USA > Indiana > Daviess County > Living leaders, an encyclopedia of biography : special edition for Daviess and Martin counties, Indiana > Part 15
USA > Indiana > Martin County > Living leaders, an encyclopedia of biography : special edition for Daviess and Martin counties, Indiana > Part 15
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claims. He built up a large and remunerative practice. In 1887 he organized and became president of the Atlanta "Journal," now a lead- ing afternoon paper of the South. At that time Henry W. Grady, of the Atlanta "Constitution," was an advocate of protection. Mr. Smith championed the principle of a low tariff. When Mr. Cleveland was defeated in 1888 Mr. Smith did not waver, but predicted the downfall of protection. He married the youngest daughter of Gen. T. R. R. Cobb and niece of the late Howell Cobb, and is closely related, by his own family as well as through his wife, to many of the leading families throughout the Southern states. Mr. Smith is persistent in carrying out his plans and in the performance of whatever work may be intrusted to him, giving little heed to the criticisms and vehement protests which his course sometimes provokes.
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HOKE SMITH.
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EMMA DOROTHY ELIZA NEVITTE SOUTHWORTH.
M
ANY mothers, and even grandmothers, of today can remember with what pleasurable emotions they pored over the captivating novels of Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth when they were girls. Not a few of them have continued to read her works ever since, and even now wait impatiently for each new story from her pen; for, notwith- standing her advanced age, Mrs. Southworth is still writing. She was born in Washington, D. C., in the house and room once occupied by General Washington, December 26, 1819. She was graduated in 1835 and in 1840 she married Frederick H. Southworth, of Utica, N. Y. Four years later, thrown upon her own resources, she became a school teacher in Washington, and while so occupied began to write stories, the first of which, "The Irish Refugee," appeared in the Baltimore "Saturday Visitor." Subsequently she became a regular contributor to the "National Era," in the columns of which paper appeared her first novel, "Retribution." It was issued in book form in 1849, and the author at once attained such popularity that for years some of the leading publishers competed sharply for her stories. With unusual rapidity she wrote her succeeding stories, issuing sometimes three in a She has published about sixty volumes, and continues to be year.
one of the most prolific of living writers.
Many of her stories were
first published serially in the New York "Ledger." They display strong dramatic power, and the majority have been translated into French, German and Spanish, and re-published in London, Paris, Leip- sic, Madrid and Montreal. For twenty-three years Mrs. Southworth resided in a beautiful villa on the Potomac Heights, near Washington, but in 1876 she removed to Yonkers, N. Y.
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EMMA DOROTHY ELIZA NEVITTE SOUTHWORTH.
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GOLDWIN SMITH.
H IS prominent connection with the Liberal movement in Canada and his championship of the United States Government have made the name of Goldwin Smith quite as popular on this side of the Do- minion border as it is in Toronto, where he resides. This eminent author and scholar was born in Reading, Berkshire, England, August 13, 1823. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, and was afterward associated with the reorganization of the latter university, in which he was regius professor of modern history from 1858 to 1866. During the Civil War in America he Wrote "Does the Bible Sanction Ameri- can Slavery?" "On the Morality of the Emancipation Proclamation," and other pamphlets that influenced public opinion, so that when he visited this country in 1864, to deliver a series of lectures, he received an enthusiastic welcome and the degree of LL. D. from Brown Univer- sity. Returning to the United States in 1868, Mr. Smith was ap- pointed professor of English and Constitutional History in Cornell Uni- versity, and resided at Ithaca until 1871, when he removed to Toronto. He has been prominent in educational affairs there, edited the "Cana- dian Monthly" for two years, founded the "Nation" in 1874, the "Bystander" in 1880, and the Toronto "Week" in 1884. He has written much for English reviews, and among his publications in book form the most popular in this country are "The Civil War in Amer- ica," "Experience of the American Commonwealth," and "The Rela- tions Between America and England." Mr. Smith advocates the con- solidation of Canada and the United States, which he regards as the manifest destiny of the countries, and is heartily in the movement for commercial union between the two countries.
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GOLDWIN SMITH.
