USA > Ohio > The Biographical encyclopedia of Ohio of the nineteenth century. Pt. 1 > Part 28
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SIRBY, TIMOTIIY. There is so little to be said in my case that I have a preference to say it myself, in the first person, so that any inaccuracies may rest only upon myself. I was born in Middle- town, Connecticut, November 16th, 1797, and left there in May, 1So3, with my father and family, and lived in Berkshire county, Massachusetts, until 1815, except a few months in Springfield. Abont 1812 I went into the Hunt & Co. factory, below Stockbridge, with many other farmer boys, to learn to make wool into cloth, at the
Gaine, Put On Philadelvia".
Timothy Kirby.
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pay of six dollars a month and my board. We had deserters | a vast deal of surveying, locating and other business in that from the British army to instruct us in the processes. I recol. lect that we worked up one cargo of Spanish wool captmed in a British ship. My zeal for my trade gencially, and par . tienlarly to acquire skill in coloring and finishing broad- cloth, led me to the study of chemistry to a limited extent. I recollect copying out technical terms and definitions to have before me to commit to memory when running a machine in the factory. Part of the night and leisure time I devoted to reading books from a library to which I had access. Novels I did not read, because there were none to speak of at that day withm my control. This reading to me was preferable to the sports of the boys, It was very agree- able, and I have always had a preference to keep out of crowd, and entertainments. In a Springfield factory I was employed at eight dollars a month, was offered more to con- tinue, but believing I could do better, was employed in factories near Pittsfieldl, and earned money to pay the ex- pense of attending the Lenox Academy the winter of 1815. In the early spring of IS16 I put what I then considered my big volume of chaptals, chemistry and geology, in my knapsack, and went direct for the head of the Ohio river, and down it to Cincinnati, making some money by aiding the lumbermen, but tinding no employment at my trade, which ought to have been in a great state of activity if Con- gress had stood by the factories, as should have been done at the close of the British war. But the policy of a vast import trade has prevailed ever since, cutting off working people from the manufacturing employments they are en- titled to in every well-regulated country. I have made war, in my small way, on that policy, as I had good right to do, ever since. The import trade is an incubus upon the people that cannot be shaken off. Hard times will curtail every- thing else except the import trade. I dwell a little on this matter because I have so long been a zealot on the subject, and regret the general prejudices of the people and parties against a suitable diversity of employments. As I said, find- ing no work at my trade, I went back into the country, and taught a school at Eaton, Ohio, for three-quarters of a year. Thence I went back to Cincinnati, and became a student in the Cincinnati College, under the tuition of the Rev. Elijah Slack, in a class of three, Vance, Anthony and Kirby. Dr. Slack was particularly attentive to our little class, and we profited by his earnest and learned attention to us. Ilis time was principally devoted to large classes of students in the dead languages. From the Cincinnati College I went into a crowded private school until I found more desirable em- ployment. In the fall of 1818, before I ended my minority, I entered the service of General William Lytle as a land surveyor. General Lytle was one of the best of men, and was one of the half dozen deputy surveyors for the military lands in Ohio appointed by Colonel Richard C. Anderson, principal surveyor and recorder of entries and surveys in that district, lying between the three rivers, Ohio, Scioto and Little Miami. The General had done, from 1790 down,
district, and had made and spent a great deal of money. I aided him in his business, as well as I could, lor several years, but he had many older and more experienced em. ployes in his business in Ohio and Kentucky. I studied law in the office of Joseph S. Benham, and was admitted by the Supreme Court at the May term, 1827, Brown county, Ohio, where I was then trying the land suit of Anthony v's. Kirby, in which I succeeded. Henry Avery, of Connecti- cut, was a friend of mine from the year IS19; I was long his agent, and managed his affairs in his absence, and we had a land partnership. I have done a great deal of business for people residing in and about Philadelphia, extending on down to a late period. In 1828 the Bank of the United States gave me the appointment of Land Agent at their Cin- cinnati agency, which agency was in charge of George W. Jones from 1820 to 1830, and then transferred to llerman Cope from 1830 to 1836, when I was appointed Agent. The agency grew out of the old Cincinnati branch of 1817 to IS20, the assets of which run into real estate, wild lands, judgments and mortgages, and which kept on growing by accumulations and by further investments down to 1830. After which the process of realizing and remitting went on until closed up under the subsequent trusts, and I being the Manager from 1836 to the final close, with the full approba- tion of all the boards and officers I had to do with. I ought to have been a geologist; I have taken interest in the science, as time permitted, from its beginning, without much prog- ress, however, in keeping up with this great science. One thing I claim, and that is, to be the first who announced the theory of north and south currents in the water and in the air, during all past time, making the earth habitable, and accounting for the present arrangement of the earth's surface .- TIMOTHY KIRBY. [Died 1874.]
