A biographical history of eminent and self-made men of the state of Indiana : with many portrait-illustrations on steel, engraved expressly for this work, Volume I, Part 101

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1038

USA > Indiana > A biographical history of eminent and self-made men of the state of Indiana : with many portrait-illustrations on steel, engraved expressly for this work, Volume I > Part 101

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Station, Indianapolis, where he remained two years, and was removed in the fall of 1870 to the First Church in Greensburg. From Greensburg he went to Indian- apolis in 1873, and was appointed to the charge of the Third Street Church. In 1874 was appointed to Edin- burg Station, staying a year. In 1875 and 1876 he was a supernumerary. In 1877 he was appointed to North Indianapolis; in 1878 was stationed at Grace Church, Indianapolis; and in 1879 was placed on the superannuated list. He was married, February 10, 1831, to Miss Harriet Ann Goode. Of four sons born to them, three are living. The oldest son is superin- tendent of the Deaf and Dumb Institute at Jacksonville, Illinois. The second son, Francis, died at Rio Janeiro, in 1878, of yellow fever, holding at his death the posi- tion of paymaster in the United States navy.

LESSNER, OLIVER J., Shelbyville. The grand- father of this gentleman, John Glessner, was a native of Germany, and in an early period of this country's history cast his fortunes upon the tide of this now prosperous republic, in York County, Pennsylvania, where he raised to manhood the father of Oliver, whose name was also John, and who selected a home in Baltimore, Maryland, where he secured a wife in the person of Ellenora Giddle- man, a daughter of John and Mary Giddleman. He was a native of that state, and she was from London, England. After this marriage the twain settled in Frederick, of the state of Maryland, where Oliver J. Glessner was born, on the 11th of October 1828, being the third of their eleven children. In 1836 his father and family removed West, first locating at Indianapolis, and shortly afterward upon a farm near Martinsville, Morgan County, Indiana, where, in 1866, his father died, then in the sixty-sixth year of his age, his widow surviving him. She is now in the seventy- seventh year of her age and residing with this son. The subject of this sketch resided with his parents until near his majority, when he left home because of the meager facilities of his neighborhood for securing educational advantages, and sought the instructions of a retired Irish schoolmaster of much culture, from whom he obtained a rudimental education. He then took a short course of reading in medicine, but, upon the en- treaties of his friends, abandoned his prospects in the medical profession to take up the study of law, in which latter profession he graduated from the State University at Bloomington, Indiana, then under the professorship of Judge James Hughes, in February, 1856. He im- mediately began the practice at Martinsville, where he met with unusual success, obtaining at once an exten- sive and lucrative practice. On December 19, 1860, he

