USA > Maryland > Men of mark in Maryland Johnson's makers of America series biographies of leading men of the state, Volume IV > Part 20
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24
Mr. Hargett organized the Maryland State Turnpike Association, and was its first president; and to this organization may be traced > many improvements in road building. The Frederick and Jefferson Turnpike Company, of which he was president, is thought by its friends to be one of the very best turnpike roads in the United States.
The chief business of Mr. Hargett always rested in his member- ship in the firm of P. L. Hargett and Company, Seed and Imple- ment Dealers.
Beside these firm and corporation interests Mr. Hargett was · directly or indirectly interested in a number of minor enterprises. He never allowed his financial interests, or his personal business, to divert his attention from general plans for the public welfare, and as a trustee of the public schools of his city, he ever took an active interest in all matters of education.
In politics, Mr. Hargett was a Republican, his political convic- tions having been formed by a steady reading of the New York Tribune since 1865. But he held himself no advocate of a national partisanship; and he frequently found himself at issue with the measures advocated by the Republican party. In 1897, he was nominated and elected clerk of the circuit court, serving for six years.
Mr. Hargett was a member of the Reformed Church, in which he filled the office of elder and deacon, and active in the general work of his church; he was especially interested in foreign missions, and delivered many addresses for the mission cause. He also made ad- dresses on other public questions, several of which have been printed; and he was the author of some creditable verse. In 1903, at the open- ing of the Maryland Corn Institute, at Frederick, he welcomed the · farmers of the county and the state; and his enterprise and his executive ability did much towards the success of that institution, whose symbol (the "Mondamin Pin" by the sale of which the insti- tute was chiefly financed) was devised by Mr. Hargett.
350
DOUGLASS H. HARGETT
He was a Masen, a member of the Elks, and of the Society of the War of 1812.
On May 22, 1877, Mr. Hargett married Miss Emma M. Whipp, daughter of George T. and Mary A. B. Whipp, of Jefferson, Frederick County, Maryland. Of their four children, the eldest son, Burns, lost his life by an accident when eleven years old; the second, Walter S. Hargett, M.D., is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College, and of the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, and is a practising physician in Philadelphia; a daughter, Bessie Mary, a graduate of the Woman's College of Frederick, Maryland, is now Mrs. Robert Clapp, of Kannapolis, North Carolina; while Earlston L. is a law student at the University of Pennsylvania.
Asked for suggestions to his younger fellow citizens, which might help them in winning success in life, Mr. Hargett wrote: "Learn all you can concerning the work you are set to do. Think well before you act; and then do your best to accomplish the best you have thought. Determine to do only what will benefit others as well as yourself, striving above all else to be useful to your fellow men. Protect the weak against the strong; and never compromise your integrity or violate your sense of right."
351-352
BFJohnson ine Washington DC
Risch noch B. UMball.
.
ENOCH BOOTH ABELL
T HE old county of St. Mary's, first settled of all the Maryland counties, has been a great nursery of men. In the early days of the Colony, the home of culture, inhabited by a prosperous population, it gave tone and character to the whole colony. Then came the modern time, when steam superseded sailing vessels, and railroads took the place of the stage coach. St. Mary's left off the main lines of travel, fell upon evil days; but many of the descendants of the early settlers,-wedded to the soil by generations of residence, adhered to the old country. The famous old Charlotte Hall School for boys and young men has been maintained now for nearly a cen- tury and a half. St. Mary's Female Seminary for young ladies, a State institution situated at St. Mary's City, the site of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, is in a flourishing condition. And so today a brighter time is coming for the old county, and like many other sections of the East, long neglected, it has ahead of it a period of prosperity far surpassing anything it has yet known. It may be ten years, it may be twenty years away-but it is inevitable. As educational development is an index of true progress, the establish- ment at Leonardtown, the county seat, in 1885, of St. Mary's Academy, by the Sisters of Nazareth, of Kentucky-a school for young ladies; and the more recent founding, at the same place, of Leonard Hall, by the Xaverian Brothers, a school for boys and young men, already bespeaks for the county the dawn of a new era of pro- gress and development. Another sign of progress and development may be found in the recent construction of a macadamized State road from the county seat to the nearest railroad station, a distance of sixteen miles.'
A prominent citizen of the present time in that county is Enoch B. Abell, lawyer, publisher, and for the past fourteen years clerk of the circuit court. The name of Abell in Maryland is almost identi- fied with the publishing business. " The Baltimore Sun stands as a monument to one of the greatest newspaper publishers our country has known. He was of New England stock of pure English descent.
