USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > History of the city of Columbus, Ohio, from the founding of Franklinton in 1797, through the World War period to the year 1920 > Part 53
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Dr. Thompson has been a member of the Ohio Teachers' Association since 1891, and a member of the National Education Association since 1894. He has served as president of the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, and for a number of years was chairman of the executive committee. He has also served as president and member of the executive committee of the National Association of State Universities. He is a member of the Ohio Society of New York, of the Cosmos Club of Washington, D. C., and an honorary or non-resident member of various clubs here and elsewhere. He has been four times a commissioner to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, has served as delegate to the Assembly and also as delegate to represent the church in the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. He is now a member of the Executive Com- mission of the General Assembly and is president of the International Sunday School Asso- ciation, having been elected at the convention in Buffalo, June, 1918, for a term of four years.
In local business affairs, Dr. Thompson has been active and successful. For many years he has been a director of the City National Bank. He was one of the organizers and incor- porators of the Midland Mutual Life Insurance Company, and has been its president ever since its incorporation.
On September 21, 1882, Dr. Thompson married Rebecca J. Allison, of Indiana, Pa., who died at Longmont, Colo., August 15, 1886, leaving one daughter, Bessie. In October, 1887, he married Helen Starr Brown, of Longmont, who bore him two sons, Lorin and Roger, and died December 27, 1890. On June 28, 1894, he was united in marriage with Estelle Godfrey Clark, of Cleveland, who graciously presides over his home on the campus and whose qualities have won her an esteem which parallels well that of her distinguished husband.
Dr. Thompson, during his incumbency as University president in Ohio, has had num- erous offers to take up other work. Twice he was invited to a pastorate in Kansas City, and he has been asked to consider the presidency of several other universities. But all these and others offering opportunity of high service, he has declined, holding that there is no more necessary work than that which he is doing.
THEODORE W. RANKIN, M. D. T. W. Rankin, M. D., one of the prominent phy- sicians and surgeons of this section, has been closely identified with the medical profession of Columbus for over a quarter of a century. He is descended from two pioncer Buckeye families-the Rankins and Watkins, and his father and maternal grandfather were physicians before him. The Ohio settler was Dennis Rankin, who was of Scotch-Irish stock, and who settled at Brownsville, Licking county, in pioncer days, where he owned a mill, general store 'and hotel and also a large farm. The founder of the Watkins family in Ohio was Dr. John Watkins, a Virginian, who was graduated from a Virginia college, read medicine and acted as intern in a Philadelphia hospital before he settled in Zanesville, Ohio, where he was one of the carliest practitioners of medicine. He also took an active interest in public affairs and served one term in the Legislature. .
The father of the subject of this sketch was Dr. Dennis M. Rankin, who was born in Mus- kingum county, Ohio. He was a graduate of Denison College, and a Philadelphia medical col- lege. He practiced his profession in Muskingum county, this State, building up a large patronage for such a young man, his career being eut short by death at the early age of thirty years. His wife, Amanda E. Watkins, was born in Virginia. She survived to a ripe old age, dying in 1911, after passing her eighty-fifth birthday.
Dr. T. W. Rankin was born at Fultonham, Muskingum county, Ohio, April 20, 1856. After attending the public schools he was a student at the Fultonham Academy and the Zanes- ville High school, later entering Washington University at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Hc was a medical student in the office of Dr. D. N. Kinsman, in Columbus, and was graduated from Columbus Medical College with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. After graduation he prac- ticed medicine for a few months at Zanesville, later going to Kirksville, Licking county, Ohio, where he soon built up a large general practice. His skill as a surgeon was recognized in that locality where he performed many major operations in the homes of the people under ad- verse circumstanecs, with inadequate assistance or nonc. Later he took post-graduate work in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1889 and 1890 studied at the
0. 10. Rankin, MR. D.
