USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume I > Part 72
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days. Being now free from the cares of an executive officer, he devoted himself to the studies of his department and the work of the class-room. The subjects embraced in his course were psychology, ethics, and political science. He had every thing to encourage him; his classes were large, with many of the members of advanced standing; "his success in imparting the principles of his science," says one of his col- leagues, "was nothing less than wonderful. His influence in the formation of conduct and character was as wholesome and elevating as it was great and abiding." A few years before his death, in compliance with the urgent entreaties of many of his old pupils, he reluctantly determined to gather up the results of his teaching and prepare them for publica- tion. He had written out his course in mental philosophy, and was revising it when his death, which resulted from an attack of pneumonia, occurred. Dr. McGuffey was twice married, his first wife being Miss Harriet Spining, whom he married April 3d, 1827, and who died July 3d, 1856. In 1859, he married Miss Laura Howard, who, with two children - now Mrs. Mary Stewart and Mrs. Henrietta Hepburn-sur- vived him.
NOLAN, COLONEL MICHAEL P., son of William Nolan and Eleanor Kinslah, was born in Dublin, Ireland, June 18th, 1823. In the year following his parents emigrated with him and two sisters to the United States, and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In 1838 they moved West, to Dayton, Ohio, where our subject has since resided. The colonel's early life was one of toil and privation. He has literally fabricated his own fortune. Without the advantage of schooling in youth, he learned the trade of carriage-making, and entered a debating society, with which was connected a good library, for that period, before the era of public libraries. He read extensively the standard authors, devoted himself to study, and became a noted Shakespearean scholar. Endowed with a wonderful memory, he retains the information thus early acquired, upon which he draws with facility. When a young man, he commanded a canal-boat on the Miami Canal. In 1857 he raised and commanded a military com- pany, the Montgomery Guards, but soon resigned the cap- taincy. In boyhood he marked out for himself a life of in- tegrity, temperance, and industry, and custom made them to him easy and practicable. December 30th, 1847, he married Miss Anna Schenck Clark, of Miamisburg, Ohio, to whose prudence and counsel he attributes much of his success in life. There were born to them ten children, eight of whom are living. After marriage he labored at his trade by day, and with great energy studied law during the nights, and was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-eight. In the profession he soon became distinguished as an advocate, and was considered a successful lawyer, with juries particularly, from whom he would secure verdicts quite unexpected, many of which were set aside by the courts. He has thus had more verdicts set aside for him than any other lawyer of this county. Whether the skillful handling of his cause requires appeals to sympathy, withering sarcasm, or embarrassing ridicule, he wields the weapons of either with the skill of a veteran. Thus without influential friends, or even assistance from schools, he has risen from comparative obscurity to be the peer of the learned and the competitor of the strong. A lifelong abolitionist, and a denouncer of slavery in every form, when the rebellion broke out, in 1861, he responded to the first call for troops, and immediately raised Company
G, of the 11th Ohio Infantry Volunteers. On leaving the depot with his company for the field, he was called out by the multitude, and made a short and patriotic address, which was published in the Dayton Journal, of April 23d, 1861. He next became lieutenant-colonel of the 50th Regiment, and was subsequently appointed, by Governor Tod, colonel of the 109th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry. During the war he was an active member of the Union League, its president in the Third Congressional District of Ohio, and sent as its delegate to the convention that renominated President Lin- coln, at Baltimore, June 4th, 1864. During the summer of 1863 he was prominent in organizing the "war " Democracy which drew up a platform and an address to the loyal Dem- ocrats of Ohio, and Colonel Nolan prevailed upon them to select as their candidate for governor John Brough, a patriotic Democrat, whom the Republicans had nominated a few weeks previously ; thus the war Democrats and Republicans elected Brough by one hundred thousand majority, while the State went Democratic in 1862. Colonel Nolan entered upon the canvass with zeal, and "stumped" Southwestern Ohio. He had large audiences everywhere, and on the 7th of October, 1863, spoke in Mozart Hall, in Cincinnati, at a meeting called for him. He was here greeted with the largest audience of the season, and portions of his speech were published in the leading journals of the country, and were well received. A writer in the Dayton Journal, a few years ago, in speaking of him, says : "Colonel Nolan is, in some respects, the most remarkable man at the Dayton bar. In person he is not above the medium height, slightly inclined to rotundity of form; in figure and in ap- pearance quite distingué. He has all the native wit and readiness of repartee characteristic of his nationality, and en- deavors, in all instances, to get his cases before the jury, where he has few peers, and still fewer superiors. At times he is truly eloquent, and from any speech of his, of an hour's duration, passages may be culled which, in beauty of arrange- ment and effectiveness of delivery, will compare favorably with the studied efforts of the best speakers of the day. His speeches are extemporaneous; any thing like a prepared effort would be a failure with him. His oratory is not rude, yet far from classic, being the style that catches the popular ear, and holds a crowd that would grow weary under the voice of men of much greater pretensions. When he rises to speak, every one in the court-room is delighted, except the opposing counsel, who often writhes under his excoriations." For several years after the war the colonel served as United States Commissioner, and was admitted to practice in the United States Courts. At the Fourth of July celebration in Dayton, in 1876, Colonel Nolan was selected by the citizens' committee as orator of the day, and as such delivered the centennial oration. In August, 1877, he prepared a series of papers on the present condition of laboring men, which appeared in the Dayton Journal, and excited much discussion at the time, claiming, as he did, that most of the distress among the laboring classes was the result of labor-saving machinery. The document was widely circulated, and trans- lated into German. Colonel Nolan has led a temperate, regular life, and has never used tobacco. In 1877, when the temperance wave swept over the country, he was elected, unanimously, president of the first Murphy Society in Dayton, having eight thousand members. In 1878 he was solicited, by the Greenback Labor party, to accept the nomination for Congress, which he did, without the least expectation of suc- cess, but as a matter of principle. He went among the people,
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had large audiences, and obtained a reasonable vote. The colonel's life has been one of energy and thrift; a man of impulses, earnest, frank, and outspoken. He has never stooped to conquer, and his thrift is not the result of fawning.
LOCKWOOD, FRANCIS GREGORY, merchant, was born in the City of New York, April 6th, 1816. He was the eldest son of Ralph and Esther Antoinette (Gregory) Lock- wood. His parents and their remote family connections were all from Norwalk, Fairfield County, Connecticut. On the Lockwood side they are supposed to be descended from Ed- mund or Robert Lockwood, who came from England in 1630, and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts. His father and an uncle (George Lockwood), under the firm name of Ralph and George Lockwood, closed their mercantile business in New York, in 1817, and removed with their families to the almost unbroken wilderness of Huron County, in the Con- necticut Western Reserve, in 1819-20, locating in Milan Town- ship, at "Merry's Mills." Here they erected a store and dwell- ings, and transacted a large business in general dry goods, etc. In 1820 Ralph Lockwood was appointed first postmaster at " Merry's Mills," soon after called Milan, and held the office for seventeen years. Stephen Lockwood, Sen., of Norwalk, Connecticut, the father of Ralph and George, owned several thousands of acres of land in Huron County, which he pur- chased of the original grantees, in the Connecticut "Fire Lands" tract of a half million acres in said county, and in 1812, made a journey on horseback to Ohio, to view the purchase. In 1840 Milan Township, with Florence, Berlin, Vermilion, and Huron Townships, were taken from Huron County and added to the new county of Erie, with county seat at Sandusky. As the country improved in culture, pop- ulation, and wealth, good schools were opened at Milan, and in the neighboring town of Norwalk, Ohio, and Francis Lock- wood, at the age of eighteen, had acquired from such educa- tional advantages, and as assistant in his father's varied transactions as postmaster, merchant, etc., a good business education. He spent two years in the city of Buffalo, New York, one year (1835) as accountant for a prominent dry- goods house, and one year (1836) with parties operating in real estate, conveyancing, etc. He was six months in the book-keeping department of a large banking-house in Wall Street, New York, which had the redemption agency of the circulating notes of nearly forty country and city banks, in the States of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Unfor- tunately, through the effects of the great financial crash that swept over New York, and the whole country, commenc- ing in the spring of 1837, caused by real estate and stock speculation and overtrading, and from the effects of President Van Buren's famous specie circular, Mr. Lockwood lost his position, and the banking-house went down without the power to rise again. After witnessing the fearful effects of this ordeal to the business interests of New York City, for a few months, he obtained employment as accountant and teller in the Ex- change Bank, of Hartford, Connecticut, one of the best man- aged banks of that city, remaining two years, 1837 and 1838. In the spring of 1839 he became junior partner in the for- warding and commission house of George Davis & Co., at Buffalo, New York. Their canal and lake facilities for trans- portation of merchandise and produce of all kinds being first- class, the season's business resulted profitably. One of the first freight and passenger steamers to open business from Buffalo to Chicago, by regular trips through the season, was
