USA > Maryland > Talbot County > History of Talbot county, Maryland, 1661-1861, Volume I > Part 67
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JAMES LLOYD MARTIN
that what he most desired was exactly what they in reality wished, and thus while seeming to follow popular sentiment, he was in reality guid- ing, or even creating it. Even when his party had been distracted by fac- tions, he had been able to silence discontent by his great personal weight and acknowledged powers, or he had been able to compromise differences and assuage bitterness, so as to bring about union where disintegration seemed inevitable.
As a private citizen, Mr. Martin possessed many fine traits of char- acter. He was hospitable, obliging, generous and charitable. He lived liberally, and seemed always glad to have his friends participate with him in all he had that was enjoyable. He was eminently social in his habits, loving a free and unrestrained intercourse with his fellow men. Though somewhat regardless of conventionalities, he was nevertheless appreciative of those becoming forms and customs that characterize the polite. In his conversation he abounded with humor and anecdote. His wonderful memory was filled with stories of men of his time, which he told in a style peculiarly characteristic. He was always ready to perform a kindness, as many can testify beside those who had a claim on his favor. Those who enjoyed his intimacy know how often and grossly his kind and obliging disposition was abused. In his charities he was constant and unostentatious. He made no merit of these, but regarded them only as a part of his daily life, to be no more thought of after their performance. He was a warm friend, and while enmity lasted, a formidable enemy; yet he was placable, and after reconciliation, har- bored no hatred. He made no open pretensions to a religious profession, but the subject of religion engrossed his mind much during his leisure, and was one of his most interesting topics of conversation with intimate friends. The hypocritical he despised, but no one had a greater rever- ence for true piety and religious things, and no one had stronger convic- tions of the truths of Christianity.
In fine, it may be said that Mr. Martin was a man of strongly marked features of character. He took no care to conceal his faults, which were often the first traits to be noticed. His virtues were greater than his faults, but less prominent, and discoverable only after a closer study of the qualities of his mind and heart. He did not possess the softness and gentleness that render men at once amiable to us, often at the ex- pense of our respect, but rather he possessed that roughness and blunt- ness which at first repels, but afterward wins upon our regard. If he was a man to make some enemies, he was also one to make more friends. Now that he is gone, those who disliked him, if such there be, will remem-
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ber the causes of their enmity, as far as they lay in him, as the eccen- tricities of a sturdy character, and those who loved him, of whom there are many, will cherish the memory of his virtues as a rich legacy of friendship: while all, friends and enemies, will preserve recollections of him, to be transmitted by them to their posterity as interesting tra- ditions of one of the most remarkable, valuable and influential men this county has produced.
GOVERNOR SAMUEL STEVENS 1778-1860
The early American ancestors of Governor Stevens were Quakers, and were among the first white settlers in Dorchester County. The first of the name to whom a tract of land was granted on the great Choptank river, a few miles below Cambridge, adjoining Horn's Point, was William Stevens, who, with Magdalen, his wife, lies buried in the family graveyard on this old homestead, where their tombs may yet be seen.
His son William Stevens, Jr., crossed over the Choptank river and settled in Talbot County, on Dividing Creek, almost directly opposite his father's estate in Dorchester County. By his will, probated April 7, 1701, he devised to his son, Samuel, his dwelling plantation, Comp- ton, and Edmondson's Lower Cove.
From Samuel, the Compton estate descended to his son John, and from him to his grandson Samuel, Jr., the subject of this memoir. He did not enjoy the advantages of a liberal education, his father, John Stevens, who was a large landowner, having died when Samuel, Jr., was a youth, had left him a large estate in Trappe District, which included his homestead Compton. His uncle, who became his guardian, and had the management of his landed estates, brought him up with the idea that farming was the proper avocation of a Maryland gentle- man, he consequently discouraged him from studying for any of the learned professions. Although lacking a collegiate education, he, how- ever, acquired a fairly good knowledge of Mathematics, History and the British Classics, at the school of the Reverend John Bowie, an Episcopal minister, who was for some time rector of Saint Peter's Parish. After leaving this school, he was engaged in business in Phila- delphia until he attained his majority, when he returned to Talbot, and settled on his family homestead where he continued to live for the remainder of his long life of over four score years.
