USA > Ohio > The Biographical encyclopedia of Ohio of the nineteenth century. Pt. 1 > Part 52
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OLMES, CHARLES C., one of the leading to- bacco merchants and business men of Cincinnati, was born March 28th, 1828, in Shenandoah county, Virginia. When he was but seven years of age his parents removed to Ohio, where, in the country school, on the farm, and at the shoemaker's
bench, he passed the next fifteen years of his life. At the age of twenty-two he had learned a trade and was ready to start in business for himself. Accordingly in 1850 he opened a shoe store and shop in New Vienna, Ohio. This business he continued with varying success until 1856. During this year he went to Washington, Ohio, and opened a dry goods and furnishing house, still continuing his trade of shoes, and met a fair degree of success. Being disatis. fied with these undertakings, they were abandoned in IS5S, and his family moved to a farm in Bracken county, Ken- tucky. This county is in the tobacco-growing region of the State. Ilis attention was now quite largely turned to the culture of tobacco, in which business he continued for twelve seasons. ILiving by long experience and careful investiga- tion now become thoroughly acquainted with tobacco and the wants and opportunities of the trade, and being anxious for a wider and more profitable field of exertion, in 1857, mainly through his agency, the Farmers' Commission To- bacco Warehouse was opened in Cincinnati. In 1870, con- cluding to give up the farm entirely, he removed his family to Newport, Kentucky, and devoted all his energies to the interests of his business in Cincinnati. The house of which Mr. Holmes is now a member, under the linn-name of
histories of any business house in the city. In 1857 it was started as the " Farmers' House," with forty two members, having a regularly organized board of directors and excen- tive officers, The chief instigator as well as most active manager of this movement was the subject of this sketch. The movement itself was one by which the farmers hoped to be able to dispose of their crops to the best advan- tage, and in the best possible way represent their own inter- ests in the great tobacco market which Cincinnati had now become. A vast organization like this, made up of the actual producers of tobacco, selling their crops through their own appointed commissioners, and so signally departing from the ordinary routine, was not destined to glide smoothly on its way. Obstacles were found everywhere interposed, and meeting a hardly tolerable success in two years, passed into the hands of four of its members, and the firm-name of Farmers' Commission Tobacco Warehouse was changed to that of P. Il. Clayton & Co. After some other changes the house settled into the present fum of lohnes, Black & Millens. Its business is exclusively commission, and it now ranks not only as one of the most successful and extensive in its business transactions, but as one of the most deserving of consideration in the history of the Cincinnati tobacco trade. The old farmers' movement was vastly instrumental in ad- vancing and liberalizing the tobacco trade, and constitutes a page in the history of that business in Cincinnati. Mr. Holmes is one of the most extensively known and prosperous men in the tobacco trade in Cincinnati. Ile is in the prime of life, with the problem of his own success now solved. Few men are able to present a record of a more honorable and active business career. On September 13th, 1855, hc was married to Alice Nugent, of Ohio, and has a family of five daughters and one son, all living.
EDGE, FRANCIS, Manufacturer, was born in Staffordshire, England, Jannary 12th, 1825. Ile is of English parentage, and was educated in Stone, Staffordshire, England. While in his seventeenth year he was placed to learn his trade, and served an apprenticeship of five years under Joseph Whitworth, of Manchester, England. August 3d, 1848, he sailed from Liverpool for this country, and finally, on the following September 30th, settled in Zanesville, Ohio. During the ensuing six months, he was employed in setting up machinery for the Ohio Iron Company (formerly the Zanesville Rolling Mills). Ile then associated himself in partnership with John 11. Jones, and for cighteen months prosecuted business in the Blocksom Foundry, which had been rented by the partne's. He subsequently served eight years as foreman for 11. & F. Blandy. The following year was spent in the saw mill business in Arkansas. He then found employment in " getting up " machinery, designs, and
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drawings for portable engines, for Owens, Lane & Dyer, Hamilton, Ohio. In 1857 he designed, built and bought the first engine in Zanesville, Ohio. In IS58 he became a member of the firm of Griffith, Ebent & Co., which, after the Lipse of two years, became Griffith & Wedge. While in the employ of II. & F. Blandy he built not only the first loco. motive in Zinesville, but also the first portable engine. He Ins achieved business success in the face of many embar- rasing difficulties, and by steady persistence and industry hai secured the legitimate reward of enterprise and labor. Hle is a stockholder in the Brown Manufacturing Company and also in the Z inesville Woollen Company. He was mar. ried, July 29th, 1846, in Manchester, England, to Nichola J. Weild.