cCLURE, JAMES, M. D., Physician, was born in Wilkersville, Meigs county, Ohio, May 24th, 1835. llis father was a farmer, who came to this State when quite a boy, and settled in Meigs county, where James McClure lived with his parents until he reached manhood. His mother was a native also of Ohio. Ile received a classical education at Ohio University, in Athens, and upon his leaving the college be- eame a teacher in the public schools of Meigs county for some time. Being of a very studious turn of mind, and having a great taste for medicine, he engaged in its study, reading with Dr. S. Day of Harrisonville, and afterwards attending a course of lectures during the winter of 1860 and IS6r. Hfe then resumed and practised medicine in Albany, Athens county, Ohio, until the fall of 1863, when he re- turned to Starling Medical College and completed his course of study, and graduated in the spring of 1864. In May, 1864, he entered the army as Assistant Surgeon of the 23d Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and was attached to the Army
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of West Virginia, and participated in the fights of Opeqnan, | unwarrantable on the part of a " country surgeon," while the Ceden Creck, B tryville, Fisher's Ihill, and many other minor engagements, He was mastered out with his regiment, in .August, 150g. He then returned to his home in Albany and engaged in the practice of his profession, continuing there until the fall of 1871, when he moved finally to Ma- rietta, and there resumed practice, in which he is now en- gaged. Ile afterwards becime associated in partnership with Dr. Samuel Hart, and with him now enjoys a large and lucrative practice. He was married in October, 1866, to Sarah J. Greene, of Newpart, Washington county, Ohio.
UNLAP, ALEXANDER, Physician and Surgeon, was born in Brown county, Ohio, January 12th, IS15. Ile is the son of William Dunlap and Mary (Shepherd) Dunlap, both natives of Vir- ginia. His father, a farmer, was one of the pio- neers of Ohio, having moved with his parents to Kentucky in 1782 or thereabout, and thence removed in 179' to the former State, six years before it's admission as a State into the Union. His mother's family came from Shepherdstown, of which plice its members were probably the founders. He passed the freshinan an 1 sophomore years of his college life at the University of Ohio, in Athens, and his junior and senior years at the Miami Uni- versity, graduating in 1836. Ile then commenced the study of medicine under the instructions of his brother at Green- field, Highland county, and attended lectures at the old Cincinnati Medical College, where he graduated in 1839. Subsequently associating himself in practice with his bro- ther, he continued to reside in Greenfield until 1846, when he removed to Ripley, Brown county, where he was en- giged in professional labors until 1856. Later he established his office in Springfield, where he still resides. In 1843 he enne into collision with the fraternity by venturing to remove an ovarian tumor. Although this operation had been per- formed, in a few cases, as early as iSoo, with some success, by Ephraim M'Dowell, of Kentucky, it had been denounced by the profesion and characterized as unjustifiable butchery, and for more than thirty years had been abandoned as an ele- ment of medical and surgical art. In the various publica- tions there was nothing but a brief notice of its failure, and the coudannition of the faculty. Clay, of England, had performed the operation in 1842, and Atlee, of Phila Jelplia, in the summer of 1843. Two months after Atlee's opera- tion, he, not then having heard of the cases of those two practitioners, and following only the traditional report of M'Dowell's case, ventured, at the earnest solicitation of the patient, who was apprised of the risk, to undertake the operation. Surrounded by a few country physicians, he finally undertook the case, and removed successfully a tumor weighing forty-five pounds. A few weeks later the patient died, and the operation was denounced as altogether
