USA > Maryland > Men of mark in Maryland Johnson's makers of America series biographies of leading men of the state, Volume III > Part 10
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But Mr. Orrick is not merely a business man. Starting in life with a liberal education, he has been a constant reader and student, and is a man of wide information and culture. In the life of the community he is a most prominent factor. He assisted in organizing the Young Men's Christian Association in Cumberland; is a trustee in the local and State bodies and served as State chairman for several years. He has a winter home in Riverside, California, and serves the
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Episcopal Church in that place as a vestryman thus extending his religious activities even to the other side of the continent. He has served as water commissioner for Cumberland, and as secretary of the Board of Trade. He was president of the Merchants and Manu- facturers Association during its four years of existence. He is Past Grand Officer in the Royal Arcanum of Maryland; a member of the National Union; of the American Academy of Social and Political Science and the Public Health Association. A lover of baseball as a boy, he gets his present physical culture in the rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association to which he has given so much time and labor. His political affiliation is with the Republican party, but he confines his political activity to the exercise of the voting franchise.
In 1873, Mr. Orrick was married to Miss Helen M. Lewis, daugh- ter of Resin and Eliza (Pennington) Lewis, of Wheeling, West Vir- ginia. Of the five children born to them three are now living: Jesse Lewis; Virginia Pendelton, now Mrs. Carpenter, and Helen Marr, now Mrs. Sloan.
Mr. Orrick has at times been a contributor to the newspapers on questions of civic betterment and current interest.
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yours faithfully .
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WILLIAM FRANCIS ALLEN
A FIVE-HUNDRED-acre garden is calculated to give one enlarged ideas of the gardening business. Indeed, to most of us who find a little plat of ground fifty-by-one hundred a considerable job to wrestle over during the mellow spring and warm summer days, a five-hundred-acre garden looms up as a very formid- able proposition. And yet, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland there lives a man, William Francis Allen, who runs near Salisbury a five- hundred-acre garden. He does not call it that, but that's what it is. He calls it a "plantation and nursery." But the system of cultiva- tion pursued, and the results obtained are distinctly those of the most scientific truck farmer. Where other gardeners plant in small patches, Mr. Allen plants in acres. For example: In one season we find on his place seventy-five acres of strawberries; fifteen acres of dewber- ries; seventy-five acres of canteloupes; forty acres of cucumbers; twenty-five acres of sweet potatoes, and twenty-five acres of other truck. Coming down to results, he can show shipments in one sea- son, 75,000 quarts of strawberries; 25,000 quarts of dewberries; 10,000 half-barrels of cucumbers; 1,700 three-peck crates of peaches; forty carloads of canteloupes; fifty carloads of watermelons. One is not surprised to learn that on this great estate, one hundred carloads of horse manure and fertilizer are used annually, and that the gross returns are $75,000. The quality of the fruit, vegetables and plants shipped by this immense garden and nursery is such that Mr. Allen's name is known not only all over the United States and Canada, but even unto the isles of the sea. He practically furnishes all the straw- berry plants used upon the Bermuda Islands.
Now, let's look a little while at this man and see how all this has come about. He is a comparatively young man, born in the county where he now lives, on February 25, 1867, which shows him to be now in the meridian of life. His parents were Albert James and Elizabeth (Twilly) Allen. His father was in the earlier part of his life a carpenter, who later became a farmer. The family is a mixture of Scotch and English blood. His paternal grandfather, William
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Allen, was a native of the same section, and was a man of means. His mother, a daughter of Washington Twilly of Wicomico County, is the eldest of thirteen children, eleven of whom are living. In one line Mr. Allen's descent is derived from the same man who was the American ancestor of President James K. Polk. - Of this, more anon.
This great, successful and scientific farmer was a weakly youth who did not get all together one full year of schooling,-his education being confined to seven or eight short terms in the local schools of his section. Fortunately for him, he was very fond of outdoor life; exceedingly partial to nature in all its aspects, and took a keen inter- est in the farm life from boyhood. This enabled him to outgrow the weakness of his youth and developed a strong man physically. He took to farming, not with the mere view of making a living, but with the idea of accomplishing something worth while; and so at the age of seventeen, on a borrowed capital of fifteen dollars, he started busi- ness near Salisbury. This was twenty-five years ago. He now owns the largest farm of its kind and the best nursery on the Peninsula. He is probably the wealthiest farmer upon the Eastern shore of Maryland, shipping some of his wares, and notably strawberry stock, from California to the Bermuda Islands.
