Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 122

Author: Speer, William S
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Nashville, A. B. Tavel
Number of Pages: 1278

USA > Tennessee > Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee > Part 122

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Judge Young's maternal grandmother, formerly Miss Obedience Brazil, was the daughter of James Brazil, who was killed by the Harps, at a point still known as " Brazil's Knob," in Morgan county, Tennessee, See " Life as It Is," a book published by one of the Brazils. Judge Young's mother, died June 14, 1854, at the age of sixty-four, leaving four children: (1). James H. Young, a local elder for twenty-five years in the Meth- odist Episcopal church, south; a farmer in Anderson county, on the old homestead, which he inherited from his father. One of his sons, Samuel E. Young, gradu- ated at the University of Tennessee, at Knoxville, in the class of 1878, and is now a prominent lawyer at Sweetwater. Tennessee (2). Judge David King Young, subject of this sketch. (3): Nancy Aun Young, who died the wife of B. J. Hoskins, in the town and county of' Denton, Texas. She left one son, Samuel Houston Hoskins, now a wholesale harness and saddle manufac- turer, at Denton. . (D. Obedience II. Young, now the wife of Dr. T. J. Coward, Clinton, Tennessee, a pros- perous man, and a leading physician of the county. They have one child, David Richard Coward, a schol- arly young gentleman, and member of the bar.

The carly life of Judge Young, was that of a hard raised mountain country boy -- going to school in win- ter and working on the farm in summer, until he was nineteen years of age, when he went two sessions to Vi- ney Grove High School, in Lincoln county, Tennessee. While there, he taught two public schools at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month, In January, 1817, he re- turned home and soon after entered Holston College, in

٠٠

1 :

(

551

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

Jefferson county, under Rev. Creed Fulton, and ro- mained there three sessions of five months each. In 1849, he entered the law office of Col. John R. Nelson, of Knoxville, the uncle of the late distinguished Su preme judge, Thomas A. R. Nelson, and read law under his instruction, till November 12. 1819, when he was licensed to practice by Chancellor Thomas L. Williams and Judge Ebenezer Alexander. He at once engaged in the practice of law in Anderson and the surround ing counties, settled at Clinton in December, 1850 practiced in all the courts of that section and in the federal court at Knoxville, until the machinery of jus- tice was disturbed by the presence of hostile soldiery ... " Inter arma silent leges.".

Judge Young married. in Lee county, Virginia, May 15, 1849, Miss Elizabeth Woodson, who was born in Campbell county, Tennessee, September 2, 1832. daugh- ter of William Woodson, who was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1801, lived for many years in western Vir- ginia, then settled in Campbell county, Tennessee. About the year 1838, he moved to Lee county, Virginia, where he still resides, a large farmer, in the lower end of the valley of Virginia. A cousin of his, Silas Wood- son, was formerly governor of Missouri, Mrs. Young's mother was a Pebley. Her brothers, Andrew and William Woodson, are large real estate owners and farm- ers in Campbell county, Tennessee. She was educated at Tazewell, Claiborne county, Tennessee; is an ardent Southern Methodist ; a remarkable business manager, and with her brains and energy has assisted materially in amassing the handsome property of her husband. By his marriage with Miss Woodson, Judge Young has had ten children : (1). Josephine Young, died at the age of nine, at Clinton. (2). John Young; died two weeks after birth. (3). Horace Woodson Young; was killed by the lever of a cane mill, when ten years old. (4). Charlotte Alice Young, was educated at the Knoxville Female Institute and is a scholarly and accomplished woman. She married John E. Chapman, senior member of Chap- man, White, Lyons & Co .. wholesale druggists, at Knox- ville. She has three children ; Maggie, David Carpen- ter, and Minnette. (5). William Baxter Young, gradu- ated in 1882, with high honor, from the University of Tennessee, at Knoxville. After graduating he went west to see the world, was taken with the typhoid fever at Fort Worth, Texas, and there died, October 11, 1882 Ilis remains were brought home and buried at Clinton. He had the reputation of being one of the most accom- plished young men of his age in the university. (6). Minnie O. Young ; graduated in the 81 class in Martha Washington College, Virginia, and afterwards took a musical course at Nashville. (7). Samuel Clarkston Young, entered the University of Tennessee in 1881, and died while a student. December 21. 1883. (8). James Walter Young, born July 13, 1868. (9). Etta Tula Young. (10). David K. Young, jr.

