USA > Maryland > Men of mark in Maryland Johnson's makers of America series biographies of leading men of the state, Volume IV > Part 18
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JOHN WILLIAM LEITCH
On December 17, 1902, Doctor Leitch was married to Miss Emily Gertrude Colton, daughter of Frank L. and Nellie T. (Van- dewerker) Colton. They have five children: Elizabeth Helen; Mary Eva; John W .; Gertrude, and Margaret Colton Leitch.
Dr. Leitch is affiliated with all the medical societies, such as the County, State and American Medical Associations, and the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland. He has held the position of Councillor of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty, and secretary of the County Society. His religious affiliation is with the Methodist Church. His practice naturally gives him much exercise. Outside of that, he finds recreation in hunting and fishing. Politically, he has been identified since he became of voting age with the Democratic party.
His standard of life is simple and brief. He believes in and practices for himself, good habits, good associates-and Work. He has no other code to commend to the young man who wants to make a success of his life.
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Yours truly. .
DIC GENTILE
HARRY GOLDSBOROUGH WATSON
A MONG the natives of Maryland achieving distinction in other sections, Doctor Harry G. Watson, M.A., M.D., of New York City, yet in the prime of his manhood, physical and mental, deserves high place. He was born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in Queen Anne County, son of John G. and Mary E. Watson. The Eastern Shore has been a great nursery of good men. It has con- tributed immensely to the material, moral and intellectual life of the State of Maryland and the city of Baltimore. Numbers of its sons have gone farther afield and have won their way in Philadelphia and New York, while descendants of these Eastern Shore families are found scattered over every section of our country.
The Watsons are of English descent, and we know that families of this name were settled both on the Western and Eastern Shore of Maryland as early as 1688-James Watson having been a constable in Old Kent in 1688, and other Watsons are known to have been located in Charles, St. Mary's and Baltimore Counties as early as 1673.
John G. Watson, father of Doctor Watson, was in his earlier days a school teacher. Later he engaged in business pursuits and served as county treasurer of Queen Anne. He was an industrious man, energetic both in speech and action. The Wilmers, another old Eastern Shore family, with - which the Watsons are connected, have been especially notable in the work of the Episcopal Church. the family having given to that church two bishops and a half dozen prominent clergymen.
Doctor Watson was reared in the village of Centreville. He was a healthy boy, fond of reading and of flowers. He passed through the schools of the village; entered Western Maryland College, and was graduated in 1889, with the degree A. B., to which was added the degree A. M. in 1892. Between 1889 and 1892, he was connected with the Western Maryland College as director of the Yingling Gymnasium, and principal of the Preparatory Department. He then became instructor of gymnastics in Yale University; and while
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holding that position, studied medicine in the medical department of the University, and was graduated as a doctor in 1898. In that same year he took a special course in Berlin, Germany, in some of the famous clinics of that city, and again studied in Berlin in 1910. The next two years he was connected with St. Mark's Hospital in New York; and since that time has been in the active practice of his profession in that city. That he is a busy and successful man is proven by the fact that he holds numerous hospital and educational positions, in addition to his work as a specialist in diseases of the stomach. These positions at the present moment are as follows: attending physician St. Mark's Hospital; visiting gastroenterologist, St. Mark's Hospital Dispensary; instructor in Medicine (stomach) New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital; assistant in Medicine (stomach) Presbyterian Hospital Dispensary.
Doctor Watson has been a contributor to medical journals on occasion, and his article entitled "A Morning at Bier's Clinic in Berlin," published in American Medicine in Number 3 of Volume VI, and handsomely illustrated, is of great interest, not only to profes- sional men, but to the layman who is unfamiliar with the usual poly- syllabic terms employed by doctors-apparently to keep the general public from coming to a knowledge of the secrets of the profession. Evidently Doctor Watson has no secrets to hide, for he writes in plain English, and most entertainingly.
As an incident of his career, it may be mentioned that, while teaching in Western Maryland College during the earlier years of his life he read law and was admitted to the bar in Maryland, but never entered upon the practice of the profession.
