahan. Friends of accused parties signed charges against the Assistant Agent, who during their pendency was suspended from his office. Of the seventeen persons who attached their signatures to the charges, but four appeared at the trial. At an early stage in the inves- tigation, the prosecution over the protest of Dr. Lanahan abandoned the case, and he was reinstated in his office. The Book Committee secured Dr. Lanahan's final consent to a mutual withdrawal of the charges, on condition that the books of the establishment should be thoroughly ex- amined by professional accountants. In the selection of these examiners, the Senior Agent declined to allow his partner, Dr. Lanahan, any voice or representative. Under the pressure of Dr. Lanahan's charges the superintendent of the Printing Department had been forced to resign the position he had long held. He entered suit in a civil court against Dr. Lanahan for slander. That he might obtain the necessary proof for this investigation, Dr. Lanahan demanded access to the check books and other records. The Senior Agent refused his demand. Dr. Lanahan was then compelled to apply to the civil authori- ties for the order. This stirred the indignation of those who desired to witness Dr. Lanalian's defeat. The Book Committee was again hastily convened, and a second time was the Assistant Agent suspended. The majority re- solved to impeach him at once for this application to the courts. Dr. Lanahan urged a full investigation, hoping that by this method an opportunity would be furnished him to prove his allegations of fraud and mismanagement.
Under the law of the Church the Board of Bishops were required to be present at the trial, and to act as a Senate or concurrent house. Bishops Janes and Ames represented the Episcopacy. A majority of the committee resolved to remove Dr. Lanahan from his office. In concurring with this majority, the late limented Bishop Janes paid to Dr. Lanahan this richly-merited tribute : " With Dr. Lanahan I have been acquainted for more than a quarter of a cen- tury. I have assigned him to some of the most difficult and responsible appointments in his Conference. Ile has always met his obligations with fidelity and ability. I have honored him in my heart as well as in my adminis- tration. My confidence in him as' a Christian brother and as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ is unshaken, and my affection for him remains undisturbed. My decision refers only to his official act as Assistant Agent of the Book Concern. His act of suing out a writ of mandamus- at the time, and in the manner he did, I cannot approve ; but the question whether the error is sufficient to remove him from office, I have found a very difficult one to decide." The non-concurrence of Bishop Amcs restored Dr. Lanahan to the office to which the General Conference had elected him At the ensuing General Conference held in May, 1872, the Assistant Agent presented an able report, traversing the entire history of the case. This was accompanied by documentary evidence. Mr. John A. Gunn, employed by the Senior Agent for more than a year in an examination of the books, presented liis report as an expert in bookkeeping to the same supreme council of the Church. This elaborate review of the business affairs of the house fully sustained some of the gravest . charges made by Dr. Lanahan, and brought out the fact that the fraudulent exhibits of the books were serious, and covered a period of about fifteen years. Dr. Lanahan was re- nominated, but declined a re-election, that he might resume ministerial work in the Baltimore Conference. After various attempts to induce him to enter into a com- promise, the employe who had sued him for slander abandoned the case. A vacancy having occurred in the Presiding Eldership of the Washington District, Dr. Lana- han was appointed to fill the same. Since 1872 he has been continuously in the Presiding Elder's office. He is an able and eloquent preacher, and as a ready, impressive, and trenchant debater, his addresses on the Conference floor are always received with profound attention. His Conference continues to lavish on him its most conspicuous badges of honor and affection, and throughout the States engirding the National Capital his name, as an eminent minister and distinguished citizen, js held in the highest veneration. At the session of the Baltimore Conference in 1878, he was appointed for the second time to the pastorate of the Foundry Methodist Episcopal Church at Washing- ton, District of Columbia, where President Hayes and family, as well as many other distinguished men, attend upon his ministrations.