In 1863. being an ardent Union man, he went to

Kentucky, organized battery D, of the First Ten- nessee Federal light artillery, and was assigned to duty with the army of the Cumberland. His com- mand was ordered to Nashville, where, by order of An- drew. Johnson, military governor, he was placed in charge of Fort Johnson, which was the capitol build- ing, around which he built fortifications. Early in July, 1864, the military governor determined to have a civil government and reorganize the courts in East Tennessee, and about July 1, 1864, appointed Capt. Young attorney general for the Third judicial circuit of Tennessee, embracing the city of Knoxville. He resigned his captaincy late in July, 1861, and accepted the attorney-generalship, which position he held about two years. Then, being burthened with a heavy prac- tice in the circuit and chancery courts north and west of Clinton, he resigned the attorney-generalship in 1866. Ile practiced law in partnership with Col. Henry R. Gibson, under the firm name of Young & Gibson. This firm did a leading law business from January 1, 1868, to March, 1873, when Judge Young went on the bench, by appointment from Gov. John C. Brown. He was afterward elected, in 1874, to fill out an unexpired term of four years. In 1878, he was elected judge of the Sixteenth judicial circuit, compris- ing the counties of Anderson. Campbell, Scott, Fen- tress, Pickett, Overton, Cumberland and Morgan, term expiring September 1, 1886. By law, he was made chancellor in five of the counties of his district as well as circuit judge

As he moved along in the practice of law he invested largely in real estate, purchasing Eagle Bend, one thous- and aeres, for forty thousand dollars, and real estate in Knoxville valued at twenty thousand dollars. In bus- iness relations he is a member of the wholesale drug firm of Chapman, White, Lyons & Co., Knoxville, Ten- nessee.

In politics, Judge Young is a Democrat; in religion, a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, south ; in masonry, a Knight Templar, and has presided over a lodge and over a chapter of Royal Arch Masons. For several years after the war he was a director in the Knoxville and Kentucky railroad, and for two years was railroad attorney on a salary.

Judge Young's success is the result of his energy and go-a-headativeness, and of his rule to do thoroughly and well whatever he undertakes, whether it is building a chicken coop or attending to a big law suit. He made a specialty of the land laws of the State of Tennessee and in land law practice. He has in preparation a vol- ume on the land laws of the State, to be called "The Action of Ejectment in Tennessee." Ile has attained to the honors of his profession and to financial success by energy, and deferring nothing that should be done now to the next hour. His professional career is a fine illustration of what Shakespeare calls "persistive constancy." His professional career may be well un-

一

552

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

derstood from the remark often made of him, that a client never deserts him. Let it not be inferred, how- ever, that Judge Young's self-assertiveness amounts to inordinate vanity. He is at once dignified and familiar ;

and whatever the degree of his self-esteem, he has never been suspected of setting too low an estimate upon other men. The fine portrait of him accompaning this sketch contains not a trace of what is usually called vanity.

W. H. WOOD.

MEMPHIS.

O NE of the finest types of the successful Tennessee cotton planter, is Mr. W. HI. Wood, of Memphis, a record of whose life camnot fail to be instructive as well as interesting.

Ile is a native of the "Old Dominion," having been born in the good county of Albermarle in that State, November 14, 1814, and lived there on a plantation till he attained his eighteenth year, receiving his education in the common schools of the county, and in a prepar- atory school at Charlottesville. Like many self-made men, he had but limited opportunities for education. Brought up on a farm, thoroughly in love with a farm- er's independent life, he had a decided preference for agricultural pursuits, and it was the wish of his father that he should follow that occupation, but being with- out capital to engage in that business as largely as he wished, he decided for a time to try another calling.

At the age of eighteen, he removed to Hardeman county, Tennessee, in the then western district, being attracted to that county because four of his older broth- ers had gone there several years before. During the first two years of his residence in Tennessee he was en- gaged in merchandising with his brother, David Wood, twelve miles west of the town of Bolivar, and afterward went into business on his own account, opening a store for general merchandise in Bolivar. He continued in this pursuit five years, and then, returning to his first love-agricultural pursuits-began his career as a sue -! cessful cotton planter, a few miles west of Bolivar. Here he remained until 1863, twenty years in all, and then moved to Memphis, on account of the troubles of the war.

