Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 90

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 90

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

1866, he obtained license from Judges David Campbell and Hillary Ward, and at once began practice at Pu- laski. In 1868-9, he was a State director in the Nash- ville and Decatur railroad. From 1870 to 1872, his brother, Fontaine Smithson, was associated with him in the practice of the law at Pulaski.

He was district attorney-general for the Eleventh cir- cuit, composed of the counties of Williamson, Maury, Marshall, Giles, Lawrence, Lewis and Hickman, from November, 1867, to September, 1870. At this time the bar of that circuit was exceptionally strong, having among its members some of the ablest lawyers in the State. This office was, therefore, a splendid school for the young attorney-general. Since then he has, on sev- eral occasions, acted as special judge and chancellor, appointed by the governor and elected by the bar,

Ile was elected State senator, in the thirty-eighth General Assembly for the Fifteenth senatorial district, composed of the counties of Giles, Lawrence, Wayne and Lewis, November 6, 1872, for the years 1873 and 1874, and was chairman of the senate committee on judiciary. He was also chairman of a special joint committee to investigate the affairs of the Bank of Tennessee, which sat at Nashville, after the adjourn- ment of the Legislature. He was an industrious and efficient member of the senate, his committee doing a large portion of the work of the session. lle was one of the thirteen senators who voted for the pub- lie school law of 1873, under which the present sys- tem of popular education has grown so efficient and beneficial to the State. Of the measures introduced by him that became statute law, may be mentioned the act for the better enforcement of mechanics' liens, and an- other, allowing attorneys to appeal from judgments striking them from the roll for contempt of court.

He has been a member of Pulaski Lodge, No. 12, In- dependent Order of Odd Fellows, and of the Encamp- ment, in which he held the chiefoffices. He is now a member of the Knights of Honor, American Legion of Honor, Ancient Order of United Workmen, Pulaski Lodge of Free Masons, and of Pulaski Commandery, No. 12, Knights Templar, having held the offices of Captain-General and Generalissimo in said Command- ery. He is a member of the Tennessee Historical So- ciety, and of the Bar Association of Tennessee.

In polities, he is independent. He was always op- posed to slavery. Having read Wayland's Moral Phil- osophy, when a boy, he was thereby convinced that slavery was unjust and morally wrong; that it was im- politie and ruinous to the country. He has ever since held these views. He has always held that all citizens, rich and poor, great and small, should have equal rights

407

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

before the law; that the legal rights of each and all should be precisely the same. He also advocates wom- an's right to vote, to hold property independently of their husbands, and to participate in the affairs of State, believing that the restrictions upon them and their subjection to the men are relies of barbarism. He be- lieves in the utmost freedom of thought and action, in society, polities and religion, consistent with the rights of others. He was a delegate to the national Greenback convention which convened at. Indianapolis, Indiana, in June, 1876, by which Peter Cooper was nominated for the Presidency, he putting Mr. Cooper in nomination before the convention. He was also a member of the national executive committee of that party during the canvass of 1876.

Ile was married in Giles county, Tennessee, April 2, 1865, to Miss Alice Patterson. . Mrs. Smithson was educated in Giles county, is a member of the Meth- odist church, and is noted mainly for the domestic virtues. There have been born unto them six children, Anna Laura, a graduate of Martin Female College, Pu- laski, Noble Smithson, jr., John, Tully, Guy and Ahua.

lle was a director in and the attorney for the Na- tional Bank of Pulaski, from 1878 to 1882. Finan- cially, he is to-day in excellent circumstances, owns

a beautiful farm of three hundred acres on Richland creek, three miles west of Pulaski, on the Pulaski and Vale mills turnpike, which is well stocked and in a high state of cultivation. He and his father. J. G. Smithson, own the Vale mills property, consisting of a merchant and custom grist mill, cotton factory, ware- house, store-house and other buildings, the mills and factory being operated by the water power of Richland creek. Said mills and factory are in active operation and doing a thriving business.

His motto has always been to merit success by en- ergy, industry and close applicaion. He believes that fortune helps those who help themselves; that every one is, to a certain extent, the architect of his own fortune; that he who would succeed, must rely upon himself; he believes that few, if any, will aid another unless such aid will profit him who gives it, or grat- ify some of his passions or prejudices. Hle attempts to view human affairs as they are, not as they should be. He has a large practice in the local courts and in in the Supreme court of Tennessee, and is an attorney of the Supreme court of the United States. As a law- yer, he is chiefly distinguished for the labor and care bestowed upon his cases, and the thoroughness with which he prepares them.

