USA > Maryland > Men of mark in Maryland Johnson's makers of America series biographies of leading men of the state, Volume III > Part 18
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Mr. Price is practically a self-made man, and that his business capacity is of a high order is proven by the fact that though his life until he was an elderly man was spent on a farm, he is now one of the wealthiest men in Queen Anne's County.
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CHARLES ALBERT WEBB
P ROMINENT in the business life of Baltimore, is Charles Albert Webb, of the old commission house of A. L. Webb and Sons, vice-president of the American Bonding Com- pany, director of the Baltimore Savings Bank and the Merchants National Bank, and connected with other financial institutions of Baltimore and New York.
General Webb was born in Baltimore on March 26, 1856, son of Albert Lee and Catherine Anne (Deford) Webb. The ancestral line of this family is a remarkable one, and it brings in a large number of the most prominent of the early families of New England. The American progenitor was Christopher Webb, who came from Bark- ing, Essex county, England, in 1626, his family consisting of two sons and two daughters. His eldest son Christopher married Hannah Scott and settled in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, in 1654. This branch of the Webb family that comes from Barking, Essex County, was descended from the Webb family of Oldstock, county Wilts; and the first known ancestor of the family was engaged in the second crusade, his name being found among the knights of an ancient roster known as the Apuldercrim roll. The coat of arms of the Oldstock family of Webb, is thus described by Burke: "Gu. a cross betw. four falcons, or. Crest-A demi-eagle displ. issuing out of a ducal coronet, or." The various families which converge upon the subject of this sketch as given in a carefully made genealogical record of the family, shows next to the Webb family, the Adams family, to which President John Adams belonged. This particular branch of the Adams family goes back to Wales, in County Car- marthen; and there are ancient inscriptions in Tidenham Church, near Chapton, made in 1310, from which it is gathered that the repre- sentative of the family of that day was in parliament from 1296 to 1307. The old coat of arms is thus described by Burke: "Argent on a cross gu. five mullets or. Crest-Out of a ducal coronet or, demi- lion affrontee gu. Motto-Aspire, persevere, and indulge not." The famous Prescott family of Massachusetts, founded by John
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Prescott, who came over in 1640, next appears in the genealogi- cal line. Then we find Major John Mason, of Connecticut, born in England 1600 commanding officer in the Pequot war, Representa- tive in the General Court from 1637 to 1641, and Deputy Governor in 1669. Then comes in the Hobarts, founded by Edmund Hobart, of Hingham, who came from England in 1633. Then the Binghams. The date of their coming is uncertain, but Thomas Bingham was a young man in 1660. Next appears Bakers, founded by Reverend Nicholas Baker, born about 1611, and who appears as a settler in Hingham in 1635. Through the intermarriage of one of the Bakers with a daughter of Isaac Robinson, who was a son of Reverend John Robinson, of Leyden, the leader of the original Plymouth Rock Com- pany, appears a connection with the very first company of colonists who came over in the Mayflower. Then comes into the line the Jen- kins family, founded by John Jenkins, who came over in 1635. Another family appearing in this ancestral line, are the Annables, founded by Anthony Annable, who came over in 1623, and during his life was one of the useful men in the colony, always known as "good man Annable." Then Thomas Allen appears, who during his life was probably the wealthiest man in the colony. Then comes in the Bigelows; and here we have a curious example of the evolu- tion of names. In 1642 the founder of this family appears in the records under the spelling of John Bijulah. Later on we find him appearing as John Bigolo, and about the same time Samuel is de- scribed as Samuel Bigilo. Then the chapter is wound up by the original John's name appearing as John Biglo. During the Revo- lutionary period, Abner Webb, a member of this family, was a soldier in the Continental line. But the Baltimore Webbs do not have to bolster themselves upon the merits of their ancestors, and this recital has been given merely to show that they come of the best American stock and are living up to the traditions. Albert L. Webb, the father of Charles A. Webb, founded a commission business in Baltimore. He was eminently successful in his business, and thus was able to give to his son, Charles Albert Webb, the benefits of a good education. Charles Albert was a strong boy, fond of out- door sports and exercise, and gave promise of unusual capacity. He went to the private school in Baltimore. conducted so long by George Carey, one of the best training schools our country has ever known; and from there to the Pennsylvania Military Academy, where his
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schooling was completed. In 1872 he entered his father's business in Baltimore as an employee, and speedily showed that he possessed an unusual measure of the strong qualitites of his family. He de- veloped business ability of a very high order, and has attained a position in the business world of the highest honor.