In the meantime, he had purchased a plantation in what was then Phillips, now Lee county, Arkansas, and had acquired considerable planting interests in that State. Not avaricious, but possessing a capacity to ac- cumulate property, when the war began he had amassed a comfortable estate, much of which, being invested in slaves, was swept away in the great conflict between the States.

After reaching Memphis, he engaged in no regular business for several years, but in 1866, resumed plant ing on his lands in Arkansas, and has continued in that occupation till the present time, residing all the time in the city of Memphis

One of his objects in engaging in planting after the war was to test the value of free negro labor. He had been a practical, as well as a successful, farmer, and had given his business close attention, so that he knew not only how to have it done, but how to do it. He was sufficiently well posted in the details of his business to know all about its management, and had never failed to make a crop for want of an overseer. Possessing these qualifications, in addition to thirty years' successful ex- perience with slave labor, he was well calculated to make the proposed experiment in labor. Early in Jan- uary, 1866, he brought three hundred negroes from the State of Georgia to his plantation in Arkansas, and from that time on, has kept employed from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty each year. His experi- ment has been a decided success, and has amply demou- strated that free labor is more profitable than slave, and he now regards the emancipation.of the slaves a most fortunate circumstance for the people of the country, even in a financial sense. His interests were in a re- markably flourishing condition as long as he was able to give them his full attention, and now, when prevented by increasing age from doing so, they are still very prosperotts.

Mr. Wood is a stockholder in various banks and in- surance companies of the city of Memphis, In the winter of 1566, he was made a director of the De Soto Bank, and served four years, He has declined to serve as an officer in any other corporation, though several times elected.

Mr. Wood has been a Democrat all his life. He took an active part in polities in his county previous to the war, but would never consent to become a candidate for office, preferring to devote his time and . his energy to his chosen occupation. The story of his first vote, which was cast before he was nineteen, for Andrew Jackson for president, is very interesting. He had been in Tennessee but a few weeks, but had become ac- quainted with the sheriff of his county, and was told to cast his vote. Replying that he was not old enough, he was told, " You are as large as any of them," and being introduced by the sheriff to the judge of election, passed in his vote for "Old Hickory." In 1860, he was a Douglas man, and strongly opposed to secession. Since the war he has generally voted with the Democrats, but

11 :

553

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

has not been a party man, and has not taken any active interest in politics.

He became a Mason in Clinton Lodge, No. 51, at Bolivar, Tennessee, nearly fifty years ago, took the de- gree of Master Mason, and served as secretary of the lodge.

Mr. Wood was married, June 17, 1834, to Miss Be- nigna Polk, youngest daughter of Col. Ezekiel Polk, of Hardeman county, and a half-sister of Samuel Polk, father of President James K. Polk. Mrs. Wood was born in 1816. and was educated at Bolivar and at Jackson, Tennessee. She has been a member of the Presbyterian church for many years. To this union have been born four children : (1). Mary Morton Wood, born in 1835; now wife of Napoleon Hill, esq., of Memphis. [See sketch of Mr. Hill, elsewhere in this volume. ] (2). Sophia Wood, born in August, 1837 ; died at the age of two years. (3). James Wood, born in IS10; died at the age of one and a half years. (1). Nina Wood, born in November, 1813: now wife of James HI. Martin, a merchant, of Memphis, and the mother of seven children.

Mr. Wood's father, Drury Wood, was born in Louisa county, Virginia, and moved to Albemarle county, in the same State, at an early day, and engaged in tobacco planting. He died in 1812, at the age of seventy five. The Wood family is of Scotch descent, and first settled in Virginia during the seventeenth century, coming

over with the Watsons and the Mickeys, descendants of which well known families are living in Virginia at the present time. Drury Wood was the son of David Wood. Thomas and Drury Wood, brothers of the subject of thissketch, are now lawyers at Charlottesville, Virginia. Another brother, Rice W. Wood, who died in 1838, was a prominent lawyer in that town, and served several terms in the Virginia Legislature.

Mr. Wood's mother, Miss Matilda Carr, of Albemarle county, Virginia, was of Scotch-Irish descent, and a daughter of John Carr, a farmer. Her brother, Ander- son B. Carr, was one of the early settlers of Memphis, and owned extensive landed interests in that vicinity. He settled at Memphis in 1819, and died about 1816 or 1847. One of his daughters, now living in Memphis, is the wife of Dr. William Hewitt.

