Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 73

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

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concentration of all his forces in one channel ; the mas- tery of all technical difficulties, and a stern determina- tion always to be at the head of the cotton business. Placable, pleasant and good-natured, he is beloved in social life. There his utter simplicity of character and his ingenuousness are felt to be the products of a good heart. He is the idol of his home circle, in which he finds a recompense for all the cares of a life whose burdens have been in proportion to the rapid growth of his business. Napoleon Hill is winning the title of merchant prince. Far seeing, he is far reaching ; hence his name is listed among the railroad, bank and insur- ance officers and directors, and those who have invested in and control great mechanical enterprises in Tennes- see and Alabama. His life is a lesson for the genera- tions to come, as it is an example for that which is contemporary with him. Honored by all men, he is looked to by all classes of his fellow-citizens as one worthy the highe4 public trusts."

Napoleon Hill was born in Maury county, Tennessee, near Columbia, October 25, 1830. When he was about , five years of age his father moved to Marshall county, Mississippi, where he grew up, living on a plantation until his seventeenth year. He received his education in the old field schools of Mississippi, never attending any college. When he was about fourteen years of age, the death of his father put an end to his school days, as he was the oldest son, and had to take charge of the plantation. Determining to adopt a mercantile life, he went. in 1817, to Bolivar, Tennessee, and began his business career as a clerk in the store of his uncle, John H. Bills, and there remained till April, 1850. The California fever having broken out, he left Ten- nessee and went across the plains to that State in search of gold. For two years he lived the life of a miner, working in the placer diggings. Getting tired of this business, in which he had met with partial success, at the end of two years he left it. After this he opened a trading post at the junction of the Trinity rivers, mining streams in the northern part of California. There he built boats -and established ferries across the two streams, opened and conducted a ranche. Gold had just been discovered upon that stream, and miners were flocking thither from every nation and every clime. Among these he built up a flourishing trade, and re- mained there about four and a half years. In 1857, he returned to Tennessee, having accumulated about ten thousand dollars during the California trip. He settled at Memphis and engaged in the cotton and commission business, as a member of the firm of Hill & Dorion, till the beginning of the war. At the close of the war, he resumed business at Memphis, as a cotton factor and wholesale grocer, in the firm of Williamson, Hill & Co., which lasted till the spring of 1868, when the partner- ship was dissolved by the death of Mr. Williamson. The name of the firm was then changed to Hill, Fontaine & Co., the name under which it now exists.

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Mr. Hill has been identified with all the commercial and financial enterprises of Memphis for many years, and has been an officer in numerous banks, railroad and insurance companies. A few years subsequent to the war, he filled the position of president of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce for two forms, and was president of the Cotton Exchange for two terms, during the years 1850 81. He is now president of the Memphis City Fire and General Insurance company, the largest in the State, and is also a director of the Memphis and Charles ton railroad. He was one of the organizers of the Union and Planters Bank of Memphis, the largest bank in the State, and has been one of its directors since its foundation. He is largely interested in the Pratt Coal and Iron company of North Alabama, he and his part- wer holding about one-fourth of the stock of the com- pany, which owns and operates the largest bituminous coal mines in the United States, producing over two thousand five hundred tons of coal daily, besides oper- ating iron furnaces of which the daily product is from one hundred and fifty to two hundred tous. in addition to which he is the owner of a large area of iron lands in Franklin county, Alabama, and coal lands in the ad- joining counties. He is the head of a house which does the third cotton business in the world, handling as much as one hundred thousand bales per annum. The firm has also a large branch establishment at St. Louis, and their trade in the departments of their business- groceries and cotton -- is more than five and a half millions of dollars per annum.

Up to the war, Mr. Hill was a Whig, and since the war has voted with the Democrats, but has never been a candidate for office, and seldom takes any part in polities, devoting his whole time to his business. . He is essentially a business man.

Mr. Hill was married, in Hardeman county, Tennes- see, July 8, 1858, to Miss Mary W. Wood, whose father, William H. Wood, a gentleman of large success as a banker and planter, now lives in, Memphis, and is engaged in planting in Arkansas. He was born in Albemarle county, Virginia, in 1814, and came to Ten- nessee in 1833. The family is of Scotch descent. Mrs. Hill's mother, nce Miss Benigna Polk, daughter of Col. Ezekiel Polk, one of the earliest settlers of Hardeman county, belongs to a family of Scotch-Irish descent, which traces its ancestry through many generations back to Treland and Scotland. She was a half- sister of the father of James K. Polk. Mrs. Hill's sister, Miss Nina Wood, is now the wife of James IL. Martin, of Memphis.

