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 II, Part 27

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1006

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 II > Part 27

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the committee rooms and upon the floor, taking part in many debates. He served upon the Committees on Public Expenditures, on Banking and Currency, on the Ku-klux Investigations, on the Alabama Investigations, and on Military Affairs. Services upon these commit- tees involved a large amount of labor and research, and the results are well known. Upon questions of recon- struction his views were pronounced, and were adverse to a temporizing policy. His course upon the relief bills for individual rebels, the impeachment of Presi- dent Johnson, upon the Georgia question, the Ku-klux law, the acts to enforce the constitutional amend- ments, the question of suffrage and elections, and minor questions of reconstruction, indicated his convic- tions of the pressing necessity of the exercise of its amplest powers by the general government. He re- ported the bill to protect electors, commonly called the Force bill, in the winter of 1875, a salutary measure, but which, by filibustering, the Democrats defeated. The bill passed the House, but too late to be taken up in the Senate. Had this bill become a law honest elec- tions would have been secured by national power. His speech made in February, 1875, in advocacy of this bill, is a fair specimen of his ability to discuss such questions. His utterances upon financial questions ex- hibited great force, knowledge, and research. His speech in opposition to the first bill passed to relieve rebels, in 1868, stands alone and above all others in op- position to it. Mr. Coburn's service of four years on the Committee on Banking and Currency gave him an opportunity to mature his views on these subjects. He opposed contraction, favored funding the debt, de- nounced and exposed the various nostrums providing for a return to specie payments, demonstrated that they must be brought about by natural causes, and by a revival of trade and business, rather than by mere legislation, and deprecated in the strongest terms the idle and dangerous efforts to do that by legislation which could only be accomplished and regulated by the great laws of trade. Time has justified his position. He opposed land grants to railroads; favored a protec- ive tariff; opposed subsidies to foreign steamship lines ; and favored free shipping as the true means of reviving commerce and of fostering our carrying trade. His speeches upon these and kindred subjects are elaborate and powerful discussions. He served four years as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, and his work is significant on army legislation during that time. The present system of paying the army was reported by him, and carried through without amendment; the establishment of the great military prison at Fort Leavenworth is founded upon the bill which he re- ported, without any alteration. This makes the prisoners a productive element in the army, instead of an ex- pense, in the state-prisons, of many thousands annually ;