In one thing Mr. Webb does not hold to the New England tra- ditions. Politically he affiliates with the Democratic party. The Democrats are so hopelessly outnumbered in New England, that one is tempted to forget that there are any Democrats there; but whenever a New England Democrat is found, or a man of New England descent is found in the Democratic ranks one may depend upon it, that he is not only one of the straitest of the sect, but that he is one abundantly able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, and knows no variableness nor shadow of turning in his political principles.
General Webb's business career deserves rather more specific mention than has been given in the foregoing paragraphs. It has been stated that he entered the business founded by his father and conducted under the style of A. L. Webb and Sons. This was origi- nally a strictly commission business. Under the management of General Charles A. Webb, who is now the head of the house, the business has been broadened and widened, until its volume many times exceeds its most palmy days during his father's time. In addi- tion to managing this huge business, he is general manager of the Southern Branch of the Standard Distilling and Distributing Com- pany, which is the largest spirit and alcohol concern operating in the South. He handles both of these two diversified interests with con- summate ability, and is recognized as a man of the highest order of executive capacity. In the American Bonding Company, of which he is vice-president, he was also one of the organizers, and has been a most active factor in its success. A strong testimonial to his business capacity is found in the fact that he is a director of the Merchants National Bank. Douglas Thomas, the president of that bank and one of the leading financiers of Baltimore, has the faculty of securing upon his Board of Directors men of the first order of ability,-and the fact that a man is connected with that bank is evidence of his ability. It must not be gathered from this that General Webb is one of those men who immerse themselves in business to the exclusion of everything else, for he is keenly interested in every interest which goes
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to make up the life of the community. He holds membership in the Maryland, the Merchants, the Baltimore Country, the Green Spring Valley Kennel, and the Elk Ridge Clubs.
On March 10, 1908, he was appointed a member of the staff of Governor Austin L. Crothers, present Governor of Maryland, with the rank of Brigadier-General. This again may be taken as evidence of his commercial and personal standing, as well as of his political affiliations; for the military families of our governors at the present day are made up from men of the highest standing who are in political sympathy with the governors.
On January 7, 1880, General Webb was married in Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Baltimore, to Miss Mary E. Cator, a member of the well known Maryland family. Of this marriage, the children are: Carrie Pattison; Mary Cator; Elizabeth Pattison, and Catherine Deford Webb.
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GEORGE THOMAS MELVIN
G EORGE THOMAS MELVIN of Annapolis-lawyer, banker and public man, now one of the prominent and influential citizens of this State-was born on the family homestead near Burrsville, Caroline County, December 18, 1851; son of Thomas and Mary Frances (Fisher) Melvin. His father, Thomas Melvin, was a prominent man of the county, and served for many years as magistrate; represented his county in the General Assembly as far back as 1847, and was postmaster of Denton, Maryland, by appoint- ment of President Cleveland as late as 1885. His mother was a daughter of George Fisher, originally of Delaware, who served a as member of the State Senate of Delaware.
Mr. Melvin was a healthy country boy; reared on the farm; accustomed to farm labor, of which his father made him do a full share, and also worked in the lumber mill operated by his father. Looking back from his present vantage point, Mr. Melvin can see that this hard discipline of his youth was of exceeding value, as it taught him promptitude of action, a sense of responsibility, orderly methods, and conscientious performance of tasks. He was fortunate in his mother, as-well as in his father. A woman of much strength of character, combined with sweetness of disposition, She was an ideal adviser and companion for the growing boy. He attended the country schools where terms were short; but having fully determined in his own mind to have an education, he studied hard even during vaca- tions. He began his career as a public school teacher at Harmony, Maryland, in 1873; and while teaching, took up the study of law under the preceptorship of William S. Ridgely, a son of the Reverend Greenberry W. Ridgely, who was at one time the law partner of Henry Clay in Kentucky, and who purchased a large landed estate in Caroline County and retired to it in later life. Mr. Melvin was admitted to the bar at Denton in 1876, by Judges Robinson, Wickes and Stump.
