The biographical encyclopedia of Illinois of the nineteenth century, Part 16

Author: Robson, Charles, ed
Publication date: 1875
Publisher: Philadelphia, Galaxy
Number of Pages: 770

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in debt on account of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, and other improvements, and there was a strong disposition on the part of many to repudiate these debts. Mr. Arnold took a bold stand against repudiation, and in the fall of that year he delivered an address in Chicago, which was afterward printed, upon the duty and ability of the State to pay its debts. As the recognized champion of anti-repudi- ation he was elected to the Legislature; and in the session of 1842-43 made the " Canal Bill " a specialty, urging the completion of the work. As Chairman of the Committee on Finance he made an elaborate report on the same sub- ject, urging measures by the adoption of which the canal was subsequently completed. During the same period he opposed the enactment of certain laws relating to the sale of property upon execution or judicial process; and on their passage he carried the question up to the United States Supreme Court, under test cases, when the Court declared the laws unconstitutional and void. In 1848 he entered with great earnestness into the " Buffalo Platform " Free Soil movement, being a delegate to the Buffalo Convention, and helping to organize that new party. He, and such men as W. B. Ogden, Thomas Hoyne, Daniel Brainerd, and George Manierre, called a Free Soil State Convention at Ottawa, Illinois, nominated a Van Buren and Adams electoral ticket, and opened the first formidable anti-slavery campaign in Illinois. Mr. Arnold took the stump with great ardor, and this was the starting-point of that grand moral revolution in American politics which made Lincoln President in 1860, and finally abolished slavery. From 1848 to 1858, although taking an active part on the anti- slavery side in every campaign, State and national, he de- voted himself closely to his profession, being engaged in many important civil and criminal cases, and rapidly achieving a high reputation. Also as attorney for the Canal Board he gained an important suit, in which certain lands were claimed by settlers by right of pre-emption. The cases were taken to the Supreme Court. N. B. Judd and Stephen A. Douglas were among the lawyers for the claimants, and Mr. Arnold and R. S. Blackwell of those for the Canal Trustees. Mr. Arnold claimed that the pre- emption did not extend to these lands, and his views were sustained by the Court. In 1855 he was again elected to the Legislature. During this session he made an elaborate and effective argument in reply to those who contended that Governor Bissell, who had just been inaugurated, was constitutionally ineligible to the office in consequence of his having accepted a challenge to mortal combat from Jeffer- son Davis, while in Congress, arguing that the challenge was accepted outside of the State and did not affect the case. In 1858 he was an unsuccessful candidate for Con- gress before the Republican Convention of the second dis- trict. In 1860 he was nominated for Congress from that district and was elected. During the campaign he addressed a great multitude in the wigwam, at Springfield, for " Lin-

BIOGRAPHICAL ENCYCLOPÆDIA.

