Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 28

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

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classical and logical, with great magnetic power in literary composition. . Unselfish in his nature, he con- cedes to every one the right to think and act for him- self. Original and audacious in his operations, he has conceived and carried forward more gigantic projects, perhaps, than any man in Tennessee. He handles men like chessmen on the board, with dash and brilliancy and venturesome spirit, but with the consummate grace and cool confidence of a master of the art.

CAPT. JOIIN POMFRET LONG.

CHATTANOOGA.

C APT. JOHN POMFRET LONG, of Chattanooga, was born at Knoxville, Tennessee, November 25, 1807. His father was William Long, a native of Meck- lenburg county, North Carolina, born February 19, 1775, settled at Knoxville in 1797, married Miss Jane Bennett in 1805, resided at Knoxville until 1813, when he removed to Washington, Rhea county, Tennessee, and staid there until November, 1836, when he removed to Chattanooga, where he died November 1, 1844. He was a house-carpenter by trade. In the latter part of his life he was an elder in the Presbyterian church. Hle was plain William Long, but was so uniformly up- right that it came to be a saying "As honest as Billy Long." He was one of the first settlers of Chattanooga, and assisted in organizing the Presbyterian church there in 1840.

Capt. Long's grandfather, John Long, was born in county Antrim, Ireland, settled in Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, participated in the Revolutionary war, married Miss Elizabeth Shields, of Mecklenburg county, and was drowned in 1799, while returning in the night from a Masonic lodge meeting. He came alone to America, leaving only a maiden sister in Ireland. During the Revolution, in Charlotte, North Carolina, some tories were captured, from whom information was obtained that an attack wasto be made on " Post Ninety. six," one hundred miles distant from Charlotte. The Whigs posted two couriers on horseback, taking differ .. ent routes, to notify the garrison at " Post Ninety-six." John Long proposed to carry the information on foot, started at sunrise and at sundown delivered his dis- patches at Ninety-six, and put the garrison on their guard-a remarkable record, showing the patriotism of the man, the spirit of those times, and the pluck that is in the blood of the Longs.

Capt. Long's mother, Miss Jane Bennett, was the daughter of Maj. Peter Bennett, a native of Virginia, who married Miss Elizabeth Pomfret, daughter of John Pomfret, of King William county, Virginia. Maj. Bennett was in the Revolutionary war, at the close of

which he served as sheriff of Granville county, North Carolina. Ile died in 1822, An Knox county, Tennessee, where he had settled in 1802, a farmer. Capt. Long's maternal great grandfather, John Pomfret, came from England, settled in King William county, Virginia, married a Miss Hunt, and died in Granville county, North Carolina, in 1802, at the age of eighty-four.

Capt. Long's mother was born in Granville county, North Carolina, January 26, 1781, and moved with her father to Knox county, Tennessee, in 1802. She was a Presbyterian. She died at Chattanooga, December 10, 1859, leaving three children : (1). Mary Long, now the widow of John A. Hooke, an attorney-at-law, who died at Chattanooga in 1865. . She has five children, James, William, Robert, Jane and Elizabeth. (2). James Shields Long, a physician; married Jane Caldwell, of Monroe county, Georgia; died in 1866, leaving two children, Mary and Virginia. (3). John Pomfret Long, subject of this sketch. The latter grew up at Wash- ington, Rhea county, Tennessee; finished his schooling at Knoxville when fourteen years old: engaged next in a tannery for three years; next clerked three years for Col. Thomas MeCallie, a merchant at Washington, then opened a store on his own account at that place, and from there moved to Ross' Landing (now Chattanooga), reaching there April 18, 1836. Here he opened a gen- eral store, which he continued, with varying success, until 1860. He was then elected city recorder of Chat- tanooga, and filled the position three years, until the city was evacuated by the Confederates. Prior to the evacuation, in 1862, he was appointed provost-marshal of Chattanooga by Gen. MeCown, and served in that capacity several months.

A few days after the battle of Chickamauga his house was torn down and his effects destroyed. He having gone south in the meantime, leaving his family in Chattanooga, they subsequently rejoined him at Griffin, Georgia, where they remained until the close of the war. Capt. Long then returned to find himself' without home or property, and a family to support. He began

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business as a real estate agent and fortune favored him, for he soon was very successful. In 1868 he applied to Judges Trewhitt and Adams, at Chattanooga, for a law license, which was granted. His practice has been principally in the chancery court, where his knowledge of the land and titles in Chattanooga has been of great value to him. Notwithstanding his losses by war and going security, he has accumulated a nice, property, mostly in real estate.