In early life, he had determined to win a just measure of success as gauged by proper standards, and to this determination he has
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adhered with a steadfastness of purpose which did not permit of failure. From 1878 to 1885, Mr. Melvin was auditor and equity examiner of Caroline County Circuit Court. During these same years, he was editor of "The Denton Journal," an influential and widely known weekly of the Eastern Shore, afterwards acquired by his youngest brother, Howard Melvin, and now conducted by him. Another brother, James F. Melvin, once associated with "The Den- ton Journal," afterwards published "The Cambridge Chronicle" and founded "The Ellicott City Democrat," which was merged with "The Ellicott City Times," and is now engaged in newspaper work in the West.
In 1885, in association with William S. Ridgely, his former law preceptor, Mr. Melvin purchased of the late George Colton, "The Maryland Republican" at Annapolis, and in the following year was made State Printer of Maryland. In 1890, he was appointed United States Post Office Inspector. Selling out his interest in "The Mary- land Republican" in 1894, Mr. Melvin devoted himself to legal and real estate work in Annapolis. In the past twenty years, Annapolis has grown largely and has been greatly beautified. In this work, Mr. Melvin was a pioneer, especially in the surburban area, having created the section known as West Annapolis and the city residential district known as "Murray Hill." He was largely instrumental in giving that impetus to municipal growth which has resulted in the expansion and beautifying of the city.
In 1904, he was appointed by Governor Warfield a member of the Anne Arundel County School Board, and from that time has been exceedingly active in the cause of public education. The county system has been developed and enlarged, with better school houses, more capable teachers, the introduction of the teaching of agriculture in the schools, and the establishment of the Annapolis High School.
In September, 1894, Mr. Melvin, in conjunction with Colonel Luther H. Gadd, purchased the Hotel Maryland property, one of the landmarks of Annapolis, and made it a thoroughly modern and successful enterprise. Mr. Melvin bought out Colonel Gadd's in- terest in 1901, and in September 1910, leased the property to J. Norman Smith and his brother, Lester L. Smith, of Anne Arundel county, who are now its managers.
In 1905, Mr. Melvin founded and was first president of the Anne Arundel County Tax Payers' Association, which has done a great
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educational work and aroused an interest among the people upon public questions and as to local government, with the result that use- less expenditure has been curbed; the standard of public service improved in all departments of county administration; waste and extravagance abolished, and the new system of public road manage- ment inaugurated. In religious circles, Mr. Melvin is a communicant of St. Anne's Protestant Episcopal Church of Annapolis.
In 1878, Mr. Melvin married Miss Maria Louise Hopkins, youngest daughter of the late Henry P. Hopkins, a prominent farmer of Talbot County. They have two children; Mrs. Elsie Melvin Kemp, wife of W. Thomas Kemp, of the law firm of Whitelock Deming and Kemp, Baltimore; and Ridgely Prentiss Melvin, of Annapolis, a graduate of St. John's College, in 1899 and of the School of Law of the University of Maryland in 1902. The younger Mr. Melvin has achieved success at the bar. He was elected City Coun- selor of Annapolis in 1907, and reëlected in 1909.
Mr. Melvin is now president of the Annapolis Banking and Trust Company (incorporated by the legislature of Maryland in 1904), which position he is filling with the same ability that he has filled all other positions in life. Yet physically strong and in the prime of his mental powers, he has been for many years a most useful and valuable citizen, and bids fair in the future to do even better work than in the past, which has already gained him the respect and esteem of the community in which he has been so good a citizen.
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ELIHU EMORY JACKSON
T HE late Honorable E. E. Jackson of Salisbury, one of the pioneers in the Southern lumber industry, a leader in the business world, and one of the best Governors Maryland has ever had, was born in Somerset County near Salisbury, on November 3, 1837, and died in Baltimore on December 27, 1907. Governor Jackson crowded into his seventy years of life an amount of achieve- ment seldom equalled by any man in the same period of time.