David Macy

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secures them from the barbarities of inferior military eight, and his father reached seventy-six years of age. Both died in Randolph County, Indiana, the father in 1847 and the aged mother in 1874. From all outward appearances, Mr. Macy is destined to equal either parent in longevity, as, although he has reached the allotted threescore and ten, there are no symptoms of either mental or physical decay, and he is as active as most men of fifty. When about nine or ten years of age David removed with his parents to the state of Indiana, settling in the southern part of Randolph County, in a por- tion of the state at that time very thinly settled. He worked on the farm of his father until he was about eighteen years of age, assisting in clearing up the ground, rolling and burning logs, making rails, and doing other work incident to improving a homestead in a newly settled country. During the winter months he attended a country school in the neighborhood, and ac- quired a good common school education. At the age above named he commenced work with Hiram Macy, an elder brother, as a mill-wright, and continued at that business for between two and three years. He then de- cided to abandon his trade, and commenced the study of law at Centerville, Wayne County, Indiana. He ap- plied himself energetically to his studies for nearly two years, and on the 3d of March, 1832, obtained a license to practice law from the Hon. Charles H. Test and HIon. M. C. Eggleston, the Circuit Judges. The same officers at posts and state-prisons, and enforces humane treatment. His report upon army staff organization is a remarkable document, and attracted the greatest at- tention in all army circles. He advocated a system of details for the staff from the line, making it a school for the officers, and giving an opportunity for the selec- tion of the best material both for the staff and line, and enabling each to obtain a varied and thorough expe- rience. He reported and carried through the measure which provided for headstones in the Union National Cemeteries. He resisted strenuously and successfully many schemes of extravagance connected with the ad- ministration of military affairs. His term in Congress expired in March, 1875. In 1874 he was defeated at the election when the hostility engendered by the tem- perance crusade and the Baxter law swept the Republi- can party down throughout the entire state. Since then he has practiced law in Indianapolis, except while en- gaged upon the Hot Springs Commission, in settling the disputes and entangled claims of the people to the lands of that place ; this was a most difficult and ardu- ous task, and was well performed. He has delivered at various times public addresses and orations, which, for style and substance, compare well with any like contem- poraneous productions. They would fill a volume, and are worthy to be placed among American classics. His address to the old settlers at Mooresville in 1873 has | year he removed to New Castle, Henry County, In- had no rival in that line. His oration on the Fourth of July, 1872, at the Soldiers' Home, at Dayton, was a memorable one, calling out general commendation ; and his speech on Decoration Day, 1880, at Williams- port, was a model of elegiac eloquence. He is a forci- ble and brilliant extempore speaker. He takes a lively interest in politics, and is heard from on the stump in every great struggle. He has been a school commis- sioner, a member of the Historical Society, and is in- terested in whatever promotes the well-being of society. Strong, genial, and energetic, he has a career before him as well as behind him. He is frank, bold, and clear in the expression of his opinions, and worships, in friend and foe, candor and manliness. His habits are those of a scholar, and his life one of quiet and reserve, except when roused and pushed into action. If asked to point out his most prominent traits, they would be common sense, firmness of purpose, and promptness in action. diana, and began practice. In 1833, having business at Indianapolis, and learning while there that a number of lawyers were to be examined in the Supreme Court room, to ascertain their qualifications for admission in that court, he concluded to become one of the class, which he did, passed the ordeal successfully, and was, with others, licensed to practice in that and all other Superior Courts of Record in the state of Indiana. His license bears date December 4, 1833, and is signed by S. C. Stevens and J. T. Mckinney, two of the Su- preme Judges. The people of the state of Indiana had then for years been agitating the question of the state entering upon a general system of internal improve- ments adequate to the wants of the people and to the resources of the state. The country was comparatively new, the state and county roads about one-third of the year muddy and in bad order, and the people had neither canals nor railroads on which to transport pro- duce to market, or receive goods or groceries in return. The only way was by hauling in wagons, which was very expensive. It was, therefore, not at all strange ACY, DAVID, banker, etc., of Indianapolis, was born in Randolph County, North Carolina, De- cember 25, 1810. His father was a native of the Island of Nantucket, and his mother of the state of Virginia. Mr. Macy comes of a long-lived race; his mother lived to the advanced age of ninety- that the prospect of improving the country by roads or canals met with favor. Mr. Macy was a warm advocate of internal improvements, and in 1835 became a candi- date for the office of Representative, on that question alone being elected, and was re-elected in the year 1836 and 1837 on that issue. The project was brought

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before the Legislature at an early day of the session of 1835, and a bill, which he supported, was agreed upon, appropriating the sum of ten million dollars for constructing railroads, turnpike roads, and canals in various portions of the state, and specifying the amount to be laid out on each work. The bill passed, fund commissioners were appointed, bonds of the state issued, and labor on the different public works was soon com- menced; but, owing to the inexperience of the fund commissioners, a large amount of the funds appropriated were lost, and the credit of the state was impaired, and the contractors ceased their work, leaving the various works incomplete. But subsequent events show that the people of the state did not give up the idea. They realized the importance of having these unfinished high- ways of commerce completed. New companies were organized, and arrangements made to take some of the incomplete work off the hands of the state and finish it. This was done, and soon after these great public ben- efits were completed. The Legislature granted other charters to construct railroads and turnpike roads in various portions of the state, and they were built with characteristic energy by the people, who found them to be of great utility and a large source of revenue to the state. Instead of spending ten millions of dollars, as the state originally proposed, over one hundred millions have been paid out in Indiana for the construction of railroads alone since the passage of the internal im- provement bill of 1835. These improvements have, in a great measure, facilitated the successful use of the tel- egraph and many other projects and inventions which naturally followed. Mr. Macy was a strong advocate and persistent champion of every movement calculated to bring about this result, and no little credit for the achievements of Indiana in this matter is due to his en- ergetic and whole-hearted advocacy. He can point with pleasure to the fact that the early advocates of these improvements were not in error, though they may have made some mistakes; but that their acts in the main have been of great public utility, giving employment to at least twenty thousand laboring men in Indiana alone. In 1838 Mr. Macy was elected by the Legislature pros- ecuting attorney for the Sixth Judicial District of the state for the term of two years. In 1840 he removed to Lawrenceburg, Dearborn County, and resided there, practicing his profession, until 1852, in the mean time serving as mayor of the city two years, and representing the county in the state Legislature in the years 1845 and 1846. In the year 1852 Mr. Macy moved to In- dianapolis, his present place of residence. In 1855 he was elected president of the Peru and Indianapolis Rail- road (I. P. and C.), and, with the exception of a short interval, had its control and management up to January 1. 1880, at which time his resignation as president of the company took effect. In January, 1876, he was

