Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 17

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

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Mr. Cole was married to Miss Anna V. Russell, of Augusta, Georgia, December 24, 1872, and has one child, Whiteford Russell, born at Nashville, on January 14, 1874. Miss Russell was called " the pride of Georgia,"

and was considered the most beautiful and brilliant woman in the State. Her classic beauty, intellectual culture, rare dignity and grace of manner have excited universal admiration, both in this countryand in Europe. Those who know Mrs. Cole well say she is possessed of great patience and fortitude. A pen picture of her, drawn by a correspondent from the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, says: "She is a magnificent looking woman, with powdered hair, fair complexion and eyes soft, with a sheer dreamery of gray tinting. She sat surrounded, and was as quiet in manner and as serene in power as a picture from a master."

A recently published sketch of Mr. Cole says : " We risk nothing when we affirm that he is one of the marked men of this age -- of the active, stirring times in which we live. The make-up of his head, its broad base and crowning elevation, designate him at once as no ordinary man. Its whole exterior indicates an enormous brain power, and thoroughly poised. He is no dreamer-no wild, incoherent enthusiast. Delibera- tion, careful and judicious thought, stamp his brow, while his movements, so steady and uniform, unfold the real character of the man. Breadth of comprehension and a vigorous, determined will are his great resources in traversing the field of destiny into which his qualifica- tions have thrown him. Not, perhaps, so quick to act as some of his peers, yet as sure and certain when he does act. His standpoint is that of reason, of facts. He seems to adopt the inductive system in reaching conclusions. Hle ascends from parts to the whole, leaving nothing in his rear to interfere with his investi- gations and their results. Nor has he reached his zenith. There are yet further conquests in store for him."

MAJ. BYRON G. MCDOWELL.

BRISTOL.

T' CHIE subject of this sketch, Maj. Byron G. MeDow- ell, now an attorney of the firm of Butler & McDowell, Bristol, Tennessee, was born in Macon county, North Carolina, June 22, 1837, and grew up there; raised a farmer's boy until the age of twenty. Ile then attended Sand Hill College, North Carolina, three years, after which he went to Athens, Georgia, and engaged in mercantile business, first as salesman, then as book-keeper for the firm of Pitner, England & Freeman, and remained there from the fall of 1860 until the war broke out, when he joined the Southern army as a private in Company B, Thirty-ninth North Caro- lina infantry, Col. David Coleman cammanding, and served in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky, participating in the battle of Newbern, in the winter of

1862. The regiment was then transferred to the Army of Tennessee under Gen. E. Kirby Smith. In the meantime McDowell had been promoted to the quarter- mastership of the Thirty-ninth regiment. The regi- ment was stationed at Cumberland Gap. It next went with Gens. Bragg and Kirby Smith on the Kentucky campaign to Perryville, and engaged in the terrible and bloody fight at that place. On the return of the troops from Kentucky to Tennessee he was promoted to major of the Sixty-second North Carolina regiment. A few months before the war closed Col. R. G. A. Lowe, of the Sixty second, resigned on account of ill-health, and Major MeDowell was promoted to the lieutenant-col- oncley of the regiment, and remained in that position until the surrender, and though entitled to be called

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"colonel," is best known by his rank as major. He participated in all the battles of the East Tennessee campaign, and was wounded March 20, 1864, in an en- gagement on the French Broad river, by a minnie ball through the wrist, the sear of which he will bear till "the last enemy " subdues him. He was taken prisoner by Gen. Samuel Carter, now an uncle by marriage, on his first raid into East Tennessee in the spring of 1862, but was paroled the same day and exchanged about a month subsequently.

An interesting piece of history is connected with the Sixty-second regiment. While at Cumberland Gap, on September 13, 1863, the regiment was surrendered by Gen. Frazier, and the men thought needlessly so. They were satisfied they had been sold out, and that a sur- render was unnecessary. Maj. McDowell and all the regiment able to travel, together with a large portion of the Thirty-seventh Virginia regiment, determined that they would not be surrendered, that they would come out of Cumberland Gap, and they did come out, though surrounded by a large force of Federals. They cut their way through in the night, and escaped with about eight hundred men unhurt, not a man being touched. They returned to East Tennessee and united themselves with the army under Gen. Samuel Jones, afterwards under Gen. Breckinridge.

During the war, January 27, 1863, Maj. MeDowell was captured the second time, this time by Miss Mar- garet Rhea, daughter of Col. James D. Rhea. The affair occurred at Union Depot (then Zollicoffer), Sul- livan county, Tennessee, and it is needless to say the gallant Major gallantly surrendered, has never asked for a parole, would not accept one if tendered, but remains a willing prisoner.

