History of Chittenden County, Vermont, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 94

Author: Rann, W. S. (William S.)
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason & Co.
Number of Pages: 1054

USA > Vermont > Chittenden County > History of Chittenden County, Vermont, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 94

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" P. W. BARNEY, Clerk. (L.S.) LE G. B. CANNON, President."

With so hearty an expression of friendship and good will from those who, outside of his own family, were best able to speak correctly of his character, Mr. Root might well feel happy in the retirement of his beautiful home on the shore of Lake Champlain.

When he first removed to Shelburne Mr. Root lived on the end of Shelburne Point. He came to the farm now occupied by his widow, in 1848. Here, in less than two years after the time of his retirement from active business, on the 3d day of August, 1883, Mr. Root passed away.

He was not a politician in any sense of the word, though as a citizen he always had a lively interest in current political affairs, upon which he entertained enlightened and decided opinions. From his position as a member of the old Whig party he naturally stepped into the ranks of its successor, the Republican party, with which he was after- wards identified. He never held public office, excepting that of representative in the Legislature from Shelburne for three years from about 1850. He early took an active in- terest in the affairs of the Methodist Episcopal Church of his town, and was ever ready and willing to give it the benefit of his counsel and substantial assistance.

On the IIth of December, 1831, he married Elizabeth P., daughter of Hon. Robert White, of Shelburne. They have had one child, Maria, now the wife of Charles L. Hart, of Burlington, who, with her son, Fred Root Hart, now resides with her mother on the home farm in Shelburne. Mrs. Root's father, Robert White, was one of the earliest associate judges of the County Court of Chittenden county, and a descendant of Peregrine White, of Pilgrim fame. His father, Nathan White, was an early settler on Shelburne Point, after having borne an honorable part in the War of the Revolution, and aiding in the capture of Major Andre. A more detailed sketch of this family and of his lifelong associate, Lavater White, appears in the chapter devoted to the history of Shelburne.

R OBERTS, DANIEL. Daniel Roberts is the son of Daniel and Almira Roberts, who were natives of Litchfield county, Conn., and came to Wallingford, Rutland county, Vt., early in the century. Daniel, sr., was the son of a Revolutionary soldier

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HISTORY OF CHITTENDEN COUNTY.

and was early left an orphan. After serving a seven years' apprenticeship to the clothier's or cloth-dresser's trade he became a wandering schoolmaster for five or six years, when, with his young wife, he came to Wallingford and took up his trade, which he followed for thirty years or more, and then removed to Manchester, in Bennington county, where he purchased and cultivated a farm. He died at the age of seventy-nine years and his wife at the age of eighty-four. They lie buried at Manchester. They were both fond of good reading, more than commonly intelligent, and friends of all good and right things in society. Both were musical ; the mother was a most charming singer. A relic of the father's taste in this direction is a book of familiar airs, arranged for the flute, written in his hand with a quill pen and India ink, after the fashion of those days, in a beautiful schoolmaster's script and style now obsolete. The son naturally in- herited the musical temperament of his parents.

The subject of this sketch was the fifth of ten children born at Wallingford, Vt., May 25, 1811. He entered Middlebury College at fourteen years of age, graduating in the class of 1829; studied law with Hon. Harvey Button, of Wallingford, still sur- viving at the venerable age of eighty-six years, and was adınitted to the bar of the Rut- land County Court at the September term, 1832. In November he started out " to seek his fortune," with ninety dollars in his pocket. He went by stage to Schenectady, took a canal boat for Buffalo, got frozen in near Rochester, went by stage to Ashtabula, and across the State of Ohio to Beaver, Pa., on the Ohio River, took deck passage among a throng of German emigrants down the Ohio and Mississippi. He stopped awhile at Grand Gulf and at Natchez, where he was admitted to the bar on public ex- amination in court. Robert J. Walker was then a prominent lawyer at that bar. After spending the month of February, 1833, in New Orleans, the young traveler went up the Mississippi on the steamer Yellow Stone, one of the boats of the St. Louis Fur Company, which passed its winters in the lower Mississippi trade and made its annual trip to the Yellow Stone in the Indian fur trade. He endeavored to secure a chance in the spring voyage, but could not. His disappointment was his good fortune, as was prob- ably his departure from New Orleans, for the cholera prevailed severely there during the . season of 1833 and made sad havoc on the steamer on her mountain trip. Stopping at St. Louis and straying into the court-house there, he was charmed by the eloquence of Ed- ward Bates (afterwards United States attorney-general and member of President Lin- coln's cabinet) in the defense of a half-breed Indian girl who had stabbed and killed her lover. The jury wept and, having under Missouri law the right of determining the punishment, they gave her, " poor Indian Margaret !" three months in the county jail. Landed at Naples, on the Illinois River, then in Scott county, Ill., he sought out his kinsfolk at Winchester. He spent that season in the woods mostly, hunting squirrels and wild turkeys, and getting the ague as compensation. He then went to Jackson- ville, Ill., where he encountered his class-mate, now Rev. Dr. Truman M. Post, of St. Louis, then a tutor in Illinois College. He formed a business connection with Murray McConnell (long afterwards murdered in his office). Stephen A. Douglas taught the winter school in Winchester in 1833-34, came in the spring to Jacksonville, and was admitted to the bar before he was of age, and started at once for the presidency of the United States. He took to politics as a duck to water, bought him a suit of Kentucky jeans, hob-nobbed with the border Democracy like one " to the manner born." Elected district attorney, Mr. Roberts remembers him as he started out on his circuit, astride of a three-year-old colt, his short legs reaching hardly below the saddle-skirts, and in his

