USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > The Biographical cyclopedia of representative men of Maryland and District of Columbia Pt. 2 > Part 77
USA > Maryland > The Biographical cyclopedia of representative men of Maryland and District of Columbia Pt. 2 > Part 77
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Circuit, and from 1875 to 1878 the Washington Street Church in Baltimore. In all of these appointments he has been favored with revivals, and in some instances with large additions to the church membership. On the occa- sion of one of his first services on the Bel Air Circuit, he was seated in the pulpit with a minister who thirty years before had been his classmate in the Sunday-school of St. John's Methodist Protestant Church in Baltimore, and in the audience was Mr. Albert G. Griffith, their former Sunday-school teacher, through whose instrumentality Mr. Norris was converted. To the three the thoughts and as- sociations awakened by such a meeting were most precious. On taking charge of the Pipe Creek Circuit, in Carroll County, Maryland, Mr. Norris found that his only daughter could not there enjoy the educational advantages required at her age, and after consulting with several prominent gentlemen in the county he decided to establish the needed literary institution. This he did at Union Town, and the school was highly successful from the beginning. Pupils came from several adjoining counties and from
Philadelphia. It was called the Union Town Literary Institute, and teachers of ability were engaged in its de- partments. It was finally absorbed by the Western Maryland College in the flourishing rural city of West- minster, then embraced in the Pipe Creek Circuit. Pro- fessor Fayette R. Buell was Principal. Mr. Norris was one of the originators of the institution, and was elected its first President. The building was substantial and com- modious, and with the grounds was afterward purchased by the Maryland Annual Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, and now constitutes the college above named. It was regularly incorporated by the Legislature in 1868 with full collegiate powers. Mr. Norris is still a member of its Board of Trustees by election of his Con- ference. Being eminently a peacemaker there have been few difficulties in the churches under his pastoral care " which he has not been able to harmonize by his personal influence. In his ministry of thirty-six years he has not had half a dozen church trials, having generally been able to settle quietly any trouble that occurred without com- promising the integrity of religious interests. He is gifted with a remarkable love of order and promptitude, is never late in his attendance upon his engagements, and but once, when sick, has he failed to be present at roll-call at the opening of the sessions of his Conference. From time to time the Conference has conferred upon him various offices of honor and trust. He has been placed on im- portant committees, and has long been a member of the . Faculty of Instruction. On several occasions he has rep- resented his Conference as Fraternal Delegate in his own Church and at the sessions of other ecclesiastical bodies. He was a member of the General Convention which met in Baltimore in May, 1877, at which the union of the two sections of the Methodist Protestant Church in the United States was so happily effected. Mr. Norris was married, January 4, 1844, to Miss Selina C., daughter of Rev. Jesse Wright, M.D., of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, and has seven children.
HITTINGHAM, RIGHT REV, WILLIAM ROLLIN- SON, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland, was born of English pa- rents in the city of New York December 2, 1805. He attended the General Theological Seminary, and graduated in 1825, a year in advance of the canonical age of ordination. He was admitted to the ministry in 1827, made Deacon by Bishop Hobart and sent to Orange, New Jersey, and its surroundings as a Missionary. In 1831 he became Rector of St. Luke's Church in his na- tive city, where his eloquence brought him at once into prominence. In 1834, his health being impaired, he went to the South of Europe to recuperate, and returned home the following year greatly benefited. In 1835
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he was called to the chair of Ecclesiastical History in the General Theological Seminary, which position he filled with marked success for five years, during which time lie acquired a wide reputation as a teacher. In 1840 a vacancy occurred in the diocese of Maryland and he was elected Bishop. He was consecrated in Baltimore Sep. tember, 1840, and since then has resided in that city. Since his accession there has been a steady advance in all that pertains to the material and spiritual welfare of the Church and of the institutions of benevolent character within his diocese. Bishop Whittingham has made many valuable contributions to religious literature. In 1871, at the Convention of Bishops, he was commissioned to visit Europe for the purpose of ascertaining the state and con- dition of the various reformatory Church measures which had just been inaugurated in Germany and Italy, which mission he performed. He was present at the Bonn Con- ference of Old Catholics in 1872, and returned to this country immediately afterward. He is a man of strong convictions, a ripe scholar, an able prelate, and throughout his whole career as Bishop has been deservedly popular.