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New York Post-Graduate Medical School, also took instructions at Bellevue Hospital under Dr. Joseph O'Dwyer, and, thus exeeptionally well equipped for his ehosen eareer, he entered the praetiee of his profession in Columbus in 1890. He was assistant to Dr. Kinsman, at the Columbus Medieal College, professor of physical diagnosis at Starling Medical College, and in this institution beeame professor of children's diseases, when the two old sehools were merged, after which Dr. Rankin served on the staff of Ohio Starling Medieal College as professor of materia medieine and therapeuties, and later sueeeeded Dr. Kinsman as professor of praetiee ' and elinieal medieine and when that institution became the medieal department of the Ohio State University he continued on the staff until 1914, when he resigned and was made emeritus professor of practice and medicine. He helped organize and was one of the staff of the P'rot- estant Hospital and taught the first elass of graduated nurses ever taught in Columbus, resign- ing from that staff in 1913. Dr. Rankin was the first in his county to perform intubation for the relief of membraneous eroup or laryngeal diphtheria.
During the first seven years after the organization of the Children's Hospital, Dr. Rankin was visiting physician to that institution and he has been a consulting physician to it ever sinee.
He and Dr. E. J. Wilson organized a small private hospital on Broad and Third streets, which, for larger aeeommodations, was removed to Washington avenue. Dr. Baldwin later beeame identified with that hospital and continued so until he built the first Grant street hospital, at which time the Washington avenue hospital was merged into the Grant street hos- pital, Dr. Rankin becoming president of the latter. He held this position until its reorganiza- tion, and is still identified with it professionally. He has long been influential in seeuring for Columbus modern hospital serviee.
Dr. Rankin was one of the promoters and organizers of the Columbus Academy of Medicine. He helped write its first constitution and issued the first eall for membership. Dr. Kinsman was the first president of this institution. He was sueeeeded by Dr. Rankin, who is still a member of its board of trustees. Dr. Rankin helped organize the Ohio State Medieal Society under its present regime and was the first counsellor of this district, which embraces ten counties. He also organized the different societies of this distriet. He is a member of the American Medical Association, is medieal director of the Ohio State Life Insurance Company, of Columbus, belongs to the Columbus Club, the Wyandotte Club and the East Side Country Club.
Dr. Rankin married Lillia A. Blaek, daughter of Dr. J. R. Black, of Newark, Ohio, and to their union four children have been born, namely: Vera, who married Emerson Powell, of Columbus : Eva, who married Stanley Brooks, of Columbus; Helen is the wife of Douglas Brown, and they reside in New York City; Doris is the wife of West W. Jordan, and they make their home in Philadelphia, Pa.
Dr. Rankin is widely known in medieal eireles in eentral Ohio, in which he has been regarded as a leader for many years. In all the positions of responsibility mentioned in the preceding paragraphs he discharged his duties in an able, faithful, eonseientious and satis- factory manner. Being a profound student, persevering and of an inquisitive turn of mind, he has kept fully abreast of the times in all that pertains to medicine and surgery. He is frequently ealled in consultation on baffling eases and his advice is often followed with gratifying results. Moreover, he is held in highest esteem by all who know him for his many commendable personal qualities.
GEORGE W. BRIGHT, banker and man of affairs, has been a part of the business history of Columbus for over forty-five years and has won a place among our notable men and patriotic citizens. He is a native of Ohio and is deseended from two pioneer families of the State. His paternal grandfather, Major Bright, a native of Maryland, was a pioneer of both Fairfield and Haneoek counties, and was the owner, by entry and purchase, of upwards of two thousand aeres of land in Haneoek county. His maternal grandfather, George Stoner, also a native of Maryland, settled in Seneca eounty in about 1825, from where he removed to Westerville, Franklin county in 1852.
His father, the Rev. John C. Bright, was born in Fairfield county, Ohio, October 13, 1818. He entered the ministry of the United Brethren Church when nineteen years of age and was very active and prominent in the work of that church for over a quarter of a eenturv. holding charges at different points in the State. He was the first secretary of the Ohio United Brethren Church Missionary Society, a position he held for several years, retiring
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from it only a short time prior to his death, which occurred at his home in Galion, Ohio, August 6, 1866. On July 15th, 1844, he was united in marriage with Sophia Ann, and following her death, he on July 1, 1851, married her sister, An M. Stoner.
George W. Bright was born near Tiffin, Ohio, April 25, 1846. Ile was educated in the publie schools and Otterbein University and at Columbus High school. He left Otterbein when fourteen years of age, and worked on neighboring farms until September, 1863, when he came to Columbus and attended high school until the spring of 1864, when he entered
the army. He attempted to enlist in 1863, but was refused on account of his age and physical condition, but on May 2nd, 1861, he passed the examination and was mnstered into Company H, 133rd Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Three and one-half months later he was invalided home with typhoid malaria and was discharged from the service. In Feb- ruary, 1865, having recovered from his illness, he enlisted in Company A, 187th Regiment, O. V. 1., and served until he was mustered out and honorably discharged January 20, 1866.