417
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
L UXURIANT in expression and intense in feeling, with descriptions and fancies glittering with sensuous delights and every variety of splendor, the stories of Harriet Prescott Spofford would be charming if their only merit was their artistic coloring. Mrs. Spofford began writ- ing when very young. She was born in Calais, Me., April 3, 1835, but in her youth was taken by her parents to Newburyport, Mass., which city has ever since been her home. At the age of seventeen she was graduated at the Pinkerton Academy at Derry, N. H. While in school at Newburyport her prize essay on Hamlet attracted the attention of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who became her friend and counselor. Her father, Joseph N. Prescott, suffered a stroke of paral- ysis which permanently disabled him, and her mother also became a confirmed invalid, so that she felt the need of making her talents avail- able, and began to contribute to the Boston story papers. In 1859 her sparkling story of Parisian life, entitled "In a Cellar," appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly," and gave her a reputation. The editor of
the magazine, James Russell Lowell, had hesitated to publish the story until satisfied that it was not a French translation. From that day she was a welcome contributor both of prose and poetry to the chief
periodicals of the country. In 1865 she was married to Richard S. Spofford, a lawyer of Boston. Among Mrs. Spofford's published works may be mentioned "Sir Rohan's Ghost," "The Amber Gods, and Other Stories," "Azarian," "New England Legends," "The Thief in the Night," "Art Decoration Applied to Furniture," "Marquis of Cara- bas," "Poems," "Hester Stanley at St. Mark's," "The Servant Girl Question," and "Ballads about Authors."
418
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
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CLAUS SPRECKELS.
T HE founder of and principal factor in building up the sugar-refin- ing industry on the Pacific coast has become so well known through his enterprise and success that his name is familiar throughout all countries where sugar is dealt in as an article of commerce. Claus Spreckels was born in Lamstedt, Kingdom of Hanover, in July, 1828, and came to America in 1848, arriving at Charleston, S. C., where he began business as a clerk in a grocery store. Within two years he owned the store, and soon developed a wholesale trade and became an importer. In 1855 he removed his business to New York City, and in 1856 again transferred it to San Francisco, where he bought out his brother Bernard, who was engaged in the grocery trade. The Albany Brewery was started by him in San Francisco in 1857, and the venture proved so successful that he disposed of his grocery house and continued as a brewer until 1863. In that year he sold the brewery, and, with others, founded the Bay Sugar Refinery. For the purpose of acquiring a complete knowledge of the sugar business he went to Europe to master the process of manufacturing beet-root sugar, actually entering the great refinery at Magdeburg as a workman. Returning to San Francisco he built another and larger refinery, and in 1867 organized the present great corporation of the California Sugar Refinery, of which he is president and principal owner. This com- pany refines fifty million pounds of sugar every year. Mr. Spreckels is also extensively engaged in sugar-planting in the Sandwich Islands, where he obtained a grant of forty thousand acres of cane land, and is cultivating sugar cane on an enormous scale. Pluck, perseverance, and natural business ability are the causes of his success.
420
CLAUS SPRECKELS.
421
AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS.
A UGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS, the sculptor whose design for a World's Fair medal failed to meet the approval of Secretary Carlisle and the Senate, is a New Yorker in everything but the actual accident of birth. He was born in 1848, of Irish and French parent- age, and when but a mere child was brought by his parents to New York City. Their son showed his talent at a very early age. The first money he ever had he spent for a box of colors. Work to him was a necessity. At thirteen he had to leave school and was appren- ticed to a cameo cutter. He spent his days at the bench and his evenings at the Cooper Union art schools. £ Within three years he had a reputation as one of the best cameo cutters in the city. At nine- teen, having saved some money, he went to Paris to perfect his knowledge of cameo cutting. But he had an ambition to be an artist in a larger way and entered the studio of Jouffroy, the sculptor, where he worked with an energy that made him a favorite with his master. The war with Germany interrupted his studies and he went to Rome, where he opened his first studio. There he modeled a Hiawatha which ex-Governor Morgan, of New York, admired and had cut in marble. Then his success began. He made a bust of William M. Evarts, and after that orders fairly flowed in upon him. The Farra- gut statue in Madison Square, New York City, was his first great public commission. The critics at once pronounced it a masterpiece, as they did his Lincoln, his Pilgrim, and his Sherman. Even the rejected medal is admitted to be admirable from an artistic point of view, and is considered by those competent to pronounce judgment. a worthy example of his skill.
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AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS.
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CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.
