USA > Kentucky > Biographical cyclopedia of the commonwealth of Kentucky > Part 92
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from his decisions or rulings, a fact that can not be stated of any other presiding officer in that body.
At the close of the session of 1894, having read law while in the newspaper office and in the legislature, he was admitted to the Louisville bar, and became associated in the practice of law with F. J. Hagan, and at once entered upon the profession which had been his choice for years. The universal acquaintance which he had made while engaged in newspaper work, and his wide popularity, having a friend in every ac- quaintance, enabled him to step into a lucrative practice at once.
His record as a legislator was pure and spot- less, and his reputation for industry and integrity gave assurance of his honesty of purpose. Suc- cess had crowned his every effort, and this gave him a prestige and inspired confidence on the part of litigants. His services were sought and im- portant cases placed in his hands, which older lawyers expected would have come to them, and his success in the legal profession was at once assured.
Mr. Carroll was married June 6, 1894, to Sarah F. Holt, daughter of ex-Chief Justice W. H. Holt of Frankfort.
Anthony Carroll, father of Anthony J. Carroll, was an extensive railroad contractor, who lived in Oldham County, where he purchased a tract of six hundred acres of land, upon which he made his home until his death in 1871, aged fifty- six years. He was a native of Ireland, where his father, Anthony Carroll, lived and died.
Elizabeth Collins Carroll (mother) was a na- tive of Ireland and a highly educated and accon1- plished lady. She survived her husband, and died at her home in Oldham County in 1883, aged fifty-one years. Her father, Edward Col- lins, died on his native heath in Ireland.
JAMES H. HICKMAN, Mayor of Owensboro JA and one of the most influential citizens of that city, son of Dr. William A. and Burnette (Barbour) Hickman, was born in Bardstown, Kentucky, March 17, 1852. He was educated in St. Joseph College at Bardstown and in the
University of Illinois; and, after completing his literary course, studied medicine and attended the medical department of the University of Louis- ville, from which he graduated in 1875. For five years following he was associated with his father in the practice of medicine, but abandoned his profession in 1880 to engage in the tobacco business with F. J. Clarke, under the firm name of Clarke & Hickman. This partnership con- tinued until 1883, when Dr. Hickman was elected president of the Owensboro Wagon Company --- one of the most successful manufacturing enter- prises in that city-a position which he still re- tains. He is vice president of the First National Bank and has other investments and business interests, but has given especial attention to the management of the affairs of the Wagon Com- pany.
After serving the public for several years as trustee of the School Board and as a member of the City Council, he was elected mayor of the city in 1890, and has been twice re-elected- in 1892 and 1894.
A man of superior business ability, of un- swerving integrity, of genial, courteous demean- or, he is at once the exacting man of business and the generous friend of all who have dealings or intercourse with him. Nor is his popularity confined to party lines, for while he is a Democrat when it comes to a vote or a political contest, he knows no party in the discharge of his official duty, enjoying the confidence and respect of men of all parties.
He is a member of the principal benevolent orders, including Knights Templar, Knights of Pythias, Elks, Royal Arcanum and Knights of the Ancient Essenic Order, and is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Dr. Hickman was married October 1, 1877, to Adele H. Jackson, daughter of James S. and Sue (Hawes) Jackson. She was a native of Ma- sonville, Daviess County, Kentucky. She died leaving three children, Virginia, Christopher and William.
Dr. William A. Hickman (father) was born in Shelbyville, Kentucky, October 26, 1816. He removed with his father to Sangamon County, Illinois, in 1833, where he remained four years,
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when he returned to Shelbyville and began the study of medicine.
In 1840 he entered the medical department of the University of Louisville, from which he grad- uated in 1842, and began the practice of niedi- cine in Shelbyville. Finding, however, that his practice would probably conflict with his old friend and preceptor, Dr. G. W. Nuckols, he re- moved to Bardstown in 1840, where he was a leading physician for twenty-five years, when he turned over his lucrative practice to his brother, Dr. J. F. Hickman, and removed to Owensboro in 1865 and practiced medicine in that city and vicinity for another quarter of a century, when he went to Springfield, Illinois, to reside with his daughter, Mrs. James P. Radcliff. He practiced medicine there for a few years and then engaged in the drug business, in which he continued until his death, Deceniber 20, 1894.
Dr. Hickman was actively engaged in the prac- tice of his profession for more than fifty years, and was a conspicuous figure in the communities in which he lived, a man of superior intellect, kind hearted and benevolent, with a good word for everyone, and his reputation as a physician was of the highest character.
