USA > Pennsylvania > The Biographical encyclopedia of Pennsylvania of the nineteenth century. Pt. 1 > Part 48
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presented the Seventh Ward in Common Council in 1866, and declined a re-nomination. He was elected to represent the Fourth District of Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, in 1869, and re-elected in 1870, 1871 and 1872. He served on the " Ways and Means " Committee, and in 1871 was Chairman of the Committee on Railroads as well as Chairman of the Committee on Legislative Apportionment ; in 1872 and '73, he was chosen Speaker, and exercised the functions of that office with dignity and credit. Ile strenuously opposed the Commis- sion to get control of the city of Philadelphia, and did much to facilitate the design of the Constitutional Convention. Ife presided at the Republican State Convention which nominated Dr. Stanton for Auditor-General and Colonel Beath for Surveyor-General in 1871. He was nominated for High Sheriff of Philadelphia in June, 1873, and elected on October 13th following. In public and private life he has won a high reputation. Possessed of sound judgment, fearlessness, and discretion, he is well fitted to become one of the recognized leaders of his party.
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ORWOOD, JONATHAN LARKIN, M. D., Physi- ' cian and Mayor of Chester, Pennsylvania, was born in West Chester, Chester county, in the same state, October 17th, 1834. His father was descended front a colony of Swedes, who were among the first settlers of the State of Delaware. His ma- ternal ancestors were members of the colony of William Penn. His parents having removed to Delaware, in 1840, he attended the common schools of that State until 1850, when they removed to Delaware county, Pennsylvania. Ile enjoyed few advantages for obtaining an education, but as he labored upon the farm he resolved to educate himself. Added to his naturally gifted intellect, he pos- sessed industry and indomitable perseverance, and succeeded so well that, in the autumn of 1853, he went to Evansburg, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, in answer to an adver- tisement, and having successfully passed the examination, though but nineteen years of age, was assigned to the charge of the school at that place. After seven months' teaching he was enabled by rigid economy to enter upon a course of study at the Freeland College, where he received tuition in exchange for his services in teaching the higher mathe- matics. Having returned to Delaware county, he taught at Springfield during the winter of 1854-'55, and in the autumn of 1855 entered the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, whence he graduated M. D. in April, 1857. He at once engaged in practice in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he still remains, and has achieved an enviable reputation with substantial success. During the war of the Rebellion, he was four years in charge of the Municipal Hospital of Philadelphia, then located at the
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Lazaretto, on the line between Philadelphia and Chester ; and was also connected with the United States Army Ios- pital, at Upland, Delaware county, Pennsylvania. When the city charter was obtained, in 1866, he was elected, upon the Democratic ticket, to Councils, and was twice re-elected, serving until April Ist, 1872, when he was elected Mayor of the city, notwithstanding the fact that the Republican party had a majority of over 400. This office he still fills with general acceptance `and with marked ability. Ile established the Delaware County Democrat, October 8th, 1867, and under his able management it was conducted until June Ist, 1871, when he sold it to Colonel W. Cooper Talley, under whom it continues its successful career and enjoys a large circulation. Though he is prominent, active, and public spirited, aiding every good work, his greatest energy has been given to his chosen profession, and from it he has secured the greatest reputation. IIe stands in the front rank of the medical profession, and particularly ex- cels in surgery, being considered one of the first surgeons in the State. IIe has performed many difficult and re- markable surgical operations, and his extraordinary skill is attested by the official records of many successful results secured in cases seldom, if ever, before surgically treated in private practice.
