USA > Ohio > The Biographical encyclopedia of Ohio of the nineteenth century. Pt. 1 > Part 9
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for six years-by almost unerring judgment and never-failing truthfulness to his trust. lle was severe where severity was demanded; but he could and did temper justice with mercy when there was a fair chance that the result would be better for society. His mistakes were very few, if any, in dispos- ing of cases. Ilis record as Judge of the Police Court is a bright paragraph in the history of the Queen City of the West, no other person having remained in that office so many years and given such universal satisfaction. Since his re- tirement from the bench Judge Straub has pursued the practice of his profession.
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MEDLEV, ANDERSON, M. D., was born, July 31st, 1810, at Batavia, Clermont county, Ohio, a spot which in that early time bore the name of Durhamtown. lle began life at sixteen as a cabinet-maker, and worked at this trade until his twenty-third year. llis father, Aaron Smedley, was a prominent tanner, and died in 1819 at llamilton, Butler county, Ohio. He was an early settler in that section, and stood in high estimation for his purity of character and for his public spirit. His wife was Joanna Southard, a daughter of Hezekiah Southard, and was born at Browns- ville, Pennsylvania, when her father with his family was moving from New Jersey to Flemingsburg, Kentucky. She became the mother of eight children, and is still living at the advanced age of eighty-five years. The early education of Anderson was of that limited quantity and narrowness of range obtainable in a log school house; but during his ap- prenticeship he made valuable use of all his leisure moments, and acquired at these odd moments a profound knowledge of the science of medicine. In 1833 he entered upon its practice in Fairfield, Indiana, where he remained two years, and then made his residence in Franklin, Warren county, Ohio, and thence, after three years, he went to Carthage, Hamilton county, Ohio. He is now a resident of Cummins- ville, Cincinnati, and has continued with general success in that profession which he acquired by persevering energy. In 1844 he began a course of lectures at the Ohio Medical College, and from this institution he took a high degree in 1846. For three years he was Physician-in-Chief for the Hamilton County Infirmary. In 1831 he was married to Caroline Penton, a native of Pennsylvania, and the fruit of this happy wedlock was eight children. His career, crowned now with distinction, is that of a self-made man. He was always a close student, and avoided all political affiliations and associations that tended to hinder him in his progress towards perfection in medical science. He has at all times manifested a philanthropie spirit, and has especially inter- ested himself in the cause of popular education. Ile has served repeatedly as a Controller of the public schools. He was an earnest advocate and supporter of the war against
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rebellion, and gave one son to his country. This son was | the Tennessee, composed of the 11th, 13th, 15th and 16th Daniel P. Smedley, a Surgeon of the Ohio volunteer infantry, who died from disease contracted while in service.
ICKENLOOPER, ANDREW, Brigadier-General United States Volunteers, was born, of mixed German and Irish ancestry, at Hudson, Ohio, August 30th, 1836. In 1846 the family removed to Cincinnati, where Andrew ended his school education at old Woodward, afterward entered the counting-room of the Weekly Despatch ; was then for a time in an insurance office; and at the age of seventeen en- tered the City Civil Engineer's office as rodman. In 1857 he received the appointment of City Surveyor, which office he held at the outbreak of the war. He recruited an artil- lery company, originally known as Hickenlooper's Cinein- nati Battery, which first saw service under Fremont at Jeffer- son City. On March, 1862, the battery was transferred to General Grant's army at Pittsburgh Landing, and did such excellent service there that three days after the battle its commander was promoted to division commander of artil- lery. Ife served in this capacity until after the battles of luka and Corinth, when he was especially honored in the official report of the latter battle, and on the 26th of October ordered'by General Grant to report for staff duty to General MePherson. Ile was at first made Chief of Ordnance and Artillery, and then in February, when about to start down to Vicksburg, he was made Chief Engineer of the 17th Army Corps. In the siege of Vicksburg he conducted the siege operations in front of the corps with such signal ability as to win the warmest approval from MePherson himself, whose own abilities as an engineer were of the highest order. Ile wrote of him as exhibiting " untiring energy and skill in conducting reconoissances, making maps of the route passed over, and superintending the repairs and construction of bridges, etc., and exposing himself constantly night and day." In this siege the first mine that was made and ex- ploded under the enemy's works was made under Hicken- looper's directions. AAfter the fall of Vicksburg the " Board of Honor " of the 17th Corps awarded him the gold medal with the inscription, " Pittsburgh Landing, Siege of Corinth, luka, Corinth, l'ort Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Ihills, Vicksburg." When McPherson took command of the Army of the Tennessee he was made Judge Advocate on his staff, and a little later Chief of Artillery for the De- partment and Army of the Tennessee. In this position he accompanied his chief through the Atlanta campaign. After the death of MePherson he returned to his duties as Judge Advocate, and a little later accepted the position of Assistant Inspector General of the 17th Army Corps, which carried with it the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. In the spring of 1865 he was brevetted Brigadier-General of Volunteers, and assigned to the command of the oldest brigade in the Army of
