USA > Indiana > Decatur County > A Genealogical and biographical record of Decatur County, Indiana : compendium of national biography > Part 15
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M ORRISON REMICH WAITE, seventh chief justice of the United States, was born at Lyme, Connecticut, November 29, 1816. He was a graduate from Yale Col-
lege in 1837, in the class with William M. Evarts. His father was judge of the su- preme court of errors of the state of Con- necticut, and in his office young Waite studied law. He subsequently removed to Ohio, and was elected to the legislature of that state in 1849. He removed from Maumee City to Toledo and became a prom- inent legal light in that state. He was nominated as a candidate for congress re- peatedly but declined to run, and also de- clined a place on the supreme bench of the state. He won great distinction for his able handling of the Alabama claims at Geneva, before the arbitration tribunal in 1871, and was appointed chief justice of the supreme court of the United States in 1874 on the death of Judge Chase. When, in 1876, elec- toral commissioners were chosen to decide the presidential election controversy between Tilden and Hayes, Judge Waite refused to serve on that commission.
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His death occurred March 23, 1888.
E LISHA KENT KANE was one of the distinguished American explorers of the unknown regions of the frozen north, and gave to the world a more accurate knowl- edge of the Arctic zone. Dr. Kane was born February 3, 1820, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a graduate of the universities of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and took his medical degree in 1843. He entered the service of the United States navy, and was physician to the Chinese embassy. Dr. Kane traveled extensively in the Levant, Asia and Western Africa, and also served in the Mexican war, in which he was severely wounded. His first Arctic expedition was under De Haven in the first Grinnell expedition in search of Sir John Franklin in 1850. He com- manded the second Grinnell expedition
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in 1853-55, and discovered an open polar sea. For this expedition he received a gold medaland other distinctions. He published a narrative of his first polar expedition in 1853, and in 1856 published two volumes relating to his second polar expedition. He was a man of active, enterprising and cour- ageous spirit. His health, which was al- ways delicate, was impaired by the hard- ships of his Arctic expeditions, from which he never fully recovered and from which he died February 16, 1857, at Havana.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON was a daughter of Judge Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston, and was born Novem- ber 12, 1815, at Johnstown, New York. She was educated at the Johnstown Academy, where she studied with a class of boys, and was fitted for college at the age of fifteen, after which she pursued her studies at Mrs. Willard's Seminary, at Troy. Her atten- tion was called to the disabilities of her sex by her own educational experiences, and through a study of Blackstone, Story, and Kent. Miss Cady was married to Henry B. Stanton in 1840, and accompanied him to the world's anti-slavery convention in Lon- don. While there she made the acquain- tance of Lucretia Mott. Mrs. Stanton resided at Boston until 1847, when the family moved to Seneca Falls, New York, and she and Lucretia Mott signed the first call for a woman's rights convention. The meeting was held at her place of residence July 19-20, 1848. This was the first oc- casion of a formal claim of suffrage for women that was made. Mrs. Stanton ad- dressed the New York legislature, in 1854, on the rights of married women, and in 1860, in advocacy of the granting of di- vorce for drunkenness. She also addressed the legislature and the constitutional con-
vention, and maintained that during the revision of the constitution the state was resolved into its original elements, and that all citizens had, therefore, a right to vote for the members of that convention. After 1869 Mrs. Stanton frequently addressed congressional committees and state consti- tutional conventions, and she canvassed Kansas, Michigan, and other states when the question of woman suffrage was sub- mitted in those states. Mrs. Stanton was one of the editors of the " Revolution, " and most of the calls and resolutions for con- ventions have come from her pen. She was president of the national committee, also of the Woman's Loyal League, and of the National Association, for many years.