He was the leading spirit in establishing the first railroad at Owensboro, and was the first president of the road. He was an active member of the Methodist Church for over sixty ycars, dur- ing which time he was an exemplary Christian gentleman.
Dr. W. A. Hickman was married (first) in 1844 at Bardstown to Burnette Barbour, daughter of William and Jane Barbour. She was born in Virginia in 1827, and died in Bardstown in 1853. Her parents having died when she was quite young, she made her home with her uncle, Ben Hardin of Bardstown. She was educated in Dr. Atkinson's school in Bardstown, and was a very highly accomplished member of the distinguished Barbour and Hardin families. Ben Hardin mar- ried Betsy Barbour, a sister of William Barbour.
William Hickman (grandfather) was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1790; removed to Sanganion County, Illinois, in 1833; then went to Springfield, Illinois, where he died in 1874. He married Mary E. Cardwell at Shelbyville,
Kentucky, in 1813, and she died in Springfield, Illinois, in 1833. William Hickman was a mer- chant in Springfield and several times a member of the legislature. His father was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, and was present at the siege of Yorktown, and was one of the guards ap- pointed by General Washington to take Corn- wallis to Richmond.
M' RS. LUCY DOWNS, the first white child born of American parents west of the Allegheny mountains, was a resident of Old Town, Greenup County, for over forty years. She was the daughter of Jeremiah and Lucy Virgin, born September 17, 1769, in what is now Fayette County, Pennsylvania, near Uniontown, which was then called Beesontown. She re- moved in 1790, with her parents and brother, Brice Virgin, to Limestone, now Maysville, Kcn- tucky, and thence in 1792 to Cincinnati-where she was married September 20, 1800, under a marriage license issued by Gen. Arthur St. Clair, as governor of the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio. In June, 1845, part of her regular family at Old Town were her daugh- ter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter; she then distinctly remembered Gen. Washing- ton's visit to her father's and a neighbor's in 1773 when surveying what was afterwards called Washington's Bottom.
W ALTER O. BULLOCK, M. D., an emi- nent physician of Lexington, son of Sam- tel R. and Eliza Whitney Bullock, was born near Lexington, Kentucky, in 1842. His father died in 1849 and he was cared for by good and wise friends. He passed through the Sophomore class of the Transylvania University at Lexington and was then sent to the University of Virginia, where he remained until the beginning of the Civil war, when he enlisted in the Confederate service, and was with the army of the West until the close of tlie strife. He then began the study of medicine, entering first the University of Louis- ville, and from there going to Bellevue Medical College, New York City, where he graduated in 1869.
On his return home lie was appointed de111011-
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strator of anatomy in the Louisville Medical College and remained there for one year; prac- ticed his profession from 1871 to 1875 in the state of Mississippi, and returning to Kentucky was appointed by Governor Blackburn superin- tendent of the Eastern Asylum for the Insane at Lexington, which position he held for three years. He has since been engaged in the active practice of his profession in Lexington. He is president of the Board of Medical Examiners, and sur- geon for the Lexington Eastern Railroad.
Samuel R. Bullock (father), son of Waller and Maria B. Bullock, was born in Fayette County, Kentucky, August 1, 1817; graduated from Cen- ter College in 1838, and after completing his law course at the Transylvania University, began practice at Lexington. In 1845 he became a partner of J. C. Breckinridge and afterwards of James B. Beck. He was a brilliant lawyer and personally enjoyed the confidence of the com- munity to an unusual degree, as was evidenced by his being made executor of many valuable estates. He died of cholera July 12, 1849. He married Eliza Whitney, who died in 1859.
The name Bullock has been a power in Fayette County for generations. The famous educator, Rev. Dr. Joseph Bullock, principal of Walnut Hills Academy, a celebrated female school lo- cated seven miles from Lexington, left his im- press for good on the minds and characters of hundreds of Kentucky women and those of other states.