Iowa Veteran Volunteers, with which he served until the close of the war, when he returned to Cincinnati and formed a partnership with R. C. Philips, civil engineer. In the follow- ing year he was appointed United States Marshal for the Southern District of Ohio. Generals Grant, Sherman, How- ard, Logan, Leggett and Belknap, when his application was made for this office, gave the very highest of testimonials ; Leggett said, " McPherson regarded him as his model of- ficer; " while Howard wrote, "As a military engineer I never knew his equal." In January, 1871, he resigned the office of Marshal, and in May was appointed City Civil En- gineer ; served one term, was unanimously re-elected for a second, but shortly resigned to accept the Vice-Presidency of the Cincinnati Gas Light & Coke Company. The career of General Hickenlooper has been remarkable. Ile was in eighteen distinct battles and many skirmishes, and received not a mark : and this war record closed in his twenty-ninth year.
CHEY, JOIIN 11., Banker, was born in Jones- town, Leb :. non county, Pennsylvania, on Septem- ber Ist, 1802. Ilis parents were John and Elizabeth (Hoover) Achey, people in moderate circumstances, who followed the quiet pursuit of farming. After receiving a good rudimentary education in Eng- lish and German, Mr. Achey was apprenticed to the trade of carpenter, which he followed for a short time after the expiration of his mdenture, and then engaged in the lumber business, and also in mercantile trading. In the spring of 1838 he moved to Ohio, settling at Dayton, where he en- gaged for twelve or fifteen years extensively in the lumber business. He became a Director in the old Dayton Branch of the Ohio State Bank, which in 1865 was converted into the Dayton National Bank. He has been a Director in the new institution, and for the last three years its President. Soon after settling in Dayton he joined the Masonic order and passed all the degrees, For twenty two years he was Commander of the Knights Templar in Dayton, and for two years, I$57 and 1858, Grand Commander of the State of Ohio. He has taken a lively interest in the cause of Ma- sonry, and has been a delegate to most of their conventions. A strict Methodist in his religious belief, he has taken a special interest in the degree of Knights Templar, which none but those accepting the orthodox view of the Christian religion can take. This degree he conferred on nearly four Imindred Masons during the twenty two years of his com- mandership in Dayton. Ile has also been active and liberal in establishing lodges throughout the smaller rural towns. He married Mary Rife, of Dauphin county, Pennsylvania, with whom he has had three children, one son and two daughters. Only one now survives, a daughter, the wife of Dr. Thomas I. Neal, of Dayton. In his seventy-third year Mr. Achey is still a man of great vitality and enjoys excel-
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lent health. He is found every day at his place of business, and his step is as light and his form as straight as most men's at fifty.
NTIIONY, GENERAL CHARLES, Lawyer, was born in Richmond, Virginia, March 31st, 1798. Ilis parents were Joseph and Rhoda Anthony, both members of the Society of Friends, who re- moved to Clinton county, Ohio, in ISHI, and en. gaged in the occupation of farming. Their son was carefully educated and sent to Cincinnati to study law, where he was admitted to the bar about 1820. In 1824 he removed to Springfield, where his superior acquirements soon gave him position at the head of the bar. Ile was especially distinguished as a jury advocate. He was three times a member of the lower branch of the Legislature, and was chosen Speaker. In 1833 he was also elected to repre- sent his district in the Senate, where he served one term. Ile was a Grand Master in the order of Free Masons, and from an early period of his life a devout and active member of the Presbyterian Church. While a member of the Legislature he succeeded in reforming the policy of the State in the management of its prisons, securing all the re- forms and committing the government to humanitarian and reformatory principles in its treatment of the criminal class. Ile derived his military title from his connection with the State militia. General Anthony was twice married; on March 23d, 1820, to Elizabeth Evans, of Cincinnati, who died in 1841, leaving four children and having lost five; in 1844 he married Mary E. Ilulsey, of Springfield; with her he had seven children, four of whom, together with their mother, survived him. He died in Springfield, May 10th, 1862, and was buried with distinguished honors by the Masonie fraternity and the Clark county bar.