the steamboat Madison, of Charles M. Reed's (Erie, Pennsyl- vania) heavy line of lake steamers, running principally to the ports on the south shore of Lake Erie, as far as Detroit, Mich- igan. Of this line Messrs. George Davis & Co. had the sole agency at Buffalo. Owing to the death of Ralph Lockwood, October 28th, 1838 (born July 9th, 1787), leaving his family encumbered with a property difficult to manage as to real estate, and minor heirs to protect, his son Francis removed to Milan, in the spring of 1840. Here he opened business with a cousin, in general dry goods, etc., under the firm name of James C. Lockwood & Co. Milan having become a heavy grain market, and commercial depot for a large district of country on the most southerly bend of Lake Erie, including the area of about ten counties, by the construction of the Milan Canal (eight feet in depth) to a point four miles below the town, to the navigable waters of Huron River, and thence by the channel of the river (seven and a quarter miles) to Lake Erie, at Huron, business of all kinds increased, and the future of the place seemed assured. The firm of J. C. Lock- wood & Co. was very successful, and after eight years' progress was dissolved, on account of the failure of the health of its junior partner, who suffered as an invalid for nearly four years. In 1840 Mr. Lockwood was admitted to membership in the First Presbyterian Church, of Milan, by letter from the Fourth Presbyterian Church, of Hartford, Connecticut. Rev. Everton Judson was pastor of the former Church. Recover- ing health in 1851, he again entered into mercantile business in the spring of 1852, with a brother, Ralph Lockwood, under the firm name of F. G. and R. Lockwood. For nearly thirty years it has been reasonably prospered, although the once busy and growing town of Milan has suffered a decline of nearly twenty years, from the building of railroads, cutting off its trade, and the failure of its citizens and property-holders to secure railroad facilities before the abandonment of their canal navigation, which occurred in the spring of 1865. That work originally. cost eighty thousand dollars, and was opened in July, 1839, a heavy work for a small town of four hundred inhabitants to build, although it had the aid of the State of Ohio to the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars. It proved to be a complete success, admitting vessels of one hun- dred and fifty to two hundred and fifty tons burden to discharge and receive cargo at its convenient docks in front of the town. In 1850 twelve large grain warehouses were in use, and four- teen stores of all kinds were doing a heavy trade (up town) with the sellers of wheat and produce, staves and lumber, brought in from the surrounding country; and the population of the place at the census of 1850 had increased in ten years to thirteen hundred, and the Milan Canal Company (capital stock seventy-five thousand dollars) were enabled to pay back to the stockholders about thirty-eight per cent in dividends, up to and including the year 1851. A large amount of capital was invested in building vessels. Five ship-yards were put in operation, and a convenient dry-dock for repairing vessels. Some of the finest vessels of the age, fifteen and twenty years ago, in use on the great lakes, of sixteen to twenty thousand bushel grain-carrying capacity, were constructed and fitted out at Milan, and at Gay's Landing, on the Huron River, six miles below town. A fleet of ten to fifteen vessels were con- stantly employed in the carrying trade to Buffalo, the then principal grain market of the great lakes, and to Oswego and the Canadian ports on Lake Ontario. In 1857 five hundred men were employed on the above ship-yards, and thirteen vessels of all sizes (including six costly revenue schooners for
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the government) were built. Four vessels, likewise, were built the same year at Gay's Landing, to carry twenty thou- sand bushels of grain each, being too large for the capacity of the locks in the canal to let them through, if built up town. Since 1871 the construction of a railroad from Wheeling to Huron and Toledo, on Lake Erie, has been agitated. The company organized the same year as the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad Company. The capital stock was subscribed, and the work of grading was commenced at Navarre, in Stark County, in 1873. But financial difficulties attending the progress of such costly work held the company's opera- tions in suspense till 1879, when the aid of prominent cap- italists in New York was