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 45

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 45

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ONES, CAPTAIN WILLIAM H., lawyer, of Brookville, was born in Caroline County, Mary- land, July 1, 1836. The distinguishing features of his boyhood were poverty, hard work, and an un- gratified thirst for knowledge. Up to the nineteenth year of his age his education had been acquired in that unsatis- factory and desultory manner better described as being " picked up;" that is to say, a grain of knowledge here and another there, as chance afforded the opportunity,

Richard Stunden.

Yours Fraternally James Lamb M.K.

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and a leisure moment the time. At the age above men- tioned he entered the Brookville College, and graduated with credit four years later. During this time he lived ät home-a distance of about two miles from the town --- where, morning and evening, he assisted on the farm, in addition to working in the field during the hot, ener- vating days of summer. It is possible, however, that, hard as his lot then seemed, the very difficulties he en- countered laid broad and deep the foundations of that energy, perseverance, and strength of will that have characterized him in all the pursuits of life. On leav- ing college, he quietly began his routine labors on his father's farm, teaching school occasionally, when he could be spared from home, and slowly but surely ac- quiring the funds necessary to defray personal expenses while studying law, to which profession he had long resolved to devote himself. He had just commenced his law studies, in the office of Howland & Barbour, at Indianapolis, when the death, in rapid succession, of his brothers, Pitt, James, and John, recalled him to Brook- ville. This sad event necessitated his remaining at home, where, in the office of Holland & Binkley, he again plunged, with all the ardor of youth and en- thusiasm, into the dry mysteries of Coke and Black- stone. He speaks with a gratitude that is truly re- freshing of Messrs. Holland & Binkley, by whose kindness he was enabled, as a notary public, while yet in their office, to earn an occasional dollar in fees. He passed some time in studying law, assist- ing his father, and occasionally teaching school, as in his college days. At the breaking out of the war he joined one of the three months' regiments, and participated in the first West Virginia campaign. By Governor Morton he was afterward commissioned captain in the Indiana Legion, which did service as effective though less glorious than that of their comrades in the field. His record as a soldier closes with a short campaign as first lieutenant of the Indiana Volunteer Infantry, in 1864. He was admitted to the bar the year following, and was at once appointed deputy district attorney for the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court. January I, 1867, he was admitted as an equal partner in the firm of his old preceptors. His star was now in the ascendency. He had toiled for years amid the rocky and barren fields of poverty and want, but was now beginning to reap the well-earned reward of his merits. In 1868 he was elected district attorney, and in the spring of 1872 re- ceived the appointment of United States commissioner, which position he still fills. Judge Holland died in 1875, and the year following Mr. Jones dissolved his partnership with Mr. Binkley; a twelvemonth later the present firm of Jones & McMahan was formed. Mr. Jones is a most radical Republican; and as a political speaker and delegate has in several campaigns rendered his party efficient service. He married, May 16, 1864,

Miss Aurelia H. John, daughter of the late Robert John. One child-a daughter of thirteen-is the result of the union. Captain Jones is a man of strong, well-knit frame, of prepossessing appearance, and manners so un- assuming that they might be termed diffident. He pos- sesses a strong constitution and is capable of performing an almost unlimited amount of work. He has an excellent practice, which has handsomely remunerated his years of hard labor. His reputation as a lawyer is equaled only by his worth as a private citizen. His domestic life is charming in its refinement and culture; sympa- thetic and charitable, he has a kind word for all. There is much in his life to admire; in his character there is still more to respect.

AMAR, JOHN HOWARD, merchant, of Aurora, is a native of the state of Kentucky, and was born on the 4th of September, 1850, in Maysville, Mason County. He is descended from English and French ancestors, and is the eldest living son of William W. and Elizabeth (Blake) Lamar. He was educated in the Maysville Seminary under the tuition of President Richardson, a gentleman of high literary attainments, and a successful educator. After taking a full classical course he graduated with honors, and soon after went with his parents to Newport, Kentucky. In 1864 his father removed to Aurora, Indiana, where, assisted by his son, he conducted a successful dry-goods trade. In the early part of 1878, Mr. J. H. Lamar purchased his father's store, and is now carrying on the business. In 1878 he married the accomplished daughter of J. J. and Caroline Backman, of Aurora. Miss Back- man spent two years in traveling under the tutorage of Rev. Doctor Burt, visiting, besides various parts of Europe, Egypt and the Holy land. In the fine arts she has displayed skill and versatility, and some of her landscape paintings are executed with surprising exact- ness. She is a member of the Presbyterian Church, while Mr. Lamar belongs to the Episcopal Church, of which he was appointed junior warden by Bishop Tal- bott, of the diocese of Indiana. Mr. Lamar is an active and enterprising business man, and one of Aurora's most wealthy and popular citizens.

