USA > Kentucky > Biographical cyclopedia of the commonwealth of Kentucky > Part 94
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James Lisle (grandfather), a native of Clark County, was a son of John Lisle, who was one of the early settlers of Kentucky, he having located about a mile north of Boonesboro.
Esther Hampton Lisle (mother), daughter of George Hampton and Catherine Raut, was born in 1821 and died May 26, 1876. She was the mother of eleven children, of whom the following are living: David C. Lisle, James D. Lisle, Zip- porah, wife of Henry Oliver of Arlen, Clark County; Thomas Lisle, and Minerva, wife of J. N. Hodgkin of Elkin, Clark County. Marcus C. Lisle, deceased, was elected to Congress in 1892, when he was only twenty-nine years of age, and died July 7, 1894, while discharging the duties of that office. He was born September 22, 1863, in Clark County, Kentucky, and after at- tending the common schools of the county took a two years' course at Kentucky University. Lexington, afterwards studying law at Columbia College, New York. After finishing the law course he practiced law at the Winchester bar, and was elected judge of the Clark County Court in August, 1889; resigning this office in 1893 to take his seat in Congress. July 27, 1887, lie
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married Miss Lizzie B. Bean of Clark County, who died March 4, 1893, the day upon which he was to take his seat in Congress. They had one son, Claiborne Lisle, who was born September, 1889.
W ILLIAM HENRY WADSWORTH .- In the family Bible still owned and cher- ished by the descendants of the first-named, un- der date of 1632, the following memorandum is recorded:
"This day, Christopher and William Wads- worth came over in ye good ship Lion."
Of the antecedents of these two brothers, be- yond the fact that they were of English birth and of the Puritan faith, were of excellent repute, and acquitted themselves as became true men, nothing is known to the writer. In this land they took root and put forth vigorous branches in the New England colonies; and if trees may be judged by the fruit they bear, it will be ad- mitted that they must have come of good and sound stock. From Christopher descended Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose fame ex- tends wherever the English language is read or spoken as the sweetest and greatest of American poets. William Wadsworth, the younger broth- er, was twice married, and was the father of ten children. The name of Joseph Wadsworth, a son of William by the second marriage, is in- separably associated with one of the earliest struggles of the colonies for the right of self- government, and will live in American history as that of the hero who preserved the charter of Connecticut by concealing it in the oak tree, which ever since has been known as "The Charter Oak." He had five children, the oldest of whom was a son named Joseph B. Wadsworth. This son had a son and namesake, who had eight chil- dren, the third of whom was a son named Tim- othy Wadsworth, who was the father of eleven children. Rhoda Wadsworth, the youngest child of Timothy, married Dr. Samuel B. Barlow, and was the mother of the late S. L. M. Barlow of New York City, so well known as an able lawyer, a successful financier, and a liberal patron of art and literature. The youngest son of Timothy was the late Adna A. Wadsworth, who was born
in Hartford, Connecticut, on the 4th of May, 1795. He married in early life Mary Williams Ramsdell, daughter of Robert W. and Prudence Ramsdell of Hartford. Adna A. Wadsworth came to the West when a very young man, and located in Maysville, where he lived the rest of the days allotted to him in such a manner as to win the respect of all who knew him. Without the advantage of an academic or collegiate educa- tion, he was yet a man of intelligence and in- formation, as well as one of strong natural sense. He did not accumulate riches, nor even an inde- pendence, but he left to his only son the more valuable inheritance of manliness, self reliance, courage, integrity and an honorable character. He was long the marshal of Maysville, and made an efficient and fearless officer. His wife died in 1824, at the age of twenty-three years, leaving a son, William Henry Wadsworth. He married a second time, but both his children by the sec- ond wife died in infancy.
