USA > Maryland > Men of mark in Maryland biographies of leading men in the state, Volume I > Part 7
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When he was twenty years of age, in the latter part of 1857, Mr. Foard engaged himself as a reporter on the Baltimore " Republi- can," an afternoon paper, the successor of the "Argus," and pub- lished by the late Beale H. Richardson. In this connection he reported the proceedings of the courts, including a series of exciting prosecutions in Baltimore city and county, growing out of the Know Nothing disorders, which then agitated the city and the country. The judges on the bench of the Criminal Court of the city were Henry Stump and then Hugh Lennox Bond; in Baltimore county, John H. Price.
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Active newspaper work in Baltimore during the Know Nothing reign was an exciting experience every day of the week, and Sunday, too. It was succeeded by the still greater excitements of the Civil War and the incidents leading up to that great struggle.
From the afternoon newspaper on which he was engaged in 1857-58 Mr. Foard went to "The Exchange," in which Messrs. Wallis, Howard, Kerr, Hall, Fitzhugh, Carpenter, Simpson K. Donovan and others were engaged, fighting against the abuses of local misgovernment and for the restoration of order. Some exciting months were spent on the local staff of this paper, under the immediate direction of the late Mr. Thomas W. Hall, who was in the position of what is now designated as "the City Editor."
From "The Exchange" Mr. Foard was transferred to the edito- rial department of the "American," by Mr. Charles C. Fulton, who had then just returned from his first visit to Europe; and toward the close of the year 1860, when the legislature of South Carolina and the Constitutional Convention of that State assembled in Columbia, he engaged with Mr. Pelham's paper, "The Guardian," of that city, in reporting the legislative proceedings.
When the exodus from Columbia to Charleston took place, with small-pox as the excuse, he followed the migrating bodies and wrote a series of letters to "The Baltimore American." He was present as a correspondent in the South Carolina State Convention when the Ordinance of Secession was passed December 20, 1860, and remained for a month or two in Charleston, which was then a center of national interest and solicitude. He sent the first news to the North of the failure of the Star of the West to relieve the garrison of Fort Sumter, after the United States troops had been withdrawn from Fort Moul- trie. The firing on the relief ship was perhaps the first overt act of the war, and the news was discredited at the North until inquiry proved its authenticity. In sending this despatch Mr. Foard was acting as an assistant to the then Charleston Agent of the Associated Press, Mr. Laidler, who was not in position to assume responsibility for such work at such a time. He made a trip by sea to New York with a Georgia friend to purchase arms, and wrote letters to the Charleston "Courier" on the business stagnation and political situa- tion in the commercial metropolis.
In April, 1861, he returned to Charleston by rail, having his baggage examined by the customs officers of the state at the north-
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ern boundary of South Carolina. He was a witness and a chronicler of the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter. As a member of the Charleston "Courier" staff he went to Montgomery, Alabama, where he had the opportunity of witnessing the signing of the Ordi- nance of Secession of that state, and reported the doings of the Pro- visional Congress of the Confederacy; the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as the provisional President; the framing of the constitution, and went with the exodus to Richmond, Virginia, when the seat of the Confederate Government was transferred from the banks of the Mobile river to the banks of the James in the Old Dominion.
It was the good fortune of Mr. Foard to know and to have the advice, the friendship and guidance in his newspaper work of Vice- President Alexander H. Stephens, who always, throughout his whole life, took an interest in young men and helped them in every way.
Still holding a connection with the "Courier" as correspondent, Mr. Foard went to Fairfax Court House, Virginia, and was in the village when Marr was killed by the Federal cavalry raiders. He wrote up the incidents of the attack at Vienna Station by Gregg, with his South Carolina regiment of infantry and Kemper's Alexandria artillery, on Schenck's Ohio troops cooped up in their cars. On Manassas Plains he joined Company A, 17th Virginia regiment, Captain Norton Marye, and was engaged in the preliminary skirmish and in the First Manassas or Bull Run battle, and other engagements.