In his college days, Doctor Watson was much given to athletics, serving as captain of the football and baseball teams at the Western Maryland College; and as instructor in gymnastics in Yale University, was naturally given to athletics. All indications now point to the fact that his time is too much taken up in trying to put the disabled into an athletic condition to give much attention to personal ath- letics.
He is a Democrat in his political affiliations; a member of the Maryland Society of New York, and a communicant of the Methodist Protestant Church. In his reading, outside of his medical studies, Cooper, Irving and Longfellow are his favorite authors-and certainly no man could have a higher literary taste.
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Doctor Watson was married on October 14, 1903, to Adelaide Marie Erichs, daughter of H. W. Erichs of New York.
For the young man entering upon the work of life, he lays down a simple, practical code. First, he would have him cultivate the "sound mind in the sound body;" maintain a cheerful spirit; work hard; take yearly vacations; travel as much as possible-and marry a German-American girl, which is an indirect way of saying that the Doctor has not found marriage a failure.
He is a self-made man in the best sense of the word; for after passing through the academic courses in the Western Maryland College, the rest of his education has been obtained by his own efforts -and the thoroughness of that training has been proven by his career in the ten years that he has been in the active practice of the noble profession which he has adopted as a vocation.
DAVID JOHN LEWIS
1 HE Congressional Directory gives the following summary of Mr. Lewis:
"David John Lewis, Democrat, of Cumberland, born May 1, 1869, at Nuttall's Bank, Center County, Pennsylvania, near Osceola, of Welsh parents, Richard Lloyd Lewis, and Catherine Watkins Lewis, who migrated to Pennsylvania from Wales. Began coal mining at Houtzdale, Pennsylvania, when nine years of age, and removing to Allegany County, Maryland, continued at mining until April 20, 1892, when he was admitted to the bar of Allegany, where he has since practiced. Pursued his occupation as a miner and his studies in Law and Latin at same time, and was coached in Law by Hon. B. A. Richmond and in Latin by Rev. John W. Nott, D.D. Married to Florida M. Bohn, 1893, and elected to Maryland Senate in 1901. Elected to 62d Congress over Brainherd H. Warner, Jr., Republican, by majority of 682."
A contemporary publication gives the following character and biographical sketch of Mr. Lewis' life:
"Down in the black depths of a coal mine, by the wavering light of his cap lamp, David J. Lewis studied law. At night, when he went home sleepy from the sweat and the bad air, he studied again. But he fell asleep so often that he had to hold the book in such a position that it hurt his arm. It kept him awake and he became a lawyer.
That was when he was nineteen years old. He is forty-one now `and the Democratic candidate for Congress from the Sixth district, but in those forty-one years have been crowded a fight for education and advancement which, had he wavered at any time, would have driven him back to the mine hole.
And he has formed the habit of study and advancement and he cannot give up. He is a lawyer with an established practice at Cumberland, but going to Congress means to him the realization of a hope he has had since the black days in the mine.
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Just as he burrowed his way through the coal, so has he burrowed his way through life, leaving the non-essentials on the side; shoulder- ing through days of discouragement to the goal. And always he has reached the goal because he fought square, never put his heel on the head of another to rise and has never forgotten the days in the mine.
Lewis believes legislation directly affects the happiness of the people and he says it slowly, like a student, because he believes it after studying all the legislation of the world.
A MAN AMONG MEN
There is something tremendously paradoxical about "Davie" Lewis, as many of his friends call him. He came to Baltimore yesterday and walked about and only his friends stopped him. No one else recognized the game fighter who is now in the last throes of a battle for victory in the Sixth district, where the change of one vote counts so much.
"Davie" Lewis is not calculated to be conspicuous in a crowd unless the crowd is sitting down. He is hardly five feet tall, and stand- ing he has to look up at his fellows. But sitting you forget his height; you even forget the broad heavy shoulders that blot out the back of his chair, and you see only his face, and seeing his face means knowing him intimately.
The forty-one years of struggle have left the imprint of lines on his face and have strengthened the hands that he holds tightly clasped as he talks; but it is the clean-shaven mouth that opens and shuts like a safe deposit vault and the gray eyes that are straight and un- wavering that tell his story better than he can tell it himself.