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was married, at Georgetown, Vermilion County, Illi- for judicial purposes, saving to the tax-payers of the state incalculable amounts, and accomplishing that end which had been sought for many years without avail. In 1872 Mr. Glessner was selected by the state Demo- cratic Convention as a presidential elector for his con- gressional district, but did not serve, owing to his ineligibility, being then a member of the Senate; and on the ninth day of June, 1880, he was again chosen by the state convention as a presidential elector for his district. He is an astute politician, a zealous Democrat, usually an active participant in the campaigns of his party, and has been frequently favorably mentioned in connection with congressional nominations in his dis- trict, though he has never permitted his name to be offered for that place. He is known as a man of the highest integrity, and has certainly superior abilities as a lawyer, as a politician, and as a legislator, which will ever commend him to the confidence of the people of his state. nois, to Miss Louzena B. Moore, daughter of Nelson and Ann Moore, of that place. In 1862 he was nomi- nated as the candidate of the Democratic party for the Lower House of the state Legislature, and, although the county was strongly Republican, was defeated by but a small number of votes. In 1864, as the candidate of the same party, he was elected Judge of the Eighth Judicial District, composed of the counties of Morgan, Shelby, Johnson, Brown, and Monroe; and, although an extensive district, requiring his whole time, and being young in years, and in the profession and practice, he maintained the position in an honorable, dignified, able, and highly agreeable manner until October, 1868, when he declined the earnest solicitation of his party and friends to again accept that office. During his serv- ice as judge, in August, 1865, he moved his family to Shelbyville, at which place, immediately upon the close of his judicial term, he entered upon the practice of his profession, which he has pursued assiduously until this time, winning for himself an enviable rank at the bar of his county and in the profession in his state. As a OODWIN, REV. THOMAS A., of Indianapolis, is a native of Indiana, and few names on the list of her distinguished men are more familiar to the people of the state than that of " Parson Good- win." It would be impossible in the circumscribed limits of a sketch to do more than glance at the salient points of his history. He was born in Brookville, Franklin County, Indiana, November 2, 1818. His fa- ther was one of the earliest settlers in Franklin County, as well as of the state of Indiana, and the Goodwin family are still among the most prominent and respected in his native region. The youth of Mr. Goodwin was not marked by any thing strikingly different from that of most farmers' sons of his day. Working on the farm in the summer season, and in winter picking up a mod- est education at the common country schools, filled up the early part of his life. On the opening of the Indi- ana Asbury University, at Greencastle, young Goodwin was the first student from abroad to avail himself of the privileges of the institution, and in 1840 he was a mem- ber of the first class which graduated at that university. He entered the Indiana Methodist Conference the same year, and continued in pastoral work until 1844, when he opened the Madison Female College, in which he continued for several years. He subsequently assumed the presidency of the Brookville College, resigning the place in 1853 to take charge of the Indiana American, a paper of twenty years' standing, which had hitherto been Whig. Under Mr. Goodwin's control it soon be- came a most pronounced anti-slavery paper, reflecting in its columns the advanced views of its editor on this question, before the Republican party had as yet any existence. Long before assuming editorial control lawyer, he possesses much more than ordinary ability, being endowed with an active mind, shrewd dis- cernment, a combative disposition (though strictly courteous), combined with extensive reading and prac- tice. As an advocate, few men in Indiana have equal skill; his bright, perceptive faculties, a vast fund of natural capacity, known as common sense; an unusual personal magnetism; a fine voice; a smooth, graceful, and attractive flow of language; an ingenuity in pre- senting lucidly and impressively the facts establishing his theories, and in answering and averting elements in conflict with his theories, all unite in securing his aim. In October, 1870, he was elected by his party to the state Senate, as a member for the counties of Shelby and Bartholomew, serving as such for four years and during three sessions of that body. Judge Glessner, then being one of the few Democratic Senators who were lawyers or skilled in debate, and with a natural taste for legislative duties, was advanced to the position of one of the leaders of his political side of the Senate, a place, whether upon committee duty or upon the floor, he maintained with credit to his constituents and dis- tinction to himself, against such opposition as the pres- ent Lieutenant-governor Gray, Hon. John Caven, mayor of Indianapolis, Judge E. B. Martindale, Hon. Asbury Steele, Hon. Harvey D. Scott, Hon. George B. Sleeth, and a number of others then leaders upon the other side, as the records of his term will give ample testi- mony. To him from the Senate, and Attorney-general T. W. Woollen from the House, as members of a joint committee, is the credit due for the origin and passage of that noted bill which abolished the useless and ex- pensive Common Pleas Court, and redistricted the state | of the American, " Parson Goodwin " had become widely

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known as a fearless and outspoken champion of the slave, and an unsparing denouncer of the system which kept the negro race in shackles under a free flag. In his ministerial capacity he had fearlessly proclaimed his sentiments, and among his brethren of the South the hated term Abolitionist soon began to be coupled with his name. Always a man of decided convictions, and capable of impressing his stamp upon those with whom le came in contact either personally or through the medium of his paper, he soon became an acknowledged leader in what seemed at first almost a forlorn hope, but was destined to wield an influence that shook the country to its center, and culminated at last in the war which brought freedom to the slave, and wiped from the page of American liberty the one foul blot upon its otherwise spotless record. As the circulation of his paper increased, and it seemed necessary for him to change his base of operations, in April, 1857, he ap- peared unheralded, with type and press, in the city of Indianapolis, and commenced the issue of his paper from that city, continuing its name, and intensifying its peculiar characteristics. In addition to its anti-slavery features, it was extremely radical on the temperance question, and soon obtained the largest circulation of any paper in the state, and wielded a dominant influ- ence in the politics of the embryo Republican party, After the organization of that body, and its subsequent success, so many rival papers sprung up to share in the patronage of the public, and the mission of the American having virtually ended with the abolition of slavery, it was discontinued during the first years of the war. For some time before the commencement of the great struggle, Mr. Goodwin had become convinced that the question of the extension and abolition of slavery was destined to be settled only by the sword, and in 1865 he gave utterance to the sentiment that war was " not only inevitable, but desirable." On laying down the pen, Mr. Goodwin sought rest and quiet in agricultural pur- suits, but his active brain grew restive in retirement, and in 1870 he resumed the conduct of the paper. For about a year and a half he devoted himself assiduously to his editorial labors, but the time for a paper of the pecul- iar characteristics of the American had passed away, and, after having made serious inroads upon his health, he was obliged to seek recuperation in farm life, and was enabled in a great measure to recover his former good health. During all this time Mr. Goodwin had con- tinued to exercise the functions of a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, averaging about one hundred sermons each year for upwards of twenty years; and this almost wholly without compensation of any

