Album of genealogy and biography, Cook County, Illinois, 2nd ed., Part 8

Author:
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Chicago : Calumet Book & Engr. Co.
Number of Pages: 808

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The silver question precipitated a controversy between those who were in favor of the continu- ance of silver coinage and those who were op- posed, Mr. Cleveland answering for the latter, even before his inauguration.

On June 2, 1886, President Cleveland married Frances, daughter of his deceased friend and part- ner, Oscar Folsom, of the Buffalo Bar. Their union has been blessed by the birth of two daugh- ters. In the campaign of 1888, President Cleve- land was renominated by his party, but the Republican candidate, Gen. Benjamin Harrison, was victorious. In the nominations of 1892 these two candidates for the highest position in the gift of the people were again pitted against each other, and in the ensuing election President Cleveland was victorious by an overwhelming majority.

BENJAMIN HARRISON.

ENJAMIN HARRISON, the twenty-third President, is the descendant of one of the historical families of this country. The first known head of the family was Maj .- Gen. Harrison, one of Oliver Cromwell's trusted followers and fighters. In the zenith of Cromwell's power it be- came the duty of this Harrison to participate in the trial of Charles I., and afterward to sign the death warrant of the king. He subsequently paid for this with his life, being hung October 13, 1660. His -descendants came to America, and the next of the family that appears in history is Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, great-grandfa- ther of the subject of this sketch, and after whom he was named. Benjamin Harrison was a mem- ber of the Continental Congress during the years 1774, 1775 and 1776, and was one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was three times elected Governor of Virginia.

Gen. William Henry Harrison, the son of the distinguished patriot of the Revolution, after a successful career as a soldier during the War of 1812, and with a clean record as Governor of the Northwestern Territory, was elected President of the United States in 1840. His career was cut short by death within one month after his in- auguration.

President Harrison was born at North Bend,

Hamilton County, Ohio, August 20, 1833. His life up to the time of his graduation from Miami University, at Oxford, Ohio, was the uneventful one of a country lad of a family of small means. His father was able to give him a good education, and nothing more. He became engaged while at college to the daughter of Dr. Scott, Principal of a female school at Oxford. After graduating, he determined to enter upon the study of law. He went to Cincinnati and there read law for two years. At the expiration of that time young Har- rison received the only inheritance of his life-his aunt, dying, left him a lot valued at $800. He regarded this legacy as a fortune, and decided to get married at once, take this money and go to some Eastern town and begin the practice of law. He sold his lot, and, with the money in his pocket, he started out with his young wife to fight for a place in the world. He decided to go to Indian- apolis, which was even at that time a town of promise. He met with slight encouragement at first, making scarcely anything the first year. He worked diligently, applying himself closely to his calling, built up an extensive practice and took a leading rank in the legal profession.

In1 1860, Mr. Harrison was nominated for the position of Supreme Court Reporter, and then be- gan his experience as a stump speaker. He can-

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vassed the State thoroughly, and was elected by a handsome majority. In 1862 he raised the Seventeenth Indiana Infantry, and was chosen its Colonel. His regiment was composed of the raw- est material, but Col. Harrison employed all his time at first in mastering military tactics and drill- ing his men, and when he came to move toward the East with Sherman, his regiment was one of the best drilled and organized in the army. At Resaca he especially distinguished himself, and for his bravery at Peachtree Creek he was made a Brigadier-General, Gen. Hooker speaking of him in the most complimentary terms.

During the absence of Gen. Harrison in the field, the Supreme Court declared the office of Supreme Court Reporter vacant, and another person was elected to the position. From the time of leaving Indiana with his regiment until the fall of 1864 he had taken no leave of absence, but having been nominated that year for the same office, he got a thirty-day leave of absence, and during that time made a brilliant canvass of the State, and was elected for another term. He then started to rejoin Sherman, but on the way was stricken down with scarlet fever, and after a most trying attack made his way to the front in time to participate in the closing incidents of the war.

In 1868 Gen. Harrison declined a re-election as Reporter, and resumed the practice of law. In 1876 he was a candidate for Governor. Although defeated, the brilliant campaign he made won for him a national reputation, and he was much sought after, especially in the East, to make speeches. In 1880, as usual, he took an active part in the campaign, and was elected to the United States Senate. Here he served for six years, and was known as one of the ablest men, best lawyers and strongest debaters in that body. With the ex- piration of his senatorial term he returned to the practice of his profession, becoming the head of one of the strongest firms in the State.