He married Miss Eliza May of Chester, Pa., who died many years before him.
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GOVERNOR SAMUEL STEVENS
In politics, for which he early developed an especial fondness, he was always an ardent democrat. He invariably characterized those who entertained political principals adverse to his own, as "damned feder- alists," and persisted in doing so to the end of his long life, and for many years after the Federal party had ceased to exist, and had been super- ceded by the Whig party. He was repeatedly elected a delegate to the Maryland Legislature, serving in the sessions of 1809, 1811, 1813, 1817, 1819 and 1820. He took an active part in the political campaign against the Federalist governor, Charles Goldsborough, of Dorchester, in 1818, who was defeated by Samuel Sprigg, the democratic candidate. This enabled Mr. Stevens to secure the governorship of Maryland in 1822, the term then being for but one year. He was again re-elected, in 1823, and for the third time, in 1824. Having served for three con- secutive years, the full extent of the term as then limited by the state constitution, he retired to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, and was never again a candidate for any public office.
He was the 18th Governor of Maryland, and one of the four gov- ernors that Talbot County has, thus far, furnished the state; the other three being Edward Lloyd, the 13th, Daniel Martin, the 20th and Philip Francis Thomas, the 28th Governor of Maryland.
Born in 1778, in the very midst of the American Revolution, he was of course too young to remember any of the exciting incidents of those stirring times. During the war of 1812, he was serving his state as a law maker. Dying, as he did, on the very eve of our unhappy civil war, he was fortunate in escaping participation in any of the three American wars. His administration as Governor was not an especially eventful one. There were no momentous matters requiring legislation. The enfranchisement of the Jews by the Maryland Legislature was one of the most notable acts of legislation during his term of office. An- other commendable act, to which he gave his assent as governor, was one extending "to all citizens of Maryland the same civil rights and re- ligious privileges that were enjoyed under the Constitution of the United States." It enacted that "no religious test shall ever be re- quired as a qualification to any office or public trust under the State of Maryland." It altered the oath of members of the Legislature, and of other public officers, allowing them to either swear or affirm, thereby admitting those belonging to the Society of Friends or Quakers to the privilege of holding either an elective or appointive office, a right which had long been unjustly denied them. The greatest event in the history of Maryland that occurred during Governor Stevens' admin-
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istration, was the visit to Baltimore of that great hero of the Ameri- can Revolution, General LaFayette. The grandest civic and mili- tary parade that Baltimore city had ever turned out, marched to Fort McHenry on the 25th of August, 1824, to greet LaFayette, where, in front of a tent that had been Washington's headquarters during the Revolution, Governor Stevens welcomed him as the guest of the State of Maryland.
Governor Stevens was for many years an active and useful mem- ber of the Board of Agriculture for the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and for several years its President. In the book of the proceedings of this Board and in the minutes of a meeting at Locust Grove in Bailey's Neck the residence of Mr. Thomas T. Hayward on August 31, 1843, the following interesting item is recorded:
Governor Stevens appeared this day in a coat and vest which he wore in 1808, and in pantaloons which were twelve years old. But for the great heat of the day he would have ridden his mare, which is 28 years old, and has never been struck with a whip or spur, under the saddle or in the harness, and is still a good animal, so much for taking care of animals and things. The mare was got by Oscar.
It was upon the back of this faithful steed, which he called "Pin- wire," just nineteen years before the above date, that our truly rural governor had ridden from his Talbot country-seat, Compton, all the way around the head of the Chesapeake bay to Baltimore, to welcome La- Fayette. The coat referred to was a swallow-tailed blue jeans, home- spun coat, with brass buttons, that he had worn on this famous ride, and in which he had received the marquis, who was dressed in his full regimentals, covered with gold lace and foreign orders. The gov- ernor boasted, in his old age, that he had never worn any other than homespun clothing in his whole life.
In religion he was an Episcopalian, and was a regular attendant upon the Sunday services at old White Marsh Church, to which he always came on horseback at all seasons, while the other members of his family came in his coach.