secured, and the road has since been completed from below Massillon to Huron and Toledo, and for a year has been in full running order, opening a heavy freight and coal traffic from the vast coal fields of Eastern Ohio, to the head of Lake Erie and the Northwest and Can- ada. Milan became early interested in the construction of this important railroad, and is now receiving the benefit of the outlay of some fifty thousand dollars expended in its aid. Mr. Lockwood holds also a heavy interest in it. The town has improved since the opening of the road, many fine buildings have been erected the past season, and a real value given to lands and tenements about the town, heretofore sadly lack- ing. As a citizen interested in promoting the public, educa- tional, and charitable institutions of his chosen place of res- idence, Mr. Lockwood has not failed to be honored by his fellow-citizens with positions of trust and responsibility. In 1857 he became secretary of the Milan Canal Company, and took the general management of the canal in 1859. In 1864 he was appointed township clerk, which office, during the war of the Rebellion, required close and constant attention to relieve the necessities of soldiers and their families. The same year he was appointed clerk of Milan Board of Educa- tion, serving for six years. In 1875 he was elected clerk of Milan Corporation, and in 1877 was appointed secretary of the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad Company, with the principal office at Norwalk. He served as such till the affairs of the company were reorganized under President W. A. Mack, of Norwalk, and the needed capital secured to build the road, C. Robinson Griggs, Esq., of New York, being chief contractor and lessee, and Commodore C. K. Garrison, of New York, furnishing the capital. In 1854, Mr. Lockwood married, at Milan, Electra M. Reynolds, daughter of Jason and Esther (McMillen) Reynolds, who was born October 13th, 1833, near Moscow, Livingston County, New York. He has one daughter, Caroline A., aged twenty-seven years, who was married to William H. Noake, October 24th, 1877, now resident in St. Louis, Missouri; and two sons-Walter J., aged twenty- three, and Frederick S., aged seventeen. Mr. Lockwood's mother, E. Antoinette Gregory, was born October 5th, 1795, and was a daughter of Moses and Esther (Hoyt) Gregory, of Norwalk, Connecticut. She died at Buffalo, New York, at the residence of her son-in-law, George L. Marvin, January 3d, 1856, and was buried at Milan. Of her only brother, Commodore Francis Hoyt Gregory, born October 9th, 1789, late of the United States navy, some interesting incidents are told. His permanent family residence was at New Haven, Connecticut. In early life he had an unconquerable desire to become a sailor, to which his parents objected, especially his mother, on account of the dangerous nature of a seaman's occupation. But he was deaf to all their persuasions, and finally ran away, and went to sea. Afterward, returning
home, he was allowed to enter the United States naval service, taking a thorough course of study, and was rapidly promoted. In 1812, as a lieutenant under Commodore Chauncey, at Sack- ett's Harbor, or Oswego, on Lake Ontario, he kept the Can- adian towns on the lake, especially Kingston, in continual fear of his secret expeditions to burn and destroy their ves- sels of war, completed or standing on the stocks. After these attempts to worry the enemy, becoming more bold and suc- cessful, Lieutenant Gregory was taken prisoner. The English commander refused all offers of exchange, threatening to execute him as an incendiary; but he was finally sent to England, and held as a prisoner of war for nearly three years. He traveled and saw much of the country, on parole of honor. It was a long time before his parents ascertained where he was, and mourned for him as one lost. At the end of the war, he was released, and returned home, to the great relief of his family. He was at this time twenty-five years of age. Soon after his return from England, he was employed by the government, with sufficient naval force, to exterminate the pirates and buccaneers infesting the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent waters, with headquarters at New Orleans. With his usual energy he set about this difficult task, and succeeded in sweeping from their hiding-places, in and about the Gulf and the coast of Florida, those pests of commerce and civ- ilization. For this service he was highly commended by the naval authorities and the country .; Previous to 1825 he held command of the Navy-yard, at Brooklyn, New York, for sev- eral years. In 1825 he commanded the United States ship of war in which General Lafayette returned to France from his last visit to the United States, and subsequently was placed in command of a new ship of war sent over to the Greek Government to aid that feeble nation in throwing off the Turkish yoke. He had intervals of leave of absence for various periods, residing with his family at New Haven, Con- necticut. In 1844 he had command of the United States re- ceiving ship North Carolina, in the harbor of New York, con- tinuing there several years. He was absent on a number of long cruises, generally of three years' duration, in command of various squadrons at foreign ports on the Atlantic coast, notably at Rio de Janeiro, where he concluded those unde- sirable periods of absence from home and family, about 1855. Thereafter he held command of the Navy-yard at Charles- town, Massachusetts, till compelled to retire from active duty, from the effects of a severe fall. After the opening of the war of the Rebellion he had charge of the construction of iron-clads, up to 1862, at New York, where he died, aged seventy-three years, and was buried at New Haven, Connecti- cut. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Commodore John Shaw, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
