Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 135

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006

USA > Ohio > Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I > Part 135

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Warren Higley, President of Ohio State Forestry Association, wrote of him : "His early surroundings and associations were powerful allies in his education as a natural- ist. IIc read and studied and mastered the book of Nature in its varied teachings as but few have mastered it. A seed, a bud, a leaf, a plant, a branch, a tree, a shell, a rock, at-

tracted his notice and elicited investigation. He was a veritable student of Nature, and his love among men was as lovingly beautiful as it was among his plants and trees. . . . He is justly called the Father of American Forestry."

Associated for a time, about the year 1854, with Dr. Warder, in the publication of the "Botanical Magazine and Horticultural Re- view." was JAMES W. WARD, a gentleman highly accomplished by varied attainments in science, literature, art, and both a poet and the nephew of a poet. The best remembered of his verses by the older citizens is a parody of Henry W. Longfellow's " Hiawatha," en- titled "Higher Water," descriptive of a freshet on the Ohio river ; other of his pieces were characterized by delicate fancy and re- fined instincts.

ROBERT CLARKE was born in Annam, Dumfrieshire, Scotland, May 1, 1829. He removed with his parents to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1840, was educated at Woodward Col- lege, and became a bookseller and publisher in that city. He edited George Rogers Clarke's "Campaign in the 'Illinois' in 1778-9" (Cincinnati, 1869), James McBride's "Pioneer Biographies " (1869), Capt. James Smith's "Captivities with the Indians" (1870), and is the anthor of a pamphlet entitled "The Prehistoric Remains which were Found on the Site of the City of Cin- cinnati, with a Vindication of the Cincinnati Tablet," printed privately, 1876 .- Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography.

The mystery of the fate of Sir John Franklin for a long term of years aronsed the sympathy of the civilized world. He had sailed from England in May, 1845, in two British ships, the Erebus and Terror, on a voyage of discovery of the northwest pas- sage across our continent, and never re- turned. Several expeditions were sent in search, two from our country, De Haven's and Griffith's in 1850, and the last under Dr. E. K. Kane in 1853. The last under Mc- Clintock sailed from England in 1857 in the little steam-yacht Fox, purchased by Lady Franklin, and brought back from the Es- kimos intelligence of the sad fate of the ex- pedition, with many relics.

All further search for them in England was then considered as ended. Not so in this country. There was one individual-then a citizen of Cincinnati, and personally known to us as a singularly modest and worthy man, doing business as a seal engraver at No. 12 West Fourth street-CHARLES FRANCIS HALL, a native of Rochester, New Hamp- shire, born there in 1821, where he began life as a blacksmith. For years he had been an enthusiastic student of Arctic exploration, and when the mystery over the fate of Sir John Franklin had aroused universal sym- pathy he was intensely excited. He pondered over the subject by day and dreamed of it by night, and felt as though there might be some poor souls yet surviving of the lost mariners among the Eskimos, whom to relieve from their savage, dreary, deathlike existence he

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was personally called upon to attempt by every attribute of humanity.

Some of his townsmen, when they finally learned of his preparing to start off on a self-constituted expedition in search of the survivors of the Franklin Expedition, and, moreover, heard that he designed making scientific observations of natural phenomena, replied, with supercilious smiles : "Pshaw ! what in the way of Arctic explorations and scientific investigations can this fellow do ? Why he is nothing but a common seal en- graver," they said, "who has received but the common schooling, and perhaps only from a common Yankee school-marm at that, and who in all his life has accomplished no greater feat than engraving the initials of sundry nobodies upon wedding-rings, 'With this do I thee wed!'"

Such commentators, with any amount of

CHAS. F. HALL.

scholarly drill, prove incapable of a fresh thought, or else it would flash upon them, as it would upon any bright, well-read lad of fifteen, that the great names that come down to us from Moses to Socrates, from Shakes- peare to one Ben Franklin, and almost the entire line of original inventors, Edison in- clusive, are largely those of individuals who were powerless to display parchments of graduation. They seem dead to the fact that upon the basis of a common school education, with the abundant printed aids of our time- advantages which "Moses and the prophets," Socrates and the popes, had not-for the in- vestigation of almost any single topic, that the naturally clear brain when will and en- thusiasm absorb its entire power is capable of the most subtle fingerings, of giant grasps and far-reaching conquests. His townsmen little realized that in the person of this

modest, quiet seal engraver was to be demon- strated from the days of the Norsemen to our days no greater hero in all Arctic history, and moreover that he was to win the singular distinction of penetrating nearer to the North Pole than any human being before him, and then filling the northernmost grave on the globe.

