The biographical encyclopaedia of New Jersey of the nineteenth century, Part 83

Author: Robson, Charles, ed; Galaxy Publishing Company, publisher
Publication date: 1877
Publisher: Philadelphia, Galaxy publishing company
Number of Pages: 924

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most satisfactory manner. For several years he has resided in Trenton, and since his removal to that city has been for two terms a member of the Common Council, and also has served as a member of the School Board, evincing while holding the latter trust, as, indeed, he has done since its inception, a warm regard for and earnest determination to aid the pres- ent admirable school system of New Jersey. He has now been in public life in America for nearly forty years ; has ably filled many important public offices ; has been largely instru- mental in the formulation and adoption of many important public measures, and has won the confidence and esteem of a vast number of the leading public men. Throughout his long and useful life he has been unswervingly true to his party and to his friends, and to hoth he has given far more than he has received. For a long series of years he has been an active member of the society of F. and A. Masons, and is now about the oldest, if not the oldest, member of the 33d degree of the ancient Scottish rite. He was mar- ried in February, 1820, to Sarah D'Azevedo, by whom he has had several children, of whom five are now surviving. Ilis wife still lives, and after fifty-seven years of connubial happiness they are surrounded by numbers of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

HITMAN, WALT, Poet, was born at West Hills, New York, in 1819, and in early life assisted his father in farming and agricultural pursuits, on Long Island. His parents were respectively of English and Dutch descent, and he partakes of the blood and nature of the two races that set in pro- gress the settlement and civilization of New York. In his youth he had listened to the preaching of the famous Quaker iconoclast, Elias Hicks, of whom his parents were followers, and through his valuable teachings he probably secured many of the more important elements in his education and mental characteristics, After leaving his father's farm he taught school for a short time, then became a printer, and subsequently a carpenter. When his first volume appeared he was engaged in the erection of frame dwellings in Brooklyn, and it was set in type entirely by his own hand. He was originally a supporter and partisan of the Demo- cratic party, but when the fugitive slave law was passed, dis- covered that his ideas and convictions and those of his co- workers in politics were far from harmonizing, and he then openly declared his sentiments and principles in a poem called " Blood Money," one not found in his works, but which was the first he ever wrote. "He confessed to having no talent for industry, and that his forte was loafing and writing poems, He was poor, but had discovered that, on the whole, he could live magnificently on bread and water. He had travelled through the country as far as New Orleans, where he once edited a paper. And in his book will be found all that is himself-his life, works and days; my eyes to find if this new sunbeam might not be an illu-

he has kept nothing back whatever." He continued writ- ing poems, that appeared from time to time in enlarged editions of " Leaves of Grass," which in 1860 reached its sixth edition, until the outbreak of the rebellion, when he repaired to Washington and devoted himself to nursing and conversing with the wounded soldiers who were in the hos- pitals. His labors among them, for which he never asked nor received any compensation whatever, were unremitting, " and he so won the poor fellows from all thought of their sorrows by his readings and conversation that his entrance was the signal in any room for manifestations of the utmost delight. He certainly has a rare power of attaching people to him." During the years thus occupied it has been com- puted that in the hospital and on the field he ministered to upward of 100,000 sick and wounded men, giving them personal aid and attention, and retreating from no peril, whether of disease or battle. At the close of the war he was appointed to a clerkship in the Department of the In- terior, and in the intervals of official work wrote a new vol- ume of poems, entitled " Drum Taps." A critic, speaking of the work, says ; " This volume is entirely free from the peculiar deductions to which the other is liable, and shows that the author has lost no fibre of his force. There is in it a very touching dirge for Abraham Lincoln, who was hiis warm friend and admirer." In 1865, or 1866, the late Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Harlan, had pointed out to him, " probably by some one who desired Whitman's clerk- ship," various passages of the " Leaves of Grass," and for this cause removed him from his office. " The indignation which this caused throughout the country proves that Walt Whitman has quietly obtained a very wide influence. After a very curious controversy, chiefly notable for an able and caustic pamphlet written by Mr. O'Connor, showing that the Secretary would equally have dismissed the Scriptural and classical writers, the bard was appointed to an office in the Attorney-General's department." It is understood by his friends that he is writing a series of pieces which shall. be the expression of the religious nature of man, which he regards as " essential to the completion of his task." A brilliant writer, in the London Fortnightly Reviews, con- tributes the following reminiscences : " It was about ten years ago (written in 1866) that literary circles in and around Boston were startled by the tidings that Emerson, whose incredulity concerning American books was known to be as profound as that of Sydney Smith, had discovered an American poet. Emerson had been for many years our literary banker ; paper that he had inspected, coin that had been rung on his counter, would pass safely anywhere. On his table had heen laid one day a queerly-shaped book, en- titled, 'Leaves of Grass, hy Walt Whitman.' There was also in the front the portrait of a middle-aged man in the garb of a workingman. The Concord philosopher's feeling on perusing this book was expressed in a private letter to its author, which I quote from memory : 'At first I rubbed