The political campaign of 1888 was one of the most memorable in the history of our country. The convention which assembled in Chicago in June and named Mr. Harrison as the chief stand- ard-bearer of the Republican party was great in every particular, and on this account, and the at-

titude it assumed upon the vital questions of the day, chief among which was the tariff, awoke a deep interest in the campaign throughout the nation. Shortly after the nomination, delegations began to visit Mr. Harrison at Indianapolis, his home. This movement became popular, and from all sections of the country societies, clubs and delegations journeyed thither to pay their re- spects to the distinguished statesman.

Mr. Harrison spoke daily all through the sum- mer and autumn to these visiting delegations, and so varied, masterly, and eloquent were his speeches that they at once placed him in the fore- most rank of American orators and statesmen. Elected by a handsome majority, he served his country faithfully and well, and in 1892 was nom- inated for re-election; but the people demanded a change and he was defeated by his predecessor in office, Grover Cleveland.

On account of his eloquence as a speaker and his power as a debater, Gen. Harrison was called upon at an early age to take part in the dis- cussion of the great questions that then began to agitate the country. He was an uncompromising anti-slavery man, and was matched against some of the most eminent Democratic speakers of his State. No man who felt the touch of his blade desired to be pitted with him again. With all his eloquence as an orator he never spoke for ora- torical effect, but his words always went like bul- lets to the mark. He is purely American in his ideas, and is a splendid type of the American statesman. Gifted with quick perception, a logi- cal mind and a ready tongue, he is one of the most distinguished impromptu speakers in the nation. Many of these speeches sparkled with the rarest eloquence and contained arguments of great weight, and many of his terse statements have already become aphorisms. Original in thought, precise in logic, terse in statement, yet withal faultless in eloquence, he is recognized as the sound statesman and brilliant orator of the day. During the last days of his administration Presi- dent Harrison suffered an irreparable loss in the death of his devoted wife, Caroline (Scott) Har- rison, a lady of many womanly charms and vir- tues. They were the parents of two children.

COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS

INTRODUCTORY

E BELIEVE the time has arrived when it becomes the duty of the people of this county to perpetuate the names of their pioneers, to fur- nish a record of their early settle- ment, and relate the story of their progress. The civilization of our day, the enlightenment of the age, and the duty that men of the present time owe to their ancestors, to themselves and to their posterity, demand that a record of their lives and deeds should be made. In biographical history is found a power to instruct man by precedent, to enliven the inental faculties, and to waft down the river of time a safe vessel, in which the names and actions of the people who contributed to raise this country from its primitive state may be preserved. Surely and rapidly the great and aged men, who in their prime entered the wilder- ness and claimed the virgin soil as their heritage, are passing to their graves. The number remain- ing who can relate the incidents of the first days of settlement is becoming small indeed, so that actual necessity exists for the collection and pres- ervation of events without delay, before all the early settlers are cut down by the scythe of Time.

To be forgotten has been the great dread of mankind from remotest ages. All will be forgot- ten soon enough, in spite of their best works and the most earnest efforts of their friends to preserve the memory of their lives. The means employed to prevent oblivion and to perpetuate their mne11- ory has been in proportion to the amount of intel- ligence they possessed. The pyramids of Egypt were built to perpetuate the names and deeds of its great rulers. The exhumations made by the archæologists of Egypt from buried Memphis indicate a desire of those people to perpetuate the memory of their achievements. The erection of the great obelisks were for the same purpose. Coming down to a later period, we find the Greeks and Romans erecting mausoleums and monu- ments, and carving out statues to chronicle their

great achievements and carry them down the ages. It is also evident that the Mound-builders, in piling up their great mounds of earth, had but this idea-to leave something to show that they had lived. All these works, though many of them costly in the extreme, give but a faint idea of the lives and characters of those whose memory they were intended to perpetuate, and scarcely anything of the masses of the people that then lived. The great pyramids and some of the obelisks remain objects only of curiosity; the mausoleums, monuments and statues are crumb- ling into dust.

