USA > Ohio > Auglaize County > Portrait and biographical record of Auglaize, Logan and Shelby Counties, Ohio : containing biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens, together with biographies and portraits of all the Presidents of the United States > Part 9
USA > Ohio > Logan County > Portrait and biographical record of Auglaize, Logan and Shelby Counties, Ohio : containing biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens, together with biographies and portraits of all the Presidents of the United States > Part 9
USA > Ohio > Shelby County > Portrait and biographical record of Auglaize, Logan and Shelby Counties, Ohio : containing biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens, together with biographies and portraits of all the Presidents of the United States > Part 9
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Auglaize, Logan and
Shelby Counties, OHIO.
10
6
INTRODUCTORY.
HE time has arrived when it becomes the duty of the people of this county to per- petuate the names of their pioneers, to furnish a record of their early settlement, and relate the story of their progress. The civilization of our day, the enlightenment of the age and the duty that men of the pres- ent time owe to their ancestors, to themselves and to their posterity, demand that a record of their lives and deeds should be made. In bio- graphical history is found a power to instruct man by precedent, to enliven the mental faculties, and to waft down the river of time a safe vessel in which the names and actions of the people who contributed to raise this country from its primitive state may be preserved. Surely and rapidly the great and aged men, who in their prime entered the wilderness and claimed the virgin soil as their heritage, are passing to their graves. The number re- maining who can relate the incidents of the first days of settlement is becoming small indeed, so that an actual necessity exists for the collection and preser- vation of events without delay, before all the early settlers are cut down by the scythe of Time.
To be forgotten has been the great dread of mankind from remotest ages. All will be forgotten soon enough, in spite of their best works and the most earnest efforts of their friends to perserve the memory of their lives. The means employed to prevent oblivion and to perpetuate their memory has been in propor- tion to the amount of intelligence they possessed. The pyramids of Egypt were built to perpetuate the names and deeds of their great rulers. The exhu- mations made by the archeologists of Egypt from buried Memphis indicate a desire of those people
to perpetuate the memory of their achievements The erection of the great obelisks were for the same purpose. Coming down to a later period, we find the Greeks and Romans erecting mausoleums and monu- ments, and carving out statues to chronicle their great achievements and carry them down the ages. It is also evident that the Mound-builders, in piling up their great mounds of earth, had but this idea- to leave something to show that they had lived. All these works, though many of them costly in the ex- treme, give but a faint idea of the lives and charac- ters of those whose memory they were intended to perpetuate, and scarcely anything of the masses of the people that then lived. The great pyramids and some of the obelisks remain objects only of curiosity ; the mausoleums, monuments and statues are crum- bling into dust.
It was left to modern ages to establish an intelli- gent, undecaying, immutable method of perpetuating a full history-immutable in that it is almost un. limited in extent and perpetual in its action ; and this is through the art of printing.
To the present generation, however, we are in- debted for the introduction of the admirable system of local biography. By this system every man, though- he has not achieved what the world calls greatness, has the means to perpetuate his life, his history, through the coming ages.
The scythe of Time cuts down all ; nothing of the physical man is left. The monument which his chil- dren or friends may erect to his memory in the ceme- tery will crumble into dust and pass away; but his life, his achievements, the work he has accomplished. which otherwise would be forgotten, is perpetuated by a record of this kind.
To preserve the lineaments of our companions we engrave their portraits, for the same reason we col- lect the attainable facts of their history. Nor do we think it necessary, as we speak only truth of them, to wait until they are dead, or until those who know them are gone: to do this we are ashamed only to publish to the world the history of those whose lives are unworthy of public record.
.
Very Respectfully 8, William Saurince 4
BIOGRAPHICAL.
..
h ON. WILLIAM LAWRENCE, A. M., LL. D., lawyer, jurist, statesman and author. The Lawrences of the United States are descend- ants of Sir Robert Lawrence, of Ashton Hall, in Lancashire, England. His grandson. James Lawrence, in the reign of llenry III. mar- ried Matilda Washington, who belonged to the family from which George Washington was de- scended. The Lawrences in England were distin- guished in polities and otherwise. One of them was a second cousin to Oliver Cromwell, and was Lord President of the Protector's Council and a member of the House of Lords.
Joseph Lawrence was born in what is now Phila- delphia, near Byberry Friends Meeting House, De- cember 2. 1793. He was a soldier in Capt. Ben- ezet's company of Philadelphia Guards. in the War of 1812. About 1816, he removed to Ohio, settling near St. Clairsville. but soon afterward went to Mt. Pleasant. Jefferson County. where he was married, October 30. 1817, to Temperance Gil- erist, a native of Berkeley County. Va .. born Au- gust 6. 1792.