AMB, JAMES, M. D., of Aurora, was born in Ve- nango County, Pennsylvania, on Oil Creek, near the first oil well, February 15, 1818, and was the oldest son of the thirteen children of David Ham- ilton and Margaret (Kidd) Lamb. His paternal ances- tors emigrated from the north of Ireland before the Revolutionary War, and General John Lamb was the first collector of the port of New York under Washing-

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ton. Both his grandmothers were of Scotch-Irish de- scent. One was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania. When he was only nine years of age his parents removed to Indiana and settled in Jefferson County. At the age of fifteen he became clerk in a dry-goods store in the village of Canaan, and after one year was sent by his employers with Mr. Goodrich on a coasting trading boat down the Ohio River. Although among other duties he was obliged to sell intoxicating liquors, he never in- dulged in their use. After disposing of his goods and boat, he entered the employment of two brothers who were extensive farmers, merchants, and suppliers of wood to steamboats. He was engaged to take charge of their store, all the money taken in their extensive business passing through his hands. He early acquired studious habits, and spent his evenings in reading aloud to his employers, who became so well pleased with him as· to offer to educate him at the Catholic institution at Beards- town, Kentucky. He had made preparations to accept their kindness, when he was stricken with a disease from which he did not recover for eighteen months, and was obliged to return home. Preparatory to moving West, his father, David Lamb, sold his farm, taking in part payment notes which matured some two years after. He then returned to Pennsylvania, received his money, and invested in a fleet of coal-barges. They were wrecked in a storm near Cincinnati, and Mr. Lamb never fully recov- ered from the loss. He died in 1866, at the age of sev- enty-five years. His wife survives him, and is eighty years old. James Lamb's educational advantages were very limited. After mastering Pike's and Smiley's arith- metic, he wished to procure a grammar; and in order to procure the necessary means took some corn on horse- back nine miles to Madison, where he sold it at twenty cents per bushel. He then bought one of Professor Kirkham's grammars, and by close application mastered it. At the age of nineteen he began teaching school, which he continued twelve years, spending his leisure in study. In the autumn of 1845, after he had been teach. ing one year, he commenced the study of medicine, re- citing to Doctor John Horne, of Moorefield. He after- wards studied with Doctor Buel Eastman, and, later, with Doctor Benjamin Tevis, gentlemen of culture and ability. He commenced practice in May, 1849, just previous to the great cholera epidemic of that year, and treated many cases successfully. In 1856 he performed paracen- tecis abdominis for a lady thirty-six years old, who had become so large that respiration was seriously impaired ; and in twenty-three tappings, in a period of fourteen months, drew away one hundred and twenty-six gallons of fluid. In 1858, in company with Doctor Butz (since deceased), he opened a preparatory college of medicine, supplying it with a very valuable anatomical museum and laboratory, at a cost of sixteen hundred dollars. They had six students at the breaking out of the war,

