The biographical encyclopedia of Illinois of the nineteenth century, Part 94

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

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OGAN, HON. JOHN A., United States Senator from Illinois, was born in Jackson county, Illinois, on February 9th, 1826. His father, Dr. John Logan, came from Ireland to Illinois in 1823. His mother, Elizabeth (Jenkins) Logan, was a native of Tennessee. ITis early education he re- ceived partly from his father and partly from such schools as were set up from time to time by teachers who visited the new settlement. Having thus laid a foundation he became a student at the Louisville University, from which he graduated in due course. On the outbreak of the Mex- ican war he enlisted as a private in the Illinois volunteers, and was chosen Lieutenant in a company of the Ist Illinois , Raymond he saved the day by his personal valor; at Jack-

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son he did yeoman service in defeating the enemy, and in | tion. Nearly all the buildings of the Vermont Cer tral and the battle of Champion Hill he played a conspicuous part. During the siege of Vicksburg he commanded McPherson's centre, and on the 25th of June made the assault after the explosion of the mine. Ilis column was the first to enter the city, of which he was made Military Governor. In November, 1863, he secured another and important military step, being appointed to succeed General Sherman in com- mand of the 15th Army Corps. IIe led the advance of the Army of the Tennessee in the movement at Resaca, and at Dallas he encountered and repulsed Hardee's veterans. Another distinguished service he rendered in driving the enemy froin his line of works at Kencsaw Mountain. At Atlanta, after the fall of General McPherson, he succeeded that gallant and able officer in command of the Army of the Tennessee in that desperate battle. And so until the close of the war he was continually in active service, ever dis- tinguishing himself by his military skill and gallantry. He was appointed Minister to Mexico in 1855, but declined. Becoming a candidate for the Fortieth Congress as Reprc- sentative from the State of Illinois at large, he was elected by a large majority, and was re-elected to the Forty-first. In the latter he served as Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, a position for which his experience pecu- liarly fitted him. He was a second time re-elected, but before he could take his seat in the Forty-second Congress he was elected by the Legislature as the successor of Richard Yates in the United States Senate. He entered that body on March 4th, 1871, and his term extends until March 3d, 1877. Since the outbreak of the war he has affiliated with the Republican party, and his earnest, able advocacy of the distinctive principles which drew him within its ranks has contributed in considerable measure to the maintenance of its supremacy, Ile is a man of great popularity and a steadfast friend of the soldier with whom he fought so bravely for the preservation of the nation.

the Rutland & Burlington Railroads, together with many of those on the New York Central and Syracuse & Bing- hamton Railroads, were erected from designs furnished by him, and were by him supervised in construction. He after- wards enlarged the sphere of l.is professional labors to em- brace all branches of the art, for which he was fully prepared by arduous study and by a talent for originality which is not often to be encountered. In 1850 he moved to Syracuse, New York, where he met with great success. In 1856, infected alike with thousands with what was popularly termed the " western fever," he went to Chicago, where he found many formidable competitors in the profession of architecture, and all engaged in a thriving business. Ile found the field within the city proper thoroughly occupied, and by men whose ability could not be discounted. The most promising prospect to him as a new comer was the suburban vicinity and the towns and cities whose destiny was controlled almost by that of Chicago itself. Chicago was then as now the centralizing point of northwestern trade, and he conceived the idea that it should be and could be the central point of professional labor. IIe commenced his labors in this direction and his perseverance was rewarded with unbounded success, richly merited by his patience, his energy, and his genius. While the competitors for the field of architecture in Chicago per se have surpassed him in obtaining patronage in that city, he has outstripped them in securing professional and lucrative employment beyond its immediate boundaries, and has achieved a repu- tation which is not limited to a city, but which may be said to be co-extensive with improvements in the entire north- west for the past twenty years. Hc has designed and su- pervised the construction of more buildings in the country which is tributary to the commercial greatness of Chicago than any other architect of his time. His business grew very rapidly in proportion, and he was compelled to employ a large number of draughtsmen to get out the working plans of the buildings he had designed. While he gives his atten- tion to structures of all kinds and adapted to every variety of purpose, he makes a specialty of those devoted to public uses, such as churches, court-houses, schools, halls, etc., and is almost exclusively engaged in important work of this nature. He designed Plymouth Church, on Wabash avenue; the Eighth Presbyterian Church, at the corner of Roky and Washington streets ; the Newberry, Skinner and Haven public school buildings, which furnished the models for nearly all the schools since erected in that city; the Theological Seminary of the Northwest, at Hyde Park; the Northwestern University, at Evanston ; and many splendid residences conspicuously adorning some of the finest thor- oughfares in Chicago. Beyond the limits of Chicago, liis genius embodied in brick and stone and wood is even more prominent, but it will be impossible to enumerate in this connection more than the following edifices erected from

