USA > Ohio > Ashtabula County > History of Ashtabula County, Ohio > Part 45
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Although it was thought that he could have been elected, he declined to allow his name to be used as a candidate for the office of mayor of Milwaukee. The known liberality of his views induced the Socialist party of Wisconsin to seek Mr. Speneer as their standard-bearer for governor of the State, which he per- emptorily declined, on the ground that he was opposed to some of their views and tendencies regarding property, ete. The independence of his political aud religious opinions disincline him to the restraints of public office, and attract him toward reform movements, in which he is moderate and judicious though firm and resolute.
The National Liberal league, having for its platform of principles " the total separation of religion and the state," " national protection to national citizens in their equal religious, eivil, and politieal rights," and " universal education as the basis of universal suffrage in this free republic," appointed Mr. Spencer on its national executive board and head of the organization in Wisconsin.
To these measures he lends his influence with characteristie liberality and energy.
Mr. Spencer has becu twice married. May 15, 1853, he united in marriage with Miss Sarah Elizabeth Beach, second daughter of William and Susan Roop Beach, Erie county, New York, a lady of rare talents, refinement, and beauty of eharacter, whose acquaintance he formed in Buffalo, where she was known as a most accomplished teacher. She died in 1856, leaving an infant son, Junius.
June 22, 1863, he married Mrs. Ellen Whiton King, widow of Chancy P. King, a lawyer of Janesville, Wiseonsin, daughter of Hon. Daniel G. Whiton, and nieee of Edward V. Whiton, first chief-justice of Wisconsin. By this mar- riage there are seven children, Robert C., Jr., Edward W., Henry K., Anna E., Charles L., George S., aud Earnest D.
The residence of Mr. Speneer in Milwaukee, on Prospect avenue, is by the shore of Lake Michigan, looking out upon Milwaukee bay, a most delightful spot, not unlike the haunts of his boyhood, the shore of Lake Erie, at Geneva.
The Spencerian business college at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, of which Mr. Spencer is founder and proprietor, holds the highest rank, and is widely and favorably known for its thoroughness and sueeess in educating and training young men for business life.
During the past twenty-five years Mr. Spencer has instructed thousands, who are well represented among the best business men of our owu and other countries. As a business educator he makes a deep impression upon the minds and character of his students, inspiring the best spirit aud giving safe dircetion to their ambition and energies.
CAROLINE L. RANSOM .*
The defect in the American character is on the art side. The art elements in the nature of individuals remain comparatively undeveloped. The aggregate effect on the national character in the eye of an educated foreigner is somewhat striking, and is not unfrequently charged to the account of defeetive moral senti- ments ; a something in the climate, they say, tending to savagery, of which there has been a deal of twaddle. This deficieney is not due to any laek of native en-
# By Hon. A. G. Riddle.
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dowment, that we inherit from our polyglot ancestry, but to the want of means, the helps for its development. Our present greatest need, in the way of educa- tion, is far deeper, higher, more universal art culture. When a shoal of poets come they create their audience. This would be true of a school of painters, but there always must be some prophecy and preparation for a Messiah. You cannot make an artist ; the schools and colleges never produced one, and never will. If any man should ask me what is their use, I should attempt no reply to him ; the question could never be answered to his apprehension. He is not far enough removed from the Digger Indians. The labor should have been with his ances- tors. We have much well-considered writing and criticism of art and artists. What we most need are collections of works of art, a better and wider diffusion of genuine specimens. The man who carries a really good picture, even when translated into an engraving, to a remote village, is a benefactor in a small way. The city that decorates one of its squares with a fine piece of statuary, has done as much for its people as if it had endowed a free school. None will pass it with indifference. To some it would be a perpetual pleasure; to the few a celes- tial revelation, giving point to their own aspirations, suggesting the needs of their own natures, and leading the way to the possibilities of their own powers.
The story of one artist soul, born in exile from artistic surroundings, I am briefly to sketch. Genius is sexless, when lodged, as in this instance, in the fem- inine form. and finds expression by a woman's hand ; it nevertheless asserts itself as undeniably genius, a part of the great art soul of which the favored few are endowed.