BISHOP H. N. MOTYEIRE.

NASHVILLE.

H OLLAND NIMMONS MOTY RIRE was con- verted at the age of twelve, at Cokesbury school, South Carolina, in 1837, and since he put his hands to the plow has not looked back. He had a good induc- tion, his parents, moreover, being love-feast and class- meeting Christians, whose overflowing hospitality made their home a stopping. place for the preachers. All these influences had their effect on his character, and gave direction to his after life.

At the age of twenty he began to preach, the very year he felt called to the ministry. He has preached constantly ever since. He joined the Virginia confer- ence November, 1845, was sent to Williamsburg, Vir- ginia, and preached there until May, 1816. At that time the first general conference of the Methodist Episcopal church, South, was held in Petersburg, and that general conference elected Rev. Dr. T. O. Summers to be editor at Charleston, Dr. Summers at that time being pastor of the principal church at Mobile. Young MeT'yeire being at the conference to see the great mon of the church, Bishop Andrews picked him up there and sent him to take Dr. Summers' place at Mobile. He reached Mobile July 1, everybody assuring him he would have the yellow fever. He was at once intro-

duced to the quarterly conference, which he found in session, occupied in discussing the startling question of buying a lot in the new city cemetery for the purpose of burying preachers who might die of the fever. The lot was not bought in vain, for, in 1851, three preachers were buried in it who had died of the yellow fever. He preached there until the end of the year, and although he did not take the fever himself, the first man he was called on to bury had died of it. While in Mobile he made the acquaintance of the lady who became his wife, a cousin of the lady whom Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt afterward married. This is one of the secret links of a chain of causes that ultimately gave origin to the great Vanderbilt University, located at Nashville.

Ilis next station after Mobile was Demopolis, Ala- bama, in 1847; next at Cohimbus, Mississippi, in ISIS. Hle was then transferred to New Orleans, where he spent ten consecutive years, first as pastor of Felicity Street church, which he built, and then, from 1851 to 1858, as editor of the New Orleans Christian Advocate, which he founded in 1851. In 1858, he was elected by the general conference to edit the Nashville Christian Advocate, a position which he filled until February

408

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

1862, when he left the city, on the fall of Fort Donelson, and did not return until February, 1867.

While within the lines of the Confederacy, in 1863, he took charge of the church at Montgomery, Alabama. In 1866, he went to the general conference at New Orleans, as a delegate from the Montgomery conference, and was there, in April, 1866, elected bishop, together with three others-Wightman, Marvin and Doggett. Since his election as bishop, he has presided in each of the thirty-seven conferences of the church.

Bishop MeTyeire has been rather a builder up of the church, looking after its doctrine, discipline, pastoral visiting and general edification, than a revivalist. His most important contribution to the church was to codify its laws in a volume called " The Manual of the Disci- pline for the Direction of Church Courts and Coufer- ences." He was the author of the resolution, which he introduced in 1866, for the admission of lay delegations, and lay delegates took their seats in the general confer- ence in 1870, for the first time,- That legislative act was a great crisis in the affairs of the church, and is now generally conceded to have resuscitated the church from its depression and almost collapsed condition after the war. The Northern Methodist church followed the example in 1868, and lay delegates took their seats in 1872, in the general conference of the northern church. The lay addition brings in and concentrates all the forces of the church. The result is that the southern church doubled its membership in fifteen years, and is the stronger on account of the measure.

In addition to his seven years' editorial experience in New Orleans, and three years in Nashville, Bishop MoTyeire has led a busy literary life otherwise. In 1851, the Baptist convention of Alabama offered a prize of two hundred dollars for the best essay on the duties of Christian masters. He competed for the prize, his essay was accepted, and published under the title of " Duties of Christian Masters"-(300 pp., 16 mo.) In 1869, he wrote, at the request of the bishops of his church, his "Manual of the Discipline, " (320 pp., 16 mo.) Since its publication appeals from quarterly and annual conferences have greatly diminished, the volume hay- ing given uniformity to the administration of church affairs. His next work, written in 1871, was " A Cate- chism of Bible History," (240 pp., 16 mo.); in 1874, "A Catechism on Church Goverment," (200 pp., 16 mo.) In 1884, he wrote his " History of Method- ism," (octavo, 688 pp. ) This is a history of Methodism from a southern point of view, not a history of southern Methodist. A recent writer in the Nashville Ameri- can says of this remarkable work : " It enjoys the rare distinction of being the only history of the church by a southerner. Every page reveals the hand of a master word-builder and faithful historian. Ho discusses the great subject of the church's disruption, and its con- comitant issues, in a spirit of utter impartiality, and with an argumentative power that carries conviction to

