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 106

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 106

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

"The lecture of Mrs. Haggart was an eloquent and pointed appeal for the education of women. The lec- ture was entirely free from reflections or satire on the sterner sex, and contained no whining complaints about woman's rights or her social degradation, but was a clear, concise, logical, and really eloquent address, de- livered with great distinctness of articulation, elegance in diction, and graceful gestures, the speaker often rising with her subject to heights of oratory seldom listened to in this town. The audience testified their apprecia- tion by the closest attention, and seemed entranced as they listened to her telling truths and good hits at fashionable education. We trust she may be persuaded to lecture again, on any subject she may choose."

A few weeks afterward she delivered this same lecture in Morrison's Opera-house, Indianapolis, and of it the daily Journal made the following editorial notice :

" Mrs. Haggart's lecture at the Opera Hall last night was a brilliant affair. Those who were so fortunate as to be present enjoyed a rich treat, while those who failed to attend missed one of the best intellectual treats of the season. Mrs. Haggart is eloquent, forci- ble, sensible, and pointed, and while she recounts with a just pride woman's achievements, she does not spare her follies. She points out to her the path of duty and road to success and happiness, and urges upon her the importance of pursuing it in such eloquent terms as must have a good effect upon those who hear her. Her lecture was frequently and enthusiastically ap- plauded."

From this time on she received numerous and press- ing calls to lecture at different points in her own and adjacent states, and up to this time has lectured in cvery county and almost every town of importance in Indiana. She has received the highest and most lib- eral encomiums from the press wherever she has gone, that the most accomplished writers could pen. Some have emphatically pronounced her the " best lecturer

East or West, man or woman." She has few, if any, superiors as a reasoner and debater. Her arguments before the General Assembly of Indiana, during the session of 1879, have been pronounced the most logical and convincing ever delivered by any advocate of the legal and political equality of woman. She is, on the rostrum, a woman of fine appearance and dignity, and has a wonderful magnetic power over audiences. She is always pronounced by those who have heard her the finest woman speaker on the American platform. In 1877 she was elected chairwoman of the state central committee of the Indiana Woman Suffrage Association, which position she has filled up to the present time. In 1869 she was sent as a delegate to the National Woman Suffrage Convention at St. Louis, and while at this most interesting convention made, to quote the correspondent of the Indianapolis Herald, "one of the grandest speeches of her life." In 1878 Mrs. Haggart established the Woman's Tribune at Indianapolis, a weekly paper devoted wholly to the interests of women. Her sole aim in founding this journal was to help women, and aid in their elevation and advancement, to open up wider avenues of work for them, and advocate for them every possible honorable means of becoming self-dependent and self-supporting. Her paper was adopted as the organ of the State Suffrage Association, and became at once a fearless champion of the enfran- chisement of her sex. The Tribune was very favorably noticed by the press, and welcomed by the equal suf- fragists of the West as a strong ally to the cause. Mrs. Haggart devoted her best energies for over one year and a half to conducting her paper and filling lecture engagements. Her power and earnestness in the tem- perance work were so universally recognized that calls for her services as a lecturer poured in upon her from all quarters, and, in order that she might be able to go untrammeled into the lecture field, she sold out, on June 25, 1879, the subscription list of the Woman's Tribune, to Matilda Joslyn Gage, editor and proprietor of the National Citizen and Ballot Box, an equal suffrage paper published at Syracuse, New York. In the sum- mer of 1878 Mrs. Haggart conceived the idea of estab- lishing a woman's department in the state fairs of Indi- ana. She succeeded in engaging several enterprising ladies of Indianapolis in the work of aiding her, and the result was, the largest and grandest exhibit of woman's work was made at this fair ever shown in Indiana. During the fair a meeting of the State Board of Agriculture was called in connection with the woman's board, and a permanent organization of the woman's board was effected, and christened the Woman's State Board of Industry. Mrs. Haggart was elected president of the woman's board, and made an ex-officio member of the State Board of Agriculture. She was also sent as a delegate to the January meeting of the State Board

REPRESENTATIVE MEN OF INDIANA.

[7th Dist.

of Agriculture in 1879, the first woman delegate ever sent to any state agricultural board meeting. After the burdens of editing and publishing the Woman's Tribune were removed, Mrs. Haggart entered unreservedly and entirely into the lecture field, fully imbued with the overwhelming importance and responsibility of her mis- sion. Her favorite themes are the education, elevation, and enfranchisement of her sister woman, temperance, and moral reforms. This earnest woman is a reformer by nature, and she seems to discern already, through the opening vista of future years, the full realization of her highest aspirations. The superior physical and mental development of Mrs. Haggart is no doubt, in a great measure, due to her entire freedom from fashion- able restraints, the healthful surroundings of the place of her nativity, and the sensible training of wise par- ents. All these, added to great natural endowments, have produced a woman abundantly able to distinguish herself in the great field of the world's workers, and one who will yet win a name that will be cherished in thoughtful remembrance by a grateful posterity.