coln and Liberty." The next day, when parting from Mr. | he had an enthusiastic public reception from the people of Lincoln, with whom he had for years been personally in- the city. He ardently supported and defended Mr. Lincoln during his renomination and re-election in 1864, deliver- ing a strong speech in the House, which was published and widely circulated as a campaign document. In June, 1863, General Burnside, commander of the military department which included Chicago, issued an order for the suppression of the Chicago Times for disloyal utterances. This created intense excitement in the city, and an outbreak was immi- nent. Mr. Arnold was then in Chicago. A number of citizens of both parties united in a request to the President to revoke the order. Mr. Arnold and Senator Trumbull sent a despatch to Mr. Lincoln, asking him to give prompt and serious attention to this request, and as a consequence the order was revoked. Mr. Arnold declined a renomina- tion in 1864, and after Mr. Lincoln's renomination devoted himself during that campaign to public speaking in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. With Mr. Lincoln's approval he was engaged during the last year of the President's life in preparing a Life of Lin- coln and a history of the overthrow of slavery. To facili- tate his labors, Mr. Lincoln tendered him the position of United States District Attorney for District of Columbia, and also that of Auditor of the Treasury for the Post-Office Department. But before the appointment was made the President was assassinated, and his successor appointed him to the Auditorship. Afterward, from dislike of Mr. John- son's political course, he resigned the office, and returned to Chicago. Soon after that he completed his historical work, which was published in 1867. It forms a standard work for reference upon the life of Mr. Lincoln, and the downfall of slavery. He here resumed the practice of his profession. In 1869 he wrote a short sketch of Mr. Lin- coln, condensed from his larger work. In 1871 he published a revised edition of the " Life of Lincoln." The house of Mr. Arnold and most of its treasures were consumed in the great fire of October 9th, 1871, the family barely escaping with their lives to the light-house, and from thence being conveyed by a river tug through a gauntlet of fire and other perils to a point of safety on the west side of the city. Their adventures on this occasion are detailed at length in an interesting account included in a published " Ilistory of the Great Conflagration." Mr. Arnold, now well along in years, is enjoying a life of comfort and ease in his rebuilt house in Chicago. timate, Mr. Arnold said, "Good-bye, Mr. Lincoln ; next time I see you I shall congratulate you on being President elect." "And I you," said Mr. Lincoln, " on being Con- gressman elcct." Whereupon Mr. Arnold remarked, " Well, I desire to go to Congress, chiefly that I may aid you in the great conflict with slavery that is before you." Mr. Lincoln replied, "I know not what is before me, but if elected, I will do my duty as God shall enable me to see it, and if a conflict comes, ' thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just.'" Mr. Arnold was among the very first Northern men who arrived in Washington in February, 1861, just previous to Lincoln's inauguration. From that date until Mr. Lincoln's assassination he devoted all his time and energies to the support of the President and the Union, retiring from his legal profession. When the more intense radicals became dissatisfied with Mr. Lincoln be- cause of his apparent unwillingness to adopt extreme meas- ures against slavery during the first year of the war, Mr. Arnold and his colleague, Owen Lovejoy, did much to neutralize this feeling, by expressing their entire confidence in Mr. Lincoln as an anti-slavery man. Mr. Arnold was selected by the Illinois delegation in Congress to deliver an obituary address upon the decease of Stephen A. Douglas, and in honor of his memory. This was his first speech in Congress. In the following December he was appointed Chairman of the select committees on the defences of the great rivers and lakes, and in February, 1862, he made an able report, showing the vast commercial and military im- portance of the same at the West, and strongly recom- mended the conversion of the Illinois & Michigan Canal into a channel for the navigation of ships and steamboats. Ile prepared and introduced a bill to this effect, and urged its passage. In June, 1862, he made a speech in support of this mcasure. The bill, however, was lost. In January, | 1863, he again made a speech in its advocacy. He was re-elected a member of the next Congress, and Speaker Colfax appointed him Chairman of the Committee on Roads and Canals. IIe reported and urged a bill providing for an appropriation by Congress of $6,000,000 to aid the State of Illinois in making the Illinois & Michigan Canal a ship canal. The bill passed the House but was rejected by the Senate. IIe retired from congressional life at the end of this term. He was a member of the Committee on the Pacific Railroad. He introduced and urged through Con- gress the act making all foreign-born soldiers who, after service in the Union army, should be honorably discharged, naturalized citizens of the United States. But especially it was he who was the first to offer a resolution in Congress for the emancipation of all the slaves of rebels, and the abolition of slavery entirely in all parts of the country. In January, 1864, he introduced a bill confirming the Presi- dent's Emancipation Proclamation. On his return Chicago, after the adjournment of Congress in July, 1864,

AGGETT, JOHN FLETCHER, M. D., was born in Charlotte, Chittenden county, Vermont, on February 15th, 1815. He received his medical education at the Medical College of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and Woodstock, Vermont, from which latter institution he graduated in 1836. In IS38 lie emigrated from his native State and commenced the practice of his profession at Lockport, Illinois, where

BIOGRAPIIICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA.

he has resided ever since, being among the first settlers in | of the city administration so clearly cstablished itself in the that town. In 1871 he was elected as Representative from the 15th District, now 18th, in the State Legislature, and served one term with great acceptance, and has also served one term on the County Board of Supervisors.