He came of good stock. His father, Hugh Jackson, was a large land owner in that part of Somerset County, now within the bor- ders of Wicomico, and lived on land inherited from his grandfather, Elihu Jackson (I.). Hugh Jackson was a considerable slave owner and a planter of the old regime. In addition to that, he was interested with his sons in the lumber and mercantile business. He served as Judge of the Orphans' Court; was a man of profound piety-an earn- est worker in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and often sent as a delegate to conferences; and on account of the integrity of his character, constantly called upon by his neighbors to settle estates. Throughout life, he was a staunch and unwavering Democrat. The progenitor of this branch of the Jackson family was Samuel Jackson who came from Shellands in County Suffolk, England. Samuel Jackson was a member of a party which came to Maryland with Col- onel William Colebourne from Virginia in 1661, and settled in Somer- set County. He was granted lands by Cecilius Calvert in 1668, and evidently had the land hunger possessed by the Englishmen of that day, an appetite which still persists in their descendants, and secured all the land he could, like the other English settlers, by bringing in outside persons, even members of his own family, and setting up a claim for land for each person brought in. The early Colonists were not lacking in wisdom in their generation. Joshua Jackson, son of Samuel, served as a soldier in the French and Indian wars. His three brothers, Thomas, Daniel and Isaac; also saw service as members of Captain Scott Day's Company. Elihu Jackson (I.), son of Joshua Jackson and great-grandfather of Governor Jackson, entered the
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Revolutionary armies as a young man of twenty-one. He was one of the prominent men of his day on the Eastern Shore and of much force of character. He was a large owner of real estate, and ranked as a wealthy man. He left bequests of silver, mahogany furniture and books which are still in possession of Governor Jackson's family. He was a vestryman in old Green Hill Parish. Governor Jackson's grandfather, John Jackson, married Nellie Hammond of Worcester, then Somerset County, who was a descendant of Captain Edward Hammond.
Governor Jackson's maternal line was equally strong. His mother, Sarah MacBride Humphreys, was a daughter of Joshua and Elizabeth (MacBride) Humphreys. She was a descendant of the old English families of Humphreys, Scarborough and Richardson; and his father was related to the Hammond and King families,-all these being prominent in the early history of the Colonies. The Scar- borough family originated in Yorkshire. The Hammond family appears as far back as Domesday Book. The Humphreys family name is of Norse origin and goes back to the time when the Norse- men made their incursions into England. The original Norse name was Holmfridr.
Governor Jackson was reared in the country, and even as a boy measured up to the highest standard of duty. He attended the country schools, which were not of the best in his boyhood, but made the most of his opportunities and declined the collegiate education offered him by his father, because of a great desire to enter business. He took an active part in the work of the farm, superintending the slaves and leading them in their work. For two years he taught school, because his health for the moment was not rugged enough to endure the farm labors. At the age of twenty-one, he left the farm and engaged in mercantile business at Delmar, Delaware, where he remained four years. From the very start he developed the quality of leadership. Never sparing himself, he was always in front, urging his followers to an advance.
