USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume II > Part 23
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KIRTLAND, JARED POTTER, M.D., LL.D., sci- entist, born November 10th, 1793, in Connecticut, and died in November, 1877, at East Rockport, Ohio. He was the son of Tarhand and Mary ( Potter) Kirtland, and grandson of the late Dr. Jared Potter, a distinguished physician of Wallingford, Connecticut. In his youth he was adopted into the family of his grandfather, and from him and the common district school he received most of his early instruction. His father was largely interested in the New Connecticut pur- chase by the Connecticut Land Company, and in 1799 was appointed its general agent. In 1803 he removed his family to Poland, Mahoning county, where he became a prominent citizen, retaining his agency so long as the Company existed. From 1807 to 1810 Jared pursued a course of classical studies in the Wallingford and Cheshire Academies, where he early evinced the possession of a mind of very uncommon order, and that a scientific career would be his natural choice. While yet a-boy he was a diligent student of nature,-a ver- itable human worm, boring his way to knowledge by a pre- cocious system of analysis and investigation applied to every- thing he touched and saw. At the age of twelve years he was an expert at budding and engrafting, and many hardy annuals and perennials were cultivated by him. At this age, too, he began the study of the Linnaan system of botany and the system of producing new varieties of fruit by crossing, and became proficient in their practice. Assisted by his cousins, he also managed the extensive orchards of white mulberry trees established by his grandfather for the cultiva- tion of silk-worms. He well understood that the female silk- worm, hatched alone and kept alone, would lay eggs which would hatch as well as if she were domiciled with the male,- yet it was believed the worms thus produced were of no value. ( This was nearly half a century before Siebold wrote on Partheno-genesis.) He was thus early initiated into a practical knowledge of the metamorphoses of insects, which ever afterwards incited him to investigate every one which passed before his eyes. In 1810 his father, having become alarmed at the state of his health, sent for him to come West, and in May of that year he started on horseback, in company with Joshua Stow, of Middletown, Connecticut. This unex- pected change interrupted his classical studies, but introduced to him new subjects for future study. During the long jour- ney his mind was industriously engaged in its prelimin- ary investigations of the natural history, botany, geology, ichthyology, and general history of the country through which he traveled. He formed theories of his own regard- ing some of the subjects of his closer investigation, and his views and deductions in many instances subsequently proved to be as well founded as they were original. At Buffalo he spent some time in dissecting fishes which he had never seen nor heard of. The fishermen were at first in- clined to make sport of "a Yankee greenhorn" who had never seen a white-fish. He went on, however, examining every- thing they brought ashore, from snout to tail, -scales, bladder, and entrails. They soon found that he could teach even a fisherman something about fishes. On the 4th of June he and his party reached Conneaut Creek, where Judge Stow had landed with General Cleveland's party, July 4th, 1786. At Painesville the party met General Simon Perkins, with whom Kirtland rode to Warren, and from thence, by way of Youngstown, another day's journey brought him to Poland, where he found his father recovered from his sup- posed dangerous illness. He was soon occupied in teaching
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school here, having been waited upon by leading citizens of the place, who at length persuaded him to accept the position of the school-teacher who had recently died. While attend- ing to his scholastic duties he spent much of his time in the forests, fields, and about the water-courses, examining their productions in almost every department of natural history.