five of whom, including a brother of Doctor Lamb, en- tered the army, and either were killed on the field, or died of disease or wounds. During the small-pox epi- demic of 1862 in Indiana, out of about one hundred cases treated by Doctor Lamb, only three proved fatal. During the prevalence of this disease he saw no other patients. Feeling a desire for a more thorough medical education, he took a course of lectures at the Medical Department of the University of Michigan, where he graduated in 1853, the second in the class. While a student in the university he was chosen one of the committee to revise the " Serapion," a college literary and scientific society ; and at the close of the session re- ceived a certificate of honorable membership. He re- sumed practice in the spring of 1856 at Allensville, Switz- erland County, Indiana. In 1865 he removed to Aurora, where he has since been engaged in successful practice. Doctor Lamb was an old-line Whig, and is now a Repub- lican. He cast his first vote for General Harrison, in 1840. He was a warm friend of the Union in the late Civil War, and was only prevented from enlisting by the care of his family and his aged parents. He had four brothers in the army, one of whom, as before mentioned, died from a wound received at the battle of Gettysburg, and was buried with the honors of war in the soldiers' cemetery at York, Pennsylvania. Another brother, Hugh, was wounded while storming the enemy's works at Richmond; the two others escaped unhurt. Both Doctor Lamb and his wife are members of the Presby- terian Church, he having united with it when twenty- four years old, and she in early youth. In 1862 Doctor Lamb was a delegate to the United States General As- sembly at Cincinnati, Ohio; and also to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1870; and was a member of the judi- ciary committee, composed of the ablest churchmen of America and Europe. He has always been frank and generous, and ready to alleviate the sufferings of his fellow-men. He is an honored member of the Masonic Fraternity, but thinks Church duties of more importance than those of Freemasonry. He assisted in reorganiz- ing the Dearborn County Medical Society, which had been suspended for several years, and which now num- bers about fifty physicians, some of whom reside out of the state. He has contributed many papers to this society, which are now on file in the archives; and is always ready to defend the honor and integrity of the profession. In 1874 he was called to treat an obscure disease which, with the assistance of the celebrated Doc- tor George Sutton and son, was pronounced trichinosis, and as such was successfully treated, only three out of eleven cases proving fatal. Doctor Lamb also operated successfully for a case of strangulated hernia, the patient being fifty-five years old, for which operation he re- ceived complimentary notice from the Dearborn County Medical Society. He has devoted a large portion of his

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time to the successful treatment of chronic female dis- eases and diseases of the eye. In November, 1841, Doctor Lamb married Miss Sarah Ann Carnine, of Switzerland County, Indiana. Her ancestors on her mother's side were Hollanders, and remotely connected with the celebrated Anneke Jans. Her grand-parents came from. New Jersey to Kentucky, from which state her parents migrated to Indiana at an early date. Doc- tor Lamb has had four children, two of whom survive. The son, Lamartine Kossuth, is a graduate of the Ohio Medical College, and has a good practice in Tolono, Illinois; the daughter, America Cerella, who completed her musical education under the tuition of Professor Andre, of Cincinnati, Ohio, is the wife of Doctor Fred- erick Treon, also a graduate of Ohio Medical College, and in practice with his father-in-law at Aurora.

ATHROP, LEVI P., late of Greensburg, merchant and banker, was born in that place, April 15, 1832. His father, Ezra Lathrop, a native of Canada, came to Greensburg in 1824; engaged in business as a dry-goods merchant, and retired with a handsome fortune. Levi P. Lathrop received a good education in the Greensburg schools. After a thorough business training in his father's store, he was received as partner at the age of twenty-one. On the 14th of April, 1857, he married Eliza, second daughter of David Lovett. He continued a prosperous business with his father until April, 1865, when he engaged with David Lovett and Samuel Christy in banking. In this, also, he was very successful until his death, which took place September 15, 1874. He died, as he had lived, a con- sistent Christian, having been for several years a worthy member of the Greensburg Baptist Church. He left a wife and two children.

ATHROP, EZRA, merchant and capitalist, of Greensburg, was born March 12, 1803, at Sutton, Canada, to which place his father, Rev. Erastus Lathrop, had removed from Connecticut a few years previous. On the breaking out of the War of 1812, Rev. Erastus Lathrop went to a place near St. Albans, Vermont, being unwilling to pass through the war against his native country. Here, while a boy, Ezra Lathrop learned much of the excitement attend- ing war. The battle of Lake Champlain was fought in hearing of his father's house, and many adventures with smugglers kept up the excitement until the conclusion of peace. His father, not being satisfied with the coun- try where he was living, sold his possessions there and removed to the state of Indiana in the year 1817. The