The war over, Maj. MeDowell settled with his wife at Union Depot, read law under Col. N. M. Taylor and Judge R. R. Butler (whose sketches appear elsewhere in this volume), and was admitted to the bar in March, 1866, by Judge R. R. Butler and Judge Sam Milligan, of the Supreme bench. He began practice in Sullivan county, and has been engaged continuously in practice till now in the counties of Sullivan, Washington, and Carter, and in the Supreme and Federal courts at Knoxville. In the fall of 1879 he formed a partnership with Judge R. R. Butler, which continues to the present time.

In politics Maj. McDowell is an hereditary Democrat, his family having been Democrats from " a time beyond which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," but though a working member with his political party he has never held or sought civil office. As a delegate he has frequently attended the State Democratic con- ventions, and has frequently spoken in political cam- paigns. In 1866 he was made an Entered Apprentice Mason at Bristol, but has never taken the higher de- grees. In 1874-75 he edited the Sullivan Landmark, published at Union Depot. In religion he first attached 10

himself to the Methodist church, in 1852, but in 1880 he joined the Presbyterian church at Bristol. For twenty years he has been a Sunday-school teacher, and for four years was a Sunday-school superintendent.

The MeDowell family is of Scotch-Irish origin. The advent of the family into this country was previous to the Revolution. Many of them participated in the war for independence, some of them were at King's Mountain, and some figured in the war of 1812. At the battle of King's Mountain, according to the " His- tory of the Heroes of King's Mountain," John and Charles MeDowell both commanded forces. . They were not generals in fact, but two of the commanders having faltered as the battle was progressing, John and Charles McDowell assumed command and went forward, and so were complimented with the title of general. Maj. Mc Dowell is a descendant of the fifth remove from Gen. John McDowell. Another MeDowell, a kinsman of Maj. McDowell, was a member of Congress from Mary- land.

The grandfather of Maj. MeDowell was John McDow- ell, a farmer and politician, born in MeDowell county, North Carolina (the county receiving its name as a com- pliment to other members of the family) ; married at Pleasant Gardens, in the same county, and there lived and died. He was a member of the North Carolina Legisla- ture, and occupied various civil positions .. He was a Bap- list. His son, Rev. John McDowell, father of the sub- ject of this biography, was born in Haywood county, North Carolina, in 1804: was a merchant in early life, and originally a Baptist, but dissolved his connection with that Church on account of disagreement with its doc- trine of immersion. He then attached himself to the Methodist church, in which he preached until his death, September 11, 1883. He was an active worker in the church, of limited education, but of wonderful origi- nality; a very zealous man in any thing he undertook, and exceptionally devoted to the work of the ministry, and of good business qualities, mostly acquired by ex- perience. He was county surveyor of Macon and Hay- wood counties, North Carolina, for forty years. He had few enemies; was a man of even temperament, and always had a kind word for everybody, irrespective of their positions in life. He taught his children at an early age to respect the Sabbath and the Church, which resulted in their early connection with the church of his choice. He died a triumphant death, making a profound religions impression upon those who witnessed his departure. He left six children living: (1). William R., who married Elizabeth Gibbs, and is living, a farmer near the old homestead. (2). Nancy E .; unmarried, and living on the old homestead. (3). Sarah T., wife of Joseph Brendle, a farmer in Haywood county, North Carolina; has one child, John. ( 1). Caroline, wife of William MeClure, a farmer in Macon county, North Carolina, living near the old homestead. (5). Byron G., subject of this sketch. (6), Athan L., a farmer ou

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the old homestead; married Caroline Russell, daughter of James Russell; has four children, Ara, Adaline. Emma and Elizabeth. .

Two of Maj. MeDowell's brothers died-Leander at the age of twenty-three, and John at the age of six. Two of his sisters are also dead-Nancy at the age of ten, and Maria, who died the wife of John MeClure, leaving five children, Elizabeth, Martha, Mary, Daniel, and Jerome, all married. Elizabeth married a Dryman, Martha married John Vanhook, Mary married a Nor- ton, John married a Norton.

Maj. MeDowell's mother, nee Elizabeth Morrow, was born in Haywood county, North Carolina, daughter of William Morrow, a farmer, her mother being Elizabeth Medford, of a well-known "old North State" family, living on Pigeon river, Haywood county. She was a Methodist, and is spoken of gratefully by the son for her faithfulness and self-sacrificing devotion to her children, and her constant and consistent Christian life. She died June 11, 1876, at the age of sixty-seven.