When Hall returned from his first expedi- tion he brought two natives, the Eskimos Joe and Hannah, afterwards of the Polaris Expedition, and came to Cincinnati with them. About that time Lady Franklin, who had come to this country to meet Hall, was also in Cincinnati, and gave a reception to such of the citizens as desired to call upon her in the ladies' parlor of the Burnet House, when John D. Caldwell, Ohio's "Universal Secretary," acted as chaperon.

This was in the war time, the winter of 1863-4. One evening at that period we saw Hall and Joe together in the Gazette office. The Eskimo, or more properly Innuits, are a small race, the men under five feet in stature. Joe looked alongside of Hall as a pigmy be- side a giant. Hall was a tall, fleshy man, with rather a small head, the last man one would pick out for a hero, possessing very little self-assertion or fluency of speech. What may seem strange, his Eskimo com- panions Joe and Hannah on their arrival in this country, consequent upon the inhospital- ity of our climate, had caught severe colds, As we looked upon Joe that winter evening in the Gazette office, we felt we would like to know his emotions on a first introduction to civilized life. Ruskin said : " What thought that was when God first thought of a tree." We felt we would like to know Joe's emotions when he first saw a tree. He was of a race of our fellow-creatures who never see a tree nor a shrub their entire lives through, but dwell in seeming utter desola- tion and solitude, where the whole earth lies dead under an eternal snowy shroud.

EDWARD FOLLENSBEE NOYES was born in Haverhill, Mass., October 3, 1832, and be- coming an orphan served five years appren- ticeship in the office of the Morning Star, a religious newspaper published at Dover, N. H. He then prepared and " went through " Dartmouth College, graduating near the head of his class, moved to Cincinnati and gradu- ated in the Cincinnati Law School in 1858. When the civil war broke out he was one of the members of the Literary Club who en- listed. He changed his law office into re- cruiting headquarters and was commissioned July 27, 1861, Major of the 39th Ohio In- fantry, and later its Colonel. He was with his regiment in every march and in every battle and skirmish in which the command was engaged, until he lost a leg in an assault on the enemy's works at Ruff's Mills in the Atlanta campaign. While yet on crutches he reported for duty to Gen. Hooker, and was assigned to the command of Camp Den- nison, and later was commissioned Brigadier- General. In 1871 he was chosen Governor of Ohio ; at the next election was defeated ;

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in 1877 he was appointed by his old friend and club mate, President Hayes, Minister to France. During his service there he was sent on an especial mission to the East, visit- ing all the countries that border on the Mediterranean. He resigned in 1881 and resumed his law practice in Cincinnati. He possesses fine oratorical powers, and is re-

GEN. E. F. NOYES.

markable for his enthusiastic, cheery disposi- tion and kindly manners. He was so beloved by the soldiers that he induced a larger num- ber of veterans to re-enlist in his regiment than was secured to any other in the National army from Ohio. He died Sept. 4, 1890.

In our boy days we often saw in our fa- ther's bookstore in New Haven, ALPHONSO TAFT, then a Yale student. He was tall, broad-even as a youth-heavy and strong, and then noted for his strong common sense and masenline grasp of intellect. He was a warm admirer of Daniel Webster, whom in some important aspects he resembled, and of the many eulogies pronounced upon that great man his tribute to his life and services is regarded by the family and friends of Mr. Webster as the most truthful and masterly. He once made a remark that is worth any printer's ink : "It is a pretty bad case that has not to it two sides."

Judge Taft was born in Townsend, Ver- mont, November 5, 1810; graduated at Yale in 1833 ; tutor there, 1835-1837 ; in 1838 ad- mitted to the bar and after 1840 practised in Cincinnati, where he won high reputation. In 1856 he was a delegate to the National Republican Convention, and in the same year was defeated for Congress by George H. Pendleton ; from 1866 to 1872 was Judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, when he resigned to associate himself in practice with two of his sons. "In 1875 he was a candi-

date for the Republican nomination for the governorship ; but a dissenting opinion that he had delivered on the question of the Bible in the public schools was the cause of much opposition to him. The opinion that defeated his nomination was unanimously affirmed by the Supreme Court of Ohio, and is now the law of the State. He became Secretary of War March 8, 1876, on the resignation of Gen. William W. Belknap, and on 22d May following was transferred to the attorney- generalship, serving until the close of Gen. Grant's administration. Judge Taft was ap- pointed United States minister to Austria April 26, 1882, and in 1884 was transferred to Russia, where he served till August 1, 1885. He has been a trustee of the Univer-

ALPHONSO TAFT.

sity of Cincinnati since its foundation, and in 1872-82 served on the corporation of Yale, which gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1867." Four of his sons have graduated at that institution. He died May, 21 1891.