Mr. Wood began life with but little and worked his way up. His success is the result of constant, patient effort. In the ordinary pursuits of life, success is not the result of genius or of chance. Mr. Wood's theory is that any man of ordinary capacity, who has energy and directs that energy well, is bound to succeed, while the most brilliant talents, without energy, lead only to failure. Iu an experience of nearly sixty years, he has come to the conclusion that the opportunities for suc- cess in agriculture in the South were never so good as to day: Lands are cheap, labor is cheap, and all that is necessary to success is intelligence and persistent effort.

GEN. JOHN T. WILDER.

CHATTAANOOG.1.

TI HE phrase that best describes and differentiates the personality of the subject of this sketch is the soubriquet selected by tien. Rosencrans, and incor- porated in his order issued after the battle of Hoover's Gap and applied to his command, which thenceforward was officially designated and has passed into history as " Wilder's Lightning Brigade."

He is a man of strong will, and a man of thought. or rather a man who thinks and who formulates his thoughts into productive activities. He never cared for money only for its uses -as a tool to work with. He has plenty on which to retire from business and to live a life of case and comfort to himself and family all of their days, but he would be unhappy if not at work, and at work in new fields of enterprise of his own invention. He is a man who decides and takes hold, never asking any man to lead him, On all sub jects that come before him for solution, he deliber ates and promptly forms an opinion and acts upon it. He belongs to no church, to no society, being too inde pendent to wear any man's collar or to don the badge

and train in the harness of any organization. In poli- ties, he is a Republican, but not radical. In a word, he is very individual, of strong personality.

Though his father was a man of means, he was too proud to ask him for anything, and left home when a boy, and has made his way by industry and push and vim and snap ever since. His habits were always good. He never drank, never gambled, never used tobacco or dissipated in any way. His rule has been, and is, to find out things difficult to do, and by methods and inventions of his own, work them out and compel suc- cess, doing his own thinking; first looking well over the ground to see that he is right, and then going ahead. He is a man of large build. six feet two inches in height, weighing two hundred and ten pounds; is self-collected, always busy, never in a hurry; has an easy, kind-hearted temper, a voice affectionate in tone, never harsh, but vigorous; true to friend and foe; open- eyed, open hearted, open- handed, and never goes back on his word or his friends. Though essentially a business man, he has scholarly attainments, especially in geology,

١٠٠٠٠

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

mining and engineering. studies which he took up and mastered without a teacher, and on which his ad: ice is constantly sought by persons interested in the branches of industry on which those sciences bear. He is the inventor of Wilder's turbine water wheel, which is now being manufactured in Wilder's machine shop and foundry, an engineering business at Chattanooga, em- ploying about seventy-five hands, at an average of two dollars per day wage, and operated on a capital of about fifty thousand dollars. To gratify his patriotic spirit, he has been foremost in the work of developing the mineral resources and the manufacturing interests of the South, and especially of Chattanooga, where he settled, in 1870 and over which his cannon had boomed, and of which he took possession, August 29, 1863, and it is thought he has done as much to build up the town and to in- duce immigration and capital into the country as any man in the State. He has talked, written, worked, trav- eled, and spent thousands of dollars to make the coun- try known, and has been instrumental in bringing four million dollars into that section of the State, and the people who have moved into it upon his representa- tions are prosperous. He has lived now twenty-one years among a people whom he ouce fought with all his dash and vim, and has not yet received an uncivil or an un- kind word from any man in the South, and what is more, he has hosts of friends among them. He has never held back from helping to build up the town of the country, especially in the direction of mining and manufacturing. His chief ambition is to be the most useful citizen.

1 ,

! .

Instinctively despising a man who has no opinions, and unconsciously disliking to follow anything that other men begin, even when a soldier, he struck out for himself, and both as civilian and soldier he has made for himself' a distinguished name without having reputation for his objective aim. He fought from a sense of duty, as he works because he wants to do it The mounted infantry of the armies'on both sides in the lite war was first thought of and organized by Gen. Wilder. While he was at home, in Indiana, on his first furlough, in 1862. the Confederate cavalryman, Col. Johnston, made a raid into that State. Col. Wilder, fertile in resources, at once organized a thirty days regi ment, which he mounted, and drove Johnston back. This was the first appearance of mounted infantry in the war. The next year they appeared on the southern side under the leadership of Gen. Forrest.

