USA > Tennessee > Davidson County > History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 108
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Upon the failure of the Confederate cause Col. Burch returned to Nashville and resumed the practice of his orig- inal profession. He pursued it with marked success for four years. In September, 1869, he purchased a control- ling interest in the Union and American,-the journal with which he had been connected before the war, which had been revived in December, 1865,-and again became its lead- ing editor. To that work he was devoted exclusively until 1873, when, a vacancy occurring in the comptrollership of the treasury of Tennessee, he was appointed to that respon- sible trust by Governor John C. Brown, and filled it until the expiration of the term in February, 1875, declining to offer as a candidate for another term. During his incum- bency of that office its duties were more than ordinarily onerous and delicate, and on the list of those who have served in that capacity it is conceded that no one has ex- hibited greater ability or more rigid integrity to the public interests. Indeed, his aptitude for what in many respects is the most important office in the administration of a State government was remarkable.
Retiring from the comptrollership, Col. Burch returned to the editorial tripod, and was thus engaged for another period of four years. As an editor and politician, except on ques- tions connected with the civil war and pending its continu- ance, he was a supporter of the political fortunes of Andrew Johnson, and as a personal friend enjoyed in a high degree the confidence of that remarkable man. Not always in- dorsing his peculiar views, he admired his vigorous quali- ties of character, and the steadfast friendship of Col. Burch was appreciated by his wide circle of admirers. On leading questions of State and Federal policy, the journal, now called The American, with which he has been so long iden- tified, and with which he yet holds connection, has always occupied bold, clear, and unequivocal positions, and main- tained them with incisive force aud ability. As its con- ductor he has given it a front rank in the press of the South- west, and impressed his views firmly ou the public opinion of the State.
On the accession of the Democratic party to the power of the majority in the Senate of the United States, in March, 1879, Col. Burch was elected to the secretaryship of that body, over a number of formidable competitors for
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that honorable and dignified office, every one of whom was an ex-member of either the United States Senate or House of Representatives. Though but for a little more than a year in the discharge of its various and responsible func- tions, his ability and efficiency are conspicuous, as are his urbane and graceful manners in the society of the members of the highest deliberative body in the government. If peculiar fitness alone should be considered, it may be pre- dicted that he will long occupy that distinguished position.
Col. Burch's domestic circle is a large one. Mrs. Burch was Miss Lucy Newell, of Chattanooga, Tenn., a most amiable and estimable lady. They have had born to them eight children, two of whom-the eldest and fourth-died when they had about attained their fifth year. The others survive: Katharine N., Mary B., John C., Charles N., Robert L., and Lucius. The family, though still holding a residence of citizenship in Tennessee, are at present dom- iciled in Washington City, Col. Burch's official residence.
Col. Burch is now in the mature vigor of life and pos- sessed of a robust physical constitution. This brief sketch of the events of his career attests a strong individuality. Classically educated, his tastes are literary and his culture extensive. In the fields of study to which his pursuits have directed, his information is full, and whether as a writer or speaker or in the executive sphere, his resources are ready and forcible. Every station to which he has attained has been filled with great credit and marked ability, and given earnest that he would fully sustain himself in any to which he might aspire. In the social circle he is a genial and attractive member, and his cordial bearing and kind offices have gained him a large list of warm friendships, which are held by the manly attributes of character he has dis- played.
MAJOR HENRY HEISS.
Maj. Henry Heiss, son of John P. and Anna Moly- neaux Heiss, was born April 30, 1838, at Bristol, Pa. His parents removed to Nashville a few weeks after the birth of Henry, and his mother died shortly after arrival here.
Mr. Heiss, Sr., became an active and influential politician and one of the publishers of the Nashville Union. James K. Polk, upon his election to the Presidency, invited him to Washington ; here, in association with Thomas Ritchie, of the Richmond Enquirer, one of the most eminent jour- nalists the South has produced, he established the Washing- ton Union, which was the organ of the Polk administra- tion.
Henry was educated at boarding-schools at Strasburg, Pa., Mount Holly, N. J., and graduated at Columbia Col- lege, near Washington, D. C.