start, nor pecuniary or other outside assistance. In March, 1871, he purchased a one-half interest in the blast-furnace on the line of the East Pennsylvania Railroad, known as the " Temple Iron Company." He also has heavy interests in the Topton Furnace, on the same road, and in the Millers- burgh Furnace in Lehigh county. Ile takes great interest in developing this section of the country. During the war for the preservation of the Union he was among the largest contributors of pecuniary means to carry it on, and although not drafted, furnished a volunteer, whose bounty, amount- ing to $700, he himself paid. He has been very active in church and school matters, and also in charitable institu- tions. Ile aided in founding the " Orphans' Home" at Bloomsburg, and has placed an orphan boy in Lancaster College at his own expense. He has been an elder in the First German Reformed Church for the past twelve years, and has helped to construct the splendid edifice known as St. Paul's Reformed Church, under the pastoral care of Rev. Dr. Bausman. IIe has been honored by his fellow citizens with election to the Select Council of the city, where he has served them faithfully. He was married, in 1843, to Letitia Wieter, of Lehigh county. Ilis daughter is the wife of J. L. Boyer, of the Temple Iron Company ; while two of his three sons are intended for the business in which he is interested. One of these, Ambrose, will shortly be made Superintendent of the Millersburg Iron Furnace; another, Wilson, is, destined to manage the brick-works; while the third, Isaac, who is now at school, is designed for some profession." He is a self-made, strong-minded, gene- rous, just ,and amiable man ; a first-class mechanic and builder, industrious and far-seeing. Personally, he is of a fine physique, and enjoys the best of health, which is attri- butable to temperate and regular habits, which, early formed, have never been departed from.
CHOSE, ISAAC, Furnace Builder, is a native of Lehigh county, where he was born December 6th, 1822. His father, who bears the same name, a mason by trade, is one of the leading men in Hanover township, where he has held several local offices, beside filling various positions of trust and responsibility. Ile himself was educated in the ordinary schools of the neighborhood, and then commenced to learn the avocation of a bricklayer. In 1839, he devoted his attention to furnace building, and became in time a thorough master of his art, which he has followed to the present time. ITis experience has been immense, and he AWLE, WILLIAM, Lawyer, was born April 28th, 1759. His parents were members of the Society of Friends, and he was educated at the academy under the control of that denomination. Having elected the legal profession as his future vocation, he studied for some time with Counsellor Kemp of the city of New York ; then sailed for Europe, and in London was regularly installed a Templar, pursuing his studies with that eagerness and assiduity which ever marked his carcer through a subsequent brilliant practice of over half a century. After completing his studies, and making a tour through the principal countries of the old world, he returned to America, in 1783, a thorough and accomplished scholar. In 1791, he was appointed United States District Attorney by President Washington, who subsequently ten- dered him more than once the position of Attorney-General is considered one of the best, if not the best, furnace builder in the United States. He has been more successful than any other, and his reputation extends over the whole country. He removed to Reading in 1851, and, in 1853, he pur- chased, remodelled and reconstructed his present works, considered to be the largest and most successful in the Union. During the first year he manufactured a few hun- dred thousand, but now makes three million fire-bricks per annum, requiring the services of fifty men and boys all the year round. During the whole of these twenty years and upwards the works have been idle but sixty days; and this cessation occurred during the panic of 1857. This enor- mous number of three million bricks represents the money value of $150,000. The amount of capital invested in the business is over $100,000, and is the result of his untiring industry and capabilities, for he had no capital whereon to !of the United States, which he declined to accept. In
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1828, he was honored by Dartmouth College with the | for the Presidential and State elections of the same year. In degree of Doctor of Laws, and a short time previous to his death, was applied to by that institution, for a third edi- tion of his great work on Constitutional Law, which had been adopted as a text book in many colleges in the Union; but his great age and failing health forbade his making the effort. Ile was an eminently pious man; and his writings on doctrinal points are deserving of the highest praise. Ilis Essay upon Angelic Influences is full of the most fascin- ating speculation, and the soundest reflection. He died April 12th, 1856.
