Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 83

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

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To the medical journals of the country he has con-

tributed a large number of interesting and valuable papers, notably among them, one on " Disinfection of Sewers by Ozone," "Cotton as a Fomite," "Vital Sta- tisties in Tennessee," " Bovine Tuberculosis; a Fruit- tal Source of Human Disease and Death," and " Ozone and its Relation to the Public Health." He is regarded as one of the foremost authorities in the South on sani- itary matters.

Of Irish parentage, his character is naturally persist- ent and self-assertive. In the " History of Davidson County," from which the editor has culled most of the foregoing facts, it appears that on the paternal side, he is descended from Lord Plunket of Queen's counsel in the trial of Robert Emmet, in 1805, and that in the collateral branches of his ancestral family have been priests and bishops of the Catholic church in Ireland. His mother, nee Miss Anna Smyth, was a well rounded character ; possessed of many noble womanly attributes, and a mental strength and range of culture seldom found. She died in her sixty-second year, upon De- cember 7, 1877. She, as also all his maternal ancestors, were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. The Magee College at Derry, Ireland, was endowed by his great-aunt, Magee. One of his near relatives-a Plunket-is a member of the present British Parliament.

Dr. Plunket's father, James Plunket, was a native of Edgeworthstown, county Longford, Ireland, and a grad- uate of Trinity College, Dublin. He was a man of superb education and skilled in scientific mechanics. Coming to this country, he was, for many years, a manu- facturer of cotton mill machinery at . Paterson, New Jersey, whence he moved to Dayton, Ohio, lived there four years, and finally settled at Franklin, Tennessee, where he took charge of and finally became a leading member of the firm that owned the large cotton mill and mercantile establishment connected with it at that place. Ile was a well-read man, had a fine memory of names, dates and authorities, and did business on the old time principle that honesty is the best policy. In religion he was a Roman Catholic. He died January 31, 1871, at the age of sixty-eight. His brother, Judge Joseph Plunket, resides at St. Maries, Ohio.

Dr. Plunket married, in Danville, Kentucky, Novem- ber 19, 1872, Miss Jennie E. Swope, a native of that place, daughter of Col. John B. Swope, who died June 28, 1881, one of the standard men of Kentucky, a scholar and a retired merchant. Her mother, nee Miss Fannie Hunton, of a Virginia family originally, was a sister of Mrs. Judge Fox, of Danville, of Judge Logan Hunton, of St. Louis, and Col. Thomas HI. Hunton, of New Or- leans. Mrs. Plunket's brother, Col. Thomas II. Swope, is a capitalist at Kansas City, Missouri. Her brother, Logan O. Swope, is a large stock farmer near Independ- ence, Missouri, and her brother, John Swope, is a stock raiser at Midway, Woodford county, Kentucky Her sister, ner Miss Margaret Swope, is now the wife of William M. Fleming, a farmer of Maury county, Ten-

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nessee. Mrs. Plunket was educated in Danville and at Stewart College, in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and from the readiness with which she reads human nature, seems to have inherited this, the striking, characterstie of her father. Like him, also, she is devoted to literature, and is a lady of rare mental culture.

By his marriage with Miss Swope, Dr. Plunket has only one child living, Gertrude M. Plunket, who was born January 20, 1883.

Dr. Planket and wife are members of the First Pres- byterian church, of Nashville. He is a Master Masons and in politics a Democrat, although reared by a Whig father.

Financially, Dr. Plunket has been quite successful, and is in very easy and comfortable circumstances. He began professional life without inheritance, and has accumulated his fortune mainly in the line of his prac- tice and by judicious investment. He is the only phy- sician his immediate family has produced, except his younger brother, Dr. Joseph M. Plunket, who died in Nashville, January 31, 1873, at the age of thirty two. Ile took up medicine from pure love of it, and has stuck to that profession, as it correlates the natural sciences, of which he is a devotee.

His brother, Thomas Smyth Plunket, was a lieuten- ant in the United States navy; appointed to the Naval Academy at Annapolis by President Johnson, in 1867, and from which he graduated in the class of 1872. Ile distinguished himself by his fine scholarship in that in-

stitution. He lost his life accidentally while skating, at Erie, Pennsylvania, January 31, 1882. He was in his thirty-second year at the time of his death,

Dr. Plunket's brother, John Thompson Plunket, graduated from the Southwestern Presbyterian Univer- sity, at Clarksville, and afterward from the Union The- ological Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina, and after preaching several years at Raleigh, North Carolina, is now pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian church at Covington, Kentucky. He married Miss Sallie Ken- nedy, a daughter of Hon. D. N. Kennedy, of Clarks- ville, Tennessee, and by whom he has had three boys, Thomas, Henry and Paul.