William Henry Wadsworth, the subject of this sketch, was born in Maysville, Kentucky, on July 4, 1821. Upon the early death of his mother, the little boy found a home in the family of David Smith, who lived a short distance from Maysville, on the trace beaten in the prehistoric ages by the buffalo in their roamings from the prairies of central Ohio to the salt springs of Kentucky. It was while he lived at this place, the playmate of the young daughters of Mr. Smith, who admired his grace and brightness, and whom he never ceased to hold in kindly re- gard, that he was seized with the ambition, and revealed to them his purpose, to own the spot overlooking the beautiful river, which he finally purchased, and where the end of life came to him. To his remaining parent he was an object at once of affection and pride; appreciating the value of the opportunities which had been denied to himself, the elder Wadsworth made exertions to have his son well educated. The boy was sent to the best schools to be found in the locality in which he lived. At first to a country school on Tuckahoe Ridge, where he had as his playfellows and classmates the sons and daugh- ters of the Virginian farmers who owned and occupied the lands for many miles around-then,
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as now, an uncommonly fine rural population. This was followed by several years of study at the Maysville Seminary, of which the late Jacob Rand and W. W. Richeson were the principals, and where he had as one of his schoolmates Ulysses S. Grant, whose home was then in Brown County, Ohio. His brilliant talents, his aptness in mastering all subjects with which he grappled, even at that early age, made a profound im- pression upon Gen. Grant, who, years after, in his headquarters at Millikin's Bend, spoke of him to the writer in terms of unstinted praise and the frankest admiration. The collegiate education of Mr. Wadsworth was obtained at the Augusta College, then in the height of its usefulness, with an able faculty and a large attendance of pupils. While of a playful temperament and fun-loving disposition, which remained with him through life, through the years of his boyhood and youth his assiduity in the acquisition of knowledge was remarkable. With a wonderfully retentive mem- ory, quick perception, and great facility of ac- quisition and expression, he did not rely on these qualities, but was at once most painstaking and industrious-a thorough student. It was while attending college at Augusta that a bough was blown from a tree under which he was passing, and, falling upon him, broke his left shoulder and arm, inflicting the injury which left him crippled for life. After leaving college, at which he graduated with distinguished honor, he was for a time a clerk in the dry goods store of James Clarke, then a Maysville merchant, and thus earned the means necessary to enable him to prepare for the profession in which he was dcs- tined to shine with a light as steady as it was brilliant. His legal studies were prosecuted in the office of Thomas Y. Payne and Henry Wal- ler, and under their instruction. The last named will be remembered as an accomplished gentle- man and one of the ablcst members of the Mays- ville bar of his time. Upon his admission to the bar, Mr. Wadsworth did not have to pass through the ordeal to which the young and untried law- yer is usually subjected-that of waiting through weary months, perhaps for years, for his first "case." Loved by his associates and by those of his own age, his industry, thoroughness and
manliness had also attracted the attention and won the respect of the business community and of the farmers of a prosperous and wealthy coun- ty. Business came to him unsought, without resort to chicanery or doubtful methods, and without accepting cases which the higher class of lawyers prefer to avoid. Almost at a bound he gained the front rank in his profession in all northern Kentucky, and held it, if not without a peer, certainly with no superior, for nearly or quite half a century-no mean tribute to his worth when one calls over the list of able and brilliant men who were his associates or antag- onists in many a stoutly contested battle in the courts.
In 1853 the Whigs of Lewis and Mason Coun- ties tendered Mr. Wadsworth an unsought nomi- nation as their candidate for the state senate, which he accepted, not without reluctance, and made his debut into the political arena in an able and thorough canvass of the Senatorial District. Such was his personal popularity, and so un- mixed the esteem in which he was held by mem- bers of both parties, that the field was left free to him without opposition, and not only did he draw out the full strength of the Whigs, but the votes of a large number of Democrats also were recorded in his favor. At this time Mr. Wads- worth was a little more than thirty years of age. Those who were so fortunate as to hear him could not but remark that, if he had ever had any of the affectations of the "boy orator" or of the "young man eloquent" about him, he had cer- tainly outgrown them. His speeches were ear- nest and animated, yet calm and dispassionate appeals to the reason and judgment of his audi- tors; clear cut, masterly arguments upon issues which strictly concerned them; free from all theatrical gesticulation and stage play, yet deliv- ered with fervor and fire; without florid or exag- gerated expression, and yet with a sustained beauty and purity of diction and sentiment run- ning all through them from the beginning to the close which was unsurpassed. The term for which he was elected was for four years, extend- ing over the sessions of 1853-4 and 1855-6. Dur- ing these sessions he addressed the senate on a number of important questions, not only draw-
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ing crowded and enthusiastic audiences from the interested public, but never failing to carry his point and eliciting the most complimentary opin- ions from his associates.
