History of Greene County, Ohio: its people, industries and institutions, Volume II, Part 106

Author: Broadstone, Michael A., 1852- comp
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Indianapolis, B.F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 1440

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On June 24, 1876, at Wilberforce, Dr. Samuel Thomas Mitchell was united in marriage to Malvina Fairfax, who was born in Fairfax county, Virginia, daughter of Carson and Ellen (Beckley) Fairfax, the former of whom was a slave, but the latter, a free woman, hence Mrs. Mitchell was born free, as was her husband. Carson Fairfax came to Ohio with his family from Virginia in 1859 and located at Waynesville, in the neighboring county of Warren, later moving to Wilberforce, where he and his wife spent their last days. Their daughter Malvina was but six years of age when they came to this state and here she grew to womanhood, completing her schooling at Wilberforce and afterward engaging in teaching school, continuing thus engaged for six years, two years in Kentucky, two years at Wilmington, this state, and two years at Wilberforce, where she was living at the time of her marriage to the young collegian who afterward became president of Wilber- force University. To that union were born six children, namely : Ethel, who married Cantwell Magee and is now teaching in the state school for colored pupils at Nashville, Tennessee : Charles Sumner, who is engaged in the railroad service, making his home at Cleveland, this state; Pearl, who has but recently finished a supervisor's course in music at Oberlin College;

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Bessie, who, following her graduation from Wilberforce University, entered the Indiana State Normal School at Terre Haute, from which she was graduated, later and for six years was engaged in teaching at Indianapolis and is now living at home with her mother; Samuel, who makes his home at Toledo, Ohio; and Dr. O'Neill Mitchell, who studied dentistry at the Michigan State University at Ann Arbor and at Northwestern University at Chicago, and is now engaged in the practice of his profession at Chicago. After her husband's death Mrs. Mitchell became matron of Shorter Hall, the girls' dormitory at Wilberforce, and when Emery Hall was erected became matron of that new dormitory and so continued until S. T. Mitchell Hall was completed, the same being dedicated to the memory of her late husband, when she was matron of that hall and is still thus engaged. Mrs. Mitchell has done much for the institution to whose interests she has been devoted since the days of her girlhood and whose develop- ment she has watched almost from the days of its beginning.

JORDAN ROBB.

Jordan Robb, a retired merchant of Xenia, who is now engaged in truck farming on a tract of land in the corporation limits of that city, is a native of Tennessee, but has been a resident of Xenia since the days of his boyhood. He was born in the hills of eastern Tennessee on March 15, 1855, son of Alfred Robb and his wife Maria, the latter of whom was a light- colored mulatto woman.

Col. Alfred Robb was a native of Tennessee, a typical mountaineer, six feet and four inches in height, who had been admitted to the bar and was just beginning to practice law at Clarksville, Tennessee, when the Civil War broke out. He was commissioned colonel of the Tenth Tennessee Regiment of the Confederate army, known as "the Irish Regiment," and was killed while in command of the same at the battle of Ft. Donnelson in 1862. He was a Catholic and his wife was a Methodist.

Jordan Robb was seven years of age when his father was killed in battle. When his father's estate was adjusted he was sent to Chicago in charge of a freedman named Thornton Johnson, an old servant of the Con- federate General Johnson, who had freed him, the old servant being en- trusted with the boy's share of the estate with instructions to take care of him until he came to a more understanding age, and the lad lived with Thornton Johnson until he was eleven years of age, when he ran away, leaving whatever money eventually might have come to him, and started out to make his own way in the world, presently making his way to Xenia. When sixteen years of age, a red-headed, ragged, unlettered boy, he came to

