USA > Maryland > Men of mark in Maryland Johnson's makers of America series biographies of leading men of the state, volume I > Part 16
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For four years Mr. Hayne was in charge of the movement to es- tablish a lightship at the buoy marking the tail of the horseshoe at the entrance of the Chesapeake bay. The old course was so hazardous that there were many wrecks. A strong opposition developed from national sources on account of the expense and from local sources on account of locality, some desiring it on the middle ground, two miles above its present location. The movement headed by Mr. Hayne succeeded be- cause, as he says, " their position was a broader one, the present loca- tion of the lightship serving vessels large or small, while the middle- ground location would have served chiefly the deeper-draft vessels."
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Mr. Hayne has always taken special pleasure in work which yielded beneficial results to others. It is his strong belief that all men should add to and not subtract from the world's storehouse, and even though the carrying-out of such policies should involve personal sacri- fice, it should be done without publicity or the desire for reward, for that often leads to the vices of vanity and selfishness.
Outside of his legal studies his reading has been of philosophic and scientific works which appealed to reason, but he says that per- haps the greatest help he has had in life was the trite words of wis- dom used by his grandmother, Angeline Bowen, in condensed, short form of folk-lore, many of which sayings he has preserved. He has always found one of Emerson's expressions most helpful: "Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar?" He can see where he has drawn value from many sources; of first importance was his home training ; secondly, the noble men of his acquaintance who are doing their duty without ostentation and without hope of financial reward. His own study, school associations and other things have been con- trolling factors. In political matters Mr. Hayne may be classed as an Independent. When elections come and there are no great controlling interests involved he looks to the platform represented by the man himself.
Religiously reared in the Methodist church, he naturally has for that organization the most kindly feeling, but he sees good in all sects and creeds. In the matter of relaxation and recreation Mr. Hayne's own words are: " First and above all fresh air and plenty of it to im- prove the blood. Light exercise and an understanding of the value of hydrotherapeutics to keep the blood circulating, with temperance in all things. As diversions I find music, the study of the sciences and particularly the new school of rational medicine to be helpful and interesting."
Speaking of the results of his labors, he says that he has no real cause for complaint, and has been treated better than he had any right to expect. In his work he strives to do each day better than he did the day before. He possesses the power of concentration with determina- tion and capacity for long and continuous work ; coupled with this, his friends say that he has extreme caution, which, however, is merely the result of close analysis. He holds a sincere respect for the other man's views and has found this most helpful in his dealings with men. Mr. Hayne regards chess as not only a pleasant diversion, but one of the
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very best forms of mental acrobatics, as it develops concentration and careful analysis, firmness, courage, caution, patience and judgment. When asked to express himself in the way of advice to the young man starting out in life, he makes this statement: " Next to an abiding faith in some one of the forms of worship, or reaching the same result through a philosophic basis, enabling one to become attached to the good, the true and the beautiful, I regard essential qualities toward proper advancement to be: well-directed concentration intensely di- rected to the work in hand, with capacity for continuous effort. It is «ential that sound analysis should always be a preliminary to the adoption of sound methods. I draw a sharp distinction between animal courage and spiritual courage. The former may and often does find its incentive in a vain effort to secure applause. The latter is more often applied unostentatiously under the dictates of conscience and usually requires self-sacrifice, without anyone being aware of the struggle or result. The true heroes of the day are the quiet sufferers self-sacrificed to the principle of right, with a modesty which cannot be penetrated. It is by no means always the worthiest men whose work becomes known. Never abuse authority ; remember that those dependent on you need your protection. If you are of militant spirit and spoiling for the fray, take it up on principle with those who have an equal or better chance to defend themselves. Never take advantage of an enemy in an unguarded moment."