6 ULICK, GEORGE W., Lawyer, was born in Bata- vin, Clermont county, Ohio, June 29th, 1833. Ile was the fourth child in a family consisting of eight children, whose parents were Lott Ilulick and Rada (Dimmitt) Hlulick. His father, a native of New Jersey, followed through life the coopering trade and abo agricultural pursuits, He settled in Cler- mont county, Ohio, in 1814, and has since continued to re- side there. His mother was born near Batavia, Clermont county. His maternal grandfather, Ezekiel Dimmitt, a na- tive of Virginia, was one of the early pioneers of this county, and was intimately identified with the early history and publie enterprises of Clermont county. Until the year 1851 he worked on a farm in the summer season, and through the winter months attended school. Ile then attended Farmers' College, near Cincinnati, and after passing through a four year,' course of literary study, graduated from that institu- tion in July, 1855. He thereupon entered the law office of Judge Friback, in Batavia, and while teaching school during the winter, applied himself to the study of legal text-books. This system of training he sustained assiduously for two years, then passed a thorough examination, and in 1857 was admitted to the bar. He subsequently opened an office in Batavia, and there entered actively on the practice of his profession. In 1858 he was a candidate for the Prosecuting Attorneyship, but with the balance of his ticket was defeated. In October, 1861, he was married to Josephine W. Harri- son, a native of Cincinnati, who at the time of their marriage was residing in St. Louis. In the fall of 1863 he was elected Prohate Judge of Clermont county, and held the office for three years. At the outbreak of the war of the rebellion he entered the army of the United States, and ac- companied to the scene of operations Company E of the 22d Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry. With this force he was then connected for four months, and, having enlisted as a private, was promoted to a Captaincy before the expira- tion of his term. He afterward raised and organized the 4Ist Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and was selected to occupy its Coloneley. That position, however, he was
compelled to resign, his duties an the bench demanding the major portion of his time and attention. He has acted at various periods as a member of the local School Board, and is deeply interested in moral and educational reform. As a practitioner and as an expounder of the law he possesses equally the confidence and admiration of the bar and of the general community, as is evidenced by an extensive practice.
OYLE, JOHN HARDY, Attorney-at-Law, was born on a farm near Somerset, Perry county, Ohio, April 23d, 1843. Ilis parents, who were among the earliest settlers of the Maumee valley, were married at Providence, on the Maumee river, in 1835, or thereabout. They subsequently moved to Perry county, Ohio, and from there, in 1846, removed to Toledo in the same State, where they have since resided. lle was educated primarily in the public schools of Toledo, and completed his literary education at the University in Granville, Ohio. Upon relinquishing school life he entered the office of his uncle, who was then, 1859, Recorder of Lucas county, Ohio, and acted as his deputy for two years. At the expiration of that time he commenced the reading of law in 1863, entered the office of Edward Bissell, and in 1865 was admitted to the bar and to a partnership with his preceptor. The firm thus constituted still exists, and is a leading one in Toledo, where there are to-day more than one hundred resident legal practitioners. Ile has exhibited great skill and well-directed energy in the conduct of various important cases. On one occasion he successfully conducted a suit for the occupants of one hundred and sixty acres of land in the centre of Toledo, valued at over one million of dollars, the title to which was involved in the suit ; the claimants were the heirs of one Ford, a privateer in the war of 1812, who was then living at Fell's Point, Baltimore, Maryland. The case hinged on the legitimacy of a daughter who, the claimants alleged, was born while the aforesaid Ford was a prisoner of war in Plymouth, Eng- land, and was illegitimate. He spent a large portion of the spring and winter of 1874 in Maryland and the District of Columbia in taking testimony in this important case. The final result established the legitimacy of the child, and hence the title of his clients. Political office of a partisan nature he has never either songht or accepted. He was one of the organizers of the present excellent public free library of Toledo, and for many years served efficiently as Chairman of its Lecture Committee. In connection with Ilon. De Witt Davis, of Milwaukee, he organized also the Northwestern Lecture Bureau in 1865, in Chicago, Illinois. He has fre- quently contributed articles on law and literary subjects to the magazines of the country, and is the possessor of a varied and valuable fund of information of a very diversified char- acter. The Republican party has always commanded his