ODGERS, COMMODORE JOIN, was born, August 3, 1771, in Harford County, Maryland. ITis father emigrated to this country from Scotland in 1755, and was Colonel of Maryland militia in our war for independence. In the battle of Brandywine he was especially conspicuous for his personal courage. IIe mar- ried Elizabeth Reynolds, of good family in Delaware. John was their second son and third child. At the age of fourteen he was placed on a ship sailing from Baltimore, of which his father was part owner, and evidenced so much capacity that by the time he was of age he com- manded a ship sailing to Hamburg and Liverpool. At the latter place the flag of his country being insulted he de- fended it with great bravery and compelled a retraction of the offence. In one of his voyages he was wounded, his ship captured and confiscated under the tyrannical laws of the French Republic, and he was detained for some time a prisoner in France. In 1798, as First Lieutenant of the frigate Constellation, he took part in the battle which re- sulted in the capture of the French frigate L'Insurgente, on board of which he was placed as Prize Master, with Midshipman Porter and twelve or fifteen seamen. A sud- den gale separated them from the other vessels, the ship was disabled, the one hundred and seventy-five prisoners yet unconfined, and the decks were strewn with the dead and wounded. Lieutenant Rodgers immediately ordered the prisoners to be driven below, and stationed sentinels at the hatches with orders to blow off the first head that appeared above deck, and after two days and nights with- out a moment's rest the ship was safely brought into the harbor of St. Kibb in the West Indies. In 1799 he was
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promoted to the rank of Captain, and cruised in the West Indies in command of the sloop Maryland, and in the Mediterranean in command of the John Adams. In 1805 he commanded the United States squadron in that sea, and during the war with the Barbary powers destroyed the principal cruiser of the Bey of Tripoli. Afterwards on the Constitution he brought the boastful Bey of Tunis to terms, forcing him to sign a treaty and to send an ambassador to the United States. In 1811, while cruising off the coast of the United States in the frigate President, a British ship at night answered his hail by opening fire, to which the broadside of the President was returned and the enemy silenced. She proved to be Ilis Majesty's sloop-of war Little Belt, and had suffered much from loss of men and injury to the vessel. The affair caused much excitement in the two countries, and in England the Commodore was. denounced in the strongest terms. In June, 1812, nearly the whole navy of the United States was assembled in the harbor of New York under his command, and sailed in pursuit of a British fleet of one hundred merchant vessels bound to England from the West Indies, and convoyed by a frigate. Overtaking them the second day out, the Com- modore's ship outsailing the rest of the squadron got near enough to open fire, and the first gun fired during the war was sighted and fired by the Commodore in person, the shot passing through the stern of the frigate, killing two men and dismantling a gun. During this engagement a bow gun of the President burst, killing and wounding fifteen men and breaking the leg of the Commodore. During the years 1812 and 1813 the President cruised off the coast of Scotland and kept many of the enemy's ships busy. In the summer of the latter year the President was laid up for repairs, and Commodore Rodgers was at Phila- delphia superintending the construction of a new frigate when the Britsh fleet entered the Chesapeake, and by a march from the mouth of the Patuxent captured Washing- ton, burned the public buildings, etc. Commodore Rodgers with the crew of his ship hastened thither, and with Commodores Porter and Perry, by means of five ships and batteries on shore, compelled the enemy to abandon the Potomac. In September he saved Bal- timore from an attack by obstructing the channel, sink- ing vessels for that purpose. In 1815 he was made President of the Board of Navy Commissioners, holding that position till 1825, when he commanded the Mediter- rancan Squadron until 1828, resuming at that time his place on the Navy Board. In 1832 he suffered from an attack of cholera, from the effects of which he never re- covered, and died in Philadelphia in 1838. IIe was mar- ried in 1806 to Miss Minerva Denison, from the vicinity of Havre-de-Grace, Maryland. She survived her husband thirty-eight years, and died at the age of ninety-three. They had a large family. One of their sons, Frederick Kodgers, a young midshipman, was drowned in a vain effort to rescue a messmate, and Lieutenant Ilenry Rodgers
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was lost in the sloop-of-war Albany, from which no tidings were ever received. Rear-Admiral John Rodgers entered the navy in 1828, and the eldest son, Colonel Robert S. Rodgers, lives in Harford County, at the old family home- stead, where his father and mother were married. Ile married the daughter of Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1841. Two of his sons, Commander Frederick Rodgers and Lieutenant John A. Rodgers, are in the naval service. The second son, Captain Calbraith Perry Rodgers, Fifth United States Cavalry, was killed in his tent by lightning in Angust, 1878.