353
354
ENOCH BOOTH ABELL
Enoch Booth Abell, though not a member of that immediate family, has duplicated in a country paper and in a smaller way the success which Arunah S. Abell won in a metropolitan journal.
British genealogists tell us that the family name of Abell had its origin in the Anglo-Saxon, Abal, meaning "strength" and the career of some of these later American Abells would indicate that strength has not departed from the family. The name is an ancient one in Great Britain, found in the Roll of Battle Abbey and in the Domesday Book. The family has been armigerous in that country for centuries.
Enoch B. Abell, of Leonardtown, was born in that ancient village December 13, 1855; son of James Franklin and Maria J. (Nuthall) Abell, both natives of St. Mary's County. His father was a son of another Enoch B. Abell; followed the occupation of farming and brokerage; filled the office of constable for many years; and was a trustee of St. Mary's Female Academy. Enoch B. Abell, after at- tending the public and private schools of his neighborhood, entered as a student at Georgetown University, in September 1872, and was graduated with the degree A.B. in 1877, and then read law under the late Colonel Benjamin G. Harris and Judge B. Harris Camalier, his brother-in-law and now associate judge of the seventh judicial circuit of Maryland. He was admitted to the bar in 1880, and began the practice of his profession that same year. In 1883, a strong Republican in his political convictions, he in conjunction with the late Frank N. Holmes, a former schoolmate, established The Enter- prise, a weekly newspaper, as a vehicle for conveying his views to the public of his section. In that same year he became clerk of the levy court, a most responsible position, and served three terms of two years each, acting in 1901, as secretary and member of the build- ing committee of the new court house. In 1889, his Alma Mater conferred upon him the degree of M.A.
Mr. Abell is identified with all movements looking to the develop- ment of his native county, and occupies many important positions in private and business life. He is treasurer and general manager of the Leonardtown Joint Stock and Transportation Company; treas- urer of the St. Mary's Live Stock and Improvement Company; treasurer of St. Mary's Race Association. As a source of recreation he manifests great interest in the light harness sport, and is the breeder and owner of a trotter, "Russel G.," winner of the handsome
-
355
ENOCH BOOTH ABELL
silver cup awarded for speed by the Road Drivers and Riders Associa- tion, D. C., May 11, 1910, on the Washington Speedway.
As the years went by, Mr. Abell made character and gained the confidence and the esteem of his fellow citizens, in addition to which he made a substantial success of his business affairs. So it came about that in 1897, he was elected clerk of the circuit court for a terin of six years. In 1903, so efficient had been the discharge of his duties, he was elected for a second term; and in 1909 was again elected for a third term, which he is now serving. As an evidence of the great trust his party reposes in his judgment and leadership, it may be noted that he has held the position of chairman of the Republican County Central Committee and a member of the Republican State Executive Committee for the past fifteen years. He was one of the Fifth Congressional District Delegates of Maryland at the Republican Presidential Convention, at Philadelphia, in 1900, and, prior to the nomination, was a strong advocate of Mckinley and Roosevelt, "first, last and all the time." His Republicanism dates back to his college days, when in 1876, he became president of a Hayes and Wheeler Club, organized in the college, during the mem- - orable Tilden-Hayes fight, and led a small band of followers against the united Democracy of the school in a joint debate which finally terminated in a small sized riot, when the authorities intervened and broke- up the meeting. He was also a delegate from his native county to the Cambridge State Convention in 1895, which nominated the late Lloyd Lowndes, who was the first Republican governor of Maryland after the Civil War.
In 1904, he became one of the organizers, and since its establish- ment has been a director of the First National Bank of St. Mary's- a bank which has a surplus greater than its capital.
Mr. Abell is a communicant of the Catholic Church, and a member of the Knights of Columbus. He was one of the incorpora- tors of the Southern Maryland Telephone Company, and is still a member of its board of directors. He is the owner of eight or ten houses in his native town, also of five farms in the county, outside · of his business investments in real estate in all sections of the county. In fact, he is an up-to-date man of affairs.
On September 1, 1884, Mr. Abell was married to Katie M. Camalier, oldest daughter of the late John A. and Mary E. Camalier, and sister of Judge B. Harris Camalier of the seventh judicial dis-
.