In 1858 he became connected with his father's paper, the Evening States, published at Washington, as reporter for the various departments of the government and of Con- gressional proceedings.
In 1859 and a part of 1860 he was engaged with a gov- ernment surveying party on lands lying chiefly in Allen Co., Kansas, known as the New York Indian lands.
At the breaking out of the civil war he returned to Tennessee and enlisted as a private soldier in the Confed- erate army.
He selected the cavalry service, and during the war was attached to the commands of Van Dorn, Forrest, and Wheeler. During the last year of the war he had risen to the rank of captain, with staff-rank as major ; was pro- vost-marshal of corps under both Forrest and Wheeler ; was paroled May 23, 1865, and returned to Nashville, where, in the fall of that year, he took a position on the Republican Banner, which had been recently revived, after its suspension since February, 1862.
He became the managing editor of that paper, and re- mained with it until August, 1870, when he went to St. Louis to become the managing editor of the Times. He re- turned to Nashville early the following year, at the solicita- tion of the proprietors of the Banner.
In 1872 went back to St. Louis again to take charge of the Times, remaining there until March, 1874, when he accepted the position of managing editor of the Nashville Union und American.
When, in September, 1875, The Republican Banner and The Union and American were consolidated, he re- ceived the appointment of managing editor of the Ameri- can, which name was given the consolidated paper. This position he has ever since held, making a continuous ex- perience of fifteen years as a managing editor.
This uninterrupted retention in the control of the press implies a fitness for the work, and the qualities requisite for the duties and responsibilities are apparent when we analyze Maj. Heiss' character.
He has quick perception, sound judgment, and great in- dustry ; keeps wide awake to the current history of the day in all departments; wastes no time or space on the extreme ideas of any party ; involves himself or his paper in no wrangling or factious criticism; but, with conserva- tive adherence to his own convictions and the policy of the Democratic party, he makes a paper at once healthy in tone, instructive, useful, and acceptable in the homes of a large constituency.
Maj. Heiss possesses great modesty joined with unques- tioned bravery ; his instincts are gentle, pure, and gener- ous; he kindles warm friendship among his acquaintances, and firm faith in his integrity and devotion to duty in all life's relations.
Maj. Heiss was married Sept. 4, 1872, to Miss Mary G. Lusk, a daughter of Robert Lusk, Esq., an eminent banker of' Nashville.
He has never sought or held public office, nor would he be turned aside from his chosen profession of journal- ism, which he regards as one of the most honorable.
DR. WILLIAM H. MORGAN.
The Morgan family is of Welsh origin, and its name can be traced to quite remote antiquity. History tells of " Mor- gan the Courteous," a Welsh prince, who died in 1001. Another Morgan, Prince of Parnyh, went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and died in 1126.
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The progenitors of the American family of this name- three brothers-emigrated to New Jersey in the latter part of the seventeenth century.
From this stock William Morgan removed to Virginia. At Shepherdstown, near Harper's Ferry, a stone dwelling still stands bearing his initials and the date of 1710. Abraham, youngest son of this William Morgan, emigrated to Logan Co., Ky., and located near Russellville.
William H., the subject of this sketch, was born at this Kentucky home. He was one of eight children. His mother before marriage was Elizabeth Adams, of Mont- gomery Co., Md. While his parents were comfortable livers, they had not the means to give him more than a common school and limited education. Having lofty as- pirations, and seeing that he would have to rely on his own exertions, by industry and economy he saved from his earnings (not being ashamed to be seen at work for wages) enough to qualify himself to embark in the learned profes- sion of dental surgery ; his energy, industry, and economy in his young manhood days won for him the confidence and esteem of all right-minded men. He commenced the study of dentistry about the year 1846, and graduated from the Baltimore College in 1848; settled in the city of Nash- ville in 1849, where he has remained in a lucrative and successful practice to this time.