One does not want to get the idea that all these things just fell into Mr. Allen's open mouth. The great plant of the present day, for so it may be called, is the result of twenty-five years of intense and intelligent application. His earlier years were years of desperate struggle. Practically without capital, except an abundance of energy and ambition, he was almost despairing, when an intelligent commis- sion merchant of the city of Boston, Mr. H. H. Kendall, who saw what was in the young man, gave him a lift in a monetary way, and from that day to the present, the growth of his business has been continuous. He is a recognized leader in his section, regarded as the most scientific farmer upon the Peninsula; a long time president of the Peninsula Horticultural Society; a director of the Peoples Bank, and connected with the Wicomico County Fair Association, the Home Gas Company, the Salisbury Railway Company and other flourishing enterprises.
He supplies over four thousand customers a year from his rurs- eries,-and the stamp of " Allen of Salisbury" on a crate of produce or fruit or upon a package of plants, is accepted all over the country as a guarantee of quality. A diligent student of the best works bear-
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ing upon agriculture, as well as a most earnest practitioner, he has year by year improved his methods. He has weeded out and tried hundreds and hundreds of varieties of fruits, and now grows over one hundred varieties of strawberry plants alone,-all of which have been brought to their present state by the most analytical and care- ful methods. For example: He will offer a prize of two hundred dollars or one hundred dollars for the best dozen strawberry plants,- the only condition being that the varieties winning the prizes must be new and have never been introduced. Some of the varieties orig- inating from his plantation or through his efforts are now known in every corner of the land. All this has been to him a labor of love. With peculiar qualifications for the business, he has an intense love for it-it is a passion with him, and his work has resulted not only in a substantial prosperity for himself, but in assisting toward pros- perity many hundreds of people who have never seen him. He is a student of the soil; and like any other man who studies his business thoroughly and carefully, he gets the results he goes after. Such a man as this is invaluable, not only to the local community, but to the State in which he lives. In America our development has been far too one-sided. During the last forty years our people have run mad after manufacturing interests; and though our agricultural interests by reason of vast extent of territory, have made enormous production, it has been at the cost of a great loss of fertility to the soil. Men like Mr. Allen are the great exemplars to whom the people can look for betterment of this weak spot. Year by year, he leaves his acres better than he finds them; and the value of such men and their methods cannot be computed in dollars.
Mr. Allen says he has never had the time for much amusements. Indeed, a man who spends his life as he does gets recreation every day. He, however, takes a trip every summer up through New Eng- land, in which he gets both renewed strength and new ideas. He is a liberal-minded man in religion. His parents are Baptists; his wife was formerly a member of the Methodist Protestant church but the family now attend the Presbyterian,-so he divides his time between both churches. He is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity; and in politics classes himself as a Democrat, though he reserves the right of independent thinking and votes his conscience when he finds him- self out of line with party nominations.
On November 12, 1890, Mr. Allen was married to Miss Martha
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P. Taylor, a daughter of Gillis T. Taylor of Sharpstown, Maryland. With his wife and their four children he dwells in one of the most beautiful country homes to be found in any part of our vast country.
Mention has been made of Mr. Allen's relationship to President Polk. His father, Albert James Allen, is a son of William Whitting- ton Allen, who married his cousin, Mary Whittington. Mary Whit- tington was a daughter of Joseph Whittington, who married a Miss Foster. Joseph Whittington was a son of William Whittington, a colonel in the Revolutionary Army, who married Priscilla Polk. Priscilla Polk was a daughter of James Polk, who was a grandson of Robert Bruce Polk, who was the American progenitor of President James K. Polk. This Colonel William Whittington of the Revolu- tionary period, was said to have been a lineal descendant o Sir Richard Whittington, known in history as "Dick" Whittington, who was three times Lord Mayor of London. Mr. Allen can boast good blood if he should care to do so,-but no man of his ancestry. however famous he was, was ever more useful in his generation than this unassuming Eastern Shore farmer.