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the notice of William Reid, uncle of Whitelaw Reid, who was looking for a boy to help about the house and he was taken into the Reid household. This was the turning point in the life of Jordan Robb. The Reids treated him well, gave him right ideas of religion and morality, taught him to read and write and generally put him on the right path, opening the way for a better condition in life than he otherwise might dared to have hoped for. After about three years spent with the Reids he enlisted in the regular army, with a view of becoming a soldier, but six weeks later it was discovered that he was under eighteen years of age when he had enlisted and he was dis- charged. In the meantime he had been developing a natural taste for mechan- ics and when he came home from his little jaunt in the army J. B. Fleming em- ployed him in his tanning shop, starting him at a wage of fifty cents a day, and he remained in that shop for eight years. He then entered the em- ploy of the Shawnee Agricultural Machine Company and was for seven years employed there. He then was made mechanical foreman of the Forsythe saw-mill at Xenia and was thus engaged for a year, at the end of which time he bought from C. E. Hall a grocery store on East Church street and, he having meanwhile married, operated the grocery with the help of his wife until the latter died. Mr. Robb continued in the grocery business for thirty years, or until 1915, in which year he sold his store and bought a tract of ten acres within the corporate limits of Xenia, where he has since been engaged in truck-gardening. In 1898 he built a house at 525 East Market street and still lives there. Mr. Robb is a Republican, has served as a member of the county visiting committee and for the past ten years as a member of the Xenia board of health, and in the spring of 1915 was elected one of the members of the committee of fifteen chosen to draft the new city charter, which later was adopted preparatory to the city enter- ing upon a new administrative era under a commission form of government.

Jordan Robb has been twice married. On October 12, 1878, he was united in marriage to Lizzie Collins, who was born in Cincinnati, daughter of James and Nancy Collins, the former of whom also was born in Cincin- nati and the latter, in Kentucky, and both of whom spent their last days in Xenia. James Collins was a ship carpenter and was for years employed in the United States navy yards. Mrs. Lizzie Robb died on August 5, 1887. she then being twenty-nine years of age, leaving two daughters, Viola and Elizabeth. On June 27, 1906, Mr. Robb married Laura Virginia Phelps, who also was born in Cincinnati, a daughter of Samuel and Anna Phelps, both now deceased, and who died on January 27, 1915, without. issue. Both of Mr. Robb's daughters were graduated from the Xenia high school and the elder, Viola, later was graduated from Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, where she took bookkeeping and millinery. She married Christopher An-

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derson and still lives in Xenia. The younger daughter, Margaret, was grad- uated in dressmaking from the Young Woman's Christian Association School at Cleveland. She married Raymond Borden, who is engaged in the plumbing business in Xenia, and she and her husband make their home with her father on East Market street.

PROF. THOMAS H. JACKSON, D. D.

Prof. Thomas H. Jackson, D. D., chair of introduction and practical theology, Payne Theological Seminary, Wilberforce University, and a col- ored writer of more than local note, was born in the City of Brotherly Love, reared in New Orleans and Louisville, early turned his attention to the acquisition of learning, finished his schooling at Wilberforce University, a member of the first class graduated from that institution, became a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal church, later and for years rendered service in the cause of education as president of Shorter College at Little Rock, Arkansas, and in 1912 returned to Wilberforce and has since then continued connected with his alma mater, with the faculty of which he had first become connected in 1870, being thus regarded as the oldest member of the faculty in point of service.

Doctor Jackson was born in the city of Philadelphia on March 13, 1844, son of George and Elizabeth (Williams) Jackson, the former of whom was born in Maryland, one generation removed from Africa, and the latter of whom was of Pennsylvania-Dutch extraction, who were the parents of two children, the subject of this sketch having had a sister who died in infancy. George Jackson was a sailor and was lost at sea when his son Thomas was but a baby. His widow survived him many years, her death occurring at the home of her son, Doctor Jackson, at Wilberforce, in 1898, she then being sixty-nine years of age. She had moved from Philadelphia to St. Louis in 1851 and in the latter city married Thomas Lucas, a steward in the river- boat trade, for some time thereafter living in New Orleans and then in East St. Louis and in the city of Louisville. During his residence in the latter city Thomas Lucas was engaged in the river trade on a boat plying between Louisville and Henderson, Kentucky, and while this engaged met his death while attempting to escape from a band of the Ku Klux Klan which had attacked the boat on which he was serving as steward. He hid himself in the boat's wheelhouse and was struck by one of the wheel's paddles and car- ried down to his death. It was during the time of the family's residence at New Orleans that young Thomas H. Jackson, then about eight years of age, received his introduction to letters, under the tutorship of a Mr. Lawrence, a kindly white man, who inspired in his breast a desire for further learning.