When he first came to Ross' Landing-then a mere ferry and steamboat landing in an Indian country-he found no post-office and no post-roads. He made appli- cation to the post-office department for a post-office, which was granted, and he was appointed postmaster, without compensation. The name of the post-office was changed to Chattanooga in 1838. Capt. Long held the postmastership until 1814, when he had to give way for one of the friends of President James K. Polk.

In 1832 he cast his first vote for Gen. Jackson; his next was for Ilugh L. White, and thenceforward he voted the Whig ticket from Harrison to Bell, since which time he has been a Democrat. He attended the Whig State convention at Murfreesborough in 1841, when JJones was nominated for governor against Polk. In February, 1861, he voted against secession, but when President Lincoln ordered out troops, he voted for secession. He was always a States' rights man, as was his father before him. He has, however, never been so warm a partisan as to vote the party ticket unless he liked the men ; always considered it a duty to vote, but equally a duty to scratch objectionable names from the ticket.

In 1845 he was elected to take his father's place as an elder in the Presbyterian church, which he had joined in 1843. He was a commissioner of the town of Chat- tanooga when the land was subject to entry, and the occupants were entitled to preference of entry. The three commissioners, Aaron M. Rawlings, George W. Williams and Capt. Long, entered the quarter-section, sold the lots, and made titles to the purchasers April 20, 1839, which was the day on which the town of Chattanooga had its birth. Capt. Long's staying power is illustrated in the fact that he has never yet seen the Mississippi river, and of the large cities only a few.

Capt. Long was married to Miss Eliza Smith, No- vember 6, 1831, at Smith's Cross-roads (now Dayton), Rhea county, Tennessee. Mrs. Long was born January 25, 1813, at Washington, Rhea county, Tennessee. Her father was William Smith, a native of Massachusetts, who came to Knox county in 1808; was a school-teacher, and had for one of his pupils Dr. J. G. M. Ramsey, the historian, who said of him, " He was one of the best common school teachers I ever saw." Mrs. Long's mother was Elizabeth Cozby, daughter of Dr. James Cozby, a man noted in the early history of East Tennes sce as a physician and an Indian fighter. (See Ramsey's

History of Tennessee). Mrs. Long's brother, Dr. Milo Smith, was an able physician, and for several terms mayor of Chattanooga, where he died in 1868. Mrs. Long was educated at Knoxville; made a profession of religion and joined the church in 1843, the same day her husband made profession and joined. She has been an invalid the greater part of her married life, but is beloved for her sweetness of temper. She is fond of the company of young folks; has an unconquerable will- power that has carried her through all her troubles; is notably cheerful and pleasant, and, for one of her age, remarkably active, especially when "upon hospitable cares intent." To this union there were eleven children- all born in Chattanooga." Five of these died in infancy and childhood. The others are: (1). William Pomfret Long, died nineteen years old. (2). Elizabeth Jane ' Long, died sixteen years old. (3). James Cozby Long, born December 2, 1844; educated in the Naval Acade- my at Annapolis; resigned and joined the Confederate navy in 1861, attaching himself to the fleet along the coast of North Carolina. He was in the fight at Roanoke Island, the second in command of the Curlew, Capt. Hunter. He was then transferred to the Merrimac, as midshipman, and was in the famous naval fights in Hampton Roads, and remained with his ship until she was burnt. He was then transferred to Drury's Bluff, and finally to Plymouth, North Carolina, and was on board the iron-clad Plymouth when she was blown up by the United States navy. He next served under Capt. Moffit on a blockade runner. . After the war he went into civil engineering, and had charge of the gov- ernment works at Muscle shoals for a while. He is now a manufacturer of iron paint at Birmingham, Ala- bama. Ile married at Elyton, Alabama, November 20, 1872, Miss Frances Walker, and has four children, William Walker, John Pomfret, James Cozby and Mary. (4). John Pomfret Long, jr., born' March 4, 1817; joined Col. Walker's Nineteenth Tennessee regi- ment in May, 1864, at Dalton, Georgia ; participated in all the fights from there to Atlanta, and on July 22, 1864, was disabled by a shell taking his foot off; died March 1, 1880, unmarried. (5). Milo Smith Long, born May 10, 1859; graduated in medicine at Nashville, and is now in Dakota. (6). Marcus Bearden Long, born January 27, 1854; now a civil engineer, and was for a while engaged as engineer in Mexico on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad; unmarried.