elected president of the Meridian National Bank of In- dianapolis, and has held that office up to the present time. Mr. Macy was married, January 17, 1837, to Miss Mary Ann Patterson, of Indianapolis. Their only daughter, Carrie, is the wife of V. T. Malott, general manager of the Indianapolis, Peru, and Chicago Rail- road. While under Mr. Macy's supervision this railroad had rapidly advanced until it became one of the most popular as well as one of the best paying roads of the state. Although enrolled among the wealthy men of Indiana, Mr. Macy is one of the most unostentatious of men, frank, open-hearted, and candid in his manner, and retaining in his demeanor the simplicity and candor characteristic of the old time gentleman. In business, of untiring energy and unimpeachable integrity; in the state, a public-spirited citizen ; in the Church, an active and zealous member, he is in the family and social circle an exemplary husband and father, an affable and courteous gentleman, liberal to all deserving objects, and esteemed and venerated by all who know him.

OACHE, ADDISON L., Indianapolis. Fancy might find in the given names of Addison Locke Roache an indication of temperament, if not a key to character. Not a recluse or a bookworm, and eminently a man of affairs, yet his life has busied itself with those things in which success depends upon the symmetrical judgment and practical grasp that come from reading and reflection, rather than with those in which it is achieved solely in the narrow groove of pro- fessional excellence. Roughly speaking, it might be said he is an example of the general average of abilities, the sum of which is denoted by that much-abused term, "common sense," which successful men always have in an eminent degree. To this, in Judge Roache's charac- ter, is added the finish and poise which a strong intel- lectual temperament gives. By profession a lawyer-or rather, it should be said, by nature-he is not merely a lawyer. If it be that this profession is the Rome to which all roads lead, it is certain he has trod many of them, and, as a political and historical student as well as a lover of general literature, has the ripe fruits of a well-stored mind to attest. Born in Rutherford County, Tennessee, November 3, 1817, his father and family came to Bloomington, Indiana, in 1828. Here the boy had the advantage of a collegiate education in the state university, whence he was graduated in September, 1836. Immediately thereafter he began the study of law in the office of General Tilghman A. Howard, at Rockville, Parke County. He was admitted to the bar, and began practice at Frankfort, Clinton County. With his professional studies had already commenced that general reading which has made him many-sided in his