Though he agreed with the leading principles of the American party, and actively co-operated with it in opposing the candidates and measures of the Democrats, Mr. Wadsworth never united with that organization. In common with many members of the bar in 1856, he favored the candi- dacy of E. C. Phister, who had been his class- mate and townsman, and who, up to that time, had been a zealous Whig, for the circuit judge- ship. But developments during the canvass forced upon many of the Whigs the conviction that the motives which had induced them to sup- port Mr. Phister would be defeated by his elec- tion, and they insisted that Mr. Wadsworth should become a candidate in opposition. An election to the position would have been no advancement to Mr. Wadsworth, who was then in the enjoyment of a lucrative practice and in the full tide of a prosperous career. But he was not the man to hesitate when duty called or friends demanded personal sacrifices. He threw himself into the canvass with all his accustomed energy. Many Whigs were already committed to Phis- ter, believing him to be one of them;, Democrats, in the full persuasion that in the future he would co-operate with them, gave him their full strength; the combination was successful by a meagre majority. The announcement of his ad- hesion to the Democrats, which quickly followed the election of Judge Phister, fully vindicated the course of Mr. Wadsworth. During those years Mr. Wadsworth had been unremitting in the suc- cessful practice of his profession. In northern Kentucky he had no equal upon the hustings. His career as a legislator had been one of marked ability. In the canvass of 1860 the momentous issues involved stirred men's souls. Parties felt that it was a struggle for life, and they put for- ward their ablest men. It was at such a time that Mr. Wadsworth was chosen to form and lead the Union sentiment of the state as the candidate of the Bell-Everett party for elector from the state at large. The canvass he made in every district in Kentucky was conceded by all to have
been one of exceptional power and brilliancy, arousing the Union men to the utmost enthu- siasm and challenging the admiration of their most resolute opponents. John C. Breckinridge was defeated in Kentucky; the sentiment which kept Kentucky fast to her moorings within the Union and sent thousands of her sons into the Union army was crystallized during that canvass. It was felt and admitted that the result was in large measure due to the unanswerable argu- ments addressed to the good sense and judg- ment of the people by Mr. Wadsworth and the eloquent appeals by which he kindled and fanned into a flame their slumbering patriotism. The cause he had at heart triumphed through his ef- forts; but it was almost at the sacrifice of his own life; his physical endurance was unequal to the tax made upon it by his mental power; he retired from the canvass to be prostrated for weary months upon a bed of pain. Before he could leave his room one state after another had passed ordinances of secession, but Kentucky stood firm.
In May, 1861, the Union men of the Mays- ville district, assembled in convention at Grayson, without a dissenting voice, and without an in- timation from him that he desired it, tendered him their nomination for Congress. His oppo- nent in the race which ensued was John S. Wil- liams, who had the prestige of a military career in the war with Mexico, had been a Whig mem- ber of the legislature, and to whom must be con- ceded power and skill in exciting passion and stimulating prejudice. This is not the place for a contrast of two men so utterly unlike. Col. Williams, after a few meetings with Mr. Wads- worth before immense audiences, with their pas- sions at white heat, found that his interests re- quired him to refuse further joint discussions. The majority in the district for Mr. Wadsworth was more than eight thousand; in his own county it was over fifteen hundred in a vote of twenty- five hundred; in Col. Williams' county the Union majority was large. The seed sown by Mr. Wadsworth the previous fall bore good and abun- dant fruit in the spring harvest. Mr. Wadsworth was re-elected in 1863 as a conservative Union man. He went to Washington desiring to give
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the administration a cordial support in every measure for the restoration of the Union and the maintenance of the constitution, and which tend- ed to those ends. While to the end of the strug- gle, and in its every phase, he yielded to no man in devotion to the Union cause, he found himself unable to concur with the distinctive and an- nounced policy of the President and of the ma- jority in Congress on many measures which his judgment condemned as violations of good faith to the Union people in the Southern states, as calculated to prolong the war, to increase the bitterness of the strife, and to defeat the end in view as expressed in the Crittenden resolution. His dissent was frankly expressed and his oppo- sition was openly made, his speeches while in Congress voicing the sentiments of the sincerest friends of the Union in the country and of thou- sands of the bravest soldiers who fought and died under its flag. While the war progressed he was in the field and under fire on a number of occasions under General Nelson, General Green Clay Smith, General Lew Wallace and others. His patriotism and devotion were tested and proved by the severest ordeals through which a man can pass.