ING, IION. WILLIAM H., Lawyer, was born October 23d, 1817, at Clifton Park, Saratoga county, New York. Ile prepared for college at IIamilton and Jonesville Academies, and entered Union College in January, 1844, and graduated with the class of 1846, a class of which that insti- tution is justly proud ; for of a membership of one hundred and six, forty became lawyers, twenty-nine physicians and eleven clergymen, and twenty-six entered on several voca- tions. The class furnished one Governor for New York, Hon. J. T. Hoffman ; a Chief Justice for the State of Cali- fornia, IIon. Silas W. Sanderson ; an Assistant United States Attorney-General and Solicitor of Internal Revenue, Walter II. Smith; also several members of Congress, Judges, Legislators, College Presidents and Professors, all men of sterling integrity and ability. Immediately after leaving college he entered the law office of Hon. John K. Porter, of Waterford, New York, who was one of the lead- ing lawyers of the State, and with whom he remained until his admission to the bar in 1847, when he commenced the practice of his profession in Waterford, where he remained until 1853, when he removed to Chicago, where he arrived on the 4th day of February, 1853, and where he has since that time resided and practised his profession. He was elected President of the village of Waterford, which office he resigned in anticipation of his removal to Chicago. Very soon after his arrival at Chicago he formed a' partnership with Ira Scott, a former fellow law student, who had pre- ceded him to the Western States. This partnership con- tinued until March, 1875, more than twenty-two years, and during a portion of this time Solomon M. Wilson, brother of that eminent jurist, Hon. John M. Wilson, and George Payson, son of the well-known Rev. Edward Payson, were members of the firm. Mr. King was for more than six years, from May, 1868, to August, 1874, a member of the Board of Education, and for more than three years Presi- dent of that body. The pressure of professional dutics caused him to resign his position as President, and also as a member of the Board, in August, 1874, which was the subject of universal regret among all the friends of the public schools, as he had been the leading spirit in all the valuable reforms, and had succeeded-where so many administrative officers fail-in imbuing a general public interest in their welfare. His annual reports were models in terseness and perspicuity. As a memorial of the esteem in which he was held by the Board and the public, the new grammar school on Western Avenue was named the " King School." No department

confidence of the public as the Chicago Board of Educa- tion, in the substitution of moral suasion for corporal pun- ishment. Mr. King, in his annual report in July, 1874, used the following language : " The infliction of corporal pun- ishment is no part of the duties of a teacher. The duty of inflicting such punishment, whenever it exists, is within the exclusive prerogative of the parent or guardian." The press of Chicago was unanimous in commending his man- agement of school affairs. In 1870 he was elected a mem- ber of the Legislature of Illinois for the years 1871 and 1872. This was a most important Legislature : being the first to assemble after the adoption of the new constitution, very momentous questions were to be acted upon. This body was a most creditable one, and probably the ablest the State has ever had. In this body he occupied a very promi- nent position, was Chairman of the Committee on Fces and Salaries, and a member of the Committee on Judicial De- partment, and of the Committee on Education. He was the author of the bill establishing the fees and salaries of all the officers in the State, which finally passed, as it proved far superior to the one which originated in the Senate, and was substituted for the Senate bill by that House. He was also Chairman of the Committee on Burnt Records. This was a most important committee. The records of the titles to property in Chicago and Cook county had been destroyed by the great fire of October Sth and 9th, 1871, leaving real estate owners, or parties desiring to sell or mortgage prop- erty, in a helpless condition, in that they were unable to prove their titles to their property, and legislative action be- came necessary. He introduced a bill to establish evidences of title by a decree of the Court of Chancery, which was finally passed, and has become a relief, and the only prac- ticable plan. His course while a member of the Legisla- ture received the unqualified approbation of his constituents, and he was strongly urged to accept a renomination, which he declined, as he also declined to accept any other office. The pressure of his professional duties demanded all his time and attention. He has been for several years President of the Union College Alumni Association of the Northwest. His speech at the first annual dinner of the Chicago Bar Association was widely copied by newspapers throughout the State and country as one of the happiest efforts on that occasion. He was married, September Ist, 1847, to Mary, daughter of Levi and Plotina Chency, of Orange, Massachu- setts, and is the father of two daughters. Mary, the eldest, is the wife of Tappen Halsey, one of the proprietors of the Chicago Homeopathic Pharmacy ; Fanny, the youngest, is a girl of fourteen, at present attending the Chicago Iligh School. Mr. King has very strong attachments to his home, his wife and children. For his success in life he awards to his wife, who is a woman of extraordinary good sense, ed- ucation and ability, a large share of credit. As a lawyer, Mr. King stands in the front rank of his profession. The following is an extract from " Sketches and Notices of the

Hay Puh. O. Faltapita.

William N. Kimp 1

BIOGRAPIIICAL ENCYCLOPÆDIA.

