Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 20

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 20

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He has been successful in private business. Rarely gifted with imagination, lifting him above the narrow, practical, routine plodding of every day, to see also beyond to-day, and to survey the entire field, he has been an enthusiastic and devoted philanthropist and

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PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

public servant. In him, however, imagination was what it has been in every progressive public teacher who has given the world a shove forward, not the incli- nation to dream dreams, or to pursue theory and vaga- ries, but imagination controlled by will, reined in by judgment, seeing clearly the well defined lines of prac- tical progress for many men, while, as one man, he has pursued his own path with almost unerring practical sagacity.

Holding office, when office holding lay bent with his own tastes and thought, he has steadily refused to enter politics, to accept political station or to engage in party strife, although often besought to do so, when political office seemed to lie within easy grasp. And here it may be well to mention, that in this era, when the highest private standard is so seldom carried rigidly into public life, the writer of this sketch has been in position to know, and all who have served with or under him will attest, that his accounts of personal expenditures were a marvel of scrupulous exactness down to the very cent This was not a matter of pride or of boast, for it was never alluded to, so far as is known ; it was a matter of character practically working itself out in small affairs as in great ones.

Such men leave their annals illustrated by few stir-

ring events. The field of thought and the task of human advancement and of natural progress, afford no themes for battle scenes. Their storm and stress period is truly a time of uneventful strife, but it is strife in that cushioned field of thought whence no stroke of lance resounds from the helm of antagonist to re-echo in the far times. When the struggle against darkness is over, arduous as may have been the labor, stubborn and hard the conflict, there is left out the fact that there was darkness, that there is light, and that there are those who lighted and bore torches. They leave no well filled cemeteries as warriors do ; they have em -- bodied themselves in no enduring and recorded enact- ments as statesmen have done ; they have linked them- selves with none of those stirring events which men call dramatic and make the themes of song and speech ; but they have made light the dark places; they have builded in the field of all of human progress, a field broader than that of warrior or statesman ; they have builded strongly and firmly in the only enduring fabric- that of human progress, human labor and human thought. In this field of human endeavor, Joseph Buckner Killebrew has builded his own monument in Tennessee, and for the lasting advantage of the people of Tennessee.

HON. LEONIDAS CAMPBELL HOUK.

KNOXVILLE.

TN sketching the careers of prominent men, it has always been the purpose of the editor to demonstrate the methods by which they achieved their prominence. With this view we have been giving brief memoirs of grave and learned judges, pious and reverend divines, gullant soldiers and skilled physicians. Our present problem of study is the successful progress in life of a noted political leader who, commencing from an hum- ble origin and attaining high honor and commanding influence, must have studied and practiced well the arts which command success arts which may well be scrutinized with interest by those who propose to them- selves a similar career.

Leonidas Campbell Hlouk was the son of a working cabinet-maker, and himself worked at the same trade for a livelihood, while he was qualifying himself by a self-taught education for the higher sphere in which he now moves. He was born in Sevier county, Tennessee, June 8, 1836. His father died when he was less than three years old, and his mother married again four years afterwards. The family moved, and he with it, first to Knox county and afterwards to Louisville, in Blount county, where he learned the cabinet trade. Ile began working at this craft at fifteen, and at about

eighteen returned to Sevier county, where he followed his trade till he married. Three months covers the whole time that he went to school, his education being acquired by his own unaided efforts while working at his trade, and driving an ox-cart while work, was dull. Let no man despise such an education; it is a school whose graduates are men like Leonidas Houk and Andrew Johnson. He has himself described the cabi- net shop in which, after working hours, he worked still harder at his books than he had with his saws and chisels, lighted only by the flames of pine-knots collected by himself' in the roads .. His reading, as soon as he could read a book at all, was directed to the study of law. This preference he seems to have inherited from his father, who, though not professionally a lawyer, was much consulted by his neighbors and frequently wrote out contracts and other law papers for them. Perhaps among the boy's seanty library were some old elementary law-books which had been so used by his father. Such a life he lived till his marriage.

He now devoted himself in earnest to the law as a profession, and was called to the bar October 13, 1859, his license being signed by Chancellor T. Nixon Van- Dyke and Circuit Judge E. 1. Gardenbire. He com-

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

menced the practice of law at Clinton, in Anderson county, Tennessee, where he resided thirteen years, doing a lucrative practice from the first. His first effort in politics was as sub-elector on the Bell-Everett ticket in 1860, and after the election of Lincoln he attended as a member the Union convention at Greeneville, Ten- nessee, in 1861.

