Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 72

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 72

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Dr. Shearer's mother, are Miss Ruth Akers Webber, who died in Appomattox county, Virginia, at the age of thirty-seven, was the daughter of John Webber. She was the mother of seven children, six of whom. John B. (subject of this sketch), Elizabeth M., Richard B., James W., Mary R. and Henry C., survived her. Of these, Elizabeth M. Shearer died the wife of W. A. LeGrand, leaving three children, John A., Richard B. and Lillie R., who married Eldridge-P. Carson. and has one child, Lizzie Gessner. Richard B. Shearer was a Confederate soldier, and was killed at Monocacy,

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Maryland, at the head of his company, in 1863. James W. Shearer is now a Presbyterian minister. Mary R. Shearer has been twice married, and has five children. Henry C. Shearer is a farmer in the home county, Vir- ginia, and an elder in the Presbyterian church, and has three children.

Dr. Shearer has been, financially, far more successful than most men of his profession. The first money he ever earned he adopted the theory of the tithe as the minimum that a man should give of his gross carnings

to religious and charitable uses, but he has given be- yond this rule, time and again, even to half his income. It is a common saying in Clarksville that everything he; touches prospers. Has not God said, "Them that honor Me, I will honor?" and again, " There is that which seattereth and yet increaseth." He lost evers. thing he had by the war, and the property he now has is the aggregate of' little . acenmulations, year by year, mainly from professional sources, aided by the economy and prudence of his enterprising and faithful wife.

ALONZO W. BROCKWAY.

BROWNSVILLE.

A LONZO W. BROCKWAY was born near Malone, Franklin county, New York, September 22, 1824. His father, William C. Brockway, was the youngest of a large family of brothers and sisters, and was born at or near Walpole, New Hampshire, in 1786. his father. origi- nally a native of Ellington or Lyme, Connecticut, having moved to Walpole a short time previous to the breaking out of the Revolution, and there lived and died. He had been a captain in one of the New Hampshire regi- ments, and a gallant soldier in many battles of the Revo- lution ; was several times severely wounded and carried a British bullet in his leg to his grave.

The Brock ways are of English descent, and about all the persons of that name in the United States are sup- posed to have descended from Walston Brockway, who is shown by the records to have owned real estate in Lyme, Connecticut, as early as 1679. He is believed to have emigrated from England about 1660, only forty years after the landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, and no other emigrant of the name is known to have come over, hence the conclusion that he was the pro genitor of all the American Brockways, This is the view of William L. Brockway, of New York city, and Beman Brockway, of Watertown, New York, who are compiling the genealogy of the family.

Mr. A. W. Brockway's father was a soldier in the war of 1812. He was a farmer and mechanie : a man of vig . orous mind and body, and died about twenty-five years ago, at a very advanced age.

Mr. Brockway's mother was Miss Betsey Hadley, a direct descendant of the Putnam family, and was a cousin of Gen. Israel Putnam. Her mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Putnam, and her father was a sol- dier in the Revolution; was at the battle of Bunker Hill, at the very beginning of the war, and served faith- fully till the close. The family seem to have been very numerous and very long lived on both sides. Both the parents of Mr. Brockway lived to be over eighty years of age, and his grandparents were both over ninety years

of age at death, and he, though now over sixty years of age, has all the activity and energy of thirty years ago.

Mr. Brockway's youth was passed at Malone. The usual routine of life incident to a new country and a very cold climate was his lot. Hard work, even in young boyhood, alternating between the field, the forest, and the workshop, and attending the district school for a few months each year, made up the record of his early life, with very few embellishments, either in the way of recreation, fine clothes or luxurious habits of living in any sense. He now recalls, as the most pleasant of those early days, the few on which he was permitted to go to the village, about two or three times a year, with the other boys, and enjoy the festivities which in those days attended the fourth of July, and the annual gathering of the militia, usually formed the " general muster." If he was the master of fifty cents on an occasion of this kind, to spend in ginger cakes, soda water, fire- crackers, and the like. he was rich, and so felt, because it had been accumulated gradually, by dint of some skill and extra work during the preceding days and weeks.