On being honorably discharged, he went to Richmond, and engaged for a time in newspaper work. He was appointed clerk of the Roanoke Island Investigating Committee of the Confederate congress and then a clerk in the Treasury Department. He had charge of the printing of the Confederate bonds, fifty cent notes and postage stamps, in the establishment at the corner of Ninth and Main streets; was transferred to the quartermaster's department at Au- gusta, Georgia, where he remained until the close of the war, under L. O. Bridewell, major and quartermaster, in connection with the depot of supplies and extensive manufactories of the Government there.
Returning to Baltimore, Mr. Foard, in May, 1865, became con- nected with the editorial staff of the "Sun," in which employment he has continued uninterruptedly ever since. In coming back to Maryland it was again to engage in the excitements incident to the reconstruction period, for there was a reconstruction period in Mary-
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land no less important than in the States south of the Potomac. The "Sun" employed all its forces, great and small, to dispossess the junta which had possession of Maryland and put its government. again in the hands of the people. The Constitution of 1867 came with the reaction followed by the enfranchisement of ex-rebels.
Of course, it goes without saying that Mr. Foard is in politics a Democrat. He did not vote for Breckenridge in 1860. He was not a secessionist. He cast in Maryland his first vote for president for the Stephen A. Douglas electors. On Manassas Plains a year or so afterward, wearing the gray' uniform, he voted for Jefferson Davis. and subsequently in Maryland for Horace Greeley.
In June, 1SS2, he married Miss Emily J. Virdin, daughter of Doctor William W. Virdin of Harford county, of which union there were three children, one son, Arthur V. Foard, and two daughters. Emily J. and Katharine Ellis Foard.
Thoroughly identified with Maryland by ancestry and love of this land of toleration and its people, Mr. Foard has quietly and unob- trusively devoted himself in many ways to the promotion of its interests. At the same time he has ever cherished a warm affection for Charleston and the State of South Carolina, where the early and impressionable period of his boyhood was passed. In all the many depressing changes Charleston has undergone, in peace and in war. in the trying periods of reconstruction, he has sympathized with, and aided in, the recuperative efforts in every way. Two days after the earthquake of August 31. 1886, he was in Charleston in the discharge of his duties as staff correspondent of the "Sun." No doubt South Carolina methods of education and influences, experienced in early life, molded and fitted him to a large extent for much of his life work as a journalist. Governor Smith appointed him April 19, 1901, on the Maryland Commission for the Charleston Exposition.
The Baltimore Morning "Herald" of Saturday, September 12, 1903, said editorially:
"If anyone were to ask the average Marylander who is the best known working newspaper man in the state, the reply in nine cases out of ten would be Mr. Norval E. Foard of the Baltimore "Sun." For Mr. Foard has done all sorts of newspaper work and he has done it in all parts of the state and in many parts of other states. His beginning the business antedates the Civil War, and he is as indus- trious and energetic today as he was nearly fifty years ago when he
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worked in South Carolina sending out to the world the news of the stirring events which were then taking place in the old Palmetto State, where history was being made at so rapid a rate as to terrorize the whole people of the United States.
"Mr. Foard is versatile. He has done all sorts of work and he has always done it well. He is able to do as good work today as he ever did, and no one would be able to imagine that he worked before the war and that he has worked with very little intermission ever since. While his years are not few, his mind and body are as active as ever and he shows no sign of the ravage of time except on the top of his head, where he admits that his hairs are few, and what there are, are whitened with the winter's rime.
" A genial, wholesouled gentleman. A newspaper man with few equals, and no superiors in the state; a true friend and a loyal champion of what he believes to be right, it is a pleasure to bear even a slight tribute to his worth."
Mr. Foard's vitality is of a high order, enabling him to undergo with the least fatigue long-continued mental exertion. His love of literature is ardent. He had no difficulty in acquiring an education, for he found what he wanted in books, and from early youth was a constant reader, preferring biography as the best source of history, and delighting in books of voyages and travels. In this line of read- ing he found much to fit him for newspaper work and throughout his career to stimulate his energies. The story of the northwestern explorations of Lewis and Clark; of Fremont, the Pathfinder; of Captain Cook, the navigator; of Commodore Perry, who opened the ports of Japan; Doctor Kane's polar quest and other northern ex- plorers; Livingston and Stanley in the Dark Continent; the narra- tives of all the British adventurers of the Elizabethan period; of Raleigh, and Drake, and Frobisher and hundreds of others; in fact, everything that opened to view new scenes, new people, new coun- tries were greedily devoured in youth, and taste for them does not depart in age. This reading is refreshing and stimulating.