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sion. . . . . I greet you at the beginning of a great career, ' was at first stunned by this from an outsider, and one in the which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for dress of a laborer ; then he eyed him from head to foot, as if questioning whether to commit him; during which the offender stood eying the governor in turn with a severe serenity. Walt triumphed in this duel of eyeshots, and, without another word, the governor called an officer to go and transfer the prisoner to a better room." He was visited by the celebrated Henry Thoreau in 1856, and this scholarly thinker says of him : " Walt Whitman .... is the most interesting fact to me at present. I have just read his second edition (which he gave me), and it has done mne more good than any reading for a long time. There are two or thiec such a start.' Toward no other American, toward no con- temporary excepting Carlyle, had Emerson ever used such strong expressions as these." He then at once printed a new edition of his poems, placing on the back of it: " I greet you at the beginning of a great career : R. W. Emer- son," which, with the publication of the entire letter at the end of the volume, " annoyed Mr. Emerson very much, for it was a formidable book for any gentleman to carry by his endorsement into general society. Mr. Emerson was after- ward convinced, I believe, that Walt Whitman had printed his letter in ignorance of the bienséances in such cases, but i picces in the book which are disagreeable; simply sensual. he was destined to hear of some unpleasant results from it. . It is as if the beasts spoke. Of course he can com- municate to us no experience, and if we are shocked, whose experience is it that we are reminded of ? . . . . He occa- sionally suggests something a little more than human .. . . . Wonderfully like the Orientals, too, considering that when I asked him if he had read them, he said, ' No; tell me Hle is apparently the greatest democrat about them.' . His book was, in fact, unreadable in many of those circles to which the refined thinker's name at once bore it, and many were the stories of the attempts to read it in mixed companies. One grave clergyman made an effort to read it aloud to some gentlemen and ladies, and only broke down after surprising his company considerably. Nevertheless, the book continued to be studied quietly, and those who the world has seen." He has made an cqual impression on read it ceased to wonder that it should have kindled the sage other men of ability and culture who have visited or have been brought into contact with him ; while in England, by such minds as Rossetti, Meredith, Swinburne, and many more writers of high and unassailable talent and powers, he has been called the great singer of America. He is pas- sionately fond of opera music, and many of his verses have been written while listening to the performance of the Italian, French and German masterpicces. " He notes which was strongly mixed with gray, was cut close to his. everything and forgets nothing. His brain is indeed a kind who had complained that the American freeman is 'timid, imitative, tame,' from 'listening too long to the courtly muses of Europe.'" In his poems are the autographs of New York, and of the prairies, savannahs, Ohio and Mis- sissippi, and all powers good and evil. Here is his portrait in IS66 : " The sun had put a red mask on his face and neck . his head was oviform in every way; his hair, head, and, with his beard, was in strange contrast to the almost infantine fulness and serenity of his face. This serenity, however, came from the quiet light-blue eyes, and above these there were three or four deep horizontal fur- rows, which life had ploughed. .... When he was talk- ing about that which interested him, his voice, always gentle and clear, became slow, and his eyelids had a tendency to decline over his eyes. It was impossible not to feel at every moment the reality of every word and movement of the man, and also the surprising delicacy of one who was even freer with his pen than modest Montaigne." Again : "I found him setting in type in a Brooklyn printing office a paper from the Democratic Review, urging the superiority of Walt Whitman's poetry over that of Tennyson, which he meant to print (as he did everything, pro and con), in full in the appendix of his next edition. He still had on the workingman's garb, which (he said) he had been brought up to wear, and now found it an advantage to con- tinue." The following anecdote related of him is charac- teristic of his naturc : He was going the rounds of a prison, and saw a man, pending trial for a slight offence, incarcer- ated in a very disagreeable and unhealthy cell. " Hear- ing his account, Walt Whitman turned about, went straight to the governor of the prison and related the matter, ending thus : ' In my opinion, it is a damned shame.' The governor