He died in 1860, in his 82nd year. . He had but one child, a son, Edwin John Stevens, who married Miss Sarah Hooper Eccleston, of Cambridge, and who died in early manhood, leaving two sons, Samuel, of Cambridge, and Edward John, of Baltimore, and two daughters, both of whom are deceased; the older, Eliza May, died unmarried, the younger, Sarah Eccleston, was the 1st wife of Commander Thomas C. B. Howard of the State Fishery Force, and left one son, Edward J. Howard of Cam- bridge, Md.
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GENERAL TENCH TILGHMAN
GENERAL TENCH TILGHMAN 1810-1874
In almost every community it is the fate of a few leading citizens to be pioneers in the development of the many latent resources of their own immediate section of country; to be foremost in all public enter- prises; to devote all their energies toward the social betterment of their fellow men to the neglect of their own private interests, and to enrich the general public while they impoverish themselves. Talbot county furnished a citizen of this type in General Tench Tilghman.
He was born at "Plimhimmon," an estate of seven hundred acres in Oxford Neck, Talbot County, on March 25, 1810. He was the only son of Tench Tilghman of "Hope," grandson of Colonel Tench Tilghman, Washington's confidential aid-de-camp and private secre- tary, and great-grandson of Hon. Matthew Tilghman, of Rich Neck Manor, the Patriarch of the Maryland Colony.
He had the advantages of a liberal education, having graduated from Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., at the age of seventeen, and four years later, in 1832, from the U. S. Military Academy, West Point, N. Y.
Upon receiving his commission as a lieutenant in the regular army, he was stationed, for a short time, at Fort Severn, an army post at Annapolis, Md., whereon the U. S. Naval Academy was later located. He joined the expedition under Gen. Winfield Scott against Black Hawk, Chief of the Sac and Fox tribes of Indians that were then war- ring against the white settlers near Rock Island, Ill. Black Hawk surrendered before General Scott's command reached Rock Island. Cholera having broken out among General Scott's troops stationed at Fort Dearborn, upon the site of which the city of Chicago now stands, his command was recalled, when Lieutenant Tilghman resigned his commission in the army, and devoted himself to agriculture, in which he was an enthusiast.
General Tilghman was an active member of the Board of Agricul- ture of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, an organization that has en- joyed a continuous existence since the year 1818. He was the first farmer in Talbot to test every new agricultural implement and the first to use Peruvian guano on wheat. He purchased the first reaping ma- chine ever used in the State of Maryland, with which he harvested, in the summer of 1836, his entire crop of wheat, oats and barley.
The "Report of the Board of Trustees of the Maryland Agricul- tural Society" for the Eastern Shore, on the successful trial of this first Hussey Reaping Machine for harvesting small grain, forms a most
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interesting chapter, not only on the history of agriculture in Talbot County, but in the whole State of Maryland. It is as follows:
REPORT of the Board of Trustees of "The Maryland Agricultural Society," for the Eastern Shore, on the Machine for Harvesting Small Grain, invented by Mr. Obed Hussey of Cincinnati, Ohio .- Trial for Harvest of 1836.
