USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Families of the Wyoming Valley: biographical, genealogical and historical. Sketches of the bench and bar of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, vol. II > Part 45
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founder of the family in America, who was a Yorkshire gentle- man and a captain of grenadiers in Charles II's army. This Captain Brodhead was a great-nephew of John Brodhead, lord of the manor of Monk Britton in Yorkshire, whose descendants still hold the estate in England, granted their ancestors by King James I. Captain Brodhead came to America with Colonel Rich- ard Nichols, in the expedition which took New York from the Dutch in 1664, and settled in the conquered province in com- mand of the forces at Kingston. John Romeyn Brodhead, the historian, General Thornton Brodhead, of the Mexican war, killed at the second Bull Run, while commanding the Third
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HENRY RICHARD LINDERMAN.
Michigan Cavalry, the late John M. Brodhead, M. D., second comptroller of the treasury, Washington, D. C., were among the numerous well known members of this family. The mother of Asa R. Brundage, of the Luzerne bar, was Jane Brodhead, daughter of Judge Richard Brodhead.
Dr. Henry Richard Linderman, son of Dr. John J. and Rachel Brodhead Linderman, graduated from the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons, began practice with his father, then removed to Carbon county, and in 1855, being then thirty years of age, was appointed chief clerk of the mint at Philadelphia. He resigned in 1864. In 1867 he was appointed director of the mints and assay offices, with personal supervision of the Phila- delphia mint; resigned in 1869; was then commissioner of the United States in several capacities, notably to examine the meth- ods of coinage of the different great European powers (1870-71), and then (1872) for the fitting up of the new mint at San Fran- cisco. He was the author of the coinage act of 1873, which abolished the silver dollar and placed this country upon a single gold standard, and authorized the trade dollar for purposes of commerce with China and Japan, and which codified the law relative to the mints, assay offices, and coinage of the United States, and provided that the office of director of the mint, with full supervision of the mints and assay offices, should be a bureau of the Treasury department. This legislation was passed by congress through the efforts of Dr. Linderman. Upon the new law going into operation he was appointed to the office of director of the mint for the term of five years, as provided in the coinage act. Under its provisions he organized and perfected the mint service, and left it at his death, what it has been since, the admi- ration of the civilized world. He was the confidential adviser of the president and secretary of the treasury, and the author of much of the legislation of the resumption period in our national finances, and was regarded by the financial world, in Europe and the Orient as well as in our own country, as one of the ablest of American financiers. He was the author of "Money and Legal Tender in the United States," and a writer of approved authority upon financial and coinage topics. His official reports were looked upon as of such value that they were used in some
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HENRY RICHARD LINDERMAN.
of the American colleges as text books. Dr. Linderman mar- ried, in 1856, Miss Emily Davis, of Wilkes-Barre. She was the daughter of George Hyer Davis, one of the early and well known coal operators of the Carbon county district, and a granddaughter of the late Samuel Philip Holland, of Wilkes-Barre, in whose house on River street she was brought up by her grand parents, her mother having died soon after the birth of this child. Through her father, Mrs. Linderman is descended from the well known Coleman family of Lancaster county, and is also of the same stock as the late Rear Admiral John Lee Davis, of the United States navy. Her grandfather, Samuel Philip Holland, is remembered by all old residents of Wilkes-Barre as the head of the coal operating firm of Holland, Lockhart, McLean & Co., and as a distinguished figure in Wilkes-Barre fifty years ago. He was an Englishman of old county stock, and came to this coun- try with a competence, which he invested in coal lands. His father, Philip Holland, passed much time in Philadelphia, and died, while on one of his visits there from England, during the yellow fever epidemic in Washington's administration. He is buried in old Christ church burying ground in that city. Samuel Holland was the friend of Reverdy Johnson, of Baltimore, in which city he passed much of his leisure, of Henry Clay, and of Crittenden, of Kentucky, and of many more of the famous Amer- icans who were gathered together each winter at the capital, forty miles away. To the society of these distinguished Americans he was welcomed as a friend and an acquisition. He was a large, portly, and remarkably handsome man, of great polish of man- ner, and with the breeding of the old school of English gentle- men. Few men of his time, in eastern Pennsylvania, were more widely known and honored. He died in 1856, when his house passed into the hands of the late Anthony H. Emley, and his widow left Wilkes-Barre to make her home with her children, who were all living elsewhere. Mr. Holland's large coal interests and his at one time enormous land ownership should have made him one of the very wealthy men of his day, but he was fully thirty years in advance of the times in his ideas, and he failed some two years before his death. Governor David R. Porter, of Pennsylvania, was for a long time Mr. Holland's partner in a large portion of his coal interests.