. He also called the attention of the farmers to the new varie- ties of fruit, and instructed them in the art of propagating them by budding and grafting. It was here also that in his father's apiary he found a new field for investigation, which for sixty-five years made bee-culture a favorite study, both as an art and a science. The sudden death of his grandfather Potter, who bequeathed to him his medical library, and money enough to attend the medical school at Edinburg, Scotland, called him back to Connecticut in 1811. Arrived at Walling- ford, he commenced the study of medicine in the office of Dr. John Andrews, and continued it later in that of Dr. Sylvester Wells, of Hartford, Connecticut, both of whom had been pupils of his grandfather. He devoted special attention to anatomy and materia medica; and the renewal of intimacy with his old schoolmate, Lyman Foot, at that time chief assistant of Professor Silliman, led him also to pursue a course of study in chemistry, which Professor Silli- man facilitated and encouraged, by allowing him and Mr. Foot the free use of his most desirable and necessary appa- ratus, materials, and books. In 1813 he was well prepared to enter Edinburgh College, in furtherance of his grand- father's wish. But the war with Great Britain, then in pro- gress, prevented his departure, and the medical department of Yale College going into operation the ensuing winter, re- ceived and recorded his name as the first on the matriculation book of that institution. The class of that term consisted of thirty-eight members, among whom were Beriah Douglas, father of Senator Douglas. While pursuing his medical studies at Yale, he received private instruction in botany from Professor Ives, and in mineralogy and geology from Professor Silliman, besides making considerable progress in the science of zoology, without teachers. After a year's con- nection with Yale, his health required a respite, which was passed at Wallingford as a quasi doctor, successfully ad- ministering to the inhabitants during a time of general sick- ness. He next entered the celebrated medical school in the University of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, then at the head of all others in the United States. Here the usual zeal and scope of investigation in all departments of natural science characterized his studies. He returned to Connec- ticut in March, 1815, graduated in the medical department of Yale, and at once settled down to practice in Wallingford, Connecticut. For two and and a half years he pursued his professional labors here, devoting vacant hours to the cul-
tivation of the natural sciences. The plants, flowers, fruit- trees, medicinal herbs and shrubs, that were proper to that climate, he cultivated as a practical horticulturist ; geological researches were continued, and the ornithology of New Eng- land was added to his studies. Fresh-water fishes and insects also received a share of his attention; the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms were daily observed and scientifically examined, and at the same time he superintended his grand- mother's farm. As physicians were plenty at Wallingford, he determined again to remove to Ohio, and in 1818 the journey was made and he arrived at Poland. Having per- fected arrangements with his father, he returned East for his family. During his absence and against his expressed wishes,
he was elected probate judge. He could not well avoid accepting the trust, and with the aid of a clerk the duties were performed until he had received a call to settle in Dur- ham, Connecticut, as a physician, where a large practice and the successful cultivation of an apiary, garden, and orchards gave him abundant employment until the autumn of 1823. The death of his wife and daughter in this year, and the overburden of business, caused him to renew his arrange- ments for removing to Ohio, and, in company with his father, who was paying him a visit at the time, he again took his departure for the West. He had determined to relinquish the practice of medicine and become a farmer and merchant at Poland, but urgent cases of sickness gradually enlisted his skill and sympathy, and the increase of his practice making it necessary to have a partner, he associated with him Dr. Eli Mygatt, an able physician. In 1828 he was elected the representative for Trumbull county in the Ohio legislature, in which capacity he took up the penitentiary system. His object was as a humanitarian to do away with close confine- ment, and as a statesman to derive profit from convict labor. Both these purposes he ultimately accomplished, against the most strenuous and bigoted opposition, and was christened by the sobriquet of "The Father of the New Penitentiary." He was elected to the legislature for three successive terms, in the last one of which he championed and carried through the bill for chartering the Ohio and Pennsylvania canal. The measure was violently opposed by the Sandy and Beaver Canal Company, which had previously obtained a charter. Both these works were then looked upon as of immense im- portance to the public ; yet he lived to see both completed, put into operation, and at length superseded by railroads and pass into decay and obliteration. In 1837, while engaged in his large country practice, the professorship of theory and