William Lawrence, whose portrait and biography we here present, was born of these parents at Mt. Pleasant. . Ine 26, 1819. March 1, 1830, the par. ents, with their son and a daughter. Sarah, removed to a farm then recently purchased by the father near Richmond, Jefferson County. where they re- sided until the spring of 1836. For the first three years. the son William worked on the farm in the
summer, and attended a common school during the winter, where he perfected a knowledge of the common branches of education, surveying and spherical trigonometry, and before he was thir- teen. wrote out in book form a solution of Gum- mer's Surveying.
November 1, 1833, our subject became a student in Rev. John C. Tidball's academy near Knox- ville, which was afterward removed to Richmond. Ilere he continued (except that he worked a por- tion of each summer on his father's farm) until the spring of 1836. lle then entered the store of James Updegraff, at Mt. Pleasant, and remained there as clerk until the fall of the same year. when he became a student at Franklin College, New Athens, Ohio. He was graduated from that insti- tution with the degree of A. B .. and with the hon- ors of his class, and so delivered the valedictory address in the fall of 1838.
Ilis parents having in the spring of 1836 re- moved to Pennsville. Morgan County, our subject in November. 1838. commenced the study of law with James L. Gage. of MeConnellsville. and was graduated with the degree of L. B., at the Cinem- nati Law School in March, 1810; was admitted to practice law by the Supreme Court of Ohio. at Zanesville, in November. 1810; and was reporter for the Ohio State Journal in the Ohio House of Rep- resentatives at the session of 1840-41. and a cor- respondent for the Zanesville Republican and Me- Connellsville Whig Standard. While a law student.
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PORTRAIT AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
he taught a common school three months at Penns- ville, and a like period at MeConnellsville, and had a somewhat extensive law practice before Justices of the Peace, by which means he more than defrayed his expenses. He practiced law in the court at MeConnellsville, in the early part of 1×41, but in July of that year commenced his practice in Bellefontaine, and has ever since eon- tinued vigorously and successfully engaged in his profession. now more than fifty years, except when his time was devoted to the duties of the offices he has filled.
A. a lawyer, the name of William Lawrence ap- pears in many volumes of the Ohio and Ohio State Reports. in important land and other cases, in the reports of the Supreme Court of Kansas, and of the I'nited States. By authority of Atty .- Gen. Williams, he was leading counsel in the great case of the L. L. & G. Railroad Company vs. the United States. in which nine hundred and sixty thousand acres of land were reclaimed by the nation and secured to settlers. From July 15, 1841. to July 15, 1843, he was a law partner of Benjamin Stanton, afterward Member of Congress and Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio. From July, 1851. to February, 1854, he was a law partner with his law. student. William II. West, afterward At- torney-General of Ohio. Judge of the Supreme Court and candidate for Governor in 1877. From April. 1866, to August, 1871, he was law partner of Emannel J. Howenstine, and following that for some years partner with his son. Joseph II. Law- rence.
In that greatest historic election contest for the Presideney before the Electoral Commission, under the Act of Congress of January 29. 1877, he was elected by the Republican members of the House of Representatives in Congress to argue two of the four contested State electoral votes, Oregon and South Carolina, and the record shows with what learning and ability he conducted the contest. llis portrait is found in that great histor- ical painting purchased by Congress, and now in the Capitol. " The Electoral Commission." by the distinguished artist, Mrs. C. Adele Fassett, of Washington. D. C.
The great law writer. Bishop. has quoted with
approval from the law arguments of Judge Law- rence, as in " Bishop on Statutory Crimes," section 14, note (ed. 1873); " Bishop's Criminal Law " (ed. 1868), section 219 and note 1; and Paschal in his annotated " Constitution," third edition, page 421. says of his work on the " Law of Impeachable Crimes," used on the impeachment trial of Presi- dent Johnson, that: " In all that great trial there is no more accurate and precise learning, than is to be found in the brief of authorities upon the law of impeachable erimes and misdemeanors, pre- pared by Hon. William Lawrence, of Ohio, which was adopted by Mr. Butler."
llis printed briefs in law cases would make sev- eral good-sized volumes, some of which are found in the Government Law Library at Washingtonu. Ile has contributed law papers to sundry publica- tions, and among them to the American Law Rey- ister, the Cincinnati Lux Record. and the Southern Law Review, including in the latter an extended review of the works of Joel Prentice Bishop, and of Bliss on " Code Pleading." He has studied more branches of the law than members of the profes- sion generally. As lawyer and judge, he has be- come familiar with the constitution and common law of Ohno; as president of a court-martial for a month at Cumberland, Md., in 1862, he studied the laws administered in such tribunals; as a mem- ber of the Judiciary Committee, of the Committee on the Revision of the Laws, and as Chairman of the Committee on War Claims, in the popular branch of Congress, he became familiar with the constitu- tion and laws of the United States and inter-State and international law, including the laws of war; and as First Comptroller of the Department of the Treasury, he became versed in the national ex- ecutive common law and in the construction of statutes.