D AVID DUDLEY FIELD, a great American jurist, was born in Connecti- cut in 1805. He entered Williams College when sixteen years old, and commenced the study of law in 1825. In 1828 he was ad- mitted to the bar, and went to New York, where he soon caine into prominence be- fore the bar of that state. He entered upon the labor of reforming the practice and procedure, which was then based upon the common law practice of England, and had become extremely complicated, difficult and uncertain in its application. His first paper on this subject was published in 1839, and after eight years of continuous efforts in this direction, he was appointed one of a com- mission by New York to reform the practice of that state. The result was embodied in the two codes of procedure, civil and crimi- nal, the first of which was adopted almost entire by the state of New York, and has since been adopted by more than half the states in the Union, and became the basis of the new practice and procedure in Eng- land, contained in the Judicature act. He
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was later appointed chairman of a new com- mission to codify the entire body of laws. This great work employed many years in its completion, but when finished it embraced a civil, penal, and political code, covering the entire field of American laws, statutory and common. This great body of law was adopted by California and Dakota territory in its entirety, and many other states have since adopted its substance. In 1867 the British Association for Social Science heard a proposition from Mr. Field to prepare an international code. This led to the prepara- tion of his " Draft Outlines of an Interna- tional Code," which was in fact a complete body of international laws, and introduced the principle of arbitration. Other of his codes of the state of New York have since been adopted by that state.
In addition to his great works on law, . Mr. Field indulged his literary tastes by fre- quent contributions to general literature, and his articles on travels, literature, and the political questions of the hour gave him rank with the best writers of his time. His father was the Rev. David Dudley Field, and his brothers were Cyrus W. Field, Rev. Henry Martin Field, and Justice Stephen J. Field of the United States supreme court. David Dudley Field died at New York, April 13, 1894.
ENRY M. TELLER, a celebrated H American politician, and secretary of the interior under President Arthur, was born May 23, 1830, in Allegany county, New York. He was of Hollandish ancestry and received an excellent education, after which he took up the study of law and was ad- mitted to the bar in the state of New York. Mr. Teller removed to Illinois in January, 1858, and practiced for three years in that state. From thence he moved to Colorado
in 1861 and located at Central City, which was then one of the principal mining towns in the state. His exceptional abilities as a lawyer soon brought him into prominence and gained for him a numerous and profit- able clientage. In politics he affiliated with the Republican party, but declined to become a candidate for office until the admission of Colorado into the Union as a state, when he was elected to the United States senate. Mr. Teller drew the term ending March 4, 1877, but was re-elected December 1I, 1876, and served until April 17, 1882, when he was appointed by President Arthur as secretary of the interior. He accepted a cabinet position with reluctance, and on March 3, 1885, he retired from the cabinet, having been elected to the senate a short time before to succeed Nathaniel P. Hill. Mr. Teller took his seat on March 4, 1885, in the senate, to which he was afterward re-elected. He served as chairman on the committee of pensions, patents, mines and mining, and was also a member of commit- tees on claims, railroads, privileges and elections and public lands. Mr. Teller came to be recognized as one of the ablest advo- cates of the silver cause. He was one of the delegates to the Republican National conven- tion at St. Louis in 1896, in which he took an active part and tried to have a silver plank inserted in the platform of the party. Failing in this he felt impelled to bolt the convention, which he did and joined forces with the great silver movement in the cam- paign which followed, being recognized in that campaign as one of the most able and eminent advocates of "silver" in America.
JOHN ERICSSON, an eminent inven- tor and machinist, who won fame in America, was born in Sweden, July 31, 1803. In early childhood he evinced a decided in-
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clination to mechanical pursuits, and at the age of eleven he was appointed to a cadet- ship in the engineer corps, and at the age of seventeen was promoted to a lieutenancy. In 1826 he introduced a "flame engine," which he had invented, and offered it to English capitalists, but it was found that it could be operated only by the use of wood for fuel. Shortly after this he resigned his commission in the army of Sweden, and de- voted himself to mechanical pursuits. He discovered and introduced the principle of artificial draughts in steam boilers, and re- ceived a prize of two thousand five hundred dollars for his locomotive, the "Novelty," which attained a great speed, for that day. The artificial draught effected a great saving in fuel and made unnecessary the huge smoke-stacks formerly used, and the princi- ple is still applied, in modified form, in boil- ers. He also invented a steam fire-engine, and later a hot-air engine, which he at- tempted to apply in the operation of his ship, "Ericsson," but as it did not give the speed required, he abandoned it, but after- wards applied it to machinery for pumping, hoisting, etc.
