USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume III > Part 61
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good physician," and he took delight in serving the poor with no pecuniary gain to himself. Often he was a better friend to others than to himself, because his native benevolence and generosity was so great that he would refuse no one suffering or in want. Thus he greatly endeared himself to all who knew him, and that number comprised nearly every person in the county and vicinity. On the 19th January, 1840, he married Miss Ellen, the daugliter of Jacob H. Houser, one of the prominent citizens of the county. Of five children, the issue of this union, three are living, two daughters and a son, the former respectively the wives of George E. Gregg, of Sandusky, and B. F. Brunson, of Kenton, and the latter, a farmer, also resident at Kenton. In August, 1850, Dr. · Leighton and his wife became members by profession of the First Presbyterian church of that town. In native ability, Dr. Leighton excelled, while in his profession he practiced over a large extent of country, from the early days when wolves' howling was his lullaby, where, if belated, he camped in the woods, until those later times when the comforts of civilization became general.
STEELE, CHARLES MCDONALD, late General Manager of the Cincinnati Daily News Journal, is a son of Thomas Steele, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland (who came to this country in 1815), and Maria Phipps, a native of Penn- sylvania. They were married in Philadelphia, where Charles McDonald was born April 24th, 1841. One other son, Thomas, is now a minister in the Presbyterian Church. In the Fall of 1841 his father moved with his family to Cincin- nati, and died there in July 21st, 1849, of Asiatic cholera. The death of his father left him almost self-supporting in the eighth year of his age. And, as for his education, he had as well to depend upon himself, deriving his principal advantage in that direction from the schools of Cincinnati. Thus, with Mr. Steele, life was real and earnest from his childhood. His first employment was, in 1853, as a roller-boy in the West- ern Methodist Book Concern, where his left arm was broken, which necessitated a change of occupation, and, in 1854, he became a newsboy upon the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Day- ton Railroad, continuing this busy life until the war broke out. His disabled left arm prevented his enlistment in the army ; but upon the recommendation of Washington Mc- Lean, M. D. Potter, and Richard Smith to the late Alfred Gaither, superintendent of the Adams Express Company, he was appointed express messenger for that company, running from Chattanooga to Knoxville. This was a responsible and somewhat hazardous position ; but he discharged its duties with faithfulness and fearlessness. He closed his career in this business as agent for the same company at Murfreesboro, to the entire satisfaction and with the hearty approbation of that company. After the war Mr. Steele operated largely and with success in real estate, and as a contractor. It has been said of him that he has handled as much real estate to ad- vantage as any gentleman of his age in that city. Three important subdivisions were made by him, one comprising about one-fourth of the incorporated village of Hartwell. Indeed, that community ascribes to his energy, taste, and public spirit much of its present reputation as a desirable and thriving suburb of Cincinnati. He was its first Mayor, and re-elected twice to the same office. To the erection of the Methodist Episcopal Church of that village he gave more liberally than any other person. But not to this enterprise alone has he given from a sense of public duty. His gen-
erosity is only one of his many good characteristics. As a member of the Board of Education he served most efficiently for six years, giving liberally of his means and time to ad- vance the interests intrusted to that body. As a contractor Mr. Steele has built many of the streets and sewers of Cin- cinnati. Among his latest operations may be mentioned the building sixteen sections of the southern division of the New Orleans branch of the Cincinnati Southern Rail- road. As a business man Mr. Steele has made an hon- orable record. He is an earnest and enthusiastic worker in all his enterprises, and his general success and present stand- ing among capitalists and financiers is the best commentary that can be made upon both his natural and acquired abili- ties. From boyhood he has had to make his own way in the world, and one of the most pleasure-giving tasks of his life was the care and support of his widowed mother, who died January 21st, 1880. Mr. Steele was called to the general management of the Cincinnati Daily News Journal because of his well-known characteristics-integrity, intelligence, and acknowledged capacity as a business man. Mr. Steele is a gentleman of pronounced views of public men and measures. His impulses are noble and just and generous. Had the paper lived, and he continued at its head, it would have been a truthful and faithful, a fearless and intelligent expositor of the current affairs of the day. In the Fall of 1861 Mr. Steele married Miss Mary E. Thompson, a graduate of Cin- cinnati Wesleyan College, only daughter of Mr. R. P. Thomp- son, a well-known resident of Cincinnati, and for fifty years superintendent of the printing department of the Western Methodist Book Concern. They occupy one of the many residences at Hartwell which he has built by way of im- provement and embellishing that pleasant suburb, highly esteemed by those who know them best, and enjoying the respect of the community at large.
