USA > Missouri > Cole County > Jefferson City > The Bench and bar of St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson City, and other Missouri cities : biographical sketches > Part 41
USA > Missouri > St Louis County > St Louis City > The Bench and bar of St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson City, and other Missouri cities : biographical sketches > Part 41
USA > Missouri > Jackson County > Kansas City > The Bench and bar of St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson City, and other Missouri cities : biographical sketches > Part 41
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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 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53
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reputation as a writer. He remained there four years. He came to Cuba in December, 1882, where he has been actively engaged in the practice of the law since that time. Mr. Farrow is a thorough lawyer, well posted in the statute law, and the decisions of the courts, and is eminently practical in all he does. He makes a cogent, logical argument, and is a gentleman of excellent standing in the community, and has many admiring friends who regard him highly for his true manhood and intellectual qualities.
He was married in April, 1880, to Miss Mollie Smith, of Gasconade county. They have one child living, Undril Golder Farrow, having lost their infant daugh- ter, Cora.
HON. JOHN T. CHANDLER.
LIBERTY
HE ancients said: " Every man is the architect of his own fortune." This,
T 1 in a modified sense, must be true, And yer, it seems that the smiles of for- tune brighten the pathway of some men through life, and that success, with them, is, in a large measure, due to their lucky environments ; while others, fortunate only in physical and mental constitution, are relegated to a lot in which success is purchased only at the price of self denial and persistent application to their life work.
With the latter class, every advancement, or at least their initial successes, are won by paying without discount, in brawn or brain, the demands of a rigorous and exacting fortune. These men no one feels inclined to help, because they can help themselves. Of this latter class is the subject of this sketch.
John Temple Chandler was born in Louisa county, Virginia, October 13, 1832. Ilis father, Leroy Chandler, was born in Caroline county, Virginia, October 31, 1795, and was raised and educated there. He was the son of Timothy, and grandson of Richard Woolfolk Chandler, of the same county, who were of Eng- lish descent. Leroy's mother was Miss Lucy Temple, daughter of Colonel Samuel Temple, of Caroline county, Virginia, and granddaughter of Joseph Temple, of England, whose brothers, John and Peter Temple, were of the court which tried and condemned Charles 1, and who signed the warrant that sent him to the scaffold. Leroy, though a mere boy at the time, was a soldier of the war of 1812. He was a man of strong and unimpeachable integrity of character, and, though inheriting an ample patrimony, was too indifferent to the accumulation of property to be considered a business success. His chief property consisted of
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slaves, acquired by inheritance and natural increase, and as he would not traffic therem, he kept them until his title thereto vanished, January 1, 1863, under Mr. Lincoln's emancipation proclamation.
Sarah Ann Chandler, the mother of the subject of this sketch, and daughter of Charles and Ann Quarles, was born in Louis county, Virginia, April 20, 1804. She was a woman of fine natural endowments, of excellent education, and the devoted mother of a large family, most of whom she educated almost entirely by her own personal instruction. If anything in the line of comment is admissible in a biographical sketch, it is due the memory of these parents to say that no one ever reared a family of higher personal integrity
In 1836 Leroy Chandler moved with his family to Missouri, and purchased and settled on a farm, about twelve miles east of Boonville, in Cooper county, where the family residence was until after the mother's death in 1865, and the father's death in 1870. Here the subject of this sketch was reared. He received his primary education from his mother, in the branches ordinarily taught in a grammar school. After this he was sent for a short time to the public schools of the neighborhood, which were just being estabhshed in the county, and next, with his twin brother, James II. Chandler, now ( 1884) a successful business man of Kansas City, to Charles W. Todd's school for boys in Boonville. After this he was educated by his own exertions. In 18gt and 1852 he and his brother, James, were students in William Jewell College, at Liberty, Missouri, where their classical education was begun. Their next and final schooling was at Kemper's Male Collegiate Institute in Boonville. Here, in 1855, he finished his educa- tion so far as school instruction was concerned.
