USA > Pennsylvania > The Biographical encyclopedia of Pennsylvania of the nineteenth century. Pt. 1 > Part 57
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pursuing his calling in all these cities. In March, 1866, he first reached Chester, Pennsylvania, where he opened a job printing office in Market street, and commenced busi- ness on his own account. In the following month of Oc- tober, in conjunction with Dr. Taylor, he started the Ad- vertiser, a small paper ten by thirteen, which after a little more than a year was enlarged to eight columns. In the course of the following year he disposed of his interest in the paper to his partner, and finding his job business in- creasing removed to more commodious quarters, to the upper rooms of the Post-office building, subsequently changing to the present council chamber, where, on June 6th, 1868, he issued the first number of the Chester Advocate, intended purely as an advertising sheet, and distributed gratuitously. Business connected with the job printing continuing to increase, a further change to more enlarged space was soon deemed necessary, and, in January, 1869, the present loca- tion on Edgemont avenue was first occupied. The Advocate had been enlarged to the dimensions of six columns, and now sold at the nominal price of one cent per copy. In October, 1872, the size of the paper was still further in- creased ยท by the addition of a column to each page, and the price raised- to two cents; the circulation continues to in- crease gradually but surely, and its proprietor is reaping from his enterprise in this direction. An additional build- ing has been recently erected, which is also occupied by him, with a total frontage of forty-two feet and a depth of fifty feet. It is of fine brick and three stories in height. .The basement is used as a press-room, where four presses are worked by a five-horse power engine. An elevator communicates with the floor above, and is used for the raising and lowering of forms, ete. The first floor contains the office, composing rooms, etc., while the upper stories are occupied as a dwelling. Every convenience is to be found in and around the composing and press-rooms, which are well lighted and ventilated. The building is heated throughout by steam from the boiler. The success which has attended the proprietor of the Advocate is solely due to his untiring industry and energetic perseverance. He takes particular pleasure in doing his work well, and in this way cannot fail to meet the approbation of his patron ..
ALTERS, GEORGE, Mechanical Engineer, was born in Pikeland township, Chester county, Pennsylvania, March 22d, ISto, and is a son of William and Catharine Walters. He was edu- cated in the district schools, and at an early age was apprenticed to learn the coach-making trade, at which he faithfully served until attaining his majority, when he continued as a journeyman for a year or more longer ; and then finally set up on his own account in the same calling, having first erected his own shops, etc. In 1838, he removed to Phoenixville, and effected an engage-
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ment as pattern maker and draughtsman in the establish- ment of Reeves & Whitaker, where he has ever since re- mained, with them and their successors, a period of over. the third of a century. He has, during this time, been re- gularly advanced through all the various grades, and is now, and has been for the past twenty-five years, the Chief En- gineer and Chief Draughtsman of the Phoenix Iron Com- pany. These works, the most complete of their kind in the United States, have been erected from time to time, mainly according to his plans and designs and under his immediate supervision ; and the perfection to which they have been brought bears witness to the very great ability and deep study which brought them into being. In 1844, he planned the blast furnaces at Havre-de-Grace, Mary- land, erected there by Reeves & Whitaker, having been selected by the proprietors as the Engineer and Designer ; and here, for the first time in the history of iron manufac- ture, was the gas taken from the tunnel head of the furnace, and introduced under the boilers for the purpose of gene- rating the steam and heating the blast. This was his own invention, which has since been universally adopted. In 1845, under the direction of David Reeves, he planned the blast furnaces at Phoenixville, and superintended their erection. Here, likewise, was the gas successfully intro- duced under the boilers, where it fulfilled all the purposes above mentioned. These two furnaces having proved eminently prosperous, he was again selected by the same gentleman to furnish the plans and superintend the con- struction of what was then termed the new Rail Mill at Phoenixville. It was commenced early in May, 1846, and on the 16th of November following all the furnaces, machi- nery and other appliances necessary in the manufacture of railroad iron were completed, and rails successfully made. Immediately after this, the firm of Reeves, Abbott & Co. selected him as the Engineer to superintend the erection of a large rail mill at Safe Harbor, Lancaster county, Pennsyl- vania, for which he made all the necessary drawings. In the same year also Reeves, Nichols & Co., of Bridgeton, New Jersey-in addition to their already great manufactur- ing establishment-commenced the erection of a large rolling