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MORRISON, GEORGE, Presbyterian Minister and Editor of the Presbyterian Weekly, Baltimore, Maryland, was born at Sweet Air, Baltimore County, Jannary 30, 1831. After a thorough pre- paratory education under the instructions of the Rev. Professor Stephen Ferkes, D.D., now of Danville Theological Seminary of Kentucky, the subject of this sketch entered Princeton College, whence he graduated in 1852. Though in carly life having a great ambition to be a farmer, he established in the autumn of the year of his graduation from Princeton a classical school at Sweet Air, which proved to be a successful step. In 1854 he was elected Principal of the Baltimore City College, which position he held until 1857, the Board of School Commis- sioners on the occasion of his resignation passing resolu- tions highly complimentary to the faithful and efficient manner in which he had performed his duties. The same year he removed to Danville, Kentucky, to study theology at the Danville Theological Seminary, and in 1860 was licensed by the Baltimore Presbytery to preach the Gospel. After travelling for some months in the States west of the Mississippi River, he, in the autumn of 1860, accepted the charge of a church at Cynthiana, Kentucky, where he re- mained until the close of the civil war. In 1865 his wife died, and in the spring of that year he resigned his Ken- tucky charge to assume the charge of the First Presbyterian Church at Terre Haute, Indiana, the duties of which he entered upon in the winter of 1866. During his Kentucky residence he adhered to the Federal Government in all of its struggles for unity and integrity, and was an occasional contributor to the secular and religious press. He re- mained in charge of the church at Terre Haute until the spring of 1870, and whilst there, in addition to his pastoral work, contributed to the Herald and Presbyter, performed considerable missionary and educational work for his Pres- bytery and Synod, and paid off the debt of the church building. Ile resigned the above charge with a view to return to the bounds of the Baltimore Presbytery. In 1867 Mr. Morrison was a member of the General Assembly of his Church at Cincinnati, and during the same year at In. dianapolis. At the joint meeting of the synods of Indiana he delivered a forcible and eloquent address on a rennion of the Presbyterian Church, which was published in full in the Indianapolis Journal. For a few months before his return to Maryland he supplied a church at Shipman, Macoupin County, Indiana. In 1872 he accepted a call to the Bethel Church of Harford County, Maryland, still retaining his residence in Baltimore. In 1873 he became editor and one of the proprietors of the Presbyterian Weekly of Baltimore. In May of 1875 he was appointed by the Presbytery of Baltimore to represent them in the General Assembly which sat at Cleveland, Ohio. In 1876 he resigned his charge of the Bethel to assume that of the Grove Church, Harford County. From 1860 until the present time Mr. Morrison has been prominently identified
with the questions that affect the integrity of the Presbyte- rian Church. Ilis father, George Morrison, was a Presby- terian minister, who from 1822 to 1837 preached in Balti- more and Harford counties, He was an accomplished classical teacher, his reputation as such extending though- out the State. His wife, the mother of George Morrison the younger, was Eliza Millington Lovell. The grand- father of the subject of this sketch was Donglass Morrison, who died at his farm, near White Clay Creck Presbyterian Church, in New Castle County, Delaware. He was an elder in that church, as were his father and grandfather. Five generations of the Morrison family, from 1711, are interred in the cemetery of the above church. Mr. Mor- rison's maternal grandfather was William Lovell, from London, who settled in Baltimore in the early part of the present century. In August of 1856 Mr. Morrison was married by the Rev. Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge to his daughter, Miss Sally Campbell Breckinridge, at Braedul- lane, near Lexington, Kentucky. She dying in 1865, he married the second time, February, 1875, Miss Maggie Register, daughter of Joshua Register, of Baltimore. Mr. Morrison is a gentleman of great force of character and marked individuality, and is one of the ablest ministers in the Presbyterian Church.