His political career was now interrupted by the war. He entered the Federal army August 9, 1861, enlisting as a private in Company II, First Tennessee infantry, Col. R. K. Byrd, and served in Kentucky, West Vir- ginia and Tennessee. Ile took part in the battle of Mill Springs and in the skirmishing that resulted in the capture of Cumberland Gap (Gen. G. W. Morgan's campaign). After this he was placed in charge of the line of transportation communicating with headquarters at London, Kentucky, where, August 17, 1862, a severe engagement took place, in which he commanded.

After this battle he went to Cumberland Gap, thence with Morgan to Ohio, to West Virginia, and thence to Nashville. 'He was in the first two days' skirmishing in the battle of Stone's river, and afterwards took part in what is known as the Dog creek expedition, in pur- suit of Wheeler. After the battle of Murfreesborough and some subsequent skirmishes, he was taken sick at Carthage, Tennessee, and resigned. His first commis- sion was as lieutenant and quartermaster in the First Tennessee regiment. He served on Gen. Thomas' staff at the battle of Fishing Creek, and was immediately afterwards promoted to the coloneley of the Third Ten- nessee infantry. He served as colonel from February 3, 1862, to the day of his resignation, April 5, 1863. He did his duty as a good soldier, without making any pre- tensions to military science.

He attended, in 1865, the Republican convention or mass meeting, called by Andrew Johnson, Gov. Brown- low, Mr. Maynard and others, at Nashville. The pur- pose of this meeting was to consider the plan of reconstruction drawn up by these gentlemen and sub- mitted by them to the convention. Mr. Houk opposed this measure, especially the disfranchising clause, and favored a regularly elected constitutional convention. His proposition was defeated by a majority of eighteen, and Johnson's measure was carried. Had Mr. Honk's counsel been acted upon, he believes that Tennessee would have been Republican at this day. Ile was elector on the Lincoln and JJohnson ticket in 1864.

In 1866 he became judge of the Seventeenth judicial circuit of Tennessee, comprising the counties of Ander- Hon, Campbell, Cumberland, Fentress, Morgan and Scott. He held this office for four years, when, finding its salary too small to support his family, he went to Knoxville in March, 1870, and practiced law there till 1878.

In 1868 he was a delegate from the State at large to the national Republican convention which nominated Gen. Grant for president.

In 1872 he represented Knox and Anderson counties in the State Legislature, serving as chairman of the finance, ways and means committee. Ile introduced and conducted through the House the measure on which was based the State school law ; he was the Re- publican nominee for speaker of the House.

From 1871 to 1873, he was a special commissioner under the southern claims commission.

In 1878 he was elected to the Fortieth Cong ess with a majority of two thousand four hundred and fifty. In 1880 re-elected with a majority of eight thousand and seventeen. In 1882 re-elected, majority five thousand seven hundred and fourteen. His district is one of eight giving the largest Republican majorities in the United States. 'In 1884 he was again re-elected, with a majority of ten thousand three hundred and eighty- two.

He served in Congress as chairman of the war claims committee, and acquired-much popularity with his peo- ple for the zeal and effectiveness with which he advanced their interests. In 1881 he was also a dele- gate to the State convention which nominated Frank Reid for governor, and to the national convention which nominated Blaine and Logan. He was in favor of the nomination of Arthur, but returned a zealous promoter of the Blaine ticket.

Mr. Houk is a member of no secret society except the Knights of Pythias. He is a member and trustee of the Methodist Episcopal church at Knoxville.

Judge Houk possesses in an eminent degree the qualities which combine to make a successful party leader. Aggressive 'and self-assertive, the atmosphere of political strife is the element in which he breathes most freely. He himself, when asked to state the lead- ing principle of his life, answered that it was never to inflict a wrong and never to submit to one without resenting it. Risen from a position in which he earned his daily bread by his daily manual labor, he knows the million who still occupy that position ; he knows their wants and wishes, their likings and animosities, and knowing this can always address them with effect, can always excite their attention, conciliate their confidence and warm their sympathies, Always ready to converse with men of every grade, his conversation is genial and jovial, full of humor and repartee and adapted to every collocutor. Let him on the other hand meet with an antagonist, and he never rests till he has demolished him beyond all possibility of future opposition.