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sympathies and support. He was married, October 6th, | Hamilton & Dayton Railroad. Ile married, October 20th, 1858, to Alice Fuller Skinner, daughter of Dr. S. W. Skin- 1847, Mary E. Morehouse, of Newark, New Jersey. ner, of Windsor, Connecticut, now of Toledo, Ohio,
CRIBNER, CHARLES HARVEY, Lawyer, was born on the 20th of October, 1826, near Norwalk, Connecticut, and is of English descent. While still a child he removed with his parents to Newark, New Jersey, and it was in the common schools of that city that he acquired the rudiments of his edue ition. In 1838 his parents removed to the vil- lage of Homer, in Licking county, Ohio, and there in the district schools his education was continued. Going to school was scarcely the chief occupation of his boyhood, however. Ile was a farmer's boy, and his attendance at school was intermittent, as that of a farmer's boy is apt to be. So, working on the farm in summer and going to school in winter, he passed his time until he was eighteen years of age. Then he left the farm, and gave up the dis- triet school. Ile went, at that time, as an apprentice to learn the trade of saddler and harness-maker. Not that he had made up his own mind to piss the remainder of his days in a saddler's shop. He had marked ont a different career for himself, and wrought industriously to fit himself for it. Ile worked hard at the acquisition of his mechanical trade during the day, and then at night he worked jast as hard studying law. Ilis night work was so effective that, in October, 1848, he was admitted to the bar at Mount Ver- non, as a practising lawyer. He commenced the practice of his profession at Mount Vernon in the year 1849, and in 1850 he entered into a professional partnership with II. B. Curtis, of that place. This partnership continued until June, 1869, when the firm separated, and he removed to Toledo. There he entered into a law partnership with F. II. Hurd. Ile has remained at Toledo ever since, and his partnership with Mr. Hurd still continues, the style of the firm being Seribner, Hurd & Scribner. His success in his profession has been great, and he is recognized as one of the leading lawyers of Toledo. Daring the twenty-seven years since he entered the profession, he has been engaged in some of the notable legal cases that have come before the courts in which he has practised, in Toledo and elsewhere. Politi- cally he is a Democrat, and in October, 1867, he was elected a member of the Ohio State Senate from the district com- prising Holmes, Wayne, Knox and Morrow counties, While in the Senate he was Chairman of the Judiciary Com- mittee. In the spring of 1873 he was elected a member of the Constitutional Convention. He was also nominated for Supreme Judge on the same ticket with Governor Allen, and was defeated by only a small majority. The practice of his profession does not absorb all his strength and energy. Ile is also Director of the Toledo Mutual Life Insurance Company, and is attorney at Toledo for the Cincinnati,
URRAY, ORSON SMITHI, a Teacher and Incul- cator of Morality and Philanthropy, was born in Orwell, Vermont, September 23, 1806. Ilis paternal progenitors, (Murray and Plum, ) were of Scotch and Scotch- Irish origin ; his maternal, (Bascom and Stevens, ) Welch and English. Ilis parents, Jonathan Murray and Roselinda Bascom, went to Vermont from Guilford, Connecticut, and Newport, New Hampshire. He was educated into the Congregationalist and Roger Williams. Baptist religions ; and was baptized into the church of the latter, at the age of fifteen. He inherited an organization, and was nursed and fostered into a thirst, fer knowledge. Was the oldest of eleven children ; and his parents were unable to afford him more than common school and limited academie opportunities for learning, Ilis inspira- tions, his desire for knowledge, his aspirations after attain- ments in scholarship and useful learning, received from his parents, were stimulated, strengthened and enlarged, when he was seven years old, by Silas Wright, who was then his school-teacher, Ile was occupied with school- learning, school-teaching and farming work, during his minority ; and thus occupied for himself till he had a wife and two children. After, by his own energies, carrying him- self through a course of studies in Castleton and Shoreham academies, and receiving a license as a Baptist preacher, he purchased the Vermont Telegraph, the Baptist paper for the State, and published it, at Brandon, under the patronage of the denomination, making his first issue as editor and pub- lisher, October 1, 1835. Among leading objects in this undertaking were, the moralizing and humanizing of the Christian church and world, as in relation to slavery, human slaughter, rum, tobacco and licentiousness. Ile had been among the first, if not the first, publicly to advocate total abstinence from all alcoholic liquors as beverages for people in health, and especially in the spring of life. This was done through the Castleton Statesman and Vermont Tele- graph, previously to his purchase of the latter. He after- ward became convinced, and