of American formation, in which all things print themselves like ferns in the coal. Every thought, too, signs itself in his mind by a right and immutable word." In one of his private letters is the following : " I assume that poetry in America needs to be entirely recreated. On examining with anything like deep analysis what now prevails in the United States, the whole mass of poetical works, long and short, consists either of the poetry of an elegantly weak sentimen- talism, at bottom nothing but maudlin puerilities, or more or less musical verbiage, arising out of a life of depression and enervation, as their result ; or else that class of poetry, plays, etc., of which the foundation is feudalism, with its ideas of lords and ladies, its imported standard of gentility, and the manners of European high-life-below-stairs in every line and verse. . . . Instead of mighty and vital breczes,

proportionate to our continent with its powerful races of men, its tremendous historic events, its great oceans, its mountains, and its illimitable prairies, I find a few little silly fans languidly moved by shrunken fingers." During the past few years he has resided in the vicinity of Camden, New Jersey, where, as in all places ever honored by his presence, he is regarded with affection and admiration by all classes and all manner of men. He published the first cdition of " Leaves of Grass " m 1855; the third edition in 1860; " Drum. Taps " in 1865-66; collected " Poems," Svo.,

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in 1867; and in 1868 was put forth a volume of his poems | capacity he served until the close of the war. He was mus- selected and edited by W. M. Rossetti, Svo., London.

ILLETS, COLONEL J. HOWARD, Senator from Cumberland county, was born in Cape May in 1834. Hle is a son of Dr. Reuben Wil- lets, the family, of English descent, having first settled on Long Island, and afterwards at Willets' Point, Cape May county. He was educated at the Pennington Seminary, and at the West Point Military Academy, where he remained one term, when he resigned and entered the Jefferson Medical College, in Philadelphia, from which he graduated in 1857. Shortly after his grad- uation he settled at Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, and prac- tised his profession there until the outbreak of the civil war. Sharing in the patriotic uprising so general in New Jersey at that critical period, he volunteered his services and was commissioned a Captain in the 7th Regiment of New Jersey Volunteers, serving with the regiment through the Peninsula campaign, in which he greatly distinguished himself, and elsewhere, till 1862, when he was appointed Lieutenant- Colonel of the 12th Regiment, and a few months later, the colonel, Robert C. Johnson, having resigned on account of ill health, was promoted to the Colonelcy. At the battle of Chancellorsville, in the following May, his regiment be- haved with conspicuous gallantry, and suffered heavily, losing 179 in killed, wounded and missing, he himself, at the head of a brigade, being severely wounded in the face and arm. The 12th Regiment, indeed, has passed into his- tory as in every respect one of the finest in the army. " It is the boast of the 12th," says Foster, in his work on " New Jersey and the Rebellion," " as it is that of most of the New Jersey regiments, that it was always in the post of danger ; that it suffered in action most severely, and that it could always be relied on for perilous duty. Major-General French regarded the 12th as one of the finest regiments in the army, and the commanding officers of the brigade were always unanimous in its praise. Its losses were very severe in men and officers, and were never supplied by the State, no recruits (except about thirty) having been sent it until after the surrender of Lee. It never lost a color in action, and had very few prisoners taken. It never was broken, and never retreated until the whole line was broken or ordered back. It was composed of the flower and strength of the rural population of South Jersey, and on every field in Virginia they bravely maintained the honor of their flag and State." It was one of his most painful experiences in the war that the wounds he received at Chancellorsville, added to those he had received in the Peninsula, necessi- tated his parting with this gallant regiment and withdrawing from active service, but being totally disabled, no choice was left him. The War Department subsequently assigned him to duty as President of a Board of Court-Martial, in which

tered out of the service, December 20th, 1864, when he returned to Port Elizabeth and resumed the practice of medicine, though the brilliancy of his military record, com- bined with his abilities and popular qualities, soon drew him into the political arena, where, as in every other theatre of action in which he has figured, he won signal distinction. In 1871 he was elected a member of the New Jersey As- sembly, and re-elected the following year; and in 1874 he was elected to the State Senate, serving in both bodies on several of the most important committees. His course as a legislator not only secured the respect of his colleagues but proved highly acceptable to his constituents. In 1876 he travelled extensively in South America, visiting most of the important cities on the Pacifie side, having previously ex- plored the chief places of interest on the Atlantic coast. Scarcely yet in the prime of his manhood, and thus rich in knowledge and experience, with abilities of a high order well trained, it may fairly be predicted that his countrymen have not heard the last or the best of him.