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DANIEL ROBERTS.

saddle-bags his whole library, consisting of a book on criminal law, which young Rob- erts had loaned him.

In the summer of 1835 Mr. Roberts came home on a visit, which he has never fin- ished. In the spring of 1836 he took the office and business of Milo L. Bennett, of Manchester (afterwards a judge of the Supreme Court), and remained in practice at Manchester until the spring of 1856 (twenty years), when he removed to Burling- ton, where he formed a law partnership with Lucius E. Chittenden, afterwards register of the treasury and now a practicing lawyer in New York city. He has been in prac- tice in Burlington for thirty years and over, it being now nearly fifty-four years since his admission to the bar, and making more than fifty years of active law practice in this State. His name first appears in the State reports in the case of Kimpton vs. Walker, Ninth Vermont Reports, 191 (February term, 1837), and appears in every volume since, up to and including the fifty-seventh.

He has not had much to do with public office. His earliest politics were strongly anti-slavery, as a Liberty party man, Free Soiler, etc., for which reason, if for no other, offices did not seek him. However, he was bank commissioner during the years 1853 and 1854, and from the spring of 1865 to the spring of 1866 was a special agent of the United States treasury department, and for one year, 1868-69, was State's attorney for Chittenden county. In 1869, during the first term of President Grant's administration, he was offered the position of solicitor of the United States treasury department, but declined the offer ; from 1870 to 1872 he was city attorney, and again in 1880.

Although never in the Legislature, Mr. Roberts has been of marked influence in shaping the laws of the State. His hand is clearly seen throughout the general statutes by those familiar with their history and development. In particular, he has been in- strumental in securing by statute simplification of the ancient rules of criminal pleading and in enlarging the property rights of married women.

His views upon law reform he developed at length in an address before the Ver- mont Bar Association, as president thereof, in 1880. In 1878, under a contract made with the judges of the Supreme Court, by authority of the Legislature, he completed a digest of the decisions of the Supreme Court down to and including Volume 48 of the Vermont Reports, entitled Roberts's Vermont Digest. This work is accepted among the profession in Vermont as a model digest for its terseness and accuracy of statement and for bringing out the very point of the decision. It is not uncommon for the judges of the Supreme Court to cite it per se, instead of the cases, as authority.

At the Vermont centennial celebration at Bennington, August 16, 1877, he was ap- pointed orator of the occasion. The oration is inserted among the published proceed- ings of the day. It is a valuable historical document and a good specimen of Mr. Roberts's impressive and scholarly style.

In 1879, at the semi-centennial gathering of his college class at Middlebury Col- lege commencement, he received the degree of LL.D.

In July, 1837, he was married to Caroline, daughter of Rev. Stephen Martindale, of Wallingford, who died on the 14th of June, 1886. There are four children - Mary, Caroline M., Stephen M. and Robert. Of the sons, Stephen is a physician in New York city and a professor of diseases of children in the University of Vermont, and Robert is a lawyer, associated with his father in practice, under the firm name of Roberts & Roberts.