All these things, however, had a tendency to develop the perseverance, energy, resolution and self-reliance which have characterized him in later years. Ilis training was of the kind best calculated to develop the sterling elements of a boy's character, if he possesses any. At sixteen or seventeen years of age he was per- mitted, though under many difficulties, and with few of the real necessities of such schooling, to attend, for a few .terms. the old Franklin Academy, and was for a time the school-fellow of .ex . Vice- President William A. Wheeler, who was a native of Malone. Many pleas- ant recollections occur to him now, more than forty years after, of his daily life with young Wheeler and his cousins, who were near neighbors, and some of the other young men who have, like him, attained distinc- tion in life.

When about nineteen years of age, Mr. Brock way went West " to grow up with the country." This was about

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1843. With a few dollars which he had seraped to- gether, and a few more which had been generously sent him by an older brother, Rev. William H. Brockway, then chaplain in the United States army, and stationed at Fort Brady, at the outlet of Lake Superior, he started for that place, more than a thousand miles dis- tant, nearly all by water, except seventy miles, from Malone to Ogdensburg. This distance he made, mostly on foot, in the space of two days, his little blue 7x9 trunk having preceded him by stage, at a cost of fifty cents. Toward the close of this trip, a pleasant incident occurred. When about eight or ten miles from Ogdens- burg, he was overtaken by the mail stage, a four-horse Concord coach, the grandest and most rapid style of inland travel in all that region in those days. The driver, who knew him well, halted the stage and invited him to mount the box with him, and he so rode into town, much refreshed by the ride and thankful for the kindness. For this act of kindness to him, tired, foot sore, and almost discouraged, as he was, the name of Irwin Heath, the stage driver, has ever been held in grateful remembrance, but from the time that he boarded the old steamer Ontario, the same night, and took an affectionate farewell of his friend, they have never met.

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He took a deck passage for Detroit. The voyage, which lasted a week, was attended with hard fare, sea sickness, and almost starvation toward the latter part. There were then only a few old-fashioned steamers on the lake, and the "deck passengers" had to sleep on deck and take their meals at the second table. for twenty-five ceuts each. When he reached Detroit he was out of money and had been without food for thirty- six hours. A rascally restaurant-keeper had passed a counterfeit dollar upon him, which left him without means to procure anything to eat during the latter part of the trip. Though he had a draft for twenty dollars, which his brother had sent him, on a house in Detroit, yet, with the timidity of a country boy, he was afraid to show it to the captain, thinking he would be put down as a humbug. In Detroit he put up at the old City Hotel, on Woodbridge street, and went to bed sup- perless. Rising early next morning, he found the firm on which he had the draft John Owen & Co., drug- gists -- on Jefferson avenue, had his draft cashed, and felt that he was in possession of untold wealth. Hle remained in the city a few days, and was very kindly treated by his brother's friends, Mr. Owen, his partner, Mr. Henchman, and the Rev. Mr. Fitch. He then em- barked on a sailing vessel for Mackinaw, and arriving there safe, coasted with French Canadian voyagers to Fort Brady, being several days on the way, camping out at night, and coming near being wrecked in a storm.

At Fort. Brady he remained for two or three years, doing all sorts of work, not hesitating to seize any op- portunity that presented itself. He was employed in clerking at the military post, exploring and working in

the copper mines, and generally "roughing it." All of that country was then strictly Indian lands, but the year after he went there the Indian title was extin- guished, and then people began to flock thither, from every nation and every clime, to the copper mines, which had just been discovered, and have since proven by far the richest in the world. Mr. Brockway was in the midst of all this movement from its very inception, and experienced all the incidents of camp life -"all of which he saw and a part of which he was." He was a friend of Dr. Houghton, State geologist of Michigan, by whom the copper mines were brought into notice, and was one of the first to go into the enterprise. He attended to transportation, exploration, keeping the accounts of the company and a great variety of other work connected with the business in its every depart- ment. While there he fell in with John Hays, of Pitts- burg. who was representing the Pittsburg and Boston Mining company. Mr. Hays took a great fancy to him, and one day made the, to him, very startling proposition that he should come to Pittsburg the next year to be his partner in the drug business. This offer, which was made on account of his known honesty and integrity, was accepted.

