USA > Ohio > The Biographical encyclopedia of Ohio of the nineteenth century. Pt. 1 > Part 2
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partial to the French, and this man gained his confidence, was intrusted with the bones to convey them to Europe, and there disposed of them and was never heard of more. Nor was this by any means the only instance in which his good natthe was imposed upon by adventurers and sharpers. Ile was the special patron of those engaged in secking for precious metals, and such persons never neglected to quarter themselves upon his family while having their " specimens" examined through his agency. Ile was very fond of associating with French people, and sympathized warmly with refugces from that (then) distracted country. Ilis own polite manners and faultless precision in dress, no doubt, commended him to these exiles from the " land of etiquette." This admiration of the French and his love of change led him to conceive the idea of taking up his resi- dence in Louisiana, which had lately been purchased by the United States, and which was a place of refuge for large num- bers of these exiles. Accordingly, in 1807, he departed on a flat-boat for the lower Mississippi. Soon after his arrival he was elected a Parish Judge, and the Creoles of Attacapas elected him a member of the convention to form a consti- tution for the new State. During the invasion of Louisiana by the British he was an Assistant Surgeon in the American army. Eventually he became dissatisfied with his prospects and associations in the South, and longed for Cincinnati. From letters he wrote, this dissatisfaction must have amounted to actual disgust. IIe arrived in Cincinnati in May, 1816, after a voyage by river of eight months. Dur- ing this journey, which for some reason he had protracted to great length, he contracted a disease from which he never recovered. He met with a flattering welcome from the citizens, and at once resumed his popularity. But he was not destined to remain long with them. Ile died in the spring of 1817, regretted by the entire community, to every man, woman and child of which his face and figure were familiar. IIe was the second physician to die within the limits of Cincinnati, Dr. Allison being the first. IIe was very original, if not eccentric, in manner. IIe dressed with great care, and never left the house until his hair had been powdered and his gold-headed eane grasped in his left hand. Ile was devoted to the Masonic fraternity, and invariably adorned his signature with some of its emblems. Dr. Daniel Drake, his distinguished pupil, says of him that " he had the most winning manners of any physician he ever knew." Although so many years have passed since his death, there are yet living quite a number of citizens of Cincinnati who remember him, and his memory is preserved not only by those who actually recollect the man, but by the whole medical profession of the city. As the introducer of vaccination in Cincinnati, and, prac- tically, therefore, in the West, he is entitled to high distinction among his professional brethren, and to the grateful remembrance of the whole community. In all the relations of life, whether as a physician, a public of-
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ficial, or a private citizen, he proved himself a man of a romantic canses which have come within his practice. In great ability, broad liberality of view and eminent consci- entiousness.
AGANS, MARCELLUS BROWN, Lawyer, was born in Petersburg, Somerset county, Pennsyl- vania, on the 21st of April, 1827. On the father's side he was descended from the old Puritan stock, and on the mother's was of Scotch-Irish extraction. At the age of four years he was taken with the family to Kingwood, in West Virginia. Ile obtained a preparatory course of training in the academy at that place, and when that was completed he entered the Washington College, at Washington, Pennsylvania. There he graduated at the early age of seventeen years. Not long after he left college he began the study of law with his uncle, the Hon. William G. Brown, of Kingwood, who represented the Wheeling District in Congress for three successive terms, and who was distinguished as one of the foremost lawyers of that State. In the year 1848, while still in his minority, the young student was admitted to the bar, and immediately thereafter he entered into a partner- ship with his brother-in-law, who was afterwards judge of one of the Circuit Courts of West Virginia. In the year 1852 the younger member of the firm rentoved to Cin- cinnati and continued the practice of his profession. In 1856 he formed a partnership with S. J. Broadwell. Ile continued in this partnership until 1868, when he was elected to the Judgeship of the Superior Court of Cincin- nati by a majority of very gratifying proportions. Ilis pro- fessional career has been an eminently successful one, and he stands among the foremost of the able men of the Cin- cinnati bar. The duties of a very active professional career and a very exacting official position have not prevented his finding leisure for. high and choice intellectual and social culture. He has found time, moreover, to attend to many matters ontside of his profession and his official position, in which the public was much interested. He has been an active Sunday-school worker, and his work in that dirce- tion has been earnest and effective. Ile was one of the incorporators of the Wesleyan Female College of Cincin- nati, and the origin and success of this institution were largely due to his efforts. In the great contest that pre- ceded the expulsion of the Bible from the public schools of Cincinnati, he and Judge Bellamy Storer gave the majority deci ion in favor of retaining the Bible. In this connection it may be said that he is an active and earnest Christian, and his decision in the matter just cited was in a line with both his religious and intellectual convictions. llis term as Judge of the Superior Court would have expired in the year 1873, but the superior pecuniary advantages offered in the practice of his profession led him to resign the position before the expiration of his term. His professional experi- ence has been varied by a number of remarkable and
1851 he married the only daughter of Hon. Sammel Lewis, a distinguished and uncompromising opponent of the slave power, who was twice the candidate of the Free-Soil or the Free Democratic party for Governor of Ohio, and who was also the father of the free school system in that State.