practice of medicine was offered him in the Ohio Medical College at Cincinnati. He accepted the position, and ably filled the chair until 1842, when he resigned. When the first geological survey of Ohio was organized in 1848, he was made responsible as an assistant for the natural history of the State. His reports in this capacity embrace a catalogue of the fishes, birds, reptiles, and mollusks of Ohio. The fishes he sketched with his own hand, and described the character and habits of all the then known species found in the different waters of the State and Lake Erie. These were subsequently published in the Boston Journal of Natural Sciences and in the Family Visitor. He also commenced the formation of a cabinet of Ohio mammals, birds, and reptiles, a State collection of insects, and perfected an ex- tensive cabinet of the land and fresh-water shells of Ohio. He expended a large amount of money from his private purse in making these collections, and when the legislature broke up the survey and refused to reimburse him, he held on to his collections and ultimately donated them to the Cleve- land Academy of Natural History. In 1837 he had taken up his residence in the neighborhood of Cleveland, where he purchased a fine fruit farm on the Lake Shore, and in 1841 he accepted the appointment to the chair of theory and practice and physical diagnosis in the Willoughby Medical School, where he lectured one year. The medical depart- ment of the Western Reserve College was established in Cleveland in 1843, and he was appointed to and filled a similar chair in that department until the close of the term in 1864. His announcement of the existence of sex among the naiades was made in 1834, in Vol. xxvi of the American
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Journal of Art and Science, and the discovery created not only discussion but a sensation throughout the scientific world. As early as 1829 he had commenced collecting the land and fresh-water shells of Ohio, and made numerous dissections of them. All previous writers on the subject had looked upon these animals as hermaphrodite, or uniting the two sexes in one individual. But he discovered that about one-half of any given species would be fertile and would teem with young, while the other would be barren, and that certain differences in the form of the shell invariably at- tended the fertile or barren condition of the animal. He further noticed that at some seasons of the year these two forms would be found pairing and running together on the sand-bars in the waters. After long observation, he con- cluded that the animals were not hermaphrodite, but the sexes are distinct, and that each sex possesses a peculiar organization of body associated with a corresponding form of the shell sufficiently well marked to distinguish it from the other. This view was published, accompanied with sketches of the different forms of the shell. A translator of the German Encyclopedia Iconographie attempted to refute it in the American edition of that work. He took the ground that the form of the shell peculiar to the fertile individuals is the result of the pressure and distention by the enlarged ovaries. At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, subsequent to this criticism, he, in a well-arranged article read before the meeting at Cincin- nati, rebutted the attack and refuted the assumption by ex- hibiting a suite of shells, male and female, from the oldest specimens down to the young, taken from the ovaries as early as the formation of their testaceous covering was com- pleted. A debate ensued after the reading was finished. The translator renewed verbally his criticisms, and was promptly corrected by Professor Agassiz, who said: "Dr. Kirtland's views are entirely correct, and have been sus- tained by my own and the German naturalists' investiga- tions." Siebold and his translator, Dr. Burnett, Charles Knight's English Encyclopædia, and Isaac Lea, likewise sustained his views. He also discovered that the young of the naiades, soon after they are discharged from the mother, form a bysus, or beard, by which they attach themselves to some foreign substance, and thus remain securely anchored the first year of their lives. This discovery was also pub- lished in Vol. xxxix of Silliman's Journal of Science. Vol. xl of the same journal contains an account of the fact, first made known by him, that the Bohemian Wax Wing is an occasional winter visitor to Northern Ohio; also that the Sylvia pensilis rests and rears its young in the valley of the Mahoning river at Poland. In the summer of 1853, in com- pany with Prof. Baird and Dr. Hoy, he made an extended natural history reconnoisance through Northern Ohio, Mich- igan, Upper Canada, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and in 1869-70, when seventy-seven years old, he made a six-weeks' journey of similar purpose through Florida, where he made valuable collections in natural history. From the days of his medical pupilage he had always superintended a farm, and from 1840, when he purchased an exhausted farm on the Lake Shore, west of the Cuyahoga river, he zealously followed scientific farming. He was the first to demonstrate theoreti- cally and practically that the stiff clay soil derived from the underlying Devonian shales may be highly productive for fruit, and his success in fruit-growing stimulated others, until the old pastures and meadows of the section were changed
