USA > Pennsylvania > Encyclopedia of contemporary biography of Pennsylvania, Vol. II > Part 50
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large establishments to the varied enterprises of the Lumber City. About five years ago he also was the prime mover in organizing the Edison Eleetrie Light Company, for Williamsporters. He was President of the company the first two years of its existence and since then has been a Director. Mr. McCor- miek is interested in numerous other matters as well, a fact that speaks volumes for his industry, management and business ability. Mr. McCormick was renominated as the Republican candidate for Congress, in 1888, and after a memorable contest was re-elected by a majority of four thousand six hundred and sixty-four, leading the Presidential ticket by several hundred votes. After his first eleetion, in 1886, his distriet was so changed as to make the normal Republican majority very much less, but, notwithstanding this fact, his majority was substantially the same in 1888 that it had been in 1886. Mr. MeCormick took his seat in the Fifty- first Congress, December 3, 1889, and his party being in the majority he was made Chairman of the Com- mittee on Railways and Canals, and a member of the Judiciary Committee, and the Committee on Edu- eation. Mr. MeCormiek was married, in October, 1875, to Miss Ida Hays, a daughter of John W. Hays, of Erie, Pennsylvania, and has two children, a daughter and a son, aged thirteen and ten years respectively.
JOHN DALZELL.
Later, they placed him at Yale College, where he was graduated, in 1865, with the Bachelor's degree. Returning to his home in Pittsburgh, the young man ehose law as a profession, and began his studies for the bar in the office of John H. Hampton, a prominent lawyer of Pittsburgh, who was the attor- ney for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and other large corporations. In February, 1867, he was duly admitted to practice, and in October of that year he became the partner of his preceptor. Under the firm name of Hampton and Dalzell this partnership was continued until the election of the junior member to Congress, in 1886. Mr. Dalzell's rise at the bar was rapid. He studied hard to en- large his knowledge and was repaid by a success as substantial as it was remarkable. His first impor- tant successes date baek to 1870, and from that year down to his retirement from active and continuous practice upon election to Congress, he was engaged in almost all the important litigation in the western part of the State, representing the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the Pennsylvania Company, the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway Com- pany, the Chartiers Railway Company, the Alle- gheny Valley Railroad Company, all the Westing- house corporations, including the great Natural Gas Company, known as the "Philadelphia Company," the Western Union Telegraph Company and many others in Allegheny County. Besides praetieing in the Courts of Common Pleas, in a number of coun- ties, he also practiced to a great extent in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court of the United States, and in the United States Cir- euit and Distriet Courts. An examination of the State Reports of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania shows that Mr. Dalzell practiced there continuously for upwards of fifteen years in the most important eases from the Pittsburgh distriet. Absorbed to such a great extent by purely professional duties, Mr. Dalzell took no active part in polities until 1882, when he was sent especially as a representative of the Allegheny County bar, as a delegate to the State Republican Convention, in which he distinguished himself by a masterly speech, nominating A. M. Brown as Allegheny County's candidate for the. Supreme Beneh. In 1886 he was nominated for Con- gress by the Republicans of the Twenty-second Congressional Distriet of Pennsylvania, and in the canvass defeated R. B. Parkinson of Pittsburgh, by four thousand and five votes. In the Fiftieth Con- gress he was placed on the Committee on Pacific Railroads, and made a speech on the refunding bill reported by that committee which was highly com- mended. His oratorieal powers, of the first order,
HON. JOHN DALZELL, a distinguished lawyer of Pittsburgh, and Member of the Fiftieth and Fifty- first Congresses, representing the Twenty-second Congressional Distriet of Pennsylvania, was born in. New York City, April 19, 1845. The Dalzell family is one of great antiquity in Scotland, and many of its members find place in the history of that ancient kingdom. The family name of the Earls of Carn- warth-a title dating back to 1639-is Dalzell. The ancestors of the subject of this sketch, remotely of Scotch birth, settled in the North of Ireland and in- termarried with natives of that country. His father, Samuel Dalzell, married Mary McDonnell. Both were of Seoteh-Irish stock and belonged to respeeta- ble families living in the neighborhood of Belfast, County Down, Ireland. They were intelligent, thrifty people, not rieh but in comfortable circum- stanees, and highly respected. They fully appre- ciated the advantages of education and when John, who was their eldest living son, had passed through the Third Ward publie school in Pittsburgh, they sent him to the Western University [in that city. | were employed to advantage in the support of many
