USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume III > Part 5
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and the Lamb. God bless you, my beloved brother, and grant that we may all meet in the city of God above." Dr. Grimes was a member of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which convened at New Orleans in 1858 ; also the Assemblies at St. Louis in 1866 and 1874. He was a member of the General Assembly which met at Sara- toga, New York, in 1883, and took an active part in the re- vision of the Church Discipline, then under consideration. He married in 1857 Amanda S. Simeral, and had issue five children, three of whom are living at this writing (1883).
CAPPELLER, WILLIAM S., Auditor of Hamilton County, Ohio, was born February 23, 1839, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. In his boyhood he removed with parents to Wayne County, Indiana. His father died in 1852. His first step toward self-support was taken in 1852, when he was apprenticed to learn the trade of printer, under the tutelage of Hon. D. P. Holloway, then editor of the Rich- mond Palladium. But subsequently he accepted the offer of his uncle, Philip Dom, of Mount Healthy, Ohio, to afford him the opportunity to acquire an education. He accord- ingly attended Farmers' College, at College Hill, Ohio, being encouraged and assisted by an educated mother. To this mother, her intelligence and great energy, he attributes mainly his success in life. In 1866 he was appointed post- master at Mount Healthy, Ohio, and held that office until 1872. In 1859 he embarked in the dry goods and grocery business. In 1869 he was elected clerk of Springfield Town- ship, and also clerk of the Board of Education, and was re- elected four times. In 1870 he was appointed by the Court of Common Pleas of Hamilton County one of a committee of three to investigate the accounts of the officials of that county. He discharged his duty with such fidelity and thoroughness as to elicit commendation from both the press and the community at large ; and the General Assembly, acting upon the report made by the committee, amended the law relating to the compensation of county officials, by a bill known as the " Hamilton County Fee Bill," which is still in force. Mr. Cappeller served several years as tax omission deputy, in the office of County Auditor of that county. In the fall of 1877 he was himself elected Auditor, after one of the most spirited campaigns in the political history of that county, being the only Republican elected on the ticket. In October, 1880, he was re-elected to the same office by a majority of three thousand eight hundred and forty-five votes, receiving the largest vote and the largest majority of any of the candidates. His thorough familiarity with all the details and duties of the office has enabled him to meet without embarrassment increasing labors. In 1877 he published the "Tax-payer's Manual," which met with great favor, owing to the valuable information it contained for the use of bank- ers, merchants, manufacturers, etc. It was highly indorsed by the judges of Hamilton County, and also by leading State officials. For many years he has been prominently identified with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, contributing to its publications, delivering addresses, etc., and as a repre- sentative of the Grand Lodge of Ohio has always been con- sidered a wise and judicious counselor. He was installed Worthy Grand Master of the Right Worthy Grand Lodge of Ohio on the sixteenth day of May, 1878, and filled the posi- tion with singular ability and intelligence. In December, 1880, he was elected to represent the State of Ohio in the Sovereign Grand Lodge of the World. Mr. Cappeller is an
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original thinker and a popular public speaker. Possessed of a pleasing address and fine social qualities, by industry and a courteous demeanor he has been eminently success- ful. During the years 1880-81 he was chairman of the Ohio State Republican Executive Committee, and his ad- ministration was characterized by great executive ability and political sagacity, and contributed greatly to the success of the campaign in carrying the State for Garfield and Arthur. During the year 1883 his Republican zeal manifested itself in the conspicuous part he took as a delegate in the State Convention which nominated Hon. J. B. Foraker for Gov- ernor, and whose availability as a candidate Mr. Cappeller was one of the first to discover and champion. Mr. Cap- peller is well known as a public-spirited citizen, giving of his private means liberally to the support of the different churches in his vicinity. His views are broad as to matters and meas- ures touching the public welfare, while maintaining an un- faltering allegiance to the party of his choice, believing that through its intervention the best interests of the community can be conserved. He assisted in organizing, and is a large stockholder and the manager of, the American Press Associ- ation, a system that is now supplying a large number of daily and weekly newspapers throughout the United States with stereotype news reports from the various offices in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, and elsewhere. In 1859 he married Miss Lizzie Killen, of Mount Healthy. Their residence is upon Chase Street, corner of Dane, in the Twenty-fifth Ward, in Cincinnati, and is an imposing structure, surrounded by cultivated grounds.