every unbiased mind. The work as a whole is justly esteemed a classic by the educated of all Christian sects into whose hands it has gone. The author and the communion he represents are signally honored in the fact that this history has won such high favor within a twelve-month."

In March, 1873, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, of New York, made a donation of five hundred thousand dollars for founding Vanderbilt University at Nash- ville, making it a. condition of the donation that Bishop MeTycire should be president of the board of trustees for life, with a veto power, assigning as a reason that he knew Bishop MeTycire and wanted him to be to the uni- versity what he himself was to the magnificent railway system known as the New York Central. ITe afterward added five hundred thousand dollars, and his son, Wil- liam II. Vanderbilt, subsequently donated two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, making the entire donation one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Bishop MeTyeire expended five hundred thousand dollars of these funds for the grounds, buildings and apparatus of the institution. The grounds comprise seventy-live acres, beautifully situated, and have all the requirements for health, eligibility, etc. The various buildings are thirty in number. The institution has six departments and employs forty professors. Thus, with its munificent endowment, learned faculties and magnificent scheme of buildings, Vanderbilt University has become the greatest institution of learning in the South or Southwest, and equal to the famous old insti- tions of the North and East.

Bishop MeTyeire married, in Mobile, Alabama, No- vember 9, 1867, Miss Amelia Townsend, a native of that city, born in 1827, daughter of Maj. John W. Townsend, founder and for many years editor of the Mobile Register, and postmaster at Mobile, under Pres- idents Van Buren and Polk. The Townsend family were formerly New Yorkers, and bought Oyster Bay, Long Island, from the Indians. Originally, they were Qua- kers of English descent. Mrs. MeTycire's maternal grandfather was Judge John F. Everett, a native of Georgia, and one of the first mayors of Mobile. He died at a good old age, but his mother survived him many years and died in southern Georgia, over one hun- dred years old. Mrs. MeTycire's mother was Jane In- dependence Everett. She died in Bishop MeTycire's house at Nashville, in 1876, at the age of sixty-six. Mrs. Melycire's grandfather. Judge Everett, married three times. His second wife, a Miss Hand, was a first cousin of Commodore Vanderbilt. Mrs. MeTycire was educated in Mobile and in New York, and was in her youth reputed the most beautiful woman in Mobile ; and though now fifty-seven, has not a grey hair, does not use spectacles, and is very active and vigorous. Her leading characteristic is fondness for domestic life, a keeper-at-home .. She is not fond of general society, but cultivates a few friends, who are closely knit to her.

409

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

By his marriage with this lady, Bishop MeTyeire has had eight children, two of whom died in infancy. The surviving are: (1). Mary Gayle MeTyeire, born in 1848; educated at New Orleans and Nashville. (2). John Townsend MeTyeire, born in 1850; graduated at Emory and Henry College; now in railroad business. (3). Walter Montgomery MeTycire, born in 1852; now in railroad business. (4). Amelia MeT'yeire, born in 1856; educated at. Nashville; married Prof. J. J. Tigert, of the Vanderbilt University, and has three children, Mary, Holland and John. (5), Holland N. MeTyeire, born in 1859; educated at Nashville; now in business in the Southern Methodist Publishing House, Nash- ville. (6). Janie MeTycire, born in 1862; graduated at Ward's seminary, Nashville ; married, in 1852, Prof. W. M. Baskervill, of Vanderbilt University, and has one child, Amelia.

Bishop MeTycire was a Whig until the Whigs got lost, since which time he has been an eclectic Democrat. lie belongs to no secret society, once assigning as a rea- son, " it took all his time to be a Methodist."

