A Centennial biographical history of the city of Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio, Part 3

Author: Lewis Publishing Company
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1156

USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > A Centennial biographical history of the city of Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio > Part 3

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for interment and were deposited in the old graveyard near the present site of the union depot. They were in after years removed to Green Lawn cemetery.

Alfred Kelly, a son of David Kelly, was born in Middletown, Connecti- cut, in November, 1789. When he was nine years old his father moved with his family to Lowville, New York. Alfred attended school at Fairfield Acad- emy and afterward commenced the study of law under Jonas Platt, who was a judge of the supreme court of the state. About the year 1810 he went to Cleveland, Ohio, where he continued the practice of law, and when he had scarcely attained his majority was appointed prosecuting attorney, which position he held for several years.

In 1814 he was elected to the house of representatives and is said to have been the youngest member of that body, which met at Chillicothe, then the capital of Ohio. At this session of the legislature Mr. Kelly prepared and introduced a bill to reform the practice of law in the courts of the state. The leading feature of this bill was a simplification of the methods of pleading and dispensing with the old system of verbiage and adopting a more modern and euphemistic style of expression. His effort was not successful at the time, but the principle suggested was the precursor of our code, which fol- lowed thirty years later. The bill also dispensed with or abolished imprison- ment for debt save in the instance of fraud.

But above all and beyond every other matter of legislation or business he was more particularly interested in the canal policy, which at that time was the absorbing and prevalent question of public interest throughout the state; and he was without doubt its most zealous advocate and supporter. Having been appointed canal commissioner, he prepared himself at once with all the zeal and energy of his nature to enter into the discharge of the onerous duties of his office. It was thought by many at the time that the work could not be completed within the period allotted or within the limit of cost pro- vided for its completion. To what extent both expectation as to length of time and limit of cost was disappointed on the part of the opponents of the measure is matter of history and comment on the subject need not here be misemployed in its useless recital. Suffice it to say the work under the guid- ance and direction of this masterful hand was done and was done well.

Mr. Kelly was none the less efficient in financial affairs than in the con- struction of canals. During the memorable and exciting financial crash from 1837 to 1841 his brilliant conceptions in finance sprang forth with a flash which attracted the attention of all who beheld them. By his sound judgment and good business management he engineered the financial affairs of the state in a manner which not only relieved it from its pecuniary entanglements, but produced an appreciation of its securities to an extent which not only. relieved embarrassment but advanced value to a point beyond par.

Such in part is some of the achievements of this remarkable man. A full and complete history of his successful, eventful and useful life would in its

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application of resultant benefit to the state afford most instructive and inter- esting reading to a multitude of its inhabitants.

William B. Hubbard, who was called a lawyer, statesman and financier, was born in Utica, New York, in August, 1795. He was the son of Bela and Naomi Hubbard, who were of Anglo-Saxon descent. Mr. Hubbard was a descendant of the Stow family, whose earliest progenitor in this country arrived in New England not many years posterior to the landing of the pil- grims at Plymouth rock. The settlement of this family was in the state of Connecticut, where for a number of generations it maintained a high and hon- orable distinction. Mr. Hubbard chose law as a profession and pursued a course of study with a kinsman who was an accomplished priest in his day, the father of Chief Justice Stow, of Wisconsin, lately deceased. After com- pleting his studies and being admitted to practice in New York he moved to St. Clairsville, Ohio, in the year 1816. His success in the new field of labor was marked and rapid. He rose to the head of his profession and at a bar with such practitioners as John C. Wright, Charles Hammond, Benjamin Tappan and Philip Doddridge, the last mentioned of whom was a cotemporary of Daniel Webster in the congress of the United States, and of whom the great statesman and orator once remarked he was the only man he ever met that he feared in debate. The material of which our subject was composed and the intellectual mold in which he was cast may with readiness be inferred when the company with whom he associated and the position which he sus- tained in that company are considered.