BUTLER, REV. JOHN GEORGE, D.D., was born in Gre 1826 in Cumberland, Maryland. Ilis parents were Jonathan and Catharine Butler. His grand- father, Rev. John George Butler, was for many years a noted minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the pietistic type, and labored in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Mr. Butler's parents were both con- sistent Christians. ITis father was to the time of his death a merchant in Cumberland, and esteemed by all who knew him. A very important part of Mr. Butler's education was gained behind his father's counter and in managing country stores, of which he had several. A number of years were spent in the Academy of Cumberland, and in 1846 he entered Pennsylvania College at Gettysburg as a partial course student. lle went through the regular course in the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, and was called to St. Paul's Church at Washington, D. C., in 1849, of which he was pastor for about twenty-four years. Dr. Butler's en- tire ministerial life has been spent in Washington. The pulpit of St. Paul's was probably the first in the Capitol to speak out firmly for the Government after the firing upon Sumter. But whilst unequivocal in sustaining the Gov- ernment, such was the confidence of the people in the moral integrity of the pastor, and such his kindness and gentleness, that many of his people of Southern sympathy were his fastest friends. He was tendered and accepted the Chaplaincy of the Fifth Pennsylvania Regiment, one of the first coming to the defence of the Capitol, after April 19, 1861. Ile was appointed by President Lincoln Hos-
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pital Chaplain, and served successively in Union Hotel and Seminary hospitals in Georgetown, in Cliffburn and Lin- coln hospitals of Washington, to the close of the war. The Memorial Church of Washington, of which he is now Pastor, was projected in 1866, and dedicated in June, 1874. It is an attractive and capacions free-seated church, and is supported, as it was erected, wholly by voluntary con- tributions. The Memorial Church is organized upon the broadest basis consistent with scriptural catholicity, and is intended to represent the evangelical type of Christianity promulgated by the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Dr. Butler preaches wholly without notes, and has done so from his early ministry. He is at this time the Senior Pastor of Washington city. Several years ago the honorary degrees of A.M. and D.D. were successively conferred upon him by Pennsylvania College. Ile was Chaplain of the House of Representatives of the Forty-first, Forty-second and Forty-third congresses, and received the Republican nomination for the same position
in the Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth congresses. For a number of years he has been one of the Associate Chap- lains of the United States Hospital for the Insane, near Washington. He had from its inception been a member of the Theological Faculty of Howard University, where he now occupies the chair of Church History, Homiletics, and Pastoral Theology. He is a Director in the Theologi- cal Seminary of Gettysburg, and a Trustee of Pennsylva- nia College. He is a weekly correspondent of the Lutheran Observer, to which he has been a contributor for more than twenty years, and is a member of the Board of For- eign Missions, and the l'resident of the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
EWNAM, WILLIAM EUGENE GROOME, retired Merchant, was born in Millington, Kent County, Maryland, February 17, 1818. He was the eldest child of William and Margaret (Groome) Newnam, whose marriage took place in 1817. His mother's family had long been settled in that county. Her father was born in 1778. His father served in the war of IS12, and was engaged in the action near Chestertown, in which Admiral Cocheam was killed. William E. G. Newnam was born with defects of speech and hearing, which were only remedied by the most persevering surgical and medical treatment, and which prevented his attending school during his very early years. At the age of fourteen he was placed in the office of Thomas Nicholls, Clerk of the Court of Appeals of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When this office was transferred to Annapolis he engaged as clerk to James Price, who for fifty years was Register of Wills for Talbot County. Afterwards he entered the office of James Parrott, Clerk of the Circuit Court of that county, where he continued till he reached his majority. Ile then went
to Wetumpka, Alabama, to find an opening for business, but returned and became a clerk in the well-known store of John W. Cheezum. He was afterwards engaged in the store of W. 11. & P. Groome, to whom he has always felt greatly indebted, not only for the kindness he experienced, but for the business knowledge he there acquired. In July, 1850, he entered into partnership with his cousin, W. 11. Newnam, on Kent Island, which was continued for ten year». Conducting his business on the soundest business principles, and satisfied with regular and legitimate profits, Mr. Newnam has been eminently successful, and has accu- mulatet a large property, owning several hundred acres of land. His home is in Stevensville. Ile was married April 15, 1874, to Elmina, daughter of Joseph M. and Jane Smith, of Queen Anne's County, and has one daughter, Eva Groome. Rev. Joseph E. Smith, D.D., of Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, of the Conference of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, is the brother of Mrs. Newnam.