OODRUFF, HON. AARON DICKINSON, late of Trenton, Lawyer, Attorney-General of the State of New Jersey, was born in Trenton, Sep- tember 12th, 1762. IIe delivered the valedictory at the Princeton commencement of 1779; in 1784 was admitted to the bar, and in 1793 was made Attorney-General of the State, and annually re-elected, ex- cept in 1811, until his death. He served also in the Legis- lature, and was influential in having Trenton selected for the State capital. IIe died at Trenton, New Jersey, June 24th, 1817, while actively engaged in the performance of his numerous and responsible duties as Attorney-General, and Trustee of the Presbyterian Church of his native place. He was buried in the Trenton churchyard, where his epi- taph records that : " For twenty-four years he filled the important station of Attorney-General with incorruptible in- tegrity. Adverse to legal subtleties, his professional knowl- edge was exerted in the cause of truth and justice. The native benevolence of his heart made him a patron of the poor : a defender of the fatherless : it exulted in the joys or participated in the sorrows of his friends."

NGHAM, HON. SAMUEL D., Manufacturer, Secretary of the United States Treasury, 1829- 1831, late of Trenton, New Jersey, was born in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, September, 16th, 1773, and was of Quaker parentage. His earlier years were spent in the paper manufacturing busi- ness, in Easton, Pennsylvania, and until drawn into the arena of political life he was successfully engaged in mer-

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Joseph Garr

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cantile pursuits. He afterward served three years as a judge, his final opinion and decisions were taken as ulti- member of the Pennsylvania Legislature; and was a mem- ber of Congress from his State in the years 1813 to ISIS, and 1822 to 1829. From 1829 to 1831 he officiated as Secretary of the United States Treasury ; the latter appoint- ment he received from John Quincy Adams. He died at Trenton, New Jersey, June 5th, 1860.

ILLER, REV. SAMUEL, D. D., Professor in the Theological Seminary of Princeton, was born in 1769, a few months before the birth of his inti- niate and illustrious friend, Dr. John Mason. Ifis father, an excellent clergyman of Scotch extrac- tion, was born, educated and ordained in Boston, but spent the greater portion of his life in Delaware. IIis mother, a native of Maryland, was a lady of rare accom- plishments and high moral character. At a suitable age he was sent to the University of Pennsylvania, where he en- joyed enviable advantages; while, in his leisure hours, he had access to the best circles of society in Philadelphia and the environs, where he was ever a courted and re- spected guest and visitor. Upon finishing the prescribed course of studies at the university, he commenced the study of theology under the guidance of his venerable father, and after his decease placed himself under the instructions of the celebrated Dr. Nisbet, then filling the presidential chair of the Dickinson College, Carlisle. IIe studied the Bible earnestly and constantly, not merely as a source of theo- logical knowledge, but especially as a gracious means of spiritual culture. Ile was liberal and kindly in sharing his moderate means with those he found deserving pity and support, and in the practical affairs of life was notably care- ful and systematic. Above all did he act upon the counsel, " Though thine enemies strike and revile thee, thou shalt treat them with pity and compassion ; " and once took es- pecial pains to spread a favorable opinion of one who had done him an unmerited injury, and the fact being adverted to, he admitted its truthfulness, but added, mildly, "IIc was a good man, notwithstanding." In 1791 he was li- censed to preach. His early and only settlement as pastor was in the First Presbyterian Church, of New York city, which then embraced more talent, wealth and influence than any other one in the connection. After laboring zealously and efficiently in this field for a period extending over twenty years he was appointed to the Professorship of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government in the Theo- logical Seminary at Princeton. Ifis lectures on the com- position and delivery of a sermon, to the students under his charge, have never been surpassed in their line, and take high rank as masterly productions ; he was also a judicious critic on all matters relating to public oratory, or speaking, and by those who knew him, and who were competent to