John Ransom is a lineal descendant of Edward Hyde, the great Earl of Claren- don, and chancellor of Charles II. In this branch of the family, the name of Ann Hyde, Edward's daughter, and the mother of two queens, was repeated in every generation till the present. Elizabeth Orms is the daughter of General Orms, of Castleton, Vermont, a strain of people, if less exalted, worthy to mate with the descendants of Hyde. From the union of these two was born Caroline L., at Newark, Ohio. In her infancy the family emigrated northward, and found a home near the Mormon temple, in the beautiful region of Kirtland. In 1840 the Ransoms formed a permanent seat in Harpersfield, on the picturesque banks of Grand river, Ashtabula County. There was much, both at Kirtland and about this final resting-place, that appealed to the imagination and poetic nature of the young girl. We are told she exhibited an aptitude amounting to rarc precocity in the study of some branches of education, which, united to an ambition quite masculine, enabled her to maintain a position in advance of her classmates. With less than a girl's aptitude for mathematics, she easily surpassed her male competitors in the Greek and Latin classics, receiving her education at an academical school open to both sexes. She was a graduate of the Grand River Institution, where she afterwards remained as principal of the ladies' department, and had charge of the Greck and Latin classes of the whole school. She was carly aware of a strong predisposition to art, and looked about eagerly for the means of indulging her bent. These were of the scantiest. During her vaca- tions she took lessons in linear drawing, and doing flowers in water-colors, from a strolling teacher of slender capacity. Small as the aid was, it kindled the latent aspiration, and induced her to grasp at the elusive forms of beautiful nature. Nothing escaped her eye, which caught at every point. At that time she had never seen but one real painting. Think of a young poct who had never read but one poem ! With this scant furnishing forth she herself established a class in water-colors, and gave herself, as far as she could conscientiously, to nature. While looking out eagerly for help a special Providence, in the form of a wander- ing portrait-painter, was vouchsafed her. Him she employed to paint herself, and at once went about procuring him orders. Had he sat to her she could not have studied him closer. What can be more fascinating to a young art soul than a painter at his easel ? His colors, brushes, palette, the way he uses, and the marvels he works with them-nothing escaped her ; every moment she could snatch from duties was spent at the temporary studio. Everything he did observed, every word treasured, little scraps of old masters, stories of their wonders, talks of their lives, of living painters he had known. had read about, or heard of. She induced her father to have portraits of all the family. These, five in number, were painted in the family home. She felt in her soul that she could paint. The artist had a portrait which he claimed to have painted under Chester Harding. She copied it. Her success astonished her master, friends, and, most of all, her- self. She now essayed a living subject. A kind old aunt of her mother was specially raised up to be her first sitter. We may fancy the opening scenes of this experiment. The eager young girl, her fair face flushed, her blue eyes large and flashing, with the masses of wavy hair dashed back as by the hand of the wind. The good, patient, dear old aunt perked up. posed and pushed about by the dainty fingers of the girl artist, who would tell her to look this way and that, step back and view her, with her head first on one side and then on the other, till everything is adjusted ; and then. with a long, quivering breath, the crayon is
applied to the canvas. What a picture it would make. What anxious days those were, big with the fate of artist and sitter, both to be immortal, or neither. Days of going on, going wrong, and then off, and then all right again. It was a tri- umph. Old aunty, at least, was made famous. What a moment for the neophyte, as amid the wonder and plaudits of the eager friends, in the rush and gush of emotion, with her face in her hands, she heard her soul saying to itself, " I, too, am a painter !" It is truc, the outlines were a trifle hard, and the half-tints might have been better adjusted, but the hand that fashioned it was the hand of an artist. It was a likeness and full of life and flesh. She repeated the experiment with other sitters, and so found her career. From her love of nature, and the seeming ease with which she sketched the features of a view, she thought that landscape would afford the best subjects for her pencil.