He went down to Detroit and went into the house of John Owen & Co. (who had cashed his draf when he first came to Detroit), as a clerk, and remained from fall till spring. With only such experience as he had gained here, he went to Pittsburg and became the part - ner of Mr. Hays, in the firm of Hays & Brockway. His capital was only two hundred dollars and his experience. Mr. Hays' capital was five thousand dollars, but they were equal partners. This was the move which first brought him out of the position of a working man and introduced him to mercantile life. At Pittsburg he remained for several years in a flourishing business.

After awhile, at the request of Mr. Hays, Dr. C. J. Hussey, and other wealthy gentlemen, who controlled the Pittsburg and Boston Mining company, Mr. Brock- way was sent back to the Lake Superior copper regions to attend to the transportation of a mass of copper which had just been taken out of the company's mine. This piece of copper weighing about four tons, was the largest mass of native copper that had been mined in the world up to that time. In the face of many obsta- eles he got it shipped to Fort Brady and thence to De- troit, and finally got it safely to New York. Here his parther, Mr. Hays, took charge of it, shipped it on the old steamer Sarah Sands, one of the first .stern-wheelers which crossed the ocean, carried it to London, where it was put in the British museum, and there remains to the present day. An article written by Mr. Brockway on this mass of copper, and giving some outlines of the mines, was published in the London Times, and this, with the arrival of the copper, produced more excite- ment in England than anything of a similar nature that has ever happened. A year or two after this. Mr.

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Brockway sold out his interest in the drug business to Mr. Hays.

Having become a favorite with Dr. Hussey, he was made a confidential friend by that gentlemen. In the winter of 1848 9, he went to Louisville with Dr. Hus sey to buy a stock of pork, and before they had been there long the Doctor was called back by sickness in his family, and Mr. Brockway was left in charge with forty thousand dollars to invest. The money was invested and the pork shipped to Pittsburg. The steamer on which Mr. Brock way started back home was never able to get beyond Wheeling, Virginia. and he was com- pelled to stage it from that point across the country east ward, and suffered greatly on account of cold weather and exposure.

Mr. Brockway is an original, genuine " Forty-niner." Just at this time the gold fever was breaking out. and one day-shortly after his arrival home -- Mr. Hussey asked him how he would like to go to California. His reply was, that it would please him if he only had money to go on. He was then informed by Dr. Hus- sey that he and other gentlemen had made up a purse of ten thousand dollars to be invested in California, provided he, Brockway, would go out to take charge of the enterprise. Preparations for the trip were at once begun. Supplies were shipped in March, 1819. Mr. Brockway and a few companions proceeded to St. Louis and thence to West Port landing, where Kansas City now stands. Here they started for the journey of over two thousand miles across the plains, through a country uninhabited, save by hostile Indians. A large company of emigrants had been formed at West Port landing, and was commanded by Col. Wil- liam HI. Russell, who had previously crossed the plains. About half way across part of the company became dissatisfied, seceded and elected Mr. Brock way captain. This trip, the incidents of which are like a romance, lasted more than three months, and was attended by many hardships -- hard work. bard fare, in the face of scalping Indians, fording rivers, scaling mountains and cliffs, and drawing their wagons after them over weary miles of arid, almost burning, plains; snow banks hard as ice, in the mountains, in the month of July, were some of the many interesting incidents. From West Port landing to San Francisco, there was only one United States post, a small fort in the valley of the Platte, and white men were seen by them only three times on the journey. They arrived in the valley of the Sacramento, in a very dilapidated condition, the latter part of July, 1849. After a few days' rest he bought a lot and began to build, erecting thereon the first brick house in Sac- ramento City, and helping to make the brick with his own hands. . Labor had to be paid five to ten dollars a day, and the little lumber they could get cost one hun- dred dollars per thousand feet, as there was only one saw-mill in the State. This was Suter's mill, where gold was first discovered. Mr. Brockway at once em

barked in trade and did a flourishing business until a year later, when his building and stock were swept away by the great floods in the Sacramento- valley; After the waters had subsided, he rebuilt and began again. wider very depressing circumstances, but built up a good business and made money rapidly. About a: year after he took to mining, and located the first gold bearing quartz vein at Mariposa. The land afterwards turned out to be the property of Gen. Fremont, and the result of the venture was somewhat disastrous.