356
ENOCH BOOTH ABELL
trict of Maryland, and to them have been born five children: Benjamin Kennedy; Ellen Marguerite; Mary Elizabeth; James Franklin, and Maria Heloise Abell, all of whom are graduates of St. Mary's Acad- emy, except James Franklin, who matriculated at Loyola College. Baltimore, Maryland, and later at Leonard Hall.
He believes, and believes truly, that the great need of his county is the extension of the railroad line clear down the Peninsula, either to the old town of St. Mary's, or down to Point Lookout; and that with the establishment of better shipping facilities, with its genial climate and kindly soil, the old county, now nearly three hundred years settled, will enter upon a period of new development.
A public spirited and useful man, Mr. Abell's fifty-five years of life have been full of arduous work and successful achievement.
357-358
-
ASA BIRD GARDINER, JR.
A SA BIRD GARDINER, JR., of Baltimore County, Maryland, comes of a family which during the past three hundred years has contributed many excellent citizens to our country, and which prior to that, for five hundred years was conspicuous through numerous branches in Great Britain. The name Gardiner in the earlier centuries seems to have been indifferently spelled: Gardener, Gardiner, and Gardner. The same coat of arms appearing under these three different spellings demonstrates beyond question the common origin, irrespective of the spelling. At the present moment, there are two titles in the family, Baron Gardner, and Baron Burghclere-the first of which is now being contested by rival claimants. Of this family, Baring-Gould, the English author, says that "they derive from some worthy working man who, when engaged in the potting- shed or in manuring the soil, had no notion that a descendant would wear a coronet." This is merely his quaint way of saying that it is one of those family names derived originally from an occupation, as a multitude of our English family names are. The Gardiners have been prominent in Great Britain as far back as the first Crusades, and 'the coat of arms used by the progenitor of this branch of the family is found in England, with slight variations, in about six different branches. The prominence of the family in Great Britain may be judged by the fact that altogether there are at least fifty coats of arms granted to it during the last eight hundred years. In Thomas Wall's Book of Crests, an old book printed in 1530, under No. 558, appears the following: "Gardiner of beryth to his crest an oold man's hed silver long here and berd sable his necke rased geules and albanoys hatte on his hede silver the reversion lyke a wrethe purple." It will be noticed in the description of the coat of arms of the American Gardiners that the bearded Saracen's head with the wreath, etc., reproduces in a way this old crest.
The family of Asa Bird Gardiner, Jr., is descended from Sir Osborn Gardiner, Knight, Lord of the Manor of Orell on Douglas River, Wigan Parish, West Derby Hundred, County Palatine of Lancaster,
359
-
--
360
ASA BIRD GARDINER, JR.
.
.
England; and this Sir Osborne Gardiner was rated as the chief of that Anglo-Saxon family. This was in the year 1128. As early as 1150, this family had the following coat of arms: "Or, on a chevron, gules, between three griffins heads erased, azure, two lions counter- passant of the field, or." Apparently this was the first coat of arms granted the Gardiner families. They saw service in the third and seventh Crusades, and there was added to this coat of arms the fol- lowing crest: "On a wreath a Saracen's head, couped at the should- ers, full-faced proper; on the head a cap turned up gules, and azure and bearded sable. The motto: Praesto pro patria." When the Herald's College was established during the reign of Richard III, in 1484, these arms were recognized in several grants to cadet branches of the family. The American family was founded by George Gardiner, Gentleman, of London, England, sixteenth in descent from Sir Osborn Gardiner. George Gardiner married at St. James Church, Clerkenwell, London, Sarah Slaughter, youngest daughter of Paris Slaughter, Lord of the ancient family Manor of Upper Slaughter, in the Hundred of Slaughter, Gloucestershire, England. George Gardiner was a member of the Church of England; but for some reason, he elected to come to Puritan New England, and in April.1637, sailed in the ship Fellowship, with his wife, his three little sons, George, Nicholas and Benoni, and three servants, arriving in Boston, June 29, 1637; thence moved on to Providence Plantations; early in 1638, moved to Pocasset, Rhode Island, and finally settled in Newport. He was a member of the General Court which met on March 12, 1640, to estab- lish a government for the Colony of Rhode Island. He was elected ensign for the Colony on March 13, 1644, and commissioner to the Provincial Legislature of Rhode Island on October 28, 1662. He was a man of consequence in his generation, a large landed proprietor in Newport, and in the King's Province, now known as Washington County, Rhode Island. His sons were principal contributors in the erection of Trinity Church, Newport, in 1690, and the Narragansett Church in King's Province, in 1698. Many of George Gardiner's descendants have been eminent men. One of his grandsons, John Gardiner, born 1695, was chief justice of Rhode Island for several years, and its deputy governor until he died. A great-grandson, Doctor Sylvester Gardiner, born in 1707, was one of the proprietors in the Kennebec Purchase, Maine, and the city of Gardiner was named in his honor. Doctor Sylvester Gardiner's eldest son, the Honorable
.