Chicago Bar," published in 1871 : " Mr. King is a trifle be- | school-house-true Yankee institutions among true Yan- low medium size, with keen black eyes, a good forehead, a kees. He himself bought a large farm there also. They named the town Tremont. The next year, in company with Mr. Harris and Mr. Lyon, he founded another colony near by. After working a farm here for fifteen years, he, in May, 1848, went to Chicago and entered the lumber business with a Mr. Hammond. He continued in this five years, when he engaged in the real estate business with G. A. Springer. This partnership continued for ten years, after which he pursued the business alone until he retired from active life to confine his attention to overseeing the management of his own property. He was at one period an Alderman of Chicago, and has always borne a high reputation for integrity and general worth of character. Under the administration of Mayor Gurney he was for some months, during that gentleman's absence, acting Mayor of the eity. He is now President of the Old People's Home, of the Orphan Asylum, and of the Woman's Hospital-all of them Chicago institutions. pleasant, intellectual faee, and a quick, energetic, nervous manner. His general appearance is suggestive of kindli- ncss, and of an active, restless character. As a lawyer, Mr. King occupies a very excellent position. His practice is general, and his development very uniform. He is a good lawyer, whether in preparing a case, in trying it, or in pre- senting it either to a court or jury. He is a lawyer whose integrity is above all suspicion. He will only engage in just litigation, and, once engaged, he is one who gives the case a most thorough and conscientious treatment. He stands among the very first of those of his profession who may be relied on for indefatigable industry, painstaking preparation and conduct of a case, unvarying courtesy towards everybody with whom they come in contact, and thorough and conscientious discharge of their duty to their clients. These qualities have given him an excellent standing and a lucrative and successful practice. Apart from his profession, Mr. King is an affable, courteous gen- tleman. He has secured a competence from the practice of law, and is sufficiently cultivated to permit him to enjoy life very thoroughly in his eharacter as a private citizen."

AMES, JOSIAH L., Real Estate Operator, was born in Scituate, Plymouth county, Massachu- setts, October 9th, 1791. His father, William James, was a ship-carpenter, building ships for the whaling interests of Nantucket and New Bed- ford. The son attended the common school of Scituate, after which he was a pupil in the private school of Parson Flint, of Cohasset, for two years. At the age of sixteen he became a clerk in a dry-goods store in Taunton, Massachusetts. After serving here four years he started a small dry-goods business of his own in the same town. IIe next went to New York city and entered into a commission business, selling copper for a large copper company in Taunton, and dealing largely in iron, copper, and other hardware. He remained in the business for fifteen years, when he moved to Galena, Illinois, in behalf of the Taun- ton Copper Company, to examine the copper mines there. During his stay in New York he was married, in Raynham, Massachusetts, June 16th, 1816, to Amelia Washburn, daughter of IIon. Seth Washburn, of Raynham. On arriving in Galena he found nothing but surface diggings of copper, but returned pleased with the appearance of the country. Proceeding to Taunton he organized a colony of fifty-four families, in company with J. II. Harris, which they conducted west to Tazewell county, Illinois. On arriving they entered thirty-five sections of land and one or two sections of timber land. The choice in these lands was auctioned off among the settlers, and from the fund obtained by these premiums they built a church and a

EAN, MASON STILLMAN, Dentist, was born in Pittsford, Vermont. His parents were natives of Massachusetts, and five children were born to them-Mary Adaline, the only daughter, who died in 1844 of pulmonary consumption ; William Franklin, Mason Stillman, Zebina Thomas, and James Alexander, four sons. Of these, both Franklin and Thomas received not only a full collegiate education, but also studied medicine, graduated, and practised for some time in Milan, Ohio. The former obtained his degree at the Woodstock Medical College, and after several years' practice received a second diploma from the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. During the rebellion he entered the army as Surgeon, and was assigned to an Ohio regiment. In the retreat of General Pope's army, near Washington, in August, 1862, he became exhausted by excessive labor and hunger, and died at Washington in September of that year. After the lapse of only three months Zebina Thomas Dean, who had graduated in the arts at Middletown, Connecticut, and in medicine both at Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio, died of pulmonary con- sumption. The next death in the family was that of their mother, Mrs. Dean, which occurred at Dighton, Massachu- setts, in April, 1868; and their father followed her, Decem- ber 18th, 1874, in the eighty-fifth year of his agc, he having died at the residence of his youngest son, at Athens, Ten- nessee. The latter-the Rev. James Alexander Dean, A. M., D. D .- is President of the East Tennessee Wesleyan University, and he, with his brother, Dr. Mason Stillman Dean, are the only survivors of the family. The last-men- tioned was generally known by the single name of Stillman. When he was about six years old, the family removed to De Peyster, St. Lawrence county, New York, where his

BIOGRAPHIICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA.