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important measures, and for a new member he was an exceedingly active one in all the proceedings. His speceh on the Tariff, in criticism of the Hon.' William L. Scott, was a masterly effort and attracted attention all over the country. Before the expira- tion of his first term in Congress he was re-elected, defeating R. B. Parkinson, by a plurality of eight thousand nine hundred and five votes. In the Fifty-first Congress Mr. Dalzell is Chairman of the Committee on Pacific Railroads, and a member of the Committee on Elections. In the prime of life, skilled in the intricacies of law, particularly as bearing upon corporations, and highly gifted as an orator, Mr. Dalzell is unusually well equipped for a public career, and his labors, so far, are full of useful- ness and promise. With a conscientious regard for the proprieties, and with a firm determination to do his whole duty without fear, bias or favor, he re- signed his directorship in the Philadelphia Company (the great Natural Gas Company) and in the West- inghouse Eleetrie Company, and his solicitorship of the various railroad companies that he represented, previous to taking office. He still retains his seat in the Board of Directors of the Braddoek National Bank, of which he has been a member for a number of years, and is the senior member of the law firm of Dalzell, Scott & Gordon. He married, on Septem- ber 26, 1867, Miss Mary Louisa Dnff, daughter of Peter Duff, of Pittsburgh. Of the children born to this marriage, four are now living : three sons and one daughter. The eldest boy, Win. S., is pursuing his studies at Yale, a member of the class of '91. The second boy, Samuel, is preparing for college at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.
HENDRICK B. WRIGHT.
HON. HENDRICK BRADLEY WRIGHT, law- yer, statesman and author, Speaker of the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania, and Member of Congress, was born at Plymouth, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, April 24, 1808, and died at Wilkes- Barre, in the same county and State, on the 2d day of September, 1881. On the paternal side he was descended from Captain John Wright, one of that colony of sturdy and honest Quakers which emi- grated from England in 1681, under the leadership of William Penn, to whom Captain Wright was himself related by marriage. Captain Wright set- tled, a short time after landing, in the eastern part of Burlington County, New Jersey, and became the founder of the village of Wrightstown. He held .commissions as Justice of the Peace and Captain of
the Militia under the royal seal of Charles II., al- though the records of his time-and also his private diary, still preserved in the family-prove that these occupations did not prevent him from being a conseientious and devoted supporter of the So- ciety of Friends. Ilis great-grandson, Joseph Wright, the father of the subject of this sketch, was born at Wrightstown, but removed to the " Sus- quehanna country," and established himself at Plymouth, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where he married a daughter of John Hendriek, who was descended from Daniel Hendrick, one of the earlier Puritan settlers of Massachusetts. Three sons were born to this marriage, the eldest of whom was named Hendrick Bradley, in honor of his maternal grandfather and grandmother. To him, as well as to his brothers, his parents gave every educational advantage which the locality afforded, and when these were exhausted, Hendrick was sent to Diek- inson College, at Carlisle, where he graduated after completing the usual course of academieal study. While still in college he had become distinguished among his classmates as a debater and had decided to adopt the profession of the law. Upon his grad- uation he therefore entered the office of the late Hon. John N. Conyngham, of Wilkes-Barre, one of the most eminent judges of his time, and on the 8th of November, 1831, was admitted to the bar of Lu- zerne County, which at that period numbered among its members some of the most able and con- spicuous lawyers in the State. Possessed of an ex- tensive knowledge of law and of nnusual mental ability, he soon acquired an excellent reputation, and his practice increased with great rapidity. Above the average height, of erect and commanding figure, his personal appearance was always digni- fied and impressive. His voice had rare flexibility and power, his oratorical manners were alike earn- est and pleasing, and these, coupled with clearness of argument and adroitness of persuasion, seldom failed to win from the jury a verdiet favorable to his client. For the next ten years Mr. Wright de- voted himself enthusiastically and untiringly to professional work. His energies were not, how- ever, absorbed in efforts for his personal advanee- ment. He took an active interest in polities and became a conscientious advocate of the principles of Jeffersonian Democracy. He participated in many local enterprises of a business or civil charac- ter, and, as an acknowledgment of his endeavors to foster a patriotie and martial spirit among his as- sociates, was commissioned Colonel of the Wyoming Volunteer Militia, by the Governor of the State, in August, 1835. In 1841 his friends insisted on present- ing him as a candidate for the House of Representa-
Hendrick B. Might
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tives of Pennsylvania, from his district in Luzerne County, and he was elected. From the moment he took his seat in this legislative body, he was recog- nized and accepted as one of its leaders. On the floor in debate he was the peer of any of his col- leagues, and in the committee-room, a painstaking and diligent worker. Re-elected in 1842, he was ap- pointed Chairman of the Committee on Canals and Internal Improvements-matters in which he had always taken a deep interest-and a member of the Judiciary Committee. In the former capacity he performed some most effective work for the State, and in the latter he was eventually successful in his efforts to obtain a repeal of the law providing for imprisonment for debt. Believing the punishment known as solitary confinement to be a barbarous and unnecessary one, he also strenuously, though vainly, endeavored to procure its abolition. In 1843, declining the offer of a nomination to the Senate, he was re-elected to the House, and was chosen