journey of five hundred miles was made in sleighs dur- ing the winter. Such an undertaking, with a young family, required great nerve for its accomplishment. Arriving at Olean Point, a place famous in pioneer his- tory, they embarked on a raft for their point of desti- nation, steamboats being then unknown. The first year was spent in Dearborn County, and at its close Mr. Lathrop purchased lands on the edge of Ripley County, on the hills of Laughrey Creek, the principal object being to find a more healthy location. At this time a few miles back on the north-west was Indian Territory. The block-houses erected by the territorial inhabitants, to which they fled for defense against Indian depreda- tions, were still standing. Three years later the title of the Indians to a large tract of land, the richest and best for settlement in the state, was extinguished, and the land placed upon the market by the general govern- ment. Mr. Lathrop determined to profit by the advan- tages offered, and, selling his farm in Ripley County in the year 1821, made purchases in Decatur County. Re- turning to his home in Ripley County with a view to the removal of his family, he was stricken down with malarial disease, and died. Then began the real hard- ships and trials of the subject of this sketch. In the following January, with a younger brother for cook, and a hired man, he found his way through the wilderness to the lands purchased by his father. It was a dense forest, overgrown with spice-wood and great trees, which the woodman's ax had not disturbed. Here, in the month of January, beside a poplar log, a rough camp was improvised for a house, and during the winter and spring ten acres of land were cleared, and a log-cabin provided for the widowed mother and little children. At this time there were but few families in the country. The town (now city) of Greensburg contained but three cabins, while forest trees and spice-wood covered its public square. In the spring of 1822 the family re- moved to their new lodge in the wilderness. On the 4th of August, 1824, Ezra Lathrop married Miss Abbie Potter, daughter of Nathaniel Potter, who had moved from Kentucky and settled near by. She proved to be a devoted and frugal wife, and aided him in his strug- gles in a new country in the effort to rise from poverty to competence. They lived together prosperously until her death, which occurred August 21, 1877. His early occupation was farming, but after his marriage, having a taste and aptness for business, he removed to Greens- burg, and by employing skilled labor became a con- tractor and builder in stone and brick. This he contin- ued until he was elected a Justice of the Peace in 1832, in which office he served, with repeated elections, for twenty-four years, doing a large amount of business. In the year 1838 he formed a partnership with his brother-in-law, Zebina Warriner, in the dry-goods trade. After remaining in this relation one year he sold out.

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and engaged in the same business in partnership with Calvin Poramore. At the close of a year he purchased the interest of Mr. Poramore, and soon after made his son, Levi P. Lathrop, a partner in the trade. The lat- ter became a successful merchant and business man. He died in 1874, after having acquired a handsome estate for his family ; the later years of his life he spent as a banker. In January, 1862, Ezra Lathrop retired permanently from the mercantile business, placing his son, Rev. James Lathrop, who for many years had been employed as an active minister in the Methodist Epis- copal Church in various parts of Indiana, in his stead in the firm. Mr. Lathrop has since been known as a lender of money, in which he has had a large experi- ence. In early life, in the state of Vermont, he united with the Baptist Church, of which he remains an active member and supporter. Though his head is white with the frost of years, his place is always filled in the sanc- tuary. At the Sabbath-school, the prayer-meeting, and public congregation it would excite remark if he were absent. His opportunities for an early education were poor, but he acquired sufficient knowledge for the cor- rect transaction of business, and, during his long service as a Justice of the Peace, such familiarity with the laws of the country as made him the legal adviser of many of his neighbors. Now, in old age, bereft of all his family but one son, he is spending a quiet though not indifferent life, looking forward to the near future, when he shall realize that for which he now cheerfully hopes.

ANGTREE, SAMUEL DALY, of Aurora, was born November 12, 1839, in Napoleon, Ripley County, Indiana. His parents, James Hope and Mary Jane (White) Langtree, emigrated from Belfast, Ireland, in 1831. His mother was the daugh- ter of a linen-draper, and a manufacturer of consider- able means. His father's father was a minister of considerable eloquence and power. Samuel D. Lang- tree received a common school education, and when nineteen years of age opened a retail grocery in Au- rora, in which he was very successful. In 1865 he commenced to ship produce to New Orleans, and in five years shipped one hundred and thirty-five boat- loads of produce and plantation supplies to that market with profit. In 1872, in company with Mr. J. W. Gaff, he purchased the old Union Brewery property-now called the Crescent-which, after being improved, be- came very valuable, and is now the largest and best arranged brewery in the state. The building originally cost two hundred and sixty thousand dollars, and when in full operation employs from sixty to seventy-five men, producing, on an average, six hundred kegs of beer per day. A bottling department has recently been

added. In 1867 Mr. Langtree married Miss Louisa R. Cornell, daughter of Elias and Esther Cornell, of Rip- ley County, Indiana, and has two children. Mr. Lang- tree is an excellent business man, and a wealthy and useful member of society. He is unpretentious in his manner, and a great favorite with all who have the pleasure of his acquaintance. He is a Democrat, but takes no specially active part in politics. For the past four years he has been a member of the common coun- cil of Aurora.