Horace Greeley's father had been a tenant of one of her Grandfather Orms' farms, and Horace and her mother had been playmates in childhood, and grew up fast friends. With a letter to him from her mother, she made her way to New York, was kindly received, and became an inmate in the family of his sister, Mrs. Cleveland. Here she was placed under the care of the landscape-painter, Ashur B. Durand, successor of Professor Morse as president of the National Academy of Design. After many months of studious and quite successful work, he assured her that her talent and genius, which were decided, were better fitted for portraiture. She was then placed under the care of Thomas Hicks, and de- voted herself exclusively to portraits and figures. After six months she painted the portrait of Mrs. Goss, of New York, which received high commendation from her master and his brother-artists. For eight succeeding years she spent about one-half of each under the best instruction in New York, and the other in Ohio, painting portraits to defray her expenses, being a member of John F. Cleveland's family while in the city, enjoying the care and affection of a daughter of the house. The latter part of this time she was a pupil of the celebrated Huntington, when she painted her portrait of the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, which was pur- chased by congress, and now hangs in the old hall of the house, in the capitol, where he served so long and faithfully. This was hung by the side of Hunting- ton's best, in the exhibition of 1859, and received the highest commendation of him, and of the art critics, and the press of New York. It is characterized by strength and boldness, and remarkable for its life-like expression. This pur- chase by congress was its first patronage to a woman. Among the distinguished subjects of Miss Ransom's pencil were the late Dr. Jared P. Kirtland, the natu- ralist, Governor Brough, General Garfield, Governor Huntington, and Governor J. D. Cox-the two last for the governor's room in the capitol, at Columbus. Chief-Justice Chase sat to her twice while secretary of the treasury,-for a bust once, and again for a full-length portrait. The last, representing him standing in the south portico of the treasury building, was the one he wished to be known by in after-years. In July, 1867, she went to Europe, where she remained two years, seeing much of its countries, many of its great cities, and visiting some of its most famous collections of art, painting and copying several of them, making the acquaintance of many distinguished artists ; correcting, widening, and deep- ening her art impressions and instincts, perfecting her education and judgment in matters of her profession, and improving her style. A woman of wide and general culture, it was not in art alone that she was profited by these two most valuable and treasured years. I think their influence can be clearly traced in her work since her return, when it may be said that she is quite at the maturity of her powers.
Her master-piece, what she may not be expected to ever excel, what few artists in this country can equal, is her now famous full-length portrait of General George H. Thomas, so often described that effort in that direction is tautology. The subject was one which peculiarly appealed to the sensibility and appre- ciative sympathy of Miss Ransom, artist and woman as she is. The grand, massive head, weight, strength, and firmness of the figure, which she has so planted that nothing but an upheaval of the earth's crust can ever shake it; the moveless will, the changeless resolve, the calm courage, the serene daring, the combination of the great solid qualities of the man, the general, and the hero, found in her the soul and intellect that could appreciate and reverence, and the hand that could express them in the face and form which she has given to the eyes of men. All men and women have eyes with which to scan the faces and forms of their fellows. Scarcely any two see all of the same things in the face of any worth looking at. It is the gift of the artist in human portraiture to see all that the external face and form contain,-the nice lines and subtle expres- sions that elude common though acute observers. They see vastly more. The countenance reveals to them the best there is in the man, the best which they attribute to a given man; and something of this a true artist will bring forth, and make to appear in the faces of those worthy of their pencils. Two faculties the artist must have : The power of idealizing in his own soul his best conceptions of the man, and then such trained skill and deftness of hand that he can realize to
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the eye, to all eyes that have the power to see, that ideal in colors on the canvas before him. Miss Ransom is a poct, as many artists are ; she also has the gift of a poetic utterance, which few possess. There is also a martial tone and touch in her being, something to which the stir and pomp of arms, belted knights, and embattled hosts appeal, and find response. She conceived Thomas standing solitary on kindred rock, facing the near battle, swelling and lifted up with its spirit and inspiration, yet holding himself calm, proud, great, and as if in his single person he was to encounter, resist, and overcome the foe, and he looks not only as if he had made up his mind to the encounter, but would certainly van- quish the assailing host. The likeness is said to be admirable. It is much more than a likeness of the outer man ; soul, intellect, weight, manhood, winning and ready to be crowned with a great victory, are all there. The old comrades of Thomas come into its presence, look and uncover, remain silent, and burst into tears. It has been present at many of the reunions of the armies he commanded, and was the most observed and honored personage present.