mate and conclusive. IIis " Treatise on Clerical Manners and Habits," inculcating a courteous and dignificd bearing, is widely known, and has been repeatedly quoted, in por- tions, as an excellent guide for students and the clergy in general. His publications are numerous ; his first work of considerable extent being " Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century," written early in his ministry, through which he acquired an enviable reputation both at home and in Great Britain. Several of his works were controversial, and at- tracted much attention by their perspicuous, logical and well-considered arguments and analyses. He published also several biographical works of extended scope; and his volume on the " Eldership " is a work in high and general repute, Dr. Chalmers asserting that it is the best publication given to the church on that subject. He was the author also of a large number of occasional discourses. Many who were among the most honored in civil life- Dickinson, Jay, Spencer, Boudinot, Rush, Ilamilton, and, above all, Washington-were on the list of his personal friends; and with many famous and learned characters in Europe he maintained for many years a close and intimate correspond- ence. Following is a partial list of his various publications : " Letters on the Constitution and Order of the Christian Ministry, addressed to Members of the Presbyterian Church in the City of New York," 1807; "A Continuation of Let- ters Concerning the Constitution and Order of the Christian Ministry, being an Examination of the Strictures of the Rev. Drs. Bowden and Kemp, and Rev. Mr. How, on the For- mer Series," 1809; " Memoirs of Rev. John Rogers, D. D.," Svo., 1813; "Letters on Unitarianism," Svo., 1821 ; " Essay on the Warrant, Nature and Duties of the Office of Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian Church," 12mo., 1831 ; " Letters to Presbyterians on the Present Crisis in the Presbyterian Church in the United States," 12mo., 1833; "Two Ser- mons on Baptism, preached at Freehold, New Jersey," 12mo., 1834; " Memoir of Rev. Charles Ncsbit, D. D.," 12mo., 1840; " Primitive and Apostolical Order of the Church of Christ Vindicated," 12mo., 1840; besides his " Brief Retrospect " and his " Letters on Clerical Manners and Habits," etc., etc. He died at Princeton, New Jersey, in 1850.

'ARR, IION. JOSEPII, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas and Orphans' Court of Burling- ton county, was born, January 11th, 1821, in the town of Mount Holly, New Jersey, and is the son of Joseph and Ruth N. (Thomas) Carr. llis father was a merchant for upwards of fifty years in Mount Holly, and is a native of the State ; his mother is a native of Wales, who when ten years of age came to the United States, at the very commencement of the nineteenth century, and is still living. Joseph received but a limited

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education in the common school, where he remained until | and was present at the opening of the capitulation by Corn- ten years of age, and then entered his father's employ, with whom he continued three years. He was next indentured as an apprentice to Nathan Palmer, the proprietor of the New Jersey Mirror, a weekly paper then as now published at Mount Holly. In that establishment he learned the, whole art of printing; and after acquiring the same he re- mained in the employ of his patron until the latter's death, in 1842. He then assumed the entire charge of the paper, which he conducted with marked ability and success until 1857, when he was admitted to an equal share or partner- ship with the remaining heir, as Mrs. Palmer had died at this time. The paper was now vested in the firm of J. Carr, Jr., & Co., which continued without change until 1872, when he disposed of his interests in the same. In the same year, without any solicitation on his part, he was appointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas and of the Orphans' Court for Burlington county, a position which he still retains. His political creed is that held by the Repub- lican party, who in the campaign of 1876 selected him as the representative of the Second Congressional District on the Electoral ticket for Hayes and Wheeler. He has been for many years a Director of the Farmers' National Bank of Mount Holly, one of the oldest financial insti- tutions in the State. In every movement tending towards the improvement of the town or county he has ever mani- fested a deep interest, and is respected by all classes as a valuable as well as a public spirited citizen. He was married, June 10th, 1875, to Emily, daughter of John Palmer, of New York.

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The biographical encyclopaedia of New Jersey of the nineteenth century, Part 83

Author: Robson, Charles, ed; Galaxy Publishing Company, publisher Publication date: 1877 Publisher: Philadelphia, Galaxy publishing company Number of Pages: 924

Author: Robson, Charles, ed; Galaxy Publishing Company, publisher
Publication date: 1877
Publisher: Philadelphia, Galaxy publishing company
Number of Pages: 924