LLEN, IION. WILLIAM, Governor of Ohio, formerly a member of the United States Senate and a Representative in Congress, was born in Chowan, North Carolina. Ilis father, Nathaniel Allen, was a descendant from an ancestor of the same name who came from England with Wil- liam Penn, being of the Society of Friends, and settled in Philadelphia. One of the sons of the first Nathaniel Allen, whose name was William, was the first judge of Pennsyl- vania. The branch of the family from which Governor Allen descended removed to the South, and separating themselves from the Society of Friends, engaged in the Revolutionary struggle, the father of Governor Allen ac- cepting a commission in the Continental army, which he held till the close of the war. Ile was also a member of the North Carolina Constitutional Convention which ac- cepted the Federal Constitution by which the government of the United States was formed. Ilis uncle, Joseph Hewes, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Inde- pendence. Both his parents dying within a year of his birth, the care of Governor Allen's childhood devolved on his only sister, who married soon after the death of her parents and removed to Lynchburg, Virginia, taking her brother with her. To this excellent woman-Mrs. Pleasant Thurman, mother of the Hon. Allen G. Thurman, United States Senator from Ohio-Governor Allen is indebted for an education as good as the institutions of the country afforded in his day. His father left some means; but though they were not ample, under his sister's careful man- agement they were made to do the utmost toward his edu- cation. Removing to Ohio, she left him for some time in Lynchburg, where he attended a private school; but at the age of sixteen he joined his sister at Chillicothe, and made his home with her while he finished his education at the Chillicothe Academy, an institution of learning then second to none in the State, and at which he obtained the ordinary knowledge of Latin and Greck imparted at such prepara- tory institutions. At the age of eighteen he began the study of law in the office of Edward King, of Chillicothe, son of IIon. Rufus King, of New York, and was admitted to the bar when he was but twenty years of age. Ile at once began the practice of his profession with his old preceptor, Mr. King, and owing to the felicitous circumstances of his start, as well as his great native powers as an advocate, he at once acquired an extended and lucrative practice. In 1832 the Democrats of his district induced him to stand for
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the office of Congressional Representative, and though the | grand old galaxy of statesmen whose central star was district had been strongly Whig, and he was opposed by Daniel Webster, and whose history it is their country's glory to remember. Governor Allen has been much spoken of by the Democratie press of the country as a candidate for the Presidency in 1876. He was mentioned for the same place in 1847. Governor Duncan MacArthur, who declined renomination to the executive office in order to stand for Congress, the magic of a young face and a fresh, impassioned oratory broke down the opposition and secured his election by the sufficient but remarkable majority of one vote. The posi- tion which he gained in the House of Representatives by the law of intellectual gravitation marked him' as a rising OBISON, HION. JOIIN PETER, M. D., Physi- cian, Manufacturer, and State Senator, was born January 23d, 1811, at Lyons, Ontario county, New York. On his father's side he is of Scotch descent, his paternal ancestors having emigrated to America among the earliest settlers. ITis mother is of English extraction. He was educated at Niffing's School, at Vienna, New York, after leaving which, in 1828, he commenced the study of medicine as a private pupil of Dr. Woodward, President of the Vermont College of Medicine, from which institution he graduated in 1831. He started in the practice of his profession at Bedford, Ohio, where he continued for eleven years; and his success was gratifying as well as lucrative. Ile there- after turned his attention to other business. In 1874 he erected the National Packing House at Cleveland, which is probably the model packing house of America or Europe. The cost of the building was $40,000, and in it one thou- sand hogs per day can be disposed of. He has taken an active part in public affairs, and has filled honorable posi- tions in political and business life. In 1861 he was