LUSKEY, HENRY, commissioner of the bureau of la- bor statistics, was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, March 2d, 1851. He is a son of John and Mary Luskey, both of German an- cestry and foreign birth. His early education was received in the common schools and by home study. Later in life Mr. Luskey served an apprenticeship as a machinist with the Lane & Bodley Company, at Cincinnati. In 1873 he became a member of Ohio Lodge No. 31, Knights of Pythias, of Cincinnati, Ohio, and served as inner guard in that lodge for the term of two years, subsequently being elected to the vice- chancellorship in the order, which he was compelled later to resign on account of other duties which required all his time. October 10th, 1877, he was initiated into the Mechanical Engineers, of Cincinnati, as a charter member, and in No- vember following was elected their secretary, being re-elected in 1878, 1879, 1880, and 1881, a position he was compelled to resign by reason of his appointment to the State office which he now holds. January, 1880, Mr. Luskey became a member of the Laurel Mutual Aid Association, of Cincinnati, serving as its president for two terms. April 9th, 1881, he was ap- pointed by the governor of Ohio, the Hon. Charles Foster, to his present official position. Mr. Luskey was married to Miss Mary A. Schramm, May 6th, 1872. To this union have been born four children, two sons and two daughters. The appointment of Mr. Luskey as commissioner has proved to be a good one, as he is a quiet, clever gentleman, and a zealous and efficient officer.
GODDARD, CHARLES BACKUS, a lawyer, was born October 6th, 1796, at Plainfield, Connecticut, and died at Zanesville, Ohio, February Ist, 1864. He was the son of Calvin Goddard, who was a judge of the supreme court of that State, and a member of the Hartford convention, and c-3
Alice Hart Goddard, the daughter of Rev. Levi Hart, a Con- gregational minister. Charles B. Goddard was graduated at Yale College in 1814, at the age of eighteen. He studied law with his father, then living at Norwich, Connecticut, came to Ohio in 1817, and, by the advice of the late David Putnam, of Harmar, fixed his residence at Zanesville, when, June 6th, 1820, he married Harriet, oldest daughter of Daniel Convers. Her grandparents, maternal as well as paternal, were members of the Ohio company which landed at Mari- etta, April 7th, 1788. Mr. Goddard was several times elected to the legislature, and served in the senate and house of representatives of the State. He preferred his profession, however, to public life, and continued in its practice until one week before his death. In politics he was a whig, and a great admirer, as well as a warm personal friend, of Henry Clay. A member of the Episcopal church, he often repre- sented his parish in diocesan, and his diocese in general, conventions. He was a descendant of Lord Bacon, "the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind;" but he was proud of an ancestor whose name was Goddard, who was a soldier of the commonwealth, and served faithfully under Cromwell. In the margin of the genealogical history of the family are written, by his own hand, opposite the name of that ances- tor, these words: "He fought in the name of liberty, for which I, his remote descendant, revere his memory." Mr. Goddard's long professional career was a very busy and ar- duous one, and characterized by so high a degree of fidelity to his clients as amounted to devotion. The marked excess of this confined him more to a local field of effort than his great ability as a lawyer, and especially as an advocate, would otherwise have warranted. His strong attachment to his home and to his people so repressed his ambition for gen- eral fame, that he did not frequently appear where national distinctior would, had he done so, have come to him. When opportunity did arise, which he rarely had leisure from home engagements to seize, he never stood second in any forensic contest. He was the associate and compeer of such men of Ohio as the elder Ewing, Corwin, Vinton, Stanbery, Chase and Hunter, and his name is fully entitled to a place on the same list with theirs. He thus belonged to a small class of able men in Ohio, who were thoroughly learned in the law, as a science, and who, by reason of the modern attempts to simplify the practice, so as to bring it within the reach of the uncultivated, have not a succession equal to them in the pro- fession. The Ohio Supreme Court Reports bear many hand- marks of his professional work, conspicuous for learning and research; and which gave him decided prominence among the few who established