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VICTOR GUSTAV BLOEDE
V ICTOR GUSTAV BLOEDE, of Baltimore, chemist and manu- facturer of chemical products, president of the Victor G. Bloede Company, and president of the First National Bank of Catonsville, Maryland, was born in Dresden, Germany, in 1849. His father, Gustav Bloede, a physician who had been a member of the city council of Dresden during the Revolution of 1849, was characterized by a lofty idealism and an intense love of liberty which shortly after- wards caused him, with his wife, Marie Franziska Bloede, to come to America, where they settled in Brooklyn, New York. His father and Mrs. Bloede's progenitors had been distinguished for work in natural science, and two of her uncles were well known for what they did in politics and literature.
Victor Gustav Bloede became a bread-winner when twelve years old " through force of circumstances," and he worked first as an office boy in the endeavor to secure the means to pursue his studies. From his earliest recollections the influence of his mother was intense, not only in awakening and strengthening his material life, but in the ethi- cal and spiritual standards which she held before him. As a small boy, he had attended the public schools of Brooklyn ; and, while engaged as an office boy, he began to study at the Cooper Institute night school in New York City. From the natural science division of that institution he was graduated in 1867, his being the first class of the institute to receive diplomas for the scientific course.
Mr. Bloede names as the strongest influence in leading him to seek to be useful and successful in life, "reading the biographies of men who have achieved success." The desire to gain success in order that he might help the mother who had done so much to help him, soon became a strong motive in his life; and he had the privilege of a per- sonal acquaintance and of kindly intercourse with that wise philan- thropist, the late Peter Cooper, the founder and benefactor of Cooper Institute, whose example and teachings had a very strong influence on the life of the young German student and chemist.
In 1868 he secured a position in chemical works in Brooklyn
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and began to study the manufacture of chemicals and pharmaceutical preparations. In this study his own personal preference was strength- ened and encouraged by his mother, who ever wisely cultivated the hon- orable aspirations of her ambitious son.
In 1877 Mr. Bloede established himself at Baltimore as a chemist and manufacturer of chemical products, and he has been president of the Victor G. Bloede Company since its incorporation in 1893, a step rendered necessary by the rapid development of the business.
A deep thinker and close observer, he early decided there was a rich field along the lines of improvement in the methods then obtaining in similar factory plants. Applying himself to study and research, he evolved decided advancement, and between 1880 and 1895 he was granted fifteen or twenty patents upon chemical processes, principally connected with dyeing cotton fabrics. One of the most important of these is the patent upon his process for dyeing in " sun-fast," unfading shades. He has also received a number of valuable medals for highly meritorious inventions.
Not content with directing his studies and investigations along lines which might prove pecuniarily profitable, Mr. Bloede has sought to make his studies practically serviceable to the cause of public health and to the public welfare. Love for humanity has always been one of his prevailing characteristics, a trait carefully encouraged by an excellent mother's precept and example ; hence the sufferings and needs of the incurably sick appealed most strongly to his vigorous manhood and sympathetic nature; and, as his horizon widened, his views in- creased, formed a purpose and blossomed into fruition. On November 10, 1908, the new and handsome structure erected in the midst of some twenty-three acres of beautiful and park-like grounds at Towson, Balti- more county, was dedicated to suffering humanity and to the memory of his mother, as the " Marie Bloede Memorial Hospital for Advanced Consumptives," and presented to the " Hospital for Consumptives of Marylard," being accepted by Doctor Henry Barton Jacobs, as presi- dent thereof, in the presence of Governor Austin L. Crothers, Right Reverend Wm. Paret, Protestant Episcopal bishop, Mayor J. Barry Mahool, and a distinguished audience.
In the realm of literature Mr. Bloede has also contributed value, he being the author of the " Reducers' Manual and Practical Metal- lurgy," a text-book of recognized worth.
Strongly imbued with civic pride, Mr. Bloede has displayed inter-
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est and taken a leading part in the beneficial development of his home town, Catonsville, Maryland. He projected the Baltimore, Catonsville and Ellicott City Electric Railway. He organized the First National Bank of Catonsville and served as its first vice-president ten years, until in 1908 he was elected its president. In 1910 he helped to organ- ize the National City Bank of Baltimore and is one of its directors. He organized and financed the Patapsco Electric Company, for furnish- ing electric light and power to Catonsville and the surrounding country.