elected to the State Senate, where his services were honorable to himself and valuable to his constituents. Ile was the Vice- President of the Northern Ohio Fair Association at its organization, and for the last three years has been its Presi- dent. man, and in 1837 he was chosen by the Legislature of Ohio to succeed the venerable Thomas Ewing in the United States Senate. Ile remained in the Senate twelve years, the associate of the brightest minds that have ever illumin- ated the history of the great republic. By such contempo- raries as Seward and Webster and Clay and Calhoun he was surrounded but not overshadowed. . From among them and by them he was chosen Chairman of the Com. mittee on Foreign Relations, a position of delicate responsi- bility, one bringing him into the closest relations with the administration, and which has ever been considered the most important and honorable in Congress. Henry Clay was a member of the committee at the same time that Mr. Allen occu: ied the chair. His party being in the minority in the Legislature in 1849, he was succeeded in the Senate by the late Chief-Justice Chase, and retired completely from public life. May 5th, 1845, he had married Mrs. Effie Coons, the daughter of Governor Duncan MacArthur, his first political opponent. She is remembered as a woman of great personal attractions and a highly cultivated mind. She died in Washington in March, 1847, leaving an infant daughter. Overwhelmed by this great affliction, which was rendered unusually poignant by the singularly tender at- tachment in which he held his wife, Mr. Allen willingly withdrew from public life to a fine estate of fourteen hun- dred acres called Fruit Hill, in the valley of the Sciota, neur Chillicothe, a part of which had been acquired with his wife, and was formerly the home of her father, Gover- OWLAND, CHARLES W., Cotton Merchant, was born in Anderson county, Kentucky, on Novem- ber 17th, 1831, and is the son of Allen Rowland and Nancy S. Railey, both of whom were natives of Woodford county and of Virginia ancestry. He was raised on a farm, passed two years at the Kentucky Military Institute, and in 1849 moved to Cincin - nati and became a clerk in the grocery house of Messick, Taylor & Watts. He began the grocery business in one of the firms succeeding them, in August, 1854, and continued in that business until 1867, when the present farm of Row- land & Co. was formed, which now conducts the largest cotton business in the city. Its members are Charles W. Rowland, W. II. Harrison, and Charles Heinking. He was married on July 20th, 1854, to Virginia Greene. Ile was President of the Young Men's Mercantile Library Association in I$59; was President of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce from August, 1870, to August, 1872. In religious matters he has always been an active worker. nor MacArthur. Here for a period of twenty-four years he enjoyed uninterrupted the pleasures of an elegant rural home, dividing his attention between the education of his child, the cultivation of his farm, and the prosecution of philosophical and scientific studies, to which he has ever been devoted. In 1873, feeling that he owed it to the party that had raised him to such early fame, he consented to have his name placed on the Democratic ticket for the office of Governor, and with the singular felicity which has ever attended his political career, the farmer of the Sciota was elected, though all the rest of the State ticket sustained defeat. Ile was nominated in 1875 for a second term, but was defeated on the financial issue. The career of Gover- nor Allen cannot be discussed at great length in a work of this nature; but fortunately a life so singularly marked dis- closes its importance by the simple statement of events, without the comment of the historian. He is emphatically a gentleman of the old regime-a solitary survivor of that
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Ile joined the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1849, and is | Lieutenant-Governor of the State, and that at a time when now President of the Young Men's Bible Society of Cincin- nati. lle has always been a Democrat, but has hekl no political office save that of a member of the Ohio Constitu- tional Convention of 1873-74. Ile took an active part in the temperance crusade of IS74 as a public speaker against license, visiting various parts of the State for this purpose. Ile is now Chairman of the Union Temperance League of the State of Ohio.