LOUIS SEYMOUR ZIMMERMAN
T HIS is essentially the day of the young man. At no age in history have so many young men been prominent in busi- ness and in public life. A shining illustration of the success of young men in business is given by Louis Seymour Zimmerman, president of the Maryland Trust Company of Baltimore, whose resi- dence is at Robinson, Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Mr. Zim- merman was born in Baltimore County on September 8, 1876; son of Charles T. and Mary S. (Seymour) Zimmerman. His father was a farmer of German descent. His mother was of English descent, coming from a family which is one of the most illustrious in Great Britain. This Seymour family exhibits some of the most remarkable mutations and figures in some of the most remantic chapters of Eng- lish history. Mr. Zimmerman therefore comes of the best English, or rather Norman and German blood. He was reared in the coun- try; had good educational advantages, and became a clerk in Balti- more at the age of sixteen. In 1894, he entered the service of the Maryland Trust Company and while in that service he attended lectures in the law department of the University of Maryland and was graduated in 1900 with the degree of LL.B. In 1903, then a young man of twenty-seven, he was elected assistant secretary and assistant treasurer, and since that time has filled successively the positions of secretary, second vice-president, acting president; and in January, 1910 was elected president of the company. Mr. Zim- merman says that his record is yet to be made, and that to some extent is true; but certain it is, that he has already made a remarkable record, having risen from a clerkship in sixteen years to be presi- dent of a great corporation, and not quite thirty-four years old.
He holds membership in the University and Merchant's Clubs of Baltimore, and the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. In political life, he is an independent Democrat. He is very partial to outdoor life of all kinds, but more particularly fond of water sports. His religious affiliation is with the Presbyterian Church.
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LOUIS SEYMOUR ZIMMERMAN
It is a reasonable expectation that a young man who has trav- eled so fast and so far has in him great possibilities of usefulness, not only to the institutions with which he is connected, but to the commonwealth.
JAMES WILLIAM REESE
J AMES WILLIAM REESE, educator, was born at Westminster, Carroll County, October 3, 1838, the son of Jacob and Eleanor (Fisher) Reese. His father, a man of amiability, generosity and with a high regard for scholarship was a merchant, banker and manufacturer. Mr. Reese's ancestors on his father's side were Germans who settled in Baltimore and in Western Maryland during the eighteenth century. His mother's ancestors were Scotch-Irish, and came from the same section of the State.
In childhood, Mr. Reese lived in the village, where he devoted much of his time to outdoor games and books. His health was deli- cate; notwithstanding which for several years he spent a portion of the day in acquiring a practical knowledge of business in the bank of which his father was cashier. His mother exercised a strong and excellent influence upon his life during the period of growth. He says: "My first books-the first to make a reader of me-were the 'Arabian Nights,' Scott's novels and Shakespeare; but general literature, the- ology, and especially the Greek and Latin writers have done the most towards fitting me for my work in life." His early educational train- ing was received from private tutors and at St. Timothy's Hall, Catonsville. He then entered Princeton College and was graduated with the degree of A.B. in 1859. In 1862, the degree of A.M. was conferred by Princeton; and in 1873, the Western Maryland College honored him with the degree Ph.D. honoris causa. In 1860, he entered the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York; and upon graduation in 1863, was ordained Deacon by Bishop Whittingham of Maryland. In January 1864, Mr. Reese took charge of the Ascension Church at Westminster, which position he held until 1870; but owing to the condition of his health, and especially to the weakness of his voice, he found himself unfitted for constant ministerial work, and resigned. He then accepted the professorship of Ancient Languages and Literature in Western Mary- land College, which position he now holds. His success as an edu- cator, which was his personal preference after the ministry, has been marked.
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Of the influential factors in shaping his life, he ranks first, home training; next is school discipline; then, his own private studies and the advantages of foreign travel. Mr. Reese has already published many addresses of an educational character. He has spoken many times before the Maryland State Teachers' Association, and his paper which was read before that organization at Ocean City in 1902, is the last of his addresses which has appeared in print.