taught, that bad eating is as great an evil as bad drinking; and exemplified his doctrine by several years of faithful practice, in refraining from ani- mal food-in accordance with the views of Epicurus and Sylvester Graham ; but became convinced that any desirable change in this regard could only be effected gradually. Ile was the procurer of the passage, by the Vermont Legis- lature, of the first resolution by a State Legislature, instruct- ing Senators and requesting Representatives in Congress, to use their endeavors for the abolition of slavery and the trade in the District of Columbia, and the suppression of the inter-State traffic. He assisted, as the only delegate from Vermont, in the formation of the American Anti- Slavery So- ciety, in Philadelphia, in December, 1833; and in the
Ygrownin the Gold - Kurtidy. the Remedy Onson SeMurray,
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spring following organized, in Vermont, the first State Society auxiliary thereto. He sympathized and co-operated with John R. MeDowal, in his endeavors to expose and do away with libertinism and prostitution in general, and in the church in particular. At the end of six years publishing of the Telegraph as a religious paper, he parted with his re- ligious brethren, for want of agreement in faith and practice -in the use of means for human enlargement and general improvement. He published the Telegraph two years longer in the interests of morality-of humanity. When Horace Greeley, Albert Brisbane, George Ripley, William Henry Channing, and others were advocating Fourierism, he gave in his adhesion to what seemed to him the more beneficent philosophy advocated and practiced by Robert Owen. January 1, 1844, he started the Regenerator, a weekly journal, at 29 Ann street, New York, under the motto-"Ignorance the Evil-Knowledge the Remedy." At the end of six months, he removed to Ohio, and published in a log-cabin, on Fruit- Hills farm, in Warren county, till March, 1856. He was prevented continuance in publishing, by the death of his oldest son, Carlos, who had just arrived at maturity ; whose assistance as a practical printer, as a sympathizer in his father's advance-views and as a useful and promising writer, was indispensable to success, against the odds he had to contend with in surrounding and attend- ing adverse circumstances. During all these twenty years of publishing, except the six months in the city of New York, he clung to the soil, from which, as much as possible, to obtain his bread -- that he might the better maintain his rectitude, his fidelity to his convictions, as a public teacher and exemplar. During the past autumn, (1875,) a visiting friend was inquisitive to know how to define, or designate, Mr. Murray's position as in relation to existing religions. Ilis inquiring friend was permitted to apply to his case, if he pleased, the term, Radical Protestant-his belief being that to define any religion is to destroy it for any good pur- pose ;- just as M. D. Conway declared, in one of his late lectures in Cincinnati, that to define a god is to destroy it- a belief which Mr. Murray has, in substance, entertained and taught much longer and plainer than has Mr. Conway. Mr. Murray accepts, takes and carries to its legitimate con- clusions, the old-time pulpit-preaching-not yet altogether given up by religionists -- that religion and morality are in- imical, antagonistical : that the works of the moralist are preventive of the works of the religionist-and so the works of the religionist must be preventive of the works of the moralist : that religion and morality lead into parting-off paths, separated by an impassable gulf; into adverse ways, to opposite results : that it is important to hold up to view, and to demonstrate these distinctions : that religion, in ac- cordance with the etymologieal meaning of the word, in the heathen original, ties, tethers, binds, enslaves : that it re- quires human sacrifice; subsists on human ignorance; in- flames passions, excites prejudices, creates ill will and bad neighborhood ; causes strifes, hates, jealousies, enmities, from time to time addressed protests and remonstrances to
persecutions, wars and human destruction :- whereas morality is applied good will; is practiced humanity; is charity, peace, enlightenment and enlargement, elevation and salvation. That, possessing brains, practicing muscular und intellectual activity and listening to the voice of a morally cultivated conscience, " a man is a man; "-that- these qualifications and actions constitute true manhood and positive, genuine, needed usefulness. That evidence is more and better than authority : that the true teaching is by the presentation of evidence. That to be taught and gov- erned by authority is to be led and to stumble in darkness : while to be taught and governed by evidence, is to be led and to walk in light. That fear is a bad, vitiating motive ; a brutal restraint, necessitated only by ignorance; and that its exercise tends to the augmentation and perpetuation of the ignorance. In regard to creative, controlling, governing power-ruling, regulating force-he holds and teaches