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He also while in that city received some instruction from the Rev. John N. Brown, pastor of a local African Methodist Episcopal church, who later became bishop of the church. When the family moved to Louisville in 1853 young Thomas Jackson received further instruction from William Gibson, who was connected with the African Methodist Episcopal church, and in 1856, when the (white) Methodist Episcopal church opened the school at Xenia which later developed into Wilberforce University he became one of the first students of that Southern school on Northern soil, his first in- structor there having been Professor Parker, the second principal of the school, and his second, Dr. Richard S. Rust, later president of the school, and for two terms he pursued his studies in the school to which students by the score had been attracted from the South to the free state of Ohio. He then returned to his home in Louisville and became engaged working on the steamboats plying between Louisville and New Orleans, and was thus en- gaged until 1864, when, he then being twenty years of age, he re-entered Wilberforce University, which the year before had passed into the posses- sion of and under the control of colored men, and was thus a student there when a year later, on the very day of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the school building was destroyed by fire. This disaster so seriously inter- rupted the work of the school that it was not until 1870 that the class of which young Jackson was a member, the first class graduated from Wilber- force, was enabled to complete its course. There were but three members in that class, Doctor Jackson, John T. Jenifer and Isaiah Welsh, the latter of whom is now deceased. Upon receiving his diploma Doctor Jackson was ordained a deacon in the African Methodist Episcopal church and a year later was made instructor in Hebrew, theology and homiletics in Wilberforce University, remaining thus connected until 1873, when he accepted a call to the pastorate of a church at Columbia, South Carolina. In 1884 Doctor Jackson returned to Wilberforce and resumed his former position as teacher of Hebrew. theology and homiletics and was thus engaged until 1892, when he became engaged in college work at Little Rock, Arkansas. Two years later he accepted the presidency of Shorter College at Little Rock, Arkansas, which position he occupied from 1895 to 1904, in which latter year he was made dean of the theological department of that college and continued thus engaged until his election in 1912 to the chair of introduction and practical theology in the Payne Theological Seminary of Wilberforce University. The Doctor accepted that call and has since been thus connected with his alma mater. Doctor Jackson has written on a wide variety of subjects, a contributor to theological magazines and church papers, and has published pamphlets, including one on "Will" and one on the "Life and Labors of Bishop Payne." He is the owner of property both at Wilberforce and at

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Little Rock. The Doctor ranks high among colored Masons and Odd Fel- lows and for years was the grand chaplain of the latter order in the state of Ohio, as well as master for the third district, and while living at Little Rock helped materially in the erection of the colored Masonic temple in that city.

Doctor Jackson has been twice married. On the evening of the day of June, 1870, on which he was graduated from Wilberforce University, he was united in marriage to Julia Frances Early, of St. Louis, who had also been attending the university. To that union were born two daughters, the late Elizabeth Louisa Jackson, who was graduated from Wilberforce Uni- versity and was later elected principal of the female department there, and Julia Edna, also now deceased. The mother of these daughters died in 1896 and in December, 1897, Doctor Jackson married Susan Pattillo, wlio

1 was born in Arkansas and who was a member of the first class graduated from the colored high school at Little Rock, later teaching in Shorter College and later attending and graduating from Wilberforce University. To this union two children have been born, Thomas Henry, Jr., born in September, 1901, now (1918) a senior in the academic department of Wilberforce Uni- versity, and Geraldine Edith, who was graduated from the classical depart- ment.of the university in 1918.

PROF. DUDLEY W. WOODARD, Sc. M.

Prof. Dudley W. Woodard, head of the department of mathematics at Wilberforce University and a charter member of the American Mathematical Society, has been engaged in educational work ever since his graduation from Wilberforce in 1903, one of the strong and growing force of Negro educators in this country. He was born in the city of Galveston, Texas, son and only child of Dudley and Geneva (Anderson) Woodard, both of whom were born in that same city, but who are now living at Austin, Texas, where the former is engaged in the undertaking business. They are members of the African Methodist Episcopal church and their son was reared in that faith.

Following his graduation from high school at Galveston in 1899 Dud- ley W. Woodard entered Wilberforce University and was graduated from that institution in 1903 with the degree of Bachelor of Science. He then returned to Galveston and during the two years following. 1903-05, was there engaged in high-school work, a teacher of mathematics. Following this practical experience he entered the University of Chicago and in 1906 was graduated from that institution with the degree of Bachelor of Science, the same university the next year conferring upon him the degree of Master of Science. In 1907 Professor Woodard was called to Tuskegee Institute

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at Tuskegee, Alabama, to take charge of the department of Mathematics of that institution and was thus engaged there for seven years, or until the spring of 1914, when he accepted the call to enter upon a similar service in behalf of Wilberforce University, where he ever since has been thus engaged. Professor Woodard is a charter member of the American Mathematical Society, a learned association whose object is to encourage and maintain an active interest in and to promote the advancement of mathematical science. In 1911 he published a text-book, "Practical Arithmetic," and he also is a frequent contributor to educational journals.