The favorable accounts of the operation of this implement, in several of the Western States, induced the Board to invite Mr. Hussey to bring it to Maryland and submit it to their inspection. It was accordingly exhibited in Oxford, Talbot Co., on the first of July, in presence of the Board and a considerable number of other gentlemen. Its perform- ance may justly be denominated perfect, as it cuts every spear of grain, collects it in bunches of the proper size for sheaves, and lays it straight and even for the binders. On the 12th July, a public exhibition was made at Easton, under the direction of the Board; several hundred persons, principally farmers, assembled to witness it, and expressed themselves highly satisfied with the result. At the Trappe, where it was shown by the inventor on the following Saturday, an equal degree of approbation was evinced. It was afterwards used on the farm of Mr. Tench Tilghman, where 180 acres of wheat, oats and barley were cut with it. Three mules of medium size worked in it constantly with as much ease as in a drag harrow. They moved with equal facility in a walk or trot. A concise description of this simple implement will show that it is admirably adapted to the important purpose for which it was invented. Resting on two wheels which are permanently at- tached to the machine and impart the motion to the whole, the main body of the machine is drawn by the horses along the outer edge of the standing grain. As the horses travel on the outside of the grain, it is neither knocked down or tangled in the slightest degree. Behind the wheels is a platform, (supported by a roller or wheel,) which projects beyond the side of the machine five feet into the grain. On the front of the edge projecting part of the platform is the cutter. This is com- posed of twenty-one teeth resembling large lancet blades, which are placed side by side and firmly riveted to a rod of iron. A lateral mo- tion is imparted to it by a crank, causing it to vibrate between two rows of iron spikes, which point forward. As the machine advances the grain is cut and falls backwards on the platform where it collects in a pile. A man is placed on the part of the platform directly behind the horses, and with a rake of peculiar construction, pushes off the grain in separate bunches; each bunch making a sheaf. It may appear to some that the grain will accumulate too rapidly for this man to per- form his duty. But upon considering the difference between the space occupied by the grain when standing and when lying in a pile after it is cut, it will be evident that the raker has ample time to push off the bunches even in the thickest grain. In thin grain he has to wait until sufficient has collected to form a sheaf.
The machine is driven around the grain, which may be sown either
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GENERAL TENCH TILGHMAN
on a smooth surface or on corn ridges. For the first round a way may be cleared with a cradle; but this is deemed unnecessary, for the grain when driven over, is left in an inclined position, and by cutting in the opposite direction as much of it is saved as with a cradle. Fourteen acres in corn lands were cut between 10 A. M., and 7} P. M. The hands had never worked with the machine before, nor was it a trial day's work. For owing to the shortness of the straw, the machine was not allowed to cut when passing over the ridges from one side of the ground to the other, and this time was consequently lost. From the principle on which the cutting is performed, a keen edge to the cutter is by no means essential. The toughest weeds, an occasional corn stalk or a stick of the thickness of a man's little finger, have been frequently cut without at all affecting its operation; it can be sharpened, however, in a few minutes with a file. The width of the swath may be increased by having the cutter made longer, and the same machine will cut a stubble of several different heights of any size, though the strength of every part has been fully tested. The machine has been often choked by oyster-shells getting into the cutter, in attempting to cut too low a stubble. The motion of the machinery being checked, the main wheels slide on the ground; the strain on every part being equal to the power exerted by the horses. It can be managed by any intelligent careful negro. We deem it a simple, strong, and effective machine, and take much pleasure in awarding unanimously the meritorious inventor of it a handsome pair of silver cups.
ROBT. H. GOLDSBOROUGH, SAMUEL STEVENS, SAML. T. KENNARD, ROBT. BANNING, SAML. HAMBLETON, Sr., NICHL. GOLDSBOROUGH, ED. N. HAMBLETON, JAMES LI. CHAMBERLAIN, MARTIN GOLDSBOROUGH, HORATIO L. EDMONDSON, TENCH TILGHMAN.
General Tilghman was President of the United States Agricultural Society when this Society held its annual fair in Richmond, Va., in 1858, and in Chicago in 1859. Although the Society was driven out of existence by the Civil War, it was through its instrumentality by the publication of monthly agricultural bulletins at Washington, D. C., that the Department of Agriculture was established by the United States government, as will be shown in the following inaugural address of President Tilghman at the opening of the Sixth Annual Exhibition of the United States Agricultural Society held at Richmond, Virginia, October 26-30, 1858.
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THE WORTHIES OF TALBOT
INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT TILGHMAN.
Brother Farmers of America, Ladies and Gentlemen of whatever clime and occupation: You have listened to the language of eloquence and cordial hospitality with which we have been welcomed to the Capital of this ancient Commonwealth, by the distinguished President of the Virginia Central Agricultural Society.
It becomes my pleasing duty to acknowledge the obligation which has thus been conferred upon us, and as the official organ of the Agri- cultural Society of the United States to extend to all who are here assembled a greeting to this, its sixth annual festival.
