USA > Vermont > Vermonters : a book of biographies > Part 13
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tion, Captain Partridge became a powerful influence in American education.
In 1833, 1834, 1837 and 1839, Captain Partridge represented the town of Norwich in the Vermont Legislature and in that capacity labored to give efficiency to the military system of the Green Mountain State. In 1838, he was influential in calling together a convention of officers and persons interested in military affairs from several states. This convention met at Norwich, Vermont, on the fourth of July, and for several years continued to meet annually to debate plans for the organization and dis- cipline of the militia, for the dissemination of knowledge of military science, and for a consideration of coast defense. Many of the reports of this organization were drawn up by him and the proceedings printed by the order of the Congress of the United States.
The combination of versatility and persistence in this man was remarkable. Fired by enthusiasm for the citizen soldier idea in education, he never let pass an opportunity to disseminate his doctrine by the spoken or by the written word. As evidence of this may be mentioned the fact that in 1842, while serving as a camp instructor for a large body of officers and men of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Militia who were encamped at Reading, Captain Partridge, following busy days as drill master, lectured each evening to the officers assembled in the General's marqueé upon his theory of National Defense.
On this and many similar occasions he demonstrated the need for trained officers who in time of emergency could leave the pursuits of peace and serve as efficient drill masters of the raw material out of which efficient armies are made. On one oc- casion Captain Partridge said:
Let' practical and scientific military instruction be a part of our system of education, and we shall become a nation of citizen soldiers; the need of a large standing army will be done away; in case of sedi- tion or foreign invasion a sufficient force will be ready to take the field, and when the emergency passes away the character of the soldier
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will be lost in that of the citizen. Scarcely ever has a nation lost her liberties when her armies were composed of her own citizens who fought for the preservation of their liberties and property.
His influence as an educator was not confined to the founding of Norwich University as he established several military schools which were patterned after the American Literary Scientific and Military Academy out of which the present Norwich grew. Notable among these was The Virginia Literary Scientific and Military Institute established in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1839, an institution which for many years was instrumental in diffus- ing widely in Virginia knowledge and taste for military affairs.
In April, 1837, he was married to Ann Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of John Swazey of Claremont, New Hampshire. As a result of this union two sons were born, George M. C., who died in May, 1855, and Henry V., a captain in the Pennsylvania Volunteers during the Civil War and for many years a trustee of Norwich University.
Toward the close of the year, 1853, Captain Partridge returned to Norwich in apparent good health, but a few days after reach- ing home he was prostrated by a spinal trouble from which he never rallied, departing this life on the 17th of January, 1854. He was buried in the little cemetery at Norwich, Vermont, not very far from the parade ground of the old Norwich Uni- versity, and since 1919, when the Centennial of the founding of the institution was observed, an official pilgrimage from North- field has been made annually to decorate his grave and hallow his memory.
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EDWARD JOHN PHELPS
By Daniel L. Cady
T HE first time I ever saw Mr. Phelps was at a session of the United States Court at Windsor, Vermont. A mere youth, I had strayed in from the street to see and hear; the bar was full, and when I entered a gentleman was speaking, who, I soon learned, was 'Phelps of Burlington." I can see him now; tall he looked in his long, black coat, and his easy de- livery of legal language was beyond anything I had ever before listened to. I do not know who was the judge, nor who were any of the eminent men who set within the bar, nor what was the cause being heard, except that it called for the citation of Mr. Phelps of the famous Tichborne Case; he seemed as famil- iar with that case as though it were in the Vermont Reports. Phelps! Tichborne Case! Indeed, I both saw and heard that day. Within a day or two, after I remember of being told that after the adjournment of court, there being no train for Burlington for two or three hours, Mr. Phelps took his gripsack in hand and started to walk the railroad track to Hartland, in prefer- ence to wearing out his time at the hotel. This also impressed me, not then realizing that an opportunity for meditation is a part of a full life.
The next time that Mr. Phelps appeared to me was after I had matriculated at our State University; I read in the very same catalogue that contained my printed, Freshman name, that Edward John Phelps, LL.D., was special professor of Medical Jurisprudence in the College of Medicine; I thought that well he might be if a fine presence and a fine use of lan- guage were germane to the holding of the chair.