OSEPH SAMUEL BOTTS, corporation law- J yer of Lexington, son of H. C. Botts and Nannie Felix, was born in Woodford County, Kentucky, September 17, 1865. After the coun- try schools, he attended W. L. Threlkeld's school in Lexington, and was in Georgetown College for five years, but was prevented from finishing his collegiate studies by illness. He then at- tended the law department of the University of Virginia and graduated with the honors of his class and with the degree of Bachelor of Laws; was elected judge of the moot court of the senior class, this honor being based upon the class and social standing and merit of the student and of the man. He was admitted to the bar in 1886
and at once began to give special attention to the legal business of corporations, in which he has been eminently successful, and is attorney for the following building and loan associations: The United States Savings and Loan Company of St. Paul; The United States Building and Loan Association of Louisville; Commercial Building and Trust of Louisville; Deposit Build- ing and Loan Association of Lexington, and Fayette Building and Loan Association of Lex- ington, Kentucky, besides which he represents a number of the leading collection agencies throughout the country and many of the leading business firms of Lexington, including L. & G. Straus, Pearson & Clark, Williamson & Bro., Lindsey & Nugent and others. Mr. Botts is a thorough corporation, equity and commercial lawyer, in which line he has been eminently suc- cessful and has proven himself one of those useful factors which have been brought to the front by the advancement of the city of Lexington. He prosecutes his cases with good judgment and with vim and vigor, showing due respect to op- posing parties, and his intense interest in every transaction inspires his clients with utmost con- fidence in his management and his fidelity.
H. C. Botts (father) was a son of Henry and Virginia Botts, and was born and educated in Montgomery County, Kentucky.
Nannie Felix Botts (mother), daughter of Jo- seph and Jane Shouse Felix, was born in Wood- ford County in 1839, and graduated from a fe- male seminary in Versailles. She was a highly educated woman and an accomplished musician, having studied under Prof. De Roode and other eminent teachers. She married H. C. Botts in 1864 and died in Woodford County in 1865, leav- ing her only child, the subject of this sketch, to her mother, to whom he owes all of the quali- ties of his noble and useful manhood.
Jane Shouse Felix (grandmother and foster mother) was a daughter of Samuel Shouse and Katherine Perry. She died in 1894 and is buried beside her husband in the old family burial ground of her fathers.
Joseph Felix (grandfather) was born in 1808, and was a farmer in Woodford County, and also manufactured bagging and rope and had an ex-
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tensive business with the South. He was a member of the Hillsboro Baptist Church; died in 1867, and is buried beside his wife, near Mor- tonsville. Their children are Elizabeth, wife of J. C. Hall; John I. Felix; William M. Felix; Cordelia, wife of C. T. Dale; Alice, wife of C. G. Skillman; Josiah Felix; Mary, wife of B. P. Car- penter; Emma, wife of L. J. Cleveland, and Nannie, deceased, who married H. C. Botts.
C OL. CHARLES S. TODD, a soldier and diplomatist, son of Judge Thomas Todd of the United States Supreme Court, was born near Danville, Kentucky, January 22, 1791, and died at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, May 14, 1871, aged over eighty years. He was educated in the best schools of Kentucky; graduated at William and Mary College, Virginia, 1809; studied law with his father and attended the law lectures at Litch- field, Connecticut, under the celebrated Judges Gould and Rees, 1810; practiced law at Lex- ington, 1811-12; volunteered June, 1812, and was made acting quartermaster of the advance of the Northwestern army; was on Gen. Wil- liam H. Harrison's staff, as division judge advo- cate of the Kentucky troops, December, 1812; bearer of instructions to Gen. Winchester, pre- vious to the disastrous affair of the River Raisin; upon the recommendation of Gen. Harrison was appointed captain in the Seventeenth United States infantry, and soon after appointed aid to that commander, whose official report highly commended his important services in the canı- paign and particularly in the battle of the Thames; he subsequently acted as deputy in- spector general of the Eighth Military District, then as adjutant general, and in March, 1815, was promoted inspector general, with rank of brevet colonel of cavalry. Gen. Harrison, in a letter subsequent to the war, to a member of President Madison's cabinet, expressed the opin- ion that "Col. Todd was equal in bravery and su- perior in intelligence to any officer of his rank in the army."
Upon the disbandment of the army in 1815, Col. Todd resumed the practice of law at Frank- fort, and in 1816 married the youngest daughter of Gov. Shelby; was secretary of state under
Gov. Madison, 1816; representative in the legis- lature from Franklin County, 1817 and 1818; charge d'affaires to Colombia, in South America, 1818-23; on his return, settled in Shelby County as a farmer; was a commissioner to the Presby- terian General Assembly in Philadelphia, 1837 and 1839, when the separation was effected, he sustaining the old school; was vice president of the Kentucky State Agricultural Society for sev- eral years, and delivered the annual address, 1839; in connection with Ben Drake, prepared sketches of Gen. Harrison, 1840, and became editor of the Cincinnati Republican, a Whig newspaper; ac- companied Gen. Harrison to Washington, Feb- ruary, 1841, having been selected by him as United States minister to Vienna, but this ap- pointment was prevented by the death of the president; in the summer of 1841 President Tyler appointed him to the mission of St. Petersburg, which he held until displaced by President Polk in the fall of 1845. At St. Petersburg, and during his visits to the interior of Russia and to the king of Sweden (Bernadotte, the only marshal of the great Napoleon who retained his crown), he was treated with most marked consideration.