Ericsson was first to apply the screw propeller to navigation. The English peo- ple not receiving this new departure readily, Ericsson came to America in 1839, and built the United States steamer, "Prince- ton," in which the screw-propeller was util- ized, the first steamer ever built in which the propeller was under water, out of range of the enemy's shots. The achievement which gave him greatest renown, however, was the ironclad vessel, the " Monitor," an entirely new type of vessel, which, in March, 1862, attacked the Confederate monster ironclad ram, " Virginia, " and after a fierce struggle, compelled her to withdraw from Hampton Roads for repairs. After the war
one of his most noted inventions was his vessel, " Destroyer," with a subinarine gun, which carried a projectile torpedo. In 1886 the king of Spain conferred on him the grand cross of the Order of Naval Merit. He died in March, 1889, and his body was transferred, with naval honors, to the country of his birth.
JAMES BUCHANAN, the fifteenth presi- dent of the United States, was a native of Pennsylvania, and was born in Franklin county, April 23, 1791. He was of Irish ancestry, his father having come to this country in 1783, in quite humble circum- stances, and settled in the western part of the Keystone state.
James Buchanan remained in his se- cluded home for eight years, enjoying but few social or intellectual advantages. His parents were industrious and frugal, and prospered, and, in 1799, the family removed to Mercersbur Pennsylvania, where he was placed in school. His progress was rapid, and in ISO1 he entered Dickinson College, at Carlisle, where he took his place among the best scholars in the institution. In 1809 he graduated with the highest hon- ors in his class. He was then eighteen, tall, graceful and in vigorous health. He com- menced the study of law at Lancaster, and was admitted to the bar in 1812. He rose very rapidly in his profession and took a stand with the ablest of his fellow lawyers. When but twenty-six years old he success- fully defended, unaided by counsel, one of the judges of the state who was before the bar of the state senate under articles of im- peachment.
During the war of 1812-15, Mr. Buch- anan sustained the government with all his power, eloquently urging the vigorous prose- cution of the war, and enlisted as a private
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volunteer to assist in repelling the British who had sacked and burned the public buildings of Washington and threatened Baltimore. At that time Buchanan was a Federalist, but the opposition of that party to the war with Great Britain and the alien and sedition laws of John Adams, brought that party into disrepute, and drove many, among them Buchanan, into the Re- publican, or anti-Federalist ranks. He was elected to congress in 1828. In 1831 he was sent as minister to Russia, and upon his return to this country, in 1833, was ele- vated to the United States senate, and re- mained in that position for twelve years. Upon the accession of President Polk to office he made Mr. Buchanan secretary of state. Four years later he retired to pri- vate life, and in 1853 he was honored with the mission to England. In 1856 the na- tional Democratic convention nominated him for the presidency and he was elected. It was during his administration that the rising tide of the secession movement over- took the country. Mr. Buchanan declared that the national constitution gave him no power to do anything against the movement to break up the Union. After his succession by Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Mr. Buchanan retired to his home at Wheatland, Pennsyl- vania, where he died June 1, 1868.
JOHN HARVARD, the founder of the J Harvard University, was born in Eng- land about the year 1608. He received his education at Emanuel College, Cambridge, and came to America in 1637, settling in Massachusetts. He was a non-conformist minister, and a tract of land was set aside for him in Charlestown, near Boston. He was at once appointed one of a committee to formulate a body of laws for the colony. One year before his arrival in the colony
the general court had voted the sum of four hundred pounds toward the establishment of a school or college, half of which was to be paid the next year In 1637 preliminary plans were made for starting the school. In 1638 John Harvard, who had shown great interest in the new institution of learning proposed, died, leaving his entire property, about twice the sum originally voted, to the school, together with three hundred volumes as a nucleus for a library. The institution was then given the name of Harvard, and established at Newton (now Cambridge), Massachusetts. It grew to be one of the two principal seats of learning in the new world, and has maintained its reputation since. It now consists of twenty-two separate build- ings, and its curriculum embraces over one hundred and seventy elective courses, and it ranks among the great universities of the world.