medical journals refused to report the case. The woman's death had, however, not been the direct result of the operation, and though frowned upon in many quanters, he puseved in his studies and practice until a biffiant success dissipated entirely the clouds of prejudice. To-day, his reputation as an ovariotomist is co-extensive with the circulation of med- ical literature, while his practice extends throughout the central and western portion of the United States. Down to the present time he has performed nearly one hundred oper- ations, and has reported the subject ably and exhaustively. In eighty per cent. of his cases, he has met with complete success-a higher estimate than may be awarded to any other American or European ovariotomist, with but a single exception. Ile has outlived denunciation, and in 1868 re- ceived from the faculty of the State of Ohio the signal com- pliment of an election to the Presidency of the Ohio Medi- cal Society. He has also been made one of the Judicial Council for the American Medical Association. He has lately been appointed to a professorship in the Starling Medical College of Columbus, Ohio. He has a strong natural proclivity for surgery, which early developed itself, and which has been cultivated by close reading and an extensive and varied practice. In " Gross's System of Surgery," vol. ii., he is reported, under the heading " Li- thotomy," as " having successfully removed a stone weighing twenty ounces," the largest ever removed from a living person. Also in this branch of surgery his practice has been very extensive. Among exceptional cases, he has three times removed the under-jaw, once ligated the com- mon carotid artery, and once removed the clavicle. Ile was married March 27th, 1839, to Maria Elizabeth Bell, of Highland county, Ohio, by whom he has had three chil- dren : two sons, one of whom died in childhood ; the other, Charles W. Dunlap, is now associated with him in his pro- fessional practice ; and a daughter, Mary Elizabeth Dunlap, who was married to William Hamilton, of Springfield.
HACKER, JOHN A., M. D., Editor of the Medi- cal News, was born in the village of Goshen, Clermont county, Ohio, at a point about twenty miles distant from Cincinnati, January ist, 1833. Ilis father, John Thacker, was also a physician, whose father moved to Ohio from the State of New York at an early date. On the paternal side there exists a family record which dates back to 1750. ITis fore- fathers were highly respectable farmers in casy circum- stances. On the maternal side the family history extends to a period preceding for many years the revolt of the colonies, to a Mr. Gardner, who came from England, and purchased the island in Long Island Sound known as " Gardner's Island." His maternal grandmother, whose maiden name was Lneretia Willis, was a cousin of the wife of General
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Greene, of Revolutionary celebrity. In his earlier days he | the Chair of Anatomy in the Cincinnati College of Med- attended the common schools of his village, and also the icine and Surgery, lecturing through two terms. Al- though he taught anatomy acceptably, be resigned its pro- fessorship in consequence of the chair not being in accord- ance with his tastes. In the fall of 1867 he was made Professor of Psychology and Diseases of the Mind in the same institution, a branch of science congenial to his taste, and in whose cultivation he has expended much time and attention. In 1871, upon a reorganization of the faculty, he became Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine, vice Dr. B. S. Lawson, resigned, and has since occupied that chair. Ile has also devoted his attention closely and persistently to microscopy, and has probably the greatest number of fine lenses of eminent makers throughout the world of any private individual in the United States. Ile possesses also a very large and rich cabinet of microscopic objects, and the Medical News contains a microscopie de- partment (a need met by no other journal in the country), to which many of the most distinguished microscopists con- tribute. He is an honorary member of several microscopic societies, in Memphis, San Francisco, etc., and is a member also of various medical societies. Wittenberg College, of Springfield, Ohio. O1 the comple- tion of his general literary education, he commenced the study of medicine under the preceptorship of a second cousin, Dr. Townsend Thacker, of Goshen, Ohio, and March ist, 1856, graduated at the Miami Medical College. The day succeeding the reception of his diploma, he, with a number of other competitors, was examined in order to ascertain his fitness for an important position in the St. John's Hospital, of Cincinnati, now known as the Good Samaritan Hospital. On this occasion he was one of the two successful candidates. His stay in the hospital was, how- ever, of limited duration, for, receiving the appointment of Physician to the Il unilton County Lunatic Asylum, he at once removed to that institution. At the expiration of ten months he resigned his position in the asylum, and entered on the practice of medicine in Cincinnati, where he has since resided. While engaged in the Asylum, although nomin ally the assistant physician, the superintendence of the entire establishment devolved on him, the nominal superin- tendent