AARON F. PERRY, like Judge Taft, is from the Green Mountain State, born at Lei- cester, Vermont, January 1, 1815-like him was educated at Yale, and cast his fortunes in Ohio, first settling in Columbus, where he had as successive law partners Gov. Dennison and Gen. Carrington. In 1854 he removed to Cincinnati and became a law partner with Judge Taft and Col. Thomas M. Key. As a lawyer he has made enduring marks upon the history of his country-notably in the case of Vallandigham against Burnside, in- volving the legal right to arrest a private cit- izen for indulgence in the freedom of speech in opposition to the measures of a govern- ment struggling for its life against citizens in armed rebellion. Mr. Perry in his politics was originally a Whig, then a Republican,

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and in 1870 was elected to Congress by the Republicans, where he took a leading part. During the war era no man, in our judgment, in the Cincinnati region, was so effective as he in upholding the hands of government by public addresses, irresistible from their grasp and clearness of' statement, beanty of diction with keenness of wit, and delivered with a grace and ease of manner and a power that so captivated the multitudes that ever assem- bled to hear him, that they were always sorry when he closed. So important were his ser- vices to Ohio at this period, that Gov. Den- nison thanked him in his annual message. Although suffering from a malady, deafness, that warps the disposition of many sensitive natures, Mr. Perry seems not at all affected by it, but everywhere and to every one ap- pears with an overflow of good feeling that renders his presence, and after thoughts of him, to a high degree pleasant.

REUBEN RUNYAN SPRINGER.

REUBEN RUNYAN SPRINGER, philanthro- pist, was a descendant of the early Swedes who settled in Delaware in the seventeenth century. His father was a soldier under Gen. Wayne in the Indian war, and later became the postmaster in Frankfort, Ky., where Reuben was born, November 16. 1800. He in turn became postmaster. a clerk on a river steamboat running between Cincinnati and New Orleans, and then acquired an in- terest. Later be became a partner in a wholesale grocery house in Cincinnati, and retired in 1840 from ill health, and never re- sumed active business.

"He went abroad repeatedly, huying many works of fine art, which are now mostly the property of the Art Museum. He gave to the Music Hall, the Exposition Building, the Odeon Theatre and the Art Museum, in all.

$420,000 ; to private charities of the Roman Catholic church-of which he was a member -more than $100,000, and at least $30,000 annually in the way of benevolence, beside contributing liberally and regularly to varions charities and public enterprises. He died in 1884, left by will about $3,000,000 to nearest of kin-having no children ; also annuities to the College of Music, the Music Hall and the Art Museum, and nearly $400,000 to various Roman Catholic charitable institu- tions, among these $40,000 to the Cathedral School, $30,000 to St. Peter's Benevolent Society, and $100,000 for the education of priests." A fine statue to his memory is in the Music Hall, the work of Clarence Powers. Mr. Springer was in person tall and erect, with dark eyes, and dignified and quiet in manner, and impressed the casual observer as one of the highest type of gentlemen.

CALVIN WASHBURN STARBUCK, printer, born in Cincinnati in 1822; died there in 1870 ; was the fastest type-setter in Ohio ; established the Times, the progenitor of the Star-Times ; was remarkable for his phi- lanthropy to various charitable institutions of the city both by cash and personal labor. During the civil war he strove by voice and pen to establish the National credit. To the families of his employés who enlisted be continued their full wages while they were in the service, and in 1864 volunteered and bore his musket as one of the one hundred- day men.

DAVID SINTON, so widely known for his benefactions, was born in County Armagh, Ireland, early in the century, of mingled Scotch and Anglo-Saxon blood ; the family name was originally Swinton. His father's family came to this country and settled at Pittsburg when he was three years of age. His life business has mainly been the manu- facture of iron, the location of his furnaces, Lawrence county. His residence has been mainly Cincinnati. He is entirely a self- made man ; has a large, strong person with strong common sense, and therefore moves solely on the solid foundation of facts. His residence is the old Longworth mansion on Pike street, built by Martin Baum early in the century. Mr. Sinton's only living child is the wife of Chas. P. Taft, editor of the Times-Star.

