USA > Indiana > Encyclopedia of biography of Indiana > Part 2
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BIOGRAPHY OF INDIANA.
conspicuously successful, whether esti- mated by the character of his public ser- vice or the best standard of professional ethies and domestic life. He always re- garded public office as a public trust. An official oath was not to him a mere formality, required by statute, but a sac- red obligation to bind the conscience and consecrate the man, without reserve, [0 the publie duty imposed. Before and above this, he had the rugged honesty of nature, the integrity and strength of character, the firm, exalted purpose to do right, that would control if every oath of office were abolished. He regarded economy in public or private expenditures a virtue, and extravagance a crime; un. necessary taxes as indefensible and unjus- tifiable. The welfare of the common peo- ple always found in him an advocate and promoter. His sympathy and efforts in their behalf secured and retained the con- fidence of the humble men who work. His character exhibited the gentler qual- ities, supported by strength to repel any assault. His affability was fortified by firmness as unyielding as Gibraltar, when principle was involved. His genialty, so admirable in the home and society, sprang from the kindness of his heart. He could not have been otherwise than cordial without repressing the spontaneous im- pulse of his nature. His social traits, lit- erary attainments, culture and refinement fitted him for the enjoyment of private life. His ability, training, broad knowl. edge of men and affairs, spotless record and unimpeachable integrity, qualified
him for the highest public station. He was married twice; first to Miss M. V. Brown, of Indianapolis, who was the mother of his four sons and one daughter. Many years after her death, and between his election and inauguration as Gover- nor, he was married to Miss Cornelia Stone, of Cuba, New York, a lady of rare talent, literary taste and cultivation, who died in 1887. His sons are Omer, mer- chant, Chicago; George T., lawyer, In- dianapolis; Edward B., cashier of the In- diana National Bank; Albert B., profes- sor in Armour Institute, Chicago. The daughter, Annie, is the wife of Augustus I. Mason, lawyer, Indianapolis. Gover- nor Porter died May 3, 1897. His life was full of usefulness and crowned with honor. He received in the fullest measure the confidence and esteem of his fellow citizens.
SAMUEL MERRILL.
High up among the foot-hills of the Green Mountains lies the little town of Peacham. It has every natural charm- meadows, woods, flowery valleys, crystal springs, dashing brooks, the home of speckled trout; placid lakes, or ponds, as they are called in the moderate speech of New England; stony stretches, impene- trable to the plough; hills, terrible in their rocky steepness; and wide views, bounded on one side by the peaks of the White Mountains, eighty miles away, on the other by the wooded slopes of the Green; while over all is a transparent air, abso-
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lutely untainted by smoke. Shortly after the war of the Revolution, emigrants, chiefly from other States, though largely from Scotland, settled in this picturesque, infertile region. After their homes, a church and a school-house were built. The church was large, with a lofty barrel- pulpit and sounding-board, square high- backed pews, and had neither stove nor fire-place. The hardy farmers and their equally hardy wives did not go to church for luxury or ease. Nor did they expect either at home. They were industrious, intelligent, frugal, upright. The minister, a learned and good man, spent his long life in this one parish. The school became in course of time widely known as Peacham Academy. To this little moun- tain settlement, came, in 1789, Jesse Mer- rill and his wife, Priscilla. He was marked with a stern dignity of character and of carriage. Her memory suggests Luther's words, "There is nothing sweeter on earth than the heart of a woman in which pity dwells." She was the ideal of woman- hood in the eyes of her children. Their second son, Samnel, was born October 29, 1792. The scant soil of his farm was laboriously cultivated by the father alone, until he had the help of his son. He had a few books, of which the Bible and Jose- phns were the most interesting, and all his boys loved to read. Once a week the mail brought news from the great world, on fire first with the wild promise and the wilder atrocities of the French Revo- Intion ; later, ablaze with Napoleon's bril- liant and terrible career. It was often
Samuel's happy lot to be dispatched when the day's work was over through a mile of dark woods on the weekly errand to the postoffice, where at least one repre- sentative of every house for miles around waited for the eagerly expected mail. The discussions of foreign affairs that were carried on, the horror and indigna- tion that were expressed, had a perma- nent effect on the boy's mind as to the value of order and law. Not the least favorable of early influences in the Mer- rill family was the congeniality of the brothers and their love for one another. This affection, fed as it was by constant intercourse, by letter and visit, proved as enduring as life. The friendship of schoolmates was another formative and lasting influence. A visitor to Washing- ton in the time of our Civil War, men- tioned Samuel Merrill in the presence of Thaddeus Stevens, who was also a native of Peacham. It was in that sad winter, when defeat in the field, discord in Con- gress, and dissatisfaction throughout the country, threatened the destruction of every national and rational hope, and when the feeble but fierce old man eut right and left with the double-edged sword of satire, but the name of his old friend softened him with a strange ten- derness. He exclaimed, "Ah, why should heaven, already thronged with such be- ings, snatch him away? The Lord may want him in another field, but we need him here!" Such as chose of Jesse Mer- rill's sons, four out of the six, were sent to college. Three were graduated. Sam-
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BIOGRAPHY OF INDIANA.