Natural inclination turned him toward journalism, for its pur- suit implied mental activity, variety and novelty. The scene of activity was ever changing for him. His whole life was spent in con- tact with men in active life, chiefly political and governmental, and in observing, in chronicling and in commenting on their public doings and their relations to the ever varying public policies, day by day.
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He never found time to give to clubs, fraternities or secret orders of any kind. In religion, he is a member of the Protestant Episcopal church, confirmed in that faith in early manhood. His chief amuse- ment is fishing, and as a lover of the woods and the streams, walking and swimming, and occasional use of foils or dumbbells, were all the exercises he needed or enjoyed. As to the modern system of physical culture, he considers it overdone and ventures this opinion at the risk of being rated as an "old fogy." He says: " My chief desire through- out life was to be employed. I have found enough to do and all of it has been agreeable, because I went at it with love for it and stuck to it from a wish to do the best that could be done in any particular line. Beyond this I have had no ambitions. I do not know any field of human endeavor in which there is more to do and to do well than in journalism, which is ever progressive."
In these days, when public libraries are multiplying so rapidly all over the country, it may not be amiss to refer to the fact that for a great deal of his personal gratification in life, as well as for his equip- ment for newspaper work, Mr. Foard acknowledges his great indebt- edness to this agency. In his boyhood he had access to the appren- tices' library, a benevolent foundation, in Charleston, South Carolina, where youths were encouraged to read. When he became the libra- rian of the Alexandria, Virginia, library a little later on, it was like arriving at an inheritance of books. Some one has said recently that the educated people of Charleston had command of the best English spoken in the United States. But in Virginia and in Maryland the English of Queen Anne's period and of the era of Elizabeth crops out frequently, even among those who are not highly educated, and it is due in great measure to the hold which the literature of those days, flowing from the mother country, and treasured in the Colonial libraries, has had on the people, anchoring the language by English classical standards.
Since the above sketch was prepared Mr. Foard died of pneu- monia on March 26, 1906, after an illness of only ten days.
Yours very truly Icellu J. Franklin
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Science summa cum laude. He had already had some practical experi- ence; first as a clerk in a wholesale store in New York City, and then as a chainman in an engineering corps of the Pennsylvania Railroad. After graduation, he became assistant engineer on the Fernandina and Cedar Keys Railroad in Florida.
When war broke out between North and South, Franklin placed his services at the command of the United States Army, and in May, 1861, was appointed 1st Lieutenant of the 12th United States Infantry. He was promoted February, 1863, to a captaincy in the same regi- ment, being detailed as inspector general of the 6th Army Corps with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel of Volunteers. Col. Franklin was on the staff of Gen. Sedgwick, commanding that corps, when the latter was killed. Later he was on the staff of Gen. Wright, Sedgwick's successor, where he continued until the surrender of Gen. Lee at the close of the Civil War. He participated in the campaign under Mcclellan against Richmond, saw service in the draft riots in New York City, and was in the campaign under Sheridan in the Valley of Virginia until after the battle of Cedar Creek in 1864, and under Grant until the surrender at Appomattox. For these services he received the brevets of Major and Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army and of Colonel of Volunteers.
After the cessation of hostilities between the North and the South, he returned to his regiment and went with it in 1869 to the Pacific Coast. For nine months before resigning from the army in in 1870, Col. Franklin was detailed as instructor of tactics at the University of Wisconsin, and while there taught civil engineering. From 1870 to 1887, Col. Franklin was general manager of the Ashland Iron Company of Maryland. In 1887 he entered the service of the Maryland Steel Company and became Superintendent of the Balti- more and Sparrows Point Railroad in which position he continued until 1894.
Col. Franklin severed his connection with these two concerns to accept the presidency of the Baltimore City Passenger Railway, which he held until its consolidation with the other street railways of Baltimore. For a number of years prior to 1902, he was vice presi- dent of the Consolidated Company. He is at present a director of the Maryland Steel Company, the Provident Savings Bank, and the Towson National Bank. Since 1SS4, he has been a member of the United States Light House Board.