On the 5th of June, 1883, Mr. Bloede married Miss Elise, daugh- ter of Carl and Marie Franziska Schon of Toledo, Ohio. They have five children : Marie, Carl S., Ilse, Victor G. and Vida Bloede.
In his political convictions and party relations he is "independ- ent," voting and working at all times for the men he thinks best quali- fied. He has given no special attention to athletics or physical culture, except in the practice of long-distance walking, in which he is a warm believer. He has found his favorite forms of recreation in fishing, rowing and walking.
To the young people of Maryland, this successful scientist and business man offers these suggestions: "No man of high ideals and strong desire to accomplish is satisfied with the results of his efforts, for the ideal is the unattainable; but I have observed that men seldom fail to accomplish any task or aim which they have set before them, when their motto is ' Never give up trying.' Persistency is the greatest single element in success. Have a purpose in life. Study and observe men and women of strong character and ability. Always seek associa- tion with those to whom you can look up. Never give up an under- taking because it is hard and unpromising; but make up your mind to persist until you succeed."
He is a member of the Society of Chemical Industry (Interna- tional), the American Chemical Society, the Chemists' Club of New York City, and the Johns Hopkins Club.
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THEODORE MARBURG
of New York, The Pilgrims of New York and London, corresponding member of the American Institute of Architects, The Political Science Association, The American Society of International Laws, and mem- ber of the American Economic Association, which he served as vice- president from 1900 to 1902. Politically, he is identified with the Re- publican party. He has participated prominently in the formation of several important organizations, such as the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore (1399), The American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes (1910), and The Maryland Peace Society (1910). Religiously, he is affiliated with the Unitarian church.
With the thoroughness characteristic of the Teutonic race, from which he is descende.l, his reading has been along the lines that would give precise and thorough information in a way that would round out his intellectual training. Thus he has found Blackstone most excel- lent for reason, Emerson for stimulus, and the physical sciences (chem- istry and physics) for exactness. Mr. Marburg has a sound philosophy of life. As he sees it, one should make service and not fame the aim of life; and absolute intellectual honesty should be cultivated vs. special pleading in conduct as well as speech. He believes it is a good practice to go out in the open alone to take one's bearings. He believes that the cultivated man should saturate himself with Shakespeare, Bacon and Plutarch, cultivate the classics, get a thorough grasp on human history, and by training in the natural sciences correct habits of loose thinking. From his standpoint these are all parts of the machinery of civilization, and to fail to equip oneself with that machinery is throwing away one's inheritance. Certainly no fault can be found with Mr. Marburg's defi- nitions nor with his ideals, unless it may be that he magnifies the intellectual and possibly to some extent overlooks the practical, for life is a combat, whether it be in business life, in political life, in moral life, or whether it be in the spirit of the individual where the forces of good and evil combat, or whether it be out in the hurly-burly of life where fellow contends with fellow. The great value of this intellectual training can be realized only if one uses it as an effective weapon for winning the struggles which we cannot evade. The price of good gov- ernment is not only watchfulness, but constant battling. For Mr. Marburg this much may be said : In the beginning he set for himself a lofty ideal and, to the extent of his opportunity, he has lived up to it.
LEIGH BONSAL
L EIGH BONSAL, lawyer, of Baltimore, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, July 4, 1862, son of Stephen and Frances Land (Leigh) Bonsal. His father was descended from Richard Bonsal, who came from the village of that name in Derbyshire, Eng- land, to Philadelphia in 1683 and owned three hundred acres of land within the present limits of that city. Bonsal, or Bonsall, as the name appears in old English records, was probably originally of Welsh ex- traction, as the Herald's office in London shows the grant of coat armor to Sir Thomas Bonsall, of Fronfraith, county Cardigan, Wales, and apparently later on descendants of this Sir Thomas Bonsall settled in Montgomery, Wales and Derbyshire, England. On the maternal side of his family, the Leighs are not only among the most ancient, but were at one time one of the most numerous families of the English gentry, the various branches of the family being in possession of fifty different coats of arms. In our own country the ancestors of Mr. Bon- sal appeared as members of the colonial legislatures in Pennsylvania and Virginia, on committees of safety, as militia officers, and one cer- tainly was a member of the Virginia Council.