uel was persuaded by his elder brother James, afterwards a distinguished law- yer, to leave college and join himself, Thaddeus Stevens and John Blanchard in teaching school and studying law in York, Pennsylvania. When prepared for the practice of law, the young teachers left their school and sought different fields of labor. Three remained in Pennsylvania, the fourth and youngest, then twenty- three years old, came to Indiana, which had just been received within the Union as a State. After inquiry as to the pros- pects of the towns on the Ohio, Mr. Mer- rill bought a skiff at New Albany, and rowed himself with his trunk, in which, besides his clothes, was his law library, up the river seventy-five miles to Vevay. In this interesting Swiss settlement he was fortunate in gaining the friendship of two families of Dumonts. John Du- mont was then and always one of the first lawyers in the West. Julia, his wife, was a woman of genius, and her mother was a woman of rare excellence and social charm. Abram Dumont, a young mer- chant, was the wittiest, cheeriest and best of men. It was thus that the happy in- fluences of congenial association were continued. Never anywhere in Indiana was there more delightful society than in this little town at this early period. Mr. Merrill represented Switzerland county two years in the State Legislature, hav- ing gained his election by walking over the whole county and explaining his views at every house. On being made State Treasurer in 1821, he removed to
Corydon, the first capital. Intelligence of the young man's election prompted an admonitory letter from his father, of which the following is an extract: "If you don't honor the office, it will not honor you. Remember that he that rises must fall. While you are going up, pre- pare for retreat, not as the unjust stew- ard did, but by being honest to your trust." The Vermont farmer, though he himself knew something of the sweets of office, was most concerned that his son should be honest. And the son was hon- est. Thirty years after the date of this letter, one who knew him well said, "Red hot balls would have been as tolerable to his palms as the smallest coin he be- lieved to be another's." The fees of that day were small; so were the salaries. "For ten years of his official life Mr. Merrill did nothing more than pave the way for future operations. If he had used spirits or tobacco, it is not unlikely that the small sums required for these indulgences would have interfered with his ultimate success." When the seat of government was transferred to Indianapolis, the Treasurer with the treasure, which was in solid coin, removed to the new capital. making the journey of one hundred and twenty-five miles in eleven days of Octo- ber, 1824. In 1834, having been treasurer twelve years, Mr. Merrill was selected for president of the just formed State Bank, "because of his spotless reputation, his incorruptible integrity, and his emi- nent financial ability. He held the office of president of the State Bank for ten
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BIOGRAPHY OF INDIANA.
