USA > Tennessee > Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee > Part 102
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nuptial salutation. Both husband and wife were pros- trated for weeks, and they could not minister to each other's wants, but they transmitted love and sympathy, and each sigh seemed to ask :
. One of us, love, must stand Where the waves are breaking on death's dark strand, And watch the boat from the silent land Bear the other away, Which will it be ?'
Natural endowments and high accomplishments made Mrs. Elizabeth White a most lovely character. Men- tally, she was strong, had the best culture of her day, and was eminently practical in all the relations of life. Sound in judgment, she was a wise counselor. The Orient is rich in striking symbols, and one of them is to take the veil of a bride when she lays it aside upon her marriage day; to fold it carefully, to lay it ten- derly away in a box of sandal or camphor wood; to keep it until the bride who wore it ceases to live, when it is brought forth and wrapped around the face of the dead. And the belief which is taught is that if the bride, as she matured in womanhood and motherhood, was true to her wifely trust, beneath the veil the pinched and withered and wrung face will be restored to bridal freshness and loveliness, and when her eyes shall open in the Beautiful Beyond, they will be filled with their old luster, the lips will call back their car- nation, and as youth and purity were on the earth, so the eternal youth will begin. The symbol means that what is beautiful and good cannot be lost ; that if the woman causes smiles to be born where sorrow brooded, like the children of the gods, those smiles will be im- mortal ; that if from weeping eyes she has wiped away tears, those tears will turn to diamonds, which all the abrasions of time cannot make dim or wear away; that if the voice has been lifted up in sweet accents for love, duty and charity, it will change to a note of celestial music, the echoes of which will forever swell the grand melodies of eternity, and that the beauties of heaven will be but a magnified splendor of the bride's deeds on earth. If this beautiful custom of the Orient were observed by our people, under the bridal veil that wraps the pallid brow of the deceased the face would grow rescate, and take on a celestial light which all the darkness of death and all the damps of the grave can not extinguish, for her religion was a living sentiment and a conscious reality, and her whole life was set. to the music of sympathy, affection, charity, and duty to husband, children and the world. To all who knew her she realized the conception of a faultless, lovely wo- man. While highly gifted, her spirit was of the most feminine gentleness. She was a devoted and loving mother, maternal affection ever bubbling from her lips. She has been gradually sinking for the past six months. Death seemed to be more the result of a general break - ing down and wearing out of the vital machinery than any well defined malady. She bore her long sufferings
with a patience and meekness that were sublime. Her mind was occasionally clouded, but it would soon burst forth in all its splendor and beauty. Her sufferings were a whole drama of pathos, but she preserved the harmony of her life to the end, and entered the dark, starless night of death bravely, knowing that the jour- ney to eternal day would be swift, and that the sad wails of loving husband and children would soon be lost in the melody of heaven. The sympathy of the en- tire community centers around the family of the de- ceased, and it is especially lavished upon the husband, Rev. Dr. George White. As the clods this morning rattle upon the grave of his lost idol, he will no doubt feel that he has been at the funeral of all his hopes- seen them entombed one by one. In youth he gave his heart to the church, and ever since it has been sweetly attuned to those lofty themes and sublime aspirations which lift man into the splendors that dwell above the earth and beyond the grave .. . Known and loved alike for unostentatious simplicity, spotless life and the great powers he has consecrated to the highest and best in- terests of humanity, he will have the sympathies of the whole South in his great bereavement. Rev. Dr. George White has lived through three generations, ministering holy things, and his memory will survive the tomb and ever remain a living presence, fragrant with holy in- cense. He lingers on the stage, the theater of his use- fulness and his triumphs, and with the Bible in his hand, its sacred teachings in his heart, and its sublime promises animating and inspiring his soul, he nobly, bravely labors on. But, tottering with the weight of years upon the brink of the grave, he cannot long sur- vive his irreparable loss His refrain for the future will be-
. Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed,
Never to be disquioted ! My last good night ! Thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake ;
Till age or grief or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves, and fill the room
My heart keeps ompty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there, I will not fail To meet thee in that hollow vale ; And think not much of my delay, I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed Desire can make or sorrow breod ; Each minute is n short degree.
And every hour a step toward thee.
At night when I betake to rest.
Next morn I rise nearer my west
Of life, almost by eight hours' sail,
Than when Sleep breathed his drowsy gale.