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Col. Franklin is a trustee of the First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore, which he attends; and of the Ashland Presbyterian Church of Baltimore County, having held this latter office since the church's organization in 1872. He is also a trustee of the Baltimore Orphan Asylum and the York (Pa.) Collegiate Institute. For some years he was a member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, but resigned as he did not have time to attend the meetings.
Col. Franklin is a man of fine presence and dignified bearing. He was married on December 13, 1866, to Mary Campbell Small, youngest daughter of Philip A. Small of York, by whom he has had eight children. He belongs to the Metropolitan Club of Wash- ington, the Harvard Union of Cambridge, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, the Maryland, the Merchants', the Country and the Baltimore Athletic Clubs, and the Bachelors' and Junior Cotillons.
FRANK FRICK
M' R. FRICK was born in Baltimore in January, 1828. His parents were the late Honorable William Frick, Judge of the Superior Court of this city (having previously served as a member of the senate of Maryland, and as collector of the port of Baltimore), and Mary Sloan, who was a daughter of James Sloan, merchant, of Baltimore. Mr. Frick's ancestors on his father's side belonged to the Rhenish Palatinate in Germany, the immigrant ancestor being Conrad Frick who arrived in this country in 1732 and settled in Germantown, now a part of Philadelphia. The family on both sides has been closely indentified with the medical profes- sion. Dr. George Frick, one of the first physicians in this country to make a special study of diseases of the eye, and author of the first treatise on that subject published in this country, was an uncle; Dr. Charles Frick, whose death at the early age of thirty-seven occurred in 1860, was a brother; and the late Professor William Power, a brother-in-law of the subject of this sketch; while on his mother's side Dr. William Sloan and Dr. Charles Sloan were uncles, and an aunt, sister of his mother, was the wife of the late Dr. John Buckler.
Mr. Frick was a student at St. Mary's College, Baltimore, where he graduated with honors in 1845.
In 1850 he entered upon commercial life as a member of the firm of Frick and Ball. In ISSS he became a member of the well-known firm of C. Morton Stewart and Company, which was engaged with its own fleet of Baltimore clippers in the sugar and coffee trades with the West Indies and South America, as well as in foreign banking business as correspondents in Baltimore of Baring Brothers of London. After the failure in 1875 of the old sugar refineries in this city, Mr. Frick labored assiduously for the revival here of that industry. A com- pany was formed and a refinery erected at Curtis Bay on the south side of the city, equipped with the most improved appliances. But the stock was acquired by the so-called "Sugar Trust," and the build- ings dismantled.
Team truly yours frank trich
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In 1894 Mr. Frick withdrew from the firm of C. Morton Stewart and Company and from active participation in business. He had until then been associated as director with numbers of corporations, not only commercial and financial, but also philanthropic and artistic.
For many years an active member of the Board of Trade of Baltimore, and from 1SS7 to 1894 its president, Mr. Frick was in close contact with the manifold developments of Baltimore during those years and exercised an active influence upon them. It was during this period that under the direction of United States Engineer Officers, conspicuous among them being Brigadier-General W. S. Craighill, the channel of Baltimore's harbor was widened and deepened so as to accommodate the larger class of vessels engaged in the growing foreign commerce of the city.
Since his retirement from active business in 1894, Mr. Frick has spent much time in foreign travel, visiting most points of interest in Europe as well as Egypt, Palestine, India, China and Japan. This, however, has not prevented him from preserving an active interest in the improvement and development of his native city, which has always been to him a subject of first importance. His foreign travels and observations upon municipal conditions abroad have specially qualified him for service in this respect. He has been specially inter- ested in the establishment of proper park approaches, and as chair- man of the Committee of the Municipal Art Society, assisted in inau- gurating the Olmstead system of suburban parks.