Dr. Plunket's sister, are Miss Am Plunket, is the wife of Thomas M. Brennan, who was, before the war, a large manufacturer of machinery, in Nashville, who built the first locomotive engine constructed in Ten- nessee. She has five children, Thomas, Isabella, Anna, Joseph and Harry.

Dr. Plunket's sister, mer Miss Isabella Plunket, is now the wife of Henry Clark, of Nashville, for many years: connected with the Nashville, Chattanooga and St, Lonis railway. Her first husband, Willis Long, of Versailles, Kentucky, was a merchant at New Orleans. by whom she had one child, ure Miss Anna Long, now wife of P. J. Sexton, a wealthy retired contrae -; tor, of Chicago. Her second husband, Dr. Alfred Rolls, a native of Toronto, Canada, was a physician at Nashville.

IION. THOMAS WASHIINGTON NEAL.

DYERSBURG.

OL .. THOMAS W. NEAL, or, as his friends de- light to call him, "Tom Neal," one of the most popular and successful newspaper men in Tennessee, a man who numbers his friends by legions, a typical southi- ern gentleman, frank, sincere, generous and brave, well deserves a place in the Valhalla of " Prominent Ten nesseals. "

He was born in Nashville, Tennessee, April 11, 1836, and grew up there till eighteen years of age. He comes from old Virginia stock ; his grandfather, Bartholomew Neal, was a planter in that State. His father, Richard P. Neal, was born in Virginia, emigrated to Davidson county, Tennessee, where he married, and died. He was an industrious, sober man, a good citizen, an ear- nest Methodist, and at one time held an important county office. The son was an infant at the time of the father's death.

Col. Neal's mother, nee Miss Caroline Buck, is a na- tive of Nashville, and is now living in that city, at the advanced age of seventy eight. She is an affectionate

mother, of the kindliest disposition, an' exemplary Christian, being a devoted member of the Methodist church. She has only had two children, Thomas Washington Neal, the subject of this sketch, and Rich- ard Henry Neal, a faithful soldier in the Confederate army, under Gen. Bragg, and now a clerk in the David- son county trustee's office.

Thomas W. Neal was educated at Irving College, in the literary department, but regards the printing-office as his alma mater. Indeed, he may be taken as a typical typographer, for he learned the art preservative of all arts in the office of the time-honored Nashville Republican Banner, then edited by Gen. Washington Barrow. Graduating from that institution of glorious memory, he next went to Shelbyville, Tennessee, where, for a few months, he edited the Bedford Yeoman, an independent sheet in his hands. He was next em- ployed in different capacities in printing offices at Nashville, Memphis, Helena, A.nansas, Louisville and Henderson, Kentucky, Next be edited, for two years,

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the Trenton, Tennessee, Southern Standard. From there he went to Hickman, Kentucky, and edited the Times. In 1858. he edited the Dyersburg, Tennessee, Recorder in conjunction with F. G. Samson, a lawyer and clerk and master of the chancery court. He then crossed over the river and founded the Warren Sun- bram, at Warren, Arkansas, and was engaged in that occupation until the breaking out of the war. He then laid aside the "shooting-stick " and took up the "shooting iron," enlisting as a private in the Ninth Arkansas Confederate infantry regiment, under Col. John M. Bradley. Upon the expiration of his term of enlistment, he returned to Nashville and became city editor of the Daily Press for six months. He left Tennessee on account of the war troubles, and went to New York where, for several months, he was employed as proof-reader. After this he returned to Memphis, was city editor of the Daily Bulletin, and at the same time edited the Play Bill, a theatrical sheet, devoted to fashion, gossip, society on dits, etc. We next find him at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, as editor of the Dispatch, and then he returned to Dyersburg, in October, 1865 and established Neat's State Gazette, with which he has had unbroken connection, as editor and proprietor, ever since.