Maj. MeDowell's wife was born in Sullivan county, Tennessee, December 30, 1810, daughter of Col. James D. Rhea, a farmer, a native of Sullivan county, and a man of large property. ' He has four children living : (1). Margaret, wife of Maj. MeDowell. (2). Sarah, wife of Matthew Rhea. (3). James T .; married Fan- nie Rhea, a distant relative, in Fayette county, Tennes- see, where he now lives, a farmer. (4). Elizabeth, wife of B. W. Norvell, a merchant at Union Depot, Sullivan county, Tennessee.

Three of Mrs. McDowell's sisters are dead: (1). Matilda; died the wife of W. G. Rutledge; (2). Eliza- beth; died unmarried, and (3). May; died the wife of E. A. MeClellan, leaving six children, Samuel D., James, John, Rhea, Edward and Elizabeth.

Mrs. MeDowell's mother, Elizabeth Carter, was

daughter of Alfred M. Carter, of Carter county, Ten- nessee (the county being named for the family). He was a prominent man of that section, of large wealth and extensive influence. Mrs. McDowell is a niece of David W. Carter, now of Bristol, and of Landon Carter, who lost his life about the close of the war by the wreck of' a vessel at sea. Her grandfather, Alfred M. Carter, was twice married first, to a Miss Duffield, who became the mother of David, Landon and Elizabeth Carter. The children of his second wife are Samuel P. Carter, now an admiral in the United States navy ; James P. T. Carter, deceased, and Rev. W. B. Carter, of Elizabeth -. town, Carter county, Tennessee. Mrs. McDowell is also connected with the well-known Taylor family of East Tennessee, and, being a Rhea, is related to one of the largest and most interesting families in that region. . She was educated at Rogersville and Blountville, be- longs to the Presbyterian church, and is beloved for her domestic virtues and her uniform Christian life.

Six children have been born of this marriage : (1). James R. MeDowell, born November 27, 1863; gradu- ated at King College, in 1880; now a book-keeper in Knoxville. (2), Ella Irene MeDowell, born September 8, 1866. (3). Elizabeth J. MeDowell, born August 12, 1868. (1). Albert S. MeDowell, born September 12, 1870. (5). Mary Eva MeDowell, born December 13, 1875. (6). Margaret Rhea MeDowell, born June 19, 1850.

Maj. Mc Dowell began life without property, and what he now owns he made by industry, economy, close appli- cation, and a faithful keeping of every trust committed to his hands, a record of which his posterity will be more justly proud than of the estate he may transinit to them. In boyhood his habits were sober, steady and quiet. He never but once in his life, and then when a very small boy, was under the influence of whiskey.

GOV. ALBERT S. MARKS.

WINCHESTER.

TI NIELS gentleman was born in Daviess county, Keu- tucky, October 16, 1836, His father was a farmer, and both his parents, as well as his grandparents, were pious and zealous Methodists. He grew up on his father's farm, receiving an academical education there till the age of fourteen, when his father died. After this event he continued working on the farm. He got about five months' additional schooling in his seven- teenth year, and beyond this is a self-educated man. He has always been a great reader, and during the interval between his school days and his professional career, his literary appetite seems to have been omnivorous, but with a special taste for fiction, history, biography, and

the classical authors of Greece and Rome, partly in the original and partly in translations. liis early prefer- once was for the law as a profession, and this was probably intensified when, at a school exhibition, he had made a ereditable oratorical effort and received the congratulations of his friends, who recommended that profession as best suited to his talents. He lived, how- ever, at the farm and worked regularly upon it till his nineteenth year, when he removed to Winchester, Tennessee, and commenced the study of law in the office of Colyar & Frizzell, the senior member of which, the Hon. A. S. Colyar, was a blood relative. After studying with these gentlemen for two years ho way

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admitted to the bar in the fall of 1858, and .commenced practice in partnership with them. In January, 186!, Mr. Frizzell retired from the firm, and Colyar & Marks practiced together. The next month Marks was pat forward as the Union candidate for the constitutional convention, the Hon. Peter Turney being opposed to him as the secession candidate. . Marks had hitherto been identified with the Breckinridge wing of the Dem- ocratic party. The two men had been intimate personal friends, and, though diametrically opposed in politics, made the canvass together, boarding, lodging and riding together throughout the contest. It is well known that Marks was defeated and the State seceded. War hay- ing broken out in consequence; the two - friends ran a singulary parallel course. Both became commanders of regiments, both were severely wounded, and both were at the same time confined to their beds and treated for their wounds at Winchester. To complete the parallel, both lost exactly the same number of men by the casualties of war.