Thus from the sun my slow barquo steers,
And my day's compass downward bears ; Nor labor I to stem the tide Through which to thee I swiftly glide.
But hark ! my pulse like a soft drum, Beats my approach, tells thee I como ; And slow how'er my marches bo I shall at last sit down by thee.
I am kneeling at the threshold, weary, faint and soro. Waiting for the dawning, for the opening of the door ;
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Waiting till the Master shall bid me rise and come To the glory of His presence, to the gladness of His home, But now the morn is breaking, and my toil will soon be o'er. I am kneeling at the threshold, my hand is on the door, Methinks I hear the voices of the blessed as they stand Singing in the sunshine in that far off, sinto, land. O would that I were with them, amid their shining throng, Mingling in their worship, joining in their song.
The friends that started with me have entered long ago ; One by one they left me, struggling with the foe ; 'Their pilgrimage was shorter, their triumph sooner won, How lovingly they'll hail me when all my toil is done. With them the bles ed angels that know no grief or sin, I see them by the portals prepared to let me in.
Oh, Lord, I wait Thy pleasure, Thy time and ways aro best, But I'm wasted, worn and weary. Oh, Father, bid me rest."
CAPT. HENRY HARRISON TAYLOR.
KNOXVILLE.
B ORN on the banks of the Watauga river, which, in the Indian vernacular, means " beautiful river," in the picturesque county of Carter, in Tennessee, June 5, 1841, Capt. Henry Harrison Taylor, now of Knox- ville, is a fine specimen of the sturdy young mountaineer manhood of which this State can boast.
He grew up on his father's farm and was taught to work, a rule his father enforced with all his sons, and after attending a neighborhood boarding school, he was next sent to Washington College, then conducted by those famous East Tennessee educators, Archibald Doak, Blair and Tadlock. From there he went to Emory and Henry College, Virginia. In the spring of 1860, he went to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and there completed the junior course.
But in the spring of 1861 the war broke out, and books and all thoughts of study were laid aside for the rougher and sterner duties of the soldier. He enlisted in the Confederate army as a private for the first year, then became first-lieutenant, and finally captain of company HI, Fifth Tennessee Confederate cavalry, com- manded by Col. George W. MeKenzie. He was cap- tured October 11, 1863, on the retreat from the fight at Blue Springs, Tennessee, between the Confederate forces, commanded by Gen. John S. (" Cerro Gordo") Williams, of Kentucky, and the Federal army under Gen. Burnside. At the time of his capture he was on detached duty as inspector-general of Gen. A. E. Jack- son's brigade, the staff consisting of Maj. II. M. Folsom, quartermaster; Maj. W. B. Reese, adjutant- general ; Maj. Findley Henderson, commissary, and Maj. Roswell Booth, brigade ordnance officer. Capt. Taylor was sent to Johnson's Island, Ohio, November 15, 1863, where he was detained a prisoner till June 12, 1865, when he was released, the war having terminated.
Ile was in the several fights around Cumberland Gap, when it was occupied by Gen. Morgan (Federal), and at the battle fought at Tazewell Court-house. He was in the Kentucky campaign with Bragg, and in the en- gagements at Perryville, Lancaster, Nelson's Cross- roads, and Wild Cat; was also in several skirmishes between Burnside's forces and Gen. John S. Williams, in upper East Tennessee and southwest Virginia, in the summer and fall of 1863.
There were in the Confederate army from the county of Carter, about one hundred and thirty-five men, while there were from one thousand two hundred to one thousand four hundred men from the same county in the Federal army. It took a man of determination and strong convictions of right and duty in the face of such odds to go into the Confederate army, and it took a strong-even fool-hardy -- man to return there after the war, so bitter and relentless was the hatred entertained for all ex-Confederates.
Therefore, when the war was over, Capt. Taylor went to Marion, Virginia, where he read law with George W. Jones. He was admitted to the bar and licensed to practice by Judges John Fulton and John A. Camp- bell, and then went to Columbia, Tennessee, where he began practice in partnership with Judge Thomas W. Turley (whose sketch see elsewere in this volume). He remained at Columbia until February, 1870, when he located at Knoxville, where he has resided and prac- ticed law ever since, in the circuit, chancery, Supreme and Federal courts, but doing no criminal practice. The law firm at Knoxville is Taylor & Hood, who are the attorneys for the Knoxville and Augusta railroad, and also represent the East Tennessee National Bank. Capt. Taylor has been special judge in a number of cases -selected by the lawyers where judges were incompe- tent by reason of their relations to the causes.