Gentlemen of the two societies: Allow me to congratulate you, and those who are our especial guests on this interesting occasion, upon the success with which your efforts have been crowned, in the magnificent spectacle by which we are now surrounded.
From the granite hills of New Hampshire to the verdant rice-fields of Carolina; from the swarming cities on our Atlantic border to the fertile valley of the Mississippi, Ceres and Pomona have vied with each other in contributions from the richness of their stores; and in the varied products of the farm and the garden, the mine and the ocean depths, the workshop and the laboratory, which are here col- lected together, we behold an epitome of our country's greatness, and an evidence of its enduring prosperity.
A still more pregnant indication of the importance attached to the calling in which we are engaged, is to be found in the magnitude and character of the vast concourse which has assembled to witness our exhibition, and in the number and distinction of the representa- tives from other States who have come to participate in our proceed- ings. The sturdy yeoman has left his fields and his herds; the me- chanic has deserted his workshop; the learned professions have con- tributed from their members those who have earned the highest dis- tinction in the varied walks of science and of literature; the highest dignitaries both in church and State are here, to honor us with their presence; and beauty has sent a chaplet of her choicest flowers, whose richness forms the crowning glory of the scene, and holds the ad- miring spectator entranced and spell-bound in mute admiration of its loveliness.
Among the many remarkable developments by which the growth of our country has been attended, few have afforded greater cause for surprise and gratification than the rise and progress of the United States Agricultural Society.
Its great prototype, the Royal Agricultural Society of England, had been in successful operation for many years, sustained by all the wealth and enterprise of that powerful and enlightened nation, before it ventured upon the experiment of migration in its fairs, which has since been found to be so highly beneficial in its results. Even there it is still regarded as an undertaking of no ordinary mag- nitude; and yet the actual extent of their migrations is less than those
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GENERAL TENCH TILGHMAN
of the State Agricultural Society of New York; whilst the smallest distance between the locations of any two consecutive fairs of the United States Agricultural Society had been greater than the entire extent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
It is an interesting incident in the history of these two greatest agricultural nations of the world, that the present mode of conduct- ing their national fairs was comnenced almost at the same period, and has been attended with results which evince a remarkable de- gree of coincidence.
Their exhibition for the present season was held in the ancient city of Chester, and many of the most distinguished of the nobility and gentry attended their meetings, and participated in their pro- ceedings. Among those whose eloquence contributed most largely to the interest of this memorable occasion, was the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., now one of England's greatest commoners and purest statesmen; and I was forcibly struck with his impressions of the effect of such gatherings in England and their applicability to our own Society :
"I think it may be truly observed, (said Mr Gladstone,) that this- I must say distinguished-I may say illustrious Society-appears to me to supply a want which is the greatest inherent want of agricul- ture. If we look to the case of manufacturers, it is their nature to collect themselves in enormous masses around great centres of industry. If we look to commerce, incessant communication between every part of the commercial system of the country is the very vital air it breathes, and is naturally inseparable from commercial development. But with agriculture the case is different; for, on the contrary, its nature is to be gathered around local centres, which, under ordinary circumstances, have little or no connexion or communication with one another. It is, in comparison, an isolated art, and, therefore, it might follow, under general circumstances, that agriculture was languishing in various quarters of the country, simply from the want of a knowledge of the progress achieved in other portions of the land. Well, now, if I am right in saying that this is the besetting danger and difficulty of agriculture, is it not true and obvious that the Society whose festival we com- memorate to-day, is, by the very principle of its construction, adapted effectually to supply that want, for its business is to bring together the men and the minds of all portions of the country? The stock of Dev- onshire, the horses of Suffolk, the various products of England, are exhibited in the yards today. The agriculture of England, through the means, mainly, of this Society, is rapidly attaining to the position to have but one heart and one mind-one common pulse that causes the circulation of the vital fluid throughout the whole system-one common stock into which everything that skill, that industry, that in- telligence, that capital had achieved in every single part of the country, is made the common property of every other portion of the country."
These, gentlemen, are some of the considerations on which we in- vite your assistance and co-operation. The great principle which
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