For several years he was state's attorney for Belmont county, and was subsequently chosen a member of the Ohio state senate, from 1827 to 1829. He was very much interested in railroads, and in 1830 he prepared a bill which was presented to the legislature, entitled an act to incorporate the Ohio Canal & Steubenville Railroad Company. Action upon this bill by the legis- lature is said to be the first legislation by the state of Ohio relating to rail- roads. In 1831 Mr. Hubbard was elected to the house of representatives of the Ohio general assembly, and was by the members of that body chosen as its speaker. Such was his capability and fitness that he could have held a high and enviable position in the councils of his party, but he seemed rather to choose the more pleasant and attractive pursuits of business and finance.

He moved to Columbus in 1839, thinking that in the capital of the state he would be afforded a wider and more attractive field for the gratification of his expanding ideas relative to financial affairs. He was elected the presi- dent of the Exchange Bank of Columbus, and later organized and was the president of the First National Bank of Columbus, which was the first bank in the city to become incorporated and established under the national bank- ing system. It was largely through his effort and influence that the United States arsenal was located at Columbus. It is said that Salmon P. Chase, while governor of Ohio, and afterward secretary of the United States treas- ury, frequently consulted Mr. Hubbard upon financial questions and attached

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great consequence to his opinions. He was a fine classical scholar and never lost his taste for the classics, and in his last years delighted to converse with professional scholars in the Latin tongue.

Mr. Hubbard died in Columbus, January 5, 1866, having lived to attain the scriptural allotment of three score years and ten.

While it would seem the work of supererogation in a space so confined and restricted (as a brief county biography must necessarily be) to attempt the delineation of a character at once so prominent and interesting to all the inhabitants of the state, yet it may not be a subject devoid of interest or render this work less attractive to refer briefly to a character so distinguished as Salmon P. Chase.

In the year 1820 he came as a youth twelve years old and made his home for about two years with an uncle then living in the northern part of Frank- lin, county. The fact is recited in Howe's Historical Recollections of Ohio that young Chase was for a time in the employ of a bricklayer at Worthing- ton, in the capacity of a mortar carrier, and later in life referred with pride to the fact that a man who afterward became the governor of Ohio and chief justice of the United States should have once carried the hod for him. Thus it is that amid the realities of life we sometimes discover a veritable demon- stration of the correctness of the old adage, "Truth is stranger than fiction."

The progress and rapidity with which Judge Chase was advanced in the line of political honor and preferment is too well known and remembered as a matter of fact and history to require its particular recital here. His services to the state while an occupant of the gubernatorial chair at Columbus, his position upon the exciting subjects of the nation while a member of the United States senate, his signal and masterly conceptions of the difficult problems of finance while secretary of the treasury, where the value of his service in the cause of his country was perhaps more marked and significant than in any of the many high offices with which he was honored by his coun- trymen, and his final promotion by President Lincoln to the exalted position of chief justice of the supreme court of the United States, all alike, and all in fact, with one accord proclaim and attest the wisdom of the judge, the profundity of the statesman, the conception of the financier and the excel- lence of the man.

Judge Chase, as it is well known, was paralyzed a few years preceding his death, and though the stroke was but partial he never recovered from it. He died in 1875. Two children survived their illustrious father, both daugh- ters. The older, Catherine, better and more popularly known later in life as Kate Chase Sprague, married Governor Sprague, of Rhode Island. Their conjugal relations, as was well known, were not congenial or happy and finally culminated in a separation. For several years antecedently to her death Mrs. Sprague was the occupant of her father's old suburban residence border- ing the outskirts of the federal metropolis known as Edgewood. Its high walls and capacious grounds were plainly visible from the portals of the man-

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moth white marble building, the halls of which had so often resounded with the voice of her father in the exciting debates upon momentous occasions in which he was an active participant. She died in 1899 at Washington city, and her remains now repose in peace beside her illustrious father in a beauti- ful cemetery at Cincinnati, overlooking the tranquil waters of the river Ohio. The devotion of Mrs. Sprague to her father, her ambitious hopes and zealous aspirations for his succession to the office of the chief executive, were inor- dinate and wonderful. Never, perhaps, in the history of the country has an instance of such a remarkable attachment on the part of a child for the pre- ferment of a parent been revealed so pointedly to view, unless in the single exception of Theodosia Burr for her misguided and revengeful father, who for unjustifiable and unworthy political motives was prompted to take the life of that greatest man of the American republic, Alexander Hamilton.