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OBLE, REV. MASON, D.D., Pastor of the Sixth Presbyterian Church, Washington, District of Columbia, was born in Williamstown, Massa- chusetts, March 18, 1809. He entered Williams College in 1823, and graduated in 1827. After his graduation he spent a year in teaching in the city of New York. He then entered the Theological Seminary at Princeton, where he perfected himself in the llebrew lan- gnage. In the spring of 1830 he became a tutor in his Alma Mater, and continued to discharge the duties of that position until the autumn of 1831. In the meantime he pursued his theological studies, and was licensed to preach by the Berkshire Congregational Association in June, 1831. Prior to entering upon his ministerial studies he studied for six months under the Rev. Dr. Beman, of the First Pres- byterian Church of Troy, New York, during which time he preached occasionally. While thus employed he was called to the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Washington, District of Columbia. His labors there commenced in 1832, and were attended with great success. In July, 1839, he became Pastor of the Eleventh Presbyterian Church of New York, and continued there for eleven years. Sub- sequently he accepted a unanimous call from the Inde- pendent Presbyterian Church of Baltimore to become Col- league Pastor of the Rev. Dr. Duncan, who was then in failing health. Ilis ministrations there, as they had been in other places, were fruitful of good results. Soon after- waid he was called to the Pastorate of a church which had just been organized in Washington, District of Columbia, in the vicinity of the Smithsonian Institution. About this time President Pierce tendered him a Chaplaincy in the Navy with an assignment to duty in the Washington Navy Yard, which position he accepted, as his duties as Chaplain did not interfere with his regular church work. A hand- some house of worship was erected by his congregation during his pastorate, and dedicated in 1855. The same year he accepted a proposition to join the naval squadron . about to visit the Mediterranean. lle accordingly became Chaplain on the flagship Congress, and after a lengthy cruise, during which he visited many of the most interest- ing localities in the world, he returned to Washington and resumed his pastoral duties, and was again assigned to
duty in the Washington Navy Yard. These labors were continued until the second year of the civil war, when he was ordered as Naval Chaplain to the Naval Academy at Newport, Rhode Island. Soon after the close of the war he spent one year in his native town in Massachusetts, where he occupied the pulpit of the First Congregational Church, where he had been baptized in infancy, and where he was first ordained to the work of the Gospel ministry. In 1865 the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by Williams College. After being ordered on duty to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and serving there for some time, he was again sent to the Washington Navy Yard. On returning to Washington in 1870 he was again invited to resume his labors with the Sixth Presby- terian Church, which invitation he accepted, and being placed upon the retired list of naval officers in 1872, has for the past seven years continued to devote all his time to " the interests of his church. During this period the church has largely increased in membership, and the work gen- erally is in a very prosperous condition. Dr. Noble is an earnest temperance advocate. As far back as 1833 he was President of the " Young Men's Total Abstinence Society of Washington," the first organization of the kind in that . city, and he is now the President of the " Central Temper- ance Organization," in which are represented more than fifty temperance organizations in the churches and orders of the city. In the course of his ministry Dr. Noble has published a large number of discourses, and his platform- speeches on education, home missions, and temperance have been widely distributed. He has also been a frequent contributor to the public press, his foreign correspondence, beginning with a visit to Canada in 1847, being very vo- luminous. For many years the Bible has been his chief study; yet, with his scholarly taste and habits, he keeps . well versed in the current literature of the day. Although he has written many hundred sermons, his practice has been to preach without notes after a thorough and exhaus- tive study of the subject.