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travelled until the death of the latter in Trenton, New Jersey. The learned Dr. John McKelway having decided that this brother had died from the " abuse of mercury," Alva was attracted towards the study of medicine. But, wanting means, he accepted the charge of the female de- partment of the Trenton Academy. In 1819 he was raised to the position of teacher of the higher English branches in the male department. During his occupancy of this post he pursued in his leisure hours the study of medicine under the mentorship of Dr. McKelway. While thus studying he saw what he considered well-founded objections to the allo- pathic principles and treatment. In 1820 he attended a course of lectures on botany ; and acquired a good knowl- edge of the French language by studying it himself and teaching the English to two of Bonaparte's generals. In 1821 he was compelled to travel to recover his broken health. On falling and fainting one day he discovered a simple method for the prevention or the relief of syncope, viz., simply to lay, on the discovery of the first symptom, his head much lower than his body. To defray his expenses while travelling he procured subscribers to " Burritt's Ilis- tory of the United States." In September he went to Rich- mond, Virginia, in the hope that a warmer climate would prove beneficial to him. There he united to teaching in Mrs. Broome's Female Seminary and to tuition in private families the labor of aiding in the publication of the Southern Religious Telegraph, and the preparation of the astronomical calculations for the " Franklin Almanac." In 1827 he opened a Female Seminary, which he successfully conducted until 1832, when the ravages of the cholera rendered its closing a prudential measure. IIe treated this disease on the Thomsonian plan, which proved unusually effectual. Having married in 1829 Harriet Ann Charter, of Richmond, whom he afterward resened from death by the same treat. ment, after allopathy had completely failed to relieve her, his practice in that system and his superior success arrayed against him a large antagonistie medical fraternity, a part of whose policy was the withdrawal of their daughters from his seminary. Ile then closed it and devoted his attention exclusively to the practice of medicine, in the interest and upon the merits of which he delivered in Baltimore in 1834 two lectures. These being published in The Georgia Federal Union made converts of Dr. Deloney and many others, and led to the establishment of the present Botanic Medical College at Macon. In 1835 he was invited to become the editor of the Thomsonian Recorder, in Columbus, Ohio, to establish an infirmary and to instru ct others in the new prac- tice. Meeting with unusual encouragement, he obtained from the Legislature in 1839 a charter for a new college, but not without bitter opposition, which he specdily swept away. In May, 1841, he was made by Professor John P'. ITarison the subject of a bitter attack at the close of the session of the Ohio Medical Association, but he successfully repelled it in a discourse delivered the next evening to an
'URTIS, ALVA, A. M., M. D., son of Chauncey Curtis, a soldier of the Revolution, was born in Columbia, Coos county, New Hampshire, June 34, 1797. Ilis mother was Mary Anne Burnside, daugliter of James Burnside, of Northumberland, same county. Ile received from his parents an efficient primary education, and by unusual industry and economy paid for his own boarding and tuition in later years. In 1815 he became a teacher on Great Neck, Long Island, where, in performing the duties of his position and in per- sonal research into literature and the sciences, he passed three years. During this time he acquired a good knowl- edge of the Latin langnage and the higher mathematics. Though poorly paid he saved enough money there to carry him through a two-years' course in Union College, but was deprived of this long-desired benefit by the illness of his . brother Abner, a student of the institution, with whom he fimmense assemblage (see Botanico Medical Recorder, vol.