mill, and selected him as the Engineer to plan and arrange the greater part of this improvement, all of which he accomplished to their entire satisfaction. In 1849, David Reeves became the proprietor of the Spring Mill Furnaces, and again made choice of the same Engineer to superintend the construction of the various buildings at this point. He also was engaged by the same gentleman in re-constructing and re-arranging the furnaces, ete., of the Cambria Iron Com- pany, at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which had likewise be- come the property of the same operator. Shortly after this had been successfully accomplished, Reeves, Nichols & Co., of Bridgeton, added still further improvements to their already extensive works, and he was called upon as Engi- neer for the construction and equipment of a large pipe mill for the manufacture of butt-welded gas tubes. Fol-
lowing these came many changes and new improvements at the Phoenix Works, to enable them to roll and manufacture all the various shapes of iron used in the construction of bridges, truss-girders, compound and other beams known to the trade. Ile was the Chief Engineer in the construc- tion of the iron work of the great International Bridge crossing the Niagara River, at Buffalo, connecting the latter place with Fort Erie, all the drawings, etc., for which were prepared by him at the Phoenix Company's offices-where the iron-work was fabricated-and duplicate copies of every drawing sent to the contractor who erected the bridge. He is now engaged, as Chief Engineer, in the construction at Phoenixville of the New Mill, both frame-work and roof, which, when completed, is intended to be the most perfect of its kind in the New or even the Old World. Every thing, in fact, in and around the vast establishment owned and occupied . by this company bears the mark of his skill, ability, and ingenuity. Having had all the varied details of the business to superintend, he has probably done more actual work in devising and constructing them than any one else. He has, during the course of his long and useful life, invented and perfected many contrivances, which he has patented, and which have proved of great benefit to the manufacturing world. He is known by these and his great prominence in connection with iron manufacture, all through the Middle States, as one of the best mechanical engineers of the day, and is highly esteemed, not only for his professional ability, but for those social qualities and that sterling integrity which are ever the characteristics of an able, intelligent and worthy citizen. He is a zealous and active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. IIe was married, December 27th, 1832, to Rebecca, second daughter of Philip and Catherine Gougler, of Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, and has one son, Noah, living, who is also in the employ of the Phoenix Iron Company.
UBBELL, WILLIAM WHEELER, Lawyer, and Inventor of the famous Thunderbolt Shell Fnzes, etc., was born in the former District of the Northern Liberties, now Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 4th, 1821. He is a son of Truman M. Hubbell, and grandson of Silas Hubbell, of Massachusetts, who fought at Bunker Hill, afterwards was with Washing- ton in five battles, and sold his mill seat to purchase shoes and blankets for his comrades in arms. The ancestors named Hubbell emigrated from England in 1649, and set- tled in Connecticut, while those on the maternal side were members of William Penn's colony of Friends, and settled near Chester, Pennsylvania. Sir Henry Hale Graham and Richard Flower were his maternal great-grand and grand- parents. Ile was educated at Eustace's, and Shipper's Classical School, in Philadelphia; but, owing to his parents' misfortunes during the disastrous panic of 1837, he was
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obliged, at sixteen years of age, to leave school and labor for his daily bread. Being of an inventive turn of mind, and having made some discoveries in chemistry, which he was enabled to turn to good account, he managed to earn the means to prosecute the study of the law. This, in the office of his preceptor, Hon. John W. Ashmead, now de- ceased, was successfully carried out, but owing to his numerous experiments, to be presently noticed, he was de- layed in applying for admission to the bar until March 5th, 1845. His career as a counsellor at law has been a marked one; in five years, he had attained to the dignity of an ad- vocate in the Supreme Court of the United States. Being conversant with the various mechanical sciences, which he had acquired in his leisure hours by hard study and con- stant observation, as well as with chemistry and its several handmaids, he possessed that knowledge which eminently fitted him to be a solicitor in " patent cases," generally so termed. It was in 1853 that he was selected as counsel by a committee of the now New York Central Railroad Com- pany, and made his mark in connection with W. A. Beach, of Troy, New York, and. William Whiting, of Boston, Mas- sachusetts, in arguing for the defendants, in the case of Ross Winans against O. Eaton, et. al., commonly known as the "Great Eight-wheel Car Suits," for infringement of a patent for the eight-wheeled car for railroads. , This case was now heard for the third time before Justice Nelson, of the Su- preme Court of the United