At Salisbury, Maryland, in 1864, his real business career com- menced. He was then twenty-seven years old. He engaged in the mercantile and lumber business. From the very first day he made his mark upon the community. The lumber business of the South was at that time in its infancy, and only here and there was a far- seeing man who could appreciate its potentialities. He made invest-
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ments which his neighbors, good business men but of less discern- ment, regarded as extremely hazardous, but in every case his judg- ment was justified by the results. From that fargone day, now forty- six years past, down to the day of his death, he was one of the great leaders in the Southern lumber industry. His affairs prospered. Late in life, in a reminiscent mood one day in conversing with friends, he made the statement that in his earlier years when they were spread- ing out in every direction, he always had a place for two dollars for every one that he had or could get, but despite this constant state of financial stress, he was one of the most liberal men of his generation. With such a man, financial pressure could not last long, and in a few years the great mills which he and his associates had put in at Salisbury and on the Peninsula, had to seek more distant fields for the supplies of timber, and a small fleet of vessels was kept busy in bringing in these supplies and taking out the lumber. Extensive tracts of land were bought in Eastern Virginia, and the operations of the Jackson brothers became known far and near. In conjunction with his brother William and some Pennsylvania capitalists, he began operations in Alabama. They bought altogether one hundred and forty thousand acres of timber lands in that State, a tract twenty- two miles long and twelve miles wide. Governor Jackson also became chief owner in another tract of twenty thousand acres in Alabama. Some idea of the immensity of the business there done may be gath- ered from the fact that in one of the mills the freight bills were over six hundred dollars a day. No man in his day was more thoroughly familiar with the lumber business in every detail, and no man had a wider grasp of its possibilities, nor knew better how to manage it for the results. The lumber firm of E. E. Jackson and Company; the Jackson Lumber Company, of which he was vice-president; the E. E. Jackson Lumber Company, of which he was president, al! became names to conjure with in the lumber industry. As his opera- tions ramified, and his capital increased, gaining him recognition as a financier, he was called into the councils of many financial institu- tions. He served as president of the Salisbury National Bank; president of the Sussex County National Bank of Seaford, Delaware; and other institutions too numerous to mention.
He was a democratic man-plain and unassuming in his man- ners, and possessed of the same profound religious convictions that had marked his father; never puffed up, and always had a kindly and
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affectionate word for his old friends and neighbors. His cheerful home, "The Oaks," at Salisbury, was one of the most delightful places in which to spend a visit, and its unaffected and open-hearted hospitality was known far and near. "For a number of years the ex-Governor and his family had lived in Baltimore in winter, coming there from Salisbury usually just after the November election and returning to the Eastern Shore in the early spring. His home at the southwest corner of Cathedral and Richmond Streets, across from Emmanuel Protestant Episcopal Church, is a substantial residence. Like the Salisbury abode, it is handsomely furnished and thoroughly comfortable, but the ex-Governor was noted for his simplicity in taste, and he did not care for ostentation. There are few more desir- able houses in Baltimore than the Jackson mansion, and no more interesting sites in the social history of the city."
A great developer of the lumber industry, and therefore a most valuable citizen, it is perhaps true that his greatest service was ren- dered along political lines. His political career dates back to 1882. Never an officer-seeker, while absent from home he was nominated to represent his county in the House of Delegates. He was elected; served his term with acceptability and two years later was elected to the State Senate. He had always taken a keen interest in politics, and at Salisbury had looked straitly after the securing of good men for county offices, especially the county commissioners. A staunch Democrat, and always a party man, yet he did not believe that party interests should be put above the public interest. In 1886, the Senate elected him as its president. His valuable service in that capacity made him an available candidate for governor, and some of his friends became active in his behalf. Some of his political opponents charged that there was a great deal of money expended in his campaign and that he put up a great campaign fund. The facts of the case were that the State Committee assessed him two thousand five hundred dollars; and later when some charges were brought up against him about unfair treatment of labor, and it became necessary to refute these charges through the newspapers, the State Committee asked him for another contribution of two thousand five hundred dollars, and this five thousand dollars represented his entire expend- iture which was asked for by the State Committee. He did not spend in his own home county one penny. He entered the governor's office in 1888, serving four years. When he retired from the office of gov-
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ernor eighteen years ago, the papers of that day in reviewing his work, stated without reservation that no governor of Maryland had given to the State within the memory of man, such valuable service. He entered the governor's office, determined to serve the people of Mary- land. He allowed no influences, however powerful, to sway him from that determination. In his four years' term, he reduced the debt of the State nearly one million three hundred thousand dollars, and cut the interest charged on the remaining debt one-half, meaning a net decrease annually in interest charges of one hundred and twenty- five thousand dollars. The annual gain to the State treasury during his administration reached nearly four hundred thousand dollars, without any increase in taxation, and made it possible for the tax rate to be reduced from 172 cents to 132 cents, or a reduction of nearly twenty-five per cent.
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