ANDALL, GURDON P., Architect, was born in Braintree, Orange county, Vermont, February 18th, 1821, and possessed the advantages of a thorough public school education in early life. In his youth he assisted his father, who was en- gaged in the lumbering and building trade, and on reaching manhood was married to Louisa Caroline Drew, on January 3Ist, 1842. When twenty-two years of age he moved to Boston, where he vigorously commenced the study of practical architecture in its higher forms, and soon became proficient as a designer, taking precedence in this line over many who had for years followed the profession of designing and building architects. Until the age of thirty he confined his attention exclusively to designing and con- structing churches and railroad buildings, making of the latter a specialty, in which he obtained a very fine reputa- | his designs : the Normal University, at Bloomington, Illi-

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nois ; the Court House, at Jacksonville, Illinois ; Metropolis College, Metropolis, Illinois; the Minnesota State Normal School, at Winona; and Wisconsin Normal Schools, at Whitewater and elsewhere. The cost of these buildings mainly ranged between $85,000 and $150,000. Many of the finest public school buildings in the country were planned by him, as for instance, the high school at Aurora, Illinois; the schools at Galesburg, Jacksonville, Litchfield, O'ncy, Da Quoin, Macomb, Pekin, and Sycamore, Illinois ; at Laporte, Indiana, and at Winona, Berlin, and Red Wing, Minnesota. Ile designed the Jefferson Liberal In- stitute (Universalist) at Jefferson, Wisconsin ; an academy and convent (Catholic) at Leavenworth, Kansas; and the Convent of the Sacred Heart, at St. Louis. His designs for educational institutions were reccived with so much favor in the West, that he was soon called upon to fill orders from the East and South, and he has been profitably engaged in these architectural labors. His designs possess the merit of novelty, beauty of proportion, and convenience of internal arrangement, and are accepted as the productions of a man eminently fitted for the difficult and hazardous profession of a practical architect. He is a man of fine cul- ture and of public spirit, and has taken a high place in the profession and in the estcem of the community. Latterly he has turned his attention to general science, and delivers entertaining and instructive lectures on various topics, cspe- cially on that of light and its phenomena. Beyond that of Justice of the Peace, he has filled no political station, and is independent of party affiliation in his support of candidates for civil station.

CCAGG, EZRA BUTLER, Lawyer, was born at Kinderhook, a'village lying near the IIudson above New York city, November 22, 1825. His father was a merchant who early in life acquired a for- tune, and soon retired to an estate near Kinder- hook to enjoy the fruits of his active and indus- trious business carecr. Ezra B. was educated at home under the care of a neighboring clergyman. When nincteen years of age he entered the law office of Monell, Hogeboom & Monell, prominent lawyers of Hudson, New York, as a law student, and read law for some years under the direction of these preceptors, who have all since occupied high judicial stations in the State of New York. In 1847 he was ad- mitted to practisc, and soon after removed to Chicago, where he associated with J. Y. Scammon, the firm being known as Scammon & McCagg. In 1849 IIon. Samucl W. Fuller was admitted to the partnership, the firm-name being changed to Scammon, McCagg & Fuller. This organization of the firm, which very soon won an eminent position in the esti- mation of the bench and bar, remained thus constituted until 1872, when Mr. Scammon withdrew, and Mr. W. I. Culver was admitted, and the rcorganized partnership continued the same, with the exception of these changes, until 1873, when