the law in the earlier and forming days of the State. But his especial field was the bar, where as an advocate he was brilliant and unsurpassed, being dis- tinguished as a graceful and elegant speaker, and a powerful logician and debater. On many an occasion, in the earlier days referred to, before the hurry which characterizes all business of the recent time had generated the custom, even in courts, of cutting instead of untying the knots of logic, his participation in combats of argument, wherein he was never rated below the giants of his profession, will be re- membered by those who witnessed it; and in many a county court-house in those times battles took place in which all but the intellectual giants went down. It is difficult to portray such scenes without appearance of exaggeration, but the re- maining witnesses of them will not so regard the above pre- sentation. In all public measures of his time, that looked to
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the advancement of his State or community, Mr. Goddard was a zealous cooperator. He was the counsellor of many of the leading practical men of Ohio, who set on foot and erected the great public works of the State; and his advice and participation gave life to several of the most important of them, especially the Ohio canal, the Muskingum river slack-water improvement, the Zanesville and Maysville (Ken- tucky) turn-pike, the Central Ohio Railroad, and the Cincin- nati, Wilmington and Zanesville, now called the Muskingum Valley, Railroad. He had given much attention to military science, and had decided taste for military tactics which, with his fine intellect and commanding personal influence, would have qualified him for conspicuous military service ; but his health had begun to decline before the Rebellion broke out, and he was unable to lead to the field the thou- sands who would have been proud to follow him. This was a matter of exceeding regret to him, but he never failed to lift up his voice for the perpetuation of the Union. He was frequently offered much higher official position than he ever occupied, but did not accept public office except in his early life. He preferred his profession, and to be a steady worker in it. He had several opportunities to take a seat on the su- preme bench of the State, but always declined. His faithful personal attachment to Mr. Clay might have attracted him from the bar into the field of statesmanship, in case of the election of his friend to the Presidency ; but after the defeat of Mr. Clay, Mr. Goddard never took an active part in political contests, though he was a devoted whig to the end of that party's existence as an organization. After that he voted with the republicans, but never had much liking for the new party. He never could excuse Mr. Chase for accepting his first election to the Senate, and criticised with great severity all such coalitions as the one which produced that election ; and it may be remarked of the prominent whig leaders of .
the West, that the most of them never became quite recon- ciled to the abandonment of their party, or to any of the combinations that brought about that result. His ideas and motives were always upright, and his aims straightforward. He scorned to be successful by indirection. Like the great Kentuckian, he "would rather be right than be President." Mr. Goddard practiced law in partnership with C. C. Convers.
MILLER, EMANUEL, merchant and banker, Ports- mouth, Ohio, was born in York, Pennsylvania, December 28th, 1816. His parents were John George Miller and Cath- erine Sowers, and he is the youngest son in a family of eight children. His father followed the trade of a shoe-manufac- turer for over fifty years. The early educational advantages of young Miller were exceedingly limited. The common-school was his college, and he was privileged to attend that but about three months in the year. When sixteen years old, he began an apprenticeship to the tailor's trade, at which he worked in his native place for some seven years. In June, 1839, he came to Portsmouth, having previously spent some three months at Amanda furnace, in Greenup county, Kentucky. Upon arriving in Portsmouth he began working at his trade as a journeyman, and so continued for three years. In 1842 he opened a shop for the manufacture of custom work, which business he prosecuted by himself until July, 1847, when he entered into partnership with Jacob Elsas in the regular cloth- ing and piece trade. This arrangement continued for six years, Mr. Elsas having his residence in Cincinnati, and Mr. Miller conducting the business in Portsmouth. In 1853 Mr.