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HENRY MARTYN HOYT.
The late Dr. Garrett Brodhead Linderman, of Bethlehem, who married Lucy, daughter of the late Judge Asa Packer, and who was widely known as one of the leading coal operators of Penn- sylvania, was a brother of Dr. Henry R. Linderman.
Henry R. Linderman was born in Philadelphia, in September, 1858, the only issue of the late Hon. Henry Richard Linderman, M. D., director of the mints and assay offices of the United States, and Emily Davis, his wife. After being under the charge of a private tutor, he was prepared for college at the Episcopal school of St. Clement's Hall, Ellicott City, Maryland, and entered the Lehigh University, at South Bethlehem, Pa., in 1875, where he finished a course of study in the school of general literature and law in the spring of 1878. He was then entered as a student - at law in the office of the late E. Coppee Mitchell, Esq., of Phila- delphia, but the illness and death of his father, Dr. Linderman, in January, 1879, prevented his beginning the study of his pro- fession at that time. In 18SI he entered the law office of the Hon. John B. Storm, at Stroudsburg, Pa., as a student at law, and was admitted to the bar of Monroe county in May, 1883. He entered at once upon the active practice of his profession with Henry J. Kotz, then district attorney, at Stroudsburg. In the fall of 1884 he removed to Wilkes-Barre and began practice with the Hon. John Lynch, where he remained two years. Since then Mr. Linderman, though chiefly occupied in looking after private interests, has been engaged as counsel in litigation of importance in Washington, in which he has met with gratifying success, and in the February term of the Oyer and Terminer Court for Mon- roe county, 1888, was engaged, with the district attorney, in the trial of the Welsh murder case at Stroudsburg, the common- wealth securing a conviction of murder in the second degree. He expects soon to resume the active practice of the law.
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HENRY MARTYN HOYT.
Henry Martyn Hoyt, who was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county, Pa, September 7, 1885, is a native of Kingston, Pa.,
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1014
CHARLES VAN LOON GABRIEL.
where he was born November 8, 1861. He was educated at Wyoming Seminary and Yale College, graduating from the latter institution in the class of 1883, and read law with Dickson (A. H.) and Atherton (T. H.), in this city. He now resides at Spo- kane Falls, Washington Territory. He is a son of J. D. Hoyt and a brother of E. E. Hoyt, of the Luzerne bar, whose biography may be found on page 627.
CHARLES VAN LOON GABRIEL.
Charles Van Loon Gabriel, who was admitted to the bar of Lu- zerne county, Pa., June 2; 1886, is a son of Albert Gabriel, and a grand-son of Henry Gabriel, who removed from Connecticut to Pennsylvania in 1818. Colonel Wright, in his history of Ply- mouth, says: "Henry Gabriel was a blacksmith and made Plymouth his home and residence. He married respectably, and spent a long, laborious and useful life there. He was a man of integrity and a most excellent and exemplary citizen. He accumulated some property, and died but a few years since, beloved and regretted by the whole of the community in which he spent the greater part of his life." The wife of Henry Gabriel was Edith Van Loon. She was the daughter of Abraham Van Loon, who removed from Esopus, N. Y., to Plymouth in 1794. She is the sister of Ste- phen Van Loon, who was elected sheriff of Luzerne county in 1816. The wife of Albert Gabriel and the mother of Charles V. Gabriel is Mary, daughter of Christopher Garrahan, a native of Ireland, whose wife was Abigail Hallock. Charles V. Gabriel is a native of Plymouth, where he was born January 1, 1859. He was educated at the Wyoming Seminary, Kingston, Pa., Wes- leyan University, Middletown, Conn., and at the College of New Jersey, at Princeton, graduating from the latter institution in the class of 1882. He subsequently entered the Columbia College Law School, from which he graduated, after which he entered the office of A. R. Brundage, in this city. He is now practicing his profession in the city of New York. Mr. Gabriel is an unmar- ried man.