The next appearance of Mr. Phelps, was when passing Junior spring vacation at my father's house in the country, I read one blustering April evening in a New York daily that
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Edward J. Phelps, of Vermont, had been appointed Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary near the Court of St. James's.
These three "appearances" of Mr. Phelps may well be con- sidered the points of a triangle encompassing his public char- acter-a practicing lawyer, a college professor, and the rep- resentative of our government at the seat of government of the mother country. If we add another point, his parts and accomplishments as a literary man, making our triangle a square, we will have a pretty complete career-wall which only needs "pointing up" here and there to give us the superior man entire. Let us proceed briefly in this masonry respect.
The newly printed HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF MARLBOROUGH, published by our Historical Society, shows that the Vermont Phelps family "planted itself" in Marlborough in 1764, and shortly produced General John W. and Judge James H. Phelps; through the Middlebury branch came Chief Justice and United States Senator Samuel S. Phelps, and his greater son, Edward John; through the Windsor branch came the noted physician and army surgeon, Edward Elisha, one of our family doctors of whom I was much afraid as a boy. Ed- ward was born in Middlebury in 1822, graduated from Mid- dlebury College in 1840, admitted to the Addison bar in 1843, settled in Burlington in 1845, was second Comptroller of the Treasury under President Fillmore, a delegate to the Vermont Constitutional Convention in 1870, president of the American Bar Association and lecturer at the University of Vermont in 1880, Kent Professor of Law in Yale University from 1881 to his death, appointed Minister to England in 1885 and senior counsel for the United States in 1893 in the Interna- tional Tribunal which sat at Paris on the Bering Sea Controv- .. ersy; his closing argument in this lawsuit lasting eleven days and covering three hundred and twenty-five printed pages in the official record. He died in New Haven of pneumonia in March, 1900.
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Mr. Phelps' greatest efforts, according to his friends, former Governors John W. Stewart and John G. Mccullough, num- ber twelve orations and five essays, beginning with the BEN- NINGTON CENTENNIAL in 1891, and closing with THE AGE OF WORDS ... as set out in the handsome volume sponsored by them during the year following his death. Lawyer, teacher, publicist and litterateur are the terms applied to Mr. Phelps by these two friendly governors of our state.
I remember that soon after the appointment of Mr. Phelps to the English post, President Buckham of our University, took the greater part of the recitation hour in International Law to speak of the rise of the appointee. Said President Buck- ham :
His entire youth and manhood, his education and his profession, were one continuous preparation for his great diplomatc embassage; his father was a Senator of the United States for thirteen years; he himself was classically trained; then before taking up the law, he taught for a year or two in a family school in Virginia, where both social accomplishments and the sports of the open were added to his repertory of elegance. Then he studied his profession at Yale and within two years after his admis- sion to the bar, had settled in Vermont's largest town; then came his Comptrollership of the Treasury at Washington, affording him further association with prominent Southern men as well as Northern men, and during which time he cultivated the friendship of the powerful Bayard family of Delaware. His law partners in Burlington were leaders in the profession; the Smalley of Phelps and Smalley, was soon made United States District Judge for Vermont, and the Chittenden of Phelps and Chittenden, soon became Register of the United States Treasury; im- portant railroad litigation came to him and the path from City Hall Park, Burlington, which his office windows likely overlooked, to London almost came into view.
So said our University chief. Lucius Bigelow, the Vermont- born nationally known editor of the PORTLAND OREGONIAN, spoke as follows the second morning after the death of Mr. Phelps :
A lawyer who stood in the first rank of his profession at thirty-eight, an able diplomatist and statesman, a man of versatile and literary ac- complishments and unblemished personal and political integrity, a man
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of fine personal presence and address, a man of refined and cultivated manners.
Both poet and wit was Mr. Phelps; his best, though not best-known, poem, To MY COUSIN JACK (Judge Pierpoint) is printed in Hemenways' POETS and POETRY OF VERMONT. Once when giving a dinner party and speaking of his lack of a butler, he remarked: "Catherine Hayes buttles for us." When asked about the London artists and poets, whether they affected cloaks, Byron collars and flowing ties, Mr. Phelps wittily an- swered, "Oh, yes; some of them do, but when I met a man who could paint something or write something worth while, I always noticed that he dressed and looked just like anybody else."