TT is scarcely an extravagance to say that there is nothing more charming in modern literature than the sketches and poems that have from time to time emanated from the pen of Charles Warren Stoddard. As one turns the pages of "South Sea Idyls," for exam- ple, the pulsing joys of the tropics come over him, and he feels all the bewildering charms of the free and careless life known only to the dweller under those summer skies. Mr. Stoddard was born in Roch- ester, N. Y., August 7, 1843, and was educated in New York City and California, to which state he removed with his father in 1855. In 1864 he went to the Hawaiian Islands, where he has since passed much of his time, and as traveling correspondent of the San Francisco " Chronicle" from 1873 to 1878 he visited many of the islands in the South Seas, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Pacific slope from Alaska to Mexico. His keen observation, his poetical temperament and his remarkable powers of description have enabled him to write most enter- tainingly of what he has seen. Mr. Stoddard began to write poetry at an early age, was for a short time an actor, has occasionally lec- tured, and has contributed to many of the leading magazines. In 1885 he became professor of English literature in Notre Dame University at South Bend, Ind., remaining in that position about a year. He revis- ited Europe in 1889, and upon his return took the chair of English Literature in the Catholic University of America at Washington, D. C., which post he still retains. His latest work, "Hawaiian Life, or Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes," has but recently been published, and is a masterpiece of descriptive writing. He is an earnest student equally of the books of nature and of those written by man.
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CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.
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FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON.
Q UAIN'T humor and droll philosophy, mingled with bits of tender sentiment, all strung on the thread of a prankish imagination, make up the stories that come to us from the clever author of that tantalizing fragment, "The Lady or the Tiger?" Mr. Stockton is an author of such marked individuality that there is none with whom to compare him. He was born in Philadelphia April 5, 1834. After receiving an education he became an engraver and draughtsman, and in 1866 invented a double graver. But soon thereafter he abandoned that occupation for journalism, toward which he had a natural leaning. After being connected with the "Post," in Philadelphia, and "Hearth and Home," in New York, he joined the editorial staff of "Scribner's Monthly," where he had an opportunity of developing the literary talent that had already made itself manifest. Upon the establishment of "St. Nicholas," in the autumn of 1873, he became its assistant editor. His earliest writings were fantastic stories for children, written under the name of Frank R. Stockton, which he has since retained. Later he attained a wide reputation for his short stories for older people, among them being the "Rudder Grange" sketches, "A Transferred Ghost," "The Spectral Mortgage," "A Tale, of Negative Gravity," and "The Remarkable Wreck of the 'Thomas Hyke."" But it was that little conundrum of three magazine pages, "The Lady or the Tiger?" that set everybody talking and made the author famous. His novels are "The Late Mrs. Null," "The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine," "The Dusantes" and "The Hundredth Man." Mr. Stockton's humorous view is broad, but his writings will outlive a thousand laughs.
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FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON.
427
JOHN PIERCE ST. JOHN.
C OMPARATIVELY few people are familiar with the early life of the man who is chiefly remembered as a former governor of Kansas, and as a subsequent leader of the Prohibition party, of which he was once the candidate for the presidency of the United States. Yet John P. St. John has had a checkered career. He was born in Franklin County, Indiana, February 25, 1833. In his early years he was employed on his father's farm, and was a clerk in a grocer's store. In 1853 he went to California, where he worked in various capacities, and made voyages to South America, Mexico, Central Amer- ica and the Sandwich Islands. He also served in wars with the Indians in California and Oregon. In 1860 he removed to Charleston, Ill., to continue the study of law, which he had begun in his miner's cabin. Early in 1862 he enlisted as a private in the Sixty-eighth Illinois Volunteer regiment, and before the close of the war was lieu- tenant-colonel of the One Hundred and Forty-third regiment. After the war he resumed the practice of law at Charleston, but subsequently removed to Independence, Mo., where he practiced successfully for four years and gained a reputation as a political orator. He removed to Olathe, Kan., in 1869, served in the State Senate in 1873 and 1874, and was elected governor of Kansas as a Republican in 1878. He held that office until 1882, when he was defeated as a candidate for a third term. In 1884 he was the candidate of the Prohibition party for the presidency, and received 151,809 votes. He is still an active Prohibitionist, dividing his time between lecturing on temperance and the practice of his profession. He stands as an example of unswerving devotion to a noble principle.
428
JOHN PIERCE ST. JOHN.
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RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.