By his marriage with Miss Wood, Mr. Hill has four children : (1). Olivia P. Hill, married Charles Gros venor, of the prominent real estate firm, Overton & Grosvenor, Memphis. (2). Napoleon Hill, jr. (3). Mary M. Hill. (4). Frank Fontaine Hill.

Mrs. Hill has been a member of the Presbyterian church since her youth. She is a lady of genial, sunny disposition, fond of her household, and is a good neigh- bor. a good wife and a good mother,

Mr. Hill's father, Dr. Duncan Hill a gentleman of English descent, was born in North Carolina, and came to Tenessee in his youth. He was a planter as well as a physician, and met with marked success in both lines. He died in ISIL at the age of forty years. Mr. Hill's mother was Miss Olivia L. Bills, daughter of Isaac Bills, and sister of the late Maj. John H. Bills, a promi- nent citizen of Bolivar, Tennessee. Her grand parents, Daniel and Deborah Bills, were natives of North Caro- lina, and were Quakers. She was born in Maury county, Tennessee, in June. 1507, and died at St. Louis, Missouri, in September: 1883. Her mother, Miss Lilias Houston, was a daughter of John Houston. a first cousin of Gen. Samuel Houston. After the death of Dr. Hill, she married Col. Josiah Deloach, of St. Louis, Mis- souri. She was a member of the Christian church, and an earnest, faithful Christian. She was characterized by the sweetness, and, at the same time. the strength of her character, and exercised a great influence upon her family. Her ancestry on her father's side were Welsh, while the Houstons were of Scotch descent, and settled on the Susquehanna river, in Pennsylvania, abent 1730.

Mr. Hill's brother. Jerome Hill. is the head of the branch house of Hill. Fontaine & Co., in St. Louis, and another brother, Harry M. Hill, is a lawyer in Mem- phis. Mr. Hill has also two sisters now living, Mrs. Joy, of St. Louis, and Miss Emily E Hill, of' St. Louis, Missouri.

When Mr. Hill began life, he was ambitious to make money, and when the gold fever of California broke out, he thought there was the place to make it, but after working in the mines for a while, he came to the con- clusion that a man could succeed in anything if he would bring all his energies to bear upon it and per- severe in it. He has kept ever before him a determina- tion to succeed, and feels that, without a motive in life and an object to work for, no man can be either happy or . successful, but having these, and backing them with perseverance and energy, he is certain to achieve his object. He believes that for a man to be a financial success, he must be liberal ; that a penurious man is seldom a success, and that liberality is always well rewarded. He thinks that any business well con- ducted leads to fortune, while the best business poorly followed will eventually lead to ruin. The reports which have come to the writer's ears, in Memphis, of the liberality of Mr. Hill, bear ample testimony to the truth of his theory, that liberality is an essential of Success. Memphians say that he is as liberal as he is successful.

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PROF. HUNTER NICHOLSON.

KNOXVILLE.

T HIS distinguished son of a distinguished father, i was born in Columbia, Maury county, Tennessee, June 9, 1834. His father, the Hon. A. O. P. Nicholson, was United States senator from Tennessee, in 1811-2, first appointed by Gov. James K. Polk, to fill the va- caney occasioned by the death of Hon. Felix Grundy. At the expiration of this term, he was nominated by the Democrats for election to the senate, but owing to a defection, and the forming of a combination with the Whigs, Hon. Hopkins L. Turney, a Democrat, was elected. In 1857, however, Judge Nicholson was elected to the United States senate by the Tennessee Legislature, and served until the breaking out of the war, when he left the senate, Tennessee having seceded from the Union. He was two or three times a member of the Legislature, elected first before he was twenty- one years old. He was chancellor in the Columbia district four years, as successor of Chancellor Terry HI. Cahal. He was chief justice of the State at the time of his death. He was a member of the State conven- tion of 1870, and chairman of the committee on suffrage in that body. He was twice elector for the State at large, in 1840 and 1852. He began life as the editor of the Mercury at Columbia, and edited the Nashville Union during Polk's campaign in 1844. afterwards was editor of the Washington Union during Pierce's ad- ministration, 1852 and 1857, and was during this time printer to Congress, At Chapel Hill, where he gradu- ated in 1827, he was long afterward spoken of as a rounded man, who was a born student, and who in every department took first rank. But he was more at home on the bench than anywhere else, and was pre-eminent as a judge. Judge Nicholson was born in Williamson county, about two miles from Spring Hill, Tennessee. His father died when he was four years old. He went to school to Esq. Black, grandfather of Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and afterward to Dr. Jordan, near Mount Pleasant, and finally to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, After graduating, he studied medicine at the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, but never intended to practice medicine. He studied law after he was married, and practiced at Columbia, which was his home. His first partner was Hon. Sam. D. Frierson, whose sketch appears elsewhere in this volume. While he lived at Nashville, Russell Houston was his law partner, as was also Hon. William F. Cooper, and subsequently William J. Sykes, He belonged to no church, though he read the Bible with assiduous zeal, and to no secret order. Judge Nichol- son, whether considered as member of the Legislature, United States senator or judge, always appears a strong man, who has left his mark upon the history of his