ITTLE, REV. HENRY, D. D., was born in Bos- cawen, New Hampshire, March 23, 1800. Enoch Little, the ancestor of his father, emigrated from London to Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1640; and Captain William Gervish, his mother's forefather, from Bristol, England, to the same place, in 1639. Both were Christian men, and their numerous posterity were prom- inent in the agricultural and financial affairs of the country, taking an active part in the old French and Revolutionary Wars, and did much in organizing schools, Churches, and society in those early times. Trained in the habits of industry and economy upon his father's farm, he became intensely interested in all parts of the busi- ness; and, being well educated in the free schools of New England, he taught three months the winter he was seventeen, and for some years following. Becoming a Christian in his early childhood, and taking an active part in religious meetings in all his youth, and being advised by as many as six ministers to make preaching the gospel his life-work, about his twentieth birthday he reluctantly gave up the farm to a younger brother, and began to prepare for college. He graduated at Dartmouth, standing high in his class, in 1826, and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1829; and the day after, September 24, with fifteen other home and for- eign missionaries, was ordained by the Newburyport Presbytery, in Park Street Church, Boston. His influ- ence had been such with young men as to induce the professors of the seminary to advise him to accept an appointment of the American Educational Society. He worked for them almost a year in New England and another in the West, and in this time induced so many to commence their preparation for the ministry, and raised so much money for their support, as to make these years the most useful of his life. In 1831 the Presbyterian Church of Oxford, Ohio, called him to be their pastor. The professors of the university and two hundred students were a part of his congregation, and in less than two years two hundred and ninety-seven united with his Church. September 19, 1831, he mar- ried Susan Norton Smith, who was born in Hatfield, Massachusetts, May 10, 1810. She was a pupil of Miss Mary Lyon, and, with an associate, had been teaching a

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ladies' high school in Chillicothe, Ohio. In her hus- band's long absences from home she had the principal training of her eight children, and has now the happi- ness of seeing them all Christians, and the four sons all very successful ministers of the gospel. Known to have been very successful in his work for the American Educational Society, that society, the American Board of Foreign Missions, the American Tract Society, and the American Home Mission Society, all wished him to be their secretary and general agent, with his office at Cin- cinnati; but, seeing the immense emigration beginning to flow over the Alleghany Mountains, and the few Churches then in the valley of the Mississippi, he re- luctantly left a loving, united Church, and accepted the call of the American Home Mission Society, though it promised less salary, and presented, at that time, more hardships and self-denial, than either of the other three. But it was not yet decided that this should be his per- manent work; so, in 1838, he accepted a call to the Second Presbyterian Church of Madison, Indiana, where he labored successfully for about two years, and was then pressed into the home mission work again, and has continued in it ever since, turning aside once to collect about fifty thousand dollars for Lane Seminary, and at another to raise about ten thousand dollars for the Western Female Seminary at Oxford, and once gave a course of seven lectures to the students of Lane Semi- nary; and, though twice invited to fill the chair of a professor in college, and to become pastor of the Churches in Lexington, Kentucky ; Lowell, Massachusetts ; Cincin- nati, Louisville, St. Louis, and many other places, he believed he could do more for his Master in the home mission work than by having the care of any one Church. Though his family lived in Madison, ever after 1838, his office was for years at Cincinnati; and as Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois were filling up, and as Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa began to be populated, others came in to help him in his wide and growing field of labor. His duties required long rides on horse- back to Western Pennsylvania and Western Virginia, Southern Tennessee, and all over Indiana, through deep mud, fording and swimming swollen streams. Scarcely once in the fifty years of his ministry did he fail in an appointment. He has never once gone aboard a railroad, steamboat, or a stage in any of the twenty- four hours of a Sabbath day. Often preaching in barns, log-cabins, school-houses, on steamboats, sometimes as- sisting ministers one, two, or three weeks in their pro- tracted meetings, and in more than twenty Presbyterian camp-meetings, in a large part of the last forty-five years he has delivered the Word on an average as often as once a day, and has seen some thousands become pious under. his ministry. In 1865 the title of D. D. was conferred by Wabash College. When he moved his family to Indiana, she had no free schools, and two-

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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 45

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