F EW men are better known in what may be called the old New York literary group than Richard Henry Stoddard. He was born in Hingham, Mass., in July, 1825. When he was ten years of age his family removed to New York, in which city he learned the trade of an iron molder. The literary instinct was strong within him, though, and as early as 1848 he began contributing to the newspapers and periodicals of the day. He soon acquired a recognized place in the American literary world of the time, a place he has retained. He has produced a number of works, among them being included " Adven- tures in Fairyland," "Town and Country," "The Story of Little Red Riding Hood," "The Children in the Wood," "Putnam the Brave," "Memoir of Edgar Allan Poe," the "Bric-a-Brac," and "Sans Souci Series" of compilations and a number of volumes relating to English literature. If fault is to be found with Mr. Stoddard's work in the consideration of literary matters, it must be on the basis that he is not always in touch with the new schools of literature and has come to have creeds as to book-making; but it is admitted of him by all that he is an able essayist and critic, and that by his capable selections he has aided not a little in popularizing the best class of work in the United States. He has done much newspaper work, and is still a regular and vigorous writer for the daily press, being at the present time the literary reviewer on the New York "Mail and Express." He represents a school now passing away, which was a good one, which was conservative but which did much toward making American litera- ture what it is. It was, at least, always a clean school and one tending to promote decent thought and action.
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RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.
431
ADOLPH HEINRICH JOSEPH SUTRO.
A MONG the names most worthy of inscription upon the tablets of honored perpetuity in America is the name associated in the public mind with one of the greatest engineering feats of the century- Adolph Sutro. This distinguished man was born in Aix-la-chapelle, Rhenish, Prussia, April 29, 1830. He came to America in 1850, and went at once to California to engage in mining operations, for which his studies had fitted him. He visited Nevada in 1860, and after a careful inspection of the mining region there, planned the now famous Sutro tunnel through the heart of the mountain where lay the Com- stock lode. Having interested capitalists in the project, he obtained a charter from the Nevada Legislature February 4, 1865, and the authori- zation of Congress July 25, 1866. Mining companies agreed to pay toll of two dollars for each ton of ore from the time when the tunnel should reach and benefit their mines. The work was begun October 19, 1869, and before the close of 1871 four vertical shafts were opened along the line of the tunnel, one of which was 552 feet deep. The distance from the mouth of the tunnel to the Savage mine, where, at a depth of sixteen hundred and fifty feet from the surface, it formed the first connection with the Comstock lode, is twenty thousand feet. Lateral tunnels connect it with the mines on either side of the main bore. In 1879 the great tunnel was finished and its projector became a millionaire many times over. Mr. Sutro has devoted a part of his fortune to the establishment of a fine library and art gallery in San Francisco, where he resides, and his gifts to public charities have been many and munificent. In his lovely home at Sutro Heights he has collected many souvenirs of his tours throughout the world.
432
ADOLPH HEINRICH JOSEPH SUTRO.
433
ADA CELESTE SWEET.
TN certain fields of effort probably no other woman in the country has accomplished so much as Ada C. Sweet, of Chicago. Not only has she become known as one of the most sincere and intelligent workers in the interest of reforms and humanitarianism, but she has demonstrated to the world that in the management of a difficult public office a woman's tact and judgment may at least equal those of a man. Miss Sweet is the daughter of Gen. Benjamin J. Sweet, a law- yer and distinguished officer in the Civil War, and was born at Stock- bridge, Wis., February 23, 1853. At the age of sixteen she became assistant to her father, who was at that time United States Agent for paying pensions in Chicago, and afterward first deputy commissioner of internal revenue at Washington, remaining with him until his death, January 1, 1874. Shortly thereafter President Grant appointed her United States Agent for paying pensions at Chicago. In the conduct of this office, which employed a large clerical force and disbursed millions of dollars annually, Miss Sweet made a remarkable record, effecting many reforms and reducing the work to a system which was promptly adopted by the government in the reorganization of all the other pension agencies in the country. She resigned the office Octo- ber 1, 1885, to engage in business on her own account, and, after visiting Europe, was for two years the literary editor of the Chicago " Tribune." Since 1888 she has pursued the vocation of United States Claims Attorney, finding time, however, to do much literary and phil- anthropical work, and to labor for governmental 'reforms, besides meet- ing all social obligations. Among other benefactions she founded the ambulance system in connection with the Chicago police department.