the death of Mr. Fuller occurred. This firm enjoyed a very extensive and important practice, covering many of the more important civil cases presented for adjudication to the city, State, and Federal courts. Its individual members were men profoundly read in the law, with rare abilities for the duties of advising and acting advocates. Mr. McCagg, dur- ing the civil war, was an industrious promoter of the United States Sanitary Commission, and filled the arduous position of President of the Northwestern Sanitary Commission. He was chosen as first President of the Chicago Club, and has been Trustee of the University of Chicago, and of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, and is now one of the Board of Man- agers of the Chicago Bar Association. IIc is a gentleman of scholarly tastes and acquirements, and prior to the mem- orable fire of 1871 had, besides his law library, one of the largest miscellaneous libraries in the Northwest, the forma- tion of which had been the labor of many years. His col- lection of the writings and letters of the carly Jesuits and settlers of the northwestern States and Territories was one of the best extant. This library was wholly destroyed, and much reliable data of the opening and settlement of the great Northwest was lost. Mr. McCagg is a Republican from conviction, and while he takes a profound interest in the progress of civil affairs, he is in no sense a politician ac- cording to the modern interpretation given to that term. He has given a great deal of his time and attention to the pro- motion and improvement of the system of popular education, and to all movements for the moral, intellectual and material prosperity of the community in which he resides. Hc pos- sesses no common degree of ability as a lawyer. His argu- ments, which are models of composition and eloquence, de- rive their greatest force from the clearness with which the issues involved are presented, and the logical precision with which his conclusions are attained. He is a leading and highly esteemed member of the bar, and has, moreover, the respect of the entire community in which he moves.

ATTERSON, ROBERT WILSON, D. D., Pro- fessor in the Presbyterian Seminary, in Chicago, was born January 21st, 1814, near Marysville, East Tennessee, being the son of Alexander and Sarah E. (Stevenson) Patterson, both natives of South Carolina, and descending on both paternal and maternal sides from a long line of Scotch Presbyterians, who held their faith through a century of persecution, and whose descendants, to cscape intolerant tyranny, took refuge in this country. In 1824 his father, fearing the influence which the institution of slavery might have upon his chil- dren, removed to Illinois, six years after that State had been admitted to the Federal Union, with an organic law pro- hibiting human bondage. Shortly after this migration his father died, leaving the care of his large family to his widow, a woman of great energy and rare acquirements. Robert

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remained upon the homestead farm until his eighteenth year was reached, when he entered Illinois College, having been prepared for this course by the teaching of his mother. He pursued his studies in this institution, then presided over by Dr. Edward Beecher, with great assiduity, and with the aim of perfecting himself for the ministry. Upon the com- pletion of his collegiate course, he entered Lane Theological Seminary, and prosecuted his theological studies under Pro- fessor Stowe and Dr. Lymin Beecher. He inherited from his mother a passion and taste for music, and became profi- cient as a violinist, in the playing of which he found recre- ation from his laborious and taxing application to study. Upon leaving the seminary Dr. Patterson went to Chicago, where he labored for twelve years as a pastor, and was then called to the Chair of Didactic Theology in Lane Seminary, as the successor of his former preceptor, Lyman Beecher. This tempting offer he, however, declined. In 1859 he was chosen Moderator of the General Assembly of the New School Presbyterian Church, and afterwards became a mem- ber of the conference which devised a plan of uniting the two schools, which wis eventually happily consummated. Dr. Patterson wis Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Chicago, which was organized in 1842. In 1841 Dr. Patterson, then a student in the Seminary, acted as " supply " to the pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church, and created a very profound impression among his hearers by his elo- quience and the varied resources of his mind. In the fol- lowing year the new organization called him to their head, and he accepted the pistorite, which he filled for more than a quarter of a century. He is a strong doctrinal, but not a controversial, preicher, holding to a strict orthodox inter- pretation of the Presbyterian Confession of Faith, which he expounds with logic and eloquence. He was as a pastor very popular, both in and out of the pulpit, and was con- stant in his attendince on the sick and suffering. He is now a Professor in the Presbyterian Seminary at Chicago.