G EN. THOMAS METCALFE, the tenth governor of Kentucky, was born in Fau- quier County, Virginia, March 20, 1780. His mother was the Sally Metcalfe who was shot from her horse, on the 19th of January, 1781, by a British sentinel-whilst endeavoring to make her escape from the Elk Run neighborhood, in that county, where the American traitor, Gen. Bene- dict Arnold, with 1,800 British soldiers, was "ex- ercising the most unheard of cruelty, indiscrim- inately on men, women and children, and com- mitting wanton destruction of every kind of prop- erty." She recovered from her wound, and with her brave husband, a captain in the Revolution- ary war, and "an acquaintance of George Wash- ington," emigrated to Kentucky in 1785, and settled in Fayette, but removed in a few years to Nicholas County. They were poor and humble. in his early youth, young Metcalfe was sent to school only long enough to obtain a knowledge of the rudiments of an English education-suf- ficient, however, to inspire an ardent love for
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knowledge. At sixteen, he was apprenticed to an elder brother, a stone-mason. While learning his trade, his otherwise leisure hours were de- voted to study and to books. What to other boys was labor and irksome, was to him relaxa- tion and full of promise for the future. At nine- teen his father died; and upon him fell a large portion of the burden-to him a cherished filial privilege-of caring for his mother and several children. As a mason he built, of stone, several court houses-at West Union, Adams County, Ohio; at Greensburg, Green County, Kentucky, in 1806 (still standing in 1873), and others, and laid the foundation of that at Paris, Bourbon County, which was burnt down May 8, 1872, but of which his uncle, John Metcalfe, built the super- structure. From his trade and his great earnest- ness afterwards as a public speaker, he received the sobriquet of the "Old Stone Hammer," by which he was familiarly and proudly known for forty-five years.
In 1809 he made his first public speech. A requisition had been made upon the state to vin- dicate the honor of the nation in the conten- plated difficulties with old Spain. His own fire and enthusiasm were quickly communicated to the crowd, and volunteers flocked to his standard in numbers above his complement. He had twice before raised volunteers for contemplated service against Spain, and now for the third time was disappointed. He quietly doffed his military title and took up his stone-hammer. In 1812 he was elected to represent Nicholas County in the lower branch of the Kentucky legislature; and re- elected 1813, '14, '15, '16 and '17-in 1813, while absent as a soldier, receiving every vote in the county but thirteen. In the spring of 1813 he raised a company of volunteers, and at the battle of Fort Meigs was under Col. Boswell, on the left flank of the line on this side of the river, which defeated more than double its number of .Indians; his intrepidity and gallantry secured the favorable notice of the commander-in-chief, Gen. William H. Harrison, afterwards president of the United States. In 1818 he was elected to congress, and re-elected four times; but during the last term, in 1828, he resigned to make the race for governor as the candidate of the Na-
tional Republican (or Adams) party-being elect- ed by 38,940 votes, to 38,231 for the able and popular Maj. William T. Berry, the Jackson can- didate. The latter party elected John Breathitt lieutenant governor over Judge Joseph R. Un- derwood by 1,087 majority.
In February, 1827, Gen. Metcalfe was chal- lenged to fight a duel by George McDuffie of South Carolina, for offensive language used in a newspaper article; he accepted and named rifles as the weapons at ninety feet. McDuffie, insist- ing on pistols, dropped the matter rather than fight with rifles.
Gov. Metcalfe served four years in the state senate from Nicholas and Bracken Counties, 1834-38; in 1840, and for some years, was presi- dent of the state board of internal improvement; and in 1848-49 filled by appointment of Gov. Helm the unexpired term of John J. Crittenden in the United States Senate. He died at his home at Forest Retreat of cholera, August 18, 1855, aged seventy-five years.