The way in which he got his education makes it need- less to say that he did not spend his time in frivolous amusements. He describes a day in his sixteenth year, when lying on the root of a tree reading, he for the first time sketched out a definite course of life for him- self. He determined that " he was as good as anybody, that he had as many rights in the world as anybody, that he would do no man an intentional wrong, or if he did he would repair it, and that no man should do him

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

a wrong without his resenting it, and that he would improve every advantage."

From his earliest years he was fond of politics, and attended public speakings, and felt inspired to obtain the power to mould the policy of his country.

His first reading was the Bible and Brownlow's Knoxville Whig, to both of which he frequently refers in his speeches. ITis speeches, like his conversation, abound with anecdote and incident, told with gay good humor ; but the body of them consists of a close chain of reasoning drawn less from the closet than from a close and keen observation of current events. They are the efforts of a well informed man, earnestly desirous of impressing his ideas upon his hearers. His judg- ments from the bench were clear and intelligent, and generally impartial, but the bar is more congenial to a man of his temperament than the beuch, and the polit- ical arena more so than either. The Republicans of East Tennessee have had no such leader since the deaths of Browulow and Andrew Johnson.

Judge Houk's first wife was Miss Elizabeth M. Smith, - whom he married in Knox county, Tennessee, February 28, 1858. Her father was Barnet Smith, of North Carolina, her mother a Walker, also of North Carolina. By this marriage he had eight children, two of whom died in early childhood. The remaining six are as follows: (1). John C., born February 26, 1860; already esteemed as an adroit party manager, and one of the most popular young men in Knoxville, where he prac- tices law with success. (2). Lincoln C., born Decem- ber 18, 1863; a law student and a political speaker at Knoxville. (3). William C., born February 2, 1869. (4). Ellsworth C., born May 18, 1871. (5). Annie, born January 15, 1874. (6). Edmond Spence, born June 19, 1879.

The first Mrs. Houk died exactly a month after the birth of this last child, at the age of about forty-two. She was a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, a woman of extraordinary good sense, and, as a mother, exceptionally devoted.

Hle married his next wife in Baltimore, Maryland, December 20, 1880. She was Miss Mary Belle Von- Rosen, born in Canada and educated in the island of Jersey, in the British channel. Her father was an Austrian, and her mother an English lady. Her par- ents were married by the father of the celebrated Mrs. Langtry, and she was educated in the same school with that lady. Her mother died when she was two years old. Her father still lives at Jacobsville, Maryland, engaged in farming ; he is also a skillful architect. The judge has one child by his second marriage, Susie, born October 6, 1882.

The present Mrs. Houk is a member of the Episco- pal church. She is a highly educated and accomplished

lady, speaks, reads and writes French, German and Latin. She was raised by her grandmother, Mrs. Goldie, in affluent circumstances, and prior to her mar riage, spent her life, after her school days, in travel. After her marriage, however, she devoted herself to her duties as mother of her husband's first family, whose love she earned and received by sedulous and maternal care. She spends her winters with her husband in Washington, where her social tact and Ligh breeding render her the ornament and delight of society. Her education and accomplishments, though brilliant, are not superficial, but thorough and exact.

The Honks are a German family, the name being originally spelt Haugch. The grandfather, John Adam Haugch, was born in Germany, emigrated to Pennsyl- vania, afterwards to Botetourt county, Virginia, and" finally settled in East Tennessee, in that portion now Sevier county. He raised a large family, two boys, named John and Martin, and four girls, three of whom, Sally, Polly and Elizabeth, married three brothers named Hicks, and the fourth a Mr. Hunt. The old gen- tleman was a thrifty German farmer, one of the pio- neers who settled Sevier county.

The father, John Houk, was born in Virginia, and moved to Tennessee with his father when a small boy. Too young to work, he was sent out about the settle- ment to watch for Indians, and warn the settlers if they approached. He died October 28, 1839, aged seventy, his son, the subject of this sketch, being then less than three years old. He was a man of sense and information, better educated than the average settlers with whom he lived; had some knowledge of law and frequently wrote deeds, etc., for his neighbors. He was a farmer and cabinet-maker ; he served two campaigns under Jackson ; was captain in the war of 1812-14, and was at the battle of the Horseshoe. After he returned home he was elected major of militia ; he took a promi- nent part in the politics of the day, but was never a candidate for office; a Jackson man in the first cam- paign, he was afterwards a supporter of Hugh Lawson White and a Whig to the end.