ROCKEFELLER, JOHN D., president of the Standard Oil Company, at Cleveland, Ohio, was born July 8th, 1839, in Central New York. His father, Dr. William A. Rockefeller, was a physician in that State. In 1853 he removed to Cleve- land, and remained at school until the summer of 1855. After serving a business apprenticeship until the spring of 1858, he formed a partnership with M. B. Clark in the pro- duce commission business, the firm of Clark & Rockefeller having a very successful trade until its termination in 1865. In 1862 the firm became associated with other parties in the refining of petroleum, then a new branch of industry, Clark & Rockfeller contributing a capital of $4,000 at the start, and agreeing to make further contributions if necessary. The business increased with such unexpected rapidity that within a year the advances to the refinery reached one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. In 1865 the oil refining interest had grown to such proportions that he sold out his share in the commission business, and devoted himself wholly to re- fining. The interests of his associates in the refining works were purchased and he established the firm of Rockefeller & Andrews, the latter having charge of the practical details. In the course of a few years he established a second refining business in company with his brother, under the name of William Rockefeller & Co., Rockefeller & Andrews furnishing half the capital. The two establishments were conducted separately at Cleveland for a year or two, when a combina- nation was formed, and a third house established, with a place of business in New York, for the sale of oil, the style
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of the house being Rockefeller & Co. Still later Henry M. Flagler, was taken into partnership, and the three concerns consolidated under the general partnership of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler, with establishments at New York and Cleveland. In 1870 the concern organized the Standard Oil Company, with a capital of one million dollars, and trans- ferred all their business to it. Of this company he was made president. In 1872 another consolidation was affected, by which nearly the entire oil refining interest of Cleveland and other interests in New York and the oil regions were combined in this company, the capital stock of which was raised two and a-half millions, and its business reached in one year over twenty-five million dollars-the largest company of the kind in the world. The New York establishment was enlarged in its refining departments ; large tracts of land were pur- chased, and fine warehouses erected for the storage of petro- leum ; a considerable number of iron cars were procured and the business of transporting oil entered upon ; interests were purchased in oil pipes in the producing regions, so that the company and its associates controlled about two hundred miles of oil pipes, and several hundred thousand barrels of iron tankage. Works were erected for the manufacture of barrels, paints and glue, and everything used in the manu- facture or shipment of oil. The works had a capacity of dis- tilling twenty-nine thousand barrels of crude oil per day, and from thirty-five hundred to four thousand men were employed in the various departments. The cooperage factory, the largest in the world, turned out nine thousand barrels a day, which consumed over two hundred thousand staves and headings, the product of from fifteen to twenty acres of sel- ected oak. When it is remembered that it was formerly the full labor of one man to manufacture three or four barrels daily, the magnitude of this accessory to the business can be realized. Only about forty per cent. of the company's busi- ness was done in Cleveland, the remainder being widely diffused over the country, stimulating industry and traffic wherever it was established ; but the business originating in Cleveland, the managers felt a pride in keeping a large pro- portion of it in that city. With the exception perhaps of the combined iron industries of the city, the oil refining interests almost entirely owned by the Standard Oil Company, made larger additions to the wealth and growth of Cleveland, than did any other one branch of trade or manufacture. The greater part of the product was shipped to Europe, and the market for it was found in all parts of that continent and the British Islands-in fact all over the world. Every part of the United States was supplied from the main distilling point, Cleveland, and the company virtually controlled the oil market of this continent, and in fact of the world. Be- sides the president, the principal active members of the company were, William Rockefeller, vice-president, H. M. Flagler, secretary ; Colonel O. H. Payne, treasurer, and S. Andrews, superintendent, who had charge of the manufactur- ing. The success of the company was largely due to the energy, foresight, and unremitting labors of its founder and president. In spite of the great fluctuations of the oil trade, it was always profitable to its stockholders, and whilst the trade was seriously depressed and unprofitable to others, the Standard Oil Company regularly paid handsome dividends. In 1870, a National Refiners' Association was organized with J. D. Rockefeller president. The absorbing duties of his posi- tion at the head of so gigantic a business prevented him from taking a leading part in public affairs, but he always contribu
ted freely to patriotic, benevolent, and religious purposes, and was largely interested in the improvement of real estate in the city. He is a member of the Second Baptist church, with which he has been connected for about twenty years -two years a scholar, twelve or thirteen years a teacher, and the remainder as superintendent of its sabbath and mission schools - and has made liberal donations to its fund, as he also did to the Baptist College at Granville. He is essent .- ally a man of progress, and the rare success which attended him through life is attributable to his enterprising, ambitious spirit, the confidence his integrity and ability inspired in others, a power of concentrating his mind and energies in a special, well-chosen channel, and a systematic, judicially economical method of engineering and managing great pro: jects. Foremost among those who gave him timely aid and as- sistance in his early struggles, he ever cherished the memory of T. P. Handy, Esq. That he never retrograded the almost unparalleled history of the Standard Oil Company furnishes abundant testimony. In 1864 he married Miss Laura C. Spelman, of Cleveland.