ALLEY, GENERAL W. COOPER, Journalist and Soldier, was born near Wilmington, Delaware, December 11, 1832, his father being the Rev. L. S. Talley, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. After a previous education, he entered the mili- tary school of Thomas S. Ludsler, at Wilmington, where he graduated at the age of twenty-one years. He then spent two years in travel, and, in 1855, commenced the study of the law. He subsequently became the editor of the Upland Union newspaper, which he conducted with ability until he became proprietor and editor of the National Democrat at Norristown, Pennsylvania, a journal he managed with success, till the outbreak of the Rebellion. He then raised a company of volunteers at Rochdale, Delaware county, Pennsylvania, which was attached to the Ist Pennsylvania Regiment of Infantry and Reserve Corps, as Company F, and mustered into the service for three years. He received his commis- sion as captain, May 30th, 1861, and participated, with his command, in all the battles in which it was engaged. In each of the battles of New Market, Cross Roads, second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, he was wounded, but never left his post. In November, 1862, he was commissioned colonel for his conduct at Antietam. At Spottsylvania he was captured, after gallantly leading his brigade, while reconnoitring; but was retaken, with 340 other prisoners, on the following day by Sheridan's cavalry, whom he accompanied in their raid around Richmond, having re-armed his men with captured weapons, and rendered efficient service. Rejoining his regiment, he took charge of 350 rebel prisoners, whom he conducted to Fortress Monroe. On the last day of his term of service (May 31st 1864), he, with his regiment, was conspicuous in the engagen.ent at Bethesda Church, and on March 13th, 1865, was, for meritorious services, brevetted Brigadier General, having been already mustered out of service on June 13th of the preceding year. In 1864, he was nomi- nated, by acclamation, by the Union party, as candidate for the State Senate, but the rules of the party prevented his election. IIe was commissioned by Governor Curtin to take the votes of the soldiers of Chester and Delaware counties in the armies of the Potomac and James rivers, " the grocery business.
1865, he was appointed Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue for the Seventh District of Pennsylvania, and, in 1866, Collector of Revenue by President Johnson. In 1871, he purchased the Delaware County Democrat from Dr. J. L. Forwood, and has since conducted it with marked ability. In October, 1873, he was elected to the Pennsylvania Legis- lature, by a majority of 312, in a district where the opposite party had usually received one of from 1800 to 2000 votes. Not only has he rendered editorial and military services, but he is an eminently progressive man and an active worker in every enterprise that commends itself to his judgment.
LLIS, COLONEL LEWIS NATHANIEL M., Soldier and Financier, was born in Pottstown, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, February 25th, 1820, and is the son of Christopher Ellis, of the same place. His earlier education was received in Pottstown, and supplemented by private tuition in Philadelphia. At the age of twelve and a-half years, he entered the service of the Reading Railroad Company, and was at first employed in taking cross sec- tions of the road. When it was completed from Pottstown and Norristown, he was placed temporarily in charge of the station at Phoenixville. At this time he left the service of the company for one year, to resume his studies and im- prove his education, returning to active service on the road in 1838. Phoenixville becoming a prominent point, he was appointed General Agent of the company, having charge of the various departments, a position he retains to the present day. In 1842, he was elected Colonel of Volunteers, and was one of Governor Packer's aides, during his term of office. He has held many offices of public trust and honor ; among them, that of Burgess, President of Town Council, Borough Engineer, and President of the School Board, of which he has been a member for many years, always having manifested a deep interest in educational matters. He was prominent in organizing the Phoenixville National Bank, and was one of its directors. Ile is also a director in the Mines Cemetery, and in the Masonic Hall Association. In politics he is a. Democrat, and sustained Judge Douglass in his contest with Lincoln for the presidency. At the out- break of the Rebellion he took an active part in politics, deeming-it his duty, at once, to openly espouse the cause he considered to be right. IIe is highly esteemed in the community where he resides, being a sincere friend and a business man of stability and strict integrity, as his long service in the company, with which he has been connected from 1835 to the present time, abundantly testifies. He was married, in 1842, to Mary Morgan, widow of John Morgan, a prominent man in Phoenixville, and has had three children ; one son, Mordecai, being now engaged in