ALL, JACOB A., physician and surgeon, of Green- field, was born in Fayette County, Indiana, May 22, 1822. His parents, Thomas and Matilda Hall, were hardy, respected pioneers, who endeavored to give their son the best education their limited oppor- tunities would allow. Thomas Hall, the father, was a soldier in the War of 1812, an officer on the staff of General Lewis Cass at the time of Hull's memorable surrender at Detroit. At the age of twenty-six Jacob began the study of medicine with his brother, Doctor John F. Hall, and, after a few years of practice and study combined, graduated at the Physio-Medical Col- lege, at Cincinnati, Ohio. Prior to his graduation he was in partnership for a time with Doctor Falconbury. In 1850 he removed to Hancock County, where, engag- ing in his practice, he still resides. In politics Doctor Hall was a Jacksonian Democrat until 1860, since which time he has been a zealous adherent of the Republican party. Religiously, he was a New-light for many years, but he subsequently embraced spiritualism, and, as he is a man of great positiveness of character, he is likely to continue in the faith until death. He is a man of pleasing address, of great kindness of heart, and pub- lic-spirited, devoting much of his time in practice to the relief of the poor and distressed, from many of whom he can never expect the slightest remuneration. He joined the Free and Accepted Masons in 1854, and the Ancient Order of United Workmen in 1876. He was Junior Warden in the Free and Accepted Masons and trustee, and was Master S. P. M. and D. D. P. M. in the Ancient Order of United Workmen. As an evi-

dence of their confidence in Doctor Hall's medical and surgical skill, the county commissioners have appointed him, at different times, the county physician. He is very popular with all classes, being almost without an enemy in the world. Early in life he determined to secure an education, and to his dogged perseverance and unflagging energy is due the credit for those intel- lectual acquirements that mark him to-day as a man of accurate and varied information. In this respect he is essentially a self-made man. Then, again, he is a man of great positiveness of character, and this excellent quality makes his co-operation valuable in the work of temperance reform, in which he is greatly interested. He was married to Miss Mary J. Cannady, daughter of Lewis L. Cannady, June 6, 1844. Ten children have been born to them, five of whom-one son, Lewis A., and four daughters -- are still living.

AMILTON, SAMUEL, banker, of Shelbyville, was the youngest but one in a family of six chil- dren, of whom he is the only survivor. His father, Samuel Hamilton, was descended from an- cestors who crossed over from Scotland to Ireland in the early part of the seventeenth century. He was an in- dustrious farmer, and engaged in that occupation until his death, which occurred in Londonderry County, on Christmas-day, 1854. Samuel's mother, whose original name was Sarah Dunn, died in May, 1847. She was of Irish nativity, but of German descent. Their home was on the banks of the Roe water in Londonderry, Ire- land, where the subject of this memoir was born De- cember 16, 1812. Year followed year without note- worthy events in his life until March, 1834, when, having become of age, he bade farewell to home and kindred and embarked for the United States, believing that in this land of political and religious liberty, where the road to wealth and distinction is open to all, he could succeed better than in his own Emerald Isle. He arrived in New York in the month of May, and traveled slowly westward by the way of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, and stopped finally in Rushville, In- diana, where he had a brother Joseph. He first became a clerk in Burlington, Rush County; then, on the twentieth day of April of the following year, opened a store in Shelbyville, in copartnership with his brother, under the firm name of J. & S. Hamilton. This existed ten years, and was then dissolved, after which Mr. Samuel Hamilton continued the business alone for ten years longer. With a mind adapted to all the needs and emergencies of business, he had steadily and judiciously managed the affairs, achieving most satisfactory re- sults. He now decided to engage in banking, and, in partnership with John Elliott, James Hill, and Alfred

REPRESENTATIVE MEN OF INDIANA.

7th Dist.]