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GEORGE URQUHART
GEORGE MERRITT ORR.
George Merritt Orr, who was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county, Pa., June 6, 1887, is a son of Albert S. Orr, of this city, and a brother of N. M. Orr, of the Mckean county ( Pa. ) bar. (See page 976.) He was born at Dallas, Pa., June 13, 1856, and read law with H. W. Palmer, in this city. He was educated at Wyoming Seminary, Kingston, Pa., and at the academies of W. S.Parsons and E. B. Harvey, in this city, and at the law depart- ment of the Michigan University, at Ann Arbor. His wife is Helen Easterline, a daughter of the late Joseph Easterline, of this city. He has two children. Mr. Orr is practicing his pro- ' fession at Kane, Pa.
GEORGE URQUHART.
George Urquhart was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county, Pa., June 27, 1887. He was born in this city December 31, 1861, and during the years 1880 and 1881 attended Yale Col- lege. His health failing him, he retired from his studies until 1884, when he entered the junior class of the College of New Jersey, at Princeton, and graduated from that institution in the class of 1885. He read law with Dickson (A. H.) & Atherton (T. H ), and remained with them until admitted to the bar. He is a descendant of George Urquhart, a native of Scotland, who came to America in 1786. The grandfather of the subject of our sketch was Captain John Urquhart. His father is George Urquhart, M. D. Dr. Urquhart is a native of Lambertville, N. J. He came to this city when a lad. He was educated in the schools of Lambertville and at the Wyoming Seminary, at Kingston. He graduated from the Jefferson Medical College, in Philadelphia, in 1850, and also attended lectures at the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania. The doctor has been in continual practice in this city since his graduation. He married, October
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ROBERT WODROW ARCHBALD.
20, 1852, Mary Ann Hodgdon, daughter of Samuel Hodgdon, who was admitted to the Luzerne county bar November 6, 1843. George Urquhart is the only son of Dr. George Urquhart. He is an unmarried man, and now resides in San Francisco, Califor- nia, where he was admitted to the Supreme Court of that state September 3, 1888.
ROBERT WODROW ARCHBALD.
Robert Wodrow, from whom the subject of this sketch de- scends, was a Presbyterian minister of the Church of Scotland. The Wodrow family were originally settled in England, but at an early day came to Renfrewshire, Scotland, where, by oral tradi- tion existing as early as 1700, they had possessed the hill of Eglishame, in that county, or other lands there, without inter- ruption for three hundred years. The family name appears in several forms, such as Woodrow, Widderow, Witherow and Vidderow, all pronounced pretty much alike; but the uniform spelling in that branch of the family under consideration has been as given in this article.
The first authentic record is of Patrick Wodrow or Vidderow, who was vicar of the parish of Eglishame in 1562. He married Agnes Hamilton, daughter of a brother of the House of Aber- corn. Both lie buried in the Eglishame church yard. Patrick Wodrow had two sons-James or John Widderow and Robert. The latter was born about 1600 in the Hill of Eglishame, and was educated at Edinburg and Glasgow as a lawyer, and became chamberlain to the earl of Eglinton. He married Agnes, daugh- ter of John Dunlop, a grandson of Dunlop, of Dunlop. The fourth son of this union was James, born January 2, 1637, and sub- sequently professor of theology in Glasgow University from 1692 until his death in 1707. Prof. Wodrow was a man of singular piety and learning, and endured, with so many others, the reli- gious persecutions of those times. A sketch of his life, written by his son, was published by Blackwood in 1828.
Robert Wodrow, with whose name this sketch begins, and
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ROBERT WODROW ARCHBALD.