Bishop MeTyeire was born in Barnwell district, South Carolina, July 28, 1821, and there grew up to the age of thirteen, when his father moved to the old Creek Nation, Russell county, Alabama, in 1838. There he went to school, worked on a farm, and trapped wild turkeys until 1840, when his father sent him to a manual labor school at Talbotton, Georgia, where he studied and worked two years. He then went to Ran- dolph-Macon College, Virginia, and entered the sopho- more class under President Landon C. Garland, now chancellor of the Vanderbilt University. In 18444, he graduated fourth in a class of twelve. After gradua- tion he was elected to act as tutor of mathematics and ancient languages, and, after filling that position one year, joined the conference, as before stated.

Mel'yeire is a Scotch name. Nimmons is Trish. The Bishop's grandfather, John MeTyeire, was born in the northern neck of Virginia, was a farmer, and married Lucy Shelton, of Virginia. The Bishop's father, John McTyeire, was called Capt. MeTyeire, because he raised and drilled a company in 1832-3 in South Carolina, in the nullification cause, he being a Calhoun man. His politics and his religion are indicated in the fact that he had one son named John Calhoun and another named William Capers. He was a successful planter, and remarkable for decision and force of character. An instance is related of that decision which made him a leader of men : Once, while traveling through south Alabama, he stopped at a village where he was an entire stranger. During the night a fire broke out, the people were in confusion, and he stood there giving directions, nobody knowing who he was, then or afterward; but he had an air of command about him, the people obeyed, and the fire was extinguished. He died at his home, in Russell county, Mabama, in 1860, aged sixty seven years.

Bishop MeTyeire's mother was Elizabeth Nimmons, 52

daughter of Andrew Nimmons, an Trishman, who came over in time to fight the battles of the Revolution. He was for many years the high sheriff of Barnwell dis- triet, South Carolina -- loved his toddy, loved his coun- try, and loved his children. He was a cotton raiser and a thrifty man. He had the best Irish qualities . was popular, energetic and hospitable. He died at the age seventy. His wife was Miss Jemima Montgomery, born on the Savannah river. of Irish descent. Her five sis- ters married influential citizens of that country Cato, Furz, Provost, Noble and Hutto all planters in the Savannah river bottoms. Bishop MeTycire's mother had a very full development of poetic feeling, was of tender sentiments, a great lover of her home and chil- dren and neighbors, and beloved by them all. She was exceptionally attentive to her sick servants and the aged and infirm among them. Her husband was an iron- willed man ; she was gentle. He was stern; she was tender. Such were the pair that gave to the church one of its ablest and most useful bishops. She died in 1861, leaving four sons, Henry, Holland N. (subject of this sketch), John C. and William C .; and three dangh- ters, Jane (Hurt), Elizabeth ( Harris) and Kunna (Harris)-two sisters marrying two cousins.

Two qualities, essential to a pastor, are, in equal pro- portions, blended in the character of Bishop MeTyeire- one, the iron will inherited from his father ; the other, the tenderness derived from his mother. He is a gentle, manly man ; a thinker, prompt to decide and execute with force. It will interest young parents to know some- thing of his boyhood. At a very tender age he got an impression at home that made him revolt against drunk- enness, laziness, sabbath-breaking and vices generally. His father had a fine knack of holding up a bad case to make his children abhor a vagabond or a drunkard, and to admire an industrious, sober, truthful man. His father would cite these personal instances, not for sub- jects of gossip or scandal, but as warnings or examples. Ile would tell the sons how, by study, by labor, and by honor; certain poor boys had risen to be great men : would point out successful poor young men, who had struggled up from poverty to distinction. The father never allowed liquor in his house, and created in che son an abhorrence of that class of vices, and took pains to keep him under good moral and religious influences, especially in the matter of selecting schools for him- passing by four State universities to take him to Ran- dolph-Macon, because he had learned that there his son's morals would be safer. At the age of twelve the boy joined the church. Parents who would learn how this man came to succeed in life must take into account that he had a good send-off at the hands of a system- atie, laborious, and, as the result proves, far-seeing father, who had faith in Solomon's axiom, "Train up a childin the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.'

There remains one other factor of his success, and

410

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

that is the rule the Bishop laid down for himself: To undertake, not what he thought he could do, or would like to do, but what he thought ought to be done. This often involved him in perplexities and troubles,

and subjected him to the criticism of being wanting in prescience; but once committed to a work, he must pull through it, always finding it was nearer the shore he started for than the one he left.

JUDGE JOIIN C. GAUT.

NASHVILLE.