A. Curtis 3
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x., no. 1). In the same year the Legislature transferred the Botanico-Medical College to Cincinnati, where in 1848-19 the institution had a faculty of 6 professors and $3 students in the winter se sion and go in the spring, and the Recorder had 2250 subscribers. From the commencement of the college to that time Dr. Curtis had been the sole proprietor of the institution; had furnished all its means and facilities for its operations, and obtained the aid of its professors by prying them seven-tenths of the proceeds of the tuition. By their promise to aid him all they could in conducting it according to his plans, the professors persuaded him to sell to each of them a sixth of the property of the college, and the right to an equal power with him in conducting its affairs. Though they failed to pay for those rights, they resolved to request him to leave the buildings, the infirmary and the paper to the management of the other professors, and to travel and lecture for the benefit of all. Believing also that they could prosper better elsewhere, they left in 1851 the building on his hands, and commenced their lectures in another part of the city. Thus deprived of the means to pay the balances due on his property, Dr. Curtis leased it to K. Winne for a hotel, on terms which would have en- abled him to retain it and sustain the college. But two se- vere fires, the failure of Winne, and of his successor, Young, to pay the rent, and the closing for a year by the sheriff of the building till the seized furniture of Young should be sold, caused the failure of Dr. Curtis to save the building, and to prevent the loss of so much other property that he has never been able to recover his pecuniary condition. But the before-named professors totally failing, Dr. Curtis resumed lectures in the old Cincinnati College, on Walnut street, above Fourth, employing professors as at first, and paying all expenses, till October, 1855, when the number of students was forty-two, and of professors four. Having given to these professors, on their promise to harmonize with him, as he had given to others, the balance of power in the institution, for the purpose of devoting his spare time to the labor of endowing the college on the scholarship plan, he soon had the mortification to see it sinking as be- fore. In 1858 he resigned his professorship and accepted a position in the Ohio Female College as teacher of physi ology, physical geography, astronomy and the French lan- guage. In 1859, the professors of the college having had some trouble in their operations, several of them resigned their positions and set up another school under a different name. Whereupon Dr. Curtis resumed the practice of his profession and the instruction of students in the Physico- Medical College, as at first, and has secured an enviable reputation as an educator and practitioner. In addition to editing the Recorder for twenty years, he has published a work entitled " Medical Discussions; " one on " Obstet- ries and Diseases of Women and Children; " two on " Theory and Practice of Medicine; " one of "Criticisms on all the Popular Systems of Medicine; " also, " The Provocation and Reply; " and " The Philosophy of Lan-
guage, Grammar and Composition; " and has issued many volumes of reviews, tracts and lectures. Ile has educated about 1000 men and scores of women for the practice of medicine, in which many of them have been eminently suc- cessful. June 230, 1875, completing his seventy-eighth year, he closed his last regular course of lectures to students, and consecrated the remainder of life that may be allotted to him to the careful revision, correction and improvement of his regular books, the gathering up and preserving in The Good Old Recorder, and other receptacles, of some of the best of his scattered reviews, criticisms, lectures and essays ; and sccuring to them a perpetual publication and distribu- tion. At the close of two lectures which he had been in- vited to deliver at the commencement in 1854 of Knox Col- lege, Illinois, the faculty of that institution conferred on him the degree of Master of Arts.
E CAMP, HARVEY, Builder, was born in West- field, Essex county, New Jersey, November 25th, 1807. Ile came with his parents, Ezekiel and Mary De Camp, in the fall of 1812, to Butler county, Ohio, where they opened a farm from a dense forest. Mr. De Camp came in the spring of 1825 to Cincinnati, learned the carpenter's trade of Ezekiel Ross, and at the age of twenty-two years began busi- ness in that city on his own account, taking apprentices to assist him. lle followed it steadily for thirty years, build- ing more houses than ahnost any other man of his day, and he was especially instrumental in designing and superin- tending St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church and Wcs- leyan Female College. For many years he was engaged in the manufacture of paper at Lockland. Ile was for five years a member of the City Council. Ile has been for forty-three years prominently connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church, holding all the offices in church and Sabbath- school ; and holding also directorship in various charitable and educational institutions and business companies. In IS29 he was married to Rebecca A. Wright, by whom he has seven living children ; and in 1874 to Mrs. Sylvia A. Willis. The family of Ezekiel and Mary De Camp con- sisted of five girls and twelve boys, seventeen in all; one son dying, Ezekiel put his c'ezen surviving boys to trades, ten as builders and the eleventh to the business of millwright. They taught their children to revere the Bible, and gave them two leading ideas as guides through life, " honesty " and "industry." Consequently all have been prosperous. Nine of the eleven brothers married and settled in Cincin- nati, and never had a family jar. A month before the assassi- nation of President Lincoln Judge William Johnson, of Cin- cinnati, introduced to him David, Walter, Hiram, Ilarvey, Joseph, Daniel, Lambert and Job, as " eight brothers from Obio who all voted for him, and who daily prayed to the Almighty that he might be guided by wisdom and the Union
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preserved. On June Ist, 1870, about 300 members of the | in the vicinity, with a hundred yoke o. oxen, drew the De Camp family had a reunion at the old homestead in Reily township, Butler county. All gathered around one table, with vacant chans for the absent and the dead, Had all been living they would have numbered 363, and includ- ing the 93 added by marriage, 456 persons, A huge cake occupied the centre, crowned with a sugar emblem of clasped hands. It weighed 100 pounds, was cut into 300 pieces, which gave to each person a third of a pound.