Miller purchased the interest of Mr. Elsas in the Portsmouth house, and carried on the business himself until 1869. Then was formed the firm of Miller, Voorhies & Company, Mr. L. E. Miller, son of our subject, being the company. This part- nership was dissolved in 1876, and in 1877 Mr. Miller became associated in business with Mr. Walter Cissna, under the firm name of Miller, Cissna & Company. Also in the same year a new Cincinnati firm was formed, known as Voorhies, Miller & Company, in which Mr. E. Miller retained an interest. In January, 1879, Mr. Miller was made president of the First National Bank, of Portsmouth, and still occupies the position. Deprived in his early life of the advantages of a liberal cul- ture, he has nevertheless always taken an active interest in every thing calculated to advance the interests of education in his community, and for a period of eight years was a member of the Portsmouth board of education. For nearly two years, also, he held a seat in the city council. In 1843 he married Catherine Day, daughter of Daniel Day, of York, Pennsylvania. The fruits of this union have been eight chil- dren, four living. His oldest son, Louis Edward Miller, re- ceived his education in the Portsmouth public schools, and is now a partner in the Cincinnati business house of Voorhies, Miller & Company. His second son, John G. Miller, gradu- ated at Princeton College, Princeton, New Jersey, and is now a partner with his father in the firm of Miller, Cissna & Com- pany, of Portsmouth. The oldest daughter, Emma Elizabeth Miller, graduated at College Hill Seminary, near Cincinnati, and is the wife of A. B. Voorhies, of the Cincinnati firm just mentioned. The other daughter, Lucy Ellen Miller, resides at home. In politics, up to 1854, Mr. Miller affiliated with the democratic party ; but upon the birth of the republican party he became one of its organizers, and has since been a staunch supporter of its policy. In religious belief he is a Presbyterian, having been connected with that denomination for some thirty years, and is a leading member of the First Presbyterian Church, of Portsmouth. Mr. Miller is a fine ex- ample of a self-made man. When he came to Portsmouth he had but five or six dollars in his pocket ; but, by industry, honesty, and strict attention to business, he has achieved a fine success therein. He is a man of very strong, positive convictions, and plain and outspoken in the expression of his sentiments, yet at the same time of decidedly modest and re- tiring manners. He possesses a clear head and sound judg- ment, and is an excellent counselor, always looking to the practical side of all questions. These qualities, combined with an agreeable, obliging spirit, have given him a high rank among the influential business men of Portsmouth.
PIATT, JOHN JAMES, poet and journalist, was born in Dearborn county, Indiana, March 1st, 1835. The French family from which he has descended were Huguenots, who emigrated to the island of San Domingo during the early part of the last century. John Piatt, the great-great-grand- father of our subject, came thence to this country and settled in New Jersey, thirty-five or forty years before the Revolu- tionary war. At the beginning of that war, four of his five sons, including the eldest, William Piatt, and the youngest, Jacob Piatt, father of John H. Piatt, who was, over half a cen- tury ago, a leading citizen of Cincinnati, entered the army, and the two last named served until its close, each attaining the rank of captain, and both subsequently becoming original members of the Society of the Cincinnati. Captain William Piatt, several years later, raised a company of men in the
E Miller
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neighborhood of Scotch Plains, or Plainfield, New Jersey, which was his home, for service against the Indians in the Northwest territory, and, joining the army of General St. Clair, at Fort Washington (now Cincinnati), was killed at St. Clair's famous defeat in November, 1791. Mr. Piatt's great-grand- father was, therefore, the first of the name to become associ- ated with the present metropolis, or identified with the State of Ohio. His younger brother, Jacob Piatt, the father of John H. Piatt, and grandfather of Donn, Jacob, Wykoff and Abram S. Piatt, came to Ohio later, and first settled at North Bend. Captain William Piatt's eldest son, Captain James Piatt, also raised a company of men in New Jersey at the outbreak of the second war with Great Britain, and remained in the ser- vice during its continuance. He is said to have commanded for a time a garrison on one of the islands in New York har- bor, and is believed to have been present at the battle of Plattsburg. Coming westward some years after the declara- tion of peace, in company with his second son, John Bear Piatt, a native of New York, who is still living, he died in Kentucky, a few miles below Rising Sun, Indiana, where the son, then a very young man, subsequently made his home. At this place, in 1827, the latter married Emily Scott, a native of Philadelphia, whose father, John Scott, Irish by birth, by trade a printer, was one of the founders of the Ohio State Journal at Columbus; and at a village