States, at Cooperstown, New York (in the United States Circuit Court), and he opened the case for the defendants in one of the most lucid argu- ments ever delivered, which, for its fulness of detail-cov- ering, as it does, 193 pages of matter-admirable arrange- ment, and strict adherence to the truth, redounds to his credit, industry and thorough knowledge of equity and law. The case had been by other counsel previously tried in the New York District, and a jury had given the plaintiff a verdict ; under his preparation of defence, a decision for the defendants was obtained in this and another case, and, upon being carried to the Supreme Court at Washington, it was there sustained, and the decision so secured, in favor of the defendants, was virtually in favor of all the railroad companies in the United States, as they were all interested as much as any one in the decision. The case occupied four years, and involved nearly two millions of dollars. He was also of counsel in the great case against the Wheel- ing Bridge Company, in 1850, and the Woodworth Planing Machine, which was commenced in the previous year. He followed his profession of the law steadily until the close of the winter of 1856-'57, when he had the misfortune to be one of the vietims or sufferers by the " National Hotel disease," so-called by reason of the fact that the guests of the National Hotel, at Washington, at the time of President Buchanan's inauguration, when that house was very much crowded with travellers, were simultaneously prostrated with a deadly sickness or poison; many died in a few days, while the majority lingered only to die after many years of
suffering. By his intimate knowledge of chemistry and antidotes, he was enabled to withstand the effects of the deadly arseniated poison so received, saved his life, and finally recovered his health. Not only in the highest court of the land has he earned laurels, but on a far different arena has he made himself world-wide famous. When but a lad of thirteen years, he was playfully experimenting with armed percussion arrows and projectiles, which, in after years, in explosive shells for naval and army service, he brought to perfection. It should be stated here that on his mother's side he is lineally descended from the renowned Grahams and Stuarts of Scotland, which families for many generations were oppressed by Great Britain; consequently, it can be easily understood that his feelings of determina- tion to resist the encroachments of that country were innate. When, in 1840, there was a speck of war between the United States and Great Britain, about the " Northeastern Boundary Question," he began to devise some plan whereby this country, if forced to fight, might prove the victor by land and sea. After two years of patient investigation and continued experiments, he exhibited his famous explosive " Thunderbolt Shell Fuze," and its effects on a target at close quarters and at a distance. The results of these trials were reported to the Secretary of the Navy early in 1843, by Lieutenant William A. Wurts, who had been especially assigned to this duty by Commodore Frederick Engle, who greatly assisted in making known its great explosive pow- ers and its general success. Ile was the first one to call, in an official manner, the attention of the Government to this new projectile. Commodores Perry and Stockton, in 1843, and General George Cadwalader, in 1846, took a personal interest in the matter by affording the inventor various facilities to experiment with the shells. It was in- troduced into the United States Marine Service as a secret, in 1847 (then termed the " Navy Time and Impact Fuze"), and he filed an application for a patent therefor (in the Secret Archives) in 1846, where it remained quiescent for many years, when the war of the Rebellion broke out, and he obtained his patent, January 7th, 1862. It sunk the " Alabama" in the British Channel, and has never suffered a defeat. He also is the inventor of the great Land Shell Percussion Fuze, patented in IS60, which turned the scale in favor of the North, beginning with Antietam. This is technically called the " Percussion Fuze Explosive Shell " for rifled cannon, allowing time for the shell to explode after it shall have penetrated the object at which it is fired, or against the field and by percussion. Notwithstanding the fact that the Government had availed itself of his in- ventions, several millions being used, to successfully prose- cute the war to a glorious triumph for the Union cause, and now arm the navy and army batteries therewith, yet the in- ventor had never reaped his pecuniary reward. In 1864, Congress directed him to prosecute his case in the Court of Claims, and for six years he urged his suit before that body. In IS70, it was concluded, and the following year