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OGERS, FAIRMAN, Civil Engineer, was born in | of the same place, remaining with him till 1829, when he Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 15th, 1833. Hle is a son of the late Evans Rogers, a distinguished and highly successful merchant, descended from an old family, long resident in Chester county, belonging to the Society of Friends. He received his elementary education in the best private classical academies of Philadelphia, and graduated with the class of 1853 at the University of Pennsylvania. Having conceived a great taste for mathematics and mechan- ics, he devoted himself during his college years to these studies, with the view of adopting the profession of civil engineer. So earnestly and successfully did he apply him- self, that he was, at the close of his college course, elected a lecturer on mechanics in the Franklin Institute, and. held that position for eleven years thereafter. In IS55, he was chosen Professor of Civil Engineering in the University of Pennsylvania, which chair he filled for a period.of sixteen years. He was a member of the First Troop of Philadel- phia City Cavalry ; at the outbreak of the Rebellion, in 1861,; served with that corps as first sergeant, and subsequently, after Captain James' death, succeeded him as its com- manding officer. Ile also served for a short time, in 1862, as a volunteer engineer officer on the staff of General Rey- nolds, and, in 1863, in the same capacity with .General William F. Smith. At different times he has been. con- nected with the United States coast survey, and, in 1862, he completed the survey of the Potomac river. On his re- turn to Philadelphia, after the First City Troop were mus- tered out of service, he became one of the first members of the Union Club, which was the nucleus from which the Union League sprang. Ile was an active member of the latter organization all through the Rebellion. In 1863, he was appointed by the United States Senate, one of the original fifty members of the National Academy of Sciences; and as such, served on the Compass Commission, as well as on other commissions appointed by that body. In IS71, he resigned his professorship in the University, and soon thereafter was elected a member of the Board of Trustees. He is now (1874) chairman of the building committee of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts ; and is also a member of the building committee for the Centennial Build- ings. Ile was married, in 1856, to a daughter of John F. Gilpin of Philadelphia.
ALTER, YOUNG S., Journalist, was born in Philadelphia, February 14th, 1812. His father, Captain Peter P. Walter, was of Scotch descent, and owner of a line of vessels trading to the West Indies. He died when his son was quite young, leaving him in charge of his. grandfather at Bedford, Pennsylvania, where he was educated in the common district schools. He left school, in 1S26, and was apprenticed to the printing business with Thomas R. Gettys,
went to work on his own account as journeyman, in Phil- adelphia and New York, continuing that occupation till 1833. He then removed to Darby, and, on August Ist of the same year, established the Delaware County Republican, which he continued to publish in that place until Novem- ber, 1841. In that year he removed to Chester, where he still published his paper, on Whig and Republican principles. One of the most noteworthy features of his journal was the strong and emphatic opposition he made to slavery, being one of the earliest advocates of its entire abolition in this country, and the articles, which frequently appeared on this subject, had so much weight, and were so ably and forcibly written, that they materially increased the sale of his paper, which had a larger circulation than any other in the county. Hle has sent forth from his office many apprentices who have obtained eminent positions in the country, among whom are William Ward, the first lawyer in Chester, John W. For- ney, Jr., of the Philadelphia Press, Henry T. Crosby, Chief Clerk of the War Department at Washington, District of Columbia, and many others. He was Inspector of Customs at Marcus Hook, from 1842 to 1844, and Postmaster, at Chester, during President Lincoln's first term of adminis- tration. He was also, at different times, member of the Council of the Borough and City of Chester, and is now President of that body. IIe was prominent as an originator of the Farmers' 'Market at Philadelphia, and of the corres- ponding one at Chester. He is, at the present time, Presi- dent of the Chester Library Company, organized in 1769, and has been influentially connected with many other enterprises and institutions of a local and general character. He was married, in 1833, to Laetitia, daughter of Jesse Warne, of Philadelphia. Throughout his long course of editorial and public life, he has uniformly maintained his high character for ability and integrity, and has contributed largely, by his per- sonal influence, and by his pen, towards the spread of that high tone of morality which has marked his own career.