T HOMAS HARRIS BARLOW, who was born August 5, 1789, in Nicholas County, Kentucky, and died June 22, 1865, in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the most ingenious and celebrated of Lexington inventors. His education was lim- ited. He was a soldier of the War of 1812, in Colonel Richard M. Johnson's regiment. He built a steamboat at Augusta, Bracken County. After his removal to Lexington, he built, in the winter of 1826-7, a steam locomotive, with car at- tached, for two passengers, and with power to ascend an elevation of eighty feet to the mile. In May, 1827, it was opened to the public for exhi- bition, in a large room over Joseph Bruen's ma- chine shop, where an oval track around the room was constructed, and the first "train" in western America put in motion. General Leslie Combs, Dr. Wm. S. Chipley and other old citizens are still living who took a ride at fifty cents a ticket. Sam- uel Robb purchased the novelty for travel -- vis- iting Louisville, Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans, at which latter place it was burned while on exhibition. In 1827 he built another locomo- tive and sold it to a party who found it profitable to travel and exhibit it. In 1835 another locomo-
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tive -- with two upright cylinders and lever beams, both engines attached to one axle, with crooks at right angles, and upright boilers -- was built by Jos. Bruen, for the new railroad from Lexington to Frankfort, constructed of strap-iron rails spiked down to stone sills, which proved to be as unsubstantial as its advocates claimed it would be substantial.
In 1845, in the silversmith shop of his son, Mil- ton Barlow, he made a small, rude planetarium, to illustrate the motion of the heavenly bodies in teaching his grandchildren. The idea grew as he studied and labored, and his son and Wm. J. Dal- sem aided him in working out such combinations gearing as produced the minute fractional rela- tive revolutions of the planets. After three years' patient labor, the first fine instrument was com- pleted, and sold in 1849 to Girard College, Phila- delphia. Other instruments were built during the next ten years, and after the exhibition of one at the World's Fair in New York, in 1851, sold for $2,000 each; two of the larger size to Congress for the Military Academy at West Point, N. Y., and the Naval Academy at Annapo- lis, Maryland, and one to the city of New Or- leans-besides a number of smaller ones to col- leges and public institutions. Thus has Ken- tucky the honor of presenting to the scientific world the only perfect instrument to show the motions of the solar system-the dates of all eclipses, of the transits of Mercury and Venus, and every other suggested problem during hun- dreds of years, that scientific men were curious to test it. It is one of the most exact and wonderful combinations of machinery ever made.
In 1840, Mr. Barlow had invented a rifled can- non, and made a model, but laid it aside. In 1855, encouraged by the liberality of Congress, in buy- ing two of his planetariums, he obtained for his gun a patent, with the most comprehensive claims. Congress appropriated $3,000 for an ex- perimental gun-which was cast at Knapp & Tot- ten's great foundry in Pittsburgh, and taken to Lexington to be rifled and completed by the father and son. It weighed, finished, 6,900 pounds, was five and one-half inches bore, and twisted one turn in forty feet. It then was sent to the Washington navy yard to be tested, and
developed greater accuracy and range than was expected. Although neglected for awhile by our own government, it attracted the attention of for- eign ministers and agents, and is believed to have originated or suggested most of the rifled guns of Europe and the United States. Previous to this, Mr. Barlow invented an automatic nail and tack machine, which capitalists eagerly pur- chased. About 1861, a stroke of paralysis, from which he recovered but partially, cut short Mr. Barlow's usefulness as an inventor. His son Mil- ton, on returning from the Confederate army in 1865, gathered up the fragments of $9,000 worth of planetariums built for educational institutions in the South-which could not reach them be- cause of the Civil War, and which were broken to pieces or scattered by the malicious and destruc- tive spirit of some Federal soldiers-and finished two in elegant style. One of these, by the liberal- ity of the Kentucky Legislature, he was enabled to exhibit at the World's Exposition in Paris, France, in 1867-as Kentucky's contribution to that grand collection of the products of all civil- ized nations. It received the highest premium awarded to any illustrative apparatus.
S TONEWALL J. DOUTHITT of New Cas- tle, clerk of the Henry Circuit Court, son of Silas P. and Lucy (Clements) Douthitt, was born in Henry County, near Lockport, February 22, 1861. He was educated in the common schools and at the Central Normal School at Danville, Indiana. After leaving school at the age of twenty years, he was engaged in farming, and being of a very studious turn of mind and very fond of general reading, he intended to choose the profession of law for his occupation, but circumstances diverted him from this course.
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