Judge Lawrence was one of the Ohio lawyers who, on July 9, 1880, at Cleveland, organized the Ohio State Bar Association. lle is such a devoted student of the law, that an officer in the Treasury Department (E. Graham Haywood. law elerk in the First Comptroller's office, who, like his distin- guished father of North Carolina, is an able and accurate lawyer), well knowing his taste and habits. has said: " I believe when his call comes,
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PORTRAIT AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
at the . sound of the last trump ' he will have a law book in his hands."
lle has filled important public offices. In 1842, he was Commissioner of Bankrupts for Logan County. In 1815-46, he was Prosecuting Attorney for the county. but resigned in 1816. and was elected a Representative in the Legislature, and re- elected in 1847; was elected to the Senate in 1849, and again in 1851; on March 20. 1851. he was elected by the Legislature Reporter for the Su- preme Court of Ohio, and reported the Twentieth Volume of Ohio Reports. In 1852, he was one of the Whig candidates on the Scott electoral ticket, but with his party in the State was defeated. In 1856. he was elected Judge of the Common Pleas and District Court in the Third Ohio District. comprising twenty counties; was re-elected in 1861, and served until September, 1864, when he re- signed, and in October of that year was elected Representative in Congress. Under that and sub- sequent elections, five in all. he served for ten years, from March 1, 1865, to March 4, 1877, not including one term from March 4, 1871. to March 1, 1873.
In 1862, during the Rebellion, he was Colonel of the Eighty-fourth Ohio (three-month's) Regiment, serving at Cumberland and New Creek, and for a month of that time he was President of a court- martial which tried many important cases. Te has delivered many Decoration Day addresses; also speechies at rennions of soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic. He is a charter member of Burnside's Post No. 8, Department of the Potomac. G. A. R., in Washington, D. C., was its first Com- mander, and always an active member while in that eity. The charter is dated June 11, 1882, and included the names of many citizens eminent in the military and political history of the country.
In 1863, Andge Lawrence was appointed by President Lincoln District Judge of Florida. but declined to accept. In July. 1880, President Hayes tendered him an appointment as First Comptroller in the Department of the Treasury of the United States, which at first he declined. but finally ac- cepted at the urgent request of the President and John Sherman. Secretary of the Treasury, Ile was the proprietor of the Logan Gazette at Belle-
fontaine, from March, 1845, to September, 1847, and was its exclusive editor for the first six months of that period. He was one of the editors of the four volumes of the Western Law Monthly, published at Cleveland, 1839 to 1862, inclusive, in which, and in other law periodicals, many of his opinions as judge were published. sufficient in number to make a large volume. An able judge declared that his definition of a " reasonable doubt." in the Robbins case. Eighth Ohio State Reports, was the best to be found in the books, and Whar- ton and Stille, in their work on " Medical Jurispru- dence," have copied with approval almost entire one of his charges to a jury, in a case involving medico-legal questions connected with chloroform.
In 1841-43. Judge Lawrence studied medicine and surgery, and he has published some articles on these subjects, including one on " Clithrophobia," in the Cincinnati Lancet. In some of his medical articles, he maintains that " disease in the human system is generally produced by the presence of something which should be absent, or by the absence of some element which should be present, and that remedies should seck to remove the former and supply the latter." Again he said: " Generally the only proper articles of diet are such as nature produces in the climate in which we live. Capt. IIall, the Arctic explorer, once said to me that . the chief reason why Northern explorers had nearly all perished was because they tried to live upon food adapted to the elimates from which they came. To live in Arctie regions they must eat blubber and drink seal oil.' In equatorial regions, heat eanses waste of the system, which is counter- acted by the use of coffee, which nature there sup- plies, and which is injurious elsewhere under other conditions, because it retards waste and so re- tains in the system effete matter -- disorganized life cells-which would otherwise pass off by insensible perspiration, this latter operation be- ing essential to health. Pepper. oranges. ha- nanas and other tropical products are useful where the Almighty eanses them to grow and hence intends them to be consumed. but under normal conditions are injurious elsewhere." Again Judge Lawrence said: "Fruits should be eaten in their season. Nature ripens blackberries at
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PORTRAIT AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
a time when their anti-eathartie qualities are needed to counteract tendencies in the system re- quiring them. This is simply an illustration of the principle that God provided in each climate the food that man needs. He who cans for the winter green eorn, berries, and summer vegetation having a brief period of ripened maturity before decay, changes the plans of Providence, and those who consume such preparations ineur the danger of receiving the penalties of violated law. Ile should look through Nature up to Nature's God. and learn the wisdom by lim imparted in ' lessons written in Nature's book.'"
