USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume II > Part 62
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Ohm Silamater
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and Stark counties. In June, 1812, the United States de- clared war against Great Britain, and on the 16th August fol- lowing General Hull surrendered Detroit, the Michigan ter- ritory, and the army under his command to General Brock, commanding the British army in Canada, and thus laid open the whole northwestern frontier of Ohio to British and Indian invasion. Information of the surrender was brought to him at Canfield on the 21st August. He immediately sent ex- presses to his several brigadier-generals to detail troops from their respective commands for the protection of the frontier, and ordered the company of cavalry belonging to the neighbor- hood into immediate service. On the 23d, with this company of cavalry and Elisha Whittlesey as his aid, he started for Cleveland, reaching that place on the afternoon of the next day, finding the place deserted by the frightened inhabitants and meeting there the surrendered troops of General Hull, who had been liberated on parole. The day following, two officers were sent to Washington with the news of Hull's sur- render and to procure supplies and munitions for the army. Orders were received to organize a brigade of fifteen hundred men from his division, put them under command of a briga- dier-general, and report them to the commander of the north- western army. After remaining in camp at Cleveland some weeks with the purpose of keeping up communication by the lake front with the advanced post at Huron, he resolved to abandon that line of communication as dangerous, and with- drew to the neighborhood of Akron, whence, with hastily collected reinforcements and supplies, he set out for Huron. Here he was visited by General Harrison, and, after a confer- ence, turned over the greater part of his command to that general, leaving the remainder under the command of Brig- adier-General Simon Perkins. In November, 1812, he re- tired from the service and returned to his home in Canfield. A misunderstanding in the War Department concerning the payment of the expense of provisioning his command when first called out, caused him some annoyance and embarrass- ment. The mistake was discovered and rectified some years afterward, and the integrity, business ability, and careful economy shown by him in the affair publicly acknowledged. The anxiety and exertion of organizing against invasion im- paired his health, already broken by age and the hardships of pioneer life. He married, February 16th, 1780, Miss Rhoda Hopkins, of Litchfield.
WHITEMAN, BENJAMIN, pioneer soldier, was born at Germantown, Pennsylvania, March 12th, 1769. He emi- grated to what was then called Limestone (now Maysville), Kentucky, when about twenty-one years old, and there was, by Governor Beverly Randolph, in 1791, commissioned an ensign of militia. In 1793 he married Miss Catharine Davis. In 1792 he was, by Governor Isaac Shelby, commissioned captain of a company of the 15th regiment of Kentucky mili- tia, and in 1796 this commission was reissued by Governor Garrard, of Kentucky. In 1799 he removed to Beaver Creek, Greene county, Ohio, then a small settlement, at present known as the city of Xenia, and in 1803 was by Governor Tiffin, appointed associate judge of the common pleas court of the county. On the reorganization of the Ohio militia, under the State Constitution adopted in 1802, Captain White- man, having removed to the Falls of the Little Miami, now known as Clifton, Greene county, Ohio, and there decided to settle on a farm as his permanent home, he was by Governor Tiffin, commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the 2d regiment,
3d brigade, Ist division of Ohio militia, September 28th, 1804, and the following year he was commissioned as brigadier- general, to take the command of his brigade. June 26th, 1809, this latter commission was reissued him by Governor Worthington, with command of the 4th brigade assigned him; and May Ist, 1813, he was, by Governor Meigs, com- missioned major-general of the 5th division. He continued to occupy this position until, after the war of 1812, the militia were disbanded, and returned to the avocations of peace. March 13th, 1816, we find General Whiteman engaged re- ceiving in the books he had then opened at Xenia, stock subscriptions to the State bank of Ohio, and he continued subsequently until his death, which occurred at Clifton, July Ist, 1852, to be connected with banking operations.