One of the aims of Capt, Long's life has been to give his children something to start upon and to help them attain a standing in society, and he believes that every man ought to have a home and a family, and next, that he has duties to perform as a citizen. He has desired wealth, and has been sometimes up and sometimes down, but has always made it a rule to pay his debts. . With one exception he has always made a profit on whatever he has sold. He never swore an oath in his life, and was brought up to regard the Sabbath. He has never been

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dissipated, though not always strictly temperate. Ile is a self-assertive man, and of quick temper. Being the oldest citizen of Chattanooga, he is often resorted to as an oracle on matters pertaining to the history of per- sons, families and property in that now important city. lle has been a public-spirited man all along, and is uniformly spoken of as the best representative man of the city where he located when it was simply a river

landing, and surrounded by the Cherokees. It was very appropriate that in 1881 he was selected to write the historical sketch of Chattanooga, on the occasion of representatives of the North and the South meeting at that city to shake hands over the bloody chasm. . His article, printed in the Chattanooga Times in September, 1881, is full of valuable history-local, personal and general.

REV. JAMES HOLMES, D.D., AND PROF. GEORGE D. HOLMES. (FATHER AND SON.)

COVINGTON.

T HIE Rev. James Holmes, well-known as a mis- sionary and preacher, as well as a successful educator, was ordained to the ministry in 1846. He was the son of Abraham Holmes, of Carlisle, Penn- sylvania, in which place he was born in 1801. attended Princeton College one or two years, and after- wards graduated at Dickinson College, Carlisle .. After this he entered the theological department at Princeton, but, on account of failing health, never completed his theological course there. He now became a lay mission- ary to the Chickasaw Indians in North Mississippi, and among them taught and preached from 1825 to 1823.

When the Chickasaws were removed west, Mr. Holmes removed to Tipton county, Tennessee, where, in 1834, he established the Mountain Academy, in which he taught for fifteen years. This establishment was attended by a large number of pupils from Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and other surrounding States.

In 1849 he was appointed president of the West Tennessee College, at Jackson, and after filling this office with credit for eight years, returned to Tipton county, being elected principal of the Tipton Female Seminary. Here he taught till 1868, when he retired from active professional life, and devoted himself to ministrations of religion and humanity, visiting the afflicted and bereaved, and administering the solace of religion to all who would receive it from him. Thus employed, he died, February 4, 1873, leaving behind him a name blessed by innumerable survivors who had received from him either the privileges of a Christian education, or the consolation of Christian sympathy in affliction. Many ministers of the gospel are now doing good service in pulpits throughout the southwestern States who owe their first religious impressions to the early training and teachings of this man of God. Those who remember his conversation, at once genial and sympathetic, unanimously agree in the testimony that no one was ever intimately associated with him without being the better for it.

Dr. Holmes married Sarah A. Van Wagenen, who was born at Newark, New Jersey, in 1801. She was the daughter of Peter Van Wagenen and Sarah Plume. The Van Wagenens were of Dutch extraction. She is still living with her daughter, Mrs. Hall, of Covington, her mind still active and vigorous, and occupied, as it has been all her life, with all matters of a religious character. Dr. Hohnes was, by this lady, father of seven children, as follows : (1). Emma, widow of Rev. D. II. Cummins, founder and for many years pastor of the Covington Presbyterian church. (2). Sarah, wife of Dr. W. M. Hall, of Covington. (3). Prof. George D. Holmes, subject of the ensuing sketch. (4). Mary A., wife of Rev. L. MeNeely: (5). William B., mer- chant at Danville, Kentucky. (6). James P., book- keeper in a bank and insurance agent at Bonham, Texas. (7). Anna W., widow of Capt. T. F. Patterson, of Memphis.

Abraham Holmes, the father of Dr. Hohes, was one of the eleven children of Andrew Holmes, of Pennsyl- vania. This Andrew was the son of an emigrant from the north of Ireland, who may be considered the founder of the family in America.

PROF. GEORGE D. HOLMES was third child and eldest son of the above. He was born in Marshall county, Mississippi, while his father was pursuing his missionary labors in that State, November 13, 1831. Hle was brought to Tipton county when two years old, and grew up there.

He received his preparatory education in his father's school, and in 1846 entered Princeton College, New Jersey, where he graduated in 1849. After graduation, he had charge, for eight years, of the preparatory de- partment of West Tennessee College, at Jackson.

In 1857 he settled at Covington, in Tipton county, and taught school there from 1857 to 1868, being asso- ciated with his father in the conduct of the Tipton

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Female Seminary. In 1868, his father retiring, as related in the former sketch, Prof. Holmes was elected to his present position as principal of that institution.