Besides his engagements in the United States Circuit Court Mr. Roberts's practice

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HISTORY OF CHITTENDEN COUNTY.

has been mainly in the counties of Chittenden, Rutland, Addison and Bennington. Although his cases have been of the infinite variety that fall to the docket of most at- torneys outside of the large cities, they have been chiefly such as seek the aid of coun- sel who have a reputation for legal scholarship and eloquent advocacy. Among the criminal cases in which Mr. Roberts appeared, and which have some dramatic interest or involve some interesting legal principle may be named the following : State vs. Archibald Bates, Bennington county. Mr. Roberts and Harmon Canfield, then both fresh at the bar, were assigned by Chief Justice Williams to defend Bates for murder by shooting his brother's wife through the window at night while she was sitting nursing her child. They achieved all the success possible in the case by a verdict of guilty. Bates was hung on Bennington Hill, in the presence of a great multitude on the 8th of February, 1839. This was the last public execution in Vermont. Since that time, by a change in the law, all executions have been within the walls of the State prison. Mr. Roberts has said of this trial, that although he defended the prisoner with all the earnestness possible, he never spoke to him before or during or after the trial, nor even went to see him hung.

Purcell and another were indicted jointly for the murder of a brother Irishman by stabbing him at night on the way down from the Dorset Mountain quarries. They were all drunk. Purcell demanded and was allowed a separate trial, and was defended by Mr. Roberts. It was absolutely certain that one of the two committed the murder, but it was uncertain which, and there was no evidence of a combination to kill. Pur- cell was acquitted because of this uncertainty, and because on that trial it appeared most probable that the other respondent did the stabbing. The other defendant was tried at a subsequent term and acquitted for like reasons, by making it appear as most probable that Purcell was the guilty party. Each verdict was clearly right, and yet the result of the two was the acquittal of a murderer ; but which was he ?

State vs. McDonald, 32 Vermont Report, 491, is a leading case involving the law of homicide. Mr. Roberts's brief in the case is particularly pointed, and the opinion of Chief Justice Redfield is worth study. On a second trial of McDonald he was very properly convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to State prison for life, where he died of consumption.

Any extended citation of civil causes, in which Mr. Roberts has been engaged, would have but little interest to the unprofessional reader. Such as went to the Supreme Court and were reported are scattered through nearly fifty volumes of State reports, and the record is to be found there.

SPARHAWK, GEORGE E. E., M.D., was born at Rochester, Vt., on the 20th day of February, 1829. His father, Rev. Samuel Sparhawk, was a Congregational clergy- man, of Scotch descent, and was born in Templeton, Mass., on the Ist day of January, 1801, and died at Pittsfield, Vt., in November, 1869. The subject of this sketch attended the Orange County Grammar School at Randolph, Vt., and the West Ran- dolph Academy, from which latter institution he was graduated in 1850. He was the better enabled to take this excellent course from the fact that his father removed to West Randolph in 1842. In the mean time, and up to 1850, he taught school a portion of each year for six successive years, in this manner displaying that diligence and inde- pendence of character which were afterward the chief factors of his success. In 1849 he began to study medicine under Dr. Gibson, of Sharon, Vt., continuing his teaching

9.E.E. Sparhawk. M. D

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GEORGE E. E. SPARHAWK, M. D.