To be a public man of note renders such an one an object of interest to the public, to say nothing of the gratification in that fact to the public man himself. One such, a fellow-towns- man in Cincinnati, we seldom failed to look upon as we passed him on the street from his personal attractions and general reputation as a man. He was rather short in stature but a full-chested, erect, plumply-built and very handsome man, with dark smiling eyes, a noble, massive head adorned with a wealth of dark luxuriant hair : life seemed to go pleasant with him. We never heard the sound of his voice ; but once, just before the civil war, we were simultaneously in each other's eyes. We had met and passed on a side street, each of us alone ; then we turned to gaze upon

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him at the same moment he had turned to gaze on us. The reader has had a like ex- perience and appreciates the mutual morti- fication of the moment. Which of us felt the meanest is an unsolved problem. When on our late tour over Ohio we were in the Tom Corwin mansion, at Lebanon, Judge Sage, whose home it is and who was with us, said with pride, as enhancing the attrac-

DAVID SINTON.

tions of the mansion, "In the room over us GEORGE H. PENDLETON passed several days when he was an infant." "This was the full- rounded man we met as above described. His fellow-townsmen called him "Gentleman George " from his suave manners and courtly ways. Then he was "well fixed " for pleas- ant contemplation, possessing, as reputed, ample means, the best social relations, the best Virginia blood of the revolutionary war coursing through his veins, and as the mother of his children one of the most beautiful, sweetly-mannered of women, and of the blonde order, a daughter of Francis Scott Key, author of the never-to-be-forgotten ode, "The Star-Spangled Banner." Her tragic death in Central Park a few years ago, thrown from her carriage, is remembered with a pang.

GEORGE HUNT PENDLETON was born in Cincinnati 25th July, 1825, and educated to the law. He was elected as a Democrat to Congress in 1856, serving till 1865, where he was on the Committees on Military Affairs and Ways and Means.

"In 1860, at the time of the division of the Democratic party at the Charleston Con- vention, Mr. Pendleton warmly supported Mr. Douglas. On sectional questions he was moderate and conservative. If dissolution was inevitable, be preferred it should be a

peaceful one; if war was to be waged, he warned Congress to ‘prepare to wage it to the last extremity ;' and accordingly voted for all measures required to enable the govern- ment to maintain its honor and dignity."

He was on the ticket for the Vice-Presi- dency, with George B. McClellan for Presi- dent, in 1864; was unsuccessful on the Democratic ticket for Governor of Ohio in 1869 against R. B. Hayes. In 1878 was elected U. S. Senator, and became Chairman of the Committee on Civil Service Reform. In 1885 he was appointed by President Cleve- land U. S. Minister to Germany.

He died of apoplexy in Brussels, Nov. 24, 1889. His remains lie buried in Spring Grove. He was regarded as "the very pink of honor ; performed many generous deeds ; had antagonists, but no enemies.11

Col. GEORGE WARD NICHOLS, small in person but great in will, was born in Fre- mont, Mt. Desert, on the coast of Maine, in 1837, and died in Cincinnati in 1885. He was a school-boy in Boston ; then travelled in Europe, making his headquarters in Paris. His tastes were for the fine arts, and he learned to draw and paint. In the war pe- riod he was aid both to Fremont and to Sherman, on his march to the sea. Then he

GEORGE H. PENDLETON.

came to Cincinnati, where he was for a time engaged in drawing and painting. His life there is a part of the history of the city. His father's house had been a musical home, and love of music was his master passion. He became the originator and organizer of the May Musical Festivals, the Opera Festivals, and the College of Music, founded in 1879, and "was its president, and placed the col-

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lege where envy could not reach it." The important educational influences of such work and the honorable reputation it has given the city, is not to be lightly measured. He was author of " The Story of the Great March to the Sea ;" "Art Education Applied to In- dustry," and "Pottery : How it is Made."

CHARLES W. WEST, whose great benefac- tion for an Art Museum in Cincinnati is a lasting memorial of beauty and pleasure, was born in Montgomery county, Pa. In 1810 worked on a farm, until he was twenty-one years of age, and at thirty-one established himself in Cincinnati as a merchant and had great success.