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ADA CELESTE SWEET.
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THOMAS DE WITT TALMAGE.
C OMBINING in an extraordinary degree the advantages of profound learning, the physical and mental qualifications of an orator, a deep religious sense and a pleasing manner, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage is popular alike in the pulpit and on the platform. He was born in Bound Brook, N. J., January 7, 1832, and educated at the University of the City of New York. After graduating at the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in 1856, he was ordained pastor of the Reformed Dutch Church in Belleville, N. J. He had charge of the church in Syracuse, N. Y., from 1859 to 1862, and of one in Philadelphia from 1862 to 1869. During the war he was chaplain of a Pennsylvania regiment. In 1869 he became pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, N. Y., which post he still holds His congregation, in 1870, built the now famous Brooklyn Tabernacle, which was destroyed by fire in 1872, but at once rebuilt on a grander scale. It is the largest Protestant church in the country. The ser- mons of Dr. Talmage are published weekly in nearly six hundred religious and secular journals in this country and in Europe, being translated into various languages. He has at different times edited "The Christian at Work" in New York, "The Advance" of Chicago, and "Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine," and has published a number of books. He received the degree of A. M. from the University of the City of New York in 1862, and that of D. D. from the Univer- sity of Tennessee in 1884. Dr. Talmage has made a number of suc- cessful lecturing tours in the United States, always attracting large audiences wherever he appears, and has also traveled and lectured in Europe.
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THOMAS DEWITT TALMAGE.
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NICKOLA TESLA.
A YOUNG Servian became an American and accomplished wonders. Born in Servia between thirty and forty years ago, Nickola Tesla is a Slav of Slavs, with the racial characteristics strongly stamped in look, speech and action, but he has developed the same genius which has marked the highest class of American students and inventors. His father was an eloquent clergyman in the Greek church, but to his mother may probably be traced the secret of his inventive genius, for she made looms and churns for the pastoral household while her husband preached. Tesla's electrical work started when, as a boy, in the Polytechnic school at Gratz, he first saw a direct-current Gramme machine and was told that a commuter was a vital and necessary feature in all such apparatus. He was interested. He persevered in mathematics and mechanical studies and mastered incidentally half a dozen languages, and at last became assistant in the Government Telegraph Engineering Department at Buda-Pesth. He drifted westward and made his way to Paris; he then made his way across the Atlantic to work in one of the Edison shops and to enter upon a new stage of development. He evinced a marvelous comprehension and ingenuity and soon won the admiration of the great inventor. He worked as arduously as did Edison himself, but worked on new lines, lines so divergent from those of the master that separation was wise. Tesla had become a genius of the electrical world by himself, supported by Edison. The pupil has made marvelous discoveries and is known throughout the civilized world because of what he has accomplished in his field. He has a future of vast promise and bids fair to rival his illustrious master.
438
NICKOLA TESLA.
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MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
P ROMINENT in the literature of domestic economy, as well as in the field of fiction, the name of "Marion Harland" is in very truth a household word in the United States. The lady who has made this pen-name famous is Mrs. Mary Virginia Terhune. She was born in Amelia County, Virginia, December 31, 1831. At the age of fourteen she began to contribute to a weekly paper in Rich- mond, and when in her sixteenth year sent to a magazine a sketch entitled "Marrying through Prudential Motives," which was reprinted in England, translated for a French journal, retranslated into English for a London magazine, and then reproduced in its altered form in this country. In 1856 she married Rev. Edward Payson Terhune, who is now pastor of a Brooklyn church. She has been a constant contributor of tales, sketches and essays to magazines, edited a monthly called "Babyhood" for two years, besides conducting special depart- ments in "Wide-Awake" and "St. Nicholas," and in 1888 established a magazine called the "Home-Maker." Her first novel was " Alone: A Tale of Southern Life and Manners," issued under the pen-name of "Marion Harland," and has been followed by about twenty others, all of which have attained great popularity. She has also published a number of volumes on domestic economy, cookery, and various topics connected with home management, whereby she has become known to thousands of women throughout the civilized world, and is recognized as a high authority on all subjects associated with housekeeping. Mrs. Terhune has resided in New York since 1884, is a member of Sorosis and several other organizations of a literary and philanthropical character, and has lectured before various societies on her favorite themes.
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