USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume I > Part 27
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could do the work upon which Colonel Putnam had been employed, General Washington thus allowed him to pass into other service; but this belief was not well founded. An extract from his letter on the subject to Congress will support us in this assertion. This letter was written but three days after the date of the letter just written to Colonel Put- nam, and the extract is as follows : "I have also to mention that for the want of some establishment in the department of engineers, agreeable to the plan laid before Congress in Oc- tober last by Colonel Putnam, who was at the head of it, but who has quitted and taken a regiment in Massachusetts, I know of no other man tolerably well qualified for the con- ducting of that business. None of the French gentlemen whom I have seen with appointments in that way appear to know anything of the matter. There is one in Philadelphia who, I am told, is clever, but him I have not seen." Thus it was that the educated French officers, who by this time had flocked to the standard of the Continental army, were found to be deficient in that species of practical knowledge in which Colonel Putnam excelled. After taking command of his regiment, he was, consequently, by the order of General Washington, made superintendent of the fortifications of West Point on the Hudson, then in course of construction. He arrived there in March, 1778, and found the works that for many months had been in course of erection so inefficient that they had to be abandoned, and the work begun anew under his direction. For this purpose he was authorized to employ the men of his regiment, and they built the main fortress named by General McDougal, in honor of its engineer, "Fort Putnam," and to-day it stands, commanding the plain and the point, a fine example of his practical engineering ability. In 1779, Colonel Putnam was appointed to the com- mand of a regiment of light infantry in the brigade of General Wayne-a body of men composed of the selections by General Wayne himself from the whole army ; and from this time until the close of the war he commanded this regiment. January 8th, 1783, Colonel Putnam was commissioned by Congress a brigadier-general in the army of the United States, and served as such until the declaration of peace and the ratification of the treaty in September, 1783, released him from military service. During this year he was in constant communication with the commanding general, whose full confidence and friendship he enjoyed, and who appointed him to many posts of honor and profit. He was consulted by General Washington in the arrangement for a peace establishment of the army, or such portion of it as was necessary, and he planned the project in a draft of thirty pages (the original of which is to be found among his papers in the library of Marietta College,) which the commanding general embodied in his report to Congress on the subject. Our space here will not permit extended reference to the great act of his life in time of peace. It will be found in detail in our sketch of the history of Ohio, with which our work opens. Suffice it here to say that with the formation of the Ohio Company, and that legislation by Congress that made the great Northwest free territory for ever, to be inhab- ited by intelligent American yeomanry, General Rufus Put- nam's name and fame is indissolubly united. Appointed superintendent of all business relating to the settlement of the lands of the Ohio Company, he was also appointed judge of the first court of common pleas, and one of the only three judges then in the territory ; and, shortly afterward, he was made surveyor-general of the United States. The friend of
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every mental and moral improvement, with foresight he regarded the requirements of the future, and evinced his wisdom by recommending the setting apart of one section of land in every township for the support of education. By his accurate surveys he prevented litigation and loss to the settlers. Imbued with the love of liberty and humanity, he lived for his country and her people's good. Himself without the advantages of education, he was ever ready to help others. Before he left Massachusetts he gave £100 to the academy at Leicester. In 1797, at his suggestion, steps were taken for the erection of the Muskingum Academy at Marietta, believed to be the first structure of the kind in the Northwest. He was a trustee of the Ohio University from its founding till the close of his life. In 1792, President Washington appointed him a brigadier-general in the regular army, and in the same year he was sent to Vincennes to negotiate a treaty with the Indians. He was a member of the Constitu- tional convention of 1802. Of the Congregational church, formed at Marietta in 1796, he was one of the original mem- bers, and he was through life an humble, devout Christian. His influence was always on the side of right, and every good cause found in him a true friend and an earnest advocate. His intellect was strong and solid, rather than quick and brilliant. By his native force of character, by his genuine good sense and excellent judgment, and by his unbending integrity, he succeeded, in spite of his early disadvantages, in accomplishing whatever he undertook. He was eminently fitted to be the leader of the first colony from New England to the great Northwest. Beginning at the lowest round he ascended the ladder of success, and ultimately won the high- est distinction he ever coveted -to be ever useful to his fellow- men. No monument of brass is necessary to indicate his greatness. So long as the history of his country shall be written and read, the part he played in that history will be found occupying one of its broadest and brightest pages.