moved to what is now Adams street, but in the language of those pioneer days, " out on the prairie," and commenced to manufacture brick, and in 1835-36 built for himself the first four-story brick building erected on Lake street, on the lot more recently used by Matson & Hoes for their jewelry store. For more than fourteen years he continued in the manufacture of brick, acquiring and improving a great deal of valuable property in that period, and retired in 1850 with a comfortable fortune to reward his enterprise and his ener- getic labor. In 1836-37 he erected at the corner of Ran- dolph and Clark streets a three-story building known as the " City Hotel," which subsequently he remodelled, turning it into a five-story structure, 80 by 100 feet, which was re- christened the "Sherman House." After quite a success- ful career this building was razed in 1860, and on its site he erected a splendid edifice for hotel purposes, under the samc name as its predecessor, and this hotel soon gained the repu- tation of being one of the finest, as to its accommodations and equipments, and the best as to its management, in the West. From his first appearance in Chicago Mr. Sherman observed great interest in political affairs, and was very soon selected by his fellow-citizens for positions of honor and re- sponsibility. He was one of the first Board of Trustees of the town, and served until it was incorporated as a city, and then became one of the first city aldermen, and was repeat- edly called upon to serve in that capacity. He was a mem- ber of the County Commissioners' Court, one of the Board of Appraisers of Canal Lands, a Supervisor for one of the wards, and President of the Board when the sale of the Public Square was ordered, and by his influence and argu- ment defeated a scheme which, had it been accomplished, must have cost the city a great and needless expenditure. He succeeded in inducing the city authorities to contribute liberally for the erection in this area the court-house build- ing, and did much, as a private citizen and as a municipal servant, to raise him in the estimation of the people. As early as 1843 he was elected a member of the State Legis- lature, and was a Delegate to the State Constitutional Con- vention, which was held in 1847. He has, since he arrived at the estate of manhood, with the exception of one year, acted with the Democratic party, and became popul: r and influential as one of the most sagacious and practical of its leaders. In 1856 he was nominated for the Mayoralty, but was defeated. In 1858 he was the Democratic candidate for the Legislature, and sustained defeat. In 1862 he was again nominated for the Mayoralty of Chicago on the Demo- cratic ticket, and was elected over C. N. Holden, Esq. In 1863 he was re-elected for two years over T. B. Bryan, Esq., after a bitter contest. In 1862 he was the Democratic can- didate for Congress, and in 1865 and 1867 respectively was again the Democratic candidate for the office of Mayor of Chicago. He is a gentleman of marked force of character, of good common sense, and of the highest integrity, and is respected by the entire body of citizens as a tried public

HERMAN, FRANCIS P., ex-Mayor of Chicago, was born in Newtown, Connecticut, in the year 1805, and removed with his family to Chicago in April, 1831. With the aid of a fellow-workman shortly after his arrival, he built a frame dwelling on Randolph street, between In Sulle and Wells, which he opened as a boarding-house. This hotel of modest pretensions, which originally was about twelve feet high, eighteen feet wide, and thirty fect long, was soon occupied, and the landlord did, as it was commonly said then, a thriv- ing business. In the following year he purchased a team and wagon, when there were no stage-coach facilities, and railroads in that then far western country were not dreamed of, and carried passengers from Chicago to Joliet, Ottawa, Galena, Peoria, and other interior points, and generally had the good luck to fall in with a return load. In 1835 he |scrvant and as a liberal and public-spirited man.