After leaving the army Mr. Bright became a student at Oberlin College, but his col- lege days were ended after two months time by the death of his father. He then came to Columbus and secured a position with his aunt, Mrs. A. E. Souder, who was engaged in business on south High street, in the jobbing millinery line. In 1872 he and his cousin, J. W. Souder, (son of Mrs. A. E.) purchased that business and conducted it under the firm name of Souder & Bright. Later John L. Bright, brother of George W., was admitted as a member of the firm, which was changed to Souder, Bright & Brother. Mr. George W. retired from the firm in 1891. In the meantime, however, he had become, in 1881, interested in the Sunday Creek Coal Co., of which he was vice president in 1894. He was also presi- dent of the St. Paul Coal Company, of St. Paul, Minn., a subsidiary of the Sunday Creek Coal Co. He continued as an official of these corporations until the Sunday Creek Coal Co. was sold to the J. P. Morgan interests. He was one of the organizers of the Boomer Coal and Coke Co., of West Virginia, of which he was vice president and president until 1904.
Mr. Bright entered the banking business in 1876 as vice president of the Capital City Bank, which position he has since held. He was one of the organizers of the Ohio Trust Company in 1900, of which he was president until 1908. In July, 1909, the capital stock of the Ohio Trust Company was increased from $500,000 to $700,000. Soon after this time $200,000 of the stoek was sold and the Ohio Trust Company and Citizens Savings Bank Company consolidated and formed what is now known as the Citizens Trust & Savings Bank. Mr. Bright was made chairman of the board of directors August 11. 1909, which office he is holding at the present time.
He was one of the oragnizers of the Lincoln Savings Bank, and is president of the same. He is vice president of the Bank of Basil at Basil, Ohio; vice president of the Bank of Corn- ing at Corning, Ohio, and president of the Bank of Westerville at Westerville, O., all of which he was one of the organizers.
Ile was one of the organizers of the Columbus Transfer Company in 1884 and is Treasurer of that Company at present. He was President of the Columbus Board of Trade in 1896, and has been identified with, (and Prresident at one time) the Y. M. C. A since its organization in Columbus. He has been a member of the First Congregational Church sinec 1871 and previous to 1917 he had served in one or another official capacity of that church for over twenty years. He is a member of the G. A. R., the Chamber of Commerec and of the Columbus and the Columbus Country Clubs.
Mr. Bright married Martha Worrel, the daughter of Samuel Worrel, of Pickering, Ohio, and they have one daughter, Mary Louise, who married Sinclair B. Nace, President of the Columbus Bank Note Company.
SAMUEL STRASSER RICKLY. It is the dictate of our nature no less than of en- lightened social policy to honor the illustrious dead; to bedew with affectionate tears the silent urn of departed genius and virtue; to unburden the fullness of the surcharged heart in culogium upon deceased benefactors, and to rehearse their noble deeds for the benefit of those who may come after us. It has been the commendable custom of all the ages and all nations. Hence the following feeble tribute to one of nature's noblemen. The biographers of some great men say that they grew ahamel of their lowly origin and wished never to be reminded of their early years; but the late Samuel Strasser Rickly, pioncer educator and banker of Columbus, was of too simple and sincere a mould to affeet any such weakness.
Samurl S. Rirkly
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On the contrary, he was proud of his humble beginnings, because they showed how high he had climbed, and more than that, they fitted in with his hopeful, helpful philosophy of human life that merit will have its reward and that in this free country, which he loved, although born under a foreign flag, and early taught other customs and manners, young men may still look forward to success and honor as confidently as at any time in its history as the prizes of fidelity, couarge and indomitable energy, which were among his attributes.
Mr. Rickly, who was for a long lapse of years a vital force in the business interests of Columbus, was born in Butzberg, Canton of Bern, Switzerland, on January 2, 1819. He was a son of Jolin and Anna (Strasser ) Rickly (spelled originally Rikli). Both his paternal and maternal grandfathers were extensive grain dealers in Switzerland and were in that business at the time of the French Revolution. John Rickly, father of our subjeet, was a saddler by trade, and also bought and sold grain. He served as postmaster of his parish at one time.