In September, 1880, he offered to contrib- ute $150,000 toward the erection of an art museum building, provided that an cqual amount was raised by subscription : on the condition being fulfilled he gave twice as much as he had promised. The building was begun in 1882 and finished in 1885; but Mr. West did not live to see it finished, he dying the year before aged seventy-four years. His portrait in the museum is in seeming that of a genial gentleman, full of sociality and good fellowship, which indeed were his character- istics. His offer came as a grand surprise. On the opening of the Exposition of 1880, its President, Hon. Melville E. Ingalls, the famed railroad manager, read a letter, later termed the " famous letter, " from Mr. West, making his magnificent offer. When the Exposition closed "in glory," having been a great success financially and artistically, Mr. Ingalls gave a public dinner to its friends, whereupon fifty-three gentlemen obligated themselves to increase the fund for the Art Museum $1,000 each, in all $53,000. This assured success.

After the death of Mr. Joseph Longworth, the first President of the Museum, Mr. In- galls was elected its president, and has since held the office by continuous elections, he managing things with the same vim as he has the "Big Four." Like Col. George W. Nichols, already sketched in these pages, Mr. Ingalls is a native of Maine, born at Harri- son, Sept. 6, 1842. As a matter of honoring record, we annex the names of the fifty-three who each gave one thousand dollars for the Art Museum ; and in this connection inquire what other city can produce such a fifty- three ?

F. Eckstein, M. M. White and wife, Richard B. Hopple, Morehead & Norton, C. H. and D. R. R., by John Carlisle, V. P., Peter Rudolph Neff, Alex. MeDonald & Co., J. M. Nash, T. T. Gaff, for estate of J. W. Gaff, E. L. Harper & Co., Charles Fleischmann, Windisch Mnhlhauser Bros. & Co., W. F. Thorne, Briggs Swift, Henry Lewis, Cincinnati Gas Light & Coke Co., Mrs. Larz Anderson, Cin. Street Ry. Co., by J. N. Kinney, A. S. Winslow, G. Y. Roots and wife, George Wilshire, Geo. Hoadly, Rev. Thomas H. Skinner, A. Gunnison, C. I. St. L. & C. R. R., by M. E. Ingalls, George W. MeAlpin, E. W. Cun- ningham and wife, A. J. Mullane, Mrs. George Carlisle, Robert Mitchell, Chatfield & Woods, S. J. Broadwell, Wm. P. Hulbert, John Shillito, Walsh & Kellogg, Elliott H. Pendleton, Oliver

Perin, B. S. Cunningham and wife, J. H. Rogers, George llofer, Joseph Kinsey, J. N. Kinney, B. F. Evans, A. H. Hinkle, George H. Hill, Robert Clarke & Co., C. W. Short, George II. Pendleton, M. E. Ingalls.

STANLEY MATTHEWS was born in Cincin- nati, July 21, 1824, the son of a college professor. He graduated at Kenyon, where he was a classmate of R. B. Hayes, and life- long friend. He adopted the profession of the law and at one time edited an anti-slavery newspaper, the Cincinnati Herald. He be-

STANLEY MATTHEWS.

came judge of the Court of Common Pleas, held other offices, entered the army as Lieut. Col. of the 23d Ohio, W. S. Rosecrans being its Colonel, and R. B. Hayes, Major ; re- mained in the army until April, 1863, when he was elected by the Republicans judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati ; soon re- signed and engaged in a large and lucrative law practice. On the Electoral Commission he rendered efficient service to the claims of Mr. Hayes. In 1877 he succeeded John Sherman in the Senate. . In 1881 he was appointed associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. He died March 21, 1889, leaving the reputation of being a great lawyer and a most lovable man. In person he was tall, manly and approachable to everybody. "If he had lived," said Senator Payne, "he would have been the foremost jurist in the land." Another said, "Few stronger men have been born: he embodied extraordinary powers," and with him "Re- ligion was a worship and not a show."

WILLIAM S. GROESBECK was born July 24, 1815, in New York city ; was educated to the law and came to Cincinnati. In 1851 was a member of the State Constitutional Convention ; in 1852 one of the commission

MAJOR DAVID ZEIGLER.

MARTIN BAUM.

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to codify the State laws ; in Congress 1857- 1859, serving on the committee on foreign affairs ; a member of the peace congress in 1861, and in 1862 of the Ohio Senate; a delegate to the National Union Convention in 1866 ; one of President Johnson's counsel on his impeachment trial, 1868 ; was in 1872 the Presidential candidate of the Liberal Republicans in opposition to Horace Greeley and received one electoral vote for Vice- President, for which office he had not been nominated. In 1878 was delegate to the International Monetary. Congress, held in Paris. His reputation for capacity is of the highest. And by his endowment of $50,000 for free open air concerts in Burnet Woods Park, strains of sweet music are to soothe the cares of multitudes long after he shall have passed away.

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Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 135

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio Number of Pages: 1006

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006