Major, he established the Shelby Bank, October, 1855, the firm being Elliott, Hill & Co. Two years later they dissolved, and, on the first day of January, 1858, Mr. Hamilton took charge of it, and has ever since been its manager and proprietor. His business abilities are such that he has engaged not only in the sale of merchan- dise and in banking, but was also instrumental in start- ing a planing-mill, the first in the county, and has in- terested himself in one or more grist and saw mills, and dealt in real estate, not only in Indiana, but also in Ohio and Iowa. Part of this consists of city property in Shelbyville, the rest in lands, much of which he has under cultivation. As a stockholder, he promoted the building of the first railroad through the county-the Shelby and Edinburg. Mr. Hamilton was one of those who supported Andrew Jackson's administration, and has ever since been loyal to the Democratic party. Though feeling a deep interest in its success, he seeks no share in its gifts of office. He is an elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Shelbyville, which denom- ination he joined in his native land. He is not a mem- ber of any secret society. He was married, January 30, 1844, to Miss Elizabeth, daughter of William and Eliza- beth (Morris) Lowry, of Rushville. As already seen, Mr. Hamilton has built the fabric of his fortune without assistance. He commenced a poor boy, and through the exercise of his own abilities has accumulated a fortune. Of this he has contributed freely for the pro- motion of public enterprises. He is quiet and unassum- ing in manner, and never meddles with the affairs of others. He possesses social and moral qualities that win him many friends, and sound business qualifications that make him a leader in commercial circles. He is upright in all his dealings, and, through all his long residence in Shelbyville, his daily walk and conversa- tion have been such as to exalt him in the estimation of the public.

ALFORD, ELIJAH W., Indianapolis, journalist, was born in the city of Nottingham, England, in September, 1842, and came to this country in the spring of 1849. He went direct to Ohio, learning the printing trade in Hamilton, and for some time worked at that business after coming to Indianapolis, in the' winter of 1861-2. In the latter year he was engaged upon the Journal, remaining with it in various capaci- ties until March, 1872. At that time, when the Chicago Inter-Ocean was established, he became the managing editor, which position he occupied two years. Mr. Halford's work on this journal laid the foundation of a paper that at once had a "start-off" in popularity unprecedented in journalism in this country, and which has since become the leading Republican newspaper in the North-west in influence and circulation. Having

resigned his position on the Inter-Ocean, he returned to Indianapolis, engaging again with the Journal, and re- mained for some time the managing editor. Mr. Halford is gifted as a newspaper writer and editorial manager, and has always been successful in his newspaper work. In 1866 Mr. Halford was married to Miss Fannie Arm- strong, a lady of considerable accomplishments, and noted for possessing fine vocal musical attainments. Their only child is an interesting daughter. Plain and unpretentious, Mr. Halford is devoted to the duties of his calling, and ever at his post. Although a hard worker, it sits lightly upon him. Few journalists at his comparatively youthful age have arrived to equal dis- tinction. He was only twenty-nine when he undertook, and conducted with such marked success, the chieftain- ship of the Inter-Ocean. Those who know him best have found him to be the reliable man, the true friend, and the useful citizen.

ANNA, JOHN, Indianapolis, Indiana, son of James Parks Hanna, was born September 3, 1827, in what is now part of the city of Indianapolis. His father entered and improved eighty acres of land in War- ren Township, on which he died August 31, 1839, leav- ing a widow and five children, John being the eldest. The mother died in 1844. John and the children re- mained on the farm until 1846, when, General Robert Hanna being their guardian, at his instance the chil- dren broke up housekeeping so that they could go to school. John, being determined to acquire an education, started for Greencastle in 1846 with four dollars in his pocket, walked the entire way, and entered the univer- sity, where he obtained the position of janitor of the college. He worked his way through, and graduated with honors in June, 1850. He then entered the law office of Judge Delany R. Eckles and finished the study of his profession, becoming the law partner of his pre- ceptor and settling in Greencastle. He was then elected mayor of the city of his adoption, and served three years. After Judge Eckles went upon the bench as Circuit Judge, Mr. Hanna formed a copartnership with the Hon. John A. Maston, which continued until the spring of 1858, when he went to Kansas. He was the same year elected a member of the territorial Legisla- ture from the county of Lykens, now Miami, and served as such during the session of 1858-9. He was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and introduced and carried through the act abolishing and prohib- iting slavery in the territory. In politics he was an earnest and worthy Republican. After remaining a year in Kansas he returned to Greencastle and resumed the practice of law. In the presidential canvass of 1860 he was the Republican elector of the Seventh District,

REPRESENTATIVE MEN OF INDIANA.