ROGER BROOKE TANEY, a noted jurist and chief justice of the United States supreme court, was born in Calvert county, Maryland, March 17, 1777. He graduated from Dickinson College at the age of eighteen, took up the study of law, and was admitted to the bar in 1799. He was chosen to the legislature from his county, and in 1801 removed to Frederick, Mary- land. He became United States senator from Maryland in 1816, and took up his permanent residence in Baltimore a few years later. In 1824 he became an ardent admirer and supporter of Andrew Jackson, and upon Jackson's election to the presi- dency, was appointed attorney general of the United States. Two years later he was appointed secretary of the treasury, and after serving in that capacity for nearly one year, the senate refused to confirm the ap- pointment. In 1835, upon the death of
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Chief-justice Marshall, he was appointed to that place, and a political change having occurred in the make up of the senate, he was confirmed in 1836. He presided at his first session in January of the following year.
The case which suggests itself first to the average reader in connection with this jurist is the celebrated " Dred Scott " case, which came before the supreme court for decision in 1856. In his opinion, delivered on behalf of a majority of the court, one remarkable statement occurs as a result of an exhaustive survey of the historical grounds, to the effect that "for more than a century prior to the adoption of the con- stitution they (Africans) had been regarded so far inferior that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect." Judge Taney retained the office of chief justice until his death, in 1864.
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY .- This gen- tleman had a world-wide reputation as an historian, which placed him in the front rank of the great men of America. He was born April 15, 1814, at Dorchester, Massa ยท chusetts, was given a thorough preparatory education and then attended Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1831. He also studied at Gottingen and Berlin, read law and in 1836 was admitted to the bar. In 1841 he was appointed secretary of the legation at St. Petersburg, and in 1866-67 served as United States minister to Austria, serving in the same capacity during 1869 and 1870 to England. In 1856, after long and exhaustive research and preparation, he published in Lordon "The Rise of the Dutch Republic." It embraced three vol- umes and immediately attracted great at- tention throughout Europe and America as a work of unusual merit. From IS61 to
1868 he produced "The History of the United Netherlands," .in four volumes. Other works followed, with equal success, and his position as one of the foremost his- torians and writers of his day was firmly established. His death occured May 29, 1877.
ELIAS HOWE, the inventor of the sew- ing machine, well deserves to be classed among the great and noted men of Amer- ica. He was the son of a miller and farmer and was born at Spencer, Massachusetts, July 9, 1819. In 1835 he went to Lowell and worked there, and later at Boston, in the machine shops. His first sewing machine was completed in 1845, and he patented it in 1846, laboring with the greatest persistency in spite of poverty and hardships, working for a time as an engine driver on a railroad at pauper wages and with broken health. He then spent two years of unsuccessful ex- ertion in England, striving in vain to bring his invention into public notice and use. He returned to the United States in almost hopeless poverty, to find that his patent had been violated. At last, however, he found friends who assisted him financially, and after years of litigation he made good his claims in the courts in 1854. His inven- tion afterward brought him a large fortune. During the Civil war he volunteered as a private in the Seventeenth Connecticut Vol- unteers, and served for some time. During his life time he received the cross of the Legion of Honor and many other medals. His death occurred October 3, 1867, at Brooklyn, New York.
PHILLIPS BROOKS, celebrated as an eloquent preacher and able pulpit ora- tor, was born in Boston on the 13th day of December, 1835. He received excellent
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educational advantages, and graduated at Harvard in 1855. Early in life he decided upon the ministry as his life work and studied theology in the Episcopal Theolog- ical Seminary, at Alexandria, Virginia. In 1859 he was ordained and the same year became pastor of the Church of the Advent, in Philadelphia. Three years later he as- sumed the pastorate of the Church of the Holy Trinity, where he remained until 1870. At the expiration of that time he accepted the pastoral charge of Trinity Church in Boston, where his eloquence and ability at- tracted much attention and built up a pow- erful church organization. Dr. Brooks also devoted considerable time to lecturing and literary work and attained prominence in these lines.
W TILLIAM B. ALLISON, a statesman of national reputation and one of the leaders of the Republican party, was born March 2, 1829, at Perry, Ohio. He grew up on his father's farm, which he assisted in cultivating, and attended the district school. When sixteen years old he went to the academy at. Wooster, and subse- quently spent a year at the Allegheny Col- lege, at Meadville, Pennsylvania. He next taught school and spent another year at the Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio. Mr. Allison then took up the study of law at Wooster, where he was admitted to the bar in 1851, and soon obtained a position as deputy county clerk. His political lean- ings were toward the old line Whigs, who afterward laid the foundation of the Repub- lican party. He was a delegate to the state convention in 1856, in the campaign of which he supported Fremont for president.