In the spring of 1856 he established a school in New Franklin, Howard county, Missouri, where he taught for three and a half years with distinguished success. No subsequent vocation has he pursued with such unremitting zeal as that bestowed upon this school. He regards that enough labor and personal vitality were expended on this school to have achieved distinction in any of the learned professions.
In 1850 he was elected by the board of trustees of William Jewell College to a professorship in its faculty. In the division of the branches of the college cur- riculum, he taught the academic Latin, Greek and mathematics. Here, as at New Franklin, he demonstrated his tact in the government and instruction of the classes under his charge. At the close of the first session of his teaching in the college, the board conferred on him the degree of master of arts.
buring this connection with the college he occupied his spare time in the
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study of law, under Frederick W Gwmmer, and afterward under Captain Thomas MeCarty, both of the Liberty bar, and was licensed in April, 1861, upon an examination by Judge George W Dunn, of the fifth judicial circuit.
The war between the states breaking out in the spring of 1861, the great excitement pervading the country so demoralized the students that the board of trustees found it necessary to close the college in May, a month in advance of the regular June commencement, and Mr. Chandler returned to his father's resi- dence in Cooper county. He deeply deprecated the war, believing that the Union as established by the founders of the government ought to be perpetuated. But, to his mind, the war was the logical consequence of an unsettled question in the constitution, and was inevitable. A southern man by birth, and consider- ing that the coercion of the South was without warrant of authority under the constitution, he accepted the inevitable, and, in November, 1861, went with his older brother, Major T. S. Chandler, then an officer in the southern army, through the federal lines and home guards, and joined the army in southern Missouri. He joined company A, 2d Missouri cavalry, Missouri state guards, as a private, where were his brother, James H. Chandler, and many of his old neighbors and friends. To him the war was a most painful event, and his taking part in it was an act of self denial too great to be exaggerated. But he felt impelled by.every consideration of manhood to take this step.
In February, 1862, at Springfield, Missouri, upon a call therefor, he and his 1 brother James joined the regular provisional army of the confederate states for the war. He served on the west side of the Mississippi River until after the bat- tle of Pea Ridge, or Elkhorn, in March, 1862, and was shortly afterward trans- terred with his command, under General Sterling Price, to Beauregard's army at Corinth, Mississippi.
In September, 1862, he was in the obstinate battle of Inka, Mississippi, between the armies of General Price and General Rosecrans, and in the next month was in the battle of Corinth, Mississippi, especially disastrous to the Missouri confed- erate troops.
In November of this year, he was appointed inspector on the staff of Colonel Robert McCulloch, commanding a brigade of Missouri, Texas and Mississippi cavalry. In the latter part of December, 1862, he was with his brigade in the very brilliant expedition under General Van Dorn, to the rear of General Grant's army, and by which Holly Springs, Mississippi, was captured, and the vast supplies for this large army were destroyed, necessitating their retreat back to Memphis
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Upon the death of Captain Lucius Gaines, adjutant general of McCulloch's brigade, in the attack upon the federal post at Moscow, Tennessee, in the spring of 1863, he succeeded Captain Gaines as adjutant of the brigade. This position he held until June, 1864, when he was transferred to the staff of Colonel E. W. Rucker, commanding a brigade of west Tennessee cavalry, Forrest's division, as adjutant thereof. In this position he served till the close of the war.
After his transfer to this brigade he was charged with all the details of the business belonging to his office, during its continued and very active service at the front, and, except when wounded, took a conspicuously active part in every battle in which his command was engaged, the chief of which, in addition to those hereinbefore mentioned, were fought during the very eventful year of 1864. These were the capture of Fort Pillow, April 12, 1864, and (to the confed- crate troops) the disastrous battle of Tupelo of Old Harrisburgh, Mississippi, July 14, 1864; the capture of the federal fort at Athens, Alabama, September 24, 1864, in which he was severely wounded, in the effort of his brigade to repel the federal infantry, in their attempt to reinforce their garrison at this place. Of his wound he sufficiently recovered in time to join General Hood's campaign to Nashville in the latter part of November, 1804. His brigade led one of the advance columns of this campaign, and with it, he was in the continuous cavalry fighting along the line of march ; the fight at Columbia, Tennessee ; the bloody battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 20, 1864; the battle of Nashville, December 14, 1864, and in the continual and obstinate fighting between Wilson's federal and Forrest's confederate cavalry, which covered flood's retreat back to the south bank of the Tennessee River. This closed his active service in the field. To him the war had been full of event, especially the latter part, and from Sac River, Missouri, in November, 1861, to the close at Columbus, Mississippi, May, 1865, he never shirked a duty, no matter what its hardship or its peril. In May, 1865, he surrendered, with his command, at Columbus, Mississippi, to Gen- eral E. R. Dennis, of the federal army.