Samuel Brush was a native of Chenango county, New York, and a son of Plat and Elizabeth (Treat) Brush. He moved with his family, in 1815, to Chillicothe, Ohio, where his father established himself in the practice of the legal profession. In 1820 the family removed to Delaware, Ohio, the father having been appointed to the office of register of the land office for the purpose of disposing of the government lands located in several counties in the western part of the state.

Samuel was, during his early years, a clerk in his father's office. He later received a good education under the tuition of private instructors, one of whom, General John A. Quitman, in after years became quite prominent as a member of congress from, and governor of, Mississippi. He adopted the law as a profession and was admitted to the bar and commenced to prac- tice in 1830 at Tiffin, where his uncle, Judge Brush, was then a resident and one of the judges of the court before which he began to practice. Later in his professional career, about 1840, he qualified as a practitioner in the various courts of Ohio and also the supreme court of the United States. In the fall of 1836 he moved to Columbus, where he formed a partnership in the legal business and resumed his practice in the capital city of the state, where he acquired an extensive practice and accumulated considerable means. In the organization of the Franklin County Agricultural Society he was elected successively to the office of vice-president and president of the organization. During the years of his connection with that association its grounds were purchased and laid out, its various buildings designed and constructed for different uses and the whole machinery put in perfect working operation. In the practice of law Mr. Brush was especially proficient in the particular of special pleading, no case prepared by him having ever been lost or judgment reversed for defective pleading. His mind was strong in point of concentra- tion and his manipulation and conduct of causes committed to his care for trial were ably and intelligently handled, with results which fully established the justice of his claims to the high reputation which he acquired at the bar through a long series of years of successful practice.

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Noah H. Swayne, an associate justice of the supreme court of the United States, was a native of Virginia and was born in the year 1804. He was of Quaker parentage. He was quite precocious in his youth and rapidly developed into intellectual attainments, particularly in the law, which was his chosen profession. At the early age of nineteen he obtained his license to practice law, and removed from Virginia to Ohio and commenced the practice of his profession. Mr. Swayne was one of those native born Vir- ginians not frequently, but sometimes, met with who, while generally uphold- ing and defending the peculiar institutions of the south, entertained a horror and aversion to the institution of slavery which constrained him to leave his kindred and his state to avoid coming in contact with the hated evil.

Judge Swayne's first place of residence in Ohio was at Coshocton. He was a resident of Coshocton in 1839, when he was appointed district attorney for the state. He discovered little if any interest in politics until the cam- paign of 1856, when John C. Fremont became a candidate for the presidency. His speeches were mainly in opposition to, and against the extension of, slavery. He was appointed an associate justice of the supreme court of the United States by President Lincoln to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Justice McLean, of Ohio. This appointment, it is said, was made at the request of the undivided delegation in congress from the state of Ohio, as well as out of respect to the wish of the deceased justice himself expressed a short time previously to his death. This opinion of Justice McLean con- cerning the fitness and suitability of Judge Swayne's appointment to a posi- tion on the supreme bench was the estimate of his capacity which Judge McLean had conceived of him during his frequent argument of causes before the supreme court of the United States, in which he displayed marked and unmistakable legal ability. He left several sons, one of whom, General Wager Swayne, acquired a high reputation as a lawyer in New York city.