ART, IION. ALPIIONSO, Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio, son of Chauncey and Melisendra Hart, was born July 4th, 1830, in Vienna, Trumbull county, where his father followed the occupation of farming. The family came originally from Hartford county, Connecticut, where their name and connections are very numerous, and settled in Ohio only a few years previous to the birth of their son. Mr. HIart enjoyed the usual advantages of the country youth, in the public schools of his native county, up to the age of fourteen, when his father died and the little family of five children was dispersed. Alphonso was bound out to a neighboring farmer for three years; but dissatisfied with the treatment he received, and having no opportunity for im- provement and culture, at the end of seven months he signified his unwillingness to remain, dissolved the connec- tion, and assumed the regulation of his own career. Ile determined to obtain an education, and achieved his pur- pose without the aid of a dollar from relation or friend. By laboring and teaching in vacations and winters he main- tained himself at the Grand River Institute, in Ashtabula county, till he acquired a fair knowledge of Latin, Greek, mathematical and other sciences. At the age of nineteen he registered for the bar, and pursuing his legal studies during the intervals of labor, was admitted August 12th, 1851. In the spring of 1852 he entered the office of Judge John Clark, of New Lisbon, Columbiana county, to begin practice under his direction. Ile remained with Judge Clark two years, and in i851 was elected Assistant Clerk of the lower branch of the Ohio Legislature. The same year he purchased the l'ortage Sentinel, a weekly news- paper published at Ravenna, which he conducted in the interests of the Democratic party till 1857, when he disposed of the concern to associate himself with Samuel Strawder, of Ravenna, in the practice of law. This association con- tinued till 1860. In 1861 Mr. Hart was elected Prosecut- ing Attorney for Portage county, and was re-elected to the same office in 1863, but resigned in 1864 to accept the seat in the State Senate vacated by the elevation of the Ilon. Luther Day to the Supreme Bench. Resuming his practice at the expiration of his term, he devoted himself rigidly to his profession till 1871, when he again entered the political arena and was elected to represent his district in the Senate. In 1873 Mr. Hart received the signal honor of being elected
his party sustained quite a general overthrow, and their executive nominee was defeated by Governor Allen. A career so marked as that of Mr. Hart discloses the charac. ter of the man without the comment of the historian. Since the breaking out of the war, in 1861, he has been a Repub- lican, but his legislative course has been marked by a degree of political sagacity and an independence of judg- ment which distinguishes the statesman from the mere politician. When a member of the Senate, over which he now presides, he was Chairman of the Standing Committee on Judiciary, and also of the Committee on Privileges and Elections,- As Chairman of the latter he made the majority report upon the Senatorial contest from the Third District, which resulted in establishing the right of the inmates of the National Military Asylum for Disabled Soldiers, at Dayton, to vote. The measure was one of grave importance, involving questions of constitutional law, the jurisdiction of States, and the political status of people in a State who were living upon land ceded to the general government for national purposes. Deciding as it did their right of citizenship, it excited the deepest interest among soldiers, and especially those at the various government asylums throughout the Union. The immediate question involved was the right of a Senator to a seat which he had gained by having the soldiers' vote thrown out ; and as the Senate was a tie, and the unseating of the member would give the Republicans a majority and the power to control legislation, the contest was the most obstinate and bitter in the legislative history of Ohio. As Chairman of the Com- mittee Mr. IIart brought in a report adverse to the sitting member and in favor of the contestant for whom the sol- diers had tendered their ballots. In the hot debate that followed he maintained his position with such eloquence and ability as made him the leader of his party in the Gen- eral Assembly. The Senate adopted the report and the seat was given to the contestant, and in a subsequent review of the case the Supreme Court, notwithstanding a former decision to the contrary, affinmed the policy advocated by Mr. Hart, and the right of soldiers to vote in the State where their asylums are located is now judicially settled. Impartial, able, and courteous, with great knowledge of parliamentary law, Lieutenant-Governor Hart has gained the good-will and confidence of both parties as presiding officer of the Senate. As a political speaker he is well known, having frequently made the canvass of the State. In 1872 he was l'residential Elector at Large for Ohio on the Republican ticket, and in the electoral college cast his vote for the re-election of General Grant. In his profession he has gained a reputation not less distinguished and hon- orable than that obtained in the field of politics. He was mentioned to the writer by the Chief-Justice of the State as a lawyer excellent in general practice and eminent in the sphere of an advocate. In forensic debate he possesses a style fervid, collected, and persuasive, which warms the
alphamo Hart
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imagination not less than it satisfies the judgment. During the summer of 1864 he removed to Cleveland, where he formed a professional association with Messrs. Marvin and Squire, and since his retirement from office at the close of his term he has been constantly engaged in the practice of law. Ile was married on November 22d, 1856, to Phebe Peck, of Warren, who died in September, 1868, leaving two children, a son and a daughter.