The war over, Mr. Wadsworth, declining a re- election to Congress, returned to the practice of his profession. In 1868 he made a brilliant can- vass of several of the Northern states in support of General Grant, and thereafter continued to act with the Republicans. He was offered and de- clined the mission to Austria. The commission was constituted to adjust the claims between this country and Mexico, and questions involving many millions were referred to that commission for adjudication. In cases in which the doors were open for so much fraud and perjury, General Grant was impressed with the fact that the honor of his administration not less than that of the United States, demanded that this government should be represented upon the commission by men of the very highest legal ability and of proved incorruptibility; by men whose personal characters would place their decisions above sits- picion. His choice rested upon Mr. Wadsworth, to whose patriotism he made an earnest appeal that he would accept a place on the commission.
To this service and in the discharge of this great trust, Mr. Wadsworth devoted a number of the best years of his life, separated from home and family, performing arduous labor which sapped his strength, and at a salary far below the usual earnings of his practice. It was not a reward that was given to, but a sacrifice that was de- manded of him. In very few instances were any of the questions arising in the adjudication of these claims referred to the umpire, Sir Edward Thornton, and in those instances they were in- variably decided as Mr. Wadsworth had pre- viously ruled.
In 1884 Mr. Wadsworth was a third time elected to Congress from the Maysville district, then largely Democratic, receiving the support of more than a thousand prominent Democrats of the district, some of whom had been Confed- erate soldiers, who desired in this public manner to express their appreciation of his worth, their confidence in his integrity, and their attachment to his person.
Mr. Wadsworth was of a delicate physical or- ganization; it was as if his mental vigor and fire preyed upon his body. He was slender al- most to the point of emaciation. His voice was clear, not strong; his articulation distinct, and pronunciation devoid of affectation. His man- ner was earnest, at times impetuous, almost to the point of vehemence. His diction was never florid, but was as simple as it was scholarly, chaste and elegant. His speech was never bur- dened with, nor his meaning obscured by, classi- cal and poetical quotations, which, when used, were employed solely as the vehicles of demon- stration. He never indulged in mere oratorical pyrotechnics; when his utterances were orna- mented with metaphor, it served to give force and power to his argument. When roused by the magnitude of the issue, he could rise to a high flight of eloquence, but he was remarkable for the elegance of diction and the elevation of sentiment which was sustained throughout and which distinguished all his speeches. In this he more nearly resembled Mr. Crittenden than any other of our public men; but he was himself, and no imitator of another. The highest faculty of Mr. Wadsworth was his power of close, clear,
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incisive, vigorous, unanswerable reasoning. He and belonged to a prominent and influential was a good classical scholar and had made him- family. self a proficient in several modern languages. A lover of polite literature, and a diligent reader of the best authors, his artistic taste was pleased and his lively fancy stimulated by the better class of poetry, of which he was a critical reader and excellent judge. Delighting in flowers, as he did in all things beautiful and lovely, he was an accomplished botanist. There are many who can testify that he was the embodiment of a noble and princely generosity, and there never was a truer nor a stancher friend. It need scarcely be added that he was utterly fearless.
Mr. Wadsworth was married to Miss Martha Morehead Wood, daughter of Charles Wood of Lewis County, and a member of a numerous and prominent family in northern Kentucky. They were the parents of seven children, of whoni Adna A., William H., Charles, John G., S. B. Wadsworth and Mrs. Bessie Clarke are living. Mrs. Wadsworth died December 21, 1891. Her husband followed her on April 2, 1893. He was at the time general attorney for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company in Kentucky, in which position he was succeeded by his son, law part- ner and namesake.