Speaker of that body. This position he filled with marked ability, and in the discharge of its duties acquired a mastery of parliamentary rules and usages which proved of signal advantage to him in his subsequent career. In 1844 he was a Delegate-at-Large from Pennsylvania to the Demo- cratic National Convention at Baltimore, at which James K. Polk was nominated for the Presidency. This Convention was held at a period of unusual excitement, growing out of the agitation for the annexation of the Republic of Texas. The mem- bers were almost equally divided upon the question, and grave fears were entertained that the interests and success of the party would be seriously affected by their dissensions. Those favoring annexation held a caucus at which it was determined that "every other consideration must yield to the neces- sity of appointing to the Chairmanship of the Con- vention some man skilled in parliamentary rules, and of sufficient tact and courage to secure their enforcement in every possible emergency." It was decided that Colonel Wright, more than any other member, possessed the requirements, and he was accordingly appointed. During the difficult and responsible task of organizing tlie Convention, his abilities were severely tested, but he discharged his duties with such success that he was unani- mously chosen the permanent presiding officer. The Convention was in session a week and was an exciting and stormy one from first to last. Impar- tial but firm, Colonel Wright directed its proceed- ings to the close, and had the satisfaction of seeing the nomination for the Presidency bestowed upon a Texas annexation candidate-Mr. Polk. His speech in dissolving the Convention was eloquent and af-
fecting. During the four years following this event, Colonel Wright labored assiduously at the bar. In 1852 he was again called into public ser- vice by the vote of his fellow-citizens, who elected him to the Congress of the United States. His ef- forts in the interests of his constituents while in Congress were marked by good judgment and abil- ity, and at the expiration of his term he was renom- inated. At this period the "Know Nothing" ex- citement ran high, and caused the defection from the old parties of thousands of voters who affiliated with the newly organized "American Party." Al- though the principles of this party found many supporters in Luzerne County, Colonel Wright was not among thiem. He unhesitatingly denonnced the movement as narrow, unjust and un-American, and resolutely opposed it at the cost of his election, being defeated by the candidate placed in the field by the American Party-the Hon. Henry M. Fnller. Colonel Wright now embraced the oppor- tunity he had long desired of abandoning political life and devoting himself to the practice of the law, and, in 1854, accepted the office of District Attorney, to which he had been commissioned by Governor Wolf. Although a life-long Democrat, and conse- quently a believer in the doctrine of State rights, he was too loyal a citizen to sympathize with the sectional uprising which culminated, in 1861, in civil war, and when hostilities commenced he unhesitat- ingly espoused the cause of the National Govern- ment and throughout the entire struggle was dis- tinguished for his unflinching devotion to its preser- vation. In 1861 both political parties in his district nominated him for Congress. During the ensuing two years lie was a zealous and consistent advocate of every measure which seemed conducive to the welfare of the Union. He was not a Republican nor yet a Democrat, but simply a patriot, to whom, while the Nation was in danger, all parties were unknown. His family were as faithful and devoted as himself, and his eldest son, Captain Joseph Wright, who already gave promise of emulating the achievements and honors of his father, entered the Union army and sacrificed his life upon the altar of his country. On July 14, 1863, not long after hav- ing followed the remains of that beloved son to their last resting place, Colonel Wright rose in Congress in opposition to the " Peace Resolutions " offered by the Hon. C. L. Vallandigham, of Ohio, and delivered a speech " filled with fervid loyalty, logical philippics and thrilling earnestness," in which he said :
" Sir, there is no patriotic man who does not de- sire peace ; not peace, however, upon dishonorable terms; not peace that would destroy our great
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Government; not peace that would place us in an humble attitude at the feet of traitors, but that peace which will make peace live ; peace that shall inaintaiu and perpetuate the eternal principles of union based upon equality handed down to us by our fathers and scaled with their blood; the peace of Washington, and Lafayette, whose images deco- rate the walls of this House; a peace that shall not defame and belie the memory of these ilhistrious men is the one I would see established in this land. Our army went to the field to suppress rebellion. Its numbers have reached over eight hundred thousand men, larger than any army of ancient or modern times. It is still in the field, and its destiny is to preserve entire this Union and protect the Flag, aud it has the courage and power to do it. Where I stood wheu the Rebellion begau I stand to-day-on the same platform. My opinions have undergone no change. I denounced rebellion at the threshold. I denounce it now. I have no terms to make with the euemy of my country, which will destroy the Union ; I am satisfied that no other can be obtained. Time will determine whether my position is right or not, and I calmly abide it. The war, sir, has cost me its trials and tribulations, and I can truly close my remarks with a quotation from an ancient philosopher, uttered over the dead body of his son, slain iu battle : 'I should have blushed if Cato's house had stood secure and flourished in a civil war.'"