HOLGATE, CURTIS, an eminent citizen of Defiance, was born in Dummerston, Vermont, August 28th, 1773. He was of English and Scotch descent, and was a son of Asa Hol- gate, whose father came from England, while we were colo- nies of Great Britain, as a surgeon in the British army. He died while in the service, and was buried at sea between Boston and Halifax. Dr. Holgate left one son, Asa, who at seventeen years of age, being without a home, enlisted as a private in the British army, and was engaged in the old French and Indian war. At the close of this war he married a daughter of Captain Kathan, a Scotchman, who had set- tled upon the Connecticut river, near Brattleboro, Vermont, and owned fine lands for nine miles along the river. Curtis Holgate was born on a farm, and was one of the younger children of a large family. While yet a child his father moved to Lake Champlain. The young man toiled vigor- ously at whatever he found to do, and at the age of thirty- six had accumulated a capital of about fifteen hundred dollars, the savings of his own labors. He received nothing from his father, as the fine landed estates on the Connecticut river had been lost to the family. His first wife having died, he married Miss Alvira Prentice, the daughter of a physician in northern Vermont, and shortly after, gathering together all of his worldly possessions, he removed to Burlington, Ver- mont It had considerable commercial importance, but was without a whart, though situated upon the broadest and most exposed part of the lake, and where one would be of the
greatest value. Many had been built, but none of them per- manently enough to stand, on account of the exposure of the coast to heavy storms and ice-drifts. Mr. Holgate felt con- fident that he could build a dock that would withstand the storms, and applied to the legislature for a sole right to wharf privileges, which was granted to him for the term of fourteen years. He had nearly completed his first structure when it was all swept away in one night by ice and a heavy storm. Arriving at the scene the next morning he saw where the weak points were, and decided to try again. To give up was not in his character. He was called the Napoleon of Burlington, on account of his energy and perseverance. Having no money, but the full confidence of all who knew him, he went to a leading capitalist, and laid the case before him, telling him if he would lend him the amount he needed to build another wharf, he would give him one hundred per cent interest. His application was successful. The required aid was granted, and in a short time the second dock was built. It answered his expectations, and stood for a long time against all storms, thereby giving to the city of Burlington an accommodation indispensable to its commercial interests and prosperity. The wharf is still in existence, and has made it the chief city of the State. It was completed, together with the necessary warehouses, just before the war of 1812. The commencement of the war found him with all the debts for the construction of the wharf paid up in full. according to contract, and a very prosperous business on his hands. Com- modore McDonough found the dock of great use during the war of 1812, for here he fitted out for the battle of Plattsburg, where he gained his great victory over the British. Previous to this battle the British considered themselves masters of the lake. Their ships of war went sailing up and down its broad expanse, firing into the villages and towns. One of their largest vessels anchored opposite to Burlington, but three miles distant, and sent a gun-boat within about a mile of the place, which commenced cannonading the town. A promi- nent object was the house of Mr. Holgate, which stood on the wharf. One ball .entered the roof of the house, passed into the dining-room, struck a corner post, bounded back and rolled under the dining table, from which the family had just been hastened to the back country. Other balls struck his yard and garden fences, leveling them to the ground. Going to Commodore McDonough, Mr. Holgate asked him to fit out a gun-boat to drive off the British marauders, and agree- ing to furnish the men necessary for that purpose. The com- modore granted his request, and furnished the boat with cannon. Mr. Holgate and his fellow-citizens set forth, and in a very short time silenced the British gun-boat, driving it back to the ship. At the close of the war Mr. Holgate sold the dock to Messrs. Mayo & Follett for twenty-two thousand