After the close of the war he returned with his brother, James H. Chandler, from the South to his old home in Cooper county, and engaged in farming, dur- ing the enforcement of the Missouri test oath.
In June, 1867, at the solicitation of Captain Thomas McCarty, his old law preceptor, he moved back to Liberty, and commenced the practice of law in partnership with him. In 1868 this partnership was dissolved, and he continued at the law on his own account. At the city election of 1871, next after the removal of the Missouri test oath disabilities, he was elected city attorney of the
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city of Liberty. This office he administered with energy and tact to the end that, in nearly every case in which a city ordinance was violated, the offender was fined or otherwise punished.
In 1872, at the first general election after the reenfranchisement of the dis- franchised, he was a candidate for a seat in the twenty seventh general assembly. In this race he had to meet the unreasonable and senseless prejudice lodged in the minds of some persons against lawyers, but by ridicule and indignant philip- pics against the groundless prejudice, his agricultural opponent was snowed under by a majority, known in Missouri as beastly.
In this body he was a member of several committees, and was chairman of the committee on education Besides his enarts in behalf of a good school law, bis labors were mainly com pre non, in the direction of retrenchment and reform, the repression of the too proffigate expenditure of the public money, and securing the passage of the law, submitting to the people the question of calling a consti- tutional convention, and under which the present constitution was framed.
During his term of office in the twenty seventh general assembly, he formed a law partnership with E. B. Gill, which lasted between one and two years, and until Mr. Gill's removal to another state.
In 1874, at the close of his term of office in the legislature, and without his seeking, he was made the candidate from Clay county, before the congressional convention at Kansas City, for the eighth district, and came within one-sixth of one vole of securing the nomination. In 1878 he was again the Clay county can- didate before the congressional convention for the eighth district, held at Liberty. During the progress of this convention, in which a large number of ineffectual ballots for a nomination had been cast, it became apparent to him that some sacrifice should be made to secure a nomination, and he withdrew his name from before the convention. Colonel John T. Crisp was nominated. Since 1878, though his interest in politics has been unabated, he has not sought or desired any office, regarding his position at home, in the prosecution of his private affairs, as infinitely superior to the uncertainties of any political venture.
His law practice has been a limited one, extending over a period of hardly more than ten years after its beginning in 1807. The professional business intrusted to him was attended to with fact and vigilance, and with almost uni- form success. But some years since it became evident to his mind, that in a western village, with a general tendency to decrease in the average annual amount of litigation, and with a large mumber of intelligent attorneys competing ther for, that the outlook for a lucrative business was not very flattering. For
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several years past, therefore, he has been, and is now (1884), engaged in affairs mostly outside of his office. As a business man, within the scope of his opportu. nities, he has been successful, and enjoys the unlimited confidence of the com. munity in which he lives.
Though descended from a family of old-hne whigs, in politics he is an ardent democrat, believing that the highest welfare of the country is involved in the principles and methods of his party
He is now, and has been for several years, a member of the board of trustees of William Jewell College, and its treasurer? In most communities there are public interests established and perpetuated by the liberality and enterprise of a limited part of its citizenship. Of this class Mr. Chandler has been a conspicu- ous member, and is esteemed a most useful citizen.
In November, 1867, he was married to Miss Maggie Berry, of Liberty, Mis- souri, a young lady of high accomplishments and rare natural endowments. She was born in Kentucky, March 21, 1845. Her father John Berry (recently deceased, and for more than a third of a century a resident of Liberty, Mis- souri) was a native of West Virginia, and her mother (now living) was a Miss Collier, of Kentucky. They have one child, named Susie, to whom nature has been more than generous. She was born in Liberty, Missouri, February Jo, 1870.