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the United States Supreme Court dismissed and refused the | hours in close study and translating several standard French motions and appeals of the United States, which affirmed a royalty of $200,000 to him as the inventor. Up to 1873, Congress had only authorized the payment of one- third of this amount, leaving the balance unpaid, though reported since in Congress in his favor, where it is admitted that his inventions saved the country in the war. Away back, in 1844, he patented the first adjustable breech-loading gun, compensating for expansion in heating by a screw and sectional breech. The British Government ordered one of him, which was made and forwarded, and upon this the Snider Rifle and Armstrong Gun of the British service are modified improvements, in the shape of the elements, " the compensating screw, and gated or sectional breech." Upon this latter, the original inventor has improved and patented, on a decision in his favor by the United States Patent Office. The use of breech-loading arms is largely due to his early inventions. In the civil arts and sciences he has made and patented many inventions; these embrace the Draft and Spark Arresters of Locomotives (in 1841); others in Refin- ing Iron and Metals by the use of Nitrates (1867-'70); the Solar Magnet and Engine ( Fire Insurance Journal, 1850); others in chemistry and medicinal agents, with which he restored his own health, as before stated, and extended the same blessing to many of his friends. His aged parents survive and live with him. On December 14th, 1848, he married Elizabeth Catharine, daughter of Paul Remley, of South Carolina, and has children living, Walter, Lawrence, Eleanor, Albert, Elizabeth and Paul. He is prosecuting his right to the full adjudicated compensation before the Forty-third Congress. It may be safely said, that his in- ventions of explosive shell fuzes of the army and navy of the United States have proved a great power to open the portals of the barbarian world to the advance of civilization and Christianity, China, Japan, and slavery having yielded to the influence of their fearful power. Forts, ships, and armies have failed, been destroyed, or surrendered before them, and, by the direction of Providence, the Union, freedom, peace, commerce, and national arbitration made to prevail.
ROSS, SAMUEL D., M. D., LL. D., D. C. L. Oxon., Physician and Surgeon, was born near Easton, Pennsylvania, July 8th, 1805. After re- ceiving a classical education at the academy at Wilkesbarre, and at the High School, Lawrence- ville, New Jersey, he commenced the study of medicine with Dr. Joseph K. Swift, at Easton, and subse- quently entered the office of the late Professor George Me- Clellan, whose private tuition he enjoyed for nearly two years, graduating at the Jefferson Medical College in 1828. Hle forthwith opened an office, and commenced the prac- tice of his profession in Philadelphia, employing his leisure
and German medical works, which he subsequently pub- lished. In 1830, lie gave to the profession his first original work on Diseases and Injuries of the Bones and Joints. Among other matters of interest, particular mention is made of the use of adhesive plaster as a means of extension in the treatment of fractures, now so generally employed by surgeons of this and other countries. During the same year, he returned to his native county and pursued his avo- cations at Easton. In 1833, he was tendered the position of Demonstrator of Anatomy in the Medical College of Ohio, which he accepted, and removed to Cincinnati. In this position he remained for two years, when he was in- vited to the Professorship of Pathological Anatomy in the Medical Department of the Cincinnati College, and, in the autumn of 1835, entered upon its duties. Here he deliv- ered the first systematic course of lectures on Morbid Ana- tomy which had ever been given in the United States, and while thus occupied he composed his Elements of Patholo- gical Anatomy, the first methodical treatise on the subject ever published on this side of the Atlantic. The third edition was issued in 1857. He occupied this position for four years, when he was invited by the Trustees of the University of Louisville to accept the Chair of Surgery in that school, and in the fall of 1840 he removed to that city. For a period of ten consecutive years he gave his undivided attention to the duties of the lecture room, when he re- signed to accept, in 1850, a similar professorship in the University of New York, which had just been vacated by the retirement of the venerable Dr. Mott. At the end of the first session he withdrew from this school, and, at the earnest solicitation of his former colleagues, returned to Kentucky to re-occupy the chair which he had relinquished the previous summer. In 1856, he was elected Professor of Surgery in the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, a position which he then accepted and still occupies. Hle is a very voluminous author. In addition to the works al- ready named, he has, among others, written his System of Surgery, upon which his posthumous fame will most pro- bably depend mainly; it appeared in 1859, has passed through five editions, the last being thoroughly revised and brought up to the existing state of the science (1872), and is comprised in two volumes, 8vo, pp. 2400, illustrated by upwards of 1400 engravings. It has been translated into the Dutch language and published at Nieuwediep, 1863. Within the past few years, an edition in the Rus- sian language has appeared at St. Petersburg. The work is the most elaborate and exhaustive one on surgery ever written by a single man. He has also found time to edit a large work on American Medical Biography. He was one of the founders and chief editors of the North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, which, after a successful career of five years, was finally suspended at the outbreak of the Rebellion. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society; of numerous medical societies in the United