SUNDERLAND, REV. BYRON, D.D., Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Washington, was born in Shoreham, Addison County, Vermont, November. 22, 1819. The ancestors of his parents, Asa and Olive (Wolcott) Sunderland, were among the earliest settlers in New England, and bore an honor- able part in its history and in the Revolutionary struggle. Until he was twelve years of age he was a farmer's boy, attending the district school, and full of life and playful- ness, but he had always an unbounded reverence for re- ligious things, and his mother's death before he was quite fourteen sealed the determination he had already formed that he would some day be a preacher. A few months later he joined the Congregational Church, to which she had belonged. His taste was also very decided for
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mechanical pursuits, for which he still has great fondness. After his graduation from Middlebury College in 1838 he became Principal of an academy at Port Henry, New York, and in 1841 entered the Union Theological Semi- nary. Here he was thrown almost entirely into the society of Presbyterians, and finally united with the church of the Rev. Dr. Erskine Mason, from which he has never re- moved his membership. On graduating from the Semi- nary he was united in marriage with Mary Elizabeth Tomlinson, of Middlebury, Vermont, May 22, 1843, and accompanied the family, who were removing to Western New York. Invited to preach in the Presbyterian Church in Batavia he was soon called to the pastorate, and was ordained and installed. After eight years here of arduous labor he was Pastor for eighteen months of Park Church in Syracuse, when he accepted a call to the First Presby- terian Church in Washington. Entering upon this pastoral charge in February, 1853, it has continued with some in- terruptions to the present time. In 1857 his Alma Mater conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He was elected in 1861 Chaplain of the Senate of the United States, which office he resigned three years later in conse- quence of broken health ; and accepting the charge of the American Union Chapel in Paris sailed from New York in August, 1864. His appointment was for four years, but at the end of the first year his health having improved he yielded to the urgent request of his people, and returned to Washington, with his family, where he has since con- tinued. Since 1873 he has been Chaplain of the Senate. A decided anti-slavery man, Dr. Sunderland has always taken a bold stand on the side of his country, and his many sharp public discussions with the most prominent men of opposing beliefs and theories have everywhere awakened great interest. A large number of his sermons, addresses, lectures, and poems have also been published, and cach in their day have accomplished great good. He has long been a life member of the principal religious and charitable organizations of the country, and is a Mason of high order. Many honors, both civil and religious, have been conferred upon him. During his eighteen months absence in Europe he visited many points of interest, and has travelled quite extensively in this country, making a trip to California in 1861. Dr. and Mrs. Sunderland have two daughters and a son ; and their son, who married Miss Abbie Redfield, has two sons and a daughter.
ADDESS, ALEXANDER, was born in Stafford County, Virginia, September 29, 1799. His grandfather removed from Dumfries, Scotland, and settled in the above county in the eighteenth century. His father,. Alexander Gaddess, Sr., married Katie, daughter of Joshua and Catharine Kendal, of the same State. He died in 1815 in the prime of manhood. The
subject of this sketch came to Baltimore when only twelve years of age, and became apprenticed to a Captain Towson in the stonecutting business. Here, in accord with his natural bent, he formed those habits of industry, frugality, and morality which became the foundation of his success in life and of the high esteem in which he was always held. Having completed his apprenticeship and worked some time as a journeyman he, in 1824, entered into part- nership in the same business with Messrs. Towson and Anderson, under the firm name of Towson, Anderson & Gaddess, which continued for several years, when Mr. Gaddess located at the corner of Sharpe and German streets, where he successfully conducted his business on his own account till 1864. Ile then retired, giving his business into the hands of his sons, Thomas S., Charles W., and Virginius Gaddess, which they still continue. Mr. Gaddess then purchased a residence in Baltimore County, « where he resided till his death, which occurred April 9, 1873. Mr. Gaddess was married, November, 1821, to Mary A., daughter of John Westford, a native of London, England, who had settled in Maryland in the latter part of the last century. In politics Mr. Gaddess was an old- line Whig, and although deeply interested in the prosperity of his adopted country, and earnestly seeking its welfare, he never sought or held any public office. In 1827 he united with Cassia Lodge of the Masonie brotherhood, and maintained his membership in that Order during the rest of his life. For several years he was Lieutenant of the First Volunteers, a company of mechanics attached to the Fifth Regiment Maryland Militia. He was a member and trustee of the Methodist Protestant Church, and led an exemplary Christian life. Of his nine children three sons and two daughters are still living. He was a man of fine personal appearance, of simple tastes, unobtrusive manners, and of most genial disposition, and was highly esteemed by all who knew him.