BATEMAN, WARNER M., was born August 5th, 1827, in Springboro, Warren county, Ohio. He comes of Welsh- Quaker stock. His paternal great-grandfather emigrated from Wales to Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary war. In his eighteenth year, under the direction of the late Hon. Thomas Corwin, he began a course of historical and politi- cal reading, as a foundation for the study of the law. Three years afterward he began the study of the law, and, in 1849, he removed to Lebanon, that he might prosecute his studies with greater advantage. In September, 1850, he was ad- mitted to the bar at Newark, Ohio. In November, 1850, he removed to Cincinnati, where, without experience and with- out acquaintances, he commenced the practice of the law. Mr. Bateman took an active and prominent part in the or- ganization of the republican party, and in 1856, was one of the candidates of that party for judge of the court of common pleas of Hamilton county, but was defeated with the rest of the ticket. In 1865, he was elected to the State senate from Cincinnati, and took a leading part in its deliberations. He was prominent and active in opposing the increase of corpor- ations. He urged upon the legislature the wisdom and ne- cessity of a more rigorous legislative control of railways of the State, and a committee, of which he was the chairman, was appointed to investigate and report in reference to the abuses in railroad management, and the legislation needful to cor- rect them. During the fall of 1866, this committee made an extensive examination of the subjects committed to them, took a large amount of testimony, and submitted the results in a lengthy report, prepared by Mr. Bateman, to the legisla- ture during the following winter. They also submitted two bills, one of which, creating the office of railroad commis- sioner, became a law, and the other, providing a comprehensive scheme of regulating railroads, failed upon a disagreement of the two houses. But the important features of it have since been incorporated into the laws of this and other States. In 1868, he was urged to permit the use of his name as a candi- date for Congress, but declined to do so, and continued in the general practice of his profession until April, 1869, when he received from President Grant the appointment to the office of United States attorney for the Southern district of Ohio. During 1866, '67, and '68, a powerful whisky ring had been operating in the district, defrauding the government of its
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taxes upon whisky to a great amount. In the variety of liti- gation that he prosecuted against it, he encountered the ablest counsel, and the most desperate resistance. In the end, Mr. Bateman was successful in recovering large amounts of taxes and penalties, punishing many of the chief offenders, and by his earnest and efficient prosecution, the guilty combina- tion was utterly destroyed. In 1870, he recovered judgments in favor of the government to the amount of $495,000; tried one hundred and forty-seven civil cases, and lost only eleven ; tried sixty-eight criminal cases, and lost only eight. In the first six months of his term, he tried fifty-seven criminal cases, losing only two, and fourteen cases of forfeiture, of which he lost none, and collected and paid into the treasury $158,235. So complete was the enforcement of the law, that the district has ever since escaped the scandals of whisky frauds. In 1873, the government appropriated $750,000 for the purchase of a site for a post office and custom house in Cincinnati, and owing to the number of pieces of property required, it was found impossible to effect a purchase at priv- ate sale at reasonable prices. A resort to the use of govern- ment power to condemn was necessary. There was no pre- cedent for its exercise, and the jurisdiction of the federal courts in any proceeding for that purpose was generally doubted or denied. Mr. Bateman determined to test the question, as the only practicable alternative for securing the required land, and accordingly commenced proceedings upon petition in the United States circuit court for its condemna- tion. Against the opposition of the property owners, repre- sented by able counsel, the legal questions involved, were decided in favor of the government, and the opinion of the circuit court has since been affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States, thus establishing an important and heretofore contested power of the general government to appropriate private property to public uses