HON. BEN V. ALTON.
BUFFALO.
J UDGE ALTON was born at Vincennes, Indiana, in 1843. He is the son of William It and Martha Alton One of his father's undles was with General William Henry Harrison, in the battle of Tippecanoe. His grandfather was under General Crawford in the Indian wars, and his great-great-uncle on his father's side was a revolutionary soldier In 1865 the grandparents of Judge Alton removed from Pennsylvania to Indiana.
Our subject was raised on a farm; he attended the public schools, and finally received a good classical and scientific education at Newburg Academy. He attended law school at Bloomington, Indiana, and read law with Hon. W. E. Niblack, now (1884) of the supreme court of Indiana. He was admitted to the bar in 1865, and immediately commenced practice at Vincennes, Indiana, where he continued until 1874, when he removed to Buffalo, Dallas county, Missouri,
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where he again engaged in the practice of his profession, doing a flourishing busi- In 1876 he was elected prosecuting attorney of that county, which office he filled with marked ability He was reflected in 1878, and held that office four years. He was elected judge of the fourteenth judicial circuit, January 1, 1883, which position he now holds
Ben. V. Alton is an excellent judge; his mind is acute and refined. He pos- sesses the power of analysis to a high degree, and possesses the power of detect- ing false analogies; he grasps the pivotal points of a question with great case, and is lucid, clear and logical. He is a thorough lawyer, and stands high as a judge. He is popular with both the bar and the people
Judge Alton was married in 1867 to Miss Robertine B. Beeler. They have three children, Thomas W., Queene E. and Glover P
HON. PHILEMON BLISS.
T' HE subject of this sketch was born in North Canton, Hartford county, Con- necticut, July 28, 1813, from which place his father moved to Whitestown, New York, in the spring of 1821. Both his parents were of Puritan stock. his father's ancestors having settled in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1640. His family had been well-to-do in England, but were fined, imprisoned and stripped of their property for non-conformity. The ancestors of the Griswolds, the mother's name, were also English Puritans, and were among the early settlers of Windsor, just below
Western people have no idea of the character of farming- land in some parts of New England. Judge Bliss has been heard to say that he was born on a granite rock, not on land at all, that the boys were accustomed to amuse them. selves by running across some of the better fiells by jumping from rock to rock without touching the ground. Yet they had good schools and good meeting houses. All were expected to read the Testament freely, and spell most of Webster's spelling book at an early age, both of which he was able to do at five.
On moving to Whitestown his father found excellent land, and, like the other boys in the neighborhood, young Philemon worked on the farm summers, and went to the district school winters. His father had been a school teacher in Connecticut, did not take kindly to farming, and was not very prosperous. But he took, and read the newspapers, had in the house many of the best books then
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in reach, all of a solid and most of them of a Puritan character, and a share in a parish library. At fourteen the subject of this sketch attended an academy located in Stenben, in the same county, being the township given to the baron by the state of New York for his military services, and there for a year continued his Latin and began Greek. He studied also at Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, and entered Hamilton College, but was obliged to leave in the sophomore year for want of means. He continued, however, the study of mathematics in Whites- boro for another year, and entered the law office of Theodore Sill, formerly Gold and Sill. It was the same office in which, some ten years before, Judge Leonard, of Missouri, had studied law. During his academic course he was greatly short- ened for means, and speaks of this time as one of real hardship, though he then thought little of it, and was only anxious to get an education, as going through college was popularly called.
At eighteen he took a severe cold, the effects of which, aggravated by a win- ter's exposure, with light clothing and spare diet, upon the bleak college hill, have never left him. In 1834, his health rapidly failing, he went to Florida and in a year returned with some, though not great benefit. Some influential friends tried to persuade him to remain in Oneida county, New York, but he felt that he could not live in that climate, and went to Elyria, Ohio, where his elder brother, Ilon. A. A. Bliss, was then practicing law. He did not at once resume its study, as his weakened voice, constant cough and pains in the chest warned him that his life was, probably, short. But he lost no time, taught a little in the village academy, engaged a little in practical surveying, and by working a year in a large private land office, became familiar with conveyancing and with draft- ing contracts. He speaks of this year as professionally one of the most useful in his preparative course.