State, but he shone most conspicuous as a member of the Columbia bar, universally celebrated as the most brilliant in the State, composed of Russell Houston, James K. Polk, Gideon J. Pillow, James HI. Thomas, Edmund Dillahunty, M. S. Frierson, Judge W. P. Martin, L. D. Myers, George Gantt and others. Judge Nicholson was appointed with Judge Caruthers, by the. Legislature, to revise the statutes of the State. That work is yet the standard authority, and is a model of its kind. About ten years after the completion of this work, he issued an additional volume, known as Nich- olson's Supplemental Statutes.'

The trait that most. characterized Judge Nicholson, was his extreme mnodesty and purity of thought and speech, never using an oath, or language in any com- pany unfit for the most refined ears. During his whole life he kept up his classical reading in his vacations, Horace being his special favorite. Such was his uni- form courtesy that, although engaged actively from early manhood in the most heated political campaigns of the State, he retained throughout life the warmest friend- ship of his most prominent political opponents, among whom were such men as John Bell, James C. Jones, Gustavus A. Henry and Edwin H. Ewing.

The Nicholson family is originally of English blood. It is a very numerous family, represented, historically, in England, by Gov. Nicholson, of colonial fame, Peter Nicholson, the distinguished mechanic and author of a series of books (" Nicholson's Encyclopedia "), and Gen. John Nicholson, the gallant English commander, who fell at the siege of Delhi.

Judge Nicholson's father, O. A. Nicholson, was born in Guilford county, North Carolina, and located in Maury county, Tennessee, among its earliest settlers. Ile was a mill-wright, carpenter and surveyor, and had rather a better education than a majority of the people of his day in that county, but died not over thirty-five years old, leaving three children: (1). Maria Nichol- son, who married, first, Simpson Walker, a merchant at Columbia, and after his death, Elias J. Armstrong, a farmer in Maury county. (2). Calvin II. Nicholson, a farmer in Tennessee and a planter in Mississippi. (3). Alfred Osburn Pope Nicholson, the father of Prof. Hunter Nicholson.

Prof. Nicholson's mother, nec Miss Caroline O'Reilly, was born in Maury county, Tennessee, daughter of Dr. James Charles O'Reilly, a native of the city of Dublin. Ile was a graduate of Edinburgh medical school, came to the United States, practiced his profession for a while in North Carolina, and finally settled in Maury county, in 1808. Mrs. Nicholson's mother was Miss Mary Gor- don, a cousin of Gen, John B. Gordon, United States

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senator from Georgia, and of Gen. James B. Gordon, who fell in the Confederate service in Virginia. Prof. Nicholson's mother was educated at the old Nashville Female Academy, is a Methodist, and though fond of society and a great reader, is thoroughly domestic, in her tastes and habits. She is the mother of seven children, namely : (1). Osburn P. Nicholson. (2). Hunter Nicholson. (3). A. O. P. Nicholson, jr. (1). Andrew J. Nicholson. (5). Charlie O'Reilly Nichol. son. (6). Mary Nicholson (now Mrs. A. B. Estes). (7). Anna Nicholson (now wife of Hugh Gordon).