kind, paying his own traveling expenses and furnishing his own outfit. Mr. Goodwin has attained no less celeb- rity as an original and independent writer and littéra- teur than as the bold and aggressive editor of the pio-

neer Abolition newspaper of Indiana. He has been a frequent and regular contributor to the leading religious periodicals of New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago, and his articles have attracted wide-spread attention, and have been extensively copied. Under the nom de plume of "U. L. C.," his contributions to the Indianapolis Journal have been always looked for with eagerness, and read with pleasure by all classes of readers. His style is remarkable for its quaint originality, and goes right to the point, with a terseness and vigor which is character- istic of the man. He does not allow himself to be con- fined by any literary shackles in the expression of his independent thought, and there is a charm in his bold aggressiveness which at once commends him to the thoughtful and intelligent. In 1874 a work appeared from the pen of Mr. Goodwin which gave him not only a national but a world-wide reputation, and for a time arrayed against him in his own denomination the so- called "orthodox" thinkers. This was his book en- titled "The Mode of Man's Immortality." It was a bold attack upon the traditional doctrines of the Church relating to the future life, and created a sensation which finally resulted in a trial of the author by the Church for heresy. The prosecution was, however, abandoned before any final decision was arrived at, and Mr. Good- win still retains his membership in the Church which

he has served so long and faithfully. A large num- ber of published sermons and tracts of Mr. Goodwin have been widely read and extensively circulated. Prom- inent among these may be mentioned his treatise on " The Perfect Man," which was almost universally con- ceded to be one of the finest productions on the subject ever penned, and elicited the most favorable comments

from the press and the reading public.

During the

existence of the Indiana Christian Advocate, Mr. Good-

win was its editor and publisher. Even among those whose opinions are at variance with his, Mr. Goodwin is looked up to with the utmost respect, and by many with a feeling akin to reverence. His manly and independ- ent spirit commands for him universal approbation ; he has proved himself a man equal to every emergency in

which he has been placed ; as a gentleman of culture and taste, he stands among the foremost in his state; as a minister and a man, his character and standing are above reproach ; as a pleasing and original writer and thinker, he takes rank with the best of his day and genera- tion ; and as a " representative man," none can deny him a prominent place in the history of Indiana's noted names. Mr. Goodwin has a profound contempt for that snobbery which parades its ancestry as a passport to favor, and often referred to his pedigree with a relish, if not with pride. During the war he was in Kentucky in a com- pany of Northern and Southern ladies and gentlemen, when one of the ladies announced, with a flourish, that she belonged to the first families of Kentucky, and pro-

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ceeded to detail her connection with historic names. "And I," said Mr. Goodwin, " belong to one of the first families of Indiana. My father was a tanner and my grandfather was a hunter, and back of that I have never traced my pedigree, never doubting that it was equally distinguished all the way back to the beginning. My grandfather left Connecticut about the beginning the Revolutionary War, and went to Western Pennsyl- vania. He did n't move, for he had nothing but a gun and an ax to move; and thus he became one of the first families, if not the very first, on the Redstone River. Ile remained there until the population became inconveniently dense, and fish and game became un- profitably scarce, when he built a small boat and floated down the Monongahela and Ohio to Fort Washington, now Cincinnati, about 1792, thus becoming one of the first families of Cincinnati. Here he remained several years, practicing his profession, that of a hunter, until neighbors became inconveniently numerous, and game even scarcer than in the Redstone country, when he moved to the Mad River country, near where Dayton now is, and became one of the first families of Mont- gomery County, Ohio. Meanwhile my father was born. He left home at thirteen and became a tanner, and soon after his marriage he removed to Indiana, while it was yet a territory, and thus became one of the first families in Indiana. That 's my pedigree, and I am proud to compare it with any Kentucky family that ever lived." Nothing further was said about first fam- ilies on that occasion.