Henry Stanberry, with possibly one or two exceptions, may with con- fidence be regarded as the equal of any jurist who has for three-fourths of a century past practiced at the bar of justice in the state of Ohio. He was the possessor of many of the essential prerequisites which are so necessary to the constitution of a courtly, accomplished gentleman, and all the finer ele- ments which ennoble and adorn the dignity and character of superior man- hood were inherent in his nature.

He was born in the city of New York about the year 1800, and when only eleven years old came with his father to Zanesville, Ohio. His collegiate education was acquired at Washington College, Pennsylvania, whence he graduated with much credit. After completing his education he returned to Zanesville, where he commenced the study of his profession and where, in 1821, he was admitted to the bar as a regular practitioner of the law. It was about this time, it would seem, that he was brought in contact with Thomas Ewing, the most accomplished and consummate lawyer at that day in Ohio, and by his advice or persuasion was induced to remove to Lancaster

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and begin the practice of his profession in that place, either associated with Mr. Ewing directly or in some wise connected with him in the legal business. Here he remained and continued in regular practice until 1846, when by leg- islative enactment the office of attorney general of Ohio was created and Mr. Stanberry was chosen by vote of the general assembly to fill that important office. Upon his acquirement of this position he moved to Columbus, where he continued to reside during his five years' occupancy of the office. He was a conspicuous member of the constitutional convention of 1850 and participated extensively in its debates. Subsequently to this he removed to Cincinnati and practiced law for a number of years in that city. In 1866 he was appointed United States attorney general by President Johnson and took up his residence in Washington city. This position he held, and with great credit discharged its duties until impeachment proceedings were instituted against his chief, when he resigned his office to become his counsel at the impeachment trial, which was shortly afterward commenced. His legal attainments were prominently brought to view in this trial, and his ability as a learned and accomplished jurist fully sustained by the arguments he made in the defense of the president.

He died in the city of his birth (New York) in 1883, at eighty-three years of age.

William Dennison, widely known as one of the war governors of Ohio (a very brief sketch only of whose eventful life can for want of space be here recited), was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, in November, 1815. He was a college graduate of Miami University and commenced his professional life in the practice of law in the office of Nathaniel G. Pendleton in that city. He was a prominent and influential delegate to the convention of 1856, which inaugurated the Republican party and selected John C. Fremont as its standard bearer by nominating him for the presidency in that year. In the campaign which followed he was an ardent supporter of the nominee of that convention. In 1860 Mr. Dennison was the nominee of his party and was elected gov- ernor of Ohio. He was the chairman of the convention which renominated Mr. Lincoln for the presidency at Baltimore in 1864, and upon the re-election of Mr. Lincoln became a member of his cabinet by appointment to the office of postmaster general, which position he held until 1866, when, in conse- quence of the apostasy of Andrew Johnson ( who had in consequence of the death of Mr. Lincoln succeeded to the presidency ), he resigned the office. Governor Dennison was an enthusiastic admirer and steadfast friend of John Sherman and exerted himself to the utmost to secure his nomination for the presidency in 1880. He was a man of wealth and liberality and contributed generously to a college at Granville, Ohio, which bears his name.

It was largely through the instrumentality of Governor Dennison that West Virginia was saved to the Union. He gave encouragement and assur- ance to the loyal people of that state that he would stand by them in their severance of relations with the old state and would in extremity, if circum-

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stances or conditions should render it necessary, supply a military force suf- ficient to protect and defend them. The contingency upon which the pledge was based, and the condition upon which the promise was made, both hap- pened. The extent to which the plighted faith and promise was redeemed is matter of general history and does not here require recital. Governor Dennison's administration of state and governmental affairs during his occu- pancy of the gubernatorial chair of Ohio has been gravely criticised and con- demned in many quarters, but the consensus of opinion at the present day is such as to greatly mollify the asperities of former days, and correct the mis- taken and misguided judgment pronounced under a misapprehension of the truth and facts of the case. "Time at last sets all things even."