It is true, newspaper men, who don't know a palette from a plate, still continue to take their little flings at it. Nothing better marks the position it occupies at the capital. They have never heard of the works of older and better-known artists, but they have heard of this, and cannot rest until they have advertised the fact, and their own ignorance; and it is pitiful to think that the painter of General Thomas can be wounded by these " midgets." I am not to write a history of this work, nor of the sort of criticisms it has received. I must add a word of its creation.
In the autumn of 1871, Miss Ransom produced the first portrait of General Thomas, now owned by Colonel Squire, which was a study and preparation for the full-length. This was commenced in the spring of 1872. She secured a studio in New York, where she spent six months of the autumn and winter upon it. The Army of the Tennessee held its reunion at Toledo, in the fall of 1873, when the work as then completed was exhibited. It was a bold test which the artist challenged. Its reception by his old comrades in arms was most enthusiastic. It received as much attention as the great living commanders of the armies who were present and did it homage. Thus approved, the artist determined to fully execute her original purpose-paint in the battle of Chickamauga as a back-ground. For this purpose she visited the scene of that conflict, which she carefully studied and sketched, completing the work as it now meets the cyc. In the au- tumn of 1874, at the solicitation of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, it was placed in the hall of their reunion at Columbus, Ohio, who marked their appreciation of it by the following resolution :
" Resolved, That the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, at Columbus in session assembled, hereby tender to Miss Ranson their thanks for the presence of her magnificent portrait of our old and much-beloved commander, Major-General George H. Thomas. We hereby iudorse the great excellence of the portrait, and the accuracy of the landscape of the field of Chickamauga, and we respectfully request the congress of the United States to place it permanently in the Capitol at Washington."
Afterwards it was placed on exhibition in the rotunda of the capitol, during the opening weeks of congress, where it daily attracted crowds. It is now the most conspicuous object in the studio of the artist, at Washington, where it is accom- panied by the fine bust portraits of General McPherson and B. F. Wade, and surrounded by many works of her brush, among which are the notable copies made in Italy. The Wade should be purchased and returned to Ohio, where it belongs.
I hardly dare venture a word further upon the qualities of Miss Ransom as an artist. She seems to me to be remarkable for the certainty and firmness with which she grasps her subject, and the strength and fidelity with which she works out her conception of it. She never fails of producing a striking likeness. No one can greatly excel as a painter who is not to some extent a colorist. Miss Ransom has a large gift of that power. Her spirit is steeped in its rich sensuous- ness, which sometimes finds happy expression in poctic forms, some of which have been given to the public. The best remain in MSS. She has admirable judgment of works of art ; is broad, just, and generous in her appreciation of the works of others ; is a kindly, sympathetic, noble, lovable woman. Her studio has been for many years in Cleveland. For three winters past she has occupicd one on Pennsylvania avenue, in Washington, where her Friday afternoons are among the pleasant occasions in the art and literary circles of the capital, into which she was at once received, and where she is justly appreciated. Among the products of these riper years may be mentioned the portraits of Mr. French, sergeant-at-arms of the senate, Mrs. Garfield, and Mrs. Riddle, painted in Washington, all of which, and especially the last, are among the finest specimens of American por- trait-painting. Now quite at maturity, Miss Ransom may look forward to coming years of increasing fame, and a realization of all the hopes which should crown the deservedly successful devotee of widening, growing, American art.
LITTLE
Quintas of Athens.
Quintus Flaminius Atkins, the oldest son of Josiah Atkins, Sr., and Mary Gillett Atkins, was born May 10, 1782, in Woleott, New Haven county, Con- necticut. His father, descended from an English family of good repute, was a man of more than usual bodily vigor and energy.
His mother, Mary Gillett, a daughter of Captain Zaccheus Gillett, and sister of Rev. Alexander Gillett, the first settled minister in Wolcott (theu called Farm- ingbury), was a woman of superior intelligence and many virtues.