361
ASA BIRD GARDINER, JR.
John Gardiner, graduated from Glasgow University in 1755; studied law at the Inner Temple, London, under Sir Charles Pratt, afterwards known as Lord Chancellor Camden; and although Mr. Gardiner was a Whig, he was made attorney-general of the Island of St. Christopher, in the West Indies, in 1758, holding the position until 1783, when he returned to New England. Doctor Sylvester Gardiner's eldest daughter married Colonel the Right Honorable Arthur Brown, of the British army, member of Parliament for County Mayo, and second son of the Marquis of Sligo. Another great-grandson of George Gardiner, the Honorable Sylvester Gardiner, nearly related to the subject of this sketch, was born in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, in 1747, and in May, 1787, was elected by the Rhode Island General Assembly to be a delegate from that State to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Still another great-grandson of George Gardiner, the Honorable John Gardiner, born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, in 1747, was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1788.
· Asa Bird Gardiner, Jr., is the ninth in descent from George Gardi- ner, the immigrant, through all three of his sons, George, Nicholas and Benoni, by reason of intermarriages in the later generations. Many of the intermediate ancestors in these three lines have been conspicu- ous in the public service in Rhode Island, Mr. Gardiner's great-great- grandfather, Othaniel Gardiner, born in Exeter, Rhode Island, in 1743, entered the Continental army during the Revolution, and died in December, 1777, near Lake Champlain, holding the rank of first · lieutenant.
Mr. Gardiner was born at Filston Manor, Glencoe, Baltimore County, Maryland, July 31, 1866; the oldest of four sons of Colonel Asa Bird Gardiner and his wife, Mary Austen. His father, Colonel Asa Bird Gardiner, born in New York City, September 30, 1839, has had a most remarkable career. A man of profound learning, he ob- tained the degree A.B. from the College of the City of New York in 1859; LL.B. from New York University, in 1860; A.M. from his Alına Mater in 1862; Honorary A.M. from Dartmouth College in 1864; A.M. from Columbia University in 1869; LL.D. from New York University in-1875, and L.D.D. from Hobart College in 1896. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1860. He entered the Federal army May 27, 1861, as a first lieutenant; was a captain in 1862; served with distinguished gallantry during the war, in the first year in Virginia; for some reason resigned, but only stayed out of the army a little
IT
362
ASA BIRD GARDINER, JR.
while, when be raised & company for the Twenty-Second New York; returned to active service; participated in the great campaigns of 1862-3; was wounded at Carlisle, Pennsylvania; received a medal of honor from Congress for distinguished service at Gettysburg; mustered out of volunteer service in 1866; entered the regular army in the same year with the rank of second lieutenant; transferred to First Artillery in 1869; on account of his legal knowledge became a judge advocate, first of the Military Division of the South, and later of the Division of the Atlantic; was professor of law at West Point Academy, 1874-78; acting secretary of war, 1887-88; re-engaged in the practice of his profession in New York City; became district- attorney of New York County in 1897, and is one of the best known men of that great city. Colonel Gardiner was placed upon the retired list of the army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, April 23, 1904. He is a well known legal author along military lines, having published in 1874, The Writ of Habeas Corpus as Affecting the Army and Navy; and in 1878, Practice and Proceedings of Courts Martial. In 1885, he published a history of The Rhode Island Continental Line in the Revolution; and in 1905, The Order of the Cincinnati in France.
Colonel Asa Bird Gardiner married Mary Austen, daughter of George and Caroline (Millemon) Austen, of Baltimore County, Mary- land, on October 18, 1865. George Austen, the father of Mrs. Asa Bird Gardiner, was the second son of John Austen, a gentleman of Kent County, England, who was a descendant of an ancient Anglo- Saxon family in Kent County, whose tombs and memorials principally occupy the walls or graveyard of St Martin's Church, Canterbury, the most ancient church edifice in England, where St. Augustine held services. Upon the expiration of the entailment of the Manor of Filstone, near Bessels Green, Cheapstead, Kent County, England, John Austen sold the estate, and with his wife, nee Martha Colgate, embarked at Gravesend, March 16, 1795, for Baltimore. He purchased an estate in Harford County, Maryland, for sixty thousand dollars, which descended to his eldest son, John. The second son, George, married Caroline Millemon, daughter of George and Rosanna (Cole- man) Millemon. George Millemon was a prominent citizen of Balti . more in the early years of the nineteenth century, living in 1805, on th corner of what is now Saratoga and Calvert Streets. He was a. architect and planned many of the earlier buildings, such as the› courthouse, the Maryland University Hospital, and the Belveder
-----
-
363
ASA BIRD GARDINER, JR.