dollars, and moved on a farm two miles south of Burlington, also buying eight hundred acres of land across the lake op- posite Burlington. Having some money left, he purchased six or eight vessels, and put them on the lake. On the tract of land opposite Burlington he laid out a town, calling it Port Douglas, and building a wharf, warehouse, hotel, store, and saw-mill. About this time the "Steamboat Company of Lake Champlain," which was very wealthy, laid out a town in op- position to his, about three miles to the north, and called it Port Kent. Mr. Holgate feeling that his investment would prove a loss if Port Kent should succeed, offered to sell out to the steamboat company if they would give him first cost and interest, which they declined to do. He thereupon sold
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his farm, moved to his hotel at Port Douglas, stocked up his store with goods, built a turnpike three miles through the mountains to Keeseville, a great center of the iron business, and now a noted pleasure resort in the Adirondacks, and started a line of stages to connect with the line of packets from Burlington, thereby causing their boats to stop at Port Douglas instead of Port Kent. Mr. Holgate secured the busi- ness of the Peru Iron Company at his dock and also a large lumber trade. These enterprises he carried on for one year in competition with the steamboat company without charge, when that corporation offered to accept the terms of sale made to them a year previous, on the basis of which Port Douglas was closed out to them, he receiving all his expendi- tures, together with six per cent interest. About 1823 he had made a trip west with his own team to see the country, pursu- ing the line afterwards followed by the Erie canal, passing through and spending some time at Buffalo, Cleveland, Co- lumbus, and Newark. This trip occupied the whole summer. He formed a very high opinion of the prospects of the towns and country which he visited, and, after disposing of Port Douglas, arranged to remove to the west. He went by way of Whitehall and the Northern Canal, in his own boat, and, stopping at Troy, he bought a stock of general dry goods in New York, taking it to Syracuse, and opening a store at Salina, now a part of Syracuse. In that place he bought two salt works, which he carried on about one year in connection with the store. About this time he lost three children with the measles, who died and were buried within the space of three weeks. This so disheartened him that he sold out all of his property and moved to the city of Utica, where he lived until he had educated his children, engaging in no business. But while here the part of the New York Central Railroad from Schenectady to Utica was located, and he became one of the original subscribers to the stock, taking about twenty-eight thousand dollars. Shortly after and before the road was com- pleted, he sold his stock at a premium of twenty-eight and a half per cent, and then made a trip to the west, purchasing property in Buffalo and in and near Fort Wayne, Indiana. About 1835 he visited Toledo, and bought an interest in Man- hattan property ; then going to Defiance and purchasing the interest of Benjamin Leavell, one half of the town of Defi- ance and one-third of the town of Napoleon, together with some adjacent land. In 1836 he removed to Buffalo, New York, and thence to Defiance, Ohio, in the fall of 1837. He and his family were very much prostrated by sickness up to his death, which occurred January 15, 1840, at the age of sixty-six years. When about sixty years old he united with the Presbyterian Church. He took very radical grounds on the side of temperance, as will be shown in the following in- stance. In the summer of 1839, when help was very scarce, he applied to the canal contractors for men to help harvest his wheat. The contractors were willing, but the men refused to go unless they were permitted to have liquor on the ground. Mr Holgate told them he would not allow that, but would give them two dollars per day, the regular wages being one dollar and a quarter. They agreed to this offer, and the wheat was harvested. Though Mr. Holgate resided at Defiance with his family but a few years, death calling him away his memory is fresh in the minds of the people, who feel that they owe a great deal to his help in the infancy of their town He was almost the first citizen that brought any capital with him into the place. Strict moral principles governed him in every walk of life.