Prof. Holmes is a Royal Arch Mason, Knight of Honor, an elder in the Presbyterian church, and in polities a Democrat.

Hle married first, in Jackson, Tennessee, January 24, 1854, Miss Mary E. Pyles, a native of Henderson county, Tennessee. She was the daughter of Addison Pyles, a merchant and planter, of a South Carolina family. Her mother was Martha Crenshaw, also a South Carolina lady. She was educated at Jackson, was a member of the Presbyterian church, and died in 1862, at the age of thirty-one. By this marriage Prof. Holmes became the father of three children : (1). Mattie A., born in 1856; died in infancy. (2). James Addison, born July 20, 1859; educated at the School for the Blind, Nash- ville; now living with his father. (3). George Walter, born July 9, 1861; graduate of the Baptist University, Jackson, Tennessee; afterward a merchant at New- bern, Tennessee, in partnership with George Jarman, son of Prof. Jarman, of Jackson, and now in business in Kansas City, Missouri.

Prof. Holmes married secondly at Covington, January 18, 1866, Miss Sallie E. Munford, daughter of Col. R. II. Munford, for a long time county court clerk and

register of Tipton county. He settled at Randolph, in that county, in 1828, and engaged in trade there, and in 1840 moved to Covington, where he died March 10, 1884, leaving behind him a reputation for the strictest integrity His son, Dr. M. Munford, has, for over ten years, been editor and proprietor of the Kansas City Times. Another son, Richard D. Munford, is teller in the Southern Bank of Georgia, at Savannah. His daughter, Ermine, is the widow of Col. John Gracey HIall, of Covington.

The mother of the second Mrs. Holmes was Sarah D., daughter of D. L. Morrison, who died at Covington. . in 1873, at the age of sixty.

Mrs. Hohes was educated in the Tipton Female Seminary, partly by Prof. Holmes himself. She is a member of the Presbyterian church, and is noted for her energy and for the womanly virtues that endear home to husband and children. By his second mar- riage, Prof. Holmes has two children : (1). Embry M., born July 27, 1867; now at school in Kansas City, Missouri. (2). Anna Van, born October 14, 1872; died August 31, 1880.

Prof. Holmes attributes his success in life to the methods and principles he inherited from his father, which may be summed up in the simple words, " a con- scientious discharge of duty from day to day."

COL. A. J. BROWN.

JONESBOROUGH.

T' "IHIS gentleman is a native of the oldest town and of the first county in the State, and grew up, was educated and lived there all his life, having been born in Jonesborough, Tennessee, December 16, 1834. His father being a very poor man, the son passed a rugged boyhood, driving first a two and then a six horse team over the rough mountain roads, hauling produce and iron to Knoxville and Wytheville, Virginia, and merchandise from those places back to Jonesbor- ough and other places in East Tennessee. . He was inured from childhood to farm work, plowing, chopping wood, and to do anything as a day laborer. He had no idle, playful childhood, nor joyous, careless boyhood, nor by any means was he a goody-goody sort of boy. Yet he has never to this day tasted liquor, nor been in any way dissipated.

Ilis education was obtained in the old field schools, ten months at Jonesborough Academy, one year at Taylor's Mount, Carter county, and one year at Washington College. While in the latter school he worked for his board, went in debt for his clothes and tuition, which he paid after he went to the bar. Hle

read law under Chief Justice James W. Deaderick, teaching school to support himself while studying law, and reading almost exclusively at night. He was ad- mitted to the bar at Jonesborough, in 1858, by Judge John C. Gaut and Chancellor Seth J. W. Luckey, and practiced his profession at Jonesborough until the war came up. He then, in company with Col. S. K. N. Patton, commeneed raising the Tenth East Tennessee cavalry, and in February, 1864, this inchoate regiment was consolidated with the Eighth Tennessee cavalry at Nashville, Patton being made colonel and Brown lieu- tenant-colonel. The regiment saw service in Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina. Col. Brown participated in the battles of Greeneville, Bull's Gap, Morristown, Tennessee, and Salisbury and Morgan- ton, North Carolina, and in almost numberless skir- mishes, From March 22 to May 1, 1864, Col. Brown commanded the regiment, Eighth Tennessee, in the last raid of the war, from Knoxville through East Ten- nessee, into North Carolina and Virginia, as far as Christiansburg, Virginia, and returned to North Caro- lina, and commanded it at the battles of Salisbury and

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Morganton. At the close of the war, in May, 1865, he resigned from the army and resumed the practice of Www.