Judge Marks entered the Confederate service as captain of Company E, Seventeenth Tennessee regi- ment of infantry. This regiment was included in Gen. Mollieoffer's command, and was in all his engagements to the date of his death, at the disastrous battle of Fishing Creek. In the affair at Rock Castle, out of eleven thousand men only eleven were killed, and six of these were members of Marks' company. The reason of this was that that part of the hill attacked which was opposite to Marks' command, was alone accessible, while the troops on either side of it were unable to ascend, so that the brunt of the battle was encountered by that one company. After the defeat and death of Zollicoffer, the regiment was transferred to the com- mand of Gen. Bushrod Johnson, of Hardee's corps, and participated in the engagements around Corinth, where Marks became major, May, 1862, and in the June following assumed the command of the regiment as colonel. This was when the army was reorganized, and the Seventeenth Tennessee formed part of Buckner's command during the Kentucky campaign of 1862. In this campaign he was appointed by Gen. Buckner to the honor of receiving the surrender of the Federal troops which were defeated at Mumfordsville, in Sep tomber, 1862.

On the return of Buckner's command to Tennessee, Gen. Buckner himself was ordered to take charge of the department of Alabama, with Mobile as his head- quarters. Ilis division was transferred to the command of Gen. Pat. Cleburne, and with it, of course, Marks' regiment. In this command the regiment was present at the battle of Murfreesborough, December 31, 1862. and there Col. Marks received a very severe wound in his right leg from a canister-shot, which necessitated amputation below the knee. To the editor of these sketches, on being asked the cause of his lameness, he answered " through trifling with the Onion." At the

same time his compatriots recognize in the missing limb the evidence that he did his duty in defense of the southern country and people. The Seventeenth regi- ment in that battle captured three batteries and lost two hundred and forty-six men, killed and wounded, and upon the recommendation of Gen. Cleburne, Presi- dent Davis placed its colonel's name upon the roll of honor. This terminated the military career of Col. Marks.

After the close of the war he practiced law for two years in partnership with his former partner, A. S. Colyar ; then Mr. Colyar moved to Nashville, in 1866. His partners then were Capt. J. B. Fitzpatrick and Capt. T. D. Gregory, with whom he practiced until 1870. At this latter date he was elected chancellor of the fourth chancery division of Tennessee, to which office he was re-elected at the expiration of his first term, 1878. He gained great eredit while on the bench by the energy with which he pushed forward the business which had accumulated through the proverbially dilatory proceed- ings of that court, but, though re-elected, he did not serve through a second term. The year of his re-elec- tion, 1878, he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for governor of the State, and elected to that office in the November of that year. He served for two years, but declined to allow his name to go before the next Democratic convention for re-election. The division in the Democratic party, occasioned by the State debt question, had already manifested itself during the election of 1878, and he was satisfied that, in 1880, he could not, if nominated, obtain the united Democratie vote and would therefore be very probably defeated. Judge Marks was the last governor of Tennessee who received the united vote of the Democratic party.

He resumed the practice of law in Franklin and the adjoining counties until 1883, when he rejoined his relative and former partner, A. S. Colyar, at Nashville, where was established the firm now known as Colyar, Marks & Childress.

In politics Gov. Marks is a Democrat by inheritance, as well as by conviction. Prior to their settlement in Tennessee, his family were Virginians, who lived near the seat of Thomas Jefferson, and followed the political fortunes of that gentleman throughout. and when the old Republican party separated into Whigs and Demo- erats they gave in their permanent adhesion to the latter party.

Gov. Marks married, April 29, 1863, Miss Novella Davis, a native of Wilson county, Tennessee. He had been engaged to this lady before he lost his leg, and and when he recovered, mutilated in body and broken in fortune, he honorably offered to release her from her engagement. The same offer was made to many southern ladies during and after our civil war, and this editor knows of no single instance in which one of them availed herself of her lover's permission. Certainly Miss Davis was one of the last persons who