It was left to modern ages to establish an intel- ligent, undecaying, immutable method of perpet- uating a full history-immutable, in that it is al- most unlimited in extent and perpetual in its ac- tion; and this is through the art of printing.

To the present generation, however, we are in- debted for the introduction of the admirable sys- tem of local biography. By this system every man, though he has not achieved what the world calls greatness, has the means to perpetuate his life, his history, through the coming ages, for the benefit of his posterity.

The scythe of Time cuts down all; nothing of the physical man is left. The monument which his children or friends may erect to his memory in the cemetery will crumble into dust and pass away; but his life, his achievements, the work lie has accomplished, whichi otherwise would be for- gotten, is perpetuated by a record of this kind.

To preserve the lineaments of our companions we engrave their portraits; for the same reason we collect the attainable facts of their history. Nor do we think it necessary, as we speak only truth of them, to wait until they are dead, or un- til those who knew theni are gone; and we need be ashamed only of publishing to the world thie his- tory of those whose lives are unworthy of public record.

John beam baton

yours affectionately I.S. Caton

J. D. CATON.

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JOHN D. CATON.

OHN DEAN CATON was born in Monroe, that he should be equipped for life with a trade, Orange County, New York, March 19, 1812. He is the fifteenth of the sixteen children of . interfered with the completion of his time, and at Robert Caton, and the third child of his mother, Hannah (Dean) Caton, who was the third wife of Robert Caton. The latter was born March 22, 1761, on a plantation owned by his father (Robert Caton) in Maryland. He joined the Continental Army at the age of fourteen. Though very young at the outbreak of the Revolution, he gave good service to his native land in that struggle, and after the triumph of colonial arms, settled on the Hudson River, in New York. He died in 1815.

Robert Caton, grandfather of the subject of this biography, was born in England, of Irish de- scent, and served in the English army before set- tling in Maryland. He was a prominent citizen of that colony long before the Revolution, and the name is a conspicuous one in Maryland soci- ety to-day. Robert Caton, during the life of his second wife, joined the Society of Friends, and became a preacher in that denomination, his third wife being a member also. His four children by his third wife, according to the rules of that de- nomination, became birthright members, and so has the subject of this sketch continued; he is now a member of the society in good standing.

When John D. Caton was four years old, his widowed mother took him to Oneida County, New York. His advantages were few, but he re- ceived the primary training of a common school. At the age of nine years, he was set to work with a farmer, at two and one-half dollars per montlı, and brought home a quarter of beef as the fruit of his first earnings. Work was afforded only in the summer, and his winters were spent in school un- til he was fourteen. It had been his father's wish

and he was apprenticed. A weakness of the eyes sixteen, he joined his mother at Utica, New York, where he was enabled to put in nine months at the academy. He was so diligent and apt that he was thus equipped for earning by surveying and teaching school. While teaching, he pursued the study of the classics, and also did a little work in the law by practicing in justices' courts. He entered the office of Beardsley & Matteson, at Utica, as a student, at the age of nineteen years. He later studied with James H. Collins, who af- terward became a leader at the Chicago Bar and was a partner in practice with Mr. Caton.

Having become well grounded in the theory of law, and having attained man's estate, he resolved to settle in the new West and establish himself in practice. He had a special incentive in this de- termination, in the fact that he was the accepted lover of one of "York State's" fairest daughters, and was anxious to secure a permanent home. Having reached Buffalo by canal, he took pas- sage on the steamer "Sheldon Thompson," which brought him to Detroit, and thence he took stage to Ann Arbor, still undetermined as to his loca- tion. Still pushing westward, he rode in a wagon to White Pigeon, and here, by pure accident, he fell in with a cousin, whose husband, Irad Hill, was a carpenter and was employed by Dr. Jolın T. Temple, of Chicago, to build a house for him there. The doctor and Mr. Hill were then in White Pigeon getting lumber for this purpose. Young Caton joined the rafting party which transported the lumber down the St. Joseph River, and took passage on the schooner which conveyed it to its destination. This was the

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"Ariadne," whose cargo of lumber and immi- grants was about all she could carry.