So far this sketch reads like the record of a newspaper man, given to roaming and without fixed aim in life. This usually falls to the lot of the Bohemian, who, like the migratory bee, sips honey on the wing, and goes on and on in his happy pursuit of sweeter flowers; but the truth is, Col. Neal has been remarkably devoted to one line of thought and action, and for a newspaper man has developed fine staying power, having remained a fixture at Dyersburg more than twenty years, and made a name as the most successful country newspaper man in Tennessee. He has filled every position in a print- ing office, from roller-boy to the editor's chair, and, as a consequence, the State Gazelle is not only one of the best weeklies in the State, but from its foundation has been a financial success.

In ante-bellum times, Col. Neal was a Henry Clay Whig, but post bellum has been a Democrat; yet with a considerable dash of independence. He founded the State Giecette during Brownlow'sadministration in Ten- nessee, when it took some nerve to edit a Democratic newspaper in this State. In the meantime, the people of his town, county and district have called him to occupy various positions of honor and trust. He has been mayor of Dyersburg two years, president of the Dyersburg Town Board of Education, president of the Dyer County Fair Association, secretary of the Sunday- school (though not a member of any church), and, as an evidence of his popularity among the younger " boys," president of the Dyersburg Base Ball Club. He is an Entered Apprentice Mason, an Odd Fel- low, and a Knight of Honor. In 1833, he was elected Dictator of the Knights of Honor, at Dyersburg,

and is now Grand Assistant Dictator of the Grand Lodge of that order for the State. In 1882, he was elected president of the Dyersburg Building and Loan Association. He has also been president of the Ten- nessee Press Association, and no annual meeting or " annual jaunt across the country " is complete without the presence of " handsome Tom Neal." In 1877, he was elected to the Tennessee Legislature from Dyer county by the largest majority ever received by anybody in that county. In 1884, he was nominated by acclamation, in the convention at Union City, as the Democratic can- date for joint representative of Dyer, Lake and Obion counties, in the forty-fourth General Assembly of Tennessee, and was triumphantly elected, having re- ceived the largest majority of any Democratic member of that body. In that Legislature he was appropriately made chairman of the committee on public printing, being the only editor in that body. He has been a delegate from Dyer county to every Democratic State convention held at Nashville since the war, and was alternate delegate for the State at large to the national Democratic convention at Chicago that nominated Cleveland and Hendricks. As a speaker, he is earnest and forcible, with considerable of the brilliancy of the finished orator. Thoroughly posted in State and na- tional polities and appreciative of the wants and feel- ing of the people; painstaking, yet quick and persever- ing in all his undertakings, he may be regarded as con- servative and liberal, yet firm and unyielding in his positions on questions of right. Honest and sincere, especially in taking the weak side early, which after- ward became the strong side, gave the people confi- dence in him, and hence his large majorities. He has frequently been on the right side in his judgment, even against popular judgment, and has at times succeeded in producing a revulsion of sentiment in His constitu- chey, thus showing that his first opinions were correct.

He began life without patrimony, and without capi- tal, save his brain and brawn. He now owns valuable real estate in Dyersburg, a farm in Dyer county, and is in very comfortable circumstances. Liberal in spirit and energetic by nature, he has never regarded stinginess as an element of success. He is not a close collector, has lost some money by going security, but he never ap- pears over-anxious about debts due him. He thinks kindness will collect a debt from a certain class of peo- ple more promptly than " dunning," or otherwise press- ing his claims. Hence, he frequently gets his money, and at the same time extends his friendship and his popularity. His object and desire is to live pleasantly and to make those around him pleasant, without vault - ing ambition for either riches or honor. His home at Dyersburg is an ideal one, as all who have enjoyed its generous hospitality will testify.

Col. Neal has been twice married; first, at Dyers- burg, December, 1859, to Miss Fannie Benton, daugh- ter of Dr. Abner Benton, of Dyersburg, a promi-

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nent physician, at one time State senator from that end of the State, and a near kinsman of the celebrated United States senator, Hon. Thomas IL. Benton, of Mis- souri. Her mother, now living at Dyersburg, at the age of fifty-seven, was originally Miss Mary Ann Wardlow, daughter of Joseph Wardlow, a very wealthy farmer, in Lauderdale county, Tennessee. Mrs. Neal was edu- cated at Brownsville, Tennessee, Female College, and was a pure, good woman, noted for her sense of right and justice and conscientious discharge of duty. She was a Methodist from early girlhood. She died in 1880, at the age of thirty-nine, having borne two children : (1). Ella Neal, born in Nashville; finished her educa- tion at Greenwood Seminary, near Lebanon, Tennessee, under Mrs. N. Lawrence Lindsley ; is an exceptionally fine vocalist, and a zealous Methodist. (2). Lillian Neal, born in Dyersburg; now in school.