Allen G. Thurman .- Within the narrow limits to which the sketch of so eminent a man as the subject of this article will be necessarily confined for want of space in the chapter of its publication, it will be impossible to do more than make brief mention of the many high official positions which he filled and the singular ability and perfect integrity with which he discharged the duties pertaining to them all.

Allen G. Thurman, than whom no purer-minded man-either civilian or representative-ever dignified a constituency in a legislative or judicial capacity, was a native Virginian, born at Lynchburg in 1813. When an infant his family removed to Ohio and located at Chillicothe. After acquir- ing an education he studied law with his uncle, William Allen, and Noah H. Swayne, both of whom in subsequent years rose to positions high in the councils of the nation, the former to the senate of the United States, the latter to a seat in the highest judicial tribunal in the country. Judge Thurman was admitted to the bar in 1835 and began the practice of law at Chillicothe. Here he continued in his profession until 1844, when he was elected to con- gress when but thirty years of age. In 1851 he was elected a judge of the superior court of the state, and the opinions rendered by him during his term of office were such as to reflect the highest credit, and deservedly established throughout the state his reputation as a judge and jurist. In 1868 he was elected to the United States senate, which was then composed of the brightest luminaries in the land. He rose at once to the high plane of his calling and immediately took rank nothing inferior to any legislator who at that time represented a constituency in either house of congress. The most dis- tinguished service rendered by Judge Thurman during his term in con- gress, as well, perhaps, throughout the entire course of his eventful and illus- trious life, was his defense of the southern people during the passage of the reconstruction measures in the south. It was in the debates which followed the introduction of these measures that his voice was raised in thunder tones against a wrong and injustice which he thought was unrightcously sought to be forced upon them. The application of a portion of the beautiful tribute of Judah P. Benjamin to Albert Sidney Johnston could with peculiar pro- priety be gratefully ascribed by the people of the south to Judge Thurman 2

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for his noble and manly defense of them in the hour of their sore affliction. Allen G. Thurman was a man in honor impregnable, in integrity incorruptible, a man, in truth, of whom it may with truth be said, he "stood four-square to all the winds that blow."

General Charles C. Walcutt .- Few individuals have died in Columbus within the past quarter of a century whose decease has caused greater sorrow or regret among its citizens than that of General Charles C. Walcutt. Gen- eral Walcutt was a native of Columbus and was born in 1838. In his early life he attended the public schools of the city, acquiring the rudimentary branches of an education, and afterward went to the Kentucky Military Institute, where he graduated in the class of 1858. Upon completing his edu- cation he returned to Columbus, where his business life began. The first office which he filled was that of county surveyor, to which he was elected shortly after his return from college. This position he retained until the commencement of the war of the Rebellion, when he resigned it, when, offer- ing his services to the government, he raised a company and was commis- sioned its captain. His promotion in the army was rapid, and as early as the second year of the war we find him advanced to the rank of lieutenant colonel and participating in the memorable battle of Shiloh, where he was struck by a ball which he carried through life. He participated also in the battles of Vicksburg and Jackson in Mississippi, Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga and Kenesaw Mountain; and after the death of General McPherson he was pro- moted to the rank of brigadier general. He fought a remarkable battle and the only one during the march of General Sherman from Atlanta to the sea and known in history as the battle of Griswoldsville. His gallantry and bravery in this battle elicited such praise and commendation, and was so pointedly referred to and complimented by General Sherman, that he was in consequence brevetted major general. After the conclusion of the war General Walcutt returned to Columbus and was shortly afterward appointed warden of the Ohio penitentiary, which he held for a number of years, and under his management of its affairs the institution for the first time in its history returned a revenue to the state treasury. He was a brave and gallant officer, a courtly, refined and cultured gentleman, and in his death Columbus sustained a loss in respect of citizenship and manhood not easily supplied. THE EDITOR.

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A Centennial biographical history of the city of Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio, Part 3

Author: Lewis Publishing Company Publication date: 1901 Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1156

Author: Lewis Publishing Company
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1156