Capt. Taylor has never been in politics as a candidate, but has been a Democrat since he has been of age. In the gubernational convention of 1880, at Nashville, he was a delegate from Knox county, and served as a member of the committee on platform, and in that con- vention favored an honest settlement of the debt of the State, he belonging to what is called the "sky-blue " wing of the Democratic party. His family has figured conspicuously in the politics of East Tennessee, among them Hon. Nat. G. Taylor, who served in Congress be- fore the war; and Hon. Robert L. Taylor, who was a member of Congress, and also Democratic elector for the State at large in the presidential canvass of 1884, and now pension agent at Knoxville.
Capt. Taylor was an applicant for the position of pen- sion agent at Knoxville, in 1855, but the president declined to appoint any man to that position who had
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been identified with the Confederate army. On learn- ing this fact Capt. Taylor wrote to Senator Jackson, who was pressing bis claims, that he had been identified with the Confederate army, and had no apologies to make for it, and to withdraw his name.
Capt. Taylor married, in Madisonville, Monroe county, Tennessee, November 15, 1877, Miss Inez Johnston, a native of that place, born in the house she was married in, daughter of Joseph Johnston, a merchant, a native of South Carolina, and a relative of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Her mother, nce Miss Caroline M. Hair, an East Tennessean by birth, is the daughter of James Hair, a farmer and trader. He died in Texas, while on a visit to his daughter, Mrs. Martha Smith. Mrs. Tay- lor was educated at the Female Institute, Madisonville, and is a member of the Presbyterian church, as is Capt. Taylor, he having joined that church in 1882. Mrs. Taylor is a woman of eminent piety and thoroughness, devoted to home, is thoroughly serupulous, having a delicate sense of right, and an exquisite regard for the feelings of others.
By his marriage with Miss Johnston, Capt. Taylor has three children : Carrie May Taylor, born September 15, 1878; Elizabeth (" Bessie ") Taylor, born December 30, 1880; Alfred Wilson Taylor, born May 21, 1881.
The original family name Tailor, a maker of clothes, was changed to Taylor in Scotland, the family being of Scotch-Irish extraction.
Capt. Taylor's great-grandfather, Isaac Taylor, came to Tennessee from Virginia, and settled in Carter county, among the pioneers of that country. His grandfather, Gen. Nathaniel Taylor, came to Tennessee from Rock- bridge county, Virginia, just after his marriage with Miss Mary Patton. He was a general in the United States army, and served under Jackson at New Orleans, and at Emuckfaw and Talladega, in Alabama, in the war of 1812. He died in 1816, about forty-four years of age. He was a man of fine business capacity and great energy, acquired a handsome estate, and gave all of his children a comfortable start in life. His homestead was hear Elizabethton. Carter county.
Alfred W. Taylor, father of Capt. Taylor, was born on the Watauga river. Carter county, Tennessee, on a property that has been owned by the family for ninety years. He was a man of more than ordinary intelli gence and great modesty, a lawyer by profession, and because of his great aversion to broils and unpleasant- ness between neighbors and friends, and his efforts to keep his clients out of litigation, was called "the peace- maker " and " the honest lawyer." He died in 1856, at the age of fifty-seven, an elder in the Presbyterian church. He was one of the original projectors of the East Tennessee and Virginia railroad, and was a director in that railroad company at the time of his de- cease.
Capt. Taylor's mother, nee Miss Elizabeth Carter Duffield, was born in Carter county, Tennessee. She was the daughter of Maj. George Duffield, a Philadel- phiau by birth, of the Pennsylvania Duffield family-a man of fine education and polished manners, a major in the United States army, and for a time on the staff of Gen. Nathaniel Taylor, a circumstance that led to bringing the two families together. Maj. Duffield mar- ried Miss Sallie S. Carter, daughter of Landon and Elizabeth Carter, a prominent pioneer couple of East Tennessee. The county of Carter was named for Lan- don Carter, and the county seat, Elizabethton, was named for his wife, Elizabeth. Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Capt. Taylor's maternal grandmother, was the sister of Gen. William B. Carter, who represented the First Tennessee district in Congress two or three terms. He is said to have been a man of magnificent size and hand- somely proportioned, of popular turn, and to use a homely phrase, was " a good mixer," mingling with the people and swaying them as an electioncerer. The Carter family are said to have been part Indian, having some of the blood of Pocahontas in their veins. They are also related to the Lee family, of Virginia.