Col. Neal next married in Sandgate, Vermont, June 15, 1881, Miss Alice Hoyt, daughter of William and Esther Hoyt. Her father is a farmer. Her mother comes of a literary family. Mrs. Neal is a member of the Presbyterian church, and an accomplished per-

former on both the piano and organ. She graduated with honor from the Fort Edward Institute, New York, and is of fine literary attainments.

Col. Neal is a very attractive gentleman, personally,: and was voted "the handsomest and most polished member " of the Legislature of 1881-5. Courtly in his manners, refined in his tastes, with the air of a king, yet the dash of a cavalier, you know when he looks you in the face and gives you his hand you are taking the hand of a loyal-hearted gentleman. He is of me- dium height, " five feet, eight and three-quarter inches, by Confederate measure," and weighs one hundred and sixty pounds. His hair, moustache and imperial, lib- erally sprinkled with iron-gray, give to him a nameless air of grace and gallantry. Benignity of disposition, sincerity of .conviction, impulsive generosity, yet mod- esty of. mein-these are written in indelible lines upon his features, for a kindlier nature it were difficult to find. His career as editor, legislator and business man has been built up by industry, fidelity and ability, and this is why he has attached to himself whole troops of friends.

MR. JOHN MCLEOD KEATING.

MEMPILLS.

T "HE scholarly gentleman whose name heads this sketch, and whose position is in the front rank of the ablest and most refined and polished American jour- nalists, is a native of Ireland, and comes of Scotch-Irish stock. He was born in Ireland, Kings county, June 12, 1830, grew up and was educated in Scotland until his ninth year, and afterward in Dublin. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to the printer's trade, entered the office of the Dublin World, and at the end of five years reached the highest position- fore- man of the office-when only eighteen years of age. He was also an amanuensis to the editor-in-chief. He was very studious and very rapid in acquiring the dextrous facilities of a printer, a knowledge of newspaper work -composition, press work, etc.

In 1816, he became a member of the Young Ireland Club, of which John B. Dillon was president. After the fiasco that followed in 1848, he emigrated to America, and settled at New York, where he resided until De- cember, 1851. In New York he was foreman of an illustrated weekly paper, known as the New York Journal ; was also foreman, six months, of the Leader, a noted political newspaper.

During his residence in New York city, of nearly eight years, he served six years and three months in the New York State militia, more than two years of that time in the famous Seventh regiment. He was induced to this service in the hope that by completing seven

years' service, he would be exempt from certain duties as a citizen, and would thus be free to prosecute his labors and purposes in his profession.

But on account of ill health, he went to New Orleans in December, 1854. There he worked for a short time in the printing business, then went to Baton Rouge, and thence to Nashville, where, as foreman of the com- posing room, he helped to open the Methodist Book Con- cern, now known as the Methodist Publishing House. Shortly after, he returned to Baton Rouge and became superintendent of State printing, a position he held two years. In 1856, he returned to Nashville and married, and went back to Baton Rouge. In 1857, he returned to Nashville for the third time, and became managing editor of the Daily News, of which Allen A. Hall was the editor-in-chief. The next year, 1858. he went to Memphis, was employed as commercial and city editor of the Bulletin, and that city has been his home ever since.

He remained with the Bulletin until the commence- ment of hostilities, when he was employed as a clerk, and acted for a short while as private secretary on the staff of Gen. Leonidas Polk, and was with that com- mander from the beginning of the war until October, 1861, when he was taken ill with a serious attack of typhoid fever, which confined him to his bed four months and incapacitated him for military duty of any kind, as per report of Dr. Joseph Newnan. Partially

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recovering his health, he engaged with the Southern Express company, as money clerk, and so continued until the capture of Memphis by the Federal army. After that event he was employed as city editor of the Argus, the only Democratie paper then published there, and known as the " secesh organ," with which he re- mained until the close of the war. He then established the Daily Commercial, which existed for over one year, when it was merged in the Arges and was published some months as the Commercial and Argus.