[7th Dist.

and as such voted for Abraham Lincoln. Prior to the Chicago Convention he had advocated the nomination of Edward Bates, of Missouri, for the presidency. Afterwards Mr. Bates became Mr. Lincoln's attorney- general. Hon. Henry S. Lane and Schuyler Colfax urged the appointment of Mr. Hanna for United States attorney for the district of Indiana, and he was also recommended by Mr. Bates, and appointed a few days after the inauguration of President Lincoln, and four years afterwards his reappointment was ordered by Mr. Lincoln, although his name was not sent to the Senate until after the death of the President. He con- tinued to serve until after the split between President Johnson and the Republican party, when he denounced the President, and, at a Johnson meeting held in Indi- anapolis, introduced a series of resolutions which was the immediate cause of his being removed; Alfred Kilgore being appointed to fill his place, to whom he furnished all desired information in regard to the duties of his office. Mr. Hanna then formed a copart- nership with Mr. Fred. Kneffler, of Indianapolis, in the practice of law, and has devoted himself to practice since that time. In 1868 he was a candidate in Putnam County for the Legislature, and, although defeated, he ran ahead of the state ticket. His life at the bar has been a constant warfare, and he has had more than the usual share of the hotly contested litigated cases. As United States attorney during the war, his position was one requiring great labor, yet without as- sistance he discharged his duties to the entire satisfac- tion of the government. The prosecutions for the vio- lations of the draft laws, the revenue laws, corporation acts, treason, and felonies, were numerous, as the records of the courts attest. Since he commenced the practice of law in Greencastle he has been engaged in a number of the most prominent murder cases for the defense, the Clem case, perhaps, being the most noted. While attending the university Mr. Hanna became acquainted with Miss Mahala Sherfy, of Perrysville, Vermilion County, who was attending the Female Col- legiate Seminary, then in charge of Mrs. Larabie, wife of Professor William C. Larabie. They gradu- ated from the same rostrum in June, 1850, and in May, 1851, they were married. Mrs. Hanna was a woman of liberal education and superior intellect, and, in the fullest sense of the term, a true wife. As a Christian, she was beloved by her neighbors and idol- ized by her husband. She was the mother of seven children, one of whom was lost in infancy. She died in the spring of 1870, leaving six children, three sons and three daughters. Mr. Hanna, two years after the death of his wife, married Mrs. Emma Pathoroff, of Greencastle. They have now an additional son and daughter, eight in all. Mr. Hanna's great success in his profession has demonstrated that he is a man of

more than ordinary ability-starting out a poor boy comparatively, without friends or money, working his way through college, and attaining an enviable and high position, both as a civil and criminal lawyer. His great-grandfather was a native of South Carolina, and was there engaged, during the struggle for American independence, in behalf of liberty and the stars and stripes. His grandfather, John Hanna, son of General Robert Hanna, removed to Brookville, Franklin County, in the early history of Indiana Territory. General Robert Hanna was a member of the convention that formed the first Constitution of the state, in 1816. James Parks Hanna, father of John, lived with his uncle, General Robert Hanna, up to the time of his marriage with Miss Lydia Howard, of New Jersey. He was elected to the Forty-fifth Congress as a Republican, receiving nineteen thousand six hundred and thirty-four votes, against eighteen thousand two hundred and thirty-six for Franklin Landers, Democrat.

ANNA, ROBERT, a United States Senator, was a member of the Indiana Constitutional Conven- tion of 1816, which formed the fundamental law of the state. He was for many years in the state Legislature; was a Senator in Congress by appointment in 1831 to 1832. He took an active part for many years in the public affairs of the state, and was a general of militia. He was killed by the cars, when walking on the track of a railroad in Indianapolis, November 19, 1858.

ARDING, GEORGE C., Indianapolis. Among the journalists of the West none are known to a larger area of- readers, or more distinguished for originality and force, than George C. Harding, lately editor of the Saturday Herald, of Indianapolis. His own intense individuality, as well as his great abil- ity as a journalist, have given him a fame that is not often attained in newspaper life outside the great me- tropolis. His life has been as varied as his work is ver- satile. He is now fifty years old, having passed the half century milestone last August. He is a native of Knoxville, East Tennessee. His father, Jacob Harding, married Love F. Nelson, daughter of Hon. John R. Nelson, a lawyer of Knoxville, Tennessee. George's early youth was passed in Knoxville, his father being associated with Mr. Nelson in the practice of law, and also in the publication of an anti-Jackson newspaper called the Republican. He was a silent, meditative boy, given to long, solitary rambles in the woods. Every tree was to him an old friend; every bird, a companion ; and he knew the traits and tricks of all the animals of

REPRESENTATIVE MEN OF INDIANA.