Judge Houk's mother was a South Carolina lady, daughter of Thomas Gibson, who died in South Caro- lina ; her mother moved with her to Sevier county, where she married Maj. John Houk. She was a person of good natural sense, but of little education ; he was a man of books, though he had but slight school ad- vantages. Mrs. Houk, mother of the judge, was a Methodist, originally a Lutheran. She died, in 1867, at the age of fifty-eight, leaving two children, viz. : Leonidas, the subject of this paper, and, by her mar- riage with James Ray, a son also named James Ray, an eminent criminal lawyer, late of Jacksborough, Tennes- see. IFe is now dead.

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS,

DANIEL T. BOYNTON, M. D.

KNOXVILLE.

D ANIEL T. BOYNTON was born in Athens, Maine, February 8, 1837; the son of Joshua Boyn- ton, a nativeof that State, a farmer and cattle dealer, who moved to Elyria, Ohio, in the fall of 1837. Joshua Boynton was known as a man of iron-clad integrity, of proverbial fidelity in friendship, a member of the Congregational church, a Whig, and afterwards a Re- publican. He died in March, 1881, at the age of seventy-one.

The grandfather of Dr. Boynton was Capt. Joshua Boynton, a sea captain, who crossed the Atlantic in his sailing vessel sixty-two times, and was one of five brothers, all ship commanders, born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where the family settled in 1637. The Georgia Boyntons are a branch of the same family, and the name is numerous in several other States. Capt: Joshua Boynton married a Miss Delano, of a New England seafaring family. The original ancestor was of Irish stock, and took his name from the celebrated river Boyne. Among the more distinguished members of the family are, Hon. W. W. Boynton, formerly chief justice of the Supreme court of Ohio, (Dr. Boynton's cousin), and Gov. Boynton, ex-speaker of the Georgia Senate, and the successor of Hon. Alexander II. Stephens as governor of that State.

Dr. Boynton's mother, Parmela Emerson, was a daughter of Daniel R. Emerson, who was born in 1774, at Haverhill, Massachusetts. He was a farmer and miller, and a religious and industrious man. He died in Elyria, Ohio, in 1846. Mrs. Boynton's mother was a Miss Carter, of an old New England family. Mrs. Boynton died at Elyria in 1819, at the age of thirty- seven, having borne nine children.

Dr. Boynton's family were a religious people, much given to talking religion and quoting Scripture, espe- cially on Sunday afternoons. In this respect they were typical of the New England families of fifty years ago. It is said his mother substantially knew the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and was famous as the " story. teller" of the family, often repeating the tales of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, stories of travel, etc., for the entertainment of children, but the Bible was the literature of the family.

Dr. Boynton grew up at. Elyria, working on the farm, and when not at school, traveling with his father with stock from New York to northern Wisconsin. He early acquired a taste for literature, especially for biography and history, and became a studious reader of Shakespeare. At the age of fifteen he made up his mind to become a physician, and read and studied somewhat with a view to that purpose. His literary education 'consisted of a wide range of English literature, history and the classics 12

generally. He entered, August 1, 1860, the medical office of Dr. Jamine Strong, at Elyria, Ohio; matriculated in the medical department of the Western Reserve Uni- versity, Cleveland, Ohio, October 7, 1860 ; attended the fall and winter courses of 1860-61, 1861-62 and 1862-63, graduating in the class of February, 1863. He imme- diately entered the United States army as first assistant surgeon of the One Hundred and Fourth Ohio volun- teer infantry, Twenty-third army corps, and was pro- moted to surgeon of that regiment in January, 1865. He served in Kentucky under Gen. Burnside the summer of 1863; in the East Tennessee expedition, fall of 1863; Lamar House hospital, Knoxville, in the winter of 1863-64, and throughout the Atlanta campaign on the operating staff of the Twenty-third army corps ; was with Gen. Thomas in Middle Tennessee, the fall and winter of 1864-65, in the Twenty-third army corps, commanded by Gen. Schofield, including the battles of Franklin and Nashville. After the battle of Nashville, which virtually terminated the armed struggle in the southwest, he was transferred cia Cincinnati and Washington, and by ocean transport to North Carolina, and rejoined Gen. Sherman's army at Goldsboro in March, 1865.