DELAMATER, JOHN, M. D., LL.D., was born April 18th, 1787, at Chatham, New York, and died March, 1867, at Cleveland, Ohio. His family was of French origin, as the name indicates ; his ancestors having been Huguenot exiles who found refuge in Holland. There they intermarried with the people of the country, and the traces of the Dutch descent were noticeable in his features. His father was a farmer, and this son was originally destined for no other oc- cupation. A slight injury from overlabor, when a lad, un- fitted him for farm work, and it was concluded as the next best thing to educate him for the ministry. At that early day the opportunities of good schooling were few; but the removal of the family to Duanesburg, Schenectady county, brought them into a neighborhood more than usually fur- nished with means of instruction. He was taught for some years by a thoroughly educated clergyman, who had himself been trained abroad. As he grew toward manhood his own inclination was toward the profession of the law; but, yield- ing to the objections of his father, he gave up that preference, and entered with ardor on the study of medicine. At the age of nineteen he graduated, or, more exactly, was licensed to practice by the Medical Society of the County of Otsego, and entered immediately into partnership with his uncle, Dr. Dorr, a . physician in Chatham. After three years he removed to Florida, a town in Montgomery county ; and, after a year spent at Albany, in 1815 he established himself in Sheffield, Berkshire county, Massachusetts. It was dur- ing his residence of eight years in that place that his singular professional ability began to be recognized, and in 1823 he was invited to a professorship in the Berkshire Medical In- stitute, at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Here his peculiar capa- city as a lecturer was developed and appreciated, and when, in 1827, a new medical school was opened by the Regents of the State of New York, for the benefit of the western dis- trict, at Fairfield, Herkimer county, he was called to a lead- ing position in its faculty. He was a man for new enter- prises, and readily gave himself to an almost frontier work in scientific education. For eight years he remained at Fairfield, in honorable and useful work. His reputation be- came widespread, and a place was universally accorded him in the front rank of physicians the country over. Dr. Jack- son, of Boston, then one of the first authorities in the profes- sion, in replying to a letter of a gentleman in Utica, who had sought his counsel in a peculiarly grave and obscure malady, said "You have no need to write to me. You have Dr. Delamater near at hand, than whom there is no abler prac- titioner in the country." Such was his acknowleged position at the age of forty. From Fairfield he removed to Willough-
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by, Ohio, having previously visited that State, and delivered a course of lectures in Cincinnati, where he was urgently solicited to remain as a permanent instructor. Following an instinct, however, which always led him to shun great cities, he chose his work in the Medical Institute at Willoughby, where he remained for about six years. In 1842 he removed to Cleveland, and took part with a corps of able coadjutors in the organization and establishment of the Cleveland Medi- cal College, the medical department of the Western Reserve College. His reputation as an instructor made him desired in regions widely separated, and the versatility of his powers, which enabled him to lecture with equal ability in almost every department of medical science, caused him to be sought for by every institution whose corps of teachers might be in any part imperfect. While regularly engaged in the profes- sorship already named, he found time to deliver full courses of lectures at Bowdoin College, at Dartmouth, at Geneva, and at Cincinnati. The manuscript notes left by him show that he had delivered at least seventy courses of lectures, treating almost every subject which belongs to medical science. He closed his labors in 1860, at the age of seventy-five, having probably shared in the education of more young men in the science of medicine than any instructor of his time. When he resigned his active duties in connection with the college, he was made Professor Emeritus, and received at the same time the title of doctor of laws. Though released from stated service, he continued to practice so far as his own in- firmities permitted, and his opinion was often sought for, es- pecially in obscure and doubtful cases of disease. Consent- ing to take the place of one of the professors, absent temporarily on duties arising out of the secession war, he went on day by day till he had delivered fifty lectures, the last of his public instructions. One of his distinguishing characteristics was his absolute simplicity, simplicity even to plainness. He was plain in person, plain in attire, plain in manner, plain in thought, plain in speech, and plain in ac- tion. It was the plainness not of sterility, but of strength and of intellectual clearness. He was a man of high culti- vation and of true refinement, but he had no taste for much which passes for refinement, and many things were super- fluous to him which to others become necessaries. He was repeatedly solicited to take prominent positions in some of the chief cities of the country, but declined, giving the reason that it would bring him into a style of life not his own. He loved the country, the plain life in which he was born. He spoke the pure Saxon of the common people, and never went about for a fine word. His