Dr. Morgan has been connected with seven dental asso- ciations. He has been elected and served as president in six of them. Has been twice elected as president of the American Dental Association. He is the only Southern gentleman who has ever filled this position, the honor of a second election never having been enjoyed by any other man. For several years past he has been a trus- tee of the Ohio Dental College, and is now president of that board. His resignation was tendered, but not accepted. Is professor of clinical dentistry and dental pathology in the Dental Department of Vanderbilt University, and dean of the faculty. Is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South; he has three times served the General Conference on the book committee; was elected by the Ten- nessee Conference a delegate to the last General Conference.
Dr. Morgan was appointed to deliver the address of wel- come on the part of the dentists of Tennessee at the Amer- ican Dental Association while sitting in Nashville in 1870, a task which he performed to the satisfaction of his friends, which is shown by the closing remarks of Professor C. K. Winston, who was appointed on the part of the Medical Association to perform a like service. Said he, "I will not attempt to add anything further to the very eloquent address of Dr. Morgan, a man who is an honor to his pro- fession and a benefactor to his race."
He has not been an active politician, nor ever held posi- tion of party preferment. He was an old-line Whig be- fore the war; since that event his sympathies have been generally with the Democratic party.
He was elected to succeed John M. Bass, Esq., as presi- dent of the Nashville Life Insurance Company, and ac- cepted with the intention and for the purpose of closing up its affairs.
Dr. Morgan married Miss Sarah A. Noel, of Logan Co., Ky., by whom he has three sous and one daughter.
As a leader in the profession of dentistry, as a public- spirited citizen, as a man of integrity, culture, and useful- ness, he holds a very prominent position in the community.
WILLIAM KING BOWLING.
When Dr. Bowling was asked how old he was, he said, " When the Third Napoleon, Emperor of the French, Marshal McMahon, Charles Dickens, Salmon P. Chase, Robert E. Lee, Andrew Johnson, and Jefferson Davis came into the world, and when the American slave-trade termi- nated by a provision of the Constitution of the United States, I came,-born when giant men came, and when a giant sin and outrage died." This event occurred in the Northern Neck of Virginia, in the county of Westmoreland, the native county of George Washington. Tradition and history represent his ancestors as planters, and, while re- markable for kindness and generosity, none of them filled any conspicuous place in Church or State. The name is not found among the officers of the Revolutionary war, nor among the leaders and followers of the fiery patriots whose meetings and resolves led to that glorious consummation. Not a vestryman of the Anglican Church bears that name, nor does a Non-conformist place it upon the page of history. In the republic of letters it is unknown. A family seem- ingly content to draw their subsistence from hereditary acres. And yet few names in the gossip or literature of Virginia occur more frequently, or are mentioned with more respect. For generations the maxim prevailed in the family that the post of honor is a private station.
In 1810 his father moved to North Kentucky, where Dr. Bowling-the fifth of ten children, and middle brother of seven-was educated privately by excellent tutors, and among them three authors of books. Says he, "Like Clay and Drake, I was dropped down in the wilderness of Kentucky, and left to fight the battle of life as best I could, without education, family influence, or patronage. To three vagabond authors whom my father fed for my benefit, and a public library of five hundred volumes, which I devoured before I was fourteen, I owe the foundation of all I am or hope to be. I attended one course of lectures in the Med- ical College of Ohio, and practiced five years, and attended another course at the Medical Department of Cincinnati College, known as Drake's School, and graduated. Drake was my medical idol, and his memory is yet. I was used to the society of authors. I had slept with them, roamed the wild forests with them, raved and ranted with them, and felt almost as big at eighteen as any of them, and they felt as big as all outdoors. One was a poet, William P. S. Blair, brother of the celebrated Francis P. Blair, of Kendall and Jackson memory. Lyman Martin, afterwards my medi- cal preceptor, a scholar from Connecticut, spent merry hours at my father's with these men, but he never raved por ranted. God bless him ! He was everything to me, taught me, and believed in me."
Dr. Bowling received his medical degree in the spring of 1836. Though his Alma Mater was of brief existence, its faculty was one of the most remarkable in America; each
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member, in subsequent life and widely separated fields, achieved a national reputation.