Josiah Atkins was the youngest son of Joseph Atkins, one of the early and honored settlers in Wolcott, a man foremost in every good word and work, during a residence of many years.
During the years 1798 and 1799, a war with France seeming probable, an army was raised by the United States government, into which the subject of our sketch, at the age of seventeen years, enlisted. The regiment to which he be- longed was encamped in or near New Haven, Connecticut. The war-cloud having passed away the forces were disbanded, and our young soldier sought employment in the west.
In 1801 and 1802 he worked at road-making on the " Genesee turnpike," in central New York.
In October, 1802, he joined a party of emigrants from Connecticut, bound for the then land of promise, " New Connecticut." They arrived in Morgan, Ash- tabula County, in November, 1802.
Two settlers (with their families) had preceded them by a few months, viz., Timothy R. Hawley, a surveyor, and agent for the proprietors of the town, and Captain John Wright.
Mr. Atkins selected a farm in the east part of the town, but during the first year worked chiefly for others, chopping and clearing lands, making roads, etc.
On the 22d of February, 1804, he was united in marriage to Miss Sarah Wright, the youngest daughter of Captain John Wright, above named.
During a considerable part of the year 1805 he was engaged in carrying the United States mail between Cleveland and Detroit, his usual route being from Cleveland to Sandusky. This difficult and dangerous service was performed on foot through the wilderness, carrying the mail, a gun and axe. It required great courage and untiring energy and perseverance; but he was a man who never objected to any necessary service or duty, no matter what its hardships or privations.
In the spring of 1806, Rev. Joseph Badger, then a missionary to the north- western Indians, engaged Mr. and Mrs. Atkins as assistants at the missionary station at Sandusky.
Having built a boat on Grand river in Austinburg, and loaded it with supplies for the mission, the party, consisting of Rev. Mr. Badger, Mr. and Mrs. Atkins, and their little daughter, Emily (afterwards Mrs. Colonel George Turuer, of Geneva, Ohio), descended the river to its mouth, where they were joined by a party of Indians, who, with their families, in canoes, accompanied the missionary party along the southern shore of Lake Erie to Sandusky. Here they remained about one aud a half years, wheu repeated attacks of ague and fever forced them to abandon the mission and return to Morgan. During 1808 he was again eu-
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gaged in carrying the mails on foot, in a more rapid manner than before, called the " express mail." His route was between Cleveland and Vermilion river.
In June, 1811, the county of Ashtabula was organized, and Mr. Atkins was appointed its sheriff, serving until July, 1813, when he resigned to enter the I'nited States service, as a lieutenant in the northwestern army under General W. H. Harrison.
Previous to this service, however, in the fall of 1812, while sheriff, he, with other prominent citizens exempt from military services by age or official duties, viz., Colonel Eliphalet Austin, Major Levi Gaylord, Captain Roger Nettleton, Matthew Hubbard, Esq., Samuel Hendry, Esq., and many others, spent some time as mounted volunteers in scouting the country about Sandusky bay and Huron river, then threatened with invasion by the British forces and their Indian allies. Their effective service, it was believed, prevented an attack upon Camp Avery, an unfinished and therefore weak stockade upon Huron river.
Upon the reduction of the army to a peace establishment, in 1815, Lieutenant Atkins received an honorable discharge from the service, and returned to his farm in Morgan.
At the first general election after the close of the war (October, 1815), Mr. Atkins was again elected sheriff, and removed his family to Jefferson, where he continued to reside for the ensuing twenty-three years, save a brief sojourn on the lake-shore, in Geneva, about the year 1830.
Having served as sheriff the legal limit of four years, he was appointed, in the winter of 1819-20, to the then new office of county auditor, and served in that capacity until March, 1822.
At the next session of the Ohio legislature (1823-24) he was appointed to superintend the building of a turnpike-road through the " Maumee Swamp," so called. and to survey and sell the lands granted by congress to the State of Ohio, for the purpose of building said road. He was engaged in the duties of that appointment until the road was completed, occupying about three years.
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