Before the war Col. Brown was a Whig, and since the war has been a leading Republican. He was the mayor of Jonesborough in 1861-2, and again after the war. In 1860 he was sub-elector on the Bell and Everett ticket, and in 1876 was sub-elector on the Hayes and Wheeler ticket. In 1882, and again in 1884, he was a delegate to the State Republican convention at Nashville. At the latter he was nominated elector for the State at large, but ordered his name withdrawn. In 1850 he was elected State senator from the counties of Johnson, Carter, Unicoi, Washington and Greene, re- ceiving the largest majority ever given to a senator from that district. In the Senate he took a very prominent and leading part, was chairman of several important committees and recognized as one of the ablest debaters in that body. As a public speaker he had already won a name among the most eloquent of the gifted sons of East Tennessee, but he showed himself an unexception- ally strong man while in the Senate. In a speech called out by a senator who had repeatedly charged that law- yers legislated in their own interest rather than in that of their constituents, Col. Brown replied, substantially, in the following powerful language: "Not on account of what has been said, nor yet on account of who said it, but from the manner in which it was said and the persons to whom it was addressed, I notice the remarks of the senator who has just taken his seat. He has seen fit to indulge in a tirade against lawyers as a class. I would say to the senator, it is not the lawyers against whom the people are to be warned, or taught to fear, ' but it is the arrant demagogue who, by some strange concatenation of human events and by feeding the pas- sions and prejudices of the people, has crept into place and power. I would say to the senator, if he will but read the history of his own country, and not only of his country, but of the world, he will find that every im- portant step that has been taken to advance civil and religious liberty was proposed by lawyers; that they have been the peculiar and steadfast guardians of the rights of man throughout all time; that the forms of every government that has had for its objeet the perpet- uation of civil and religious liberty are the handiwork of lawyers; that they have been as true and steadfast friends of civilization and progress as any other class of men the world has ever known; that by their painstak- ing and love of order and liberty, they did as much as any other class in untangling the tangled web of gov- ernments, of bringing light out of chaos, and order out of confusion, in almost every nation. And that when the Savior of mankind was on earth, forsaken by His kindred and His friends, and denied by His disciples, it was a lawyer who asked for His body and furnished it a tomb for burial."

Col. Brown joined the Methodist church at Jones

borough, in 1856, remaining a member of that commun- ion till 1868, when he transferred his membership to the Presbyterian church; at the same time his wife be- came a member of the latter church. Ile is now a ruling elder, has attended presbytery and synod as a delegate, and was a lay delegate to the General Assembly at Madison, Wisconsin, May, 1880.

He became a Mason in Rhea Lodge No. 47, Jones- borough, and is a Knight of Honor, and a member of the Grand Army of the Republic.

Col. Brown married at Jonesborough, September 25, 1862, Miss Agnes M. Wilds, youngest daughter of John A. Wilds, a merchant of that place. Her mother was Caroline Boreing, a native of Washington county. Mrs. Brown was educated at Jonesborough, is of a happy, genial disposition, and noted for devotion to her family and kindness to the poor.

Ten children have been the fruits of their marriage : Carrie Rebecca, Cora May, Clarence Granville, Lillie Baker, Andrew Jackson, Paul Cowan, Horace, Walter Hubert, Agnes Wilds, Edgar Odom.

Col. Brown's father was Enoch Brown, born in Washington county, Tennessee, May 10, 1810. He was a laboring man and ran teams hauling goods and pro- duce up to a short time before the war began. He then sold out his teams, enlisted in the United States army as a private, and was made second-lieutenant of Com- pany I, Eighth Tennessee cavalry. He was in all the battles and skirmishes of the regiment, and was mus- tered out with his regiment in 1865. After the war he settled down on the farm on which he was born and remained there till his death, September 15, 1878, hav- ing been the father of three children : (1). Mary E. Brown, wife of Matthew Carter, now a produce mer- chant at Sweetwater, Tennessee; has six children, Edgar Vernon Carter, a lawyer at Atlanta, Georgia; Robert L. Carter, who assists his father in business at Sweetwater; Andrew Paul Carter, a commission mer- chant of the firm of MeGaughey & Carter, Atlanta, Georgia; Walter Carter, clerk for McGaughey & Carter; Fred and Mary Carter. (2). Andrew Jackson Brown, subject of this sketch. (3). Maria Agnes Brown, wife of Robert L. Gillespie; has seven children, Marmora Lake Gillespie, wife of J. D. Self, Telford, Tennessee ; Mary Gillespie, wife of Melvin Wells, Washington county ; Ann Gillespie, Sarah Sims Gillespie, Charles Gillespie, Robert and Maria Gillespie, twins.

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Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 28

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