As a practitioner of medicine from 1836 to 1850, Dr. Bowling gained great eminence in Logan Co., Ky., near the Tennessee line, and became widely known in both States. During this time he had always under his tuition a number of office students, who spread his reputation as an original teacher of medicine far and wide. In 1848 he was offered the chair of theory and practice, in the Memphis Medical Institute, the pioneer medical school of Tennessee. This offer he declined. Familiar through the public prints and from personal intercourse among the students of the .University of Nashville with the remarkable and persistent labors of President Philip Lindsley in behalf of Nashville as a literary and educational centre, he had already conceived the idea of a great medical school there, and as a part of that university.
In 1850 he removed to Nashville, hoping by his presence to stimulate physicians of eminence, to whom he had vainly written, to take part in the great enterprise. At this time the suspension of the Collegiate Department of the univer- sity had been decreed by the trustees, in view of the resig- nation of President Lindsley, which was to take effect on October 3d.
Dr. J. Berrien Lindsley was then busily engaged in getting up a scheme for a medical college,-if possible, in connection with the university ; if not, as a joint-stock com- pany. He brought his plans to Dr. B., who at once de- clared that he would venture largely of means and labor in connection with the " old University," and would not invest a cent in a private enterprise. Dr. L. and his associates ac- cepted Dr. B.'s views, gave him the chair of theory and practice, and made him their mouthpiece in communicating with the board of trustees, by which the faculty was com- missioned on Oct. 11, 1850. The peculiar features of Dr. B.'s plan are its making the medical professors supreme in their own department, and on the other hand endowing the University by the labors and fees of its medical profes- sors. Besides meeting all the contingent expenses of the school, the medical faculty have added to the university property buildings and outfit costing not less than fifty thou- sand dollars.
In the school thus established by the energy of a college- bred youth and the wisdom of a back woods practitioner, coupled with the assistance of a most able corps of teachers, Dr. B. became at once a master-spirit. He was ever ready to second liberal and progressive steps, regarding always large and enthusiastic classes as of prime importance. As a lecturer he was characteristically original. Thoroughly master of the great writers upon practical medicine in the olden time, and perfectly conversant by long experience with all the prevalent diseases of this region, he was able to plan a course of lectures eminently learned and practical. Understanding doctor and medical student nature with an insight given to but few, he had a hold upon the class peculiar to himself. Gifted with a creative fancy, a poetic imagination, and a delivery combining the graces of the orator with the arts of the actor, he kept large classes in rapt attention. Ile was the Rush, the Chapman, and the Drake of the South all in one. In the ten years 1851-
1861 he taught more than three thousand students,-an achievement without precedent in professional annals, for never did any school before or since have such numbers in its first decade. I am almost sure that every one of this number carried away with him as a part of his intellectual furniture not only lofty and advanced views of medicine as a humane and liberal calling, but also maxims, apothegms, and theses of lasting influence. Like Philip Lindsley, of Nashville, and Arnold, of Rugby, he impressed his individ- uality upon the pupil. This is the rare gift of the teacher who is born such.
In 1851 he founded the Nashville Journal of Medicine and Surgery, and sustained it for a quarter of a century. His contributions to medicine are principally contained in this journal, where he was never negative, but definitely aggressive or defensive, concerning all things pertaining to his. profession. Upon retiring from the Medical Journal in 1875, his publisher said of him that " Dr. Bowling had never kept the printer waiting for copy or money;" and the greatest living medical critic in his journal said of him, "A man of genius as well as of learning, of the true poctic temperament, he has written some of the most brilliant articles in our medical annals." An eminent practitioner in California says, "The first quarter of a century of the Nashville Journal has stamped its impress upon those who read it for sincerity, truth, and usefulness, elevating the standard of true medicine as no other pub- lication has donc." Many thousand copies of Dr. Bowl- ing's Introductories and also of painphlet editions of articles from the Medical Journal were circulated by order of the faculty.
Dr. Bowling has always strenuously advocated the or- ganization of the profession, and contributed his quotum of labor and time to local and national associations. He has avoided office. However, in 1856 he was elected third vice-president, in 1867 first vice-president, and in 1874 president, of the American Medical Association. In 1873 he was elected by the medical editors of the United States president of their national association.