not residing on the premises, and visiting the house but a few times per week, his visits averaging in duration from a half hour to an hour. During the early period of his practice he acted for a time as Secretary of the Academy of Medicine of Cincinnati, and prepared its proceedings, AY, GILBERT OTIS, Superintendent of the Ohio Institution for the education of the Deaf and Dumb at Columbus, was born November 8th, 1834, at Wadsworth, Medina county, Ohio. His father belonged to the clerical profession, and, as well as his mother, descended from a long line of sturdy Massachusetts yeomanry. They left that State at the time of the early western emigration, and he soon fell a victim to the malarial diseases of a new State. The care and training of Gilbert, his only son, devolved upon the mother, and to his education she devoted her time and energy, supporting herself and him by her own manual labor, and reserving his slender patrimony for future use. The childhood and youth of Mr. Fay were spent in her native village. His attendance at school was limited to the winter sessions, but by application and under the guid- ance of his mother, he managed to acquire a substantial knowledge of the English branches of study with thorough- ness and rapidity. As he advanced to manhood, the well- husbanded patrimony and his mother's self-denial secured. to him increased facilities for obtaining a comprehensive education. He attended successively Phillips Academy, Yale College, and Andover Seminary, and obtained in this prolonged course of study a refined, classical, and yet a thoroughly practical culture. Ile became a teacher in 1862 in the institution which has since been conducted with so much success under his charge. In 1866 he was appointed as superintendent, and had the satisfaction of witnessing the completion of the new building .and its occupation in embodying lengthy discussions from month to mouth, for publication in the medical journals. He is a ready writer, and has contributed extensively to both literary and medical journals. During the existence of the Quarterly Journal of Psychological Medicine, of New York, edited by Professor W. A. Hammond, M. D., he published in its columns many interesting and valuable articles on subjects of Psychology. Several of those contributions attracted much attention, and received highly eulogistic notices from the press-one of them afterward appearing in an English Quarterly. He has also been a contributor to the London Lancet ; and in the Monthly Microscopical Journal of Loinlon, for April, 1575, is a lengthy article written by him, copied from the journal which he at present edits, the Cincinnati Medical Vezes, on the performance of micro- scopic lenses of various powers. During the years 1861- 62, he edited the Cincinnati Medical and Surgical News, and in 1868 was made editor of the Medical Repertory, which journal he continues to edit, its name having been chinged to the Medical News. His vigorous editorial writings contributed importantly to the breaking down of the almost entire monopoly of the Cincinnati Hospital by a single medical college, and was the cause, in a great meas- ure, of the establishment by the trustees of the institution of a rule by which college professors were rendered incapa- ble of holding a position upon the hospital staff. And this was the first time in the history of the hospital that all the regular medical colleges enjoyed its clinical advantages on an equal footing. During the years 1863 -64 he held | 1868. The attendance in the school has increased from one
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hundred and tifty to four hundred, and the most gratifying ; graduated in 1833, with the degree of A. B. Shortly after results have been achieved by the methods of teaching adopted and carried out by Mr. Pay, who has proven him- self eminently qualified for the exercise of his responsible duties as superintendent. The intellectual life of the insti- tution has been drawn more nearly parallel with that of the public schools, while its domestic life has been character- ized by comfort, health and economy. The industrial system in use is rotary in its method, and is judiciously arranged and efficiently carried out. Mr. Fay has earned a high reputation for his skill in the exceedingly difficult as well as exceedingly delicate work of instructing the unfortunate youth who are incapable of speech and hearing, and has raised the institution with which he is connected to a lead. ing position for success in teaching deaf mutes. Ile was married to Adelia C. Allen, of Leominster, August 25th, 1863, who died in 1867. On April 14th ISOS, he mar- ried Mary J. Jarvis, of Massillon, Ohio.