Ilis health improving, in (84 he commenced the practice of law, married, in 18443, the loved and honored companion of his life, and made Elyria his home until 1861.
Mr. Bliss' position upon public questions may be here noted. From his earli- est recollection his feelings were strongly anti-slavery. When but fifteen, in the first school exhibition in which he took part with an original composition, he carefully prepared and delivered a philippic against slavery and the slave trade, and before he was twenty-one he took sides against the American Colonization Society, not as opposed to voluntary colonization, but for its opposition to emancipation except upon the unjust and impossible condition that the freedmen
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should leave the country. But he never united with the liberty party, so called. He was a zealous whig, and felt a strong sympathy with Mr. Clay in his opposi- tion to General Jackson. He, however, kept his anti-slavery principles always foremost, and was active in inducing the body of the whig party of Ohio to take ground against the black law , then in force in that state. The nomination of General Taylor for president in 1548 seemed to him, as to many anti-slavery whigs, to indicate a surrender to slavery of all the new territory acquired from Mexico. Taylor was not then well known to either his friends or enemies, and the latter united with the Van Buren democrats in organizing the free-soil party. This was the prelude to the republican party formed in 1854 upon the repeal of the Missouri compromise, and in both organizations Mr. Bliss was an active and efficient worker. He, however, in his opposition to slavery, differed from some of the more zealous abolitionists, in that he would never countenance illegal action. He always spoke of the John Brown raid as a piece of criminal folly, and condemned all attempts to enter the slave states to induce slaves to leave their masters.
In the winter of 1848-9 he was elected by the general assembly of Ohio presi- denft judge of the fourteenth judicial circuit, including Lorain, Cuyahoga, Lake and Geauga counties, found a crowded docket and left it clean. The new con- stitution of 1852, which he supported, vacated all judicial offices, threw his county into a democratic district, and he returned to practice.
In 1854 he was elected to congress by a heavy majority, from a district before democratic, and again in 1856 by an increased majority. The people had become thoroughly roused by the attempt of Missouri politicians to plant slavery in Kan- sas by force, and by the support given it by the administration of Mr. Pierce. He was prevented by his impaired voice, and by his non-combative temperament, from participating in general floor controversies, but made several arguments upon the relations of the federal government to slavery, which were pronounced by Mr. Sumner and others among the ablest upon the subject made in the house. He also spoke with some severity of the Dred Scott decision, and took the same ground upon the question of citizenship afterward assumed by Attorney General Bates, and incorporated into the federal constitution.
After leaving Washington his bronchial troubles increased, seriously inter- fered with his professional business, and he was advised to seek a dryer and more stimulating climate. He accordingly accepted an appointment from Pres- ident Lincoln, as chief justice of Dakota Territory, and bade adieu to a commu- nity very congenial in sentiment and sympathy, and to which he always professes
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great attachment. The territory was almost withont inhabitants. He was dis- appointed in its apparent incapacity for large settlement, and determined to make his stay a short one. He, however, organized the courts, and, his health becoming greatly improved, spent much of his time traveling through the terri- tory, visiting the Indian tribes, etc., and many incidents which he relates would be interesting in themselves, though out of place here.
Becoming weary of frontier idleness, in 1863 he visited Missouri, and became interested in the struggle to make it a free state. He at once began to write for Saint Joseph newspapers, and in 1864 brought his family to that city.
Ever since that time he has been an active worker in Missouri, having had for two years principal charge of the Buchanan county finances, and leaving its war- rants at par ; organizing and holding its probate court, and aiding, as one of its curators, in reorganizing the state university. In 1868 he was elected one of the supreme judges of the state, holding the place, as the law then was, for four years, and in 1872 was elected professor of law in the state university, and opened the law department. He is still in the university, is daily engaged in class exercises, and has found time to write an elaborate treatise upon pleading, which has become a standard work upon the subject.
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