He wrote a fine "backhanded" hand, and in later years had his manuscripts for public occasions prepared in characters so large that he did not need glasses to read them; he prided himself upon his mint juleps but detested tobacco-smoking; he was a fast friend of "Morgan the Magnificent," and the families often exchanged visits. If Mr. Phelps was sensitive to discord, it was because his ear was attuned to the harmonies of the fields, the woods and the brooks; if he was fastidious, it was because he was high-souled, an admirer once most truthfully remarked.
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HIRAM POWERS
By Samuel E. Bassett
Nothing to Wear! Now, as this is a true ditty, I will not assert-this, you know, is between us- That she's in a state of absolute nudity,
Like Powers' Greek Slave or the Medici Venus.
T THESE lines from William Allen Butler's popular poem, NOTHING TO WEAR, published in 1858, show the wide fame of Hiram Powers, which had already made his Greek Slave the best known statue in America. A few years before this poem ap- peared, Edward Everett had ranked Powers as not inferior to Can- ova or any living sculptor.
The career of Hiram Powers is almost without a parallel in the history of artists. In his family there was neither wealth nor culture; he had little formal education, and the thought of becoming a sculptor never entered his mind until after he was of age. The ancient Greeks made no distinction between artisan and artist: the craftsman who used his tools with accuracy, enthusiasm and success was to them an artist. Hiram Powers became an artist by his success as a workman with tools, and even the opportunity to work with tools came to him by chance.
Hiram was born in Woodstock, Vermont, in 1805. His father he describes as a small farmer, half blacksmith and half ox-yoke maker, but with a certain skill in everything that he did. As a boy, Hiram used to carve toys out of wood, and the use of tools in his father's workshop became second nature to him. When he was about fourteen years old, his father lost the small property which he had, left Woodstock with his family, and settled on a farm near Cincinnati, Ohio. The farm was near a marsh; malarial fever carried off the
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father and attacked Hiram. To shake it off he left the farm and did odd jobs in the city, often hungry and without proper clothes. A manufacturer of clocks gave him some bad bills to collect, and then let him work around the factory, doing rough jobs. He was first set at filing some brass castings. When the work was done, the manufacturer looked it over, and then called the chief workman. "Joe," he said, "this is the way I want them plates finished." Soon Hiram was head workman. Before long he could not only make or repair any timepiece, but had invented a better machine for cutting the wheels of watches.
The owner of a "Museum" (the great-great grandfather of the movie theatre) ordered an automatic organ, run by clock- work, with human figures to ring bells and blow trumpets. Hiram learned from a chemist how to make wax, and from living models fashioned wax heads and hands for the figures. He soon became the most famous maker of wax figures in the Middle West. Many stories are told of his ingenuity and success in imitating nature. A group of wax figures of notable personages was damaged in transportation. Powers took the head of a noted preacher and by bulging out the cadaverous cheeks and giving the gentleman two alligator's tushes for eye-teeth, and a few other appurtenances, produced the King of the Cannibal Islands, so true to life that the Museum ad- vertised the exhibition of the embalmed body of a South Sea chief, imported at enormous expense! He made a figure of a favorite actor, and fooled the audience by putting on the stage now the actor and now his wax effigy; he copied the fig- ure of his employer in a characteristic pose, so cleverly that the man's intimate friends were deceived, and he invented a "Chamber of Horrors," a mechanical representation of Dante's 'Inferno, which was so terrifying that the public was advised by prominent men not to bring their children to see it.