that where the power is there the responsibility is : that creators are to be held accountable for their works of creation ; that parents are to be held accountable for, and to, their children ; that the controllers of human interests-the orderers, the regulators, the disposers of human destinies-are to be held accountable for their use of power. He derives the highest motives for human improvement from the purest, most un- adulterated materialism-the idea being that as the organiza- tion is, so the manifestation must be: that the purity, the excellence, the goodness, of the propagated, depends on these qualities in the propagators : that as are the parents so will be the children-all attending circumstances being equal-first materially, then morally and intellectually- first by creation, then by culture. That it is absurdity, is confusion-is putting darkness for light-to think of purify- ing bodies by attempting to purify "minds," "souls," " spirits,"-purifying organizations by attempting to purify their manifestations : that such is the work of undertaking to purify poisoned fountains by purifying the poisoned waters which flow from them-to purify poisonous trees by purifying the fruits borne by them. That this materialistic teaching and practice is prevention ; and that without this, all curative processes-religious or other-will be futile en- deavor, fatal illusion. That here-on this materialistic basis-is the only ground of charity : that all human beings are throughout their entire existences, the creatures of cir- cunstances; while more or less they are also the creators of circumstances. Mr. Murray has for many years been an advocate of the cquality of woman with man before the law ; and of equal virtue for law-making-the equal virtue of morality and intellectuality, of talents and attainments in these respects-regardless of sex. His views in this regard were presented in writing for the consideration of the late Ohio Constitutional Convention. Against the religious movement, which has been going on during the past ten years, for the impairment, the vitiation, the corruption, of our National and State Constitutions and statutes, he has
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Congress, the Ohio Legislature, and the State Constitutional | Fremont was in command. Early in 1862 the regiment Convention. Mr. Murray is an original thinker ; a vigorous, effective writer ; a clear, forcible, demonstrative reasoner. In person, he is tall, sinewy and energetic. Now in his seventieth year, he manifests no abatement of interest in en- terprises for human improvement ; no impairment of mem- ory ; no lack of intellectual force. In 1827, Mr. Murray married Catherine Maria Higgins, of the Baptist Society, in Orwell, where they both had grown up. They lived to- gether thirty-three years, till her death in 1860. She was a woman of sterling qualities-of inherited and cultivated ex- cellencies. They had nine children. Six-(Carlos Orson, Marsena Messer, Charles Burleigh, Rachel Robinson, Rose- linda Bascom and Ichabod Iliggins)-grew to maturity. All these, except Carlos, have married and are raising fam- ilies of children. In 1865, Mr. Murray married Ianthe Poor, whose sympathies with his tastes and teachings, and whose personal, practical loving-kindnesses he recognizes aud appreciates as protractive of his days of enjoyment, and helpful in any remaining usefulness.
OYES, HON. EDWARD FOLLENSBEE, Gov- ernor of Ohio from 1872 to 1874, was born at Ilaverhill, Massachusetts, on October 3d, 1832, and is the son of Theodore and Ilannalı Noyes. At three years of age he was left an orphan and was then taken charge of by his grandparents at East Kingston, New Hampshire. At twelve years of age, on the death of his grandfather, he was taken into the family of his guardian, Joseph Iloyt, of Newton, New Hampshire. At thirteen the youth took care of twenty head of cattle, worked on the farm in summer, and in winter made a daily pilgrimage of four miles and daily cut and piled his half-cord of swamp maples. At fourteen years of age he was apprenticed as a printer in the office of the Morning Star, published at Dover, New Hampshire, where he re. mained four years and then, desiring a liberal education, prepared for and entered Dartmouth College, where he graduated high in his class in 1857. At this period he be- gan the study of law at Exeter, New Ilamphire, in the office of Stickney & Tuck; the latter, Amos Tuck, was for many years a member of Congress of note. Accidentally visiting Cincinnati in the winter of 1857-58 he was induced to re- main, where he continued the study of law in the office of Tilden, Kairden & Curwen. In 1858 he began the practice of his profession in Cincinnati. Business opened auspi- ciously, and the way to success seemed short, when the tocsin of war sounding in 1861, he volunteered in the service of the Union. On the 20th of August the 39th Ohio In- fintry took the field with John Groesbeck as Colonel, A. W. Gilbert as Lieutenant-Colonel, and Edward F. Noyes as Major. This regiment was sent to Missouri, where General
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