into the most profitable orchards, vineyards, and gardens. This required twenty years of industry, during a time when he went almost daily to his duties at the Medical College in Cleveland and visited a circuit of patients. Besides stocking his farm with almost every hardy variety of fruit known, he converted it into a perfect arboretum. In his grounds a greater number of exotic trees, shrubs, and plants were to be found than in any private establishment in the State. His greatest success in fruit-growing was the cultivation of new and superior varieties of cherries. His experiments in this line were commenced as early as 1812, and until 1847 the results revealed from year to year were unfavorable, but in the season of the latter year the progeny of a new arrange- ment came into bearing, and surpassed in quality any of the best varieties previously produced. Many of those seedlings were extensively cultivated, not only in the United States, but in Great Britain and the Continent of Europe. A large apiary was also an interesting feature of his model farm. A long experience in bee-culture, dating from the year 1810, rendered him not only an expert in the ordinary manage- ment of the honey-bee, but perfected him in its history, anatomy, physiology, and requirements. He was also an expert in. taxidermy, and many of the principal museums of the United States and Great Britain contain choice specimens of that art prepared by his hands. On his grounds at East Rockport he established a private museum, and for many years gratuitously taught a class in which the ablest taxi- dermist of the West received his first instruction. During the existence of the Cleveland Academy of Natural Science, from 1843 to 1860, it had no other president and no worker of equal value to its reputation. Among his numerous con- tributions to it are descriptions of the birds of Northern Ohio, and the greater part of its collections in ornithology were made by him. Besides contributions to native societies and museums, he furnished the British Museum with several specimens of birds not before possessed by that institution, for which he received a vote of thanks from the curators. In 1861, the College of Williamsburg, Massachusetts, con- ferred upon him the degree of doctor of laws, but at home he was known by the more complimentary and satisfactory title of "The Sage of Rockport." During the war of Secession, when sixty-nine years old, he volunteered his services to Governor Tod, and for several months acted as examining surgeon for the recruits to the old regiment at Columbus, and was subsequently detailed to examine several thousand drafted men at Camp Cleveland. The pay for his services he donated to the Bounty Fund for recruits in Rockport and. to the Soldiers' Aid Society. He was president of the State Medical Society of Ohio for one year, and for many years president of the Cleveland Academy of Natural Sciences and of the Kirtland Society of Natural History in Cleveland. He wrote valuable articles on medicine and his various pur- suits for appropriate journals, carried on an extensive cor- respondence with the eminent naturalists of the day, and was elected a member of many of the learned societies of the United States. On all subjects pertaining to the history, archaeology, agriculture, fruit-bearing, or meteorology of Ohio, he possessed information full, original, and practical. In 1870 the Governor was induced by interested parties to exclude him from the board of trustees for the Agricultural College, on the score of age. He had already performed treble the work of most men, and, at the age of four-score years, more than the majority of scientists at forty. At the
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age of seventy he persistently declined to lecture on any subject, and, believing that economy of time was as necessary in intellectual success as financial economy, he had sus- pended over his table the motto, "Time is money ; I have none of either to spare." Of the labors of his long life more than half were performed for the benefit of the public, with- out compensation. The farmers of Ohio have especial cause to be thankful to him. He sought out the best varieties of fruit adapted to the climate, and when, after tedious experi- ments, their value was demonstrated, slips, seed, and young trees were scattered freely and gratuitously through the country. His social qualities are best summed up in the brief, truthful statement that even when in his eighty-second year he was the spirit and embodiment of youth in the society of both the young and the old, and was the idol of both. In January, 1875, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society, thus receiving the title of philosopher to add to the many honors and distinctions he had so well earned. In 1815 he married Miss Caroline Atwater, of Wal- lingford, Connecticut. Of three children, the fruit of this union, but one, the wife of Charles Pease, Esq., survived. In 1824 or 1825 he married Miss Hanna Fitch Toucey, of Newtown, Connecticut. An able biographer wrote of him, "His eminent success in the field of science is attributable to his untiring industry and his inextinguishable thirst for knowledge."