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could be expected to do so, and she gladly claimed the fulfillment of the engagement, devoting herself thence- forward with redoubled affection to the happiness of her wounded lover. Any intelligent person enjoying the privilege of an introduction to Mrs. Marks, at once discovers that he has formed the acquaintance of a superior woman ; superior, that is, intellectually, mor- ally and in person. She in fact combines the elements of a perfect lady ; noble in person, elevated in mental qualities, a fine scholar, and brilliant in conversation, the ornament of society, and still domestic and prac- tical in the management of her home, she seems nowhere out of place, but, whatever she undertakes, accomplishes it as thoroughly as if that alone had been the occupation of her life. It is said that when her husband was chancellor, and necessarily absent from home a good deal, she managed the farm with the skill and energy of a first rate practical farmer. On the other hand, that her intellect and culture were made available in training the minds of her children is mani- fested by the high position they took as scholars when sent to school. It is believed that her cultivated intel- lect stimulated that of her husband, and that her tow- ering ambition kindled his to its highest efforts. This estimate of the wife of Gov. Marks justifies the editor, as he thinks, in giving her a distinguished place among the eminent Tennesseans, whose memoirs are included in this collection.

[The revising editor also, having himself been ad- mitted to the honor of a brief acquaintance with this lady, cannot refrain from adding his testimony to the nobility of her character and the fascination of her conversation. He recognizes in her a perfect type of the grandeur with which the southern ladies rose to the emergencies of the war and its consequences, and, with- out ceasing to be refined and cultivated ladies, showed themselves self-sacrificing and practical women in coping with the adversity entailed on all by that terrible calamity.]

By his marriage with this lady, Gov. Marks has two sons : (1). Arthur Handly, born at LaGrange, Georgia, March 8, 1864; a scholar of high standing at the Uni- versity of the South, Sewanee. (2). Albert Davis, born at Winchester, Tennessee, September 1, 1867 ; now finishing his education at the Winchester Normal College.

Mrs. Marks is a member of the Cumberland Presby- terian church. Her father was the Hon. John R. Davis, of Wilson county, Tennessee, a member of the General Assembly of 1859-60. and 1861-62; a planter and a major in the Confederate States army ; of a family originally from North Carolina. His father was Thomas Davis, one of the early settlers of Wilson county. Mrs. Marks' mother was Caroline Hunter, a native of Wilson county, and also of a North Carolina family.

Gov. Marks' father, Elisha S. Marks, was a native of

Loudon county, Virginia, but emigrated in early life with his father to Daviess county, Kentucky. The father died there at the age of thirty-one years. Elisha succeeded to his patrimony and lived long on the farm in Daviess county, his mother living with him. Both inherited a comfortable fortune, but made no effort to increase it. No member of the family has ever been insolvent. He married Elizabeth Lashbrook, whose mother was a Miss Colyar, sister of the father of A. S. Colyar. Gov. Marks' grandmother was a member of the Daniel family, of Virginia. His mother died in Da- viess county, Kentucky, in 1859, leaving five daughters and two sons, all now deceased except the governor's sister, Margaret, widow of Capt. J. B. Fitzpatrick, and Elizabeth, wife of Mr. Robert Handly, of Winchester, and Gov. Marks' brother, Dr. Edward C. Marks, who is practicing medicine at Tracy City, Tennessee. His father's and grandfather's families were all pious and devoted Methodists. The following letter from a ven- erable Methodist minister will show the estimation in which they were held by the ministers and members of that church :

RUSSELLVILLE, KY., August 21, 1878.

Hon. A. S. Marks :

DEAR SIR-I was greatly delighted to see from the papers that you were nominated by the late Democratic convention of your State as candidate for the office of governor, and I write to con- gratulate you upon this honorable distinction.

In 1812 I was appointed as preacher on the Owensborough circuit, in this State, where I remained two years. Your father's house was one of my preaching places, and also one of my best homes. Your grandmother, your father's mother, who resided with him, was a devoted Methodist, of the old type, and one of the most pious persons I ever know. She seemed very much to me as my own mother. I was then a young man, and her counsels and ad- vice were a great blessing to me. Your father and mother were my devoted friends. They were distinguished for that warm hos- pitality, especially towards Methodist preachers, for which Ken- tucky has always been distinguished, more eminently, however, in that day, than in the present. You were then a small boy, I would think, eight or ten years of age -- the oldest of the children, as I recollect. You were the favorite of your grandmother, who had the settled conviction that you might become a Methodist preacher, the highest distinction, in her estimation, to which you could at- tain. You were a great favorite of mine, and you became very much attached to me. You, like little boys generally, were very fond of a horse, and nearly always when I would arrive, you would ride my horse to water, and to the stable. [ made it a rule to wait ou myself as much as I was allowed. But when I would go to the stable to get my horse, you were along to aid me, and do the riding. I look back on those days of nearly forty years ago, with great pleasure, mingled with sadness.

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Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 17

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