On August 4, 1908, at Tuskegee, Prof. Dudley W. Woodard was united in marriage to Gertrude Hadnott, who was born in Alabama, was graduated from Fiske University at Nashville, Tennessee, and was teaching at Tuskegee Institute when Professor Woodard met her, and to this union one child has been born, a son, Dudley H., born on June 29, 1909. Professor Woodard and his wife are members of the African Methodist Episcopal church at Wilberforce.

REV. THEOPHILUS GOULD STEWARD AND S. MARIA . STEWARD, M. D.

In the varied activities of Wilberforce University there are few more prominent factors or more popular individuals than the Rev. Theophilus Gould Steward, chaplain and vice-president of the university and pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal church at Wilberforce, or than was his late wife, Dr. S. Maria Steward, formerly and for years resident physician and member of the faculty of the university, lecturer on hygiene and physi- ology before the girls' classes, and who also was engaged in general practice in and about Wilberforce. Doctor Steward, who died on March 7, 1918, had been a resident of Wilberforce ever since 1898, having located there when her husband went to the Philippines as chaplain of the regiment which he had served in that capacity since the days of President Harrison's admin- istration, and Chaplain Steward has been stationed at Wilberforce since 1907, when he was made a member of the faculty, professor of history and languages, later being elected vice-president of the institution. Chaplain Steward has a pleasant home, "Oakview," on the Columbus pike, in the immediate vicinity of the university.

The Rev. Theophilus Gould Steward, more familiarly known locally as Chaplain Steward, is a native of New Jersey, born at Gouldtown, in Cum- berland county, that state, April 17. 1843, son of James and Rebecca (Gould) Steward, both of whom were born in that same vicinity and the latter of whom died in 1877 at the age of fifty-seven years, the former surviving

ward

Dr S. Maria Sterand

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until 1892, he being past seventy-seven years of age at the time of his death. . James Steward for thirty years was foreman of the finishing department of the Cumberland Nail and Iron Works at Bridgeton, New Jersey. Though a man of small education he recognized the advantages of schooling and he and his wife, the latter of whom had been a teacher in the days of her young womanhood, instilled into the breasts of their children a desire for learning that inspired all their after lives. The parents were members of the African Methodist Episcopal church and their children were reared in that faith. There are six of these children, all of whom are still living, the youngest being now sixty-nine years of age, and of whom Chaplain Steward was the fourth in order of birth, the others being the following: Margaret, who married Lorenzo F. Gould, farmer, justice of the peace and veteran of the Civil War, and lives at Gouldtown, New Jersey ; William, who for years has been engaged in newspaper work at Bridgeton, New Jersey, a writer of stories and a corre- spondent for metropolitan newspapers: Mary, wife of the Rev. Theodore whose service she draws a pension from the government, and Stephen S., a carpenter, also residing at Gouldtown. Chaplain Steward knows little about his paternal grandparents, his grandmother, Margaret Steward, having gone to Santo Domingo and with her what records the family had, but regard- ing the Goulds, his mother's family, he has a long and interesting history, the Goulds having been represented at Gouldtown, New Jersey, ever since the founding of the colony.

When the English came into possession of New Amsterdam in 1664 the colony which the Dutch had settled at Bergen before 1620 came under the control of the Duke of York, who finally made over the whole to Sir George Carteret, from whose native island of Jersey the provinces were named. Later, John Fenwick, styled knight and baronet, second son of Sir William Fenwick, baronet, representative from the county of North- umberland in the last parliament under the Commonwealth, came into pos- session of a considerable tract of this land in the south part of New Jersey. chartered a ship and with his children and their families and effects sailed for the colonies. Fenwick's wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Walter Covert, of Sussex, and among their children was a daughter, Elizabeth, who had married John Adams, a weaver, who with his wife and three children (one, a daughter Elizabeth) formed a part of the new colony, which in 1675 settled on the eastern shore of the Delaware river. Johnson's "History of Fenwick's Colony," written in 1835, says: "Among the numerous troubles and vexations which assailed Fenwick, none appears to have distressed him more than the conduct of his granddaughter, Elizabeth Adams, who had attached herself to a citizen of color. By his will he deprived her of any share in his estate 'unless the Lord open her eyes to see her abominable trans-