At the close of the Thirty-seventh Congress, Colonel Wright, who was succeeded by the Hou. Charles Denison, a Democrat, resumed the practice of his profession and continued in it uninterruptedly for more than ten years. Nevertheless, he took a deep interest in public matters, particularly in those bearing upon local issues, and also devoted himself
to a close study of the labor problem, then forcing itself upon National attention with a persistency commensurate with its importance. As the result of these investigations, and as embodying his per- sonal observatious and experiences for many years, he published in the Anthracite Monitor,-at that time the official journal of the miners and other labor - organizatious in the vicinity,-a series of articles which were afterwards collected and reprinted in book form under the title of " A Practical Treatise on Labor." Colonel Wright had always coura- geously defended the laborer against the aggres- sions and encroachments of capital and of political ostracism. The book above named has been pro- nounced "an index to the author's heart." It shows clearly that his great object in life was not personal, but that he was in full sympathy with his less fortunate fellow citizens and anxious to aid them in improving their condition and opportuni- ties. Another literary labor was entitled, " Histori- cal Sketches of Plymouth, Luzerne County, Penn- sylvania." This book, which treats of his native town-Plymouth-is a volume of nearly five hun- dred pages. It contains thirty beautiful illustra-
tions, likenesses of the leading men at the time the town was settled, and also pictures of some of the old landmarks, private residences, public buildings, coal mines, etc., etc., etc. A prominent resident of Luzerne County, George B. Kulp, himself an his- torical and biographical author of ability, speaks of this work as follows :
"In tracing the pages of this book, in which the author gives a vivid description of the plaiu and frugal habits and simple customs of a primitive people, the reader will discover the decp and indeli- ble impressions which they made upon the mind of the author; a generous and heartfelt offering to a race of men, all of whom he personally knew, but who now, witli au exception of one or two, have left the stage of human action. Ilis work was the design of a memorial for these pioneers. The au- thor of this history makes no effort to assume an elevated plane of rhetoric or finished diction, but treats his subject in simple and plain language ; but which, in his narrative of events showing the perils and exposures of frontier life, touches the heart aud enkindles sympathetic emotion."