years, and retired from office compara- tively poor." This office required hard and frequent travel, as well as close cleri- eal work. Once, sometimes twice, a year, the president visited every bank in the State, giving personal, thorough, private examination to accounts, ledgers and of- ficials. He usually made Indiana jour- neys on horseback. Even this modest travel was not always safe, such accidents sometimes happening as being hurled over the horse's head because the animal had suddenly stepped into a hole in the middle of a muddy road. The stage- coach was scarcely easier and not more rapid. He used to declare that nobody knew how to travel in this State who could not walk and carry a rail. All one night on the old Madison road he carried a lantern nineteen miles before the stage, reaching home at daybreak, mud front head to foot, but apparently more di- verted than annoyed. Bringing a quan- tity of money at one time from New York to Indianapolis, he chartered the coach, and with a brace of pistols prepared to repulse night attacks in the robber-in- fested region of the Alleghanies. The only incident, however, was occasioned by runaway horses. It was night. Mr. Merrill sat on the outside, both to watch the driver and to keep a lookout on the dark wooded gorges. After running about a mile on the mountain side, the horses were stopped by the upsetting of the coach. The single passenger was hurled to the ground with a force that broke his leg, but no other injury was done. the
heavy boxes which filled the inside re- maining intact. The coin was silver alone, because, although the double standard existed in the United States, the metallic currency of the country chiefly, and throughout the West exclusively, was silver. Mr. Hugh McCulloch asserts that he had been a banker fourteen years be- fore he handled or saw a gold coin except the ten thaler pieces brought to this coun- try by German emigrants. The State Bank of Indiana was one of the three that weathered the tempestuous period be- tween 1837 and 1842. "At the very low- est point," says Mr. Lanier, a State direc- tor and afterwards a member of the firm of Winslow & Lanier, New York, "it had more specie in its vaults in proportion to its capital than any other banking con- cern in the country; and its means were more than adequate to meet all liabili- ties." The Indiana Legislatures of this period devoted much attention to the con- dition of the bank, appointing at one time an investigating committee and at another a special examiner, who both made inquiries in a spirit that "savored strongly of persecution," yet were forced to admit that the bank was sound. In addition the president was personally ex- amined by the Legislature in a thoroughly hostile and apparently malicious manner, but he acquitted himself with dignity, proving beyond suspicion the healthy con- dition of affairs. Party feeling ran high in '43 and '44, in which year occurred the third election of bank president. Mr. Merrill was a Whig, the Legislature was
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BIOGRAPHY OF INDIANA.
Democratic, and after numerous ballots secured his defeat. In 1844 he was chosen president of the Madison & Indianapolis Railroad. "He took up the work of build- ing the road when it was languishing near Vernon, and accomplished more in track-laying in two years than had been done in ten years before, bringing the road in to Indianapolis and starting on its career of railroad importance the city to which he had brought the archives when Treasurer of the State. Mr. Merrill's was a compre- hensive mind, looking at things as a whole and working out the whole; but he gave also close attention to details. His action in a sudden and sweeping spring flood gives illustration. He worked all night in a violent storm. Not trust- ing to any hurriedly-called subordinate, with his own hands he fended the drift from the abutments of a bridge, which but for this would have been carried away. During the four years of his ad- ministration no fatal accident occurred for which officials or employees were re- sponsible. By an extraordinary mistake of his own, an Englishman removing his family from London to Indianapolis was killed on the Madison hill. Mr. Merrill immediately went to Cincinnati, where the man's wife had been temporarily left. and brought her and her little children to his own house, giving her a home there for many months and caring for her as long as he lived. This is but one among a thousand kindly deeds that marked his busy life. In a short period of leisure he
compiled the Indiana Gazetteer, a third edition of ten thousand copies of which was published in 1850. Having written under some disadvantages, he was not satisfied with the work and meditated a revision which should include a history of the railroads in the State and a history of the State Bank. In 1850 he bought out Hood & Noble's bookstore and made it also a publishing house, the present house of Bowen-Merrill. In August, 1855. he made a journey on horseback to the northern part of the State, but the constitution that had lightly borne a harder strain now gave many
way. Fever set in and a week after he reached home he died, Au- gust 24, 1855. Mr. Merrill was twice married, the first time to Lydia Jane An- derson, daughter of Captain Robert All- derson and Catherine Dumont. She was the mother of his ten children. His sec- ond wife was Elizabeth Douglas Young, daughter of General James Young and Mary Irwin. He was very happy in his domestic life. As Treasurer of State. bank president, railroad president, in every place Mr. Merrill made a great record, and all the time was the most un- pretending of men. "In all efforts for the public good he took an active part." In early Indianapolis, when no regular teacher could be obtained, he taught school, and when there was a teacher but no school-house, he allowed a room in his own dwelling to be used for the purpose. He encouraged the formation of a Young Men's Literary Society, "The Indianapolis
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BIOGRAPHY OF INDIANA.