The machinery which the company had sent, by way. of Cape Horn, to operate the mines, and which proved unfit for the purpose, was put into a small boat and made a rude but real steamer. the first that ever navi- gated the inland waters of California, and ran on the Sacramento and Feather rivers. In the-summer of 1851, he sold out and started on his return to Pittsburg.

Proceeding by steamer to Panama, he crossed the Isthmus, partly on foot, partly by canoe, and partly on the back of a jackass. On one occasion, his party, who had with them about thirty thousand dollars in gold, were in danger of being robbed by a band of despera- does who watched them closely all night, but being confronted with arms loaded and cocked, they with- drew. Two of Mr. Brockway's companions on this trip were Dr. Brandies, of Erie, Pennsylvania, and Mr. Rhodes, of Mansfield, Ohio. Failing from the east side of the Isthmus, by way of Kingston and Havana, they arrived safely at New York. Mr. Brock way's idea at this time was to form a large mining company and return to California, but not succeeding in this, he went into banking, investing his capital in that bus-

His same old friends established the Forest City Bank, at Cleveland, Ohio, and put him at its head as cashier, which position he filled from 1851 to 1857, his bauk all the time in a flourishing condition. In 1858, he went to Flint, Michigan. established the Peoples Bank, and conducted it for several years. While there he built Brockway block, on Main street, still one of the finest blocks in that city.

When the oil fever broke out, during the late war, he immediately went into the business and was very unfor- tunate, being brought to bankruptcy. Giving up his all. he went to work, nothing daunted, to pay off the remainder of his indebtedness, and has done so, by hard and successful work, during the eighteen years he has been in Tennessee.

Feeling that he would have a better chance in a new country, in 1867 he came to Tennessee, and organized the Shelbyville Savings Bank, which he conducted with marked success for two years. In 1869, he sold out there and removed to Brownsville, Tennessee, which was then a very flourishing town, and there established the Brownsville Savings Bank, of which he has been cashier up to the present time. The banking business was at first carried on in a small room at the back of a

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jewelry store, but when he was about to resign on ac- count of ill health, brought on by hard work in such quarters, the stockholders and directors built the pres- ent handsome bank building, at a cost of about twenty thousand dollars, it being one among the finest in the State, and was designed by Mr. Brockway and erected under his personal direction. Mr. Brockway is now the owner of a controlling interest in this bank, besides having other property, altogether making up a comfort- able estate.

A natural born Union man, Mr. Brock way has usually voted the Republican ticket, but has taken no active part in politics. He was a delegate from Michigan to the great conservative Republican convention which met at Philadelphia, in 1866, with a view to organizing a new party out of the better elements of the two old ones, and healing the breach between North and South. He was one of a committee sent by this convention to Washington to wait upon President Andrew Johnson, who tendered them a reception at the White House.

Mr. Brockway was first married at Malone, New York, in December, 1851, to Miss Juliet Meigs, daughter of Guy Meigs, of the firm of Meigs & Wead, old and prominent lumber and dry-goods merchants. The ouly child living, by this marriage, William Guy Brockway, is now a banker in Gadsden, Alabama; was born at Cleveland, in 1858.

Mr. Brockway was married a second time, at Detroit, in October, 1868, to Miss Nellie Scott, daughter of Capt. James P. Scott, of the United States army, who died in the service, after the war. To this union have been born three children : (1). Frank Thatcher Brock- way, born in 1873; died in infancy. (2). Alonzo W. Brockway, jr., born in 1875. (3). Violette Mary Brock- way, born in 1877. Both Mr. and Mrs. Brockway are members of the Methodist church, and he has been an official member for many years.

In his business principles, the views of Mr. Brock- way have corresponded with his actions. Beginning life with no money, and without the advantages of a

liberal education, his success has been the result of hon- est, hard work. He is a man for honest labor, in any field in which a man can be useful; has a morbid horror of idleness; 'would take to sawing wood. to prevent being out of employment. Added to this, he has a firm self-reliance. He has never truite for a posi- tion, or sat under a shade tree and ent off coupons whenever there was a cord of wood to be sawed. Ile believes that life is too short to be wasted in trifling. He can find no excuse for a lack of faithfulness to any trust reposed, and feels that integrity and a faith- ful discharge of duty, are the greatest essentials of success.