MCLAREN, DANIEL, ex-president of the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad, was the son of Daniel and Margery (Crawford) McLaren, both belonging to families of Scottish Highlanders. He was born in Dundee, Scotland, March 3d, 1821, and began his active life as a machinist. For this department of business he had early evinced strong inclination. All his education and training were with a view to fitting him for such a life. He completed his preparations by serving a regular apprenticeship, at Dundee, Scotland. Having thus acquired proficiency, he cast about for practical application of his trained but untried skill. He heard of America from the lips of a relative who had visited our shores. Her descriptions were so glowing that they succeeded
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in luring young McLaren to cross the ocean. So at the age of twenty-two years he embarked upon the good sail ship Shakes- peare, and landed in New York harbor with only a sovereign in his pocket ; but this was not all his capital. Health was his. He had high resolves, an inflexible will, integrity of purpose, and a thorough mechanical education. He thus seemed an embodiment of the tremendous agencies required to develop a country as to its railroad enterprises. He was not long in finding a place to use his strength and skill. There was a demand for talent such as his, and it soon com- manded employment. Looking for work, he went from New York to Boston, from there to Falls River, and back again to Boston. One day he casually observed a machinist at work upon the wheel of a locomotive. The man was not doing the work in the right way ; so Mr. McLaren ventured a sug- gestion, which, being adopted, proved the exact thing to do. It was appreciated, and the fact becoming known to the pro- prietors of the works, young McLaren was given immediate employment. This was the beginning of his career as a railroad man. From that position he rose to be a locomotive engineer on the road from Boston to Worcester, which posi- tion he held until he concluded to come West. The Boston Advertiser, speaking of him in this connection, says: "He was a superior mechanic, a man of great nerve, and prob- ably the most self-possessed man on the road." Shortly after the resignation of William Parker, as superintendent, he came West. Here he attracted the attention of Stephen S. L'Hommedieu, then president of the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad. This was the beginning of Mr. Mc- Laren's career in the West. It might be mentioned that three men came together on that Western trip who arose to distinction in railroad circles-Daniel McLaren, F. H. Short, and John Collins. They at once became identified with the building of the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad, then (1849) in process of construction. His connection with this railroad continued from its beginning until but a few months before his death. In that time he rose from the po- sition of master mechanic to locomotive engineer, to super- intendent, to vice-president, to president and general superin- tendent of the Atlantic and Great Western (now the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio) Railroad. While holding the last named position, he had five assistant-superintendents under him. Mr. McLaren ran the first locomotive on the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad, from Cincinnati to Carthage. He resigned the position of president of the road to become manager of the Marietta, Pittsburg, and Cleveland Railroad, which office he held at the time of his death. Thus for nearly twenty-five years Mr. McLaren was connected with that important railroad; and others using its road-bed, in traversing the Miami Valley. During that time his immense force of character was shown in his manage- ment of its operations, in running its locomotives, superin- tending its vast business, and in counseling on its board of directors. He peculiarly loved the adventurous life of the engineer. It was like commanding a ship, leading a battle- charge, or directing the storm. It was realizing triumph over ever-recurring obstacles. Thus strength was acquired and added to native force of character. Hence his superi- ority over the common man. He who greatly succeeds over- comes other men and their measure to an extent. Such a man has followers, and he may have foes. Mr. McLaren was not an exception to this rule. And yet there are many who remember his acts of kindness, his deeds of charity, his
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