Athenaeum," and at its first meeting, No- vember 29, 1830, gave the introductory lecture, in the close of which he turned the attention of his hearers to the equal need and ability of women, asserting that enough women had excelled in literature to show man that they are capable of holding a station equal in dignity to his own. This in the days when even Arnold of Rugby was at a loss as to the education of an intellectual daughter! Mr. Merrill was one of the first trustees of Wabash College. He was active in the formation of an agricultural society and of a tem- perance society, pouring out his barrel of "cherry bounce" and putting away his de- canter and wine-glasses. He was captain of the first military company of Indianap- olis. In a day when it required courage he was forward in putting down a gang of lynchers who had undertaken to extir- pate the negro race and to reduce "broad- cloth fellers" to their own low level. "Level upwards, not downwards," was the doctrine he taught. He was urgent in the organization of the Indiana Coloniza- tion Society, and was one of its managers. An extract from an address he delivered before the society in January, 1839, is of interest from more than one point of view. After showing the effect of colonizing up- on character in the history of the past and of emigrating in the immediate pres- ent, he says :
"Even if experience were not so decisive of the beneficial effects of a new situation, new objects and new duties, yet from the nature of the case
such results must be expected. When the emigrant is taken from obloquy and preju- dice, oppression and desperation, to be placed where his own and his children's good, call for the exercise of every mental faculty and of all the noble feelings of the heart, he would scarcely be human were he to shrink from the duties re- quired of him. The history of the colony in Africa shows that he has not been wanting to himself. Seventeen years ago a feeble band, less than a hundred in number, with the generous and devoted Bacon at their head, were transported to the unhealthy island of Sherboro. Here sickness in a few months swept off their leaders and half their number. A re- inforcement arriving under the care of Ashman, whose fame is the property not less of America than of Africa, the whole number was removed to Monserado. Famine and disease, the slave trader and the faithless native, threatened destruc- tion. But Ashman was ever at his post. prudent in council and fearless in danger. 'Days and nights were too short for the duties imposed on him and the cares that perplexed him.' If the blood of martyrs be the seed of the church, and that of patriots avail for their country, where shall be found nobler sacrifices than have been willingly offered for Liberia? Col- onial agents and physicians and mission- aries, well knowing the cost, have gone out to a forlorn hope, and held not their lives dear, could they but promote the good of the cause; and if ever the wrongs of Africa be atoned for, if ever the black man forget and forgive the arrears of in- juries, it will be in no small part because Mills and Bacon and Ashman and Seton and Randall and Anderson and Cloud and others with talents that would have adorned any cause have, with Roman firmness and Christian love, placed their own bodies in the deadly breach."
Mr. Merrill was an elder in the Presby. terian church and a Sunday-school super- intendent. Utterly free from namby-pam- by and sentimental piety, his teaching was
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BIOGRAPHY OF INDIANA.
strong and practical, largely illustrated from literature and observation. The Rev. Dr. Babb, writing of his church in Indianapolis, says, "One of my elders, who was a thorough business man and president of the only railroad then in the State, was, like Abraham Lincoln, always ready with a story. In Presbytery and in Synod his stories often settled a ques- tion that had been debated for hours. He had tact and power in the prayer-meeting and in the inquiry meeting. He could ap- proach persons who repelled the minis- ters." He was a dear and intimate friend of the Rev. George Bush, who was a dis- tinguished scholar and at an early period a pastor in Indianapolis. He brought Henry Ward Beecher to the Second Pres- byterian church and in his house Mr. Beecher ate his first supper in Indianapo- lis and his last breakfast; made, too, his last prayer at the family altar and by the bedside of the sick. Mr. Merrill felt that the day was given for work and he was sternly diligent. With a tenderness that made his eye fill and his lip quiver at a tale of sorrow, with even a deferential respect for man as man, he was intolerant of meanness, of hardness, of laziness, of thoughtlessness, of selfishness in any form. He was not an old-time monk in regard to self-denial, nor even a Puritan, vet self-denial was a favorite word. From his twelfth year Mr. Merrill read the Bible through annually. History, biog- raphy, poetry, novels, criticism, works of science, even dictionaries and encyclo-
pedias, brought food and enjoyment to his healthy and all-absorbing intellect. "Amid the engagements of a most labor- ious life, his love of books never waned. Constantly, unweariedly, he added to his stores of knowledge. Nor was it surface sweeping with him; he read through per- pendicularly as well as horizontally. Per- haps at a single glance he could bring all the wine of the cluster into his cup, or, if it was the well-compacted thought of master thinkers, his quick penetration and capacious understanding readily put him in possession of the whole. With such a mind it was a pleasure to con- mune." He liberally supplied with books not only himself and his family, but his neighbors in the way of lending. The gift of the right sort of book he regarded as an effective means of doing good. In a meeting held in his memory after his death one said: "Mr. Merrill was a man of superior abilities and attainments. His judgment was sound, his perceptions were clear, and his memory was retentive. Probably no other man could tell so many incidents and anecdotes illustrative of the early history of the State, or could have woven his knowledge with a more inter- esting and instructive narrative." An- other: "He was made of heroic stuff, and was more like our Revolutionary fathers than any other man I ever met." Still another: "He maintained in sublime com- bination the sternest ideas of justice with the most beautiful simplicity and child- like sweetness of manners."