N ELSON, GEORGE E., Lawyer, Baltimore, Mary- land, eldest son of Arthur B. and Mildred E. Nelson, was born at " Cherry Hill," the home of his ancestors, Culpepper County, Virginia, Septem- ber 8, 1849. He was educated at a private school in his native county, and at the age of sixteen entered Roanoke College in the same State, from which he grad- uated in 1869, receiving the first honor of his class. He then entered the University of Virginia, taking a literary and philosophical course in connection with the study of law, and graduating in Moral Philosophy'in 1870 under the now famous Dr. William H. McGuffey. At the com- meneement of 1871 he received the degree of I.L.B., and represented the Jefferson Society of the University as its final orator. In the fall of the same year he commenced the practice of his profession in Baltimore, and the follow-
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ing winter married Miss Eleanor W. Taliaferro, daughter of General Alexander G. and Agnes Harwood Marshall Taliaferro, all of his native county, the last-named being a granddaughter of Chief Justice Marshall. Mr. Nelson is a thorough scholar and a lawyer of acknowledged ability. In polities he is a Democrat, and has canvassed Baltimore and Maryland in several campaigns. Well fitted for the task by his classical tastes and culture, he has frequently accepted invitations to address classes graduating at col- leges and universities. Mr. Nelson is a member of the Episcopal Church, His character and talents have won for him an enviable place in the esteem and regard of the community.
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WINN, HON, CHARLES J. M., Attorney-General of Maryland, was born in Baltimore October 21, 1822. Ile graduated from Princeton College, New Jersey, in 1840, was admitted to the bar in Baltimore in 1843, and at once entered upon the practice of his profession. In 1849 he was a member of the House of Delegates, and the following year was elected to the State Constitutional Convention. In 1851 he was chosen State's Attorney for Baltimore city for the term of four years. In 1852 he was one of the Presidential electors on the Demo- cratie ticket. From 1856 to 1875 he did not appear in public life, but devoted himself unremittingly to the duties of his profession. In the autumn of the latter year he was elected Attorney-General of the State for four years from January 1, 1876, which office he now holds. He is a . recognized leader in the councils of the Democratic party, with which he is allied. In religion he is a member of the Episcopal Church. IIe has travelled extensively throughout America and Europe, and for several years has spent most of his summer vacations across the At- lantic. In 1851 he married a daughter of Reverdy John- son.
B URKE, REV. GEORGE WASHINGTON, the third out of cleven children of William and Mary Burke, was born in Seaford, Sussex County, Delaware, March 17, 1836. His parents, members of the Meth- odist Episcopal Church from very early life, are still living. His paternal grandfather emigrated to this coun- try from Ireland about the close of the Revolutionary war, and was for many years a teacher in East New Market, Dorchester County, Maryland. George W. Burke attended the district school from his fifth year, and after reaching hi, founcenth year began earnestly to fit himself to be a teacher. This vacation he entered upon in 1858, at the age of nineteen, and followed for ten years. The same year he united with the Church of his parents, and soon after commenced preparing for the ministry. He was licensed to preich in 15ot, and was a local preacher for
four years. In 1865 he was received into the Philadelphia Annual Conference, and was appointed to Georgetown, Delaware. The two following years he was stationed at Frankford, in 1868 at Milton, and in 1869 and '70 at Lewes, all in the same State. The next two years he was in Dorchester County, Maryland, and the two following at Berlin. In 1875 he was appointed to Dehnar, and in 1876 and '77 was again in Delaware at Christiana. In 1878 he became Pastor of the church of his denomination on Kent Island, where he now resides. On the organization of the Wilmington Conference in 1868 Mr. Burke's field of labor fell within its bounds, and he has been in it an effective preacher for the last ten years. Ile was first married in October, 1859, to Miss Nellie P. Lee, niece of Caleb Shepard, of Dorchester County, who left him three chil- dren. In 1876 he was again married to Laura Virginia, youngest daughter of the late William J. and Julia A. Wood, of Salisbury, Maryland.
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