He soon determined to locate here, and in a few days set off on horseback for Pekin, one hun- dred and fifty miles away, to seek admission to the Bar. Here he met Stephen T. Logan, after- wards partner of Abraham Lincoln, and other leading attorneys of the State. After court ad- journed and supper had been taken, the young applicant accompanied Judge Lockwood, of the Supreme Court, in a stroll on the river bank, and after being plied with questions on the theory and practice of law, was addressed in these words: "Well, my young friend, you've got a good deal to learn if you ever expect to make a success as a lawyer, but if you study hard I guess you'll do it. I shall give you your license." It took but nine years for the new licensee to attain a place beside his examiner on the supreme bench of the State.

Mr. Caton's first case was in the first lawsuit in the village of Chicago, in which he appeared as prosecutor of a culprit accused of stealing thir- ty-six dollars from a fellow-lodger at the tavern. When the defendant was brought before Squire Heacock, Caton insisted that he be searched, and he was stripped to his underclothing. Before he could replace his apparel, as directed by the court, the prosecuting attorney discovered a suspicious lump in his stocking. Seizing hold of this lump, he turned down the stocking and disclosed the missing bills. The case was then adjourned till next day, and a Constable watched the prisoner all night, having confined him under a carpenter's bench. Next morning when he was arraigned, Spring and Hamilton appeared for the defence and took a change of venue to Squire Harmon, who held court in the old tannery, on the North Side near the river forks. The whole town was now agog with the novel spectacle of a public trial; and Harmon, in order to give all a chance to en- joy the show, adjourned to Wattle's Tavern, on the West Side, where the case came off with much eclat; all the young attorneys "spreading them- selves" in their respective spceches. Judge Caton remembers that he dwelt particularly on the enor- mity of the act of this serpent who had brought

crime into this young community where it had been unknown. The thief was held for trial, but the device (then new) of "straw bail" gave him temporary liberty, which he made permanent by running away as soon as the money was recovered; and as the public had had the fun and excitement of a "lawsuit" nobody cared much what became of the author of this welcome break in the village monotony. If he had been tried and convicted it would have been only the beginning of trouble, for there was no jail wherein to keep him. Young Caton got ten dollars for his fee-the first money he had ever earned in Illinois by his profession- and it just paid the arrears of his board bill .- (History of Chicago, edited by Moses and Kirk- land. )

Having now been launched in practice, Mr. Caton rented an office in the "Temple Building," having his lodging in the attic of the same struc- ture. To "make ends meet," he rented desk room in his office to his contemporary, Giles Spring.

Justice Caton recalls July 12, 1834, an era in his youthful experience. It was the beginning of his judicial career; the date of his election to the office of Justice of the Peace, the only public office he ever held except those of Alderman of the city (1837-8) and Justice of the Supreme Court of the State (1843-64). He became its Chief Justice in 1857. The election of 1834 was a fierce contest, "bringing out every last voter in the precinct, from Clybourne to Hardscrabble and beyond, per- haps even taking in the Calumet Crossing." The Government piers had been built and the begin- ning of a channel liad been cut across the imme- mnorial sandbar, but as yet it had never been used. On this memorable day, the schooner "Illinois" chanced to be lying at anchor, and the friends of Caton (George W. Dole and others), to the num- ber of a hundred or more, got ropes to the schooner and dragged her by main force through the un- finished dug-way. Then they decked her with all the bunting in the village, and, hoisting sail, sped triumphantly up the stream to the Forks- the first vessel that ever penetrated the Chicago River. And when the votes were counted the

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J. D. CATON.

tally showed-John Dean Caton, one hundred and eighty-two; Josiah C. Goodhue, forty-seven. (Story of Chicago, 130).

An incident in the life of the future chief jus- tice, which saved him to the people of Illinois, is elsewhere related in the biography of Col. Julius Warren, who was ever gratefully remembered by Mr. Caton as his dearest friend.

In the spring of 1835 Squire Caton felt himself able to assume the cares of a household, and lie returned to New York, where he was wedded to Miss Laura Adelaide, daughter of Jacob Sherrill, of New Hartford. Their wedding tour was an ideal one, being a passage from Buffalo to Chicago on the brig "Queen Charlotte." This was one of the vessels captured in Put-in-Bay and sunk in the harbor of Erie by Commodore Perry in 1812. After twenty years, it had been raised and refitted, and this was her first trip.