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States; of the Imperial Medical Society in Vienna; of the Medical Society of Christiana in Norway; of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London; of the Medico- Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, and of the British Medi- cal Association, to which, on two occasions, he was an acere- dited delegate. He was one of the founders and one of the early presidents of the Kentucky State Medical Society. During his residence at Louisville, he drew up and pub- lished an elaborate and exhaustive Report on Kentucky Surgery, in which he first established the fact that the late Dr. Ephraim McDowell, of Danville, in that State, was justly entitled to the lionor of being the Father of Ovario- tomy, an honor until that time erronecus'y ascribed to other surgeons. Shortly after settling in Philadelphia, he founded, in conjunction with Dr. Da Costa, the Philadelphia Pathological Society, of which he was the first president, and which now embraces a membership of nearly one hun- dred and fifty. In 1867, he was elected President of the American Medical Association, and, in April, 1870, pre- sided at the Teachers' Medical Convention, held at Wash- ington City, to consider the subject of Medical Education. In June of the same year, he was appointed President of the Pennsylvania State Medical Society. In 1872; during his second visit to Europe, the University of Oxford, at its One-thousandth Commemoration, conferred upon him the honotary degree of D. C. L., the only compliment of the kind ever bestowed upon an American physician, The Jefferson College, of Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, had pre- viously conferred upon him the degree of LL. D. Ile has always been a warm and decided advocate of professional progress and of a higher standard of medical education. No one on this continent, perhaps, has so often and so fearlessly denounced the existing mode of instruction as he has, or more deeply lamented its many deficiencies. As a member of a great and noble profession, he has been most faithful to its interests and its honor. From the moment of his graduation down to the present time, he has been a zealous and devoted student, seeking solace among his large collection of books, which he justly ranks as among his most instructive and cherished friends and companions. He has been eminently a man of system in all his pursuits and undertakings. As a lecturer, he is never a minute be- hind time ; and as a consulting physician and surgeon, no one could be more punctual or more conscientious in the fulfilment of his engagements. It is this characteristic trait which has enabled him to accomplish so much in the way of authorship. He has always been fully impressed with the value of minutes, well knowing that the hours would take care of themselves. Large portions of his works have been . composed while riding about the city in the daily routine of his professional visits. He is still a young man, fresh, hale and vigorous. Years have brought with them no signs of decay, mental or physical. He lectures with the same force and animation as he did a third of a century ago; his eye is not dimmed, nor does his hand tremble :
and he performs the most difficult operations in surgery with the same grace, ability and coolness that character- ized his movements in his earlier manhood.
ORGAN, JACOB B., Banker, was born in Pho- nixville, Pennsylvania, in IS14. He is the second son of John Morgan (deceased), whose biography appears elsewhere in this work. He was educated in the country schools and Westchester Academy. On completing his education he entered a store, at the same time teaching school. He was appointed Post- master of Phoenixville under the Pierce and Buchanan ad- ministration. In 1868, he was elected Cashier of the Bank of Phoenixville, a position which he still ably fills. His management of the bank has been signalized by a large in- crease of its business and a great extension of public con- fidence ; the institution at the present time having the repu- tation of being one of the strongest in the State. He has occupied many important public offices in the town ; has been Justice of the Peace and four times Burgess, also Di- rector and Treasurer of the School Board; and for his ability and general conduct during his administration of the last-named offices received a testimonial from the school teachers in 1873. In 1872, he was authorized to negotiate the water loan of $175,000, and brought that large and important undertaking to a successful issue, without making any charge for his services. Ile is a Democrat and a firm supporter of the Union cause, which he sustained by liberal contributions and active, earnest effort; in raising and dis- patching volunteers. IIe is also President of the Perseve- rance Building Association, and his influence has done much towards advancing its interests. He is a fine busi- ness man, conspicuous for his straightforward conduct in life, and for his constant efforts to assist in every thing tend- ing to improve the city and its inhabitants, by whom he is universally loved and respected. He was married, in 1849, to Lavinia C., daughter of John Vanderslice, of Phoenixville, by whom he has four children living.
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