HOLGATE, WILLIAM C., banker, lawyer, and cap- italist, was born November 23, 1814, at Burlington, Vermont, of English and Scotch descent. He has in his possession an ancient English coat of arms, without date, of which he has no knowledge save that it has been handed down from his ancestors. He was the son of Curtis and Alvira (Prentice) Holgate. A sketch of his father will be found on another page. William C. Holgate attended the academy and select school at Utica, New York, and was admitted to Hamilton College in the year 1832, graduating in 1835. In 1841 the college bestowed upon him the degree of A. M. He studied law with Willard Crafts, of Utica, and then with Horace Sessions, of Defiance, Ohio, where he was admitted to the bar of the supreme court of Ohio in the year 1838. About this time he was appointed clerk of the court, which office he resigned in 1839, then receiving the appointment of pros- ecuting attorney for Williams county, in which position he had his first experience in the practice of law. His first case in a court of record was where Morrison R. Waite, now chief justice, delivered his maiden speech as opposing coun- sel. In the winter of 1844-1845, he went to Columbus with a petition for the erection of Defiance county, and succeeded in securing the passage of a legislative enactment establish- ing the county. The bill was drafted by him, and by his untiring efforts carried through the legislature, amid the most violent opposition, in the short space of three months. On his return home with a certified copy of the law, he met such a reception from his fellow-citizens as was never given to any other man in the county. Well they might, as the project had been tried time after time, but with no man ca- pable of carrying it through. About 1851 a Mr. Allen, with his agents, was found listing and taking possession of nearly all the vacant land surrounding the town of Defiance, un- der a contract with the governor of the State, by virtue of an adroitly framed resolution of the legislature, reading in such a way as to mislead the members passing it, and also the governor and auditor of State. Ascertaining that this contract would put Mr. Allen in possession of nearly forty thousand acres of land in close proximity to Defiance, and so smother the growth and prosperity of the village and surrounding country, and believing there must be a great fraud and wrong underlying the matter, Mr. Holgate called upon the leading men of Defiance to see if they would join with him in an attempt to thwart the proceeding. He found that nearly all of them had already been interviewed by Allen, and been led by him to concur in the legality of his claim. "But," said they, "if it is wrong, what can we do about it, with all the leading officials of the State against us?" Mr. Holgate replied that he would show them what "we could do about it," and immediately called a public meeting of the town, in which, as chairman of a committee appointed by the meeting, he made an elaborate report of the law and facts relating to the matter, which was received and adopted, and, with appropriate resolutions, was published in the papers of the town and republished throughout the State. A great consternation was aroused among the people on the subject. The officials of the State were led to review and reconsider their action in the matter, and to hedge Mr. Allen's proced. ure with difficulties. The auditor soon brought the lands to sale. and the most of them were bought by actual settlers. Mr. Allen, having failed in getting action of the supreme court in his favor, finally abandoned his claim to the lands, and thus were the great interests of the State as well as the
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people of Defiance saved by the action of Mr. Holgate. When the Michigan Southern Railroad and the Pittsburg and Fort Wayne Railroad went through the State, cutting off most of the territory tributary to the business interests of Defiance, business men talked about removing to other places, and every thing looked as though the doom of the town was sealed, and no one to lift a helping hand, only to say there was no hope. It was then that William C. Holgate came to the front once more and secured to the town the Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railway. None can now appreciate the really hard mental as well as physical work it took to accomplish this object. Late at night and early in the morning Mr. Holgate worked and worked on. He corresponded with nearly every railroad man and interest-east as far as Buf- falo, and south as far as Cincinnati, and west as far as La- fayette-and the correspondence would now fill a volume. Nearly every railroad meeting within those limits was at- tended by him, and he depicted in vivid colors in the news- papers of the town the advantages of railroad routes through Defiance. The strain upon him in doing this work, in con- nection with his law office and large real estate interests, and infirmities produced by a bilious and debilitating climate, caused his health to give way in 1853 to such an extent as to render him unfit for active business for the succeeding twelve to fifteen years. He could not read or write for much of this time, and was compelled to give up his law practice, and now rarely attends to any but that in which he is personally interested. Though tolerably comfortable, Mr. Holgate has never entirely recovered from the prostration that came upon him in 1853. In 1864, when the land con- tracted to the town fourteen years previously for the Defiance Female Seminary had been forfeited to the place for