Judge Lawrence has always been especially in- terested in the study of natural philosophy and chemistry, which, like his other studies, he dili- gently pursued at college and in after life. While attending the Law School, he also attended some of the lectures on chemistry in the Ohio Medieal College. 1Ie has said: "Our books on these sub- jects inst be rewritten. There exists in universal space spirit-essence, and at localities matter com- prising those elements of which chemistry takes cognizance. Matter is inert-it cannot act or think-it has per se no power. Spirit-essenee- God-thinks, acts-is the only force. There is no force or intelligence which is a quality of matter, as so-called attraction of gravitation, or of eolie- sion or adhesion, or as chemical affinity; each of these is simply God moving on every atom and forming molecules and masses, and imparting to all the forces that move them, not by fixed natural laws, but by supreme intelligence and unlimited power. That is the intelligence that guides the rootlet in the earth, and enables it to see or feel. or at least seleet. the necessary elements necessary for the process of vegetation. What is the power that carries these, when selected, between the bark and woody substance out to the leaf, and then mixes them with the carbon drawn from the atmosphere, and returns the pulpy product and spreads it in annulations again between the wood and bark, and so carries on the process of vegeta- tion? God is the intelligence and the force. In- telligence and foree are Ilis essential attributes. The material tree dies, but God never dies. Here is a lesson in spiritual theology. The natural
body of man dies, 'dust returns to dust,' but the Spirit never dies, it . returns to the God who gave it ' its spiritual and sole identity eternal. Tele- ology and entaxiology alike prove the existence . of a psychical essence, a real substantial, intelli- gent foree, pervading all space, and this is God, who
. Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars and blossoms in the trees; Lives through all life, extends through all extent; Spreads undivided and operates unspent.'"
llis work in the Legislature of Ohio is found in many statutes, including the Free Banking Law of 1851, essential features of which are in the Na- tional Bank aets. Ilis reports on various subjects show great labor. On February 13, 1851, as Chairman of the Standing Committee on the Pen- itentiary in the Ohio Senate, he made a report, the first on the subject. in favor of prohibiting the employment of eonviets in branches of industry that would compete with the mechanies of the State. Ilis decisions as Comptroller show his re- gard for the rights of laboring men. June 27, 1874, Columbia Typographical Union No. 101, of Washington, " Resolved, that the thanks of said Union be, and are, tendered to Judge Lawrence and (others named) for their manly defense of the working men of the country, and for the interest and zeal shown by their action in the House of Representatives in the welfare of the eraft." Ile had in Congress vindicated trades-unions.
In Congress, Judge Lawrence was the first to in- troduce a bill to convert the office of Attorney- General into an executive department, and many of the provisions of his bill are found in the act finally passed creating the Department of Justice. Ilis report of February, 1869, on the New York Election Frauds. led to important legislation in that State to preserve the purity of elections, and to the legislation of Congress on the same subject, which contains provisions of a bill which aceom- panied the report. He is author of the law giving to each soldier as a homestead one hundred and sixty acres of the "alternate reserved sections " in the limits of railroad land grants. Ile was the first in Congress to urge that the publie lands should no longer be disposed of by Indian treaties
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PORTRAIT AND BIOGRAPHIICAL RECORD
to railroad companies, and that they should be reserved for homesteads. and his efforts led to the act, March 3, 1871, which prohibits such treaties. Hle was the first to urge upon Congress that the Pacific Railroad Companies should be required to indemnify the Government for loss on account of the subsidy bonds issued to these companies, and on July 7. 1876, carried a bill through the House for this purpose, and his elaborate report on the subject was highly commended by the Auditor of Railroad Accounts in his annual report of No- vember 1, 1878. The Hayes-Tilden election con- test prevented action by the Senate on this bill, but its purpose was subsequently secured by the net known as the " Thurman Act " of May 7, 1878 (see 1, Lawrence's " Comptroller's Decisions " 211). As Chairman of the Committee on War Claims, his reports would make a large volume.