ORDON, JONATHAN W., is a native of Wash- ington County, Pennsylvania, where he was born August 13, 1820. He is the son of William Gor- don, an Irishman of Scotch descent, who emi- grated from County Down, Ireland, to the United States in the winter of 1789-90. His father married Sarah Walton, a native of Greenbrier County, Virginia, August 18, 1795. They had fourteen children, six sons and eight daughters. He is their youngest son and the next to the youngest of the whole family. His father died January 20, 1841, and his mother May 29, 1857, in Ripley County, Indiana, having emigrated thither in April, 1835. Here Jonathan grew up to man's estate, acquiring a common school education, studying law, and being admitted to the bar February 27, 1844. In the mean time he had married Miss Catherine J. Over- turf. He followed his profession until the breaking out of the Mexican War, when he joined our volunteer army as a private soldier, becoming a member of the company of Captain William Ford, 3d Regiment Indi- ana Volunteers, June 9, 1846. He was subsequently appointed sergeant-major of the regiment by its colonel. With the regiment he arrived at Brazos de Santiago

July 27, 1846, and at the mouth of the Rio Grande August 3. Here he was taken sick, his health, never good up to this time, breaking down under the influ- ence of the climate, and the hardships and exposures of the camp. After remaining about two months in a nearly hopeless condition, and it being found impossible for him to recover there, he was honorably discharged in the latter part of September, and sent home on the brig " Hope Howes." A sea voyage, lasting more than a month, perhaps contributed much to save his life, but for five years after his return home he labored under the disease which he had contracted in the army, and was not fully restored to health until late in the year 1854. In 1847 he suffered greatly from hemor- rhage and abscess of his lungs, with all the usual symptoms of consumption, but, after lingering for seven months, so far recovered as to think of resuming busi- ness. His physician, however, warned him against at- tempting to speak in public. He was thus driven to turn his attention to some other profession than the law. He accordingly resumed the study of medicine, of which he had previously acquired some knowledge, and during the winter of 1847-8 attended a course of lectures in Rush Medical College, Chicago. He subse- quently graduated in the Medical Department of Asbury University, and practiced medicine for a little more than two years at Moore's Hill, Dearborn County, In- diana. In his new profession he was more successful than he had been in the law, or, indeed, than he had any right, beforehand, to have expected to be. While engaged in the practice of medicine he was elected a member of the State Medical Society of Indiana, and made chairman of its committee on Asiatic cholera-a position which he held as long as he remained in the profession. But his new profession was never to his liking, and, with the gradual recovery of his health, his desire to resume the law increased, until in 1852 he re- moved to Indianapolis, for the purpose of making the desired change in his business. Financial embarrass- ment, however, compelled him for some time to take employment as reporter to the Indianapolis daily Jour- nal, and editor of the Chart, a weekly newspaper pub- lished under the patronage of the Grand Division of the Sons of Temperance. He thus divided his time be- tween the press and the law for nearly two years. In 1853 he became an independent candidate for the office of reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the state, running against his friend, the Hon. Albert G. Porter, who was the nominee of the Democratic party. The condition of the Whig party in the state and country was then so low that no one contested his right to the field. He was supported by the Whig press of the state, and received the votes of such of the party as saw fit to go to the polls. He was defeated, however, as from the first he expected to be; but we have often