through proceed- ings in its own tribunals. Mr. Bateman was equally for- tunate in the subsequent valuation of the property appropri- ated, it being $70,000 less in the aggregate than the appro- priation made by Congress. The proceeding having resulted so successfully, the construction of the costly and magnifi- cent edifice now in progress was insured. During his term of office, also, arose the important litigation between the Newport and Cincinnati Bridge Company and the United States. That company under joint resolution of Congress in 1869, began the erection of an expensive bridge between Newport and Cincinnati, and when nearly finished in 1871, Congress required it to raise it thirty feet higher than its plan then contemplated. In 1873, after the bridge was completed, suit was brought against the United States by the bridge company, represented by the Hon. Stanley Matthews, for damages to the amount of $500,000. After a learned and exhaustive discussion upon demurrer to the bill, filed by Mr. Bateman, Justice Swayne of the Supreme court, before whom the case was heard, decided against the liability of the gov- ernment. The case was subsequently heard again, in 1878, Mr. Bateman having been retained for the government, when the plaintiff's bill was finally dismissed. Mr. Bateman was re-appointed to the office of district attorney in April, 1873, and resigned in February, 1877, after holding it continuously for a period of nearly eight years, and resumed the general practice of the law in Cincinnati. In his profession, Mr. Bateman is chiefly distinguished for thorough research and perspicuity of statement, and is regarded by all who come into business contact with him as a genial gentleman and an
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able lawyer. In 1854, Mr. Bateman married Miss Emma Buell, of Cincinnati, who died August 6th, 1867. On the 9th August, 1876, he married Miss Ella L. Trowbridge, of New- ark, New York.
WEST, JUDGE WILLIAM H., of Bellefontaine, O., was born on the 9th of February, 1824, in the village of Millsborough, Washington County, Pennsylvania. Of his maternal ancestors he has no information beyond the fact that they were immigrants from the North of Ireland, who settled, in the latter part of the last century, near Uniontown, in the same State, where his mother was born, and whence the family subsequently removed to Jefferson County, Ohio. His paternal ancestors settled with Penn's Colony on the Delaware, near Philadelphia, in 1682, whence their descend- ants have become widely dispersed. From one branch, which remained at Philadelphia, the celebrated painter, Ben- jamin West, was descended. The grandfather of the Judge, previous to the Revolution, located on the west shore of the Monongahela, near Brownsville, where his father, Samuel West, was born, in 1785. Near the close of the century, his family also immigrated to Jefferson County, Ohio, where both the paternal and maternal grandparents of the Judge sleep in the venerable Churchyard of Island Creek, above Steuben- ville. Subsequently his father returned to his native place, and, after attaining his majority, established himself in the village of Millsborough. In 1830 he removed to Knox County, Ohio, settling on a small farm comparatively in the forest, southeast of Mt. Vernon, where, for the succeeding seven years, were undergone the experiences of log cabin life. Society at that period and place had not yet emerged from its pioneer state. Its sturdy people were still engaged in removing the forest. The log school-house, with its oil- paper windows, furnished, during the winter months, the only educational facilities. Books were few in number-the small library of the Judge's father containing the largest col- lection in the neighborhood. Of these, " Bethune's France," "Hume's England," "Woodbridge's United States," some of Fielding's novels, a fragment of Shakespeare, Burns's works, the "Scottish Chiefs," the "Beauties of Sterne," "Æsop's Fables," and "Pilgrim's Progress," were the chief. In the autumn of 1840, the Judge entered as a pupil in the primary school of the Martinsburg Academy, then recently established by the Rev. Henry Hervey, the village parson, intending, at the close of the term, to resume his place on the farm. But, persuaded, after the holidays, to undertake the Latin, his examination at the close of the term, in the first book of Cæsar, was such as to determine its continu- ance. Rapidly mastering the common branches, he alter- nated between teaching and study, until the autumn of 1844, when he entered the