Samuel S. Rickly carried the mail under his father when he was but a boy, and also learned the saddler's trade and worked at it with his father. The family immigrated to America in 1834, loeating at Baltimore, Fairfield county, Ohio. But a short time had passed in the new home, when the entire family, consisting of the mother and sister of the father of our subject and twelve children were taken sick, and within a few weeks time the parents and five of the younger children andthe grandmother and aunt died. The family was then broken up, and Samuel S. Rickly was apprentieed to a carpenter for whom he worked, do- ing the hardest and most menial labor, for three years. Finally, rebelling against the tyrannical treatment and hardships which he had been forced to endure so long, he left his employer, going to Lancaster, Ohio, where two of his brothers were living. In 1836 he came to Columbus, making the trip on a canal boat, but soon afterwards returned to Fairfield county, and at Laneaster found work at the carpenter's trade, also did cabinet making. In 1838 he was employed as clerk in a dry goods store, which store was closed out in 1839, and in that year he entered Marshall College at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, defraying his ex- penses with the money he had earned by carpentering. He was ambitious to obtain a higher education and, applying himself assiduously to his text books, was graduated from that institution with the elass of 1843, and at the graduating exercises he delivered the first oration ever heard in that college up to that time, in the German language. Later he studied theology, being ordained in the ministry in the Reformed Church in 1844, near Somerset, Ohio, then engaged in teaching in private families in Maryland and Virginia in the environs of Washington, D. C.
Returning to Columbus in 1847, Mr. Rickly established the German-English sehool at the corner of Mound and Third streets, which school became a popular suceess. In 1818 he was elosen principal of the Columbus High School. In the spring of 1849 he established an academy at Tarlton, Pickaway county, which in the year following was adopted by the Reformed Church as a nucleus of a church institution and named it Heidelberg College, which in the succeeding antumn was removed to Tiffin. Mr. Riekly continued the head of the college until he was elected superintendent of the Tiffin Union Schools, and even after that he held for a number of years the chair of professor of "Theory and Practice of Teach- ing" at Heidelberg College. "Rickly Chapel" at Heidelberg was named in his honor.
In 1853 Mr. Rickly returned to Columbus and opened a select school in the basement of the Reformed Church, but in the following winter he was, unsolicited, elected journal clerk in the Ohio House of Representatives, and he then gave up teaching. At about this time he became secretary of the Ohio Manufacturing Company of Columbus, which was a growing eoneern, and in the management of which Mr. Riekly became an important factor and eventually beeame one of the strong men financially of Columbus. In 1857 he and his brother, John J. Rickly, organized the banking house of Riekly & Brother, which in time became one of the strongest banking concerns in Columbus. In 1870 Mr. Rickly bought the interests of his brother and eondueted the business until becoming involved in the failure of Jay Cook & Company during the financial panie of 1873, at which time he made an assignment for the benefit of his ereditors, knowing that he had abundant resources to meet all liabilities if a reasonable time was given him to convert his assets into cash. However, he was soon released from his assignment and his assets returned to him. He resumed business and in due course of time he paid all his creditors in full, and in 1875 he organized the Capital City Bank, one of the most substantial banking houses of Columbus. This bank was robbed in broad daylight during the State Fair in 1879 of twenty thousand
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dollars, of which amount only one thousand dollars was recovered. One year later, on July 13, a man entered the bank and sought to negotiate a loan with Mr. Rickly, who perecived from the man's actions, that he was insane. After listening to the stranger in all kindness, he declined to make the loan, and turned his attention to other matters, when without any warning, the intruder drew a pistol and fired at the banker. The aim was at the temple, but the ball was deflected and destroyed the sight of both eyes, and he was totally blind there- after. But this misfortune did not prevent him from carrying on his usual business activities.
Mr. Rickly was one of the stockholders of the first street railway built in Columbus, and assisted in the organization of the East Park Place Street Railway, of which company he was chosen treasurer; was a stockholder in the Greenlawn Street Railway Company; a director in three of the turnpike companies of Franklin county. In 1870, in partnership with others, he purchased the grounds for the old asylum for the insane, which land they sub-divided and sold, and thus was established the East Park Place district; was one of the syndicate who sold the lots of what is now West Park Place; was a prominent member of the Board of Trade, of which he was president for one year, and on January 6, 1885, he introduced a resolution before the board for the holding of a world's exposition, commemorating the fourth centennial of the discovery of America, in Columbus. This idea was to take prac- tical form later in the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He also introduced a reso- lution which resulted in the ercetion of the Board of Trade building in Columbus.