Mr. Keating spent the winter of 1867 8 in Washing. ton in confidential relations with President Andrew Johnson, and returning to Memphis in August, 1868, purchased Gen. Albert Pike's interest in the Memphis Appeal, with which journal he has been identified ever since. Three times he gave up journalism, as he sup- posed, never to return to it, because its money remuner- ation did not enable him to do what he desired for a young and growing family. He went into the cotton and grocery business, at which he did well, but was compelled to give it up by the Federal authorities in 1863. He was, as has already been stated, in the ex- press business, and also gave up a lucrative insurance business-life, fire and marine-to return to his first love, and take charge of the Appeal, in 1868, as manag- ing editor.

When Mr. Keating landed in this country, in 1818, he became a student of the politics of the country of which he determined to become a citizen, and thus was persuaded into becoming a Democrat, as he says, an humble disciple of Jefferson and of Calhoun. He did not believe in slavery, but in settling in the South, as a law-abiding man, had nothing to say; though he would have had, as all who know him admit, if ever the eman- cipation of the negro had become an open question. IFe was opposed to war, but believing in the right of seces- sion, early espoused the cause of the South as one that he believed to be the logical result of a long train of events, beginning before the Revolution and gathering strength with every cycle after. Earnestly and heartily and manfully he wrote for the people with whose for tunes he has been so intimately identified for more than a quarter of a century. He held his allegiance to the Confederacy sacred until it went down forever, and then turned to the work of guiding the hapless, helpless and hopeless people out of their individual and their na- tional distresses. Believing in individual liberty; he readily adapted himself to the changed situation and urged the acceptance of the inevitable, the rehabilitation of the country, and the restoration of the old soldiers to their places as citizens, and of the States to the Union. Negro emancipation being the great and lasting and most tangible result of the war, he believed in the education of the freedmen as necessary to their comprehension of the duties devolving upon them as citizens. He did not oppose nor did he regret their being made citizens. They could not be otherwise, being free. The decision

of Judge Gaston, of North Carolina, on the rights of bond and free, which he early met with in his studies, made a lasting impression upon him, and has been his guide ever since, where citizenship was concerned. He has always, therefore, been an ardent and uncompromis- ing friend of the negro, as he has been the champion of the rights of women to the same freedom as is enjoyed by men-to labor and participate in the affairs of gov- ernment; to vote and hold office, and help in all the affairs of State. He was one of the editors who met in Nashville, in 1869, in the Banner office, to concert measures for the restoration of the State to the people and for the enfranchisement of the ex-Confederate sol- diers and citizens. He helped to secure the adoption of the present constitution-adopted in 1870-and sus- tained Gov. John C. Brown's administration with something like enthusiasm. He was an advocate of the financial policy of that statesman, and was an uncom- promising advocate for the payment of the State debt, proving by the incontestible figures furnished by the census of 1860 and of 1870, and subsequently by that of 1880, the ability of the State to meet all its obligations. The failure to do this he regards as a grave mistake, and one that will recoil upon the people and give them trouble. During the reconstruction period he waged in the Appeal a relentless war upon the carpet-baggers in Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, where his paper circulated, and has ever regarded those repressive and oppressive measures as the greatest of all the many curses entailed by the civil war. His advocacy of manu- factures; of diversity of pursuits; of good turnpikes as a necessity to facilitate inter-county traffic; of common schools, and the utmost stretch of freedom in opposition to all class restrictions and legislation, and the dogmatic bigotry of sects, is known far and wide. He believes, as he says, that the less government has to do with the people, the greater their advance; that, thrown upon themselves, there is a direct appeal made to the indi- vidual conscience, and each man is more or less upon his good behavior. The progress of the United States, as compared with any of the nations of Europe in the last one hundred years, proves the correctness of his position. He says that no man can rise above himself, and thus he cannot be freer than nature made him. Hence, the diversity and divisions among men. He loves America, and believes in American methods, in social as in political life, as incomparably superior to those of European countries. Of the history of Tennes- see. he has been a close student, and he loves to strengthen his defense of the common people, among whom he counts himself, by pointing to the heroic self- sacrifices of the fathers and founders of the State, and the superb legacy they have left their sous in their subordination to a self-elected government, when the first colony was but a puling infant, surrounded by In- dians thirsting for its annihilation. He is proud of his citizenship and position in a State, the founders of which

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Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 83

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