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OOKINS, SAMUEL BARNES, Lawyer and cx- particular Saturday evening, on returning from his circuit, having heard of the projected departure for Washington, the judge again presented the subject, and pressed him so warmly and with such effect that on the ensuing Monday morning instead of taking the stage for Washington he sat down to study over Blackstone. After reading the usual course he was admitted to the bar in 1834, and thereafter practised his profession until 1850, when he was appointed to the circuit bench. In the last days of August, 1830, he went to Vincennes, the first seat of government of Indiana, to assist in establishing the Vincennes Gazette, a newspaper still published there. Twenty years, or thereabout, from that day he returned to the same place to hold his first court. In 1851 Indiana adopted a new Constitution, with an elective judiciary. The State was governed extensively by Demo- cratic views, and he was nominated on the Whig ticket for Judge of the Supreme Court, with Charles Dewey, David McDonald and John B. Howe, and defeated eventually by fifteen thousand majority. Two years later, in 1854, after the passage of the famous Nebraska bill and the repcal cf the Missouri Compromise, he was again nominated to the same position, and elected by about the same majority as that by which he had been defeated two years before. In 1858 he resigned his position and came to Chicago, enter- ing the firm of Gookins, Thomas & Roberts, which, with the exception of the change caused by the death of the middle member in 1863, has continued to the present time. IIe was married in Terre Haute, Indiana, in January, 1834, to Mary Caroline Osborn, and has two children living-one daughter, now married to Rev. George Ducy, of Terre Haute, Indiana, and one son, James F. Gookins, the well- known artist of Chicago. Judge of the Supreme Court of Indiana, was born in Rupert, Bennington eounty, Vermont, May 30th, ISog. His father, who died April 5th, 1814, cmigrated to Rodman, Jefferson county, New York, in February, 1812. Before attaining his fourteenth ycar, being then the youngest of ten children, Samuel set out for the West, May 5th, 1823, the objective point being Fort Harrison, where Zachary Taylor first dis- tinguished himself by defending the fort against an attack made on it by the Indians. He was accompanied on this occasion by his mother and a brother twenty-three years of age. The route taken was from Sackett's IIarbor to Lewis- ton by the stcamer " Ontario," and thence in a wagon to Fort Slosher. From there the journey was continued in an open boat to Buffalo, and in a schooner to Detroit, and later to Fort Meigs, on the Maumee. A canoe then carried the party to Fort Wanye, whence they were hauled by an ox-teani to the head waters of the Wabash, from which point they descended the river again in a canoe to Fort Harrison, and settled near the then small village, now the flourishing city, of Terre Haute. This was the second family which emigrated to the West by what was known as the northern route, the usual path of emigration prior to this time having been down the Ohio. By the treaty of IS21 the Indians had ceded a large part of northern Indiana to the United States, but still occupied the country while the emigrants were passing through. Excepting a few settlers near Fort Wayne, there was then but one settler on the Wabash from that point to another about twenty miles above Fort Harrison, the Indians being the sole occu- pants of the intervening territory. About eighteen months after reaching his Western home his mother's decease oc- curred. Left without the means or facilities needful to se- cure an education, and cherishing a longing desire to acquire CCLURG, ALEXANDER C., Merchant, General of United States Volunteers, was born in Philadel- phia, being the son of Alexander McClurg, tl.e original builder of the Fort Pitt Foundry, at Pitts- burgh, which was chiefly engaged during the war in manufacturing cannon for the use of the army and navy. Ilis boyhood was mainly spent in the latter city, to which his parents, after his birth in Philadelphia, had re- turned. He graduated at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and upon his return to Pittsburgh commenced the study of law in the office of Hon. Walter H. Lowrie, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Impaired health, resulting from too close an application to his text- books, compelled his relinquishment of this study, and in the autumn of 1859 he removed to Chicago, where he en- tered upon his arrival the book-house of S. C. Griggs & Co., the leading establishment in that branch of business in the West. He brought to this calling not only fine natural tastes and acquirements, but vigor and attention, and soon thoroughly mastered all its details. He had assumed a proni- knowledge, he apprenticed himself, signing his own inden- tures, his first achievement in the law, in 1826, to the editor, printer and publisher of the Western Register, the first news- paper published in Indiana, north of Vincennes. His first performance in his new vocation was the putting into type for the press " The Wonderful Narrative of the Death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, which occurred July 4th, 1826, on the fiftieth anniversary of the day on which they affixed their signatures to the immortal declaration." He subsequently assumed the role of journalist, acting as such until 1832. Among the leading journalists of that day were Hezekiah Niles, editor of Niles' Register, and Giles & Seaton, publishers of the National Intelligencer. IIaving no other occupation in view he made arrange- ments to go to Washington City, and, in fact, had finished the packing of his trunk and was ready for departure, when an event occurred which changed materially the tenor and purpose of his life. Hon. Amory Kinney, then Judge of the Circuit Court, with whom he had long been intimately associated, had often called his attention to the law. One inent position in this establishment when the war broke out,

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The biographical encyclopedia of Illinois of the nineteenth century, Part 94

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