Prof. Nicholson graduated, first, at Franklin College, Tennessee, in 1852, under President Fanning, and next, in 1855, at the University of North Carolina. After graduation he became associate editor with his father of the Washington Union, and while at the capital studied law with Hon. Caleb Cushing, then attorney- general of the United States. From 1857 to 1861, he practiced law at Columbia as a member of the firm of Nicholson, Sykes & Nicholson, meantime editing the Columbia Herald, from 1858 to the breaking out of the war.

In 1837, when Hon. Isham Q. Harris became goy- ernor of Tennessee, young Nicholson was appointed on his staff as adjutant-general of the State. From the battle of Fort Donelson to the surrender of Forrest's command at Gainesville, Alabama, he was actively en- gaged as major and assistant adjutant-general, and saw service in Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama and Mississippi. (See History of Forrest's Campaigns by Jordan and Pryor).

The war over, Prof. Nicholson returned to the editor- ship of the Columbia Herald. In 1868, he established and edited the Dixie Farmer at Columbia, but subse- quently moved the paper to Nashville, Paul & Tavel becoming the publishers. In 1869, he was called to the chair of agriculture in the East Tennessee University, at Knoxville, and has been connected with the college ever since, at present being professor of natural history and geology.

In 1871, he was actively instrumental in organizing the bureau of agriculture of Tennessee, and was ap- pointed by Gov. John C. Brown one of its commission ers, and continued as such during four years, the exis- tence of the bureau. (See Resources of Tennessee by

J. B. Killebrew). He has been continuously connected with the press from his boyhood to the present, either as editor, contributor or author.

He married, first, at. Harmar. Ohio, in 1855, Miss Lot- tie Stone, a graduate of the high school at that place, and daughter of Col. Augustus Stone. Her mother, Charlotte Putnam, was a lineal descendant of the cele- brated Israel Putnam, of Revolutionary fame. Her undle Col. A. W. Putnam, was for many years presi- dent of the Tennessee Historical Society, and is the author of a most excellent and valuable work, " The History of Middle Tennessee." Mrs. Nicholson died, January 7, 1873, leaving five children : (1). Caro Nich- olson. (2). Maury Nicholson. (3): Augustus Nichol- son. (4). Loring (" Lora ") Nicholson. (5). Rebecca Nicholson.

Prof. Nicholson's next marriage, which occurred Oc- tober, 1875, was with Miss Kate D. Martin, daughter of Dr. Robert Martin, of Nashville. Her mother, Miss Eliza Dickinson, is the daughter of Dr. J. Dickinson, of Williamson county, Tennessee. Mrs. Nicholson was educated at Dr. Elliott's Female Academy, at Nash- ville, is an Episcopalian, and combines, in a remark - able degree, domestic and literary tastes. By this marriage Prof. Nicholson has two children: (1). Hun- ter Nicholson, jr. (2). Bessie Nicholson. Prof. Nich- olson is also an Episcopalian, and .in politics a Dem- oerat.

Prof. Nicholson has been governed in his whole life by a conscientious desire to occupy no position which he did not feel himself competent to fill, seeking by preference those in which he could do most good to others. He has never used wine, brandy or tobacco- and yet never belonged to a temperance society. He has been an inveterate reader from nine years of age. His omnivorous reading, his inordinate fondness for books, and his wide and intimate knowledge of them, acquired for him the appointment of librarian of the university, in addition to his regular duties as professor. He pays a severe penalty for his revels in the luxuries of so many branches of learning, for by reference to the catalogue of the university, it will be seen that he has at present assigned to him no less than twelve topics, an amount of brain work that would break down many men.

PROF. ZUINGLIUS CALVIN GRAVES, A. M., LL. D.

WINCHESTER.

M ARY SHARP COLLEGE, founded in 1849, which has brought one million dollars to Win- chester, and now stands in the front rank of the female colleges of the Union, owes the system of discipline

which has given it success mainly to Prof. Z. C. Graves, who has been at its head for thirty-five years. Ilis theory of female education is: that culture gives both tone and direction to the charms of womanhood : that

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it is instruction as a means of development of person- ality ; that systematic study is thinking ; that habits of industry are chief objects of scholastic training, and that culture should at once be broad, liberal, thorough and progressive, and include the truths counceted with temporal and eternal destiny. Its teachers engaged. its equipment and methods founded upon this philosophy, it has stood the test of time and acquired a reputation that has drawn to it large patronage and created a wide demand for its alumnas. and even its undergraduates. for teachers, four hundred of whom are now in the field.