During his forty years of an active business life, in which industry and faithful devotion to his business have been Mr. - Brockway's chief characteristics, it is not saying too much to add, that during all this time only a small portion of it has been spent elsewhere than in the midst of a loving family, surrounded by the comforts of a model home, with a well selected li- brary of standard works, where the most of his leisure hours are spent in perusing their contents, and where his hand and his purse are, and ever have been, open to every legitimate business enterprise, to every call of religion, or any benevolent object, local or otherwise. In connection with this last, and showing the esti- mation in which he is held, we add, that Mr. Brock- way was recently appointed and commissioned by Gov- ernor Bate, as one of the three commissioners for the building of the West Tennessee State Hospital for the Insane, a position of much responsibility, for which he is peculiarly fitted, by reason of considerable expe- rience in the construction of buildings, both public and private, Here, as in every other trust, he will be found in the conscientious discharge of his duty to the pub- lic; and in the satisfaction of having contributed his best talents for the comfort and amelioration of that most unfortunate class of his fellow men for whom the institution is designed, will consist his highest and most satisfactory reward.

NAPOLEON HILL.

MEMPHIS.

T" HIS gentleman, whose history illustrates so well !

the fact that well directed energy leads to success in life, appears in these pages as a representative Ten- nessee merchant. The following sketch of Mr. Hill, as a business man, from a work entitled " Memphis -- Past, Present and Future," is strong testimony as to his worth and the regard the people of Memphis have for him : " No pleasanter task falls to the duty of the editor and statistician than that of presenting to the world the i

character and personnel of the leaders of thought and action, and reviewing the results of their energy and enterprise in the busy drama of every-day life. Men who give both impress and impulse to commercial his- tory are not only ' the abstract chroniclers of their day,' but they are the guides of the people in mercantile edu- cation and heralds of the broad progress Which marks American trade and commerce. For broad and compre- hensive executive abilities for leadership, men moving

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upon the active stage of business life, have proven their superiority in the estimation of the American people, not only in the ordinary pursuits of business, but to grap- ple with and manage the most abstruse points and parts of social and political economy. The true American statesmen of broad views and successful action are the leading merchants-the founders and heads of great commercial establishments. The firm of which Mr. Hill is a member has made a rare record of business success, and gained a position among commercial lead- ers throughout the country. The history of the com- mercial advancement and progress of the city of Mem- phis has produced few examples of success so marked and substantial as that which has attended the efforts of Messrs. Hill, Fontaine & Co. Within the period of its existence, this house has taken a position and achieved a success which would be surprising but for the known ability of its management."

Mr. Napoleon Hill, the head of this firm, has resided in Memphis for twenty-five years. He is one of the most widely known and highly esteemed citizens of the community in which he lives, and closely identified with Memphis in the development of her various finan- cial, commercial and productive enterprises, he exerts an active influence in the development of her resources and the fostering of her best interests.

As viewed by Col. J. M. Keating, the brilliant editor of the Memphis Appeal, Mr. Hill appears as fol- lows : " Mr. Napoleon Hill is, perhaps, one of the very best examples of success furnished by the South since the war. He is a type of the class that leads in all our industrial and commercial pursuits. Self-reliant, ener- getic, prudent, pushing, thoughtful, conservative, full of expedient, always ready, broad and liberal, cheerful in disposition, thoroughly democratic in manner. and habit, carrying the details and cares of his business with a light heart, because he never steps beyond the limits of his capital, and keeps before him constantly a high and manly sense of the obligations that rest upon him as the head of a great commercial house, the see- ond in point of cotton sales in the world. He learned many valuable lessons in the mining camps of Califor- nia in the early days of that State. These were invalu able to him, the best of them being the self control and self' discipline which none of his contemporaries have ever seen him break through. His evenness of' temper and bonhomie of manner are proverbial, as is his constancy and devotion to his relatives and his friends. He ties to these as with hooks of steel. His success since 1865, that year so memorable for an overwhelming disaster, which brought poverty and despair into all parts of the South, is one of the marvels of our time, especially when the ups and downs of Memphis are considered. He began with bare hands; to-day, twenty years after, he is a millionaire. This result, so eredita- ble to him, is the outcome of well directed and constant labor, the careful avoidance of reckless speculation ; the

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Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 72

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