style, whether in conversation or in the lecture-room, was as lucid as water, and the course of his thought equally so. As a means of conveying knowledge or of stating facts, the English language was probably never better used by any man of his time. While he spoke, few thought how well and thoroughly he was speaking and eluci- dating ; but when he had finished, it was clear that there was nothing more of importance on that subject to be said. The singleness of his intellect had its counterpart in the perfect integrity of his moral nature. In every condition, as a teacher in public institutions, as a colleague, as a friend, as a citizen, as an office-bearer in the church, the one question which with him was first and final, was the question of simple justice in the case. Toward himself he was often unjust, denying himself his own dues, depreciating his own services, abandoning his own rights, and, whatever defects he may have shared with men at large, his truth and fidelity and
honor were absolutely unblemished. Duty with him was a matter of course, and his conscientiousness of labor was es- pecially remarkable. Speaking to a young physician in the confidence of friendship, he once said, what very few men in any walk of life have ever been able to say, that "through his most active years he never went to bed without the con- sciousness that he had done that day all that any man could require of him, professionally or otherwise." His rectitude, strict as it was towards himself, was never exacting in regard to others. Toward friends, especially towards his household, it took the form of delicate and beautiful fidelity. He was unswerving in duty and affection. His high intellectual and moral qualities were tempered by an uncommon benevolence. If his excellence anywhere became, through its excess, a fault, it was that he loved his neighbor better than himself. He hardly had the sense of property as most men possess it, and his first thought always was to benefit others. What return he received was a secondary matter. In this feature of medical experience he was as preëminent as he was in his professional ability. Not only did he bestow gratuitously on the needy large amounts of labor and care, but his charges, when made, were so moderate and so indifferently looked after, that, in the course of his more than fifty years of steady practice, the earnings which he relinquished, or made no at- tempt to collect, would in the hands of most men have ac- cumulated into a generous fortune. Nor was his liberality professional only. He had a warm heart and open hand for every enterprise which tended to the good of men. He was an early and decided advocate of temperance, and often lectured on this subject with great force and marked success, not only in his medical courses, but whenever a fit opportu- nity presented itself. His crowning characteristic was his genuine and thorough piety. He made a public profession of religion at the age of twenty-five, and, like everything else about him, it was genuine. Religion was in him the under- lying and controlling element, and with all his native resource and acquired skill, he recognized his implicit de- pendence upon divine support in common duties. He never, it is believed, entered on any critical operation as a surgeon without having made the case a subject of special prayer, and his family devotions never were omitted, whatever might be the pressure of his professional calls.
MENARY, GENERAL JAMES H., was born June 9th, 1760, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In the year 1784 he was married to Miss Mary Blair, a native of Mifflin, Pennsylvania. She survived her consort many years, and lived to the advanced age of ninety-six. His ancestors were English, his father being in the city of London at the time of the great earthquake. Although but a lad of sixteen at the outbreak of the Revolutionary war, he shouldered his rifle, and went out among the colonial patriots to fight for his country's independence. This was no doubt an excellent training school for the young patriot, who in after life became the companion and associate of the most daring and adven- turous of frontiersmen. After the close of the war of Inde- pendence he, with his wife and little son, James, went to Bourbon County, Kentucky, and here his children, Alex- ander, Jane, Betsy, and Richard were born. Some circum- stances here prompted him to look about for another field and another home, one of which was his dislike of slavery, another his desire of exploring new fields of adventure. So, in company with General Nathaniel Massie, and twelve men
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besides, he came North, crossing the Ohio River at or near where Manchester is now situated; taking a north-easterly course, they reached the waters of the north fork of Paint Creek, at the place now known as Frankfort, Ross County. This was in the winter of 1792-3, for these surveying expeditions gen- erally went abroad in the winter, as at that time of year the Indians were less troublesome than in summer. But the cold of that winter came near being a more destructive enemy than even their red foe. It was here that a three days' snow-storm came upon them, sifting incessantly down its fleecy mantle until its depth reached the line of eighteen inches. They were now one hundred miles from any hab- itation of white men, and dependent solely on game for their sustenance. The crust that had formed upon the sur- face of the snow was strong enough to bear up and protect the small game, but not strong enough to bear the weight of the men, so in their efforts to hunt the