He got that open face from his Welsh parents, and he has never tried to put a veil over it. If Lewis was crooked, you could tell it in a minute. His face is the kind that registers what is going on inside of him better than he knows himself. If he wanted to go to Congress to drink tea or if he wanted to go there to put through some erratic measure, it would tell.
MINER WHEN NINE YEARS OLD
He was born in a log cabin, and, while you pause here to think of Lincoln, watch again and again how the resemblance strikes you-
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up in Osceola, Pennsylvania. He was the oldest boy of a family of five. His parents had emigrated from Wales, and his father was a miner. When Lewis was nine years old there were five children, and he had to go to work.
People pass laws now to keep children out of work until they are fourteen years of age, but "'Davie" Lewis, without a day of school, shouldered a pick and shovel one morning with his father and went down into the mine. The coal he mined was worth about $10 a month wages to him, and that meant $10 more groceries at the com- pany store.
Lewis tells this story as if it was the usual thing, and he did not think it was strange when he says, almost apologetically:
"I guess I might have gained some education when I was ten years old because they had a strike in the mine and I was out six months, but I wanted to play. I had worked pretty hard in the mine."
He had gone into the mine every morning at the gray hour, and down below he worked all day in the damp darkness with his father. He came out of the hole in the evening when the light was fading. That six months of light was new to him and he wanted to play; a nine year-old boy-and he wanted to play.
But soon after that strike the desire for knowledge, which was to lead him probably to a seat in Congress, came. The darkness and sombreness of the mine made him thoughtful. Somehow when he - was four years old his mother had taught him to read, and he conned paper back novels at nights until he fell asleep, but the desire came now for something else.
He heard a miner one day tell another that in the West the Indians were being pushed farther and farther toward the sunset, but that the United States ran clear around the world. Lewis had never heard of the Pacific Ocean, and he wondered how big the country was. He dropped his baseball to listen to the men talk. He borrowed school `books and read them, mastered them and hunted for more.
DELVES INTO HISTORY AND PHYSICS
When he was twelve years old his mother died, and from then until he was sixteen he had to help keep house and work during the day. He had little time for reading, but at sixteen went to the
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Stanton territory in the hard-coal region to look for work, and here his accumulating desire for knowledge was fired one day.
He bought a copy of Macaulay's Essays and two books on physics at a book store for a nickel, and he read one of the books on physics that night. And then for three years he read everything he could find. He delved into astronomy, histories of the world and political science. One day he was buried in a pile of slag and they dug him out for dead. When they took his clothes off they found a book on physics.
He went to the Schuylkill region. He was restless. He says now he hardly knew what ailed him. He was dissatisfied. He worked all day relentlessly waiting to get home to read, and then he was so tired he fell asleep. He read all the books he could find about Schuylkill, and then went back home.
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Some of his enemies up in the Sixth district-because every man who ever amounts to anything has enemies-say he has socialistic tendencies, but if he was going to be a Socialist he would have been an out and out one when he was eighteen. He saw the coal operators running "company stores"-the miners called them "Pluck Me" stores that charged $1 for six pounds of sugar and took all the miner's wages for the little food they sold him. If he did not deal in a com- pany store, he could not get work.
He resented this, but he was reading Daniel Webster then, and the calm reasoning of Webster was the beacon light for the miner boy. He figured it out that it did not need a revolution to do away with that store. And it didn't. He has lived to see many of them dis- appear. And it was down in the deep hole thinking of Webster that he first wanted to go to Congress.
HOPED TO GO TO CONGRESS
Nobody knew what Davie Lewis was doing. "The Kid" they sometimes called him because he was so small, but most of them called him "Davie" then and do yet. They never poked fun at him, because while "The Kid" was little the picking had broadened his shoulders and he could hit an awful blow. But he preferred not to fight. The habit of the scholar was strong even then. And so, in the solitude of the mine he hoped that some day he would be a Con- gressman.
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At eighteen he went to Mount Savage. He had joined the Knights of Labor by this time and because Davie was square and because he would willingly write a letter for a miner who could not write the miners loved him. And Davie made his maiden speech in the Knights of Labor. He did not rant and squeal about the wrongs of the workingman. He talked mildly like a scholar, and he said that the proper candidates would mean better laws.