N. L. Ronche

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mental achievements; and in the beginning of profes- sional work he halted for the benefits of travel, spend- ing nearly the whole of the year 1841 journeying through the West. He returned to Rockville in Jan- uary of the following year, and the next June was there married to Miss Emily A. Wedding. For the next ten years he steadily pursued his profession, interrupted in 1847 by attendance upon the state Legislature, of which he was a member from Parke County. In 1852 he was elected a Justice of the Supreme Court of the state. He sat upon the Bench until 1854, when he resigned. In 1859 he formed a law partnership with Joseph E. McDonald, now United States Senator from Indiana. With that he removed his residence to Indianapolis, and during the eleven years of this law partnership the firm of Roache & McDonald was in the front rank of the bar of the state. In 1859 Judge Roache had been appointed a trustee of the state university-his Alma Mater. With his removal to Indianapolis he vacated that office. In 1876 he was again appointed a trustee of that institution. The bias that with most lawyers of eminence eventually leads them into politics, of which his law partner is an example, with him led to litera- ture. Politics were with him, like history or the whole range of literature, a study. The purely intellectual cast of his character might be said to have found an expression in this connection with the state univer- sity, and to the attainment in practice of his ideal here has been given much time and labor. He had an ambition to make in Bloomington an insti- tution such as the university of a great and growing state ought to be. To this end he has sought to make its faculty a representative one of excellence-brought to a first-rate level in all its parts. To accomplish this it has been necessary, not merely to exercise that pa- tient care by which a "weeding " process shall result successfully, but to offset all the drawbacks that in- sufficient help from the state has placed in the way. But the end crowns the work. Mainly to Judge Roache's unremitting care and labor men of worth and experience rarely excelled are at the head of each of the various departments. With this effort to get the proper instru- ments, the use to be made of them has never been lost sight of. It has been Judge Roache's laudable ambition to put the state university in harmony with the common school system ; to make of it, as it should be, the fount- ain head from which should flow through the channels of the common schools all the education embodied in the school system of the state; to have a university conclusion as an end to the educational career begun in the primary schools; and from the university to send back as teachers those who have come there as scholars ; that is, to have it not merely a finishing place for pupils, but a training school for teachers. How many stum- bling-blocks there have been in the way of this noble

aim the history of Indiana attests. These have been in a measure smoothed away. The system has since been harmoniously developed and wrought out. The state university has come to be held a part of the educational system of the state. There is an approach to harmony, and the tenacity of purpose with which Judge Roache has sought this end bids fair to compass it, and bring to a realization this desire of his heart. Occupied with various schemes for the intellectual ad- vancement of his day and generation, while a member of the committee to digest the school system, Judge Roache conceived the idea of a public library for the city of Indianapolis, and executed the plan for its es- tablishment and support. He drafted the original reso- lution on the subject, argued and pleaded its way through the Legislature, and is justly proud that this work of his hand from small beginnings has grown upon its stable foundations to be an institution so cred- itable to the city, and so full of promise for increasing good and greatness. In this outline of a life, two phases of its development have shown the lawyer and the educator. Another shows an eminently successful business man, some years being spent in business after leaving his profession on account of his health. There are indications of a character unique in this, that it shows a union of elements not often found, and so blended that these qualities, in some respects opposite, have each enhanced the others. To be a successful lawyer means devotion to the profession. Judge Roache has been conspicuously successful. This is frequently, if not generally, the sum of such a life. But Judge Roache's efforts in the cause of education are indi- cations of something more than the law student, and in him is found a lover of books as books. His reading has been wide and deep, sufficient to make of most men the bookworm exclusively, with all of the im- practicability of such a character. But here, if things unlike might be compared, there is a man as "level- headed" in the actualities of life as profound in its theories. If his student life has influenced his business life, it has been in that salutary way which has elevated and strengthened it; while it is certain that this same cast of " business sense " has so acted upon his profes- sional and literary attainments as to enable him to mar- shal them for instant use, and to make them ever of practical value. His mind is of the "workshop" order, in contradistinction to the "lumber-room " sort. Its stores are not there useless, except for some one else ; they are ready to be shaped into the support of what- ever purpose is in hand. This gives him a rare power of statement. Few can go so directly to the core of a question and give the reason for the faith that is in them as Judge Roache. This power, added to the natural judicial cast of his mind, gives to his counsel and judgment the strength of finality, while the kindly

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tone of a genial nature and healthful temperament wins confidence, as his intellectual force carries conviction. He is one of the strong men of Indianapolis. The advice of no one is more frequently sought for, or regarded of more value.