UTI.IFF, IION. MILTON, Lawyer and ex-Chief- Justice of the State of Ohio, was born, October 16th, 1866, in Trumbull county, Ohio. Ile is a son of the late Samuel and Ruth (Granger) Sut- liff, who removed to western New York from Connecticut, and from thence to the Western Re- serve in 1804, and settled on a farm in Trumbull county. His father was a farmer of intelligence and limited educa- tion, but understood surveying and had taught school. Ilis mother was a cousin of Gideon Granger, Postmaster-General under Jefferson. Though her early opportunities for educa- tion were very limited, she was a woman of remarkable memory and extensive reading. ller character was marked by a devout piety and great resolution. Iler father fell in the war for independence, and her husband also had been a sollier in the same cause, when only a boy of sixteen. They had six children, all sons, four of whom became law- yers, and achieved distinction in their profession. The means of his parents being limited, Judge Sutliff received his early education in the district school, and by private in- struction from a clergyman in the vicinity, from whom he acquired some knowledge of mathematics and the classical languages, paying for his tuition by manual labor. When he was seventeen years old, he taught a private school in Ohio, and after a few years went to the Southern States to tech, remaining and teaching for a time in Mississippi and Louisiana. While teaching there, at his leisure hours he continued his reading law, which he had before commenced. I lis friends there offered favorable inducements to him for a permanent residence in that sunny clime, but his northern education and settled aversion to the institution of slavery, and a desire to perfect his education, induced him to re- turn to Ohio. Upon his return he entered Western Reserve College in 1830, recited in two classes the first year, and
entering that institution, the subject of the abolition of American slavery, which had been advocated by Lundy in a paper, The Genius of Emancipation, for a time published by him in Baltimore, and afterwards revived or continued by Garrison in a small paper, The Liberator, at Boston, in 1830 (and some numbers of which had been sent to the faculty), had been introduced into the college by the presi- dent of the college, Charles B. Storrs, and Professors Eliezer Wright and Beriah Green, men of eminent ability, approv- ing and advocating the immediate abolition of slavery. The trustees and other members of the faculty opposed these views, with most of the students. Sutliff and a few others earnestly approved. The opposition and prejudice by the opponents to abolition, as then termed, on the part of the trustees of the college and the public generally, at that time, 1833, had become so intense that the president and those professors resigned their places rather than compro- mise their sentiments. Upon the commencement occasion of 1833, the few anti-slavery men then present formed an Anti-slavery Association, with the special object to dissemi- nate intelligence, and enlist an interest in the anti-slavery subject throughout the Reserve. Sutliff, who, by his knowl- edge of law, and experience in discussing the question in debates with other students, had, for some time, been thus regarded by the faculty and students as a very logical and able advocate, volunteered his services to disseminate intel- ligence by lectures and publications on the subject of slavery throughout all the counties on the Reserve. Ilis offer was gladly accepted by the Association, but they had no funds, and Sutliff was then poor. Hle, however, borrowed money, and proceeded to redeem his pledge, without loss of time- a notable exception to the saying, " Who goeth a warfare at any time at his own charges?" The task undertaken re- quired not only ability, with candor and courage, but a pa- tient perseverance. The undertaking, supposed to require but a few weeks, required very unexpectedly a full year for its completion, During that time Suthiff, journeying on horseback, effected anti-slavery organizations throughout every county on the Reserve, attended with other pioneers at Philadelphia, in December, 1833, to form the National Anti-slavery Society, and being appointed by that society, debated the relative merits of the Anti-slavery and Coloniz- ation Societies with the late Walter Forward before the Anniversary held at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in May, 1834, and lectured on the subject at Cannonsburgh and Washing- ton Colleges, and discussed the merits of the subject for some days with the faculty of Washington College in that State, the college exercises being suspended by the faculty for that purpose. Ile, at an expense of a year's time and $200 and up, and expenses, without asking or receiving any remuneration, completed his undertaking. Then he obtained admittance to the bar, in 1834, and at once settled at Warren, and engaged in the practice of his profession. The battle for freedom was afterwards continued, with
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Galaxy Pub. C. Philadelphia.
William Beck
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