And then the miners knew why Davie read so much. And they were proud of him. One night he went to Cumberland with his lodge and made a speech there. He was called on suddenly and he arose nervously, but when he had forgotten himself some of the fruits of those long nights of study came out.
BEGAN TO STUDY LAW
There was a man named Donnelly in the meeting. He was a typesetter on a newspaper and he liked Davie because of the speech. After the meeting he asked him if he would not like to study law.
"That was the greatest moment of my life," says Mr. Lewis. "I had thought that maybe I could be a cabinetmaker if I saved $200, but-to be a lawyer. It was wonderful. I had read of lawyers, but I had never seen one."
But Davie was to suffer even greater pangs. Donnelly told Mr. Benjamin A. Richmond about him, and Mr. Richmond sent for the young miner.
"You want to study law?" he asked him.
"Yes sir," said Davie.
"Do you know any languages?"
"I know a little Welsh," said Davie.
Mr. Lewis knows now why Mr. Richmond turned away and laughed, but it was serious to the mining boy, standing there, quaver- ing, on the threshold of a new life and talking to a lawyer.
WORKED WHILE OTHERS SLEPT
The result was that Davie went home with a copy of Kent's Commentaries. He was delirious almost, he says, and carried the volume like a sacred text. Then for four years he studied law. He worked all day in the mine and at night when he got home he studied. Many times when things just would not get clear he took a book into
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the mines with him and in the breathing spaces, by the dim light of he lantern on his cap. he worked out the problems.
But his greatest trial was staying awake. Tired from work, he would fall asleep. Finally he held the book so that it ached the mus- cles in his arms, and then he stayed awake. Nights there were when everybody and everything seemed to tell him to quit. Men told him that he was tackling too big a job.
But he stuck on. He says, "a saint" had come into his life. It was Rev. John W. Nott, the Episcopal minister at Mount Savage, now an aged man. Dr. Nott taught the miner boy Latin and cheered him on. But it was a hard fight. He had to set his teeth and put his head down and hit the line hard. Harder than those who talk about such things ever do hit the line, but Davie won.
And on April 20, 1892, a miner with his Sunday suit on was admitted to the Cumberland bar. When he walked out a lawyer the miners told it underground. It went over the mountains into the hard coal region and down into West Virginia. "The Kid"-they still called him-had won.
"INSURGED" FROM REPUBLICANS
From that day he took his place as a lawyer with a duty to per- form. Men who liked this spunk gave him their business, but he always had time to spare for a poor miner with no money. And he liked politics, or perhaps was interested in politics is better. His father was a Republican and so was Davie until 1896, and then he "insurged."
"I saw then," he says, "what the present-day Insurgents see now. The old standpat element of the Republican party would obstruct the path of every piece of legislation that would make people happier-that would help them to live. Then Bryan came in 1896 and I liked his policies of legislation, and I have been a Dem- ocrat."
TO THE STATE SENATE IN 1901
In 1901 Lewis was nominated for the State Senate on the Dem- ocratic ticket and he won by 250. McKinley had just previously carried it by 1,500, but the miners and the people trusted him be- cause they knew him. He saved Allegany County $3,500 by local reforms and he put a bill through making it mandatory for the com-
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pensation of miners for injuries incurred while at work. It was declared unconstitutional.
But Lewis did not stop. He was a full-grown man then, nearing forty, and he had been fighting too long. It was his first public office, but when he ended his term in the Senate he never gave up. He lobbied for a bill at the last Legislature which levies a tax on mine owners and mine operators as well.
The money is held in trust by the county treasurer. When a miner is killed his people get $1,500. If he is hurt, he gets $1 a day.
RAN AGAINST PEARRE
In 1908 he ran against Colonel Pearre for Congress. He carried Allegany County, but the people in the other part of the district did not think he had a chance. This last time he accepted the nomina- tion again and he has made a campaign that is like him.
He speaks on the tariff. It took him two months to prepare that speech and David Lewis knows when he starts to talk. If anybody in the audience questions a single detail, Lewis knows. He learned to think in the sombreness of the mines-to think and think deeply-and he is, after all, a student-thinking what is best.