Capt. Taylor's mother died in April, 1873, at the age of seventy-three, a woman of decided character, do- mestie in her habits, an excellent manager of the plan- tation and negroes in the absence of her husband, while he was attending the courts in Carter, Johnson, Sulli- van and Washington counties. She was the mother of six sons and two daughters. All of her sons she raised to be sober and industrious men, Two of them, James P. and Alfred W. Taylor, jr., died just as they passed twenty-one years of age. James P. Taylor died soon after graduating in medicine, and Alfred W. Taylor, jr., was a merchant at Jonesborough. Nat. M. Taylor is a lawyer at Bristol (see his sketch elsewhere in this vol- une). William C. and George D. Taylor live on the farm, the old homestead in Carter county, unmarried. Henry H. Taylor is the subject of this sketch. Of the daughters, Sarah Taylor died two years of age, and Mary Elizabeth Taylor is now the wife of Dr. Jesse II. Pepper, of Bristol, Tennessee, and has two children, George Heury and Rowena Elizabeth.
When Capt. Taylor began his professional life after the war, he had for a start a capital of some two or three thousand dollars in lands and collectable debts. By dint of economy, and as the result of hard work, applying himself' with all his energy and mental ca- pacity, and by earnest devotion to his profession, he has prospered well, and is now in comfortable cireum- stances, He is a close collector of fees, but has lost some money by indulging in the luxury of security for others. He has always led a sober life, has been atten- tive to business, has the reputation of fair dealing, and the unlimited confidence of the bar and people.
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CAPT. JAMES A. WARDER.
SHELBYVILLE.
LTHOUGH a Kentuckian by birth, having been
A born in Mason county, of that State, September 21, 1813, Capt. James A. Warder has been long enough identified with Tennessee to be ranked among her permanent and prominent citizens.
His education was obtained at the private schools in his native county, and one year's attendance at Centre College, Kentucky, which latter institution he left, in 1861, to enlist as a soldier in the Federal army. He went out as a private in company C, Second Kentucky Federal calvary, and fought his way up to a captainey- attaining the rank of captain of cavalry before his twenty-first year. He served in Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia, being connected during a portion of the time with the command of Gen. Phil. H. Sheridan, and took part in the battles of Perryville, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge.
The close of the war found him at Shelbyville, Ten- nessee, where he had married, and adopting the State, of which his wife was a native, as his future home, he has made Shelbyville his place of residence ever since.
During a visit to his old Kentucky home, in 1865, he began to read law with Hon. John G. Hickman, and returning to Tennessee in 1866, he was admitted to the bar and immediately began practice, in partnership with Hon. Thomas HI. Coldwell, under the firm name of Coldwell & Warder, which partnership lasted until 1873, after which he continued his practice alone until 1876.
Capt. Warder is a Republican of the stanchest and truest type. En 1867, he was commissioned as attorney- general of his district by Gov. Brownlow, but declined to serve. In 1876, he was a delegate to the Cincinnati convention which nominated Hayes and Wheeler, and was appointed elector for his congressional district on the Republican ticket, and during the campaign that followed, made an able canvass of his district. When Hayes was made president he was appointed United States district attorney for Middle Tennessee. This office he continued to fill uninterruptedly during the administrations of Hayes and Garfield, and after the expiration of his term served for six or seven months under a special commission from Supreme Justice Stan- ley Matthews. While holding this position he had to deal with illicit distilling in the mountains of Tennes- see, and he virtually succeeded in suppressing the busi- ness of the "moonshiners" in that section. He repre- sented the government in the Davis removal cases from the State to the Federal courts, which created intense excitement in Tennessee at the time, and passed into history as a memorable contest between State and Fed- cral authorities. Capt. Warder maintained that in such
cases the Federal courts had a right to control the State courts by writs of prohibition. The Supreme court of the United States sustained the jurisdiction of the Federal court, so far as the question of removal was concerned, leaving the right to use writs of prohibition an open question.