Bridge. He had served in the Continental army in his younger days during the Revolution, and was one of the signers of the protest at a meeting of the prominent citizens of Baltimore, in 1811, which was sent to the President of the United States to be forwarded to the King of England. He was first sergeant in Captain Michael Haubert's Company, Fifty-First Regiment, Maryland Militia Infantry, com- manded by Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant Henry Amey, and fought in the Third Brigade, Maryland Militia, under Brigadier General John Stricker at the Battle of North Point, September 12, 1814, and subsequently a member of the Association of the Defenders of Balti- more. The lineage of Asa Bird Gardiner, Jr., has been dealt with ' here at considerable length somewhat upon the line advanced by Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes, that to make a gentleman you have to begin one hundred years before he is born, and we see here in eight hundred years of faithful public service and private good citizenship, there has been developed a long line of men equal to every responsibility which has devolved upon them.
Asa Bird Gardiner, Jr., went through the Columbia Grammar School, in New York, and thence to Columbia College, School of Arts, from which college he was graduated with the Class of 1887, and the degree B.A. While in college he became affiliated with the Delta Kappa Epsilon College Fraternity, and took an active part in college athletics, being particularly fond of rowing. After his graduation, he entered upon a business life in New York, and was pursuing his · career there quietly, when the death of his uncle, Edward Austen devolved upon him the care of the Filston Estate, in Maryland (named for the ancient home of the Austen family in Kent County, England, which was originally called Fel stone). Appreciating that such a property could not be handled at long range, it consisting of a valuable two thousand acre farm at Glencoe, he returned to Mary- land in 1894 and took up this work, which he has since prosecuted diligently and successfully.
On January 6, 1897, Mr. Gardiner was married to Mary Norcom Campbell, daughter of Howard Campbell, of New York.
From the time of Mr. Gardiner's return to Maryland up to the present, he has been a student of his trade, or more properly speaking, profession of farming; for when analyzed it will be seen that the suc- cessful farmer needs a wider range of knowledge than any other man in any other vocation whatsoever. If anyone doubts this, an investi-
364
ASA BIRD GARDINER, JR.
gation of some of the successful farmers of the country will develop the fact that these men have brought to their aid every resource of science, and thus achieved what looks to the uninitiated as marvelous results. Mr. Gardiner has put all of his attainments and all of his intelligence into this work, and .in addition to this, a man of great public spirit-as he could not well otherwise be with such antecedents- he has done what has been possible under the conditions surrounding him, to advance the welfare of his native county and of the city of Baltimore, which is in effect his home.
The old coat of arms of the Gardiner family has already been given. It is not amiss to give here the coat of arms of the Austen family, of which his mother was a member. From the Herald's visitation to the County of Kent in 1619, but used from far earlier days, we give this description: "Or, a chevron gules, between three lions' gambs erect and erased, sable. Crest-on a mural coronet, or, a buck sejant, argent, attired gold."
RICHARD DUNN HYNSON
I HE late Richard Dunn. Hynson of Chestertown, one of the strongest lawyers and ablest business men of the Eastern Shore, was born in Chestertown in 1865, and died there on June 2, 1907. Considering that his life was cut short at the early age of forty-two, Mr. Hynson really achieved wonderful results. His father, Richard Hynson, was a leading lawyer of his time; and his mother, Caroline L. Marsh, was descended from the famous Eccle- ston family. The Hynson family has been identified with the Eastern Shore of Maryland since 1650, and has been prominent in that section all these generations. It has contributed numerous men to the armies of the country; to learned professions; to business circles, and to public life. The family has always been large owners of real estate, and from its beginning, which was on Kent Island, has steadily multi- plied and prospered. In the first generation, the names appearing are Richard, Thomas and George. Thomas apparently was the pro- genitor of the family. He settled in 1650 in Kent Island and was clerk.of the county in 1652.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.