After the war, he went to New York city and took the fall and winter course of 1866-67, in Bellevue College Hospital, under Profs. James R. Woods, Wil- lard Parker, Austin Flint, sr., Frank Hamilton, Doremus Taylor, Elliott, Fordyce Barker and Alonzo Clark, taking also a course in microscopy under Prof. Austin Flint, jr. He returned to Knoxville, Tennessee, mar- ried in January, 1866, located and has practiced there alnost continually since. His natural taste runs toward surgery, but he has done a general and leading practice.

He served as adjutant - general of Tennessee and private secretary to Gov. Brownlow from October, 1867. to March, 1869. He was United States pension agent-at Knoxville from April, 1869, to July, 1883, and disbursed some fifty million dollars among seventeen thousand pensioners in the southern States, He also practiced his profession meantime. He is ranked among the prominent surgeons of Knoxville.

Dr. Boynton married at Knoxville, January 17, 1866, Mrs. Sue Sawyers, who was born in Elizabethton, Carter county, Tennessee, July, 1837, the eldest daughter of the famous editor, preacher, Whig politician, gov- ernor and United States senator, William G. Brownlow. Her mother was Eliza Ann O'Brien, daughter of John O'Brien, of Pennsylvania, of Irish descent. Mrs. Boynton was educated at Knoxville, and is characterized by fidelity as a wife and daughter, and devotion as a mother, adopting her father's religious and political

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

principles and his moral courage and heroism. She is a vivacious lady, and exceedingly popular with her acquaintances. By his marriage with Mrs. Sawyers Dr. Boynton has four children, all born at Knoxville : (1). Lucille Boynton, born October 30, 1866; educated at the Academy of the Visitation, Georgetown, District of Columbia. (2). Hia Boynton, born October 25, 1868; educated at same school. (3). Emerson Boynton, born May 6, 1872. (4). Etmee Boynton, born April 22, 1876.

By her first husband, Dr. James E. Sawyers, Mrs. Boynton has a daughter, Lillie, who married, December

21, 1883, Rev. Samuel Long, of the Methodist Episcopal church, South, at Okolona, Mississippi, where they now reside.

Dr. Boynton is a Master Mason, a member of the East Tennessee Medical Society, and in politics is a? Republican. His success in life has come of his appli- cation to business and study, by becoming qualified for a surgeon and physician, recognizing pathology as the basis of all treatment, and treating every case n its own merits, shaping his course to meet as many indica- tions as careful diagnoses bring to his knowledge.

NATHANIEL WILSON BAPTIST.

COVINGTON.

T' HIS gentleman was born in Mecklenburg county, Virginia, October 10, 1846. The names of his ancestors are closely interwoven with the history of that county ; more than one of them held the office of county court clerk there .. The office in fact was never held by any one outside of that family from the first organization of the county in colonial times, till 1856, when the father of N. W. Baptist resigned, and the office, for the first time, passed out of the family.

The subject of this sketch was the son of Richard B. and Mary L. Baptist, who had only one other child, Mary Winifred Baptist. He attended school in the preparatory department of Randolph Macon College, Virginia, till he was fourteen years old, where he acquired the reputation of a lively, mischievous, intel- ligent boy, popular with his school-fellows, and at the same time successful in his studies, and of good stand- ing in his class. At this time (early in 1861), Virginia became the seat of civil war, and his father placed him under the training and instruction of Ralph HI. Graves, of Granville, North Carolina. School restraints were impossible for spirited school-boys in those stirring times and as early as May 27, 1863, he was to be found in the ranks of company A, First Virginia infantry, Walker's brigade, he being then a little over sixteen years old. In February, 1864, he was transferred to the Eighteenth Virginia regiment, Hunton's brigade, and before he was of the military age, May 1, 1864, was elected second lieutenant. He was present at the battles of Stanton River, Burgess' Mills, Hatcher's Run, Sailor's Creek and Slash Cottage. He was never wounded, never in hospital, and never unable for duty a day. He was taken prisoner at Sailor's Creek and carried to Point Lookout, Maryland, where he remained till August 24, when he was discharged and sent home.

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Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 20

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