JERKINS, THOMAS, was born March 12, 1720, in Kent County, Maryland. IIe was the son of Daniel and Susannah Starton Perkins. He mar- ried Ann Ilanson, daughter of Judge Frederick and Mary ( Lowder) llanson. He was a very promi- nent, wealthy, and leading citizen of Kent County, a de- vont member of the Episcopal Church, a vestryman of Shrewsbury, and one of the first vestry of Chester Parish when it was organized, February 4, 1766. He died at the White House, Kent County, Maryland, February 21, 1768, leaving a very large and valuable estate. His daughter and heiress, Mary Perkins, married John Wilson, son of George and Margaret (Hall) Wilson, and was the mother of Margaret Wilson, who married Dr. James Black, of Fairfields.
LAV, COLONEL EDWARD, of Blay's Range, Kent County, Maryland, of English parentage, was a distinguished and zealons member of the Episco- 6. pal Church, and one of the first vestry of Shrews- bury Parish in Kent County. In 1709-1710 he gave to that parish two acres of land, the ground upon which the present church edifice stands. He was a member of the Maryland Legislature in 1706, 1707, and 1713. Ilis wife, Madame Anne Blay, was buried at Shrewsbury, Au- gust 27, 1712. His son, Colonel William Blay, was also a prominent and influential vestryman of Shrewsbury Parish, and represented Kent County in the Legislature of Mary- land in 1714 and 1715. He married Isabella Pearce, daughter of Judge William and Isabella Pearce, Ilis daughter Catharine married, July 27, 1722, John Tilden. llis daughter Rachel married Richard Wethered.
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BEARCE, HON. JAMES ALFRED, was born December 14, 1805, at the residence of his maternal grand- father, Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick, in Alexandria, Virginia. He was the son of Gideon and Julia (Dick ) Pearce, of Kent County, Maryland, and the grandson of James Pearce, the son of Gideon Pearce, who married Beatrice Codd, daughter of Colonel St. Ledger Codd. The last-named Gideon Pearce was the son of Judge William Pearee, a memoir of whom is contained in this volume. Ilis mother died when he was very young, and his early education was received in Alexandria under the direction of his grandfather. Ile entered Princeton College at the early age of fourteen, and was graduated in 1822 before he had completed his sixteenth year, dividing the honors of his class with Hugo Mearns, of Pennsylvania, and Edward D. Mansfield, of Ohio, both of whom were men of mature years and minds, and were distinguished in after life. Among his classmates also were George R. Richardson, Attorney-General of Maryland, one of the brightest ornaments of the Maryland bar in his day, and Albert B. Dod, of New Jersey, afterwards a brilliant rheto- rician and lecturer and a professor in Princeton College. After leaving college Mr. Pearce studied law in Baltimore with the late Judge John Glenn, and was admitted to the bar in 1824. Soon after his coming to the bar he com- menced the practice of his profession in Cambridge, Mary- land, where he remained about a year, after which he went to Louisiana and engaged in sugar planting with his father. Ile remained there about three years and then re- turned to Kent County, where he spent the remainder of his life. On his return to Maryland he resumed the prac- tice of the law, at the same time cultivating the farm upon which he resided. He was not, however, permitted to de- vote himself to his profession as he desired, for he was early called into public life. In 1831 he was sent to the Legislature of Maryland, and in 1835 was elected a mem- ber of the House of Representatives, and with the excep- tion of a single term, in 1839, when he was defeated by a small majority by Hon. Philip F. Thomas, he was re-elected from time to time till 1843. In 1843 he was elected to the United States Senate, where he served from March 4 of that year, and was continued by four successive elections until his death. During his long period of public service the Library of Congress, the Botanical Gardens, the Smithsonian Institute, and the Coast Survey Department were favorite objects of his fostering eare, and received great and valuable attention from him, while at the same time he discharged with distinguished ability all the duties of a legislator. Ile was offered a seat on the bench of the United States District Court for the State of Maryland by President Fillmore, and during the same administration was nominated and confirmed Secretary of the Interior, both of which positions he declined, preferring to remain in the Senate, where he believed he could be more useful to his country. Ile took a lively interest in the advance-
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