In 1872 Colonel Wright received the Democratic nomination for Congressman-at-large. The Work- ingmen's Convention gave him its endorsement, and although he was defeated, he ran several thousand votes ahead of his ticket. In the following year he presided over the State Democratic Convention at Erie. Subsequently chosen Chairman of the State Central Committee, he labored with marked zeal for the success of his party in the campaign of 1873, personally paying a large share of the expense at- tendiug it. Notwithstanding every effort, however, the party responded with only a show of its old time vigor, being disheartened by the defeat in Ohio, and the Republicans carried the State. In 1876 Colonel Wright was nominated for Congress in the Luzerne district. The honor came to him entirely unsolicited and was conferred during his absence from home. The Republicans placed in nomination the Hon. H. B. Payne, who was de- feated by Colonel Wright by nearly fifteen hundred votes. He was renominated in 1878, and re-elected, defeating his Republican opponent, Henry Roberts, by nearly twenty-five hundred votes. In 1880, al- though not in the field for re-election, he received over four thousand votes for Congress. At the date of his final retirement, March 4, 1881, Colonel Wright had served in the State and National Legis- latures exactly thirteen years. He died at Wilkes- Barre, in the following autumn, after a long and painful illness, which he endured with fortitude and patience, retaining to the last his interest in the welfare of his country and especially of that vast body of toiling men and women who ever held the first place in his heart and thoughts. A glance at Colonel Wright's public record reveals the fact that
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he was an assiduous worker, watchful of the inter- ! ests of his constituents and of the general public, and a tried and true friend of the workingmen of the whole country. As early as 1862 he acted an important part in the passage of the Homestead law, and during his last four years in the National Legislature he endeavored to procure the enaetment of a supplementary bill " by which a small loan by the Government should be made to poor and de- serving men, repayable in ten years, at a small rate of interest, secured on the premises by mortgage, to enable men of small means to enter and settle upon the public land, which to thein is otherwise una- vailable." Although this bill was rejected in the Forty-fifth Congress, its framer presented it in the Forty-sixth, where it was defeated in Committee of the Whole by three votes only, but was nevertheless reported to the House with a negative recommen- dation. His speeches on these two measures are a mine of information and might be read with great profit by every workingman in the land. But Colonel Wright did not content himself with words. His constant benefactions afforded practical evi- dence of the good will and earnest purpose that governed all his conduct toward his fellow men. He was not only a generous contributor to public ehari- ties, but a liberal private giver to those in need of help, whatever their condition. His sympathies went out in an uneeasing flow to all whom accident, misfortune or disease had rendered objects of pity, and he derived his highest pleasure from the suc- cor of the unfortunate, whom he regarded as the wards of their more prosperous brethren. Mr. Wright married, on April 21, 1835, Mary Ann Brad- ley Robinson, granddaughter of Colonel Zebulon Butler, who commanded the American forces at the battle of Wyoming, July 3, 1778. This lady was a daughter of John W. Robinson, Esq., of Norwich, Connecticut, and afterward of Wilkes-Barre, a descendant in direct line of the Rev. John Robinson, the Puritan divine to whom so many of the most famous men and women of New England trace their origin. Mrs. Wright died September 8, 1871. Of their family of ten children only four are now living. The sole surviving son, George Riddle Wright, Esq., is a prominent member of the Lu- zerne County bar.
MYRON B. WRIGHT.
HON. MYRON BENJAMIN WRIGHT, of Sus- quehanna County, Member of Congress from the Fifteenth Congressional District of Pennsylvania,
comprising Bradford, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming Counties, and prominent as a successful business man and financier, was born in Forest Lake township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylva- nia, June 12, 1847. He is the son of Chester Wright, a native of Otsego County, New York, who was for many years a manufacturer of woolen goods at Forest Lake, Pennsylvania. His mother, now deceased, whose maiden name was Julia Nickerson, was a native of Pennsylvania. After the usual course of education in the common schools, at Forest Lake, Myron, who was a lad of great promise, was sent to the Montrose Academy, the chief scholastic institu- tion in Susquehanna County. Here he pursued the full course of study, and in 1865 was graduated with honor. He then entered his father's woolen factory as superintendent, having previously given his lei- sure time to a close study of the manufacture, which he eventually mastered in every detail. In the win- ter of 1865 he taught a large class of pupils in the Bolles schoolhouse, at Jessup, and at the close of the three months term took charge of a select school for the spring term of two months. Mathe- matics had always been one of the young man's fa- vorite studies, and when in the late spring of 1866, his uncle, Mr. George Guernsey, cashier of the First National Bank of Susquehanna, secured for him a clerkship in that institution, he gladly accepted it and entered at once upon its duties. As was pre- dieted and expected, he found himself in his element when he came to deal with figures and finance. His superiors recognized his ability, and, in 1869, when the position of cashier of the bank was made vacant by the resignation of his uncle, consequent upon his removal to Port Jervis, Mr. Wright, who had been promoted in the meantime through various minor clerkships, was selected to fill the position. He came to it with a sound training in finance and with a full conception of his duties, and from that date he administered the office with the highest credit to himself and to the entire satisfaction of the stock- holders. During all this time the bank enjoyed the reputation of being one of the soundest financial in- stitutions in northern Pennsylvania, a reputation amply warranted by its record, which shows that it has never lost a dollar on any loan negotiated by it. Mr. Wright is still the cashier and the principal stockholder in this well-managed and successful in- stitution. As a business man Mr. Wright is alert in perceiving opportunities and prompt in availing himself of their advantages. His means and influ- ence have been used to aid in founding a number of sound enterprises and in pushing them to a success- ful issue. He is a stockholder in the Susquehanna and Oakland Bridge Company, of which he has been
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