Mr. Allison removed to Dubuque, Iowa, in the following year. He rapidly rose to prominence at the bar and in politics. In
1860 he was chosen as a delegate to the Republican convention held in Chicago, of which he was elected one of the secretaries. At the outbreak of the civil war he was ap- pointed on the staff of the governor. His congressional career opened in 1862, when he was elected to the thirty-eighth congress; he was re-elected three times, serving from March 4, 1863, to March 3, 1871. He was a member of the ways and means committee a good part of his term. His career in the United States senate began in 1873, and he rapidly rose to eminence in national affairs, his service of a quarter of a century in that body being marked by close fealty to the Republican party. He twice declined the portfolio of the treasury tendered him by Garfield and Harrison, and his name was . prominently mentioned for the presidency at several national Republican conventions.
M ARY ASHTON LIVERMORE, lec- turer and writer, was born in Boston, December 19, 1821. She was the daughter of Timothy Rice, and married D. P. Liver- more, a preacher of the Universalist church. She contributed able articles to many of the most noted periodicals of this country and England. During the Civil war she labored zealously and with success on behalf of the sanitary commission which played so impor- tant a part during that great struggle. She became editor of the " Woman's Journal," published at Boston in 1870.
She held a prominent place as a public speaker and writer on woman's suffrage, temperance, social and religious questions, and her influence was great in every cause she advocated.
JOHN B. GOUGH, a noted temperance lecturer, who won his fame in America, was born in the village of Sandgate, Kent,
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England, August 22, 1817. He came to the United States at the age of twelve. He followed the trade of bookbinder, and lived in great poverty on account of the liquor habit. In 1843, however, he re- formed, and began his career as a temper- ance lecturer. He worked zealously in the cause of temperance, and his lectures and published articles revealed great earnestness. He formed temperance societies throughout the entire country, and labored with great success. He visited England in the same cause about the year 1853 and again in 1878. He also lectured upon many other topics, in which he attained a wide reputa- tion. His death occurred February 18, 1886.
T THOMAS BUCHANAN READ, author, sculptor and painter, was born in Ches- ter county, Pennsylvania, March 12, 1822. He early evinced a taste for art, and began the study of sculpture in Cincinnati. Later he found painting more to his liking. He went to New York, where he followed this profession, and later to Boston. In 1846 he located in Philadelphia. He visited Italy in 1850, and studied at Florence, where he resided almost continuously for twenty-two years. He returned to America in 1872, and died in New York May 11 of the same year.
He was the author of many heroic poems, but the one giving him the most re- nown is his famous "Sheridan's Ride," of which he has also left a representation in painting.
E 'UGENE V. DEBS, the former famous president of the American Railway Union, and great labor leader, was born in the city of Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1855. He received his education in the public
schools of that place and at the age of sixteen years began work as a painter in the Vandalia shops. After this, for some three years, he was employed as a loco- motive fireman on the same road. His first appearance in public life was in his canvass for the election to the office of city clerk of Terre Haute. In this capacity he served two terms, and when twenty six years of age was elected a member of the legislature of the state of Indiana. While a member of that body he secured the passage of several bills in the interest of organized labor, of which he was always a faithful champion. Mr. Debs' speech nominating Daniel Voorhees for the United States senate gave him a wide reputation for oratory. On the expiration of his term in the legislature, he was elected grand secre- tary and treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman and filled that office for fourteen successive years. He was always an earnest advocate of confederation of railroad men and it was mainly through his efforts that the United Order of Railway Employes, composed of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen and Conductors, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association was formed, and he became a member of its supreme council. The order was dissolved by disagreement between two of its leading orders, and then Mr. Debs conceived the idea of the American Railway Union. He worked on the details and the union came into existence in Chicago, June 20, 1893. For a time it prospered and became one of the largest bodies of railway men in the world. It won in a contest with the Great Northern Railway. In the strike made by the union in sympathy with the Pullman employes inaugurated in Chicago June 25, 1894, and the consequent rioting, the Railway Union
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