ARTSIDE, AMOS, Manufacturer, was born in Lancashire, England, October 23, 1829. He is a son of Benjamin Gartside, whose biography ap- pears elsewhere in this work, and came to the United States with his parentsm 1831. His primary education was chiefly obtained at the common schools, but was finished at the old Germantown Academy. IIe left school at the age of 18 years, and began to learn the business of woollen weaving in his father's factory. There he had an opportunity of becoming practically and thoroughly acquainted with the business, in all its details. When his father left Cardington, Delaware county, to carry on his business in Chester, he accompanied him and remained in his employment till IS57, when he, with his brother James, was admitted into partnership. Ile has
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taken much interest in public matters, and few men have done more to advance the interests of the city in which he resides. He has been, for fifteen consecutive years, a mem- ber of city councils, and still continues to hold that office, having already been president of that body, of which he is the oldest member, as far as term of service is concerned. He was the originator of many public works of utility in Chester. Among them may be named the Water Works, of which he has been president since their commencement. He was a director in the Chester Improvement Company, and also in the McCaffry Direct Street Carting Company, which latter office he has held since the organization of the company. He is, furthermore, a director of the Delaware, River Railroad, and was largely instrumental in, securing" the location of the terminus of the Chester Railroad at. Chester. His business qualities are characterized by a remarkable degree of judgment and general ability, and he is widely known as one of the most energetic and thor- oughly " go ahead men " in the city'or county.
TANTON, M. HALL, President of the Board of Public Education of Philadelphia, was born in Caroline county, Maryland, February 28th, 1832. IIis father was a native of the same county, and his mother was from Delaware; the for- mer being a Quaker and. the latter a Methodist. After receiving a good and sound education, he went to Philadelphia in 1847, and entered the store of David S. Freeman & Son, in the hat and 'fur business; as salesman. Seven or eight years subsequently, he left. them to join Cowell Farcira & Co., then the most extensive house in the trade in Philadelphia, and travelled for them much in the South and West. He stayed with this firm as confidential clerk and head salesman, until after the outbreak of the Rebellion, when they abandoned the business. In 1863, he was married to Clara E., daughter of William Anspach of Philadelphia, and soon afterwards formed a partnership with his father-in- law in the banking and brokerage business, opening for that purpose an office on Walnut street. Aside from this they were very fortunate in certain investments in mineral lands, and soon had a large amount of capital within their control. In politics he had been identified with the Whig party till 1856, when the Republican party was formed. Ile joined the latter, and soon, by his activity and industry in working for it, together with his absolute avoidance of rings and other cliques, as well as his well-known honesty and manliness of character, won its high favor. In 1864, he was unexpec- tedly nominated by his party friends in his ward (the 12th) for the Common Council, and though that ward was strongly Democratic, his general popularity secured his election. Ile however declined to serve for a second term. In 1865, he was elected a director in the sectional School Board. Two years later, an Act of the Legislature gave the Judges
of the District and Common Pleas Courts the power of appointing a member from each ward in the city (29 in all), to form a Board of Controllers of the public schools. He was twice appointed a member from the Twelfth Ward, by Judge Brewster, and the Board elected him its president in 1870, a position he still fills with marked ability and ear- nestness. Though deservedly prominent among his fellow- citizens, from his honorable business standing, acquired by industry and fair dealing, and his wealth, which he dis- tributes with liberal hospitality, his real foot-hold in the esteem of the public lies in his manner of administrating the responsible office of head of the public schools. His views on the subject of education are expressed in his report for 1869. He is a firm advocate of the system of compulsory education, urges the necessity of industrial and reformiatory schools, on the ground not only of morality and Christianity, but of sound and far-seeing economy, and deprecatesi the policy which labors solely at limiting the expenses of the public schools, instead of elevating them by enlarging their sphere of usefulness, thereby increasing the benefits they confer on the community. In 1873, he was elected one of the Delegates at large to the State Constitu- tional Convention, and in that body was indefatigable in watching the interests of his constituents. Never absent from his seat, he made himself fanfiliar with every motion, and seized the opportunity to urge upon the assembly the claims of his favorite and cherished idea-the more thor- ough education of the people. He has been frequently and urgently solicited to become a candidate for the mayoralty of the city, also for congressman ; but he shrinks from the turmoil of the political arena.
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