The man who has, through this institution, impressed himself upon his times, is the subject of this biography, 4. C. Graves. Their histories are inseparable. To speak of one is to think of the other. For forty years he bas been a teacher. working seven hours a day -- not super- intending merely, but actually teaching, and of those scholastic years has not lost forty days' time -- an extra- ordinary record. The first woman's college requiring a liberal education, including higher mathematics and Latin and Greek, was the Mary Sharp, and in 1853, it conferred the degrees named on the first two women in the world's history who had received such diplomas. The graduates were Miss Nannie Meredith (now Mrs. Embrey) and Miss Mary A. Falmer (now Mrs. Forbes). Since that time three hundred and ten young ladies have received the degree at the Mary Sharp College,

Mary Sharp College began as an experiment. The problem was whether women can be educated in the higher branches equally with men. A visit to this in- stitution ought to convince the most hardened skeptic that they can, for the junior classes in mathematics are uniformly required to calculate an eclipse and develop all the formulas for plane and spherical trigonome- try ; and the same enthusiasm is manifested in astron- omy, and even the little children exhibit it in the primary branches. It depends upon how a dish is cooked whether one takes to it with relish. The thor- oughness and extent of the studies and methods of this institution ought to be known over the South, and its patronage trebled. It is a true statement that the cur- riculum here is the same as that of boys colleges, plus music. There are five professors and five under teach. ers, and twelve pianos in use, all new, and an esprit du corps that is best translated by calling it the enthusiasm of confidence. A primary school and a normal depart. ment are features of the institution. It is not architect- ural piles only, but men, that make colleges. There are names connected with the universities of Oxford, Edin- borough, Dublin, Berlin and Yale as lasting and as monumental as the buildings in which they are taught. And the name of the master spirit of Mary Sharp College is passing into a fame that will survive the edi- fice in which he has instructed tive thousand girls.

Prof. Graves is a great enthusiast in the teacher's pro- fession; he is wholly absorbed in the teacher's work. In the school-room he has wonderful power over his

pupils in directing those energies-to make students of them-to make thinkers of them; to inspire his stu- dents with a love of their work. As an instructor be- fore his class, possessing ability to impart and impress- in all this lies the secret of his success. The members? of the faculty, while not imitators of him, are equally enthusiastic in their several departments. The fact that their freshman classes start with sixty or seventy pupils, and the senior classes run out with sixteen or twenty members, demonstrates that other fact, that their pupils are not advanced without being thorough and " sure enough " scholars. In Latin and Greck the class in Horace, examined in 1883, was pronounced by competent linguists superior to any in any college, male or female, in the United States, known to the gentlemen witnessing the renderings and listening to the history of the odes. In fact, it has long been a saying about Winchester, that if Graves cannot get an idea into a student's head, no one else need to try it, for he will get on top and stamp it in.

Prof. Graves is a native of Chester, Vermont, born April 15, 1816, and there grew up at his books, do- ing the common work of that country, as required on a farm, but his mind ever upon his studies. He graduated from the Black River Institute, of Vermont, in 1837. and at the age of twenty-one, left home for the Western Reserve of Ohio, where he founded and be- eume principal of Kingsville Academy. He had taught common schools, winter sessions, in Vermont. His success at Kingsville was brilliant-his pupils coming from many States, and some of them becoming distin- guished in after life, among them : Prof. Lucien Os- born, forty years a professor in Madison University; Prof. J. W. Fowler, president of Michigan University; Rev. J. W. Knopp and Rey. William Ward, mission- aries to Burmah; Rev. Daniel Bliss, president of Bry- ant College, in Syria, and others.

After teaching at Kingsville twelve years, he was called to the founding of Mary Sharp College, where he has spent the remainder of his life, so that since he formally entered upon his profession, he has been in only two places. As previously stated, Mary Sharp College was in its inception a new departure, its purpose being to demonstrate the problem whether the female mind is capable of that development in science equal to that of the male mind. It was once thought excep- tional that Caroline Herschel should be the equal of her brothers, as a mathematician, but Prof. Graves has demonstrated the fact that the feminine mind generally is susceptible of the same degree of development as the masculine in the abstruse sciences-mathematics, meta- physics, aesthetics and ethics. That his efforts in this direction have met with success, and received due recog- nition by other eminent educators, the honors that have been conferred upon him bear testimony. The degree of A. M. was conferred upon him in 1816, by Madison University, New York, and later, that of

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Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 73

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