Judge Lawrence was a lay delegate from the Central Ohio Conference in the General Confer- ence of the Methodist Episcopal Church. at its ses- sions in 1872-76-80-92, in which he made sundry reports, and in the spring of 1888. he published in the Western Christian advocate a series of articles on the much-mooted question of the status of William Taylor. D. D., Missionary Bishop to Afrien. in which it was maintained that he was a Bishop equal in dignity with any other, a position sustained by the General Conference of 1888. The Central Ohio Conference three times elected Mr. Lawrence a Trustee of the Ohio Wesleyan I'niver- sity at Delaware, in 1878. 1883 and 1888. and he is now serving in that capacity in his third term of five years each.
February 15. 1871. he organized the Bellefon- taine National Bank, of which he has ever since since been President and a principal stockholder.
By appointment of Governor Foraker, he was one of the delegates at large from Ohio to the Farmers' Congress of the United States, which met at Chicago, in November. 1887, and in which he delivered an address on " The American Wool In- tere-t." afterward stereotyped and reprinted in New York by the American Protective Tariff League, and extensively distributed as a political campaign document in the Presidential election of 188%, and as one of the standard publications of
the League ever since. In the October, 1875, num- ber of The Republic, a Washington monthly maga- zine, he published an article. " The People a Na- tion; The I'nion Perpetual." which was reprinted as a Republican campaign document in the Presi- dential election of 1876.
In 1882, the National Chamber of Industry and Trade in New York copyrighted, printed and cir- enlated extensively a tariff " Interview with Judge William Lawrence, by Edward Young, Ph. D., late Chief of the United States Bureau of Statistics."
These are only specimens of his political works. In the Presidential campaign of 1840, before he had reached majority, he made " stump speeches " in several counties of Ohio, and in every campaign since. National and State, in various parts of the United States, he has been an active participant. many of his speeches having been published in newspapers and pamphlets as campaign document -. Ihs published speeches and lectures on political. legal, literary, agricultural, moral and mi-cellane- ous subjeets, if collected. would make two good- sized volumes.
Judge Lawrence has rendered great service to the agricultural and wool-growing industries of the country. He was a delegate to the national convention of wool-growers, wool-dealers and wool-manufacturers at St. Louis, in May. 1887; to a similar convention in Washington, January. 1888: another in January, Iss?, by the latter of which he was made Chairman of a committee to present to the Finance Committee of the Senate the claims of wool-growers to legislative and pro- tective duties. His work in these conventions has been extensively published, and his speeches before the Senate Committee are found in the Report of Tariff Testimony for January. 1889, part 3, pages 1954 to 1977. published by Congress.
In December, 1889. a national convention of wool-growers in Washington, D. C. appointed him Chairman of a committee to present the claims of wool-grower- to the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of Representatives in Con- gress, and his arguments are published in the Vol- ume of Hearings on Revision of Tariff. pages 215 to 280. January. 1890. On February 15. 1890, by invitation of the Commercial Club of Providence,
1
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PORTRAIT AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
R. 1 .. he delivered an address on " The Protection of Wool, from the Standpoint of the Grower," afterward published by " The Home Market Club " of Boston, as one of its standard documents for gen- eral distribution. He wrote the memorial of the Committee of National Convention of Wool- growers, held in Washington, D. C., from De- cember 2 to 9, 1889, published as United States Senate Miscellaneous Document No. 149, Fifty- first Congress, first session. In January, 1891, he was elected President of the Ohio Wool-growers' Association. His annual address at Columbus, January 12, 1892, has been extensively published all over the United States. The North Pacific Rural Spirit and Williamette Farmer, of February 11, 1892, prefaced its publication by saying, " Without any question, Mr. Lawrence's address is the ablest document ever given to the publie upon the subject of wool-growing, woolen manu- factures and their relation to the present tariff agi- tation." llon. F. B. Norton of Burlington, Wis- consin, said in the Wisconsin Farmer, of June 3, 1891, referring to ,Judge Lawrence, Hon. Columbus Delano and David Harpster: " It is largely due to the labors of these men that we have seen the value of our flocks doubled within the past few years, which means a gain of $100,000,000, to the wealth of the nation. The farmers of the United States could well afford to present a solid silver sheep with a golden flecce to each of these patri- otie gentlemen, who have done so much for sheep husbandry." Ilis published addresses, reports, etc .. in behalf of this industry, would make a vol- ume of six hundred pages.
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