In 1836 Mr. Caton built the first dwelling on the "school section," west of the river. This was at the southwest corner of Clinton and Harrison Streets, and at that time it was so far from other dwellings that it was called the "prairie cottage." It fell before the great holocaust of 1871. About the same time that he built this house, he entered into partnership with Norman B. Judd (who drafted the first charter of Chicago). The finan- cial difficulties of 1837 almost crippled the ambi- tious young lawyer, and to increase his troubles, his health became impaired and he was advised by his physician to return to farmning. He took up a tract of land near Plainfield, which he still owns, and removed his family thither in 1839. He con- tinued the practice of law, and the records show that he tried the first jury cases in Will and Kane Counties, as well as Cook.

Mr. Caton was appointed an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1842, and his united terins of service, by successive elections, amounted to twenty-two years. During the latter portion of this time he occupied the position of Chief Justice. The duties of his high office were completed day by day, no matter how much of the night they might consume, and the court in his day was al- ways up with its docket. In 1864 he left the Bench, and has since given his time to travel,

literary labors and the conduct of his private af- fairs. He has published several works, among which are "The Antelope and Deer of America," "A Summer in Norway," "Miscellanies" and "Early Bench and Bar of Illinois."

Before 1850 Justice Caton became interested in the electric telegraph. This was before the organ- ization of the Western Union, and he set to work to re-organize and set in order the dilapidated and scattered lines. They had hitherto occupied the wagon roads, and he secured the adoption of a system by the railways, where it was soon found to be an absolute necessity. When the Western Union took hold of the business, Judge Caton and his fellow-stockholders were enabled to make most advantageous terms for the disposition of their interests.

Death first invaded the home of Judge Caton in 1891, when a daughter, her mother's namesake, was taken away, and in 1892, Mrs. Caton went before. For fifty-seven years, this happily-as- sorted couple had traveled together the journey of life, and they were, no doubt, the oldest sur- viving couple in Chicago at the time of Mrs. Ca- ton's demise. During her last illness Judge Caton remarked to his family physician that they had lived together for more than fifty-seven years without a cross or unkind word ever passing be- tween them. Two children survived her, namely: Arthur J. Caton, a Chicago business man, who was admitted to the Bar, and Caroline, now the wife of the distinguished attorney, Norman Wil- liams.

In August, 1893, Judge Caton suffered a slight stroke of paralysis. Before this affliction, advanc- ing years had brought on the old trouble with his eyes, which had, happily for his future career, turned his attention froin a trade, but up to the beginning of 1893, he was able to read a little with the aid of strong glasses. By the aid of a reading- secretary, he keeps up an acquaintance with literature and current events. Even the added trial of decay in his powers of locomotion did 11ot make him despair or beconie morose. To a close friend he said: "I do not repine. I do not lament the advance of age and the loss of fac- ulties; not one bit. I enjoy my life, and thank-

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fully recognize the numberless compensations and it is a little remarkable that the first lawyer in alleviations that are inercifully left me. No; I am well content."

He still survives at the age of eighty-three, and

Chicago to bring a case in a court of record is still with us, with intellect unimpaired, when the bar numbers more than three thousand.

THOMAS H. WEBSTER.

HOMAS HOLMES WEBSTER. Among the many fire-insurance agents with which La Salle Street abounds, there is, perhaps, no other man whose reputation for safe and con- servative business methods has been more con- sistently sustained than he whose name heads this notice. His entire business training and experience have been acquired in this city, and, while the opportunities for speculation have been abundant, and the chances for unusual profit have seemed quite as alluring to him as to others, he has conscientiously avoided all participation in that hazardous and demoralizing field, confining his attention to the regular channels of business, and thereby maintaining his business credit and securing the confidence and good-will of his asso- ciates.

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Album of genealogy and biography, Cook County, Illinois, 2nd ed., Part 8

Author: Publication date: 1895 Publisher: Chicago : Calumet Book & Engr. Co. Number of Pages: 808

Author:
Publication date: 1895
Publisher: Chicago : Calumet Book & Engr. Co.
Number of Pages: 808