UST, RICHARD SUTTON, A. M., D. D., is one of the most energetic, enthusiastic, and successful ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church ; and in the varied official positions to which he has been called has rendered valuable service and exhibited rare executive ability in the admin- istration of affairs intrusted to his care. He was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, September 12th, 1815. His mother, from whom he inherited many of his traits of character, was a woman of deep piety and superior attainments, the daugh- ter of Richard Sutton, distinguished among his townsmen for integrity, independence, and intelligence. He was left an orphan, his father dying when he was eight years ok, and his mother when he was ten, leaving him no patrimony but a parentage spotless and revered. One of his uncles gave him a year's schooling, where he first formed a taste for study which never forsook him. Another uncle gave him a home till he was fourteen, during which time he was compelled to work hard upon a farm, with only three months' schooling each winter. He was then apprenticed to learn a cabinet-maker's trade, and at the end of three years, yearning for school and more congenial pursuits, purchased the balance of the apprenticeship, and entered Phillips' Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, to prepare for college. While at Andover the distinguished abolition lecturer, George Thompson, of England, visited Phillips Academy and lectured to the students on slavery. With his wonderful eloquence, wit, and logic the students were charmed, and a large number of them became abolitionists and formed an anti-slavery society. The teachers were displeased at this action, and required the students to leave the anti-slavery society or the academy. Nearly one hun- dred of them, rather than give up their principles and rights, left the school; some went into the anti-slavery field as lecturers, and others to institutions where freedom of thought and speech could be enjoyed. Young Rust, with several others, went to Canaan, New Hampshire, where an academy had been established upon liberal principles, and where young men and women of color were allowed to enter and enjoy the advantages of culture. So bitter was the opposition to this school, because it extended its privi- leges alike to all without distinction of color, that the man- date went forth that it must be broken up, and the farmers
academy more than a mile out of town into the woods and broke up the school ! Our young hiend finished his joe peuatory studies at the Wilbraham Academy, and in 1837 entered the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, where he was graduated in 1841, and received the degree of Master of Arts in 1844. In 1859 he received the hon- orary degree of D. D. from the Wesleyan University at Delaware, Ohio. While in college he paid his expenses by teaching and lecturing winters. Hle was one of the first anti-slavery lecturers in Connecticut, and in New Haven county was mobbed repeatedly for his lectures against slavery. He aided the ladies in organizing the First Anti- Slavery Fair at Hartford, and published for that occasion " Freedom's Gift," a little annual of anti-slavery poems and prose. The great anti-slavery struggle reached its height as he came to his manhood, and he did valiant service in the good cause, and was a pioneer in the Methodist Epis- copal Church in this grand conflict. In 1842 he was Principal of Ellington School, Connecticut; in 1843 Princi- pal of Middletown High School; in 1844 he joined the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was stationed at Springfield, Massachusetts; and in 1846 was stationed at Worcester, Massachusetts. During the next five years Mr. Rust passed through one of the most interesting periods of his life. lle originated and published the "American Pulpit," was transferred to the New Hampshire Conference, was Principal of the New Hampshire Conference Seminary and Female College, and was State Commissioner of Common Schools for New Hampshire for three years, He delivered popular lectures on education all over the State, awakened the deepest inter- est in the schools, assailed with wit, sarcasm, and invectives the miserable old school-houses, and did a grand work in introducing into New Hampshire good school-houses, teachers' institutes, and an improved system of common school education. In 1859 Dr. Rust was transferred from the scenes of his early struggles and triumphs to the Cincin- nati Conference. The name and character of the man pre- ceded him in the West, and he was at once welcomed to active service in the leading enterprises of the church. lle was for four years President of Wilberforce University, at Xenia, after which he became pastor of Morris Chapel, Cincinnati, when he was elected President of the Wesleyan Female College, Cincinnati, where he remained until the okdl college was sold and vacated, and the school was sus- pended until the new college could be erected. He was Corresponding Secretary of the Western Freechmen's Aid Society, and in connection with Bishop Clark and the Rev. Dr. Wallen, aided in the organization of the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and for the last eight years has been its Corresponding Secretary, and has discharged its duties with such marked efficiency and ability as to meet the highest comunendation of the whole church. This society, under the administration of Dr.
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