game they only frightened it away. Starvation seemed to be their inevitable fate. But the brave hearts of these fourteen frontiersmen, well trained in the school of hardship and privation, seemed, even in face of these trials, to surmount them all. They started again, single file, and retraced their tedious way back to the Ohio River, sending ahead the strongest, to break the path over which the rest were to follow. When those in the advance were compelled by fatigue to fall out, those in the rear would take up the line of march through the wild, un- broken country. After several eventful days, subsisting an whatever their unerring rifles could obtain for them, and in the face of starvation and bitter cold, they finally reached the shores of the Ohio. To their camp in the wilderness they gave the very appropriate name of "Cold Camp." After one year had elapsed, they again returned to Ohio, and had a skirmish with the Indians on Paint Creek, at the Point where the neat little town of Bainbridge is now located. And then and there, one of their number, Mr. Robinson, was fatally wounded, and died a few hours after the engage- ment. A Mr. Gilfillan was also severely wounded. In the summer of 1796 Mr. Menary, with a number of others, came and located land in the neighborhood of the present site of Chillicothe. Neither the rigor of the winters nor the relentless animosities of the Indians could prevent those hardy men from coming to the fertile and interesting portion of country that was their choice. Having raised a crop of corn and erected a few log huts, they returned to Kentucky, and in December of the same year brought their wives and little ones to their new homes. Fifteen families, a little more than sixty souls in all, composed this first colony of settlers on the then called "high banks of the Scioto," three miles below Chillicothe. The limitless fertility of the soil; the beautiful scenery ; its streams and springs a never-failing supply of water; the highly cultivated farms; the refinement, elegance, and moral character of its present people-all tend to prove the correctness of these pioneers in choosing this lovely location for their own and their descendants' home. With his family, he remained, at this point three years-then, as the Indians were less troublesome, the little colony felt secure now to separate and go to their respective places. He accordingly removed to his permanent home, near the Slate Mills, and at this home he spent the remainder of his days, bringing up a family of seven children, a credit to himself and making useful and honorable members of society. His third child, and the eldest of his daughters, Jane, was born August 14th, 1792. She was in her fourth year
when her father emigrated to Ohio in 1796. She came with the rest of the family, mounted on top of one of the pack-horses. At this tender age she experienced the diffi- culties and trials of the early pioneers, who tracked their way through the unbroken forests by the blaze of the toma- hawk on the trees. They came to Chillicothe when it was occupied by only one settler, Charles Jamison, who had erected upon its site a small cabin. In her eighteenth year she united with the Presbyterian Church in Chillicothe, then under the pastoral care of Dr. Robert G. Wilson. Jane was married in 1812, at the age of twenty, to James McCreary, of Philadelphia, and settled with her husband on a tract of land adjoining her father's. Her married life was but a short one. After lingering for several years an invalid, Mr. McCreary died, leaving her with three children-one son and two daughters. She was a resident of Ross County for sev- enty-six years, and died in her eightieth, March 25th, 1872, at the residence of her son-in-law, H. L. Kline (of whom a sketcli appears elsewhere in this volume), near South Salem, in that county. Her life was spent in doing good, and she left behind her the fragrance of a good name. When Ohio was admitted a State, her father, General Menary, was chosen as one of what were then called the " Assemblymen." He sat the first of her representatives, when Chillicothe was the capital. In 1812 he erected a block-house at what then was the outer line of Ohio settlements. It was known as Menary's Block- house, and the town of Bellefontaine marks the spot-for this wooden structure of defense has long since yielded to the ravages of time. From this point, as a base of supplies, he, in company with General Duncan McArthur, advanced with a body of men, slowly cutting their way through the inter- minable forests, toward the lakes, to take part in the disastrous campaign which finally resulted in Hull's surrender. On this expedition he was accompanied by his son, Captain Alex- ander Menary, in command of a company of riflemen, or what we now call sharpshooters, and woe betide the men that came within range of those experienced marksmen! After this campaign he once more retired to his home, and after- ward pursued the arts of peaceful life, and remained there until the time of his death, November 29th, 1835. In dispo- sition he was generous and frank, always social and cheerful, kind and pleasant-therefore his society was the more sought after, and he always carried hope and gladness wherever he went. His character was far above ordinary. His courage and endurance have been seldom equaled, never excelled. Quiet and retiring, he never sought public notoriety. Dying at a good old age, he left a name of which his family may well be proud, and his Christian life was worthy of imitation. With his co-laborers he laid the foundation of one of the greatest commonwealths in our highly-favored country.