who is widely known as the faithful and laborious author of the History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, was the second son of Prof. James Wodrow, and was born at Glasgow in 1679. His mother, Margaret Hair, was the daughter of William Hair, the proprietor of a small estate in the parish of Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire. In this parent he was equally for- tunate as in the other. To all the piety of her husband she added a degree of strength of mind not often associated with her sex. In 1691 young Wodrow was entered a student in the university of his native city and went through the usual course of academical education then adopted there, and which included several of the learned languages and various branches of philosophy. Theology he studied under his father, and while engaged in this pursuit was appointed librarian to the college, a situation to which the peculiar talent which he had already displayed for historical and bibliographical inquiry had recom- mended him. This office he held for four years, and it was dur- ing this time that he acquired the greater part of that knowl- edge of the ecclesiastical and literary history of his country which he applied during the course of his after life to such good purpose as to have the effect of associating his name at once hon- orably and individually with those interesting subjects. At this period he imbibed also a taste for antiquarian research and the study of natural history, which introduced him to the notice and procured him the friendship of several of the most eminent men of the day. But all these pursuits were carefully kept subordi- nate to what he had determined to make the great and sole busi- ness of his life, the study of theology, and the practical applica- tion of its principles. To the former he devoted only his leisure hours, to the latter, all the others that were not appropriated to necessary repose. On completing his theological studies at the university Mr. Wodrow went to reside with a distant relative of the family, Sir John Maxwell, of Nether Pollock, and while here offered himself for trial to the presbytery of Paisley, by whom he was licensed to preach the gospel in March, 1703. On October 28 following, he was ordained minister of the parish of Eastwood, (which is now a suburb of the city of Glasgow), through the influence of the family with which he resided. Eastwood
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ROBERT WODROW ARCHBALD.
was at that period one of the smallest parishes in Scotland, but it was just such a one as suited Mr. Wodrow ; for, its clerical duties being comparatively light, he was enabled to devote a portion of his time to his favorite studies of history and anti- quities, without neglecting the obligations which his sacred office imposed upon him; and of this circumstance he appre- ciated the value so highly that he could never be induced, though frequently invited, to accept any other charge. Glasgow in 1712 made the attempt in vain to withdraw him from his obscure but beloved retreat, and to secure his pastoral services for the city, and Stirling in 1717 and again in 1726 made similar attempts, but with similar results. Although the charge in which he was placed was an obscure one, Mr. Wodrow's -talents soon made it sufficiently conspicuous. The eloquence of his ser- mons, the energy and felicity of the language in which they were composed, and the solemn and impressive manner in which they were delivered, quickly spread his fame as a preacher, and placed him at the head of his brethren in the west of Scotland. The popularity and reputation of Mr. Wodrow naturally pro- cured for him a prominent place in the ecclesiastical courts which he attended, and in this attendance, whether on presbyteries, synods, or the general assembly, he was remarkable for his punctuality. Of the latter he was frequently chosen a member, and on occasions of public interest was often still more inti- mately associated with the proceedings of the church, by being nominated to committees. In all these instances he took a lively interest in the matters under discussion, and was in the habit of keeping regular notes of all that passed, a practice which enabled him to leave a mass of manuscript records behind him containing, with other curious matter, the most authentic and interesting details of the proceedings of the Scottish ecclesiasti- cal courts of his time now in existence. In 1707 Mr. Wodrow was appointed a member of a committee of presbytery to con- sult with the brethren of the commission in Edinburg as to the best means of averting the evils with which it was supposed the union would visit the church and people of Scotland, and on the accession of George I he was the principal adviser of the five clergymen deputed by the assembly to proceed to London
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ROBERT WODROW ARCHBALD.
- to plead the rights of the former, and to solicit the abolition of the law of patronage, of which he was a decided enemy. In this the deputation did not succeed. The law was continued in force, and Mr. Wodrow, with that sense of propriety which pervaded all his sentiments and actions, inculcated a submission to its decisions. Mr. Wodrow's life presents us with little more of particular interest than what is contained in the circumstances just narrated until it became associated with that work which has made his name so memorable, namely, "The History of the Suf- ferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution." This work, for which his integrity, candor, liber- ality of sentiment and talents eminently qualified him, he con- templated from an early period of his life ; but it was only in the year 1707 that he began seriously to labor on it. From this time, however, till its publication in 1721 and 1722, he devoted all his leisure hours to its composition. On the appearance of Mr. Wodrow's history its author was attacked with the vilest scurrility and abuse by those whom his fidelity as an historian had offended. Anonymous and threatening letters were sent to him, and every description of indignity was attempted to be thrown on both his person and his work. The faithful, liberal and impartial character of the history, nevertheless, procured its author many and powerful friends. Its merits were, by a large party, appreciated and acknowledged, and every man whose love of truth was stronger than his prejudices, awarded it the meed of his applause. Copies of the work were presented by Dr. Frazer to their majesties, and the prince and princess of Wales, and were received so graciously, and so much ap- proved of, that the presentation was almost immediately followed by a royal order on the Scottish exchequer for one hundred guineas, to be paid to the author as a testimony of his majesty's favorable opinion of its merits. Mr. Wodrow's literary labors did not end with the publication of his history. He afterwards planned and executed the scheme of a complete history of the church of Scotland, in a series of lives of all the eminent men who appeared from the beginning of the reformation down to the period at which his preceding work commenced. Besides these works, Mr. Wodrow has left behind him six small but
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ROBERT WODROW ARCHBALD.