JOHNSON, THEODORE NELSON, an extensive manufacturer of Portsmouth, was born in Durham, Middle- sex County, Connecticut, on the 22d of October, 1822. He is the son of Samuel C. and Phebe B. Johnson, whose maiden name was Camp, both being natives of the same county as that in which their son was born. Not long after his birth they removed to Ashtabula County, Ohio, arriving in 1824, and were among the first families in the settlement of that county. There they resided for a number of years, but subsequently removed to Southern Ohio, where the father died at the age of seventy-nine years, the mother yet surviv- ing in 1882 at eighty-five. Her declining days are spent with her son, the subject of this biography. Theodore was the third child in a family of seventeen, and had very few privileges in the way of an education except such as could be obtained at the district schools and two years spent at the academy at Kingsville, Ashtabula County. In the Spring of 1841, when he had passed his eighteenth year, he resolved to go to Washington County to teach school, having already had a two Winters' experience at home. This involved a long and tedious journey of two hundred and fifty miles, a part of which was of necessity performed on foot. With the elasticity and bright spirits of youth, however, this seemed to him nothing, and on his arrival he engaged to teach a dis- trict school, remaining in its charge for one year, returning to the home of his father in the spring of 1842. In October of same year he removed to Lawrence County, to engage in the same occupation. Soon after arriving he made the ac- quaintance of Captain John Kyle, now very prominent in Cincinnati, but then a general merchant and the county treasurer. This gentleman offered him another position, and he engaged with him as assistant in his office, and also as clerk in the store of Kyle & Johnston. In this position he made a wide acquaintance, and on the retirement of Captain Kyle he became a candidate himself for the office of county treasurer, and was duly elected. He discharged the duties
of this position for two terms, or four years, and then with- drew from political life, excepting so far as every citizen is bound in duty to the Republic, and purchased a farm at Green's Landing, in the same county. He carried this on successfully from 1850 to 1855, when he became engaged upon the Ohio River, being thus occupied until July of the year following, when he purchased stock in what was then known as the Cincinnati and Big Sandy Packet Company, which had been organized the year previous. It then con- sisted of one boat, known as the Scioto. Ten years later they bought out the Pomeroy trade, constantly adding new boats to their number until in 1873 they had thirteen. Until that year they carried on business under the name of the Cincinnati, Big Sandy, and Pomeroy Packet Company, but they then consolidated with the Maysville and Cincinnati and Portsmouth and Cincinnati Packet Companies. The company is now known as the Cincinnati, Portsmouth, Big Sandy, and Pomeroy Packet Company, and is doing an extensive business of the highest utility to the dwellers upon the Upper Ohio. Mr. Johnson remained in the employ of this company as secretary and treasurer, handling its affairs with great skill, until March, 1881, when he disposed of his interest. During the twenty-five years he was connected with this business, he was reasonably successful in a pecun- iary point of view, and was enabled to retire from it with a well-earned character for business and a fair return for his investment. In April, 1877, in company with his brother, S. G. Johnson, he bought the half interest of Mr. Roads in the firm of Johnson & Roads, manufacturers of wagon and carriage stock, at Portsmouth, the new company being styled Johnson Brothers. It was thus known until March, 1880, when Mr. S. G. Johnson died. Shortly after Mr. Johnson bought from the heirs of the estate his brother's interest in the manufactory, and taking his only son, T. N. John- son, Jr., an active young man, into partnership, formed the new firm of Johnson & Son. Up to this time, from the year 1862, Mr. Johnson had been a resident of Cincinnati, not making his home in Portsmouth until the Spring of 1880. In April, 1847, Mr. Johnson was married to Miss Phebe E. Greene, daughter of E. B. Greene, Esq., of Greene's Landing, Lawrence County, and sister to E. B. Greene, Jr., late of Ports- mouth, whose sketch and engraving may be found elsewhere in this book. Her father was of the celebrated Rhode Island family, to which General Nathaniel Greene, of the Revolu- tion, belonged, and was born in New Hampshire. In the war of 1812 he served as a commissioned officer, and came to Ohio as early as 1816. He married Lydia Mclaughlin of Vermont. Mr. Johnson's family consists of three living children: Lydia G., Theodore N., and Mary E., one other having died in infancy. Mr. Johnson is recognized as being one of the foremost and most enterprising business men of Portsmouth, and his success in life is the result of steady perseverance, wise economy, prudent management, and honest principle. He is quiet and unostentatious in his de- meanor, yet affable and pleasant in conversation and in social circles, and is highly respected as a gentleman of ster- ling worth and of good business qualifications. In his relig- ious views he is a Presbyterian, being a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Portsmouth, of which Dr. E. P. Pratt has been pastor for many years. Politically he is a republican.
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