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gression against him, me and her good father, by giving her true repentence and forsaking that Black which hath been the ruin of her and become peni- tent for her sins.' From this connection has sprung the families of the Goulds, at a settlement called Gouldtown, in Cumberland county." Further on the same historian says: "Elizabeth Adams had formed a connection with a Negro man whose name was Gould." Elizabeth Adams, grand- daughter of Fenwick, had five children by Gould, one of whom was a son named Levi. Three died young. All trace of Levi has been lost. The other son, Benjamin Gould, was the founder of Gouldtown and the founder of the family with which Chaplain Steward is connected through the maternal line. It is quite probable that when Benjamin Gould grew up there were no women of his own color in the settlement with whom he could have associated had he desired to do so. In 1627 Swedes and Finns had settled on the Delaware, regarding that country as part of the province of New Sweden, and upon Fenwick's arrival there were numerously represented in what are now the counties of Salem and Gloucester, and it is recorded that Benjamin Gould married a Finn by the name of Ann. Benjamin and Ann Gould had five children, Sarah, Anthony, Samuel, Abijah and Elisha, who, it is recorded, were fair skinned, with blue eyes and light hair, the force of the mother's Ugrian blood evidently having been dominant in this progeny. Abijah Gould, born about 1735, married Hannah Pierce, who was born in 1756, third daughter of Richard and Mary Pierce, and the first-born son of this union, Benjamin Gould, born in 1779, married Phoebe Bowen, who was born in 1788, in Salem county, New Jersey. Benjamin Gould (second) died in 1851, at the age of seventy-two years. His widow survived him until 1877, she being eighty-nine years of age at the time of her death. They were the parents of nine children, Oliver, Tamson. Lydia (who lived to the great age of one hundred and two years), Jane, Abijah, Sarah, Rebecca, Phoebe and Prudence. Of these children, Rebecca Gould, mother of Chap- lain Steward, was born on May 2, 1820. In 1838 she married James Steward and was the mother of the children noted in the preceding paragraph, includ- ing Chaplain Steward. James Steward's parents had gone to Santo Domingo with the Bowyer expedition in 1824 and it was known that they there became engaged in coffee growing, but after a few years nothing more was heard of them in this country. James Steward had been indentured to a man who ill-treated him so shamefully that before he was nine years of age he ran away and found shelter in the household of Elijah Gould at Gouldtown, where he was reared, later marrying Rebecca Gould, as set out above.

Chaplain Steward received excellent scholastic training for the minis- terial duties he has so long and so faithfully performed. Upon complet- ing the course in the local schools at .Bridgeton he for two terms taught

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school. He early had turned his attention to the ministry and in due time was ordained as a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal church and held local charges. During the reconstruction period following the Civil War, 1865-71, he labored in Georgia and South Carolina, and after some further service entered the West Philadelphia Divinity School, associated with the Protestant Episcopal church, and was graduated from that insti- tution at the head of his class in 1880, afterward being given charges in Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware, and had charge of a church in Baltimore when, in 1891, he was appointed by President Harrison chaplain of the Twenty-fifth Regiment, United States Infantry. For seven years thereafter Chaplain Steward was stationed with his regiment in Mon- tana and then, in 1899, went with that regiment to the Philippines, where he remained for three years, at the end of which time he returned with the regiment and for some time thereafter was stationed at Niobrara, in Nebraska, later being stationed at Laredo, Texas, in which latter post he was serving when retired in 1907. After a trip to the City of Mexico he returned to Wilberforce, where his wife had installed her home upon his departure for the Philippines, and at once was made instructor in history and languages in the university, two years later being made vice-president of the university, which latter position he still occupies, as well as serving as pastor of the local African Methodist Episcopal church. Chaplain Steward has published sev- eral books, including "The Haitian Revolution, 1791 to 1804," "Genesis Re-read" and "Death, Hades and the Resurrection." In 1909 and again in , IQI I he and his wife made trips to Europe, in the latter year both the Chaplain ·

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History of Greene County, Ohio: its people, industries and institutions, Volume II, Part 106

Author: Broadstone, Michael A., 1852- comp Publication date: 1918 Publisher: Indianapolis, B.F. Bowen Number of Pages: 1440

Author: Broadstone, Michael A., 1852- comp
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Indianapolis, B.F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 1440