KLINE, COLONEL HENRY L., of Ross County, Ohio, was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, October 25th, 1813. His ancestors came from Strassburg, Germany, in 1673, and settled at Baltimore, Maryland. Here they were engaged in the flouring business-one of them being lost at sea when taking a cargo of flour over to Europe. ·When a lad of eight or ten years his parents, together with the rest of the family, consisting of five boys and two girls, came and settled in Ross County, Ohio, not far from Frank- fort. The entire journey was made in wagons, and they reached their destination in December. The remainder of the winter was passed in a small log house. In the follow-
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ing spring his father, being a miller by trade, took charge of Adams's Mills, near Chillicothe. He remained here until his father bought what was known as the General Swearingen place, located in Buckskin Township, Ross County. With an energy that ever marked his acts in life, he went to work assisting his parents in securing their new home. At the same time, young and ambitious, reared under the eye of the patriots of 1812, it is not to be wondered at that he should join himself to the military organizations of his day, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel of one of the militia regiments. He was married April 2d, 1839, to Miss Mary E. McCreary, a resident of the same county, near Chillicothe, and granddaughter of General James H. Menary, a sketch of whom appears elsewhere in this volume. Having purchased a portion of the Swearingen place from his father, he became one of the fixed settlers of the neighborhood, and remained on this place until his death, which occurred Octo- ber 9th, 1879. By his energy and industry he accumulated a comfortable competency. While in his young manhood nothing stood between him and poverty but a brave heart and strong and willing hands, in his declining years all the comforts of modern life were gathered around him. In re- ligion he was a Presbyterian-always a liberal giver, a zeal- ous worker, and an exemplary Christian. Originally an old line Whig, he, at the birth of the Republican party, in 1854, stepped into its ranks, and ever kept time to its most advanced music. He sent the only son he had, P. J. Kline, to the army. Although not privileged to go to the front himself, still his hand and voice were ever lifted up in defense of the Union and his party. Possessed of a fine physical system and a brave heart, he never flinched at obstacles, or grew despondent in adversity. In short, he seldom failed to carry to completion any thing he undertook. There remain of his family the mother and two children, P. J. Kline and Mary R. M. Kline. The daughter is now at home with the wid- owed mother. The son, after having returned from the army, at the close of the war, studied medicine. At the completion of his studies, he married Miss Lida E. Pricer, of South Salem, Ohio, and located in the beautiful river city of Portsmouth, Ohio, where he takes rank among the ablest and best physicians of that part of the State.
PENDLETON, NATHANIEL GREENE, lawyer, was born at Savannah, Georgia, August 24th, 1793, and died at Cincinnati, Ohio, June 15th, 1861. His father, Major Na- thaniel Pendleton, a nephew of Edmund Pendleton, the Vir- ginia statesman, and himself a native of Virginia, was an officer in the Revolutionary army, and served on the staff of General Nathaniel Greene during his campaign in the South, enjoying in a special degree the confidence and friend- ship of that officer, after whom his son was subsequently named. After General Greene's success at the battle of Eu- taw Springs, Congress, giving him a gold medal and a Brit- ich standard, in honor of the victory, at the same time directed him to present the thanks of that body to Major Pendleton, for his particular activity and good conduct dur- ing the engagement. The State of Georgia subsequently granted lands to General Greene, who, having occupied them, persuaded his friend Major Pendleton to settle near him. When the Federal government was organized, Major Pendleton was appointed by President Washington the first judge of the United States district court of Georgia, and he presided in the first United States court ever held in that
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