Mr. Bonsal's father was a coffee importer, possessed of much cor- diality of manner and quick perception, who was highly esteemed in Baltimore, where he established himself after the Civil war, and in which city he served on various commissions for the improvement of the Baltimore City government.
Leigh Bonsal's boyhood was divided between city and country life, and as a boy he was devoted to athletic sports and yet partial to read- ing. His early educational training was obtained in St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire, from which he went to Harvard University, and was graduated by that institution in 1884 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Having decided to enter the profession of law he became a student in the Law Department of the University of Mary- land, and was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Law in 1886. While in attendance at the law school he also attended the historical lectures at the Johns Hopkins University. Immediately upon his
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graduation he entered upon practice in Baltimore, and in the twenty- five intervening years has built up a large and successful general prac- tice. Not an office-seeker, he has yet taken a keen interest in politics as an independent Democrat and has been a prominent member of the executive committee of the Baltimore Reform League. In 1895 he assisted in the movement for honest elections, and in 1896, declining to support Bryan, the Democrat nominee, he was a delegate to the ·Convention of Gold Democrats which nominated Palmer and Buckner for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. Mayor McLane appointed him president of the board of visitors of the Baltimore City jail, and in February, 1904, he served as a member of the executive committee of the General Relief Committee, which determined how needy citizens should be relieved after the great fire. Through the self-reliance and independence of the people of Baltimore, only $23,000 were spent out of the $250,000 appropriated by the legislature.
On October 16, 1890, Mr. Bonsal was married to Miss Mary C. Pleasants, daughter of the late J. Hall Pleasants, who, as president of the Civil Service Reform Association and as a trustee of the Johns Hopkins University, was for many years one of the prominent men of Baltimore. They have six children.
While at college he played football, but his present recreation is found in tennis. Religiously, he is a member of the Protestant Epis- copal church, and holds the office of treasurer of St. Paul's parish vestry. Since 1889 he has served as treasurer of the trustees of the Aged Women's and Aged Men's Home. He holds membership in the Maryland Country Club, the Baltimore Country Club, the Maryland Historical Society, the Delta Kappa Epsilon and Alpha Delta Phi fraternities.
Mr. Bonsal is something more than a successful lawyer. He is a good citizen, who has given much time and useful service to the moral and philanthropic interest of the community in places where the only compensation is the knowledge of civic duty performed.
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Very truly yours 0 Gerne & More
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GEORGE CLARENCE MORRISON
G EORGE C. MORRISON, lawyer and banker, of Baltimore, was born in that city on June 13, 1869, son of Frederick Douglas and Mary Abby ( Patrick) Morrison. Mr. Morrison comes of that excellent Scotch and Irish combination, which has given so many valuable citizens to our country. The Morrisons are Scotch, and this branch of the family was founded by the original immigrant who came from Scotland in 1737 and settled on the Brandywine river, where he took up a large tract of land and was the progenitor of ser- eral generations of prosperous farmers. His mother was a daughter of Samuel Patrick, of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. She was a great-great- granddaughter of Andrew Kill Patrick, whose father, Thomas Kill Patrick, brought him from Coleraine, county Antrim, Ireland, where the family had settled after leaving Scotland, to Massachusetts in 1:18. Samuel, his oldest son, was town clerk of Fitzwilliam in 1273. Wil- liam, his second son, was a captain in Colonel Alden's fourth Massa- chusetts regiment, and was killed by the Tories and Indians at Cherry Valley on May 30, 1728. His third son, John, was commissioned a lieutenant by the governor and council of the Province of Massachu- setts Bay on February 5, 1776, under the style of " John Patrick, Gen- tleman." He served his country faithfully, as did his son, General Marsena R. Patrick, who was made brevet major in 1849 for merito- rious conduct in Mexico, and who served throughout the Civil war as provost marshal general, Army of the Potomac.