He has been a member and an officer in the Masonic Order for thirty years. He is also a member, and has been a vice-president of the Maryland Princeton Alumni Association. In politics, he is affiliated with the Republican party. He takes his relaxation from labor in converse with chosen friends, reading novels, and solving charades,-Bellamy's by preference.
On February 12, 1868, Mr. Reese was married to Mary Pauline Perry of Westminster. They have one child, a son.
His brief words of advice to young people starting on the journey of life are comprised in one short sentence: "My advice to young people is to do whatever duty they find to do from day to day, and not bother their heads at all about 'success.'"
On February 26, 1910, the alumni of Western Maryland Col- lege gave at the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore, a banquet in honor of Mr. Reese, to commemorate the close of forty years of continuous service in that institution. This is a record of usefulness in the great field of education that has been surpassed by few men in our country.
Sincerely yours. 9 Th Bowyer
JOHN MARSHALL BOWYER
T O BE superintendent of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis or United States Military Academy at West Point, according as one belongs to the naval or military service, is a very great honor. It means that the recipient of that honor is not only a good soldier or sailor as the case may be, but that he is a good executive and thorough disciplinarian, and in every sense a master of men. That the government has used, since these establishments were founded, a wise discrimination in the appoint- ment of superintendents of these great schools is proven by the results. In our great War between the States, and it was the greatest four years' war in all history, the graduates of West Point and Annap- olis proved the value of their training. Since that time, it has been proven again and again, and especially is this true as applied to the navy when in the war with Spain, our naval gunners showed them- selves to be the best marksmen in the world with big guns. The Naval Academy is therefore a source of pride to every patriotic American, for it has turned out gentlemen, scholars and officers, whose superiors are not to be found on the globe. At least one of its graduates ranks as the first scientist of his age, Matthew Maury, the renowned hydrographer of the seas.
In the present superintendent of the Naval Academy, Captain John Marshall Bowyer, the government has an officer who is con- ducting that great institution according to the best of its long and splendid traditions. Captain Bowyer was born in Cass County, Indiana, on June 19, 1853; son of Lewis Franklin and Naomi Eme- line (Pugh) Bowyer. On his father's side he is of German or French- German, and on his mother's, of English descent. The orignial spell- ing of the name was Boyer. His people have been long settled in America and with an honorable record in several States. After the ordinary training of a boy, he was appointed to the Naval Academy from Iowa, and entered the school on September 28, 1870, graduating in the class of 1874. His naval record covers a period of forty years of long, faithful and honorable service. He was promoted ensign on
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July 17, 1875; master on May 28, 1881; lieutenant, junior grade, on March 3, 1883; lieutenant-commander on March 3, 1899; commander on March 21, 1903; captain on November 8, 1907. His naval career has covered a wide range and includes service on the Powhatan in 1874. In 1875-76 he was on the Franklin, Juniata and Alaska European station. Part of 1877 was spent on the training ship Monongahela; and from 1877 to 1880 he was on the Michigan upon the Northwestern Lakes. From there he went to the receiving ship Independence in 1880, and in 1881 was transferred to the Wachuset on the Pacific station, where he served until 1884 and was transferred in that year for the second time to the Michigan on the Northwestern Lakes. He remained there until 1887, when he was detached for instruction in torpedo service, at Newport, and in 1888 was trans- ferred to the Asiatic station and assigned to duty on the Omaha. He remained on that station until 1891, when he was detached for duty at the Naval Academy, where he remained until 1894, taking a sum- mer cruise in 1893 on the practice ship Constellation. From July 1894 to July, 1897 he was again on the North Atlantic station, being attached to the Detroit, the Raleigh and the ill-fated battleship Maine. From July, 1897 to the beginning of the war with Spain, April 1898, he was on service under the Bureau of Ordnance at Wash- ington Navy Yard, and was then assigned to duty as executive officer of the Princeton; his service in the Spanish-American War was on patrol duty about the west end of Cuba. After the Spanish-Ameri- can War he was assigned to duty in the Philippines, traveling to his station