ONGWORTHI, NICIIOLAS, Lawyer, Vine- grower and Horticulturist, was born, January 16th, 1782, in Newark, New Jersey. His father had been a Tory during the war of the Revolu- tion, and his large property had been entirely confiscated in consequence. Young Longworth's childhood was passed in comparative indigence, and while yet a boy he went to South Carolina as clerk for an elder brother; but the climate proved unfavorable to his health, and, returning to Newark, he resolved to study law. Be- lieving that the region then known as the Northwest Territory offered the best opportunity of success to young men of enterprise, he removed thither in 1803, and, fixing upon the little village of Cincinnati as his residence, he continued his legal studies in the office of Judge Jacob Burnet. ITis first case after admission to the bar was the defence of a horse-thief, receiving for his fee two copper whiskey-stills. These he bartered for thirty-three acres of land, Central avenue being its eastern boundary. Owing to the great influx of emigration this land in process of time arose to the value of over two millions of dollars. From the time of his arrival in Cincinnati he held to the idea that the log village of that day would become the metropolis of the future. Ile was outspoken and decided on this point. lis convictions determined all his actions in this direction ; but they were the merest visions to the old men around him. While a student in Judge. Burnet's office he offered ta purchase the judge's cow pasture, and, thinking to obtain it on a long credit, proposed to pay five thousand dollars for it. The judge reproved him sharply for what he was pleased to term the folly that would assume such a debt for such worthless investment; but he lived to see the cow- pasture valued at one and a half million dollars. When Mr. Longworth began the practice of law he was known as the attorney who would always take land for fees; and during his connection with that profession all his earnings were invested in lands in and around Cincinnati, so that he became, in the course of a few years, a large lot and land-owner and dealer. At that time property was held at a very low figure ; many of his lots cost him but ten dollars each, while vast tracts represented but a lawyer's fee. Ile had for some years given much attention to the cultivation of the grape, with the view of making wine; and at first at- tempted, though with but little success, the acclimation of
foreign vines. He tried about forty different varieties before the idea occurred to him of testing the capabilities of our indigenous grapes. In 1828 he withdrew from the practice of his profession and commenced experimenting upon the adaptation of native grapes to the production of wine. Two of the varieties-the Catawba and the Isabella-seemed to him to possess the best qualities for wine in that climate and soil, and he gradually adopted these throughout his vine- yards, though not entirely to the exclusion of others. IIe had two hundred acres of vineyards, and extensive wine- vaults in the city, where the vintage of each year was stored by itself to ripen. IIe also purchased wine and grape-juice in large quantities, to be converted by his processes into the wine of commerce. These vineyards eventually became profitable to him, and to the thousands of vine-growers and vine-dressers who emigrated from the wine countries of Europe and established themselves on the hill-slopes of the Ohio, in the vicinity of Cincinnati; but for some years his expenditure was greater than his income from his vineyards. IIe did not, however, confine his attention to the culture of the grape. IIe was also much interested in the improve- ment of the strawberry, and published the results of his numerous experiments on the influence of the sexual char- acter of the strawberry in rendering it productive. Cin- cinnati he made famous for strawberry culture; and from him the celebrated " Longworth Prolific " derives its name. In private life he was a genial, kindly, but very eccentric man, dressing always in the extremest simplicity and plain- ness, often to the extent of shabbiness. He was singularly unostentatious in his display of wealth and in his personal habits. IIe was never accused of meanness nor of illiber- ality. Ile was public-spirited and useful; his brain ever teeming with valuable suggestions to the people. He con- tributed largely to public charities; but his name was rarely found on published lists of contributors to charitable enter- prises. His gifts were made in secret, and oftenest to those whom he termed " the devil's poor "-the vagabonds and estrays of social life. Many citizens of Cincinnati cannot fail to remember the winter when he gave hundreds of men work in his stone quarries on the Ohio river, above the city; or, indeed, of his donating, each week, a sack of meal to a large number of equally poor women. It was no de- light or virtue to him to help those who could possibly receive sympathy or aid from others. IIe had also a sys- tem, which he studiously carried out, of selling his land to poor tenants on long time, thus enabling them to pay for it gradually, often deeding to widows of tenants half of the property leased by their husbands: in this way favoring poor men in securing homes for themselves. Ile was a benefactor to poor authors and poets, the liberal patron of art and the friend of ITiram Powers. Ile was a life-long Whig, but held no identity with any political party, and was certainly no politician. IIe had as little care and respect for politicians as for preachers, being a determined, but a silent, opponent of the latter. Nevertheless, he was
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