Mr. Morrison's paternal grandfather was Mansel E. Morrison, who married Susanna Morris. The Morrises were of English stock, descended from Anthony Morris, who settled in Philadelphia early in the eighteenth century, where all his descendants figured prominently in the social and political life of what was then the metropolis of the New World. Three of them were mayors of Philadelphia in successive generations, and one, Israel Morris, was executor of William Penn, Jr. In the early part of the nineteenth century this branch of the Morrison family settled in Harford county, Maryland, at what is now called Emmorton after one of the family.
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Frederick D. Morrison, father of George C. Morrison, was born in Harford county, on September 30, 1837. He was well educated, spent his early years as a teacher, and studied law under Henry W. Archer at Belair. Coming to Baltimore, he was appointed assistant superin- tendent of the House of Refuge. He resigned that position in 1862 to become a member of the faculty of Girard College, where he was singularly successful, but was induced, through the influence of Mr. William Chapin, then superintendent of the School for the Blind in Philadelphia, to accept the superintendency of the School for the Blind in Maryland, which he did in 1864, and this was his work for the remaining forty years of his life. He died on October 8, 1904, rather suddenly, after a surgical operation, and the Baltimore Sun of Octo- ber 9 paid him as high a tribute as it was possible to put in words.
He took the School for the Blind when it was eleven years old, he being the fourth superintendent, and found it poorly equipped to take care of the twenty-one pupils then in the school. He left it after forty years one of the famous schools of its kind in the world and one of the four leading schools for the blind in America. He left it with a splendid plant worth over $500,000 and with accommodations for more than five times the number of pupils that it had when he took charge. In addition to this the old plant had been turned into the school for the colored blind, and he acted as superintendent also for that. He be- came one of the recognized authorities of the world upon the teaching of the blind, putting into effect many original ideas and serving in many public capacities and conventions where the interest of the blind was to be promoted. Outside of his special work he was a valuable citizen in everything that would contribute to the public welfare, serv- ing on committees and directorates of useful institutions.
George C. Morrison received his preparatory education in private schools, from these he went to Johns Hopkins University and was graduated in 1890 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. From there he went to the Law School of the University of Maryland, and in 1893 was admitted to the bar. The next eleven years were spent in active practice, and he was for several years professor of commercial law in the Baltimore Law School. In 1904 Mr. Morrison first came in touch with the banking business by being made trust officer of the Baltimore Trust and Guarantee Company. He developed such remarkable apti- tude for the business that in 1908 he was made first vice-president of that company. In 1910 this company was merged with another large
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trust company under the name of the Baltimore Trust Company and of the new company Mr. Morrison was elected second vice-president. Dur- ing his college days, Mr. Morrison had been prominent both in scholas- tic and athletic pursuits. Twice he won a Hopkins scholarship and was awarded his degree "with honorable mention." He played on the Druid Lacrosse Team when that team won the Oelrichs cup and the championship of the United States at Brooklyn, New York, and he played on the Johns Hopkins team when it won the college champion- ship. He was also a member of the baseball team and was a substitute on the football team. While in college he became a member of the Alpha Delta Phi and Phi Beta Kappa fraternities. In 1903 Mr. Mor- rison was elected to the General Assembly of Maryland. Notwithstand- ing the fact that he was the only man before the people of Baltimore City who refused to pledge his vote in advance of his election, he re- ceived the second largest vote in his district. In that legislature he was made chairman of the Committee on Education and member of the Committee on Ways and Means in the lower house. He has served on the school board of Baltimore and in other places of usefulness to the people's welfare.
Both his professional and business growth have been remarkable, for though yet a young man he has been called to the directorate of some very important concerns, such as the Title Guarantee and Trust Company, the Provident Savings Bank, the Mortgage Guarantee Com- pany and the Georgia and Florida Railroad. He succeeded his honored father as a director of the Maryland Institute and the Maryland School for the Blind. He holds membership in the Masonic fraternity, the Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins, the Baltimore Athletic and the Journal- ists' Clubs, and is a director of the Maryland Jockey Club.
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