via the Suez Canal, leaving New York on January 11, 1899. He was detached from the Princeton to the Yorktown January 1, 1900, and participated in the suppression of the Philippine insurrection and the Boxer troubles in China. In September 1900 he was detached from the Yorktown to the flagship Brooklyn as executive and on April 4, 1901 was ordered home. From July 16, 1901, to July 18, 1905, he was on duty at the naval gun factory at the Washington Navy Yard serving as assistant superintendent of gun factory and head of depart- ment of yard and docks. On July 10, 1905 he was assigned to the U. S. S. Columbia on special duty, as commanding officer. The Colum- bia and the Marblehead were ordered to Colon on the Isthmus of Panama during the elections of 1906, and six hundred marines went ashore, Captain Bowyer being the senior officer present. Again he was senior officer present at Havana, commanding United States
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naval force assigned to special duty in Cuban waters from Novem- ber 2, 1906, to March 26, 1907, when he was detached to serve as aid to the assistant secretary of the navy. On November 22, 1907, he took command of the battleship Illinois of the United States Atlan- tic fleet, and made the famous cruise around the world in that battle- ship, first under command of Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans, and later under Rear Admiral Charles S. Sperry as commander-in-chief, arriving at Hampton Roads on February 22, 1909. He was then detached from the Illinois to the Connecticut on April 20, 1909, and on June 10, 1909 was detached from the Connecticut and appointed superintendent of the Naval Academy.
It will be seen from this brief record of forty years that Captain Bowyer has seen service in every department of the navy and in every section of the globe. He has therefore every advantage which it is possible for a naval officer to possess and every qualification which enters into the makeup of an efficient superintendent of the academy. Not yet sixty years of age, he has seen thirty-six years of active service, and is yet equal to years of effective service should his country need him.
On October 29 1879, Captain Bowyer was married to Miss Cora McCarter of Erie, Pennsylvania.
Captain Bowyer is a member of the Army and Navy Clubs of Washington and New York; the Hamilton Club of Brooklyn; the Erie Club of Erie, Pennsylvania, and the Fort Monroe Club, Fort Monroe, Virginia. He has arrived at next to the highest rank in the navy; and when his period of retirement comes, or before, he will undoubtedly reach the highest rank. It is hard for anyone not in close touch with the navy to understand the labor and the responsi- bility involved in the recital of these forty years of service, but the splendid record which the American navy has made in every con- flict in which it has ever been engaged is a proof not only of the abil- ity of our naval officers, but of their faithful performance of the long years of drudgery incident to the profession, the performance of which makes them fit when the great occasion comes.
JOHN BUSHROD SCHWATKA
D R. JOHN B. SCHWATKA, of Baltimore, who is the present head of the Maryland Medical College, has traveled a long way in a professional sense in the short space of twenty- eight years.
He is a native of Maryland, born in Chesterville, Kent County, on February 19, 1861, son of John August and Rachel R. E. Schwatka. His father was by trade a wheelwright. His immediate family in America dates back to August Schwatka, who came from Borken, Germany, and settled in Baltimore in 1796. His grandfather, John Schwatka, son of August, born in Baltimore in 1812, moved about 1830 to Chesterville, where he engaged in business as a blacksmith and wheelwright, and lived to the age of seventy-five. The founder of the family, August Schwatka, was a soldier in the War of 1812, a machinist by trade, who carried on business at the corner of Jasper and Saratoga Streets. John A. Schwatka, father of the subject of this sketch, succeeded to his father's business in the village of Ches- terville, and married Rachel Sanders, daughter of Bushrod and Emily (Moffett) Sander ..
Dr. Schwatka was the elder of two children, his brother, Wil- liam H. Schwatka, being also a practicing physician in Baltimore until 1905, now at Rock Hall, Kent County. As a youth, John B. Schwatka was robust and active, fond of hunting and fishing, and en- joyed the usual life of a village boy, attending the local schools, and getting the rudiments of an education. He went to the Sudlersville Academy (so-called), and from that school to the University of Maryland, going through the medical department and graduating on March 1, 1882, with the degree of M.D. Though he dismisses with a line his post-graduate work both in America and Europe, Dr. Schwatka has been a profound student of his profession.
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