Meanwhile, Powers had learned from a German artist who happened to be staying in Cincinnati how to model in clay,
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and he spent much time in making portrait busts in clay of a little Cincinnati girl. Then, when he was nearly twenty-five, he saw a famous marble bust of Washington, which was being exhibited in Cincinnati. It was the first marble statue that he had ever seen. After gazing long at it, he decided to be- come a sculptor. Again financial troubles, this time the fail- ure of the Museum to pay him the long overdue debt for his wax figures, brought with it a new opportunity. A wealthy citizen, the father of Speaker Nicholas Longworth, offered to finance the preparation for his chosen career. Powers went to Washington and spent two years in modeling in clay the busts of notable men, including President Jackson. But he had not yet done anything in marble, and America at this time could teach him little. The revival of interest in Greek art, which began at the end of the eighteenth century, and the prestige of Canova, leader in the movement to return to Greek tradi- tions, made Italy the Mecca of the sculptor. In 1836, Powers went to Florence, Italy, where he was to spend the rest of his life. He rapidly learned to carve marble, and invented a new kind of chisel which produced a surface more like human flesh. His remarkable ability was soon recognized even by the Ital- ians, and within fifteen years his name was a household word in America, to which he sent all his sculptures. His chief sculptures were portrait busts and statues of great Americans, but he also translated his fancy into marble. The Greek Slave, for which he is best known, represents a young Greek woman offered for sale in a Turkish slave market. She stands with her gaze turned away from the chains on her wrists, thinking of the happiness that is hers no more. Her purity and gentle sadness make one forget the absence of garments, which was due to the Greek tradition. She appealed so strongly to the artistic taste of the time that the sculptor made six copies of the statue.
Though he was an expatriate, Powers was described at the end of his life as every inch an American. The long years
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spent abroad had not affected his patriotism or his New Eng. land homeliness and lack of artificiality. He is a typical ex- ample of what Vermont has given her sons, not the external means, but the internal power to make the most out of life: the ability to overcome difficulties by discovering new ways or by inventing new tools; the capacity for taking infinite pains, and, best of all, a spirit undaunted and venturous, not dis- mayed by reverses, and always alert to accept an opportunity.
REDFIELD PROCTOR
By Frank C. Partridge
V ERMONT, though a small state in area and population, has made herself great by the sturdy character of her people and by the notable services of her leaders. Such a one was Senator Redfield Proctor.
His family has long been prominent in the state. His grand- father, Captain Leonard Proctor, who was a lieutenant at the Battle of Lexington, removed to Cavendish, Vermont, in the winter of 1783-84, where he founded in an unbroken forest the village of Proctorsville. There Senator Proctor was born June 1, 1831. His father, Jabez Proctor, was a member of the Governor's Council, a judge of probate and twice a presi- dential elector. Two of Senator Proctor's sons have been governors of the state, Fletcher D. Proctor, 1906 to 1908, and Redfield Proctor, Jr., 1923, to 1925.
Soon after graduating from Dartmouth College in 1851, Senator Proctor went West to seek his fortune in Minnesota. He soon lost most of the little patrimony he had inherited and returned to Vermont to start at the beginning, which he al-
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ways maintained was the most favorable starting point for any young man.
Senator Proctor was thirty years of age at the outbreak of the Civil War, but promptly entered the military service as a lieutenant in the 3rd Vermont Regiment. In April 1862, while major of the 5th Vermont Regiment, he was ordered home on sick leave, the army surgeon reporting that he was well ad- vanced in consumption and could not live a month. Although he had only partially regained his health, with patriotic de- votion and inflexible will, he accepted the colonelcy of the 15th Vermont Regiment in September, 1862, and served as its colonel until the regiment was mustered out.
After the expiration of his military service, he practiced law at Rutland a few years, but in 1869 he left the law and went into the marble business at Sutherland Falls, which later became the town of Proctor. In 1880, he organized the Ver- mont Marble Company, which grew under his master hand to be the largest single industry in the state and the largest sin- gle marble company in the world. Although largely developed by his son and associates after Senator Proctor entered national public life, it was founded by his restless ambition, iron will and farseeing vision, and it grew along the lines which he laid down. Though less conspicuous than his political career, he thought of it, and not unjustly, as his greatest work.
In building up the marble business, and in fact in all his public positions, he relied chiefly upon young men. He had the largest faith in young men of anyone I ever knew. This was due primarily to his interest in their growth and success, but it was also the result of his shrewd judgment.