junior class of Jefferson College, Penn- sylvania, then under the presidency of the venerable Mat- thew Brown, where, under the succeeding presidency of the distinguished Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, he was graduated in 1846, in a class of fifty-eight, dividing its honors with Gen- eral A. B. Sharpe, of Carlisle, in that State. Of his college fellows, the names of many are recalled with pleasure. Among them are those of the Hons. J. W. Robinson, and A. D. Rodgers, of Ohio; Judges J. P. Sterrett, J. M. Kirk- patrick, and the late gifted McDowell Sharpe, of Pennsyl- vania; Governor M. S. Latham, of California, and many others. Immediately on graduating, Judge West repaired to Kentucky with Dr. Breckinridge, who had procured for him
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a select school, near Lexington, which he conducted for one year, when associating with his friend and class-mate, the Rev. G. W. Zahnizer, they assumed charge of the High School for boys, in that city. Among his pupils in these schools are recalled the names of the brilliant Colonel W. P. C. Breckinridge; the sons of Cassius M. Clay, and the estimable Dr. L. B. Todd, a kinsman of President Lincoln. At the Lexington bar, at this period, were Mr. Wickliffe, Colonel Woolley, Mr. Mat. Johnson, General J. C. Breckin- ridge, Chief-justice Robertson, and Henry Clay-names first among the eminent jurists of Kentucky, whose forensic ef- forts it was his privilege to witness. It was his especial good fortune, in 1848, to hear the last great speech of Mr. Clay, and the funeral oration of General Breckinridge, at Frank- fort, pronounced in the presence of assembled Kentucky, at the burial of her sons who fell at Buena Vista. The influ- ence of these experiences went far towards determining his choice of a profession a few years later. Invited to accept the tutorship in Jefferson College, he returned thither in the fall of 1848, where he remained until the fall of 1849, when he was chosen Adjunct Professor in Hampden-Sydney Col- lege, Virginia, of which Mr. Charles Martin, his old acade- mic preceptor, and Mr. C. H. Venable, afterward of General Robert E. Lee's staff, and now of the Virginia University, were professors, and Dr. J. H. Green, of Kentucky, was president. Becoming weary with teaching, he resigned this position in 1850, and repaired once more to Ohio. Returning through Washington, he had the fortune to witness, in the Senate, a passage at arms over the fugitive slave law between those political giants Seward, Benton, Webster, and Clay. It was the realization of a spectacle he had long devoutly wished. In August, 1850, he was entered a student of law at Bellefon- taine, Ohio, in the office of Judge William Lawrence. In 1851 he was admitted to the bar, and immediately formed a co-part- nership with his preceptor. In 1852 he was elected Prosecuting Attorney for Logan County. In 1854 he participated in the organization of the Republican party; and in conjunction with Hon. James Walker, founded the first Republican news- paper published in his county. In 1857 he was chosen a Representative to the State Legislature. Declining a re- election, he went as a delegate to the Chicago Convention, in which he had the honor of performing what he is ac- customed to regard as the proudest service of his life-as- sisting in the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, in 1860. On the breaking out of the war, he was again returned a Repre- sentative to the Legislature in 1861. In 1863 he was elected to the State Senate, in the memorable campaign of Brough and Vallandigham. In 1865, and again in 1867, he was chosen Attorney General. In 1869 he was appointed by General Grant, and confirmed by the United States Senate, Consul to Rio Janeiro, which he declined. In 1871 he was elected a Judge of the Supreme Court, which position visual infirmity compelled him to resign at the end of one year. In 1873 he was sent as a delegate to the Convention called to revise the Constitution of the State. In 1877 he was the Republican nominee for Governor of Ohio, but experienced the fate of his party in that year. Quitting public life, he has since devoted his time exclusively to his profession. The scholastic training which Judge West had received, es- pecially in mathematics, and other branches which develop and discipline the reasoning faculties, enabled him readily to comprehend and quickly to master the principles of the law, which has been called "the perfection of reason." In C-28
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