father was engaged in farming, while during the winter months he taught school in his own and the neighboring districts. In 1837 he removed to Ogdensburg, in order that his children might enjoy the educational advantages afforded by the academy in that place, then conducted by the celebrated Taylor Lewis. At this institution, and at the Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary, Stillman acquired a fair knowledge of the higher branches of education, being occupied meanwhile in teaching both in Ogdensburg and Lisbon-a small town on the St. Lawrence river, six miles distant from Ogdensburg. In 1843 he commenced the study of medicine in the office of Drs. Loughlin and Mayo, in Ogdensburg, which he pursued for eighteen months, during which time he went over the entire course of medi- cal study, but pursued it no farther. He now resolved to study dentistry, and having that object in view, entered the office of D. C. Ambler, M. D., where he remained about a year. In the autumn of 1846 he went to Canada West, and practised dentistry in the towns of Dundas, Galt, and Guelph; and then removed to Milan, Ohio, where he con- tinued for some years. In 1852 he proceeded to Marshall, Michigan, where he successfully practised his profession until 1864, when he removed to Chicago, where he has since remained. He has always manifested a deep interest in the advancement of the cause of dental education, and has taken a prominent part in the various associations which have that object in view. He was one of the organ- izers of the Illinois State Society, of which he was made President in 1869, and has been twice elected to the same office in the Chicago Dental Society. He has likewise served for five years as the Recording Secretary and Chair- man of the Publication Committee of the American Dental Association, and is now (1875) the President of that body. Ilis writings on subjects relating to his specialty may be considered very creditable, both in a literary and scientific point of view. Some of them have appeared in various dental journals, though the greater part have been published either in the " Transactions of the Illinois State Dental Society " or of the "American Dental Association." An essay showing that the lime salts of the absorbeal deciduous teeth may be re-appropriated by any of the tissues requiring these materials is considered by him the most noteworthy.

ANFORD, EDWARD, Lawyer, was born in Say- brook, Connecticut, August 28th, 1833; his father being Edward Sanford, a farmer in that place. Ile first attended the common school, then an academy at Saybrook, and then Williston Seminary, at East Hampton, Massachusetts, where he fitted himself for college. In 1850 he entered Yale, and graduated in the class of 1854. He then taught Latin in the State Normal School of Connecticut for six months, after which he went to Morris, Illinois, in the fall

of 1854, and was Superintendent of the schools of the place for a period of eighteen months. August Ist, 1855, he was married to Mary S. Reading, daughter of Hon. J. S. Read- ing, of Morris. During his last year in college he had turned particular attention to law. Again, after teaching in Morris, he resumed its study with Judge Reading, and in 1857 he was admitted to the bar of Illinois. Since that time he has been engaged in the practice of law, with espc- cial attention to loaning money and to suits connected with real estate. He was also at onc period County Superin- tendent of schools in Grundy county, Illinois. It was in Mr. Sanford's office that the famous Granger movement was inaugurated ; the result of the consultations of a few men with regard to the question of cheap transportation to the seaboard; the movement not having then acquired its present feature of a tirade against railroads.

ENDALL, HENRY WILMER, M. D., was born in Cheviot, Hamilton county, Ohio, September 15th, 1831. His father, Dr. Richard Gardner Kendall, was from Morristown, New Jersey, but removed to Cheviot, where he enjoyed an cxten- sive practice for a period of forty years. His mother was Ann Brown, also from New Jersey. His edu- cation was obtained at Farmers' College, Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and when about seventeen years of age he determined to follow the medical profession, and accordingly com- menced his studies with his father, and in 1851 matricu- lated at the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati, graduating therefrom in the spring of 1853. He then repaired to Kentucky, in Boone county, and taught school near Bur- lington, still following his medical studies. In the fall of the same year he located himself in Quincy, Illinois, where he remained for a short time only, removing thence to Liberty, about eight miles east of Quincy, where he prac- tiscd for three years. In the fall of 1856 he went to Pay- son, in the same county, and stayed there until the breaking out of the war in 1861, when he received the appointment of Surgeon of the 50th Regiment Illinois Infantry. Dr. Kendall continued in the service until the close of the war, most of the time doing duty as Surgeon in charge of the camp located at Quincy. In 1863 he passed the Medical Board of Examiners at Louisville, Kentucky, and received from President Lincoln an appointment as Assistant Sur- geon of Volunteers, and for a while was attached to the 2d Division 16th Army Corps. Since leaving the service he has been in active practice in Quincy, where he now enjoys a very extensive reputation as an able practitioner. Although attending to a large general practice, the doctor has more particularly in the past ten years given especial attention to surgery, and enjoys the reputation of being a skilful operator. In the winter of 1870 he attended a second course of lectures and graduated at Jefferson Medical

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The biographical encyclopedia of Illinois of the nineteenth century, Part 16

Author: Robson, Charles, ed Publication date: 1875 Publisher: Philadelphia, Galaxy Number of Pages: 770

Author: Robson, Charles, ed
Publication date: 1875
Publisher: Philadelphia, Galaxy
Number of Pages: 770