then known as James's Mills, upon Laughery Creek, about twelve miles north of Rising Sun, in Union township, Dearborn county, Indiana, John J. Piatt, as the eldest son of his parents, was born. His father was at that time engaged in business as a small country merchant, a pursuit afterwards for a time associated with that of milling. Between his birth-place and Rising Sun the childhood and early boyhood of our subject alternated until he was nine years of age, when his father moved to Col- umbus, Ohio, and remained there and in that vicinity until the summer of 1856, when he removed his family to central Illi- nois. The son had his earliest education from books and na- ture before coming to Ohio. The first school-house he ever en- tered was one at Rising Sun, in which the late General Rich- ard S. Canby, a relative, also received his earliest training. At Columbus he had the benefit of various schools, including the High School, Capital University, and, it may be added, the printing office of his uncle, Charles Scott, who for many years published the leading whig paper there, already men- tioned, the Ohio State Journal. After two or three years' apprenticeship as a printer in his uncle's newspaper office, he entered Kenyon College, but did not graduate, leaving that institution with "little Latin and less Greek," in December, 1853. During two or three of the following seasons he taught an occasional country school in the neighborhood of his home, but in 1856 accompanied his father and family to Illi- nois, and remained with them about two years in the prairie country, a few miles northeast of Pana. In the fall of 1857 he published his earlier verses in the Louisville Journal, where they were praised by George D. Prentice, its editor. In October of the following year, Mr. Piatt went himself to Louisville, and was afterward for nearly two years associated in a private as well as distinctively editorial capacity with Mr. Prentice, who became warmly attached to him, in a friendship ceasing only with his life. In 1859, Mr. Piatt became a con- tributor to the Atlantic Monthly, Mr. Prentice having for- warded to Professor Lowell, its editor, some of his young associate's verses, with a note saying that if they were pub- lished he did not doubt they would be attributed to some of
the already famous American poets, notwithstanding their peculiar originality of thought and tone. One of these pieces was "The Morning Street," which, published in March, 1859, was copied in many newspapers which attributed it to both Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Emerson. In January, 1860, Mr. Piatt published, in connection with W. D. Howells-a friend whom he had first met, long before, in his uncle's printing office-his first volume, entitled "Poems of Two Friends," which was somewhat widely commented on and praised for an early Western book of verse. In June, 1861, Mr. Piatt married Sarah Morgan Bryan, a native of Kentucky-a young lady of remarkable poetical genius, whose two or three volumes of poems since published have received very high praise. Before his marriage, Mr. Piatt had received an ap- pointment from Salmon P. Chase in the Treasury Department at Washington, and made his home there until the summer of 1867, when, resigning his place, he returned to Ohio. Dur- ing his residence at Washington he published his second volume, "The Nests at Washington, and other Poems," New York, 1864,-a part of the contents being from the pen of Mrs. Piatt; and "Poems in Sunshine and Firelight," Cin- cinnati, 1866. After moving to Ohio, Mr. Piatt was editorially associated for a year with the Cincinnati Evening Chronicle, and, later, with the Cincinnati Commercial. He is still an oc- casional writer of literary articles and correspondence for the latter. Since his removal to Ohio he has published three volumes-"Western Windows, and other Poems, " New York, 1869; "Landmarks, and other Poems," New York, 1872, and "Poems of House and Home," Boston, 1879. The first includes nearly all the pieces written by himself contained in the previous volumes, which it would seem he cared to preserve. Each of these last published books, al- though neither can be said to have been popularly successful, received high praise from critics of authority at home and abroad. In addition to an extended recognition of them by the English critical authorities, quite a number of Mr. Piatt's poems have been translated and published in Germany ; and several years ago a volume of his translated poems was announced for publication in that country. Mr. Piatt's home is at North Bend, on a part of the place formerly belonging to General William Henry Harrison, but for five years, be- ginning with 1870, he resided each winter, and during the sessions of Congress, at Washington, holding the office of librarian of the House of Representatives-a position from which he was removed by the new administration of the House in December, 1875. Mr. and Mrs. Piatt have a family of interesting children; but they had the great sorrow of losing their eldest son, Alfred Victor, a gentle and promising boy ten years old, by an unhappy accident some years ago.
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