T HIE subject of this biography was born in Jeffer- son county, Tennessee, on French Broad river, about seven miles below Dandridge, February 27, 1813. When the son was eight years old, his father moved to the Hiawassee district, and settled four miles southeast of Athens, Tennessee. There our subject was reared, working upon his father's farm until he was twenty- one, going to school very little. Upon reaching his ma- jority, he hired out to get money to go to school. In 1833-34, he attended Forest Hill Academy, then under Charles P. Samuels; taught a school himself, in Mon- roe county, five months, and, at the request of his em- ployers, continved the session three months longer. In April, 1835, he went to the Theological Seminary, at Maryville, presided over by the distinguished Dr. Isaac Anderson, and remained there one year. In April, 1836, he entered the East Tennessee College, at Knox- ville (now the University of the State of Tennessee), but his funds having been exhausted by the fall of the same year, he left school, and again taught near his home, in MeMinn county, until the spring of 1837, when he returned to college at Knoxville, and remained until the following October, leaving without graduating.

He commenced studying law, January 1, 1838, with Hon. Spencer Jarnigan, at Athens, Tennessee, and No- vember 13, 1838, was admitted to the bar by Judges Charles. F. Keith and Edward Scott. He practiced around the circuit till February 19, 1839, when he located at Cleveland, and practiced there until Octo- ber, 1853, at which time he was elected, as a Whig, over his competitor, George W. Rowles, by the Ten- nessee Legislature, to the circuit judgeship of the Third (now Fourth) judicial circuit, comprising the counties of Bradley, Polk, MeMinn, Meigs, Rhea, Bledsoe, Ma- rion and Hamilton. In May, 1854, under the changed constitution, he was elected to the same position by over one thousand one hundred majority, having the same opponent. Again, in May, 1862, he was re-elected by the popular vote.

In April, 1865, he resigned his judgeship, moved to Nashville, and resumed his private practice, after hav- ing been on the bench nearly twelve years. During that long period he missed only one court, and that from the extreme illness of his daughter, Mary L., who afterwards sickened and died at Nashville, in June,

1865, aged twenty-four. From 1846, to 1854 (seven years and eight months), he was a director, in behalf of the State of Tennessee, in the East Tennessee and Georgia railroad company. Under this directory the road was built from Dalton, Georgia, to Knoxville. At a time when railroads were not very popular, he was their friend, joining with James Whitesides and others in advocating the granting of charters to them over the State. Though an old line Whig, when he came to Nashville, he opposed many of the measures of the Brownlow administration as being "too extreme," among which were the disfranchisement of ex-rebels and rebel sympathizers, and the enfranchisement of the negroes. This rendered him obnoxious to the then State government, causing him to be threatened with arrest by Gov. Brownlow for his published articles in opposition to these measures.

At Nashville, in 1867-68, Hon. Robert L Caruthers, ex-judge of the Supreme court of Tennessee, was asso- ciated with Judge Gaut in the practice of law. This partnership was dissolved by Judge Caruthers accept- ing a position in the Lebanon law school, in the latter part of 1868.

Judge Gaut became a Mason at Cleveland, in 1853, and has taken the Royal Arch degrees. In religion, he is a Cumberland Presbyterian. The Gauts are of Scotch and Irish descent, and blue-stocking Presby- terians.

Judge Gaut's great-grandfather died a soldier in the Revolutionary war. The grandfather, John Gaut, was bound out to learn the tanner's trade, in the State of Pennsylvania. Being pretty self-willed, and not liking his employer, he left him and went to Virginia, where he married a Miss Irwin. He moved to Tennessee and settled, first, in Washington county, and next, on the French Broad river.

Judge Gaut's father, James Gaut, was born in Wash- ington county, Tennessee. He died, February 13, 1875, nearly ninety years old. He was a farmer, a strictly honest rian, and did not like anybody that was not hou- est or refused to pay his debts. He was one of the commissioners to locate the county site and lay off the town of Athens.

Judge Gaut's mother, nee Miss Rosamond Irwin, was born in Washington county, near Jonesborough, and

John le Garil

111

PROMINENT TENNESSEANS.

reared on Little river, in Blount county, Tennessee. She died in June, 1869, aged seventy-seven years, ten months and five days. For morality, mildness, dis- creetness and propriety, and for the assiduity with which she inculcated principles of integrity and honor in her children, she was a model mother, and a woman of very excellent judgment.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 90

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