After service in many other public positions Senator Proc- tor became lieutenant governor in 1876 and governor in 1878. On March 5, 1889, President Harrison appointed him Secre- tary of War, and thenceforth he became a national figure. He re-organized the department along more efficient lines, in- stituted provisions for the fairer treatment of both enlisted
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men and officers, and laid the foundations for our present system of coast defense. "It was of no little consequence at this critical, formative period," said subsequently an official of the War Department, "when the nation was without a single modern defense or a single modern gun, that Redfield Proctor of Vermont was Secretary of War to give force and effect and impetus to the plans of the military experts by his wisdom, his executive ability, his knowledge of men and his great busi- ness sagacity."
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, who had been Secretary of War in the administration of Franklin Pierce, died in December, 1889, and the mayor of New Or- leans officially notified Secretary Proctor of Mr. Davis's death for the evident purpose of compelling some kind of public action by the Department. Secretary Proctor did not order the flag placed at half-mast but replied to the telegram with such moderation and respect for the southern people that his action met generally with hearty approval from the leading papers of the South as well as the North.
In the spring of 1891, Senator George F. Edmunds, after twenty-five years of distinguished service in the United States Senate, resigned and Secretary Proctor succeeded him as Sena- tor, December 7, 1891. He served continuously as Senator for over sixteen years until his death March 4, 1908. For many years he was the chairman of the Committee on Agri- culture and greatly aided the wonderful development of the Department of Agriculture. Naturally he was an authority upon things military and at the time of his death a high officer of the army said, "the Army has lost its best and strongest friend; no important army legislation has been accomplished in years without his aid."
His most notable speech in the Senate was delivered March 17, 1898, and was a recital of the conditions he found upon a personal visit to Cuba. "It is not peace," said he, "nor is it war." The speech was one of the most influential and far
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reaching in its results ever delivered in the Senate and led almost immediately to the Spanish War. It was one of those rare utterances which have really shaped public policies.
Redfield Proctor was a great Senator. In the Senate he found full opportunity for the exercise of all his powers. Though his executive force was perhaps his most conspicuous ability, the same qualities which made him a strong executive -practical sense, judgment of men, the ability to influence and use them and his wide and comprehensive view of affairs -also peculiarly fitted him for a commanding position in the national Senate.
He was an intense Vermonter and wonderfully typical of the rugged strength of our mountain state. He believed in Vermont-in her resources and in her people. It was gen- erally regarded by successive Presidents that he could always propose a Vermonter for any place. It is a fact that he was acustomed to get things for our state and for our people. But he did that wisely, as for example, the assignment of Admiral Dewey to the Asiatic fleet shortly before the Spanish War.
A fellow Senator said of him that "he taught the doctrine that labor is always rewarded. His life work teaches the American youth that almost any obstacle can be overcome and success achieved by industry."
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ROWLAND EVANS ROBINSON
By Genevra Cook
R OWLAND EVANS ROBINSON was born on May 14, 1833, at the Robinson family homestead in Ferrisburgh, Vermont. He was the son of Rowland Thomas Robinson, a staunch Friend, (or Quaker), a helper of the burdened and op- pressed, and of Rachael (Gilpin) Robinson, also a Friend, and an artist of talent.
As a boy, Rowland Robinson exhibited traits which were later to win him recognition-a love of the life of forest and field and stream, a keen and accurate power of observation, an eagerness for the tales and legends of early Vermont. He at- tended the public schools of Ferrisburgh, but his real school was that of field and wood, from which he learned secrets of knowledge and of happiness beyond those found in books.
As he grew older, his talent as an artist become apparent. Twice he went to New York, where he worked as a draughts- man and contributed cartoons and sketches to LESLIE'S, HARPER'S BAZAAR, and other periodicals. In 1870, he was married to Anna Stevens of East Montpelier, a woman of artistic and liter- ary interests, who later became his invaluable assistant as well as his inspiration. They had three children, Rachael, Mary, and Rowland.
The constant strain of rush work for publishers and the hurry and bustle of city life made Rowland Robinson long for the slow peace of rural existence, and in 1873 he returned to the homstead at Ferrisburgh, where he could work with his brother George on the farm and roam again the woods and fields which he loved. He continued his work as an artist, sending sketches to Moore's RURAL NEW YORKER and other agricultural publi- cations. About 1875 there appeared his first article in FOREST AND STREAM, to which he was later a frequent and valued con-
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