Mr. Rickly continued to take an abiding interest in educational affairs and served as a member of the school board; was a member of the Board of Equalization and a trustee of the Public Library, and by appointment from the governor and mayor was a delegate to six different important national commercial conventions.
The domestic life of Mr. Rickly began on September 16, 1815, when he was united in marriage with Maria M. Reamer, near Chambersburg, Penn. To Mr. and Mrs. Riekly the following children were born: Signora Elizabeth, S. Andelusia, Ralph R. and Alva Eugene, all deceased.
The death of Samuel S. Rickly occurred November 22, 1905.
DR. WASHINGTON GLADDEN. Dr. Washington Gladden was born at Pottsgrove, Pa., the son of Solomon Gladden and Amanda Daniels, who were married in 1833, and went to Pottsgrove to live, the two teaching in adjoining districts. His great grandfather was Azariah Gladden, a soldier in the Revolution, who presumably traced his ancestry back to John Gladden, who came to Plymouth, Mass., in 1640, and later settled in Bristol, R. I. His grandfather was Thomas Gladden, a shoemaker and farm worker. His father was born at Southampton, Mass., attended the academy there and was a teacher before he was of age. Ile taught at Owego, N. Y., one winter and then moved into Pennsylvania, be- coming master of the school in Pottsgrove. It was while he was at Owego, that Solomon Gladden met and loved Amanda Daniels, the daughter of a shoemaker who had a little farm of his own, and invited her to share his lot in Pennsylvania. She accepted, and the two, after their marriage, taught in adjoining school districts for a time. This arrange- ment ended with the birth of Washington Gladden, February 11, 1836. His education naturally began at a very early age. In his "Recollections," Dr. Gladden says he can faintly recall when he was four years old committing certain spelling lessons to memory before his father's return home in the evening. In 1810 the family removed across the Susquehanna to Lewisburg, where the father became head master of the village schools. There the following year, Solomon Gladden died and his wife for a few months took up the work he had laid down, but in 1812, she, with her two boys, returned to Owego. Washing- ton lived for a few months at the farm house of his uncle and then went to Southampton for a year with his grandfather and grandmother, returning to the farm of his uncle, Ebenezer Daniels, where he spent the next eight years. There, as he had in Southampton, he attended the district school, working on the farm under the terms of an ordinary appren- tieeship. Farmer Daniels was a great reader, and there are pleasant recollections of the evenings of reading from the books of travel and history in the district library. He read aloud for the family group, and taught his nephew to read aloud, insisting that the words be spoken distinctly and that the meaning of the author be understood. "In that practice," says Dr. Gladden, "I learned most of what I have known of the art of oral expression."
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It was an industrious family; every member worked hard. It was a religious family with its morning and evening devotions and regular church attendance, regardless of the weather. It is significant that it was a Presbyterian Church with which the family was connceted and that the doctrines then taught were most carefully studied in the family eirele, in con- neetion with the reading of the Bible and in the atmosphere of fierce antagonism to all other creeds.
When he was sixteen, the farm boy had shown such aptitude for something different that his uncle advised him to seek a wider education and succeeded in getting for him the place of printer's apprentice in the office of the Owego Gazette. From apprentice, he soon passed to writer of local news, which he also put into type, and to looker-on and in a small way, participant in politics. An evangelist rekindled his interest in religion, and the young man joined the Congregational Church and entered actively into its work. In 1855, after teaching a term in a country school, he entered Owego Academy with his face set toward the work of the Christian ministry. Thenee in September of 1856, he went to Williams College, matriculating as a sophomore, under the presidency of Mark Hopkins. He gradu- ated in 1859 and in the same year was licensed to preach by the Susquehanna Association of Congregational Ministers at Owego. There at Owego he preached his first sermon. In the few months immediately following he helped in revival services and preached in several vacant pulpits and in 1860 went to Brooklyn to be the pastor of what was called the First Congregational Methodist Church. There he was formally ordained and in his own church was married to Miss Jennie O. Cohoon, who had been a schoolmate in Owego Academy.
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