ILL, RALPH, attorney-at-law, now of Indianapo- lis. The hardy growths of nature are those which battle the storms; the fiercer the conflict the more robust becomes the trunk, and the deeper down do the roots descend. Man is but a part of nature. The successful man is not he who dreams, but he who does, and when we see a man who has hewn his way through difficulties and endured the storms of life from childhood, he is the strong man, the man of mark. Such is the subject of this sketch. His father, Jared Hill, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, March 13, 1774, and in 1800 moved to Ohio, settling in Trumbull County. He was married twice, first to Miss Sallie Sprague, by whom he had four children, she dying about 1820. His second wife was Miss Sabina Bates, who was born in Connecticut October 30, 1792, to whom was born three children. Jared Hill was by trade a carpenter and mill-wright, and was for a time interested in a flouring and saw-mill located near his farm. He died July 6, 1839; his wife, surviving him many years, died February 16, 1872. Ralph Hill was the sixth of the family, and was born in Trumbull County, Ohio, October 12, 1827, and at the time of his father's death was only II years old. The year fol- lowing this sad event, he began working on the farm of his half brother-in-law, at three dollars per month during six months, and continued at farm labor until he was sixteen years old, attending the district school in winter. In the winter of 1843 and 1844 he went to school at the Kinsman Academy, "doing chores " for his board, and for three successive winters continued in the same position, working in summer at farm labor. In the winter of 1846-7 he taught the principal school in his native township, and in the spring, with the means thus acquired, he went to the Grand River Insti- tute, at Austinburg, Ashtabula County, Ohio, where he remained until the close of the spring term of 1849, having completed a course of study which would have enabled him to enter the Sophomore class in college. He then began teaching, and continued in that occupa- tion until August, 1850, and September 2, 1850, he left home and entered the New York State and National Law School, then located at Ballston. Having received assurance of financial assistance from his brother-in-law, he commenced the ordinary course of study; but in the following November his benefactor died, and all pros- pect of aid from that source was gone. He was

extremely anxious to graduate, which would, by pursu- ing the ordinary course, require him to remain two years at the Law School, and was also desirous to be admitted to practice in the New York courts before re- turning to Ohio, which would at once entitle him to admission by courtesy to the Ohio bar, without the two years' course of study then required in Ohio. With these two objects in view he immediately entered upon a double course of study, which he kept up until the close of the school year, also studying during the holi- day vacation. In January, 1851, he applied before the Supreme Court in General Term at Albany, as one of a class of fifteen, for admission to the New York bar, eleven of whom passed a creditable examination, he being one of the number. At the close of the school year, in August, 1851, he was examined with the Senior class before ex-Chancellor Walworth and committee, receiving his certificate of LL. B. He immediately re- turned to Ohio and entered the office of Chaffee & Woodbury, at Jefferson, Ashtabula County, where he remained until November, when he commenced a select school at Austinburg, near the Grand River Institute, where he had formerly studied. This school he taught until March, 1852, when he returned to the office of Chaffee & Woodbury, remaining there until August 18 of the same year, then leaving for Columbus, Indiana, to form a partnership with Hon. William Mack, now of Terre Haute, who had been his classmate at law school. He reached Columbus August 20, 1852, and the firm of Mack & Hill, attorneys-at-law, "hung out its shingle." Since then Mr. Hill has had as partners the following gentlemen : William Singleton was associated with him from 1853 to 1856; from that time until 1863 he practiced alone, when he formed a partnership with Joseph M. Rogers, of Lexington, Kentucky, which con- tinued until 1866, then becoming connected with George W. Richardson, formerly of Madison, which continued until December 31, 1873, since which time he had no partner while at Columbus. He was married December 24th, 1853, to Miss Phœbe J. Elmer, of Columbus, who was born at Fairton, New Jersey. The following chil- dren are the fruits of this union: Mary M., born. November 12, 1854; Florence S., born September 8, 1857, died August 14, 1876; Edgar E., born August 14, 1859; and Ralph, August 10, 1875. In 1864 the Republican Convention at Seymour nominated for Con- gress McKee Dunn, who declined to make the race, and in a subsequent convention at Columbus Mr. Hill was nominated to represent the Third District, and ac- cepted. He made a joint canvass of the district with Mr. Harrington, the Democratic nominee, and to the surprise of himself and every one else was elected, and served in the memorable Thirty-ninth Congress. He was not a candidate for renomination. On May 29, 1869, on the recommendation of Governor Morton, he

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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 II, Part 27

Author: Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1006

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1006