JAMES WILLIAM FERGUSON, late presi- dent of the Deposit Bank of Paris, was one of the most successful business men of Bourbon County. He was born in Winchester, Clark County, August 25, 1830; and is a son of Abram L. and Mary (Matson) Ferguson. His father was born in Fayette County, and his mother in Bourbon County. Abraham Ferguson (grand- father) was a native of Spottsylvania County, Virginia, who emigrated to Kentucky and be- came one of the pioneers of Fayette County, making his settlement in the eastern part of the county, near Childsburgh. The old Ferguson homestead, containing five hundred and thirty acres of land, is now owned by his grandson, William H. Ferguson. Abraham Ferguson was a very successful business man and became quite wealthy. He was one of the largest slave owners of his day. His father was a native of Scotland,
Abram L. Ferguson (father) was born in 1803. For many years he was engaged in mercantile pursuits in Winchester; and upon the death of his father in 1840, from inheritance and by pur- chase of the interests of other heirs, the old homestead came into his possession. He soon removed there, where he lived until his death in 1854. It then became the property of James W. and since of William H. Ferguson. Abram L. Ferguson married Mary Matson, and they had seven children, of whom two are now living: Robert M., a banker at Lexington and a wealthy real estate owner, and Mrs. Lucy Campbell, who resides in Berlin, Germany, for the purpose of educating her daughters in music. One of her daughters has the reputa- tion of being one of the finest vocalists in Ger- many.
Noah Ferguson, deceased, a brother of James William Ferguson, resided for many years in Bourbon and Fayette Counties, and was a prom- inent farmer and horse breeder.
Thomas Matson (grandfather) was a Virgin- ian, who joined one of the early tides of emigra- tion to Kentucky and located on a farm about six miles southeast of Paris, near Bethlehem Church. He was prosperous as a farmer and a large slave owner. The Matsons are of distin- guished English ancestry. Colonel Robert Mat- son of Missouri, an uncle of James W. Fer- guson, was prominent in the late Civil war.
James W. Ferguson remained in Winchester until he was ten years of age, when, with his parents, he removed to the old homestead in Fayette County, in 1840. He received a good English education in the schools of his neigh- borhood, and continued to reside at home until 1856, when he wedded Martha Hume, a daugh- ter of Captain William P. Hume of Bourbon County. He immediately removed to the latter county, purchasing a farm of two hundred and fifty-seven acres, five miles west of Paris, on the Hume and Bedford turnpike.
Captain Hume (father-in-law), who died in 1875, was one of the leading citizens of his county.
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Eight children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson: William, deceased; Abram Luns- ford, a farmer in Scott County; Maggie, wife of Thomas Waller of Cincinnati; Robert H., a farm- er of the county; Lucy, wife of J. M. Hall of Bourbon County; Volney W., James W., Jr., also farmers, and Matilda, wife of James Thompson, farmer. Mr. Ferguson was most liberal with his children, giving each of them from four hundred to five hundred acres of bluegrass land, among the finest farms of the bluegrass region. He owned five thousand acres of land before it was divided among his children.
In 1889 he removed from the farm to Paris, having been elected president of the Deposit Bank of Paris in 1887. He was a director and one of the largest stockholders in the bank for thirty years, and for several years held the office of vice president. Bourbon County has one of the best agricultural associations in the state, and for six or eight years Mr. Ferguson was its president, always taking an active interest in the success of the Bourbon County exhibits at its fairs. This association has been in existence for over fifty-six years and is next to the Fayette County Association in importance, and for many years its county fair was the best in the state.
Mr. Ferguson was a deacon in the Christian Church. He had one of the finest homes in Paris. In the latter years of his life he gave his time in a business way to the management of the Deposit Bank, which is the oldest, with the exception of the Northern Bank, in the county, its capital being one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000), and its average deposits one hundred and eighty thousand dollars ($180,000).
F RANK P. KENYON, M. D., a leading phy- sician of Middlesborough, was born in Ply- mouth, Michigan, March 1, 1853.
His father, Orrin Kenyon, was born in Wayne County, New York, and removed to Plymouth, Michigan, in 1828, when that section was little less than a wilderness; improved a farm and has been a resident and farmer there all his life, and is now approaching his ninetieth year. His fath- er, Elisha Kenyon, was a native of Wayne Coun- ty, New York; removed with his family to Mich-
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