closely written volumes of traditionary and other memoranda, regarding the lives and labors of remarkable ministers, and com- prising all the occurrences of the period which he thought worth recording. These volumes are designated by the general name of Analecta, and the entries extend over a space of twenty- seven years-from 1705 to 1732. The Analecta contains much curious information regarding the times of its author, and is full of anecdotes, and amusing and interesting notices of the remark- able persons of the day. It is preserved in the original manu- script in the Advocate's library at Edinburg, where it is often consulted by the curious inquirer into the times to which it relates. The Analecta in its present form probably never was intended for publication. It was a mere collection of notes and comments to be made the basis of subsequent labors. "These notes," says Burton (Book Hunter, p. 311), "were written on small slips of paper in a hand closely cramped and minute, and lest this should not be a sufficient protection to their privacy a portion was com- mitted to certain cyphers which their ingenious inventor deemed no doubt to be utterly impregnable. * Wodrow's trick was the same as that of Samuel Pepys and productive of the same consequences-the excitement of a rabid curiosity which at last found its way into the recesses of his secret communings. They are now published in the fine type of the Maitland Club in four portly quartos, under the title Wodrow's Analecta."
Mr. Wodrow seems to have also been an omnivorous gatherer of pamphlets and manuscripts, some of the latter rising high enough in importance to be counted state papers. How the min- ister of the quiet rural parish of Eastwood could have gotten his hands on them is a marvel, but the appreciation of his labors is to be found in the way this material has been ransacked and made use of by book makers, and the whole collection has been at last published in a number of large octavo volumes by the Wod- row Society. A large portion of Mr. Wodrow's time, all of which was laboriously and usefully employed in the discharge of his various duties, was occupied in an extensive epistolary cor- respondence with acquaintances and friends in different parts of the world. But this was no idle correspondence. He made it in all cases subservient to the purposes of improving his general
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ROBERT WODROW ARCHBALD.
knowledge, and of adding to his stores of information, and with this view he was in the habit of transmitting to his correspondents lists of queries on subjects of general and public interest, and par- ticularly on matters connected with religion as they stood in their several localities. With all this labor he regularly devoted two days in every week to his preparation for the pulpit, and be- stowed besides the most assiduous attention on all the other duties of his parish. Some of the most curious relics of this eminent man are a dozen bound volumes of manuscript sermons written with a quill, and yet in such a minute hand as to be ab- solutely illegible to the unaided eye. These were not of course in- tended for use in the pulpit, the custom of the Scottish church at that day requiring the delivery of sermons from memory and for- bidding the use of notes. But they show the care with which his sermons were prepared, and the painful diligence necessarily em- ployed, in the midst of all his other literary labors, to commit them to their present form. In the case of Professor Simpson, the suc- cessor of Mr. Wodrow's father, who was suspended from his office by the general assembly for his Arian sentiments, Mr. Wodrow felt himself called upon as a minister of the gospel, and a friend to evangelical truth, to take an active part with his brethren against the professor. The latter, as already said, was suspended, but through a feeling of compassion the emoluments of his office were reserved to him, a kindness for which, it is not improbable, he may have been indebted, at least in some measure, to the benevolent and amiable disposition of Mr. Wodrow. In the affair of the celebrated Marrow controversy, which opened the way to the secession of 1743, Mr. Wodrow decided and acted with his usual prudence, propriety and liberality. He thought that those who approved of the sentiments and doctrines con- tained in the work from which the controversy took its name- the Marrow of Modern Divinity-went too far in their attempts to vindicate them, and that the assembly, on the other hand, had been too active and too forward in their condemnation. On the great question about subscription to articles of faith he took a more decided part, and ever looked upon the non-subscribers as enemies to the cause of evangelical Christianity. The valuable and laborious life of the author of the "History of the Sufferings
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