yours truly

1 I.M.London. 1

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heard him say that he was prouder of the contest, even with its adverse results, than of any other in which he has since been engaged. For, being independent of party dictation in respect to the means of carrying on the contest, he was driven to resort to no expedient that his judgment and conscience have not at all times since fully approved. He still looks back, with some degree of pride, to the fact that by far the most favorable no- tice of his opponent's character and fitness for the place that was published by the press of the state during the contest was written by himself, and published in his own editorial columns. Nor did the result at all wound his feelings or disappoint his expectations. The next year he was nominated and elected prosecuting attorney for Marion County, receiving a majority of seven hun- dred and fifty-two votes over the most brilliant orator of the Democratic party-Richard J. Ryan, Esq. Dur- ing his term his civil practice increased to such an ex- tent that he resigned the office, in order that he might give his undivided attention to more profitable business. But the state of popular excitement which had followed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the condition of public affairs to which it gave rise in Kansas, ren- dered it impossible for a man of Mr. Gordon's prin- ciples and temperament to keep aloof from the political struggles of the times. He took an active part in them all, and, in June, 1856, went as a delegate of the state at large to the National Republican Convention, held in that month at Philadelphia. Upon his return home he addressed the people of Indianapolis on what he had seen and heard and assisted in doing while at the convention. His speech was one of the most successful of his life and created great en- thusiasm in his hearers. Its effects spread rapidly, and at the county convention, which happened a few days later, he was nominated on the first ballot for Representative in the General Assembly. The can- vass of the county which followed was worthy of this beginning. Never was a more energetic or enthusiastic contest for popular support waged than that between him and the eloquent Ryan, who was again his oppo- nent. Mr. Ryan, as a popular orator, had many ad- vantages over him; but what he gained in this respect was counterbalanced by the careful study and arrange- ment of the facts and principles involved in the polit- ical situation by Mr. Gordon, one of whose speeches was published in a thick pamphlet of fifty-six pages, shortly before the election, and had the honor to be designated afterwards by Theodore Parker as a "mas- terly argument," which he was unwilling to do without. It was in this argument that Mr. Gordon developed, from the conflicting doctrines of the Democratic press and orators throughout the country, the theory of rights which that party, in case of Mr. Buchanan's election, ! outrage more deeply, or resented it more warmly than

would be compelled to accord to the institution of slavery in the territories, and the theory of power in the government which they would be compelled to ex- ercise for the protection of the rights so accorded. This prediction was the logical result of a laborious induc- tion from many vague statements and seemingly in- different facts, which he collected and arranged; and was particular in its details and specifications, setting down both the theory of rights and of powers in distinct categorical propositions. It ended by asking the people to remember and watch, and see if, in case of Mr. Buchanan's election, it would not be literally fulfilled. It so happened that, subsequent to the inauguration of Mr. Buchanan, every proposition contained in the theory, both of rights and powers, as set forth in the speech, was distinctly reiterated as constitutional doctrine by the administration. The Supreme Court of the United States also forced themselves to the same conclusion, which would, if the nation had accepted it, have made the institution of slavery national. To show that these doctrines were henceforth to be upheld by the executive and judicial departments of the government, the court allowed Mr. Buchanan to anticipate, in his inaugural address, the publication of their opinion ; and so to in- form the country in advance that the court would soon finally settle the slavery question, putting it beyond the pale of legitimate politics. At the close of the contest it was found that, although the Republicans had car- ried the county, the state had gone for the Democracy. The House of Representatives did not contain a suffi- cient number of Republicans even to break a quorum, or to materially check the majority in the consumma- tion of its purposes. The session that followed was, nevertheless, a stormy one, and in the heated debates which took place Mr. Gordon took a leading part. Many of the acts of the majority were without prece- dent in the history of the state, or, indeed, of any of the states; contrary to the plain letter of the state and national Constitutions, and simply revolutionary. Among these stood prominently forth the election of Messrs. Bright and Fitch to the Senate of the United States by a mere meeting of the Democratic members of the two houses of the General Assembly, without an agree- ment to do so by any concurrent action of the two Houses. This reckless proceeding was, however, recog- nized and certified by the executive of the state, as if it had been an election duly held by the Legislature; and the United States Senate accepted the gentlemen so commissioned as legal members. It is needless to say that such proceedings constituted very proper steps to- ward the attempt, then imminent, to destroy the Union and its government; and provoked in those who still respected the Constitutions enough to obey them, intense feeling, and led to bitter denunciations. None felt the

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A biographical history of eminent and self-made men of the state of Indiana : with many portrait-illustrations on steel, engraved expressly for this work, Volume I, Part 101

Author: Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1038

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1038