until 1852. In March, 1852, he entered the Vermont Medical College at Woodstock, Vt., and after the close of that spring term entered the office of Dr. William F. Guern- sey, of Philadelphia, Pa. In the fall of that year he began his studies in the Homco- pathic Medical College of Philadelphia, then the only homoeopathic college in the world, from which he was graduated in March, 1853. In June following he began practicing at Rochester, Vt., in company with Dr. H. W. Hamilton, with whom he remained until January, 1854, when he assumed exclusive control of the business. He was the pioneer of his school of medicine in that section of the State, where he continued with a grow- ing practice until 1856, when he associated himself with Dr. C. B. Currier, to whom he afterward sold his business, and on account of the failing health of his wife removed to West Randolph, Vt., that she could be near her friends and relatives while she lived. In the spring of 1857 he opened an office in Gaysville, Vt., where he made weekly vis- its, which he continued until the death of his wife in December, 1858. He then made that place his home, and immediately began a practice of most unusual extent of terri- tory and of profit. From the time of his arrival in Gaysville until he left there in 1878, his ride covered a circuit having a radius of about forty miles. In June, 1878, he came to Burlington for a few days, and continued his visits until the 25th of the following November, when he made his permanent removal here, having already established an extensive and lucrative practice. Although he has won a remarkable record of success as a general practitioner, he has been drawn by his natural and acquired skill into a con- siderable specialty in gynæcology, and all diseases pertaining thereto. His reputation in this department of medical practice is not confined to Burlington, nor even to the State. He is frequently called upon from distant points as counsel in complicated cases -more frequently, indeed, than the many and pressing demands of his Burlington and Chittenden county patients permit him to respond to. He has attained an enviable prominence in his own profession and school, and since the beginning of his professional career he has taken a most active part in the promotion of its principles and the estab- lishment of institutions looking to that end. He is the oldest homoeopathic physician in the State. He aided in founding the Vermont Homoeopathic Medical Society in 1854, and did much valuable work in obtaining a charter for the State Society, which was granted by the Legislature in 1858. He has been honored by elections to nearly every office within its gift. He has been its president, secretary and treasurer, and is now its corresponding secretary. In 1859 he joined the American Institute of Homoeopathy, which is, as its name indicates, a society of national extent and jurisdiction, and in 1884 became a senior member thereof. He is also a member of the American Obstetrical Society, since its recent organization, in 1883, under the laws of the State of New York He has been a regular contributor to the Homoeopathic Journal of Obstetrics since that magazine was established in 1879, and an occasional contributor to many other medical journals and magazines.

Dr. Sparhawk has been prominently identified with the Masonic order for more than twenty years, and has taken the various degrees both of the Master Masons and the Royal Arch Masons, and is a charter member of the White River Lodge No. 90, at Bethel, Vt., of which body he was treasurer while he remained in that vicinity. In 1875 he took the first fourteen degrees of the order called the Scottish Rite, and in 1882 the remaining degrees up to the thirty-third.

Dr. Sparhawk's political preferences are decidedly Republican, though he has little to do with politics except to keep well informed upon political movements in his county,

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HISTORY OF CHITTENDEN COUNTY.

State and the nation, and to vote intelligently. At Rochester, however, his interest in the cause of education induced him to accept for years repeated elections to the quasi- political office of superintendent of common schools. In pursuance of the time-hon- ored traditions of the family, and of his own belief, he is a regular attendant at the Congregational Church.

He has been twice married; first, on the 4th of March, 1854, to Miss Lucy Ann Griswold, of Randolph, Vt., who died of consumption in December, 1858, and the second time, on the 18th of June, 1867, to Miss Mary A. Hendee, of Pittsford, Vt. He has had two sons, of whom the younger, Fred, who was born on the 5th of Decem- ber, 1870, died on the 26th of October, 1879; and the elder, Sam, who was born on the 6th of September, 1869, still lives with his parents.

TEVENS, ALONZO JACKSON, was born in Essex, Chittenden county, Vt., on S the Ist day of April, 1828. The first of his ancestors in Vermont was his grand- father, Abram Stevens, who came from Salisbury, Conn., to Essex during the early set- tlement of that town, and was elected constable at its first town meeting. He became a large landowner there, and was widely and favorably known throughout the county- A good notice concerning his services appears in the history of Essex, written for this book by Dr. L. C. Butler. He died about 1830. His son Alonzo, father of the sub- ject of this sketch, was born in Essex about 1790, became a successful farmer there, and died in 1860. His wife, Susan, was a daughter of Samuel Sinclair, also an early settler of Essex from Connecticut, whose death occurred about 1835. Mrs. Stevens died in August, 1840, aged forty-nine years.

A. J. Stevens attended the common schools of Essex, and received as good an edu- cation as can be obtained without attendance at institutions of a higher grade. For sev- eral years after reaching his majority he labored at the occupation of a carpenter and joiner, and in 1855 came to Winooski to work as millwright for the firm of Edwards & White. Oscar White, the junior member of the firm, soon after this died, and his death was followed in a short time by the destruction of the shops by fire. The land on which the shops had stood was soon after purchased by A. B. Edwards and A. J. Stevens, who formed a partnership under the name of Edwards & Stevens. The date of this purchase is 1858. The present business really owes its existence to that firm and that date. The firm remained unchanged until 1868, when the present junior partner, Frank Jubell, was admitted to an interest in the business. The main building now extends 180 x 50 feet, with an L 40 x 50 feet, and has attached a wood and pattern shop rro x 50 feet and a foundry 60 x 45 feet, besides large lumber sheds, storehouses, etc., for the accommodation of their extensive business. In these buildings Messrs. Edwards, Stevens & Co. employ a large number of men in the manufacture of mill gearing and shafting, iron and brass castings, and wood-working machinery. The business has grown from a small begin- ning to its present gratifying proportions by reason of the diligence and skill and fair dealing of the proprietors.