Notwithstanding these varied business activities, Mr. Frick found ample time for the exercise of his tastes and talents in music and art. As a young man he was an active member of the Philhar- monic Society, which flourished about the middle of the nineteenth century, and included in its membership the young people of social position who had musical tastes and accomplishments. At the same time he was active and instrumental in the organization and manage- ment of the Allston Association, formed for the cultivation of art and the higher order of music, and which subsequently became the Wed- nesday Club, for many years a fashionable and successful association devoted to amateur performances both musical and dramatic. To these may be added mention of the Music Hall (now known as the Lyric Theatre) on Mount Royal Avenue, opened in 1894, which, in addition to serving a number of other public uses, has afforded the citizens of Baltimore an opportunity for education in the broader
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fields of orchestral and choral music, which could not otherwise have been obtained. In all of these enterprises Mr. Frick took a deep and active interest.
In January, 1861, Mr. Frick married Miss Fanny D. Lurman, daughter of the late Gustav Lurman, a native of Bremen, Germany, and for many years a prominent merchant of Baltimore. She died in 1889. A woman of cultivated mind, it was always her wish and aim to impart to others the interest in literary and artistic subjects which she herself enjoyed.
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Truly & faithfully Otto Fuchs .
CARL GUSTAV OTTO FUCHS
S (O intimately is the name of Professor Otto Fuchs associated with the history of the Maryland Institute School of Art and Design, that in the mind of the average Baltimorean they are inseparable one from the other; and so preeminently has the Mary- land Institute been the center of art -training in Maryland, that in the state's story of art Professor Fuchs must be accorded a high place. During the twenty-three years in which he pursued his profession in Baltimore, each succeeding year saw the school of which he was the head attain a higher plane of excellency and efficiency. His personality-striking as is that of many self-educated and self-trained men-was stamped upon every department of the institution of which he was director. For this reason, a biography of Professor Fuchs is a chapter in the history of the Maryland Institute.
It is doubtful if a school of the character of the Maryland Insti- tute could have chosen a man better fitted for its especial require- ments than the one who was called to assume control in 1883. The very character of the school attracts to its classes many students who are forced to make sacrifices to gratify their longing for art train- ing, and who, because of the difficulties under which tuition is ob- tained, naturally value it more highly than those to whom the oppor- tunity to study comes more easily. The classes of the Maryland Institute, in other words, are largely patronized by men and women who, if they ultimately succeed, will be classed as "self-made." And Professor Fuchs could fully sympathize with this class of students, for he, too, had won his professional training against great odds. He began the battle of life with little hope of finding open to him more than an existence of drudgery. With indomitable energy, however, he created for himself opportunities; and after he had attained signal success he was fitted by experience, as are few other art instructors, to guide, encourage, and aid those whose youth had known similar circumstances.
Carl Gustav Otto Fuchs was born at Salzwedel, Prussia, Ger- many, October 6, 1859, the son of Carl Gustav Friederich and Eliza-
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beth (Langerman) Fuchs. His father was a cabinet maker. Young Fuchs attended private schools in his native town in Germany until he reached the age of eleven, when his relatives emmigrated to America. The family party was composed of the boy, his parents, his brothers and sister, and his grandparents, and arrived in New York on May 20, 1851. On arriving in the United States, Carl was sent to the public schools. He soon learned English and in three years had finished the work of the highest grade of the grammar school. There were not sufficient means in possession of the family to per- mit him to acquire a college education. He went to work in : piano factory.
All his spare time, however, was devoted to the study of math- ematies and drawing for which he had early displayed a taste. He was also fond of working with tools. At the age of seven- teen, he obtained a position with an architect and civil engineer in Hoboken, New Jersey. Subsequently he became connected with the United States Coast Survey, which was then engaged in making topographic and hydrographic surveys around New York. About that time a school of drawing was established in New York, by Pro- fessor L. Boeck, who had come to America as private secretary to Louis Kossuth, and, though the rates were high, Mr. Fuchs' father was determined that his son should receive the instruction given there, and paid for it in part by making furniture for the school. The youth also frequently made drawings for Professor Boeck, who took a great interest in him. He permitted Fuchs to come to him whenever it suited his convenience, out of school hours, and the ambitious boy. to avail himself of the privilege, took an early breakfast, then went to school for physics, chemistry and mathematics, the lesson lasting one hour and a half. From school he went to work, and when the day's labor was finished, he returned to school for an hour, or an hour and a half and studied geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. After supper he sat down to work out the problems given to him to do, often not finishing his labor until after midnight.
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