And now after Davie has studied and fought since he was nine years old-throwing up the coal of ignorance, climbing, climbing and never allowing anything or anybody to interfere with the one aim- to know what was right and act straight-the people of the Sixth district are talking of him and the votes will tell."-Sun, October 25, 1910.
"Mr. Lewis was elected to Congress, carrying the Sixth District in the election of 1910, the first time it has been carried by a Democrat since the election of General William M. McKaig in 1892."
"Mr. Lewis as a member of Congress has been assigned to the Labor, and Military Committees; has introduced a measure for the automatic compensation of accidents on railways, and the bill for the elimination of the express companies and the creation of a system of postal express articulating rural and suburban points with the rail- ways through the rural delivery system, at rates greatly reduced from express company charges. His speeches on parliamentary reform, to secure a deliberative House, and on postal express, have received nation wide attention."
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Yours Truly Hargett
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PETER LILBURN HARGETT
O NE of the most prominent, and also most useful of the busi- ness men of Frederick City in the present, is Peter Lilburn Har- gett; a native of Frederick County, born on the farm known as "Castle Henry," on December 12, 1852; son of Samuel and Eleanor (Burns) Hargett. His people were among the early German settlers of Frederick County about one hundred and fifty years ago. Peter Hargett sailed from Rotterdam, in the ship Two Brothers in 1750, and was the great-great grandfather of the subject of this sketch. His father was by occupation a farmer-a substantial citizen who served as a county commissioner and magistrate. On the maternal side of the family, Mr. Hargett's mother's name indicates Scotch origin.
The family name of Hargett is very rare, and its derivation un -. certain beyond the fact that originally it was probably Saxon, and in modern times may be derived either from Germany or England.
Mr. Hargett was a healthy country boy, whose time was divided between attendance upon the schools and the ordinary labors of a boy on a farm. . He was well educated in the public schools and the Frederick College. His life was spent on the farm until he was twenty-five years old, when he located in Frederick in 1877 as a member of the hardware firm of P. L. Hargett and Company, com- posed of himself and three brothers. The history of that firm during its thirty-three years of existence has been one of continuous success. Mr. Hargett has developed business capacity of a high order, and has been uniformly successful in his ventures. The best work perhaps of his life, and which is a result of his farm training, is the silo which he and others have devised. At the Jamestown Exposition the silo offered by him took the first prize. In 1903, in connection with his brother, Douglass H. Hargett, he organized the Economy Silo and Tank Company, of which D. H. Hargett was president, and Peter L. Hargett, treasurer and manager. D. H. Hargett died in 1908, and the business was then reorganized and called The Economy Silo and Manufacturing Company, with Mr. P. L. Hargett as president and manager. Our people are just beginning to appreciate fully
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the importance of the work of the farmer and the necessity for the proper development and improvement of our farms. The silo is an important feature in modern farin life, and Mr. Hargett by present- ing an improvement in this necessary adjunct to intelligent farming, has rendered a distinct public service. For many years he has been connected with the Frederick County Agricultural Society, and is now its vice-president.
But the hardware business and the silo represent but a small part of his business activities. He is president of the Jefferson and Frederick Turnpike Road Company, which having been purchased by the State was made part of the State System of Good Roads on August 20, 1910; treasurer of the Berlin and Lovettsville Bridge Com- pany; treasurer of the Hygeia Ice Company, and director of the Citizens National Bank, succeeding his brother, Douglass H. Hargett, in four offices upon the death of the latter in 1908.
Mr. Hargett is an active member of the Republican party, and takes a keen interest in political life, being now one of the sitting members from Frederick County of the Maryland House of Delegates, and elected by a large majority. In fraternal circles he is affiliated with the Masonic order and the Elks. His church relationship is with the Reformed Church.
He has never grown away from the love of the soil. Even as a boy he loved the farm life, and though the larger half of his life has been spent in commercial and manufacturing pursuits, he has always retained an affection for the land and kept an interest, owning now a good farm near Frederick, which he operates successfully and which gives him the sort of recreation which he best likes. As a farmer, as a business man, as a public man, he has set an excellent example of ยท good citizenship, has practiced a rigid integrity in all his transactions, and has won the absolute confidence and esteem of the community with which his family have been identified for generations.
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