Mr. Stevens is decidedly Republican in politics. He has been elected one of the selectmen of Colchester for several terms, and represented the town in the Legislature of the State in 1869 and 1870, his last term being of two years' duration, under the sys- tem of biennial elections then introduced. He was also elected one of the senators from Chittenden county in the summer of 1886, and has received various other evidences of the esteem and confidence of his fellow townsmen. His religious preference is Con-

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ALONZO JACKSON STEVENS. - JOHN ELDREDGE SMITH.

gregational, although he is not a member of any church. He is a regular attendant upon public worship, and contributes liberally to its support.

He has always given his time and means with unstinted public spirit to aid the in- dustries of the village of Winooski, and accorded to them his influence for the support of right and justice. He was a charter member of the Winooski Savings Bank, and has been a director in that institution ever since.

In September, 1858, Mr. Stevens married Mary J. Rood, of Colchester. They now have three children, Mary Ellen, Charles H. and Hattie, all living with their parents.

MITH, JOHN ELDREDGE, was born in New Haven, Addison county, Vermont, S on the 20th of July, 1829. He traces his ancestry on his father's side to his great- grand father, Nathan Smith, who was born in Ridgefield, Conn., December 12, 1728, and whose wife, Mary Stoddard, of North Salem, Westchester county, N. Y., was born on the 2Ist of the same month in the same year. After his marriage he lived in North Salem, N. Y., where he became the father of ten children, viz .: Abner, Nathan, Annis, Nathan, 2d (born March 22, 1763, after the death of Nathan Ist), Annis, 2d (Annis Ist having died), Mary, Benjamin, Caleb, Peter B., and Fannie. Of these Peter B. and Nathan 2d were the only ones who came to Chittenden county to reside, the for- mer, a tailor by trade, settling in Burlington, where he died.

Nathan Smith, 2d, grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was in December, 1788, united in marriage with Abigail, daughter of John Eldredge, who formerly kept a tav- ern on the corner of Fourth street and Winooski turnpike, Burlington, now South Bur- lington, by whom he had eight children, as follows: Cornelia, John Eldredge, Sally Blagden, Betsy Eldredge, Pierpont Edward, Charles Lee, Lydia Lucia, and John Lu- cius. He came to Burlington in 1786, and first pitched on the site of the present city of Burlington, but through a defective title lost the place and removed to the lot now known as the Fish farm, on Fourth street in South Burlington, and made the first clear- ing thereon in the fall of 1788. Here he kept a tavern of considerable notoriety, being a frequent host of large numbers of passengers traveling by stage in days when that was the fastest mode of travel and traffic. In 1822 he went to New Haven, Vt., where on the Ist of May, 1835, he died. He was a minute-man in the Revolution, and was for a time in active service under Washington. During the War of 1812-15 the Amer- ican troops were often quartered at his tavern. Although outwardly of a stern, uncom- promising demeanor, he possessed the most desirable traits of character for a pioneer in a virgin land like early Vermont. He became acquainted with the country while on a surveying tour in this part of the State with Ira Allen, during which he assisted in run- ning the lines of Moretown, Middlesex, and several other towns, before settling in Bur- lington. His first approach to Northern Vermont was by means of a canoe on Lake Champlain.

Pierpont E. Smith was born in the tavern above mentioned on the 7th of October, 1800, married Sylphina Hanchett, of New Haven, on the 11th of December, 1823, and had four children, Nathan Hanchett, who was drowned at six years of age, John El- dredge, Charles Palmer, born August 22, 1832, and died February 21, 1862; and Lucy Cornelia, born July 18, 1837, now the wife of Charles M. Fillmore, of Minnesota. He died on the 19th of July, 1884, at the house of his son, the subject of this sketch. His wife died on the 16th of February, 1875.

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History of Chittenden County, Vermont, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 94

Author: Rann, W. S. (William S.) Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason & Co. Number of Pages: 1054

Author: Rann, W. S. (William S.)
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Syracuse, N.Y. : D. Mason & Co.
Number of Pages: 1054