G& H. Jameson
Jameson
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BIOGRAPHY OF INDIANA.
PATRICK H. JAMESON.
Patrick Henry Jameson, M. D., was born in Monroe township, Jefferson conn- ty, Indiana, April 18, 1824. As a boy he was delicate and rather precocious. While to some extent self-tangbt, Dr. Jameson acquired, for the times, a fairly good edu- ration. His father was Seotch-Irish and his mother of English descent; both were born and reared in Virginia and were, for people in their circumstances, more than ordinarily intelligent. Aside from their seenlar employments they were much devoted to religion. His father was a thrifty, well-to-do farmer. When he was sixteen years old he lost his mother, and two years later his father died, leav- ing him for the future to his own guid. ance. Soon after, in September, 1843, he came to Indianapolis, where he subse- quently tanght school for several years. While thus engaged he began the study of medicine with the late Dr. John H. San- ders. He first attended the Medical Col- lege of the University of Louisville, and the following year he attended Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, where he graduated in 1849, his diploma bearing the signatures of some of the most emi- nent physicians and surgeons then living. He immediately began practice in Indian- apolis, in partnership with his former pre- ceptor, Dr. Sanders. Early in April of the following year Dr. Sanders died, leaving his young associate to hold, if he could, the very considerable business of the late firm. This was certainly a very critical
era in the life of so young a professional man; but by the aid of his friends and patrons, and his own efforts, he so well succeeded, that during the second year of his practice he did alone more business than the firm had done the previous year. He thus early, possibly too early, was set- tled in a large and somewhat lucrative business. This he has since, for more than forty years, steadily maintained. It may be truly said of him that no man among all his confreres, living or dead, ever saw more patients, or prescribed more frequently than he. He was the first, early in the fifties, to call the atten- tion of the profession of Indianapolis to a pernicious and fatal form of anaemia af- fecting women in the latter stages of pregnancy. An eminent medical writer, acquainted with this fact, not long since remarked that a publication of his obser- vations at that time would have given him considerable notoriety, as it was not till some years after that a first descrip- tion of this disease was presented to the profession by a medical writer of Ger- many. He is one of the few surviving charter members of the Indiana State Medical Society, which was organized in May, 1849, and in early times he was one of its more active members. In 1857 he presented a report to this society on vera- trum viride in typhoid and puerperal fev- ers, which was published in its proceed- ings and republished, almost entirely, in the "American Journal of the Medical Sciences." In 1849-50 and 1854 he en- countered Asiatic cholera, which pre-
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BIOGRAPHY OF INDIANA.
vailed, to some extent, in Indianapolis. A widespread and fatal epidemic of dys- entery prevailed at this time, of which a great many died. Among its victims were some of the most prominent citizens of the county. In some instances nearly a whole family perished. Among his pub- lished writings are the "Commissioners' Annual Reports for the Indiana Hospital for the Insane" from 1861 to 1879 inclu- sive. Like reports of the "Indiana Insti- tution for the Deaf and Dumb" and for the "Institute for the Blind," for the most of this time were also written by him. These reports were published by the State. He is the author of an address entitled. "Scientific Medicine in Its Rela- tions With Quackery," which was pub- lished in the "Indiana Medical Journal" and extensively copied by other journals. During most of his life he has been a fre- quent contributor to the local secular papers, generally anonymous, but oc- casionally over his own signature. In 1861 he was elected by the Legislature a commissioner of the "Indiana Hospital for the Insane" for a term of four years; in 1865 he was re-elected for a second term; in 1869 was elected, by the same body, president of the several boards of State "Benevolent Institutions" for the insane, the deaf and dumb and the blind. Ile was subsequently twice re-elected to this prominent office, each time for an ad- ditional term of four years. All the time. from April 19, 1861, to March 1, 1866, he was a surgeon in the military service. He organized the first post hospital at Camp
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