Dr. Bowling has always taken a keen interest in public affairs, but has preferred medical to public work. He was spontaneously returned a member of the Constitutional Con- vention of Kentucky for Logan County in 1849, and there laid the corner-stone of public instruction in that State. In 1853 he delivered the oration upon the occasion of lay- ing the corner-stone of the first public school (Hume) building in Nashville. He is a firm and consistent advo- cate of universal public education for all races. He has, by invitation, delivered many addresses to institutions of learning. The only notes he ever signed as security were those of Chancellor Lindsley, for the university buildings, in 1855, to the amount of over thirty thousand dollars, the contractors having agreed with the trustees to give up their mechanics' lien, and to look to the chancellor, backed by a public subscription, for their pay.
In 1873, Dr. Bowling resigned his chair in the Medical Department of the University of Nashville. In 1877 he resumed position there as professor of malarial diseases and medical ethics. After lecturing two winters he again resigned, and is now one of the professors of theory and
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practice in the Medical Department of the University of Tennessee, at Nashville.
In 1837 he married Mrs. Melissa Cheatham, née Melissa Saunders. Her dust now mingles with that of her native county in Mount Olivet, the beautiful rural cemetery of Nashville. J. B. L.
WILLIAM WELLS BERRY.
William Wells Berry, son of IIoratio and Sarah Godman Berry, natives of Anne Arundel Co., Md., was born in the city of Baltimore, Md., June 8, 1813. He attended a private school in that city until he attained the age of six- teen, beginning there the foundation of a course of reading and study which ended only with his life, and gave him both varied and accurate information. Leaving school, he entered the wholesale drug-house of Keerle & Co., of Bal- timore, where he remained until 1834, gaining under a kind and upright employer a knowledge of commercial matters which made of him at the age of twenty-one an independent and self-reliant merchant. Removing to Nash- ville, he established a wholesale drug firm which now, under the name of Berry, Demoville & Co., is widely and favor- ably known, and justly claims as high financial standing as any firm in the South. It is characteristic of Mr. Berry that during the long period which he was engaged in busi- ness in Nashville, nearly half a century, he never changed his location.
Mr. Berry was endowed with a great capacity for affairs, and every enterprise with which he was actively connected bore evidence in its success of his marked ability and un- remitting attention. He was a member of the board of directors of the Planters' Bank of Tennessee during its most prosperous period, from 1854 to 1862. He was pres- ident of the Third National Bank of Nashville from its organization, in 1865, until he was prostrated by disease, in 1876. The almost unparalleled success of this institution was due not only to the wisdom and sagacity with which its affairs were conducted, but to the unbounded confidence of the community in its officers and directors. He was from its incorporation until his death president of the Equitable Insurance Company of Nashville, an organization which has always stood deservedly high in public estimation.
Mr. Berry was closely identified as director with other leading insurance and manufacturing incorporations; and in all these places of trust he was remarkable no less for the conscientious fidelity and impartiality with which he discharged every duty than for the sound judgment of his counsels. He was at one time owner of large planting in- terests on the Arkansas River, which he managed with the success he attained in other enterprises. On the 10th of March, 1840, Mr. Berry was married to Jane E. White, daughter of Gen. William White, a member of the David- son County bar, and a gallant officer under Gen. Andrew Jackson in the war of 1812, and subsequent campaigns against the Indians.
Mr. Berry dicd June 15, 1876, leaving a widow and five children. Just in all business transactions, modest and gentle in demeanor, refined in habits, cordial and affection-
ate in all social and domestic relations, he left to his de- scendants an honored name and a spotless memory.
JOHN HARDING.
John Harding was born in 1777 at Gooseland, Va., but spent his carly life at Powhatan, in the same State. He came to Tennessee in 1805 with four brothers and two sisters. He was reared a farmer ; his education at school was limited, his means small, as his father's property was ruined in the war of the Revolution, but if poor in estate he was rich in health, in energy, industry, and good habits.
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