7th Dist.]

that region. On account of his fondness for the forest, and his dark, swarthy complexion, he was given the sobriquet of «Cherokee." When George was about ten years old his father moved to Paris, Edgar County, Illi- nois, where the family entered upon a long and exciting conflict with the various malarious diseases incident to the climate, and the natural concomitant of "low, flat land." Notwithstanding annual attacks of ague and bilious fever, and despite the repeated venesections and salivations by doctors of the old school, George sur- vived, and saw numerous sisters and brothers-twelve besides himself-gathered about the family board. His father gave him such education as his scanty means and the limited facilities of the pioneer village afforded ; but it was not much, and was entirely rudimentary. Those were the days when it was almost impossible to " drink deep" of the Pierian spring, no matter how thirsty the student. The curriculum of the backwoods schools only extended to the " Double Rule of Three," in Pike's arithmetic, with a little of Kirkham's gram- mar, and a smattering of natural philosophy for "ad- vanced students." When the pupil got to the end of the master's string, he was turned back and compelled to go over the familiar ground, with frequent interludes in the way of "lickings" for getting into mischief. George was an industrious reader, however, with an im- pressionable and reasoning mind and retentive memory, and in this way he made up for the deficiencies of the schools he attended. He is a conspicuous confutation of the old theory that an education can not be obtained outside of college halls, being one of the best-informed men of the times, quick to see a blunder, and possess- ing the faculty of analysis in a rare degree. He makes no claim to superior scholarship, and is not what in the literary cant of the day is called "cultured," but he has knowledge of a substantial, solid, sensible order ; and his mind, instead of being a magazine of stale learning, is a spring of living thought. The elder Harding enjoyed a small law practice, payable mostly in " truck and trade," which was inadequate to the main- tenance of a large and corstantly increasing family, and so George, in order to lighten the burden, turned his young hands willingly to whatever labor offered, and, at various times, worked on a farm in the harvest- field, in a brick-yard, in a tan-yard-at any thing, in fact, that presented itself. It is interesting to hear Mr. Harding's reminiscences of some of those days. Though young, he was well-developed physically, and when only thirteen years old was often called upon to make a " full hand" at severe manual labor for less than half pay. Four dollars a month was then considered munif- icent compensation for wheel-barrowing mud to the brick-molder during fifteen hours of the twenty-four, while the pampered molder himself got the princely sal- ary of ten dollars a month. During one summer George

and Brevet Major-general James W. McMillan-then plain "Jim " McMillan-made and burned the brick for a country church on the north arm, five miles from Paris. When only fourteen years old, George ran away from home, and walked all the way to St. Louis, but was captured and returned to the parental roof by a neigh- boring merchant, who had gone to that city with a couple of teams to haul goods. He had had no dis- agreement with the head of the family. He simply left home because of a feeling that the hive was getting too full, and a belief that something better than the privations and discomforts of a poor boy in a back- woods village was to be found for the seeking in the great world beyond. The seriousness of life was appar- ent to his mind very early. He understood and sym- pathized with the cares and trials of his parents at an age when most boys are thoughtless and selfish. About the year 1845, with the consent of his father, George apprenticed himself to the printing business, under Judge Conard, of Terre Haute, at that time publishing a weekly paper called the Courier, long since dead and forgotten. Isaac M. Brown, the veteran editor and printer, taught the embryo journalist to set type, and in many respects acted as a father to him. After some time in the Courier office, George followed Mr. Brown to the Express, at that time edited and published by David S. Donaldson, still a resident of Terre Haute. Mr. Harding's father, finding that as an honest lawyer he had a hard row to hoe, started a weekly newspaper called the Prairie Beacon, in Paris, and George left Terre Haute and went to work on it. About this time he was bitten by the scribbling adder, and the virus worked rapidly. He contributed several sketches to a " literary " weekly of Cincinnati, called the Great West, which has for a quarter of a century reposed in a well- earned grave. He also wrote occasional articles for his father's paper, which must have been characterized by the brilliant incisiveness which is one of the chief char- acteristics of his maturer productions, as they always excited curiosity in the little community, and sometimes raised a fuss. During his father's absence one week, he improved the opportunity to "branch out," and suc- ceeded in making the paper so "lively" that its digni- fied editor's hair stood up when he read it. The suc- ceeding month was mainly devoted to apologies, explanations, and disavowals; and the ambitious young editor was informed that, while his ability was unques- tioned, there were grave doubts as to his discretion, and in future nothing from his pen could appear in the decorous columns of the Beacon without first having been subjected to the paternal eye. During the Mexi- can War young Harding, at this time a well-grown lad of seventeen, began to long for the bubble reputation. He joined a company made up in his town, which was not accepted. Then he went to New Orleans in a flat-

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

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 106

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