After the expiration of his term of office, Capt. Warder resumed his regular practice, in which he' has been actively and successfully engaged ever since, with a large business, extending all over Middle Ten-' nessee. He began his professional career without capital, came into Tennessee a Republican and a Fed- eral soldier, but by hard work, earnest effort, strength of will and decided native ability, has overcome adverse circumstances, achieved reputation, firmly implanted himself'in the respect and confidence of the people, and accumulated a handsome estate. . He is regarded as a sound man, financially, and has been vice-president of the Shelbyville Savings Bank for several years.
The Warder family is of English origin, and the name means " guard over." Capt. Warder's father, Dr. Wal- ter Warder, was a prominent and successful practitioner of medicine in Mason county, Kentucky. Several of Dr. Warder's uncles, as was also the Doctor himself, were prominent in the Baptist aunals of Kentucky, in the early days of that State, when log cabins were dedi- eated as churches. Capt. Warder's mother, nce Miss Nancy Artus, was a daughter of James Artus, one of the early settlers in the " dark and bloody ground."
Capt. Warder was married, January 2, 1865, to Miss Laura Gosling, daughter of William Gosling, a cotton manufacturer at Shelbyville, and of an old and highly respectable Middle Tennessee family. To this union has been born one child. a daughter.
Capt. Warder is regarded as one of the rising men of the State. His name has frequently been mentioned as a Republican candidate for governor of Tennessee, and the Supreme bench. In 1881, the Republicans made an earnest effort to carry the State, and as part of the programme, Capt. Warder was requested and unanimously nominated for congress in his district. J. D. Richardson was the Democratic nominee. The canvass attracted general attention throughout the State. The candidates were both young, widely known, warm personal friends, thoroughly posted in political history, and distinguished for the " courtesies " of debate. Capt. Warder was credited with making the ablest pre- sentation of Republicanism ever made in Tennessee, and has since been spoken of, even in the Democratic newspapers, as the "eloquent defender of his faith." It is quite certain the future bears for him additional distinction.
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HION. WILLIAM A. HENDERSON.
KNOXVILLE.
A LTHOUGH a citizen of Knoxville for thirty- nine years, the Hon. William A. Henderson is a native of Grainger county, Tennessee, having been born in that county, July 11, 1836. He is descended from an old and highly respectable North Carolina family, who were among the pioneer settlers of East Tennessee, and of English ancestry. That the family is English, is sufficiently evident from the patronymic Henderson, which was changed by aspirating the first letter of the original name, Andrewson, and making the orthography conform to the common pronunciation of it. Thus " Andrew's-son " became Henderson.
Mr. Henderson's grandfather, Thomas Henderson, was a native of the "Old North State," and came to Tennessee among its pioneer settlers. He was a mem- ber of the convention that formed the first constitution of Tennessee, and being a prominent politician, after the organization of the State served as a member of the Tennessee Legislature, from what was then called C'as- well, now Hawkins, county. Thomas Henderson mar- ried Miss Nancy Windom, of a Virginia family, who settled in the town of Somerville. The history of this marriage is more interesting than a romance. Thomas was with his father, moving from North Carolina to Kentucky; Nancy was with her father, moving from Virginia to West Tennessee. The two families met and camped near each other, at the place now known as Check's Cross-roads, Hamblen county, Ten- nessee. Young Thomas became enamored of Miss Nancy, and in three weeks they were married, left their respective parents and " caravans," settled at that place, and there lived and died.
Eldridge Henderson, father of the subject of this sketch, was a native of Grainger county, Tennessee, and a farmer of moderate means. He died when the son was only three months old.
Mr. Henderson's mother, nce Emeline Felts, was a native of Washington county, Tennessee. She was the daughter of William Felts, a carpenter, a soldier in the war of 1812, under Jackson, a quiet, plain, honest, re ligious man, who lived to be seventy-five years old. His wife was Margaret Lackey, a native of Rock - bridge county, Virginia. She died at Knoxville, Six children were born to William and Margaret Felts; three sons, Jackson, David and James, (the two former now at Nashville, the latter at Knoxville), and three daughters, Sallie, Emeline ( Mr. Henderson's mother) and Minerva. Sallie died the wife of Wilson Taylor; Minerva died the wife of James O. Allen. Mrs. Hen- derson, now sixty-nine years old, lives at Knoxville, with her son. She never had but two children, Mary and William A. Mary was born at Knoxville, grad uated at the Jonesborough Female College, and died
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