Gen. Wilder's name and his " lightning brigade " fig ure prominently in the various histories of the war, even the most compendious. A portraiture of the man, rather than his military history, is the object of this sketch. But a resume of his operations in the war be- ing pertinent to that object, is here given without any attempt at accuracy of' detail. He went out as captain of company A, Seventeenth Indiana, organized the regi- ment, was lieutenant colonel under Col. Milo S. Has

call, served a year in West Virginia, joined .Buell's army at Louisville, went with the army of the Ohio, and participated in the battles of Pittsburg Landing and at and around Corinth. At Nashville, in March, 1862, he was made colonel of a regiment. On his way back to the army from his furlough home, he met Brage's army going into Kentucky, and immediately stopped, fortified the railroad bridge at Mumfordsville, held Bragg's army in check five days, and was finally captured, his ammunition being exhausted, but his operations saved Louisville. . On being exchanged, he joined his command at Nashville, in November, 1862, was made commander of a brigade, which he imme- diately mounted. and the ensuing winter his force was used as a raiding command, having been furnished with horses and Spencer rifles. It was this command that drove Morgan away from the railroad just before the battle of Murfreesborough. His command was given the advance, June 21, 1863, of the Tullahoma cam- paign, forced the passage of Hoover's Gap. hold it against Gen. Bate and a part of Cheatham's division, flanked Bragg's right center, and got in behind Tullahoma, which forced that general to withdraw.

Being sent to Chattanooga in advance of the army, he came upon the town before any one there had an idea that there was'a Federal soldier within one hun- dred miles of it. Hle then moved south on the Western and Atlantic railroad, burning bridges and driving the enemy's cavalry back to Tunnel Hill. He was then re- called to Thomas' headquarters, at Pond Spring, east base of Lookout mountain, began the battle of Chieka- mauga, holding Walker's division a day until Thomas came twenty miles. This saved Chattanooga. He re- pulsed five charges at the battle of Chickamauga on Saturday, keeping his own lines unbroken. He partici- pated in the battles around Chattanooga and all the en- pagements in Sherman's Atlanta campaign. After the fall of Adanta, his health having broken down, in Sep- tember. 1861, he did no active service, and resigned in December, 1861. Among his more brilliant achieve- ments was his recapture, at Chickamauga, of the bat- tery Sheridan had lost, a feat which tien. Thomas ac- knowledged saved his corps. He was in two hundred and nineteen lights and skirmishes of all kinds in West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama, but mostly in Tennessee. He had thirteen horses shot under him, and was five times slightly wounded. He was the only Federal commander that stayed all Sunday night on the battle-field of Chickamauga; and so thoroughly had he impressed himself, and infused his own spirit into his men, he never lost a cannon nor a color during the war, never assaulted a position he did not carry, never de- fended one he did not hold, and his flag was never driven back a rod in any engagement. Such was the soldier that won for his command the official designa- tion of " Wilder's Lightning Brigade."

Gen. Wilder was born in the village of Hunter,

. 1

555

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS

Greene county, New York, in the heart of the Catskill mountains. January 31, 1830. Froni the age of four- teen to twenty-one, he served an apprenticeship of seven years as a founder, machinist, mill wright and pattern- maker, at Columbus, Ohio, and learned it thoroughly. He then started in business at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, but shortly afterward moved to Greensburg, in that State.

After the war, he investigated the iron and coal of the southern mineral belt from Pennsylvania to Tus caloosa, Alabama, selected Tennessee for his home, bought the ground that Rockwood stands on, in 1865 organized the Roane Iron Company, built a furnace at Rockwood in 1867-8, made the first iron in the South that was made by mineral fuel, and started an industry which has grown to be one of the largest in the coun- try, the Roane Iron Company, one of the strongest in the South, operating on one million dollars paid up capi- tal. His interest in this company he sold out. for he is not a man to float down stream like a knot on a log, but starts an enterprise, gets it under way, sells out and starts a new one to conquer another world. He is now largely interested in the Cranberry iron district, Carter county, Tennessee, and Mitchell county, North Caro- lina, owns Roan mountain and two hotels on it, and is bringing out that section of country.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 122

Author: Speer, William S Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Nashville, A. B. Tavel Number of Pages: 1278

Author: Speer, William S
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Nashville, A. B. Tavel
Number of Pages: 1278