the non-payment of purchase money, and a bill was about be- ing passed by the legislature requiring the State auditor to sell the same, he went to Columbus, and secured the passage of an act authorizing a deed of the land upon payment of the money due. Mr. Holgate and Horace Sessions advanced the money from their private funds, and secured the deed, thereby saving to Defiance the twelve hundred and eighty acres. It was about the year 1869 the citizens felt the want of increased railroad facilities to accommodate the manufac- turing interests of the place, and this again brought him to the front as the champion of the people. Several lines for a railroad were proposed and urged by the leading citizens of the town. Feeling that the most important route for the next railroad through the place would be from the southern bend of Lake Michigan, as Chicago could be most directly con- nected through it with the cities of the Atlantic seaboard, Mr. Holgate organized a company in Ohio and Indiana, its line surveyed two years later being accepted and built upon by the Baltimore and Ohio Company. The beneficial effects of this railroad .upon the business prosperity of the town are incalculable. He was appointed director in this new road. The city and county of Defiance are almost wholly indebted to William C. Holgate for securing to them that great improvement in their interest known as the "Sec- ond Street Bridge." A board of commissioners adverse to its construction in 1873 had advertised the letting of a con- tract for the construction of a forty thousand dollar stone and iron structure at the crossing of the Auglaize river at Hopkins street, which, if proceeded with, Mr. Holgate saw would so ex- haust the bridge moneys of the county that it would cut off all hopes or prospects of a bridge at Second street. It was found
that, in addition to the hostility of the commissioners, no direct relief to prevent the letting of the Hopkins street contract could be obtained by injunction from either judge residing in the county, and the case seemed hopeless. Already con- tractors from several States had begun to crowd the hotels, when, as a desperate alternative, Mr. Holgate entered the auditor's office with responsible parties and gave security, and so caused the transfer of the papers relating to the commis- sioners' proceedings about the Hopkins street bridge, by ap- peal, to the clerk's office of the court of common pleas. When the hour for letting came, the commissioners found they had no papers on their files in proper shape author- izing a letting, and dismissed the assembled bidders. Mr. Holgate was fully conscious this appeal would not, on final hearing, be sustained, but knowing it would tide over the dangerous emergency, he waited until a good case could be made up for an injunction before judges outside of the county, in the absence of those resident within. He took the appeal as his only chance. The case was now in court, with some few of the leading attorneys of the town, supported by Morrison R. Waite as their adviser. All the county com- missioners and the other prominent officials of the county sought to get the case out of court, so that they could proceed with the letting, while Mr. Holgate tried to keep it in, in order that the people of the county might have an opportu- nity to rally and elect a board of commissioners that should take care of their own and the great public interests affecting the matter. It suffices to say that in this, as in the first case in court in which Mr. Waite was the opposing counsel to Mr. Holgate, the latter's success was complete. The case was ended late in the year 1874 by a decision of the supreme court of the State against the commissioners. While this suit was pending, two new commissioners were elected in the interest of constructing the bridge over the Auglaize river at Second street, and they caused its erection in the summer of 1875. While the proposed Hopkins Street Bridge was on the outskirts of the city, with its approaches narrow and crooked, Second street is a broad avenue running by the court house through the center of the business part of the town, in a straight line across the Auglaize river to a point half a mile east. This had a direct outlet given to it by an old county road to the east and by another one running south. The town of Holgate, twelve and a half miles east of De- fiance, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, laid out by citizens of Defiance, was named as a compliment to Mr. Hol- gate for his efforts in securing that road to their place. He always took a warm interest in the real estate improvements of the town, and his brain teemed with projects to promote its growth. His efforts, with those of his partners, have se- cured to the place many important factories and other in- terests, together with the Toledo, Delphos, and Burlington Railroad, which adds greatly to the prosperity of the town. Holgate avenue was originally a road graded by Mr. Hol- gate about 1844, through a fifty acre tract owned by him, adjacent to the city of Defiance on the west, on which, in 1858, he built a house for his residence. After lining the street with shade-trees and making it inviting to those seek- ing homes, he opened it to the public, and the village soon spread over his land and extended its limits a mile westerly. Holgate pike reaches from the north end of the Maumee river bridge in Defiance on section lines to Williams county. About the year 1850 Mr. Holgate secured the passage of a special act for the locating of the Williamstown and Ridge-
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